In The Toilet

Yesterday, three weeks from Election Day, my dear friend, Jeramy, wrote in response to my last blog entry:

I have been responding to you all afternoon...mentally. Now all I can say in response is that the Bush jr. administation [sic] has been the biggest fiasco in American History. Anyone that wants to replace it with anything that even remotely resembles it is either sound asleep or has his head so far up his own ass that only a serious laxative can extract it. Head for the toilet on Nov. 4 !

I love ya, Jay. But you're so very wrong about your misplaced loyalty to "The One." The media's favorite messiah is only going to put us into a tailspin from which we may not recover.

If you recall from your American History classes. . . after the crash of '29, Hoover immediately raised taxes and enacted protectionist legislation -- the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.  Raising tariffs was one of the worst things that could have been done at that point. This is exactly what Obama wants to do -- raise taxes on the "evil rich" and enact protectionist legislation to "save American jobs."

FDR came in after Hoover, promising to balance the budget and to keep his hands off the economy. That didn't last long. FDR expanded on Hoover's policies and shortly added some of his own to the mix, including the Davis-Bacon Act, which established the requirement for paying prevailing wages on public works projects. That and several other policies suffered from the same problems that Hoover's programs did:  they reduced price flexibility, and often set minimum prices that made the Great Depression not so great after all. 

FDR's widely worshipped (by liberals) New Deal policies seemed to work at first; the economy began to expand again in 1933 and continued through the spring of 1937. At that point, a second depression began and lasted until June of 1938. It wasn't until WWII began (for the U.S.) in 1941 that the depression was officially pronounced dead.

Here's some enlightening reading, if you're interested:

"In an article in the August [2004] issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Lee E. Ohanian and Harold L. Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

"[The] two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Cole and Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years."

Your candidate wants to tax the very people who provide the jobs for this economy. Obama wants to "spread the wealth" -- a tenet of the Marxist philosophy so vaunted by the Left -- as he very casually said to a pissed off plumber questioning Obama about his tax policies just the other day at a rally.

Obama is the furthest left candidate of a major party ever to run for president. And his policies will not be good for this country. On the contrary.

Though the Bush administration has proved disappointing on many fronts -- yes, even to me -- it's been far from the "fiasco" you and many of your fellow libs claim it has been. You seem to conveniently forget about Jimmy Carter and 22% interest rates and gas lines. Another Democrat, Harry Truman, was also vilified before he left office; he had an approval rating of 21% -- lower than Bush's. History, however, has treated him more kindly. I'm sure that neither of us will be around to hear how historians one day will give Bush much better grades than the mainstream media does today.

I suppose if by "anything that remotely resembles it" you mean any Republican president -- regardless of his/her experience, policies, or basic principles -- then, yes, I do plan on supporting John McCain and voting for him on Nov. 4th.

However, I am neither sound asleep nor do I have my head up my ass. I did once -- actually, three times -- when I voted for McGovern, Carter, and Dukakis. But never again.

Maybe you should actually spend a little time studying what Obama really believes, what his policies are (if you can find them), and look into his track record. That is, if you can find a track record because, it doesn't take much to discover that he is a man of very little accomplishment. He's good at voting "Present" when it's time to take a stand; he has very poor judgment when it comes to the people he associates with (e.g., Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, and Bill Ayers); and he's a student' of the far, far left. To say he's a closet socialist is not stretching the truth at all. In fact, if fits him like a glove.

But, alas, it looks as if your guy may indeed win the election; though I'm far from ready to concede the race yet. When (or if) he does I will be spending some time at the toilet -- retching at the thought of the next four years and how we may never recover as a nation.