2010, THE YEAR OF THE TIGER

YEAR OF THE TIGER: 2010 is the Year of the White Tiger in the Chinese zodiac. The Tiger (associated with good fortune, power, and royalty), is viewed with both fear and respect; hence, their protection and wisdom is sought after. Many people believe the tiger, and not the lion, as the true king of beasts. Positive Traits: Agile natural leaders, alert, energetic, independent, far-sighted, charming, friendly, well-liked, loyal, intelligent, confident, courageous, powerful, strong, self-reliant, competitive, good strategists and tacticians. Negative Traits: Unpredictable, vain, distrustful, impatient, impulsive, quick-tempered, quarrelsome, rebellious, tend to risk their luck too often, often disregard others, are sensitive to criticism and have difficulty keeping their restless nature under control. Which one describes your president? Ours is unpredictable, vain, impulsive and is risking our future-- to say the least.

By Dennis Mullin

FACING THE NEW YEAR: The Democratic illusion is in full force as the New Year turns -- driven by the passage of a health care bill that even its most ardent supporters admit they know nothing about. The headlines of the corrupt Obama-enthralled media were absolutely breathless this week. The New York Behind Times swooned, “The Obama Way.” Just what is the real Obama way? Go on TV every day, where the press fulfills your deluded assessment of yourself. Go on a binge and spend as much money as you can; you never earned any yourself, everything you ever had came from foundations, grants and non-profits, share the easy money; apologize for everything internationally and you’ll never have to make any tough decisions. Terrorism? What, me worry? Just apologize to all Moslems all the time; let their jailed Jihadists go free (with full U.S. citizenship rights) and they’ll drop the issue. In other words, bad America is over. Good America is a third world country like everyone else – let’s just cash it all in and surrender to the inevitable. The U.S. isn’t worth saving anyway, why prolong the pain. Welcome to 2010.

Britain’s liberal mouthpiece the Guardian trumpeted the, “U.S. Victory on Healthcare Reform.” “Christmas Cheer, At Last,” giggled the Washington Post, comparing Obama to Christ himself. “Real Health Reform Beckons a New Start,” applauded the Boston Herald, and “Nancy Pelosi Cares,” meowed Newsweak. But of course none of the airheads who wrote these stories have to pay the bill, or go to an emergency room run by the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, which the rest of us will have to do under ObamaDoesntCare. Like Teddy Kennedy, they can fly off to Duke University for special treatment, even as they try to save us peasants.  If you want your mailman to be your doctor, raise your right hand.

Back in the real world, where the media does not reside, most notably the New York Times and Newsweak, the headlines were a lot less enthusiastic about the savior community organizer’s first year in office. “The Year of Living Fecklessly,” said Charles Krauthammer, “World Leaders Saying No to Obama,” said Slate, “Shame on Me for Voting for Obama,” said Michael Goodwin of the New York Post.  The polls keep sinking, independents keep fleeing the Democrats, one congressman even changed parties and became a Republican – and the media keeps skipping down the yellow brick road.

END OF TIMES: But many fear that even if the Mayan Calendar is incorrect (The Mayans kept extremely detailed astronomical records and followed the cycles of the planets and stars as they travel in their orbits. We are currently in the 4th cycle recorded by the Maya. It started in 3114B.C. and lasts for 5126 years until 2012, when the world will end.), Obama is engineering the final demise of the United States.

To pass his anonymous, undefined to the point of mysterious health reform, Congress just raised the debt limit again to unfathomable amounts – to $12.9 TRILLION, far beyond banana republic levels. The debt limit was originally passed to prevent this kind of runaway spending and now Congress is undoing its own restraints. And, it has actually inserted language in the new health care bill that would prevent future Congresses from undoing the damage – a clearly unconstitutional action.

But President Obama has appointed a Supreme Court Justice that has rejected precedence as a judgment of constitutionality to be replaced by the judgment of a “wise Latina.” Why is it that a full quarter of the Democratic Senators who voted for the health care bill, included provisions that exempted their own states from mandates included for the rest of us? Or that one Democrat from Nebraska got an increase in his state’s Medicare payments to be paid for by all the other states and with no cost to his own state?

