Our in-your-face president

 

 

A President Who Has Learned Nothing

Jonathan S. Tobin "The address was a clarion call for the country to get behind the liberal agenda he supports. Fair enough. But, like much of what has come from the White House since November, it illustrated that this president was not interested in compromise or listening to any views but his own. If this speech is to be treated as sign of what will come, the next four years will be filled with more bitter partisan argument and ideological intransigence from the president. Even as many Americans were reveling in the feelings of unity that this ceremony engenders in all patriots, President Obama was throwing down a gauntlet to his foes and saying that he will redouble his efforts to demonize Republicans".  Via Lucianne,

A flat, partisan and pedestrian speech   "The only voice that really soared at midday was Beyonce’s, while singing the national anthem. President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address, by contrast, was flat, partisan and surprisingly pedestrian—more a laundry list of preferred political programs than a vision for a divided America and disoriented world. Congressional Republicans are acting as if the 2012 campaign is continuing, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that the president followed suit. He gave a progressive speech that Democrats will like"....

 

Against Swedenization

NRO  "Since the end of the Cold War, conservatives have warned against the “Swedenization” of America. These warnings are, most directly, about a policy regime wherein government spending accounts for more than half of gross domestic product and government regulation is the biggest factor affecting the generation of the rest.   

"Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show that, in 2010, all government spending in Sweden equaled 53 percent of GDP. The same figure was 55 percent in Finland, 56 percent in France, and 58 percent in Denmark.... In 2000, government spending in the U.S. accounted for 34 percent of GDP.
""Well, what are a few percentage points of GDP among friends? By this rudimentary measure of government outlays as a proportion of national income, America already differs from Scandinavia in degree rather than in kind. If conservatives want to avert the Swedenization of America, they need to explain, more comprehensively than they have done so far, the deplorability of that outcome, since Western European social democracy appears benign where Eastern European Communism was manifestly grotesque.

Obama's Perfect Second Inauguration

American Thinker "Maybe the general public is really as excited about today's festivities as the cable news coverage would suggest, but somehow I doubt it. Idle pageantry, combined with the visible diminishing of enthusiasm from 2009's levels in terms of crowd size, are omens. It is inevitable that more and more people will figure out in his second term that he is not the person he has been portrayed as in the dominant media. It remains taboo to examine the problems with the documentation of his public biography, but providence has brought a kickoff to his second term that is the perfect symbol of the man."