03-10-2012 05:35 PM - editado 03-10-2012 05:37 PM
HOW STUPID IS OBAMA?
By J.R. Dunn
I think it’s just a matter of intellect. It has become obvious, in a sense that cannot be denied, that Obama is a fundamentally stu…pid man.
AUGUST 9, 2011
We’ve long been aware that the One is not quite the superior intellect he was sold as. Obama, we were told, was the rare possessor of a mind with the profundity of a Socrates, the breadth of a Goethe, and the penetration of a Newton. An intellect unrivaled on the current American political scene, and possibly without equal in this country’s politics since the beginning.
Events have certainly demolished that little trope. Within weeks of the inauguration, sometime between “I won” and the Air Force One trip to New York for a single night’s outing with Michelle, it became clear that the American Solomon was no better than average. And in the immortal words of Harvey Pekar, “Average is dumb.”
It’s a difficult thing to judge the relative intelligence of presidents. Thomas Jefferson is widely considered to be the smartest individual to serve as president, and I’d be inclined to agree — as long as his actual record in office is left out. The Jefferson presidency was a trail of one self-inflicted wound, missed opportunity, and unforced error after another. Many of them involved overlooking his own precepts concerning government, such as the Embargo Act, in which he attempted to solve the country’s difficulties as a third-party neutral in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars by banning overseas trade with all the belligerents.
So the grand prophet of distributed, egalitarian democracy put his name to one of the most dictatorial laws ever signed by a president. Somehow, difficult as the problem was (the Royal Navy was amusing itself by seizing American shipping while Whitehall openly accused the U.S. of assisting Napoleon), it’s possible to envision a smarter solution — one, at least, that didn’t play a large part in setting the stage for the War of 1812.
At the other end of the intellectual spectrum, we have the real dolts. The winner here is supposedly Warren G. Harding, with Calvin Coolidge as close runner-up. The problem is that both were not unsuccessful presidents. While Harding ran a scandal-plagued administration due to his propensity for naming his sticky-fingered cronies to the cabinet, he also pulled the country out of a serious recession, which at least one more recent president has been unable to accomplish.
As for Coolidge, his failing appears to be that he didn’t have much to say, evidence of low intellect in some circles. But consider what he did say. At one Washington soiree a woman approached him and said, “Mr. President, I bet my friend that I could make you say three words.”
“You lose,” Coolidge replied.
This is wit, a form of humor found only in intellects of high order. Add the fact that Coolidge’s hobby was translating The Divine Comedy, and we can see that the standards being used to judge presidents are of type that might displease Harvey Pekar. (To tell you the truth, the sole standard involved here is probably “Republican = dumb.”)
There are all sorts of useful measures of intellect. Someone once pointed out that you don’t want a theoretical physicist working on your car. The same applies to politics. As presidents we’ve had sly dogs like Martin Van Buren and James Polk; sensible, no-nonsense types like Eisenhower and Truman; and true policial geniuses such as Lincoln and Reagan. We’ve never had an actual dolt, thanks to the filtering process required for a man to become president.
The problems arise with the academic intellect, the sole type of intelligence respected in contemporary American society. As demonstrated by Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, and to a lesser extent Jimmy Carter, this is not the **noallow** of intellect you want in the White House. It’s probably a good thing that Adlai Stevenson never served. (Though Stanley Kubrick patterned Pres. Merkin Muffley after Stevenson in Dr. Strangelove. In that one he only destroys the world.)
Which brings us back to Barack Obama, Columbia and Harvard grad, president of the Harvard Law Review, and Nobel laureate.
Events of recent days have called even the “average” rating into question. Consider the “debt crisis,” so-called. It was actually no such thing. In Obama’s own words, it was an “unnecessary crisis” — that is to say, not a crisis at all. He should know, having triggered and shepherded it every step of the way.
What kind of mentality deliberately arranges a brawl over government finances in the midst of a sensitive and fragile recovery? Obama was obviously out to steal an issue from the GOP and wreck their 2012 campaign plans. But at what cost? Wrecking the national economy?
