Obama – Our Fear Monger-in-Chief
A day doesn’t seem to go by that President Obama doesn’t remind the American people that we are in an economic crisis, and more recently near an economic catastrophe. So I’m not surprised to see that every time the President or one of his “economic gurus” open their mouths the stock market seems to sink even lower with it hovering just around 1997 levels and erasing nearly all the gains seen under both the Clinton and Bush administrations. With friends like these we surely don’t need enemies!
I know there are many that have accused the Bush Administration of engaging in fear mongering; however fear mongering isn’t/wasn’t the sole domain of the Bush Administration. Presently the Obama Administration has made liberal use of this age-old tactic. For those unfamiliar with the concept, I have provided the definition of fear mongering courtesy of Wikipedia.
Fear mongering-- (or scaremongering) is the use of fear to influence the opinions and actions of others towards some specific end. The feared object or subject is sometimes exaggerated, and the pattern of fear mongering is usually one of repetition, in order to continuously reinforce the intended effects of this tactic
I can’t seem to recall any previous President who has made such liberal use of the word crisis and catastrophe as our current President. This apparent, nearly pathological, need to whip up public hysteria does not give me confidence in his ability to lead our Nation; but then again I have always been weary of his preparedness to lead since he had little to no real life experience that provided me with an reasonable reason to believe that he had the requisite skills to be elected the to the highest office of our land. Of course, regardless of his experience or lack thereof he could have opted for informing us of the harsh realities but he could also lift up our spirits with the “hope” he consistently hyped during his campaign. Of course if he did that then he wouldn’t be able to drive the American people into a fearful panic that then serves to distract our attention from the constant gaffes and mistakes being made by both his team and him.
When he’s not busy whipping the American people into a fear-ridden mass paralysis inaction and thus contributing to the continued slide in consumer confidence, which is of course another reason why our economy continues to stumble along. He was pushing through the “Stimulus Package”, a package that is estimated to cost several future generations and us somewhere around one trillion dollars (and this is a conservative estimate). This package was so urgent that no one in Congress was given less than 9 hours to read the humongous bill. Why, because there were those in Congress and President Obama busy trying to “save us” which meant that there was no time for something as impertinent as reading the bill and questions were limited to a handful of hours. This ludicrous situation was highlighted in a recent YouTube video by Congressman Price (R-GA) who created a short video. In this video he highlights the 1,000+ highlighting a copy of the final bill in his possession, and it was distressing to learn that even this final bill seemed to have be hurriedly slapped together with hand written notes in the margin and numbers (often totaling in the millions) written over, next to and above lined out sums. Also missing was the much-promised vaunted transparency that then Senator and now President Obama hawked throughout the campaign trail. A promise he failed to keep – miserably.
So in closing, I hear that today President Obama will address Congress and his new media public relations groupies (i.e.: CNN, NBC, MSNBC, et al) have informed us that he will be “Reaganesque”, which I think is ironic considering how much the Democrats despised President Reagan, and thus have a hard time envisioning him giving a speech in such a manner (except if he’s had two to three days to rehearse and his teleprompter) – but we’ll see. Tonight perhaps he’ll finally stop campaigning for the office of the President and actually lead from the office of the President.
Update – tonight’s Presidential address seemed to me to be more of the same, so much for being “Reaganesque”.
