-By Michael M. Bates
Glancing at a newspaper in the Age of Obama can be hazardous to your mental – if not physical – health.
Unemployment is rising. For 18 straight months (not that it has anything to do with The Anointed One’s time in office) food stamp participation has set records. We’re up to 40.8 million recipients. More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid, a program intended for the poor. One in six of our fellow citizens are in government anti-poverty programs.
Then there’s that marvelous Obama stimulus. Tax dollars putting people back to work with important, meaningful projects like developing a computerized choreography program, analyzing exotic ants, and studying if a soda tax will improve health. Shovel ready is indeed an apt description.
Some recovery summer, huh? Although newspapers report the depressing statistics, there’s at least one thing missing: an apology for urging their readers to vote for Barack Obama for president in the first place.
Consider how the endorsements for Obama rolled in less than two years ago. According to the Chicago Tribune, Barry’s “economic policy team is peppered with advisers who support free trade. He has been called a ‘University of Chicago Democrat’–a reference to the famed free-market Chicago school of economics, which puts faith in markets.”
Having the government take over health care isn’t a free-market solution, as you may have noticed. Vice President Biden candidly admitted, “You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.” And Obamatons showed their undiluted commitment to the free-market by opening up Government Motors.
The Tribune was so in the tank that it made a particularly laughable prediction: “We do, though, think Obama would govern as much more of a pragmatic centrist than many people expect.” Which people would that be, Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-il? Possibly, as Castro did hail the passage of ObamaCare as “a miracle.”
The Boston Globe in its endorsement was as mistaken as the Chicago Tribune:
“An early Obama campaign slogan declared, ‘We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.’’ His critics deemed such rhetoric too ethereal. Now it seems prescient, as the nation confronts a financial crisis of historic proportions, as well as all the other policy failures and debt-fueled excesses of the last eight years. The United States has to dig itself out. Barack Obama is the one to lead the way.”
The Denver Post editorialized that it “believes Barack Obama is better equipped to lead America back to a prosperous future.” According to the Albany Times Union, “Senators Obama and Biden have brought a positive, progressive and hopeful message to the American people. Senator Obama, an American success story himself, offers the best hope for a nation ready to turn the page and write a new chapter of prosperity, progress and peaceful security.” The Danbury News-Times stated that neither presidential candidate had all the answers, but “Obama has shown greater understanding of the problems and provided more specific solutions than has McCain, particularly on the economy.”
In its Obama endorsement the Washington Post assured readers that their man “would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation.” Moreover, “Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president.”
One of the reasons the New York Times preferred Obama was he’d do away with the malevolent Bush tax cuts for those “who have benefited disproportionately.” The newspaper confidently predicted that with Obama in the White House, “Working Americans, who have seen their standard of living fall and their children’s options narrow, will benefit.”
Obama was going to be a pragmatic centrist. He was the one who would guide the United States to a prosperous future. He was the one with specific solutions on the economy. He was the one who had the potential to be a great president. He was the one to lead the way.
In truth, he has quickly and systematically devastated the economy to the point where it’ll take years to bring us back. If that’s even possible.
So many newspapers report on the gloomy economy made so much gloomier by the empty suit occupying – when he isn’t on vacation – the presidency. But there’s not a word of their complicity in putting Baroke Hussein Obumbler into the White House.
If they had a shred of decency, they’d apologize to their readers for endorsing Obama. But they don’t so they won’t.
The print media, it’s widely acknowledged, are fading fast. Losing their credibility with election recommendations that match their often leftist slant may be one reason.
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Michael M. Bates has written a weekly column of opinion – or nonsense, depending on your viewpoint – since 1985 for the (southwest suburban Chicago) Reporter Newspapers. Additionally, his articles have appeared in the Congressional Record, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Mensa Journal. He has been a guest on Milt Rosenberg’s program on WGN Radio Chicago, the Bruce Elliott show on Baltimore’s WBAL, the Jim Sumpter show on the USA Radio Network and the New Media Journal’s Blog Radio. As a lad, Mike distributed Goldwater campaign literature and since then has steadily moved further to the Right. He is the author of “Right Angles and Other Obstinate Truths.” In 2007, he won an Illinois Press Association award for Original Column.
His presence on the web can be viewed at www.michaelmbates.com And he can be reached at mikembates-at-gmail.com