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Where is the head of the president?

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Ed Hahnenberg

Ed HahnenbergThe other day I got to thinking about the future of the country under the next four years of an Obama administration. That we are headed for unsustainable debt for future generations I take for granted. That’s where the morality of the leadership of this president comes into question. As regards his overall leadership, Karl Rove had some thoughts on the subject recently.

“Fewer Americas are working today than when Mr. Obama took the oath of office four years ago. The unemployment rate is higher. He’s the first president to preside over a decline in median household income during a recovery.  Nearly half as many more people receive food stamps than when he first took office and 1 out of every 6 Americans lives in poverty.

“The national debt has grown from $10.627 trillion four years ago — or $34,782 for every man, woman and child — to $16.433 trillion, or $52,135 for every American.

“Looking abroad, America’s interests — and America’s standing — are worse off in every region of the world today than they were four years ago. The Obama administration squandered the nation’s hard-won victory in Iraq, ceding influence there to Iran. Afghanistan may be abandoned to a cruel and dangerous fate.  The early opportunity to bend the Arab Spring in the direction of moderation and modernization has largely been lost.  And friend and adversary alike question America’s resolve.

“As for his style of governing, Obama is the most polarizing president in the history of Gallup’s polling.  He begins his second term with a job approval rating last Friday of 48 percent, the lowest for any modern president at the start of their second term and 19 percent below his standing four years ago.

“So what is the president’s mindset as he approaches the challenges of a second term?  The New York Times reported Sunday morning that friends believe he’s ‘bloodier minded to beating Republicans’ and no longer willing to accept Speaker John Boehner not immediately returning his phone calls.”

The president has no future election to win, so even though he is a lame duck, he did win the election. We already see the Republicans caving in the House, but then there are two brands of them, and Speaker Boehner has a monumental task of trying to lead them in some sort of unified manner until the midterms in 2014.

However, the morality of the mounting debt concerns me the most. Our government cannot keep spending. The debt clock continues to add billions to our soaring debt, almost unnoticed by most Americans.

I guess it will take a collapse of the dollar, rising inflation, and another recession before those who voted for Obama realize what a destructive path he has put us on. In his head, the president has to realize what he is doing.

Where is the head of the average American?

  • jimm58

    Apparently, the average American believes Karl Rove to be an uninformed moron. Fox entertainment is the only network interested in him, a network best known for bias and shoddy journalism.

    • Ed Hahnenberg

      Jim…If you are the average American, pity all of us. I assume you would think ABC, NBC, and the New York Times are all unbiased and tell it like it is. Fawning and softball interviews exude from such sources.

  • GenePH

    Ed, you have ventured back into the whirling vortex of controversy, here within our own solar system. While I agree with everything you point out, I am of the darker side of opinion on this. I don’t think he is just a poor leader. I think he wants it this way. He governs by creating crisis after crisis, in each case setting up the so-called conditions for change. The change he ran on. The change most people have no idea off. Starting with our Constitution – he would like to change that. He does not like America as it is. He is the first president in our history with that opinion. I hope I don’t get censored for saying that, but it is a dangerous situation we find ourselves in. I guess if o’Henry can write a column telling of his relative chasing another relative up a hill, I ought to be able to post my dark opinion.

  • Ed Hahnenberg

    Matthew…Dropping past analysts’ expectations, a gauge of consumer confidence fell this month to its lowest level in more than a year, led by gloomier expectations and views of the present situation, according to data released yesterday.

    The Conference Board reported that its gauge of consumer confidence dropped to 58.6 in January, the lowest level since November 2011. If Obama is doing such a great job, consumers don’t seem to think so.

  • Ed Hahnenberg

    John…I probably wouldn’t go that far. However, as you pointed out in another blog-reply, Obama will be judged the worst , most divisive president in modern times.

  • Ed Hahnenberg

    Tony…To put your comment into perspective, when President George W. Bush took office, our national debt was $5.768 trillion. By the time Bush left office, it had nearly doubled, to $10.626 trillion. So Bush’s record on deficit spending was not good at all…I agree. During his presidency, the national debt rose by an average of $607 billion a year. How does that compare to Obama? During Obama’s presidency to date, the national debt has risen by an average of $1.723 trillion a year — or by a jaw-dropping $1.116 trillion more, per year, than it rose even under Bush.

  • Henry Klugh

    Karl Rove was largely responsible for Bush’s two terms as
    Governor of Texas and for his winning two terms as President. In return for
    this service the President referred to Rove as “turd blossom.” This says a lot
    about Bush’s adolescent mind set and it also says a lot about Rove, a man so
    lacking in self-respect that he would smilingly submit to that treatment.
    Perhaps in Bush’s lexicon turd blossom is a term of endearment. Rove’s grandchild comes to say, “Grandpa, you
    say that the President called you turd blossom because he liked you but when I
    call my brother Billy a turd momma gets mad at me.” Good luck Karl!

    Rove’s predictions for the 2012 election didn’t turn out too
    well; some may remember his unwillingness to admit that Romney had lost Ohio
    until a Fox News hen took him by the arm to the network’s data center where the
    analysts finally convinced him. I thought he would weep. Earlier in the evening he predicted that Romney would
    win 279 electoral votes to Obama’s 253 and that Romney would win 51% of the
    popular vote. I’m sure this made Ed and others posting here so happy that in
    spite of his miserable failure predicting virtually all aspects of the election,
    if he now predicts what they want to hear about the awfulness of Obama, and why
    we are all going to hell in a hand basket entirely because of him, why what the
    hey, give him another look.

