The Patriot Post® · Obama 'Pivots' to Focus on Economy ... Again

Last week, Obama gave a speech before attendees at Knox College in his political home state of Illinois, a speech which signified a “pivot to the economy”, a new laser focus on job creation and improving the quality of life for the middle class. Some of you may be confused, recalling that Obama has declared a pivot to the economy before (14 times before, according to the Republican National Committee’s estimate, which only goes back to the beginning of 2011, or nineteen times, according to political reporter Salena Zito’s unofficial count).

But no, this is not the same as those other pivots. This is nothing like the stimulus bill which failed to stimulate the economy and actually INCREASED the unemployment rate by more than two points; and it is certainly nothing like “Recovery Summer” or “Recovery Summer 2” (or 3 or 4), which saw no actual recovery. No, this time, after nearly five years in office, he really, really means it!

And that is good news, considering how much the economy has struggled under the leadership in his administration (that new-fangled “leading from behind” technique that Obama has mastered). Under Obama, we now have more people on food stamps than at any time in the history of our nation. In fact, we have more people on food stamps than are employed in private sector jobs. And a disproportionate number of the few new jobs that are being created are either temp jobs, or work in the food and service industries, which typically are lower on the pay scale. So we sure are lucky that he is going to shine that brilliant intellect of his on our economic problems (I’d try to quantify just how brilliant he hasn’t really been forthcoming with his work while in college … probably out of kindness so that the rest of us little people won’t be intimidated by just how much smarter he is than all of us!).

Obama, knowing that many Americans are still struggling, offered us reminders of the progress that we’ve made under his leadership. He reminded us that he saved the auto industry (granted, pessimists might point out that American taxpayers lost between $10-17 billion on the bailout, but that was a small price to pay to ensure that the labor unions – which donated hundreds of millions of dollars, and provided thousands and thousands of union volunteers to canvass neighborhoods for Obama and the Democrats – got to keep their exorbitant salaries and lavish benefits, which might have been scaled back if the bailout/bankruptcy had actually followed the law). Hey, you gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet, right?

He also reminded us that he took on a broken health care system. Okay, so maybe premiums have gone up several thousand dollars a year, rather than drop by $2,500 per family like he promised. And sure, maybe companies all over America are being forced to end insurance for their employees because ObamaCare has driven health care costs into the stratosphere. And I’ll even concede that according to a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey of businesses, nearly three-quarters of them report firing employees, cutting hours, or delaying hiring and expansion as a direct result of the onerous mandates of the ObamaCare law. And so maybe more and more doctors are refusing to take government insurance like Medicare and Medicaid, and now Obamacare, because the low reimbursements and the sheer volume of time and money it takes to fight to get paid is simply not worth the hassle, and ends us making many lose money. But on the bright side, Obama claims that 30 million new people will be enrolled in government health insurance programs, so now you get to compete with them for a shrinking number of doctors. Hmmm … that was supposed to be a good thing, but now I can’t remember why.

I’m just glad that Obama has not let the fact that a significant majority of Americans today want ObamaCare repealed, or that it has never enjoyed widespread approval, or the fact that after more than 1200 days the law has not been fully implemented (which is more than 800 days longer than it took to build the Empire State building (410 days), and more than a year longer than it took to build the World Trade Center’s North Tower). And we can overlook the fact that the law was just unilaterally delayed by Obama for another year after it was clear that so far it has been a “train wreck”, according to Max Baucus, chief architect of the law.

Obama also points out that, under his leadership, 7.2 million jobs have been created in the private sector, which is a good thing because nearly ten million jobs have been lost during that same period. So what is a net loss of a few million jobs among friends, right? It’s not like they are going to suffer. After all, they get nearly two years of unemployment benefits, food stamps, government housing if they want it, an Obamaphone, and a wide variety of other goodies. Why would anybody even want to work with all that the government will give you to stay home?!

There is a slew of other good news as well! America, Obama reports, is close to producing more oil domestically than we buy from overseas (which is pretty impressive considering that his administration has crippled drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and has effectively banned, through a maze of bureaucratic obstacles, the drilling for oil in ANWR, the Outer Continental Shelf, and huge areas of oil shale in the Midwest and western United States; and has made a concerted effort to stop “fracking”, a technology that allows us to safely get at previously unreachable oil reserves).

Obama also rightly criticized those evil Republicans for distracting from the work Americans need their government to do for them by constantly getting bogged down in “phony scandals” like Fast and Furious (who cares about a few hundred dead Mexicans and a few U.S. law enforcement officers killed by guns sold by the Obama DoJ to Mexican drug cartels?), Benghazi (okay, so four Americans were slaughtered by Islamist terrorists while Obama jetted off to a fundraiser, so what?), or the IRS targeting conservative groups for intimidation and harassment (they had it coming after opposing our beloved Obamessiah), or government spying on Associated Press reporters, or collecting the data from virtually every email, web search, text message, or phone call of every American (you have nothing to worry about if you are doing nothing wrong … right?)

Yessir, I for one am absolutely giddy with anticipation, knowing that our sainted leader, the incomparable Comrade Barack, is going to use every ounce of his intellectual energy and political capital to do for the economy and job growth what he has managed to do for health care and energy prices, and achieving peace in the Middle East (he sure know how to pick which leaders to support, doesn’t he?!). I bet before long we’ll feel like we’re living in the heady days of the 1930’s under good ol’ Frankie Roosevelt.

Just remember to be patient though. The poor man is human (even if just barely because, you know, he is “sort of a god”), and he’s only been in Washington for about five years. You can’t expect him to clean up that incompetent George Bush’s mess overnight.

By the way, don’t worry about the recent report that the federal government has demanded that major internet companies turn over their user’s passwords. I’m sure Obama didn’t even know about it until he read about it in the news … just like the rest of us.