Say Anything Blog

It’s official. America is now the world’s most admired country:
the ‘Obama Effect’ has created the biggest improvement ever recorded in the Nation Brands Index.
The United States is the most admired country globally thanks largely to the star power of President Barack Obama and his administration, according to a new poll.
http://www.simonanholt.com/
20,000 people out of an estimated global population of 6.789 billion said so just this week…
Wow I’m feeling better already, how about you?
To be sure there must be some legs tingling and twitching at this honest to goodness feel good story of the week.  We sure needed it after that “Copenhagen Smack Down” regarding the Olympics and Chicago last week, but let’s not get too carried away.  Barry’s never ending popularity campaign may have won him the equivalent of “Global Idol” this week but the stark reality of his do nothing presidency is glaring.

Popularity? ...What Popularity?
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 30% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove and that gives Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -7.  Overall, 51% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. Forty-nine percent now (49%) disapprove.

I wonder how successful any of us would be if half of our co-workers and management thought that way about our job performance.

Do Nothingness Tracking:
PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on their Obameter. It’s tells the story pretty well.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/
The Obameter Scorecard
•  Promise Kept 47
•  Compromise 12
•  Promise Broken 7
•  Stalled 12
•  In the Works 112
•  No Action 325

Speaking of doing nothing, hell even SNL took an unusual swipe at Obama’s ineffectiveness this past weekend.

Unemployment Disaster:
The number of unemployed Americans is now at 9.8%, the highest level since 1983, that’s 26 years folks. So where did that Stimulus money go? Now, with only 2.4 million full-time permanent job openings and 15.1 million unemployed, job seekers outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. Obama promised his stimulus program would create 3 million new jobs but the economy needs 8 million Jobs just to get even and to get back to full employment, or below 5% unemployment, the economy would have to create 12 million to 14 million jobs.  http://www.moneymorning.com/2009/10/05/unemployment-rate-5/
Not such a rosy picture so now the Obama administration is talking up another “Stimulus” bamboozle.

Barry’s Inconvenient War:
And then there is Afghanistan and the President’s foot dragging and ‘half-ass it and hope’ approach that finally led to a brief twenty-five minute meeting with General Stanley McChystal aboard Air Force One, more of a photo opportunity than anything else. More American soldier casualties have occurred this year than in any previous year of the war http://icasualties.org/oef/ yet Obama needs more face time with political advisors.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) put it as bluntly as possible to Obama in his letter September 22, 2009:

“I am convinced that there is no strategy short of a properly-resourced counter-insurgency campaign that is likely to provide lasting security. But, time is not on our side. Coming from Harry Truman country, I ask myself, ‘What would Harry Truman do?’  And this leads me to urge you to waste no time in providing a clear direction to our commanders and civilian leaders, along with the resources necessary to achieve their mission—and to do so with an understanding that the American and Afghan people, as well as our allies, must see progress in the next 12 months.”
• “The last administration allowed itself to be distracted from the fight forced on us in Afghanistan by the fight it chose in Iraq.  I believe that this was a strategic mistake, robbing the war in Afghanistan of the necessary resources and resulting in an approach of ‘half-ass it and hope.’  We cannot afford to continue that policy.”

The Indians and Pakistani’s are scared to death over Obama’s Afghanistan policy or lack of. India’s newspaper The Pioneer offers a blistering critique of Obama’s foreign policy. http://www.dailypioneer.com/205327/Nightmare-presidency.html

Given the intensely and admirably egalitarian nature of the United States presidential election process, it has always been a theoretical possibility that the country will send to the White House a person inexperienced in global affairs and unequal to the international situation before him. Often this has not been the case, and incumbents have risen to the job. Sixty years ago, Harry S Truman had limited first-hand knowledge of great power bargaining but turned out to be farsighted enough to anticipate the Cold War. Mr Obama is the antithesis of this phenomenon. He is completely out of his depth and will probably leave behind a dangerous and unsure legacy. India could have done without this neophyte.

Not all of us have forgotten the lessons of Vietnam and the waffling by this president is done at great risk to our soldiers and to the rest of the world. God Bless our soldiers in harm’s way.

So while Obama just won another phony global popularity contest and the inept media tries to claim that Obama’s approval ratings are actually increasing…fact is it takes more than star power and perpetually running for senior class president to be the President of the United States…an idea somehow lost on Obama and his administration.

You’ve got that pure feel, such good responses
But the picture has a mustache…
You’re coming to me with that soulful look on your face
You’re coming looking like you’ve never ever done one wrong thing,
So many fantastic colors; I feel in a wonderland.
Many fantastic colors makes me feel so good
You’ve got that pure feel, such good responses,
You’ve got that rainbow feel,
but the rainbow has a beard…
Cream Swlabr lyrics by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown