Thursday, May 31, 2012

Ebenezer Obama Praises Himself

Recently President Obama has been declaring himself to be a fiscal conservative. Responding to Republican nominee-presumptive Mitt Romney calling administration economics “a prairie fire of debt,” John Maynard Obama responded with “He left out some facts—what my opponent didn’t tell you was that federal spending since I took office has risen at the slowest rate of any president in almost sixty years.”

In your guts, you know he’s nuts. That’s an obvious lie, and it is accompanied by some very high-level chutzpah. Seeking to divert your lying eyes from the obvious, Obama mouthpiece Jay Carney expanded on the theme: “To make the point, as an editor might say, reporters should not buy into the b.s. that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration. I think it’s a sign of sloth and laziness.” That’s the administration’s way of saying that what is obvious to anyone with an IQ above room temperature isn’t true.

Obama has gathered together his team of economics “experts” to perform one of the biggest con jobs in history. You’ve undoubtedly heard Obama and his minions talking about how responsible his spending has been in comparison with previous presidents. And though you’ve likely simply ignored the enormous foolishness of it all, you’ve probably wondered where he comes up with such blatant distortion of facts. Well, let me give you a hint. Ever heard “figures don’t lie, but liars can figure?”

Step one: Blame all of your first year spending on George W. Bush, reserving only a piddling $140 billion as your own. Easily enough done, if you have no conscience. The fiscal year of Obama’s first year in office ended on October 1, 2009. So Obama’s experts claim that he had no control over spending before that date. Now you also have to ignore the $800 billion stimulus that Obama and the Democrats passed in February of that year because it didn’t actually kick in fully until after the end of the fiscal year. So the calculation Obama includes in his current lie about fiscal restraint uses a baseline figure for 2009 which is almost entirely attributable to him but which he blames on his predecessor.

Step Two: Use dollars spent by the federal government without any reference to the national economy, while still blaming Bush indirectly for most of the spending since 2009, . That way you can claim a “rate” of spending that is “fake but accurate.” If you ignore the gross domestic product, population increases, more people on the public dole and wildly divergent views of inflation, it’s possible to spend trillions of extra dollars while claiming the rate of increase over three and a half years is low. In 1983, the highest previous spending year, the US was spending 23.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for all federal programs, including revitalization of America’s degraded military capabilities. How does that stack up with Obama’s federal chunk of the GDP? 2009: 25.2%; 2010: 24.1%; 2011: 24.1% and for 2012, an estimated 24.3%.

Those differences may not seem like much until you take into account the other facts. Removing 1983, rates have ranged from 18% to 21% between 1984 and 2008. And the 500 pound gorilla in the room is the GDP itself. First, much of the decrease in spending in 2012 will be attributed to cuts to the military which are the opposite of what happened in 1983. And more importantly, the GDP itself has been hugely reduced by the recession which seems interminable under Obama. Simply put, 24.1% federal spending against a sick GDP is one helluva lot more than 23.5% of a GDP that had taken off for the stratosphere.

Democrats pay the latter fact quick lip service, hoping you won’t see that it is a major factor in determining spending as a relative component of the overall economy. Their argument is that the economy stinks, so federal spending looks larger as a percentage of GDP. No, it is a larger percentage. And that bumps up against Obama’s argument that his fiscal policies ended the recession back in mid-2009. If the current economy stinks, then who care whether it’s technically a recession or not? And what about this simple figure: at the end of 2008 public debt stood at 40.5% of the economy (still too high) but now stands at 74.2% and getting worse?

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how liars figure. If simple, honest accounting doesn’t work for you, come up with some devious creative accounting to make your profligacy look like fiscal restraint. The next time your innate good sense says that Obama is outright lying about curbing federal spending, go with your instincts. They’re correct.

23 comments:

tryanmax said...

I can't help but notice that Jay Carney has adopted the conservative stance that the media is lazy regarding White House affairs. And he told them that to their faces!

AndrewPrice said...

Yeah, that doesn't even pass the straight-face test since the federal budget basically added 50% in his first year and hasn't shown any signs of slowing its growth after that.

Tennessee Jed said...

I have to wonder what he is trying to accomplish here. They must know this is so absured even left leaning media such as Wapo gave it 3 pinnochios. Maybe the hope is it will help keep the soccar mom/Opra watchers on board through the election . . . but I wouldn't be too sure.

Tehachapi Tom said...

Hawk
This lying sack of s**t has got to be dumber than he looks. It is astounding that he can believe his own lies and believe we will also.
Even a pathological liar has some constraints on what he will try and get by with. bo is not restrained in any thing; vacations,loans to crony companies not even his race baiting.
He should go, reunite with his family and help that part of the world, and just leave us.

rlaWTX said...

I really, really, really do not like that man.

(as a kid we weren't allowed to say we "hated" someone. ^ This was our euphemism.)

Anthony said...