BAD FIGHT: Or that the Democrat from Louisiana got $100 million when she is widely regarded as incompetent if not corrupt? Or that a former Hollywood mediocre, obscene comedian could be presiding over the Senate having been elected from Minnesota and deny others the right to speak against the Obama bill? If this were a fixed prize fight, a runaway football game, or a terrible Broadway play, they would stop it.

But no, it is “the Obama Way.” As Goodwin of the NY Post puts it: I am a baby boomer and my life has coincided with turbulent and awesome times. From the Cold War to Vietnam, from Watergate to Monicagate, through the horrors of 9/11 and the stunning lifestyle advances, my generation's era has been historic and exciting. Yet for all the drama and change, the years only occasionally instilled in me the sensation I feel almost constantly now. I am afraid for my country.

I am afraid -- actually, certain -- we are losing the heart and soul that made America unique in human history. Yes, we have enemies, but the greatest danger comes from within. Watching the freak show in Copenhagen last week, I was alternately furious and filled with dread. The world has gone absolutely bonkers and lunatics are in charge.”

FRIGHTENING: Mugabe and Chavez are treated with respect and the UN is serious about wanting to regulate our industry and transfer our wealth to kleptocrats and genocidal maniacs. Even more frightening, our own leaders joined the circus. Marching to the beat of international drummers, they uncoupled themselves from the will of the people they were elected to serve.

President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another. Shame on me.

Equally surprising, he has become an insufferable bore. The grace notes and charm have vanished, with peevishness and petty spite his default emotions. His rhetorical gifts now serve his loathsome habit of fear-mongering. "Time is running out," he says, over and again. He said it on health care, on the stimulus, in Copenhagen, on Iran. Instead of provoking thought and inspiring ideas, the man hailed for his Ivy League nuance insists we stop thinking and do what he says. Now.

INSULT TO INJURY: His assertion we will go bankrupt unless Congress immediately adopts the health monstrosity marks a new low. At least it did until he barged into a meeting in Copenhagen to insult the Chinese with the same do-it-now arrogance on carbon emissions. Don't get me wrong -- it's OK to insult the Chinese, but save it for an urgent life-and-death issue. Iran qualifies, with its plans for a nuclear arsenal, yet Obama has not pushed China on that issue with the fervor of his attacks on their dirty smokestacks.

Washington has its own freak show and it also features Big Government theocrats. One of the mainstream media myths is that the Democrat-on-Democrat attacks of late pit moderates against liberals. Horse hockey. No person of conservative or moderate sensibility could possibly support a federal takeover of the massive health system.

That some who profess to be moderates have gone along, either out of fear or partisan loyalty or payoffs, only underscores the madness.

VULGAR DISPUTE: In fact, it is a myth the fight is over health care at all. It is a vulgar power dispute between liberals and extreme liberals, with health care a convenient portal for command-and-control of 17 percent of the economy. It's definitely not reform.

Notice how little Obama talks about sick people or medicine or suffering or any of the realities of illness and death. There is almost no mention of the moral dimension that supposedly animates the demand for universal coverage.

The public intuitively understands the con, which is why it prefers the flawed status quo. Voters tell pollsters by as much as 3-to-1 they think a federal takeover will cost them and the country more money and will produce more red tape instead of better care.

Yet, because power corrupts, and one-party rule corrupts absolutely, dissenters are considered heretics -- until the next election. Meanwhile, Mother Nature delivered her verdict with yesterday's blizzard in Washington. I am cheered by the thought that finally, hell has frozen over.

GLOBAL TOO: And just in case you thought that at least the community organizer has been able to improve America’s image in the world, Slate writes: Praising and admiring Obama are still common, but raising doubts about him, even scoffing at him, is now becoming fashionable. Although he is still popular among Europeans and more popular with Muslims than his despised predecessor, Obama is being tagged with the unflattering label John Quincy Adams earned before he lost the 1828 election: "Adams can write, Jackson can fight."

