Congress not as crazy as Obama, it seems.
Score one for the American Dream.
Amid a dizzying array of liberal doctrinal blows, the Congress has largely stayed in step, and passed our President’s will, even if he translates the dirty work onto them, like with the stimulus. However, the men and women representing our country finally faltered from such transformative heights recently when they shot down a cap and trade bill straight from the action hero/President’s mouth.
Turns out, demanding a spike in energy prices for no reason other than to control the citizens of the nation they are supposed to represent is a line in the sand Obama wasn’t counting on. 24 Dems and all 41 GOP senators, even Mr. Specter (who will lose his seat soon, thank God), are lined up against the misinformed notion that when money is tight, you want to spike the price of goods permanently and reroute hard-earned money to the guvamint so they can force less efficient technology down our throats.
You see, Dems don’t care that solar and wind technology isn’t ready for primetime yet. When they yell and piss and moan about saving the environment, they forget simple things like the enormous cost of overhauling our energy grid, the extravagant cost of a hybrid car battery or its toll on the environment, or the gross inefficiency of many alternate fuel sources at this point in history. Liberals don’t think the way conservatives do about these things. They push and push for changes to improve our environment without regard to the fallout, because they only value the thought. They hoped for the best, and that’s the value of pushing for things that may destroy our economy. Best intentions are the currency of liberal thought (oh damn, I’m filing that line away for later).
Conservatives often side on the other side of that fence, becoming paralyzed at times by fear that something may go wrong, or just fear of rocking the boat. Truth is, ingenuity and drive to change are valuable assets in our world and nation, and a certain amount of risk is necessary to move on. In this situation, however, its clear for all to see that the environmentalist movement is using fear tactics and newspaper headlines to force a change driven only by best intentions, and not reality. I appreciate the faith and zeal of Dems to push forward, but injuring people’s livelihoods is not the way to get these things done, especially when given the drastic nature of a national energy tax.
The coolest thing about capitalism is that when a technology becomes feasible to compete with the status quo, a company will seize it and overhaul the market without guvamint intervention and subsidy. This mechanic is why the US paves the way in almost every field of technology in the world, and why we are the biggest consumer of new technologies despite having far less citizens than India, Russia, or China. Using higher taxes and guvamint handouts to force as-yet inefficient products into the system only lowers the capital base that makes new innovations possible through research and development wings of our greatest corporations. Remember, whenever you allow the guvamint to dictate how any industry works, you’re taking the power of decision from the experts of that field and putting it into the hands of elected officials who, by and large, have little or no experience in such things.
I wouldn’t hire a lawyer to design cars, but Democrats seem all to happy to pass everything into the hands of a team of lawyers in Washington DC, whose skills include being popular and winning votes. Scary sentiment when we consider guvamint-run health care.
Obama’s personal threat to bankers.
“Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that. My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
What on Earth is the President doing here? Why talk super tough to banks that are actually beginning to turn a profit again, and stoke more of the witchhunt that he started in the first place? Why do we treat the men who will eventually deliver us from this problem with such contempt? Let’s even say they directly caused this crisis and the guvamint didn’t have anything to do with it. Would you still impair their ability to right the ship out of spite? Would you let your anger get the best of you, even if it means prolonging an international recession?
“The only way they could have sent a more Spartan message is if they had served bread along with the water,” says a person who attended the meeting. “The signal from Obama’s body language and demeanor was, ‘I’m the president, and you’re not.’”
Obama really likes to play the “I’m the President” card, but only verbally, it seems. Last time he played it, it was about the GOP screeching about the pork-laden stimulus bill. Of course, he punted the whole thing to Congress right afterward, then said there was no extra spending to be found in the bill. To complete the circle, he promised to go through the budget “line by line”, only to attempt a rubber stamp when the bill hit his desk. Democrats in Congress actually forced him to read the damn thing, or at least as much as he could get through in less than 48 hours.
What we’re left with when the dust settles is a man who loves to remind people he’s President, but resorts to fear tactics and mob anger when he has to make a decision. His leadership has been nonexistent at every turn, and his “solutions” are little more than empty populist sentiments, political handjobs, and cloak and dagger tax hikes. There are men in this world who can only see the reward of hard work and leadership, and fail to understand the sacrifice and discipline that built those palaces. Most are 9 to 5ers with two leased cars, a mortgage, and credit card debt. Somehow, one of them is now President, and while he enjoys all the frills and toys of the Presidency, he is not built to pilot this ship we’re all stuck on.
