Obama's Obfuscation

Per Wikipedia:

Obfuscation is the concealment of intended meaning in communication, making communication confusing, intentionally ambiguous, and more difficult to interpret.

I didn't watch Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress last night. I was in Las Vegas attending a best friend's wedding, which had to be on 9-9-09. As it turned out, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn't have a chance to watch Obama's speech!

One of the things that drives me nuts about Obama's speeches are his selection and parsing of words. He has developed a mastery of using the English language to deflect, re-direct and mask his intent by very careful phrasing and word selection. He is a politician's dream. He is also a liar, which should come as no surprise to anyone that has listened to a career politician speak.

The office of the President of the United States, however, is a high honor. Traditionally, this high office has caused "politicians" to transcend their rhetorical embellishments and speak to a higher calling on behalf of their constituents. This has not been the case with Obama.

Obama is in constant campaign-mode. His speeches are designed to influence voters' opinion and not to lead. Although he won the election and was entrusted with the most powerful office in the world, we are continuously being subjected to a revised stump speech.

As of today, Rasmussen had this, one day after his Congressional speech:



One day earlier, the polling had the same result. Watch Rasmussen's polling tomorrow. It's bound to show a bounce from Obama's speech. After that wears off, he should return to double-digit negative numbers.

Unfortunately, Obama has transmorphed his campaign rhetoric into obfuscation. He is now paying the price in the polls. I pray that we, his constituents, don't have to pay a price as well. We expected much, much more from him than what he is delivering.

Obama: Forget "Never Forget"

In one of the most cynical moves yet of the Obama administration, we must brace ourselves for their overt attempt to re-brand 9/11 as National Day of Service.

Per The American Spectator:

This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it's not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.

The plan is to turn a "day of fear" that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.

"They think it needs to be taken back from the right," said the source. "They're taking that day and they're breaking it because it gives Republicans an advantage. To them, that day is a fearful day."

This is another attempt of the Obama administration to re-write our history and diminish the events that have defined our society. This is truly outrageous!

[Originally posted on August 25, 2009]

Obama's Choice of Literature

Obama's choice of literature pretty much explains his interests.



National Review Online has a review of "The Post-American World", posted to their blog "The Corner" on May 7, 2008. Written by Jim Manzi, the review counters the "blame America first" reviews that predominated the mainstream media upon the book's original release:

"[Fareed] Zakaria claims that the last twenty years has seen the rise of the rest of the world relative to the United States. He says:

We are living through the third great power shift in modern history. The first was the rise of the Western world, around the 15th century. It produced the world as we know it now—science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the industrial and agricultural revolutions. It also led to the prolonged political dominance of the nations of the Western world. The second shift, which took place in the closing years of the 19th century, was the rise of the United States. Once it industrialized, it soon became the most powerful nation in the world, stronger than any likely combination of other nations. For the last 20 years, America's superpower status in every realm has been largely unchallenged—something that's never happened before in history, at least since the Roman Empire dominated the known world 2,000 years ago. During this Pax Americana, the global economy has accelerated dramatically. And that expansion is the driver behind the third great power shift of the modern age—the rise of the rest.

I am always suspicious of these three-part schemes of historical epochs, the three parts of which seem to contract precipitously in length as we approach the current day. According to Zakaria, the first of these phases lasted abut 400 years, the second lasted about 100 years, and we’re now in one that has, at least in large part, happened in 20 years.

Zakaria goes on to say that this “This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else.” But the only way that sentence makes sense to me is if it means relative American decline.

Here’s the only problem with Zakaria’s thesis:



U.S. share of global economic output (on a purchasing power parity basis) has declined very slightly over the past twenty years – from about 21% to about 20%. But what has really happened over this period has been the rise of China and the rest of non-Japan Asia at the relative expense of Western Europe and Japan.

At the start of each of the last two recessions there has been a lot of hand-wringing about whether current problems are symptomatic of terminal U.S. decline. Zakaria in his article tells a story of how twenty years ago Indians were culturally fixated on the U.S., but are now more inward-looking. He goes on to cite recent economic growth rates for China and India, and makes the point that if we were to extrapolate these out for some decades the world would be a very different place. Just replace China and India with Japan and Korea, and this is an almost a word-for-word recitation of the kinds of articles you could find every week in every major American newspaper and magazine twenty or twenty-five years ago.

What Zakaria misses is that the relative decline of the U.S. is real, but that it already happened. U.S. share of world GDP in 1945 is estimated to have been about 50%; this more than halved between 1945 and 1980. The U.S. economic crisis of the 1970s was largely the result of this decline. I’ve argued at length that the Reagan economic program was a creative and successful response to that crisis that has prevented the U.S. economy from going the way of Europe. This program was focused on two things: sound money and deregulation, broadly defined. It’s ironic that, despite the rhetoric, Reagan’s program was premised on a very clear-eyed recognition of relative American decline. (It’s interesting, by the way, to see Reagan’s take on foreign policy commitments in this light.)

The ability of the U.S. economy to defy historical gravity for the past 25 years has not been automatic: it was earned in a set of pivotal political battles that were pretty much complete by 1984. The next twenty years comprised, within the American economy, a Twenty Years War to implement this less-regulated system that has now reached maturity. We live in the new economy that it has created. The danger of misdiagnosis of our current situation is that we will fail to understand the sources of our success and unwittingly throw them away."

Somehow, I don't think Obama read the book with the above thoughts in mind.

Hat tip: Bob Dornak

Two Key Speeches at the RNC

There have been two speeches given at the Republican National Convention that merit attention. Both were given by people other than the ticket's top vote-getter, but both captured the imagination of the Republican Party in ways seldom seen. These speeches served as the foundation from which two individuals were catapulted into the national spotlight and, for one, the White House.



Will history repeat itself for the other?



Hat tip: Conservatives4Palin

Republicans: Boycott Obama's Speech to Congress

Republicans should boycott Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9th. Try as I might, I can't come up with a single good reason why they need to be there. What can he possibly say that will have any bearing on their actions? History has shown us that Obama will most likely use the occasion to speak to the TV audience and push for his version of health care reform. You can be assured that he'll throw out a few "straw man" arguments to demonize the opposition.

If the Republicans don't show up, how much damage can it do to them politically? Most of the perceived push-back on Obamacare is coming from Town Hall meetings and Tea Party events. With the exception of Sarah Palin, I haven't heard one elected Republican put forth any meaningful commentary that has resonated with this country the way Sarah Palin's Facebook comments have.

Republicans should just get out of the way and let Obama and the Democrats in Congress take complete responsibility for the debacle that is Obama's agenda. Let the one lone Republican tasked with giving their token rebuttal be the ONLY one in attendance.

Oh, and one more thing. Let that lone Republican be the most junior member of the Republican caucus. I'm sure he or she won't have any problem addressing the inherent amateurism of Obama's content.