This isn’t thinking of any description — it’s the mentality of a street punk who spots somebody in another gang and decides to take him down at no matter what happens to passersby or himself.
The S&P downgrade was something he was warned about, which he knew was coming, and which was not all that difficult to avoid. But he did nothing to avoid it. His response was that of a dull-normal — it never happened before, so it can’t happen now.
Quite apart from the economic cost, it’s embarrassing and humiliating. From here on in, Obama is and always will be the president who wrecked America’s credit rating. He can put that right next to his Nobel citation.
Then to top it off, we have the strange incident — the latest of many strange incidents — on Friday, August 5th, when Obama, about to give a speech, stood staring for a full minute while evidently waiting for the Teleprompter to switch on. Under such circumstances, the normal politician will joke, will tell a yarn or two, tease the audience, do anything but what Obama did: stare off into space after announcing, “We’re waiting.” Pharaoh hath spoken.
(Actually, what tops it off is the barefoot conga line he led at one of his interminable birthday parties last week. The country consumed by fear, the markets gyrating like a beheaded snake, his own policies in a state of uniform collapse, and the president, he’s out dancing. Maybe he can do the limbo for the next crisis.)
These are all of that quality of event that, as I’ve put it several times before, you cannot picture any other president being involved in. With Obama they come one after the other — several a week, at this point. The Obama presidency is utterly unique, unlike any other administration we have had in living memory, and perhaps ever.
The events constituting this presidency have an air of unreality with no parallel in American history. It’s like a Philip K. ***** novel in which the authorities have constructed a vast system of deception to contain a secret of horrifying and universal import.
And what is that secret? I think it’s just a matter of intellect. It has become obvious, in a sense that cannot be denied, that Obama is a fundamentally stup..id man.
He has all the equipment, all the training, would probably do well on all the tests — but it doesn’t come together and produces no worthwhile results. He knows all the buzzwords, and how to get them across. He easily impresses crowds and onlookers so long as the questions don’t get too detailed. But he can’t turn any of this into action. Everyhing he touches, without exception, falls to pieces.
He has no single political success to his record. His administration is one endless Gobi, lifeless and bare. Compared to Obama, even Warren Harding, the last man on everybody’s list, looks like a beleaguered giant. What we have in Obama is the stupidest man who ever sat in the Oval Office. (And please — no claims that this is some kind “master plan” to bring the country down. You cannot construct a workable plan by piling failure upon failure. Not even Saul Alinsky himself could have brought that off.)
This raises all sorts of questions that we’ll be discussing for some time to come. To start the conversation, what does it say about Obama’s “team”? Many of them, Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, and Christina Romer among them, are smart people in any sense of the word. Obama’s type is by no means rare — universities have been pouring them out in herds since the “knowledge factory” days of the ‘60s — and is easily recognized.
And yet these intellectuals, acknowledged leaders of their discipline, did nothing to correct or educate Obama in their chosen field of economics, but instead bent over backward to implement his “policies,” schemes that they knew were based on no form of reality and could not possibly work. They took these actions despite the damage they knew would result. One of them, Timothy Geithner, continues doing so to this day.
There’s a phrase that describes this: the trahison des clercs, the “treason of the clerks,” in which a society’s intellectual class repudiates its duties and responsibilities to the larger community in search of political gain.
Without such people acting as enablers, the damage that an Obama could cause would be strictly limited. Unfortunately, this type is no rarity either. (The phrase is derived from a 1927 book by the French philosopher Julien Benda, who saw such a process occurring in France. The French clercs traîtres wound up dumping the country into the laps of the Nazis. It could be worse.)
But look on the bright side. According to whispers from Washington, Geithner is on the way out. His replacment would be Jon Corzine, who put both Goldman-Sachs and New Jersey into near-bankruptcy.
Thank God 2012 is almost here.
J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker and the author of Death by Liberalism.
Publicado: 03-10-2012 05:39 PM
Revaluating Barack Obama’s IQ
Monday, October 5, 2009
Even amongst the HBD community, it was widely accepted that Barack Obama had a much higher than average IQ. HalfSigma estimated Obama’s IQ to be around 150. Such a score would put him comfortably amongst the foremost cognitive elite.