    As to the business of the debt: without the authorization of
    congress Obama can’t spend a dime. See the Constitution Article 1 section 7.
    The debt has grown under both recent administrations because congress has
    authorized it. Obama’s approval rating is not 47%. Poor Rove can’t even get
    that right. According to recent polls Rasmussen has him at 51% and more
    recently at 60% by Post-ABC. Congress approval rating by Rasmussen is at 9%.
    Remember that Congress appropriates expenditures and controls taxes. Why no
    rants against congress?

    As for Gene who believes Obama is “The first President in
    our history not to like America as it is.” I guess he excludes Lincoln who
    wasn’t real fond of slavery; Teddy Roosevelt who wasn’t happy with the trusts’
    strangle-hold on commerce; LBJ who thought African- Americans should be able to
    vote without having the **** kicked out of them, and on and on. Oh yes Gene, I
    don’t actually have an Uncle Horace. That story was an allegory and had to do
    with a novel view of personal eschatology.

    Now I’m outta here; even Hercules was only obliged to clean
    out the Augean stables; he wasn’t expected to refurnish them!

    • Ed Hahnenberg

      Henry…Karl’s white board didn’t do him or Fox News any favors with the prediction of a Romney win. The ratings of the President have topped 50% lately, it is true. However, the point I made in the blog is that Obama has done little to put people back to work even with the Dems control of both houses of Congress from 2009-10…when the second stimulus was passed. As new weekly jobs numbers emerged today showing a jump in unemployment claims and a report released the previous day showed the economy shrinking in late 2012, Obama is effectively laying off his jobs council. Another commission wasting taxpayer money.

      I will be interested to see the unemployment numbers which come out tomorrow.

      The stimulus spending is now drying up, but I’m sure you’d be in favor of another trillion or more to stimulate an economy which, if another negative quarter plays out, we will be back in recession. Harken back to British conservative Daniel Hannan’s viral comments to PM Gordon Brown back in 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs. Hannan had it right then for Britain and was prophetic for America today.

      I think Obama, like Brown, is also patoelogically incapable of accepting responsibility for what he has done.

  • GenePH

    Since I can never figure out where a comment may fall in the daily schedule, I will start from the top of the list; but this is directed to 0′Henry, the poor ex-college professor who lives at the end of a dirt road in a trailer. That situation may be an allegorie to all of us from the 0bama administration, but some of us saw it coming. The clueless college professor who now evidently gets his information from PMSNBC nutters must have been successful in teaching yungens the beauty of 0bama socialism, because they voted him in again. So now we are all happy and poor and ignorant at the end of the road.

    I predict however, there will be a resurgence of rationalism and appreciation of the Constitution.

    • Ed Hahnenberg

      Gene…I guess one has to look at the hours posted, but I get confused too. Great stuff about us all being poor and ignorant at the end of the road. I don’t understand how O was elected again after all the distractions he pulls out in a given week. Despite the soft increase in unemployment figures and the Dow breaking 14,000, we’re still headed for recession.

    • Henry Klugh

      Poor Gene has trouble getting anything right! Where do I say I live in a trailer at the end of a dirt road? Thirty years ago,.. got that…thirty years ago I lived in a trailer at the end of a dead end road. So you believe all dead end roads are unpaved? I guess if the facts don’t suit your biases you and Ed will contrive to manufacture different ones. Additionally, I was far from a “poor professor.” I lived in the trailer because it was cheaper than an apartment and it was private. If you take advantage of inexpesive living arrangements it doesen’t mean you can’t afford better ones. Another little lapse in logic there willingly shared by Ed. Among other things the privacy helped me write three college textbooks.
      I was a full professor at a Michigan college which had a very generous pay scale, generous enongh for me to retire at 57 which I did. My income is or should be irrelevant and none of your damned business and I post this comment only because some other nutter will assume the college where I taught kept its faculty at the poverty level and that would be untrue and blantly unfair to the college.
      One more thing Gene, if you want to look up allegory you first have to spell it right.

      • Ed Hahnenberg

        Henry…You missed one for your lexicon…the safety, which figured into the Ravens dramatic win…two points are scored for the opposing team when the ball is dead on or behind a team’s own goal line if the impetus came from a player on that team.

        On a contrarian note, I contrived nothing nor had a lapse in logic in your comment to Gene. Where you came up with that is as fictional as your “poor professor” stuff.

        Finally, although both parties share the blame, my kids are finding out that the expiration of the payroll tax holiday which cut 2 percentage points from every American’s Social Security payroll tax at the end of 2010 until the end of 2012 should be a surprise to all those earning a wage. Of course those of us retired folks won’t see that since, if we’re not receiving a paycheck, we live off of a pension and SS. In any case the expiration of the payroll tax holiday is a job killer.

        • Henry Klugh

          That’s exactly what I mean. You say as fictional as my poor
          professor stuff. Where did I write about being a poor professor, fictional or
          otherwise? Even in your post just below mine you say, “Great stuff about all of
          us being poor and ignorant at the end of the road.” Where did that come from?
          But of course you “contrived nothing.” Maybe I should have said “distort.” It
          wouldn’t have mattered though. You will force any and all comments and posts
          into a form that fits your political/religious views and then deny you did it. I
          believe you and Gene would have had great careers in politics. In any event,
          continuing to post or comment here for me is a waste of time. Have fun!

          • Ed Hahnenberg

            Henry…Same here…a waste of time. I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about anyway. You live in another world of language interpretation.

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