{"id":5231,"date":"2009-08-10T12:41:08","date_gmt":"2009-08-10T17:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5231"},"modified":"2009-08-11T06:29:08","modified_gmt":"2009-08-11T11:29:08","slug":"you-gotta-know-when-to-hold-em-know-when-to-fold-em","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5231","title":{"rendered":"You Gotta Know When to Hold ‘Em, Know When to Fold ‘Em"},"content":{"rendered":"

It good to know I’m not the only one drawing this conclusion these days….<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re seeing in Washington these days is beginning to look like Jimmy Carter II.<\/a><\/p>\n

Carter, like Barack Obama, started out with the idea of stimulating the economy.<\/p>\n

His plan was to give every taxpayer $50, then throw in a few billion for tax cuts and public works programs. Simple, right? Wrong: In Washington, this soon became very complicated. Within a month, the package grew from $20 billion to more than $31 billion \u2014 a significant amount in the 1970s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, those were the days. Elitist liberal miscreants like Obama pissed away mere billions instead of trillions.<\/p>\n

Obama is losing momentum and spending political capital as fast as stimulus dollars. Will he change course?<\/p>\n

In April of his first year in office, Carter finally threw up his hands and scrapped the whole idea. He had dithered for four months. He had nothing to show for the effort. By then he was fatally diminished, his authority substantially eroded.<\/p>\n

With the Obama administration, a similar unraveling is well under way and gathering momentum. Voters are increasingly restive. The country is souring on Obama\u2019s gargantuan policy ambitions. The sense is growing that he has grossly overplayed his hand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Regrettably, I think Obama is more committed than Carter was to government engorgement of the private sector. Let’s not underestimate of the damage Obama, Reid, Pelosi and their posse are prepared to perpetrate on America.<\/p>\n

Like Carter, Obama looks increasingly like a president out of step with the times. Like Carter, there is a large gap between what voters expected based on the measured and moderate tone of his campaign and what began unfolding after his inauguration. Obama ran as a centrist, but he is governing from the left.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Surprise! (not)<\/p>\n

In an NPR poll, a plurality of Americans opposed Obama\u2019s health care efforts. In a recent Rasmussen poll, those who strongly disapproved of the president\u2019s performance outnumbered those who strongly supported him by 11 percentage points.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Immaterial. Obama is smarter than we are and knows what’s best for us. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.<\/p>\n

Many legitimately fear that if not stopped, Obama and the Democratic Congress will take this country well beyond the point where the public sector starts to \u201csqueeze the life\u201d out of the economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Too late. I believe we’re calling it the Great Recession.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not too late for Obama to make a major adjustment. Bill Clinton\u2019s initial months were equally turbulent. He was savvy enough to make a mid-course correction \u2014 but it came only after the election of a Republican Congress. On his present course, Obama is making that eventuality increasingly likely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then again, Bill Clinton was a fiscal conservative, compared to Obama and Bush.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It good to know I’m not the only one drawing this conclusion these days…. What we\u2019re seeing in Washington these days is beginning to look like Jimmy Carter II. Carter, like Barack Obama, started out with the idea of stimulating the economy. His plan was to give every taxpayer $50, then throw in a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,64,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-president-obama","category-liberal-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}