Yet with Obama’s early floundering as President and some leftist pundits openly questioning his knowledge of the issues, I think it’s suitable to reconsider just how smart Obama actually is.
We have several pieces of evidence to consider in making this assessment.
1) Attended both Occidental College and Columbia for undergraduate
We know absolutely nothing of his grades, transcripts, published writing, or testing scores from this era of Obama’s life. We know he was accepted to Columbia, but under the suspicion of affirmative action and given the range of scores at even elite colleges, this basically means nothing.
2) Attended Harvard Law school: Law Review Editor and graduated Magna ******* Laude
Again, this means nothing under the suspicion of affirmative action. Obama refuses to release his test scores, so I give his acceptance essentially no weight in supporting high intelligence. His pposition as Law Review Editor was probably garnered due to high status on campus and being a congenial fellow amongst his classmates. And surely, his white liberal and black classmates couldn’t contain themselves in electing Mr. Post-Racial as Editor.
Yet, Obama is the only editor in the history of the Harvard Law Review to not publish an article. He did graduate Magna ******* Laude, but given this writing sample, I find even that accomplishment suspicious. His writing sample is actually written quite well and I’m somewhat impressed by his word choice and sentence structure (surely better than his wife’s). However, his argument lacks any original thought and he commits the exact kind of errors a high-scoring LSAT student would have mastered. Here he uses personal anecdote as a counterargument (a type of error tested for on every LSAT):
I respect Mr. Chen’s personal concern over the possible stigmatizing effects of affirmative action...however, I have not personally felt stigmatized
He continues, outright admitting he’s an affirmative action admit:
I must say, however, that as someone who has undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my academic career, and as someone who may have benefited from the Law Review’s affirmative action policy when I was selected to join the Review last year
3) Wrote Dreams of My Father
I had considered this as sufficient evidence for asserting Obama had an extremely high intelligence. The author of Dreams is a masterful writer with a solid grasp of metaphor and prose. The inner ruminations of the Dreams Obama implies an intellectually gifted individual eager to understand his own psyche and how it relates to the larger world. Yet, given Jack Cashill’s investigations on the matter, I highly doubt Obama penned the more impressive parts of this book. Thus, I discount this as concrete evidence for Obama’s purported brilliance.
4) Law School Professor at University of Chicago for ten years
Another empty suit. Never published an article in ten years as a professor.
5) Great speaker (with teleprompter)
This video says it all (@ 0:13). The great orator is merely parroting a scrolling script:
In my estimation, taking into account his rather expansive vocabulary, penchant for stringing together good sentences, and being at the very top end of blacks, Obama’s likely around 125. He would excel at a large state school, but not at an elite one. Where would you put him on the Bell Curve?
Publicado: 03-10-2012 05:42 PM
¿ES OBAMA TAN INTELIGENTE COMO EL Y LA PRENSA QUIEREN HACERNOS CREER?
If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how he inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?
If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan’s holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?
If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia , would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent “Austrian language,” would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?
If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current on their income taxes, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to “Cinco de Cuatro” in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the fourth of May (Cuatro de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?
If George W. Bush had mis-spelled the word advice would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potatoe as proof of what a dunce he is?
If George W. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he’s a hypocrite?
If George W. Bush’s administration had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually get what happened on 9-11?
If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans , would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?
If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?
So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? Can’t think of anything? Don’t worry. He’s done all this in 5 months — so you’ll have three years and seven months to come up with an answer.
Publicado: 03-10-2012 06:32 PM
Obama's Problem as 'The Smartest Person in the Room'
December 21, 2010
Since Obama first stepped on the national stage, pundits have fallen all over each other in a race to declare that Obama is special type of genius. Tom Shales of the WaPo recently called Obama "the smartest kid in the class." Billionaire Julian Robertson claimed, "Obama, from all I read, thinks that on every occasion that he is the smartest person in the room. And I think he often probably is. ..."
