Exposed

My father used to have a reoccurring dream where he might find himself in a perilous situation and have to pretend to befriend an antagonist or a group of bad guys in order to buy time.  At his first opportunity he would try and kill them, only to find that his bullets or whatever projectile he had at his disposal, would fall harmlessly to the ground well short of its intended target.  This would immediately alert the bad guys to his betrayal and he would have hell to pay for these transgressions.  Aside from the instant psychoanalysis of my fathers' perceived inadequacies, we all detest having our real intentions exposed if we have been trying to promote something entirely different all along.  Such is the case with President Obama after a year in office.  Whatever actions he takes from here on out, and I applaud his call for a freeze on some discretionary spending, his actions, to date, have exposed him as a partisan progressive hell bent on transforming America into something it is not and doesn't wish to become.

Barack Obama came into office as the most liberal Senator ever, yet sold himself as a post-partisan, post-racial, post-imperial presidential candidate and defender of middle-class values.  He spent a year tearing that whole facade apart with the legislation he backed, the people he defended, the policies he pursued and telling the world we are not a Christian nation.  Talk about exposed.  It was an Obama MRI!  So pardon me for not immediately buying into whatever re-calibration or slight of hand he may employ to make us think otherwise.  Been there, done that.

On the other hand, I hope Republicans in Congress choose to work with him rather than against him on additional spending cuts and real job creation.  Findings from a recent study by Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, two Harvard economists, show that between 1970 and 2007 in 21 countries, including the U.S., "fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based on spending increases."  Another finding which runs counter to current Obamanomics, is that "spending cuts are much more effective than tax increases in stabilizing the debt and avoiding economic downturns."  In other words, stop growing government by taking money out of the private sector.  Real job growth will come when business is convinced that the Obama administration's not out to destroy them with union expansionism, carbon taxes, and other punishing mechanisms that kill job growth.