Ok, so The One told us without the stimulus pork recovery plan unemployment would exceed 9%.  So, we spend billions on worthless projects and now have unemployment at 9.7%.  A truly scary number is that when you count folks who have taken part time work and those who have just given up, the rate is at 17%.   Well, Barry did promise us CHANGE, and we sure are getting it.  Let’s HOPE he doesn’t have any other tricks up his sleeve.

Er, well.  Then there’s this:

GM’s sales are down 45% from last September (when sales were already bad enough to drive the company into banrkuptcy). Chrysler is down 42%. Ford is only down 5%. Car buyers are clearly punishing the two bailout recipients brutally. Robert Farago of Truth About Cars–who has been right before–predicts that GM and Chrysler will both “go down by the end of next year” without a second, new federal bailout. The only question, he says, is whether the two manufacturers will need the cash before the 2010 midterm elections.

I’m really not all that surprised.  I for one would never purchase a vehicle from GM (government motors) and although I have been a near lifelong customer of Chrysler (Dodge trucks and Jeeps) I don’t think I could bring myself to buy a Fiat (whatever the name on the car).

Sad to say, but the country might be a helleva lot better off if little Barry would confine himself to Olympic bids.  At least there his failures only impact one city at a time.

God help us.

It’s always fascinating to me to read the viewpoints and observations of folks outside the USA on the sorry state of our nation and the apparent incompetence of our President.  Such is the case in an article entitled “Lament for a nation” by David Warren in The Ottawa Citizen.  Mr. Warren compares Obama to Gorbachev in presiding over the decline of the USA and the breakup of the Soviet Union.  I think that comparison is a bit strained, but I think it is hard to argue with this:

There is a corollary of this largely unspoken assumption: that no matter what you do to one part of a machine, the rest of the machine will continue to function normally.

A variant of this is the frequently expressed denial of the law of unintended consequences: the belief that, if the effect you intend is good, the actual effect must be similarly happy.

Very small children, the mad, and certain extinct primitive tribes, have shared in this belief system, but only the fully college-educated liberal has the vocabulary to make it sound plausible.

With an incredible rapidity, America’s status as the world’s pre-eminent superpower is now passing away. This is a function both of the nearly systematic abandonment of U.S. interests and allies overseas, with metastasizing debt and bureaucracy on the home front.

And while I think the U.S. has the structural fortitude to survive the Obama presidency, it will be a much-diminished country that emerges from the “new physics” of hope and change.

Speaking of Canadians, lately this Neil Young song has been ringing in my ears:

Its awful hard to find a job
On one side the government, the other the mob
Hey, hey ain’t that right
The workin’ man’s in for a hell of a fight.

Oh, this country sure looks good to me
But these fences are comin’ apart at every nail.

Our progressive neighbors to the north (Canada, not the DPRK) are light years ahead of the USA in the health care arena.  But The One is single-mindedly driving us to catch up quick.  So, let’s dispense with all the political bickering and hear from a genuine Canadian on what we have to look forward to one day soon:

When the pain in Christina Woodkey’s legs became so severe that she could no long hike or cross-country ski, she went to her local health clinic. The Calgary, Canada, resident was told she’d need to see a hip specialist. Because the problem was not life-threatening, however, she’d have to wait about a year.

So wait she did.

In January, the hip doctor told her that a narrowing of the spine was compressing her nerves and causing the pain. She needed a back specialist. The appointment was set for Sept. 30. “When I was given that date, I asked when could I expect to have surgery,” said Woodkey, 72. “They said it would be a year and a half after I had seen this doctor.”

So this month, she drove across the border into Montana and got the $50,000 surgery done in two days.

“I don’t have insurance. We’re not allowed to have private health insurance in Canada,” Woodkey said. “It’s not going to be easy to come up with the money. But I’m happy to say the pain is almost all gone.”

Alrighty then.  Sign me up.  Besides, there’s always Mexico.

Lefty Howard Fineman in the leftist newsrag Newsweek has this to say about The One:

If ubiquity were the measure of a presidency, Barack Obama would already be grinning at us from Mount Rushmore. But of course it is not. Despite his many words and television appearances, our elegant and eloquent president remains more an emblem of change than an agent of it. He’s a man with an endless, worthy to-do list—health care, climate change, bank reform, global capital regulation, AfPak, the Middle East, you name it—but, as yet, no boxes checked “done.” This is a problem that style will not fix. Unless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he’s not going to be reelected, let alone enshrined in South Dakota.