Robertson may be half-right. Obama apparently does consider himself the smartest person in every room. According to Peter Baker of the NYT, "One prominent Democratic lawmaker told me Obama's problem is that he is not insecure -- he always believes he is the smartest person in any room and never feels the sense of panic. ... [Emphasis added.]"
How do Shales, Robertson, and even Obama know that the president is the smartest kid in the class or the smartest guy in the room? There is an interesting and little-discussed quandary (in logic it is called an aporia) in the assertion that person X, whoever that might be, is the smartest person in the room.
Before we examine this problem, let's set down some parameters. What do these people mean by "smartest"? Since the discussion is about politics, it is fairly safe to assume that "smartest" does not refer to some standard test for intelligence.
Thinking it through, Obama's admirers cannot be referring to his IQ. In terms of IQ, Obama is clearly not the smartest person in any room he enters. The fact of the matter is that Obama's IQ scores have not been made public. Guesses by enthusiasts of his IQ range from 140 to 170 [i]. Obama's detractors calculate a much lower IQ. Even conceding the highest score of 170, Obama will not always be the smartest person in any room. He would rarely be the smartest person at a local MENSA convention and never be the smartest person at a meeting of the ISPE.
Perhaps "smartest" denotes "having the greatest overall knowledge" -- i.e., real-world smart. Is Obama the most knowledgeable person in any room? This too seems unlikely. Imagine a party attended by a physicist, a historian, a neuroscientist, an English professor, and President Obama. Let's assume they all have roughly the same IQ. The smartest person in the room (in terms of knowledge) will depend on what topics are discussed. If the subjects are plasma energy, Thucydides, synapse firings, and the proper use of the gerund, Obama will not be the smartest man in the room. Keep in mind that prior to becoming a politician, Obama's claim to real-world intellectual status was as an instructor in, not a professor of, constitutional law.
There is another possible definition of "smartest." Obama could have the most "street smarts." This kind of intelligence would entail being the most cunning and devious person in any room. Let's call this "Machiavellian smart." Here, Obama might take the prize. As we will see below, no one except Obama would know, and be able to truthfully assert, that Obama is the "Machiavellian smartest" person in the room. That would spoil the scam.
As Machiavelli said, "It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver." Of course, this "double" deceiver must not be caught in the act of deception. If by "smartest" Shales and Robertson (and everyone else -- except Obama -- who makes such a claim) mean that Obama is the "Machiavellian smartest," they would be willing dupes to an ongoing hustle. Machiavelli described such associations this way: "One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived" [ii].
I am not implying that Shales and Robertson have been bamboozled -- although they are clearly gushing in their praise of Obama's "smarts," whatever those might be. I am asserting that they do not and cannot know what they are talking about when they claim that Obama is the smartest person in any room.
A claim by Y that "X is the smartest person in the room" depends on how "smartest" is defined and on whether or not Y is in the room with X [iii]. Consider, once again, a room containing a physicist, a historian, a neuroscientist, and an English professor. Y agrees to tell us who is the smartest person in the room. (In this example, "smartest" means "highest overall knowledge.")
If Y is smart enough to accurately establish which of the four people in the room has the best grasp of a variety of topics, Y must have an even better understanding of those subjects than the people in the room. Inside the room after his interviews are completed, if Y is honest and capable of making the determination, Y will say, "I am the smartest person in the room." If Y conducts the survey outside the room (say, through a conference call), then Y can truthfully and objectively report which of the four people is the smartest in the room. In either event, Y must be smarter than all the people in the room to inform us of the name of the smartest person therein.
A room full of outstanding con artists (or politicians) presents Y with an entirely different scenario. "Machiavellian" became an adjective defined as "cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics or in advancing one's career" for a reason. Moral person Y will be hard-pressed to detect the greatest Machiavellian "double deceiver" in a room filled with them.