Everyone living in the real world knows the economy sucks and that the government has been spending massive amounts of money. No way Obama or his 'experts' can spin that one way.

T-Rav said...

I wonder if they've been studying Joseph Goebbels' methods--the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

Unknown said...

tryanmax: It takes a great deal of effort to see things Obama's and Carney's way. The press has shown more diligence than they give the MSM credit for. It's hard work reporting disaster as success deserving four more years. Except for a few conservatives and a couple of real reporters, most of the press just takes Carney's criticism as justified, requiring them to work twice as hard to spread the lies. How much longer that can go on is a question. Even a rat will bare its teeth when cornered.

Unknown said...

Andrew: Aw, you're making that up, aren't you? Surely you mean the Democrats cut the budget by 50%.

Tam said...

This is exactly why I LOVED Romney's event in front of the boarded up Solyndra HQ earlier. Constant, blaring reminders of the disaster that is Obamanomics.

Unknown said...

Tennessee: Something is going on at the WaPo. They've recently published major editorials attacking the Democrats and particularly Obama. If they're not careful, someone is going to start believing the editors have read the First Amendment for the very first time since the 60s.

Unknown said...

Tehachapi Tom: Pathological liars actually believe their own lies, so it's easier for them to keep their lies straight than it is for an ordinary liar. The problem for Obama is that he is not intelligent enough to come up with a big lie that others can believe, so he steadfastly sticks to lies that are obvious even to those who don't ordinarily follow politics and/or economics. 2 = 2 = 5 is incorrect, no matter how much you may believe it's true and no matter how many times your TelePrompter says to repeat it.

Unknown said...

rlaWTX: My mom was no Pollyanna, but she used to say "hate's too strong for the Devil." I'm not sure how deeply she believed that, but with all due respect to a great woman, I HATE OBAMA. Thanks for giving me the chance to say that, just in case I had never mentioned it before. LOL

Unknown said...

Anthony: Hence the perfect Democratic bumper sticker: "It could have been worse." Maybe yes, maybe no, but they know it's unprovable.

Unknown said...

T-Rav: It's a pattern, all right. The problem for Obama's Greek chorus is that for the big lie to work, they have to have near-complete control of the mass media. That was possible for Hitler and Goebbels, and for the left in America until cable TV news and the internet came along. Now, the big lie most often comes off as, well, a big lie.

Unknown said...

Tam: That's the right way to play politics. He lies about you, you tell the truth about him, complete with a glaring example like Solyndra. 3000 jobs lost, millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars thrown down a government-favored green scheme rat hole on a stock that couldn't legitimately attain junk-bond status.

K said...

Don't kid yourself about who will believe this. I've come across several comments on left of center sites - often interjected as OT - about what a fiscal conservative Obama is and what liars the Tea Party are about Obama spending.

I think at this point, the Obama campaign is just trying to keep their people on the reservation. It's made a lot easier with the isolation of the left and right on the internet and the MSM's cheerleading.

Unknown said...

K: True believers will believe anything the man on the white horse tells them. So it's no surprise that the left (which knows nothing, zero, zilch, nada about economics) would support Obama's big lie. It's independents and moderate/conservative Democrats he's trying to sell this horse manure to, and many of them ain't buying. Anyone stupid enough to believe Obama's debt numbers is going to vote for him anyway. One thing that is completely true is that the hard left feels Obama has abandoned them with his attempts to destroy America slowly rather than their preferred instant revolution.

tryanmax said...

Tam, He did that! Please tell me it's on YouTube.

tryanmax said...

K, LawHawk, there's no way that independents and moderates are going to buy it. Just look who's on the sales team. The first one making hay with this nonsense was Ed Schultz. 'Nuff said.

Unknown said...

tryanmax: Holy Schultz! Well, he'll probably convince all six of his viewers.

Individualist said...

George Bush 482 Billion

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/28/bush-leaving-next-preside_n_115335.html

Barack Obama 2009 1.54 Billion

http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/08/21/us-obama-deficit-longterm-exclusive-idUSTRE57K4XE20090821

Wow Obama sure is a big deficit cutter - -

Actually Obama's new policy is to stop having budgets at all. For the past two years we have been operating the government without a budget with great success. Now it is time to ramp that up.

From now on not only will the congress not make a budget but the CBO will stop recording it and telling people. After all,the Chinese cannot complain about the size of our debt if it is not even known by our governent.

We will just priont money as we need it and tell everyone that we are doing fine.

The One will simply make everything better through his blessings and glad tidings...

Unknown said...

Indi: Not having a budget is part of his little plan. Since the budget offices can only work from what information they are given by Congress and the President, the lack of a budget allows major fudging on the conclusions because estimates are only that, without any documentation or authorization that creates reasonable estimates. Any budget can be fudged to some degree, but an absence of a budget allows for an infinite amount of fudging (and just plain lying).

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