The president’s problem isn’t that he is too visible; it’s the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words “I” and “my.” (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

There is only so much political mileage that can still be had by his reminding the world that he is not George W. Bush. It was the winning theme of the 2008 campaign, but that race ended nearly a year ago. The ex-president is now more ex than ever, yet the current president, who vowed to look forward, is still reaching back to Bush as bogeyman.

He did it again in that U.N. speech. The delegates wanted to know what the president was going to do about Israel and the Palestinian territories. He answered by telling them what his predecessor had failed to do. This was effective for his first month or two. Now it is starting to sound more like an excuse than an explanation.

Members of Obama’s own party know who Obama is not; they still sometimes wonder who he really is. In Washington, the appearance of uncertainty is taken as weakness—especially on Capitol Hill, where a president is only as revered as he is feared. Being the cool, convivial late-night-guest in chief won’t cut it with Congress, an institution impervious to charm (especially the charm of a president with wavering poll numbers). Members of both parties are taking Obama’s measure with their defiant and sometimes hostile response to his desires on health care. Never much of a legislator (and not long a senator), Obama underestimated the complexity of enacting a major “reform” bill. Letting Congress try to write it on its own was an awful idea. As a balkanized land of microfiefdoms, each loyal to its own lobbyists and consultants, Congress is incapable of being led by its “leadership.” It’s not like Chicago, where you call a guy who calls a guy who calls Daley, who makes the call. The president himself must make his wishes clear—along with the consequences for those who fail to grant them.

Will someone stick a fork in this guy?  Once he loses the press, what’s he got left of the left?

And the walls come tumblin’ down…

Well, we have all seen the positive response of “respected” world leaders in Libya, Venezuela and Cuba to the new guy in the White House.  Meanwhile, across the pond the Brits aren’t feeling the love.  From The Guardian:

The juxtaposition on our front page this morning is striking. We carry a photograph of Acting Sgt Michael Lockett – who was killed in Helmand on Monday – receiving the Military Cross from the Queen in June, 2008.  He was the 217th British soldier to die in the Afghan conflict. Alongside the picture, we read that the Prime Minister was forced to dash through the kitchens of the UN in New York to secure a few minutes “face time” with President Obama after five requests for a sit-down meeting were rejected by the White House.

What are we to make of this? This country has proved, through the bravery of men like Acting Sgt Lockett, America’s staunchest ally in Afghanistan. In return, the American President treats the British Prime Minister with casual contempt. The President’s graceless behaviour is unforgivable. As most members of the Cabinet would confirm, it’s not a barrel of laughs having to sit down for a chat with Gordon Brown. But that’s not the point. Mr Obama owes this country a great deal for its unflinching commitment to the American-led war in Afghanistan but seems incapable of acknowledging the fact. You might have thought that after the shambles of Mr Brown’s first visit to the Obama White House – when there was no joint press conference and the President’s  “gift” to the Prime Minister was  a boxed DVD set – lessons would have been learned. Apparently not. Admittedly, part of the problem was Downing Street’s over-anxiety to secure a face-to-face meeting for domestic political  purposes but the White House should still have been more obliging.  Mr Obama’s churlishness is fresh evidence that the US/UK special relationship is a one-way street.

Hope and Change.

So, Obama made a fool of himself at the UN this week.  Or as Rich Lowry puts it, he came across as a “gullible sap”.  Same, same.

Has an American president ever expressed such implicit hostility toward his own nation’s pre-eminence in world affairs? Or so relished in recalling its failings, or so readily elevated himself and his own virtues over those of his country?

Between America and the world, Obama adopts a happy medium. It is in this sense only that he is a centrist.

“For those who question the character and cause of my nation,” Obama said, “I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months.” In other words, he’s the redeemer of a nation sunk in war crimes (we condoned torture), high-handedness (we ignored the United Nations) and hypocrisy (we promoted democracy selectively) prior to the ascension of his blessed administration.

Read the whole thing.

Well, if Jimmy Carter is to be believed, the majority of Americans (those of us opposing Obamacare) are definitely blinded by racism.  Why else would we be opposed to an unprecedented intrusion of government into our freedom to choose medical care?

Here’s a handy chart to help you discover whether you are a latent racist:

Hat Tip: Powerline