The president was in the enemy camp Tuesday night — at least that's what those on the left are saying about Obama's speech at West Point. Enemy camp? They also added that it was a "strange venue" for the speech. Where should it have been? At ACORN? SEIU?
But the left may be onto something because that crowd did not look... how should I say it? Thrilled? The cameras even caught one cadet falling asleep. And they had pretty good reason to be annoyed.
After the president apologized (again) for America's mistakes; blamed Bush for everything that's gone wrong; bragged he's shutting down that evil Gitmo place — the place where, you know, people like the soldiers are torturing poor terrorists with loud music and staying up past night-night time, terrorists that soldiers risk their lives to catch — he topped it all off by saying he'd add 30,000 troops, far below the range of 40,000 to 60,000 requested.
He justified the escalation by underscoring the real threat Al Qaeda and the Taliban poses. In literally the next sentence, he added we'll be bringing the troops home in 18 months.
What kind of strategy is that? This isn't ping pong; this is a death match. You don't tell the other team hey, we are bringing the thunder! But we'll be going home in 15 minutes.
No wonder his approval on Afghanistan has gone down 21 points since July. And no wonder the crowd wasn't out of their seats. Even though, according to Der Spiegel, moments before the president walked onstage, gathered cadets were asked by West Point leadership to "respond enthusiastically."
Wow.
I'm going to get to the politics in a minute, but first I want to ask you: What is the long-term plan?
What's going to happen in five years in Afghanistan? Have we taught them a lesson or will there be Al Qaeda training camps, safe havens, where they are plotting more attacks?
There's no long term planning here. Just like in everything else this president does.
What's the long term planning with the economy? Our debt is so bad now that even the New York Times — one of the main propaganda arms for the Obama administration — is sounding the alarm.
The U.S. economy is like so many of the patients or Jack Bauer victims you see on "24." They get badly wounded and are at death's door, but Jack needs information from them, so he gives them a shot of adrenaline that'll allow them to talk for a few minutes, but:
(BEGIN '24' VIDEO CLIP)
KIEFER SUTHERLAND AS JACK BAUER: This man has information vital to national security. Bring him around now! Now!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
They gave the U.S. economy a $787 billion shot of adrenaline that kept it going for a while, but that just might kill it in the end. If they'd done nothing, the economy would have done worse and there would have been some difficult times, but in the end, we'd have a chance of being healthy. We could get better faster and come back stronger.
Instead, they pretend that "because of the steps they took," they were able to stabilize the economy.
What Barack Obama actually did was to quadruple the debt and increase the unemployment rate from 7.6 percent to 10.2 percent. They've wasted hundreds of millions in stimulus money on congressional districts that don't even exist and this bogus claim of putting people back to work? We've lost 4 million jobs since Obama took office. That's why they created the make believe "saved and created" category.
If you or someone you know hasn't been affected yet, it will soon become very apparent that jobs are not being saved and created. When you're having your neighbors over for a barbeque and 20 percent of them are out of work, someone's going to say, "Hey, where are all these jobs?"
There have been bogus tax cuts. I mean, when up to 15 million people find out they have to pay back the extra 500 bucks they took home in the Obama "tax cut" — remember, these aren't the rich — how are they going to react?
But it's like that across the board with Obama's policies: Spending continues unabated. If cap-and-trade passes, as Obama admitted, your electricity rates will skyrocket:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
THEN-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BARACK OBAMA: Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
And if health care reform passes, there will be massive, immediate tax increases, with no benefits at all — for anyone — coming until 2013.
If we know that this is unsustainable, then surely they do too. When the money or "asset" bubble bursts and the jobs don't materialize, the citizens of this country will have an all-out revolt at the voting booth in November.
So, what is their long-range plan here? I think there are three possible answers:
The first is that we're dealing with plain, old-fashioned, political morons. Maybe they're just so incompetent that they really believe that $787 billion, plus $1.5 trillion equals zero deficit?
I'd love to believe that, because it's better than the alternatives. But I don't. This was the political machine that was assembled just a couple years ago and became so savvy and powerful that it destroyed the former, most powerful political machine in the world: the Clintons.
They're not stupid, but they're not triangulating. Why aren't they?
Look at the president's poll numbers: On Afghanistan: In July it was 56 percent; today it's 35 percent. Health care: In July, 47 percent; today 40 percent. Jobs: In July 55 percent; today: 40 percent. The economy: In July, 53 percent; today: 44 percent.
That's not a winning strategy.
The next best scenario for their seeming lack of long-term vision is that they just don't think anyone will tell you about it. At least no one at ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post or any other media outlet besides Fox News and talk radio. Which could explain the full frontal assault on Fox by the Obama administration. They've tried desperately to make Fox "not real news" in the minds of the public. That way, when we report what's going on, nobody will believe it.
At the same time, their drive is just beginning to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, localism or whatever they possibly can to silence talk radio. This week they are having a meeting on what the government's role in the media should be. That's going on right now. Have you seen that?
Finally, they hope that Net Neutrality can neuter the Internet.
If they can accomplish those three things, they believe that it will be smooth sailing for them because you won't be able to talk to each other and you won't have anywhere you can turn to hear the truth. At that point, they'll tell you that it's just you; you're crazy for thinking the way you do. And they'll hope that they can just buy themselves enough time for something good to happen, hoping for some "miracle" fix.
But there is a third option. It's a possibility that we've warned about for many months now. And again, I want to be wrong. They could be employing the Cloward-Piven strategy of overwhelming the system to intentionally collapse it and transform or remake America:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
THEN-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE BARACK OBAMA: We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.
VAN JONES, FORMER WHITE HOUSE GREEN JOBS 'CZAR': Right now we're saying we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to some kind of eco-capitalism, where at least we're not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won't be enough.
ANDY STERN, SEIU PRESIDENT: Workers of the world unite? It's not just a slogan anymore; it's the way we're going to have to do our work.
OBAMA: We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
All the happy talk they're giving us in the meantime could be to keep us pacified long enough that it all comes crashing down and then, it'll be too late. They'll just restart everything, with their new infrastructure, because the "old" one got us into that mess. Or there could be some sort of "event" that demands that they just take control in order to "keep the peace," "stabilize our situation" or "restore order." It would be for our own good, of course. They certainly wouldn't want to do it; they'd have to do it.
Where have we heard that before?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
OBAMA: What I have no interest in doing, is running GM.
OBAMA: I don't want to run auto companies. I don't want to run banks. I've got two wars I've got to run already. I've got more than enough to do.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
They didn't want to takeover the banking industry; they had to. They didn't want to spend $787 billion; they just had to.
I was actually for the TARP fund for about two days. Here's what said a year ago:
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
BECK: I'm actually for this bailout... this is not designed to stop it, it is — it is designed to slow down the crash, because we are crashing. Now the question is do we crash into the side of a mountain or do we crash in a forest? We ain't making it to the runway.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
I said that for about two days. By Wednesday of that week, I figured out that the Bush administration and Congress were not being honest with us and I reversed myself.
Don't waste a second now. We have to focus all our attention and resources on stopping this madness. Their temporary fix should have been used to help you become responsible, to live within your means and get your neighbors into a lifeboat.
These people are flying our economy directly into the side of a mountain. Stop spending money. Stop with new programs. Stop with cap-and-trade.
Bring our soldiers home or crush the enemy and then come home. It's the only moral way to send troops into harm's way. Then, maybe, the next time you show up for a speech at West Point, it won't look like you've entered the "enemy camp."
— Watch "Glenn Beck" weekdays at 5 p.m. ET on Fox News Channel
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