Note that it will be impossible for those of us outside of the room to determine whether or not Y is part of some greater deception if Y identifies X as the "smartest person in this room," where "smartest" means most devious. If Y is "smart" enough to detect the "smartest" con artist, it is highly likely that Y is either the biggest of the swindlers -- or that Y is covering for the greatest con man in the room. In either event in this scenario, if Y claims that "X is the Machiavellian smartest person in the room" there are reasons to doubt Y's conclusion.
Getting back to the quote from the NYT, notice that the unnamed Democrat source says that Obama "always believes he is the smartest person in any room." There is something creepy about this claim -- if it is true.
Everyone reading this essay has been, at one time or another, the smartest person in a room. We knew it at the time. But what kind of narcissism and/or Machiavellian cunning must reside in the heart of a person who "always believes he is the smartest person in any room"?
A friend of Socrates named Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates. The priestess for the oracle replied there was no one. Socrates did not relish the proclamation that he was, in effect, the smartest person in any room. In fact, Socrates challenged the pronouncement:
"It seemed to me ... that the people with the greatest reputations [for wisdom] were almost entirely deficient, while others who were supposed to be their inferiors were much better qualified in practical intelligence." [iv]
This is called "humility." The smartest person in one room fully understands that he may not be the smartest person in the next. That's a large part of what it takes to be "the smartest person in the room."
Larrey Anderson is a writer, a philosopher, and Senior Editor for American Thinker. He is the author of the award-winning novel The Order of the Beloved and the memoir Underground. He is working on a new book called The Death of Culture.
[i] The website that claimed Obama's IQ was 170 (give or take a few points) offered this irrational defense of why Obama had not released his test scores: "Obama's campaign is apparently NOT HAPPY about The Washington Post preparing to disclose this [a purported high IQ score], because they fear it adds to his reputation as not an 'everyman' and being too 'elitist.'" This explanation assumes that a highly intelligent person is, ipso facto, an elitist -- whatever "elitist" might mean. It seems evident that most people would respect, and even desire, an intelligent president. One would think that WaPo would rush to publish such an IQ score if it were verifiable. Which is more likely: not revealing an IQ score because it proves the president's intelligence is "average" or because it shows the president is a genius? (Hint: one does not have to be the smartest person in the room to answer that question.)
[ii] Take the three definitions of "smart" I have presented in the reverse order: (1) street smart, (2) knowledgeable, and (3) high IQ. Now think of them in the context of this quote from Machiavelli:
There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.
[iii] For the remainder of this discussion, I have dispensed with the notion of IQ as equivalent to "smartest." Obama would have to have an IQ well over 200 to be the smartest person in any room. Such is clearly not the case.
[iv] Apology, 23a.
Publicado: 03-10-2012 10:24 PM
Pravda asks: What happened to American media?
Accuses U.S. press of ‘deliberately hiding evidence’ of Obama’s ‘fraud’
by Chelsea Schilling
Chelsea Schilling is a commentary editor and staff writer for WND, an editor of Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, and a proud homeschooling mother of two. Schilling joined the Army at age 17, receiving the rare designation of expert marksman three times. In addition to WND, Schilling has worked as a news producer at USA Radio Network and as a news reporter for the Sacramento Union.
It’s a twist of irony: The Russian news website Pravda has published an accusation that the American media is “tame,” afraid to publish news and is “deliberately hiding the evidence published on the internet about [President Obama’s] defrauding of the American public and the deliberate evisceration of the Constitution of the United States.”
In a March 7 Pravda column, “Arizona sheriff finds Obama presidential qualifications forged,” Dianna Cotter, a senior at American Military University, blasts America’s mainstream media for their virtual silence about Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s six-month investigation into the controversy surrounding Obama’s birth certificate and his constitutional eligibility for office.
NOTE: In case you missed the news conference of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “Cold Case Posse,” you can view it here.
“A singularly remarkable event has taken place in the United States of America,” Cotter wrote. “This event occurred in Arizona on March 1st and was an earth shattering revelation. … Yet, in the five days since [Arpaio’s] revelations there has been little in the way of serious reporting on the findings he presented in his presser. With 6 short videos, the Sheriff and his team presented a devastating case, one the tame US press is apparently unable to report.”
