Some leftist professor named David Michael Green has written a hysterical screed denouncing Barack Obama. It is called How to Squander the Presidency in One Year. It's a load of demagogic bombast from a non-serious commentator.Green isn't a conservative or a Republican; his references and arguments are straight out of the far left lexicon. His major complaints about Obama is not that he is too left wing, but that he isn't left wing enough. In the process, Green repeats a lot of simplistic B.S. about the Republican Party, e.g.:
1. Bush was a "war evader" while Kerry was a "decorated combat hero." Actually, Bush volunteered for the Viet Nam war as a fighter pilot but didn't have the flying time to be assigned there. Kerry, on the other hand, spent three months in a combat zone before he excused himself from further duty on account of his three purple hearts, all for superficial wounds, two of which were self-inflicted. One of the purple hearts was undoubtedly self-awarded, as were the Silver Star and Bronze Star. Kerry, as an officer, could award medals to anyone for anything, and awarded them to himself for made-up heroism. Kerry was a fraud.
2. The Democrats are the party "that stood by silently while two presidential elections were stolen away from them." No elections were "stolen away" from the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party was defeated in its attempt to steal the 2000 election; the 2004 election wasn't that close, so Green's assertion is puzzling. Does he mean the Swift Boat Vets who exposed the cowardice and cynicism of John F. Kerry during his dubious stint in Viet Nam?
3. The Greedy Corporations Caused the Recession: Specifically, Green claims:
Got an economy that is so raw it's leaving thousands in literal peril of losing their lives? Why not draft some legislation to bail-out the people who created that mess and guarantee that they retain their multimillion dollar bonuses?!?! You know, the same folks who are always talking about how great capitalism is and how important it is to take risks! The same ones who are always telling us how awful the government is - the same government that saved them from extinction.The corporations did not cause the recession from which the government "bailed them out." The federal government created the mess by forcing banks, under the threat of litigation, to lend money to poor credit risks (namely, ethnic minorities) so those borrowers could buy real estate. This was called the "subprime mortgage" market. Though it was created to lend money to ethnic minorities, it had to be offered to everyone regardless of their ethnicity. As a result, tens of thousands of loans were made to poor credit risks of any and all ethnicities. This caused the real estate bubble that burst when the unqualified borrowers couldn't pay their mortgages, which were soon collateralized by real estate worth less than the mortgage balances. This caused hundreds of banks to fail as well as the insurance companies who insured the loans. The ripple effect across the economy resulted in the near-depression we are now in.
The federal government, not the bankers, created the current economic mess, and by "federal government" I mean the DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
If David Michael Green weren't so abysmally ignorant of the facts, he would see that the federal government owes plenty to the thousands of businesses it destroyed with its socialist "subprime mortgage" schemes. It was government intervention, not capitalism, that failed.
4. Finally, Green abandons any pretense of an actual analysis and reverts to a drugged-out hippie shrieking demented rants from a soapbox in Times Square. He says:
Another brilliant presidential tactic is to be such a Mr. Happy Nice Face that you acknowledge no enemies for the country, or even yourself. Not the health care corporate vampires who suck the blood out of Americans from San Diego to Bangor, providing absolutely no value-added health service whatsoever, while denying treatment to deathly ill human beings at every opportunity, all to rake in billions more in profits. Not the reckless pirates on Wall Street who bet all our money on insane gambles that wrecked the global economy, took government bail-out money to survive, and yet are still drowning in bonuses as rewards. Not the Republican Party who spent three decades downsizing the middle class, plunging the country into wars based on lies, deregulating every protection in sight, fattening up corporate cronies, wrecking the environment, trashing the Constitution and polarizing the country politically. And not even a catastrophic climate disaster speeding toward the planet with relentless determination. No! We must all be happy and talk nice! No bad guys. Not even the bad guys can be bad guys.Green shows his profound ignorance of even the most basic economics, which explains why he is a leftist. Corporations must make profits or they go out of business. Profits are what is left over after all the expenses are paid. If the expenses exceed the revenues, you have losses, followed by bankruptcy. Oh yes, and 2 + 2 = 4. The Wall Street firms were not "reckless pirates" gambling money, but coerced firms complying with the socialist schemes of the anti-business Democrats; their failures, and the terrible economy we are now in, are products of Democrat ideology and policy -- you know, people like David Michael Green.
If Green wants to know the causes of our current troubles, he should take a long look in the mirror. The rest of his rant amounts to comic book caricatures and stereotypes, again revealing the non-serious nature of his essay. He is a little boy throwing a temper tantrum and packaging it as political analysis.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website,www.regressiveantidote.net.
Via Memerorandum
