Water over the dam (Niagera Falls)

By Dennis Mullin

JIMMY CARTER:  The parallels abound, almost to the point of becoming clichés. But they are too obvious to ignore. The peanut farmer came to office carrying his own suitcase and promising never to tell a lie and be the champion of human rights around the world. He told the truth in describing America’s “malaise,” but neglected to point out that he brought it about by creating around 20 percent unemployment, and equal levels of inflation and interest rates. His human rights campaign sparked civil wars throughout Central America that flooded American streets with refugees. Carter had an open-arms policy in regard to Cuban immigrants and Cubans were immediately granted refugee status and all the rights that went with it – which encouraged Fidel Castro to unload his prisons and insane asylums of 120,000 onto the beaches of Florida. Carter also tolerated Cuban troops running wild in a military intervention in Angola in Africa while committing human rights abuses galore.

But Carter abandoned a key American ally, the Shah of Iran, because of human rights policies and turned Persia over to the barbaric Ayatollah Khomeini, unleashing the Islamic Jihad that haunts us to this day. He also caused the humiliating 444-day hostage crisis including a disastrous rescue mission. He stood by while the Soviet Union deployed ballistic missiles around Eastern Europe – and in a grand finale watched the Soviet Union invade Afghanistan on Christmas Day 1979. Seldom has anyone’s foreign policy been so discredited by the rest of the world – and this despite the triumph of Camp David. Obama has all the failures without the successes.

OBAMA TOO: This genius came to power promising to “reason” with America’s friends and foes. So high were the expectations that he won the Nobel Peace Prize before he even had a passport. He has overseen some sort of peace. The entire Mideast is in flames as he “leads from behind.” What does that mean, pulling your master from the end of a leash? Iran keeps building the bomb while ignoring Obama entirely. The Islamic world expresses deep disappointment with Obama, even though he grew a slight mustache for his seminal speech in Cairo that fell flat. He first promised to withdraw from Iran and Afghanistan and then ordered a surge. Then he announced withdrawal dates so Al Qaeda and the Taliban could plan future operations accordingly – all to the military’s disgust.

He has totally discouraged the Europeans. The press on the continent is far more critical of Obama than that in America. The Great One scrapped the anti-missile system to Moscow’s delight and Putin takes no pains to hide his disdain for Obama. China is launching aircraft carriers and North and South Korea are trading artillery fire – nobody seems to care about an Obama “teaching moment.” His administration even gave free guns to the Mexican drug cartels which are shooting American agents in our streets. His Justice Department won’t control the border or Philadelphia, and we now find out that his health care bill will cover illegal immigrants after all, despite his earlier insistence that it would not. Guantanamo Bay is still open; about the only thing he has done to date is force the military to accept openly gay people. And with the economy collapsing huge defense cuts will come, just making matters worse.

MEDIA ROLE: He is so are behind Jimmy Carter, that one commentator said he expects billboards soon featuring Carter asking “Miss Me Yet?” One thing will be different this campaign. In 2008 the mainstream press still pretended to be objective. That was before Chris Mathews had his homo-erotic experience with the shivers for Obama running up his leg, Newsweek declared Obama divine, and all the media agreed he was the greatest orator in human history. That crap won’t fly so easily this time. The media will still be leading the Obama chorus but stunts like Newsweek’s cheap shot cover of Michele Bachmann will as likely backfire as have the desired impact. Everyone now knows the New York Times just covers a fairy tale fly-over land where all non-liberals are stupid fools and money grows on trees. No sensible mind would even explore its pages. But the press will keep on trying to show us a world where Barney Frank, Charles Shumer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), John Kerry and Joe Biden are national role models and Matt Damen provides our intellectual compass.

ECONOMY: But nowhere is the question more urgent than on the economy. For Obama’s part he now says he will give a speech on jobs in September once he gets back from vacation. You can wait. When he was elected he promised unemployment would not go over 7 percent; it is now almost 10. He said he would change the way Washington worked and then turned it over to the two biggest political hacks of the last century, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They in turn tore the economy to shreds and said we would love it once they let us read the changes. Obama promptly exceeded the debt of every President in history combined and squandered all of it on silly pork barrel projects designed to benefit his friends and supporters. He managed for the first time in history to lose the nation’s AAA credit rating. Now he blames his failures on Republicans, a Congress he controls more than half of, the Japanese, George Bush and a Tea Party that doesn’t even exist. He absolves himself of any responsibility for the pitiful state of the union. So much for hope and change; He has given us despair and opened the door to the road to ruin.

KEY POLLS: American industry is flush with cash – but nobody will invest with this man in the Oval Office. As Rome burns he rants and raves about raising taxes and increasing social spending upon which there is no capital formation. One commentator said the President would rather see the poor get poorer if he could make the rich poorer as well; in other words Obama’s plan is to make everyone worse off at an equal pace; or so it would seem. They say a society gets the government it deserves. America has become a fat, greedy, rude and lazy culture which no longer wants to work for a living if it can make the Chinese pay for it. Americans don’t realize that someday that structure will come crashing down with great pain and consequences for all; perhaps they deserve Obama. This may be the last chance to straighten the ship. If the voters follow Obama’s siren song to a no cost paradise of pure social equality without working and a government at their every beck and call – by 2016 their vote won’t matter – assuming they still have the right to one.

GO FIGURE: This year, July had 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. This happens once every 823 years. This year we're going to experience four unusual dates; 1/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/1/11, 11/11/11 and that's not all. Take the last two digits of the year in which you were born, and add the age you will be this year. The results will be 111 for everyone on earth. This is also the year Obama will give 800 speeches that nobody will listen to, attacking those who fly corporate jets and asking for trillions more for infrastructure expenses. He’s the Wizard of Oz, living  behind a curtain in an imaginary land.