Obama can write -- and he can speak -- but if he can't fight, he'll find it hard to achieve his goals. If he can't fight, he isn't scary. And evidently, being popular didn't help him much. In fact, you might even say that being popular made it more difficult for Obama to succeed

OBSTACLES: Russia has kept placing obstacles on the road to tougher sanctions against Iran; Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to freeze settlement activities as the administration demanded; Obama had a disastrous meeting with Saudi King Abdullah in which the king "launched a tirade" about refusing to show gestures to Israel Obama requested; not even Mahmoud Abbas, the very weak Palestinian president has been convinced to resume talks with Israel.

The North Koreans have said no to repeated attempts at talks; at the Copenhagen climate-change summit, the "agreement,” the U.S. reached with Brazil, China, India and South Africa lacked commitments to achieve its stated goals; the Iranians don’t show any sign of appreciation for Obama's attempt to have more civilized conversation aimed at curbing their nuclear ambitions; the Cubans, with whom Obama vowed to have more constructive dialogue, now call him "imperial and arrogant." This list is getting longer every day.

DEBT CRISIS:  As if that weren’t bad enough, Obama’s total fiscal irresponsibility is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of his mismanagement. Richard Rahn of the Cato Institute writes of the debt issue: The fundamental problem with most of the world's largest economies is that they have allowed government spending to grow faster than economic growth, which can only lead to long-run economic disaster.

Many governments are proposing tax increases, but they cannot tax their way out of this problem because most of their tax rates are already above their long-run revenue-maximizing rate. Further tax increases will only result in even slower economic growth and an increase in the underground economy, making the fiscal situation worse rather than better.

The responsible choice is a radical cut in government spending growth, with the alternative being economic stagnation or worse, likely coupled with a high rate of inflation. Japan has tried to spend itself into prosperity by issuing more and more debt. Up until now, it has avoided inflation but has suffered a decade of economic stagnation, with a falling share of world gross domestic product, and the situation can only get worse.

The Obama administration and the Congress are in a headlong rush to push the country over the fiscal tipping point. The fiscal tipping point is the point where the interest that premium bond buyers are demanding to compensate them for the risk of default and/or accelerating inflation causes the total interest cost to be so high that the government is borrowing just to pay the interest. This is equivalent to a family being so far in debt that it is borrowing just to pay the interest on its mortgage, credit cards, etc.

DEBT BURDEN: The proposed healthcare plan and the environmental cap-and-trade scheme will add trillions of dollars to the U.S. debt over the next few years and, in all likelihood, soon will drive the total debt burden to well over 100 percent of GDP. Even if the administration were to tax the "rich" at 100 percent of their incomes, there would still not be enough money to pay for all of these spending schemes.

The size of the U.S. government is already well over the welfare and economic growth-maximizing rate. Taxes on upper-income Americans are well above the revenue-maximizing rate. Thus, for those in the political class to further increase the size of government and government debt as a percentage of GDP is grossly irresponsible. It is almost as if they had a death wish for the country.

TIPPING POINT: Bond buyers are not stupid. They can see what is happening. If the administration and Congress do not soon reverse course, the cost of servicing the debt will quickly drive the U.S. to the fiscal tipping point. Once the tipping point is reached, government will shrink one way or another, because there will be no way to fund the previous bloated state. Who will be most hurt? Those most dependent on government.

That’s why there are so many grounds of concern this New Year. If one was unhappy with Bill Clinton’s social agenda and sexual psychosis, at least the economy was on firm ground. If one despised George Bush for never vetoing a single congressional pork barrel bill or for other reasons, at least things were not totally out of control. In the current environment, the lunatics are truly running the asylum and putting in place changes that will forever alter the American political and economic system – and hence our very way of life and values – and be irreversible.

Obama himself said once that the Post Office didn’t work – then why in God’s name is he putting third-rate bureaucrats in charge of just about everything he sees? This is a man who is either not thinking things through, or really wants his two daughters to end up working for ACORN. And even then, in a nation that is bankrupt even community organizers will have nothing to organize but sheer political power, which in those conditions amounts to tyranny. This is not political hyperbole – but a call for reason for our children’s sake.

Happy New Year.