Cotter recalls Obama April 27, 2011, press conference in which he “walked into the White House Press room with a Cheshire cat like grin and a ‘Long Form Birth Certificate’ from the State of Hawaii in hand.”
Speaking from the podium, Obama declared, “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.”
“Quite the barb from a man holding a forged document,” Cotter wrote. “That’s right, forged.
She notes that the investigation also uncovered an allegedly forged Selective Service Card for Obama.
“Forged documents are being used to qualify a President of the United States for the office he holds,” she contends. “Or is usurped the more accurate term?
“The silence from the main stream media in the US is deafening. It almost seems as if the press is terrified to even think the question, let alone ask it: Is the President a criminal?
The press in Arpaio’s audience were certainly asking him to state precisely that, yet nowhere has the question been asked of the White House by the press. Instead the American Press is aggressively protecting the presumed President of the United States, pushing the fraud upon both America and the world, supporting a man who may well have usurped the office.”
She asks, “What has been the response from the Obama era press?
“Silence so loud it can be felt.”
Cotter lays out detailed evidence of a widespread cover-up and concludes:
The American Press is deliberately hiding the evidence published on the internet about this defrauding of the American public and the deliberate evisceration of the Constitution of the United States. It is hiding Barack Obama’s Fraud as it has been revealed by a Sheriff in Arizona. The silence of the American press would be unbelievable if it weren’t so blatantly obvious.
It is nearly as egregious as the audacity of Obama’s fraud itself.
Publicado: 03-12-2012 05:52 PM
Top 10 Obama energy blunders
Wonder why gas prices are surging, with the cost at the pump topping $5 per gallon in some parts of the country? Obama’s anti-energy-producing policies certainly are not helping. The buck stops in the Oval Office, as this list of the President’s energy blunders attest.
1. Keystone kerfuffle
Canadian energy producers want to sell the United States an abundance of oil, if only President Obama gives the go-ahead to build the Keystone Pipeline XL. However, the President has chosen his deep-pocketed environmental backers over U.S. energy needs (and thousands of jobs for American workers). With the Middle East more volatile than ever, developing North American energy resources would help free the United States from being beholden to Islamic fanatics.
2. Volt vanity
After President Obama’s bailout of General Motors, the automaker turned its attention to producing the Chevy Volt. Even with the government’s help, the electric car is a flop, with few buyers and an exorbitant price. The Volt has trouble staying charged in cold weather and the battery can burst into flames long after being damaged in a minor accident. Obama’s fantasy of gasless cars is proving to be among the biggest debacles in automotive history—rivaling Ford’s Edsel and Chevrolet’s Corvair.
3. Solyndra silliness
President Obama made sure the $787 billion stimulus package was stuffed with initiatives meant to create green jobs by the millions. What the taxpayer got in return was a parade of bankrupt companies, led by Solyndra. The solar-panel producing company got a $535 million loan guarantee, with the promise that 4,000 jobs would be created, but end up filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year. Solyndra became the symbol of Obama’s misreading of the marketplace’s demand for green energy.
4. Tesla travesty
Here’s another tragic “green jobs” story. Tesla Motors received $465 million from the Obama administration to produce electric cars. So far the company has created 400 jobs, at a cost of over a million dollars per job, by producing the Tesla Roadster, with a price tag of $100,000 per car. Unfortunately, should the electric car ever become fully discharged, it would cost $40,000 in repairs. Where’s Occupy Wall Street on this?
5. Moratorium morass
After the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama imposed a moratorium on deep-water drilling. The action prompted oil rigs to relocate to Brazil, costing jobs in America. Obama then offered technology and support for Brazil to develop its offshore oil production, creating jobs in Brazil. Does this make sense to anyone?
6. Drilling dashed
It is not only the deep-water drilling pull-back that is wrongheaded. The President also refuses to consider drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or along most of America’s coastline. And he is not aggressively pushing for shale oil extraction or natural gas drilling on federal lands. There is an abundance of energy in this country if only the President would seek to develop it.
7. Price pandemonium
Of course energy prices are exploding. That’s what the President wanted all along. Remember his famous utterance, saying that under his policies, “electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket.” Also telling was his selection of Steven Chu as energy secretary. Chu once said that it was important for U.S. gas prices to mirror Europe’s sky-high petrol costs. It looks like he may be getting his wish.
8. Cap and trade catatonic
Despite a big push by the environmental lobby, President Obama couldn’t get his convoluted cap-and-trade package through the Democratic-controlled Senate. The legislation would have raised energy costs for consumers, while enriching visionary thinkers like Al Gore, who tried to parlay his global warming alarmism into a profitable venture by cashing in on the legislation’s emission-credits trading market.
9. Algae acclamation
With enormous areas of shale oil deposits and oil reserves in the U.S. remaining off-limits for development, President Obama has turned his eye to America’s algae resources to solve the nation’s energy problem. The President claims that by harvesting algae, and turning it into fuel, the nation could replace 17% of the oil it imports. Mr. President, if you want to reduce oil imports, here is some advice: Drill, baby, drill.
10. Energy excess
It takes a village of Secret Service agents and White House aides to accompany Michelle Obama and her husband (sometimes) on vacations to Spain, Martha’s Vineyard, Hawaii, etc. With Air Force One gobbling up copious amounts of fuel, even one of the First Couples’ date nights to New York could light a town, or even Al Gore’s house. With Americans struggling to pay high gas prices, perhaps the first family can set an example for the nation and start cutting back on their excessive energy use.
Publicado: 04-05-2012 10:19 PM
Marxist Obama is a clear and present danger to the Land of the Maple Leaf
Pictorial proof of how Obama REALLY feels about Canada
Judi McLeod Thursday, April 5, 2012
American mainstream media astroturfing notwithstanding, Monday’s one-day summit meeting in Washington with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon is the classic: “A picture is worth a Thousand Words” lesson.
The American media presented the meeting as a run-of-the-mill get together of the three North American amigos.
Nothing to see here, folks, just move along.
Look at the expression on Barack Obama’s face from pictures taken during the event. The malevolent expression on Obama’s face as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was speaking tells a different story. The picture is right up there with Michelle’s countenance while looking at France’s Carla Bruni.
President Barry Soetoro Obama has no time, let alone respect, for Stephen Harper.
And his antipathy goes beyond the malevolent look on his face to imperious doled out punishment.
Some folk see Monday’s summit as the American media going out of its way to downplay the “dumb diplomacy” of Obama to his two closest neighbours.
Canada Free Press (CFP) sees it as downright spite toward the Conservative Harper and the country he leads.
Kudos to the Investors href="http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/pri
“Energy has become a searing rift between the U.S. and Canada and threatens to leave the U.S. without its top energy supplier.
“The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Obama that the U.S. will have to pay market prices for its Canadian oil after Obama’s de facto veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada is preparing to sell its oil to China.
“Until now, NAFTA had shielded the U.S. from having to pay global prices for Canadian oil. That’s about to change.
“Canada has also all but gone public about something trade watchers have known for a long time: that the U.S. has blocked Canada’s entry to the eight-way free trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an alliance of the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Peru, Chile and Singapore. Both Canada and Mexico want to join and would benefit immensely.
The Obama administration also successfully blocked Canada from a seat on the UN Security Council in October of 2010.
The Investors Business Daily continues:
“U.S. media dutifully reported Obama’s false claim that Canada our top trading partner, is too protectionist—for whom, we don’t know. Malaysia maybe?—even if it’s good enough for NAFTA, the trillion-dollar trade treaty that is the world’s largest. Things were even worse, if you read the Mexican press accounts of the meeting. Excelsior of Mexico City reported that President Felipe Calderone bitterly brought up Operation Fast and Furious, a U.S. government operation that permitted Mexican drug cartels to smuggle thousands of weapons into drug-war torn Mexico. This blunder has wrought mayhem and cost thousands of lives.
“The mainstream U.S. press has kept those questions out of the official press conferences, while Obama has feigned ignorance to the Mexicans and hasn’t even apologized.
“In short, the summit was a diplomatic disaster for the U.S. and its relations with its neighbors, north and south.
“Once again, the Obama administration shoots itself in the foot—or, rather shoots us in the foot—through dumb diplomacy. Via InstaPundit.”
Monday’s summit is one American mainstream media mission that failed. The pictures and the words don’t match.
Marxist Obama is a clear and present danger to the Land of the Maple Leaf.
Publicado: 04-20-2012 05:18 PM
PRIMER MANUAL AUSTRIACO DE ECONOMÍA
Mises, Rothbard, Hayek... por fin en Bachillerato
Por Juan Ramón Rallo
Para bien o para mal, bachilleres y universitarios se han acostumbrado a estudiar las distintas materias curriculares a través de vistosos y coloridos manuales. Dejada atrás la época de la abundante y fría letra de los tratados, el vehículo de divulgación educativa por excelencia son en la actualidad los libros de texto.
Hasta la fecha, la Escuela Austriaca carecía de un manual de Introducción a la Economía que contuviera y estructurara la mayoría de sus ricas aportaciones de acuerdo con los planes de estudio vigentes. Muchos han sido quienes a lo largo de los últimos años ha demandado que algún economista con ganas, tiempo y conocimientos emprendiera esta fundamental tarea para transmitir y difundir, en un formato agradable y convalidable al de otros manuales, las en ocasiones complejas teorías de Mises, Rothbard o Hayek.
Afortunadamente, ese indudable vacío ya queda cubierto de manera exitosa con esta obra de Jordi Franch Parella, supervisada por Jesús Huerta de Soto y publicada por Unión Editorial. A lo largo de 16 unidades temáticas, trufadas de imágenes en color, cuadros-resumen, actividades y ejercicios de repaso, el doctor Franch Parella expone los principales temas que debe conocer todo aquel que desee introducirse en el apasionante mundo de la ciencia económica: los distintos agentes que intervienen en un sistema productivo, la organización interna de las empresas, la interacción de consumidores y productores en el mercado, la rivalidad competitiva entre las compañías, la determinación de los precios de los bienes de consumo y de los factores productivos, la existencia o no de fallos del mercado, los principales problemas macroeconómicos –como las crisis, la inflación o el desempleo–, el papel que desempeñan los bancos, el comercio internacional o los fundamentos del crecimiento y el desarrollo a largo plazo.
Aunque personalmente sigo prefiriendo que la visión y el aprendizaje general de la Economía se obtenga a través de tratados exhaustivos que muestren a través únicamente del texto argumentativo las muy diversas interrelaciones del sistema económico, no parece haber incompatibilidad alguna –más bien, bastantes complementariedades– entre los tratados clásicos al uso y este libro de profesor Franch Parella. Es más, puede que en muchos casos la llama del interés por la ciencia económica no llegue a prender con fuerza a menos que la carta de presentación sea un manual como éste.
Pero, más allá de la utilidad que la obra posea para despertar el interés y fortalecer el conocimiento sobre la economía austriaca para el público general, su otra gran ventaja es que, como hemos indicado, cumple con las directrices y requisitos básicos para superar de manera exitosa la prueba de Selectividad, de modo que puede emplearse en todos aquellos institutos de enseñanza superior que así lo deseen. El doctor Franch Parella posee una dilatada experiencia docente no sólo en la enseñanza universitaria, sino también en la preuniversitaria, esto es, en bachillerato y los ciclos formativos. Es por ello que este libro se ha redactado pensando en la labor que deben desempeñar en el día a día tanto el profesor como el alumno.
Confiemos, pues, en que este texto se convierta en una herramienta de trabajo habitual de todos aquellos profesores y estudiantes de bachillerato (o incluso, en cierto modo, de primer curso de universidad) que deseen ofrecer y recibir una visión de la economía más realista y ligada al empresario. Nuestra libertad y nuestra prosperidad sin duda lo agradecerían enormemente en el largo plazo.
JORDI FRANCH PARELLA: ECONOMÍA. Unión Editorial (Madrid), 2012, 400 páginas.