If any other of our presidents had doubled the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?
Dean “Dino” Russell is a roofer here in the middle Keys. Dancing about on roofs all his life has made him the most physically fit man in the Home Depot; it also gives him an overview of life. He is the third-most conservative man I know.
He also likes his role as rouser of rabble.
He sent me another ubiquitous email. You know the kind; it starts with “Did you know?” and ends with “send this to all your friends.”
This one blames President Obama for doubling the national debt — that masterpiece that we as a nation, Dino avers, have spent 220 years building from the original pence that fell out of Alexander Hamilton’s pocket. As an interesting digression, Andrew Jackson had four Secretaries of the Treasury, more than any other U.S. president; Mr. Jackson also paid off the entire public debt in 1835. That was the only time in U.S. history that this country has been debt free.
The email was wrong about Mr. Obama doubling our debt. He hasn’t quite done that. Yet.
I know a lot about public debt partly because I know how to Google but partly because it isn’t rocket science. Debts are like diets. Whether you have a spending problem or an eating problem, when you consume more than you work, somebody gets fat.
Dino’s email made 23 claims about all the bad things Mr. Obama has done from doubling the debt twice to not reading Arizona’s state law on illegal immigrants. The mail says the president joined another country to sue the great state of Arizona. The email called him out for mispronouncing Marine Corps and miscounting the states and not knowing Spanish; for putting 87,000 people out of work by using a forged document and for needing a Teleprompter; for spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to go to a play, to pitch the Olympics in Denmark, and to plant a tree on Earth Day; for stealing General Motors from we stockholders and firing the CEO; and making a joke at Special Olympians. He is called cheap for the gifts he gives other heads of state, subservient for bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, and criminal filling his cabinet with crooks. He apparently won’t help white flood victims in the Midwest and has created 32 Czars.
“Every statement and action in this email is factual and directly attributable to Barrack Hussein Obama,” Dino claims. “Every bumble is a matter of record and completely verifiable.”
Erm, well, no.
The gist of the email was correct. Mr. Obama is sinking the economy. He did nationalize industry and health care. He did steal General Motors from me. He is centralizing power even more. He is almost single-handedly turning the United States of America into the Union of Socialist American States.
But the email got too many facts wrong.
President Reagan doubled the debt Carter left. Bush 41 bumped the debt Reagan left by more than 50% but Clinton did double the debt Reagan left. Bush 43 nearly doubled the debt Clinton left. Bush 43 left a $10 trillion debt against a $15 trillion GDP. Obama admittedly bumped it to $14 trillion against about the same $15 trillion GDP but he ain’t the Lone Ranger.
The email got too many facts wrong about Presidents in general.
We know Mr. Obama didn’t read Arizona’s law. Politicians don’t read laws. Let’s tar the lot of them.
Mexico did file an amicus brief supporting the Obama Administration, not the other way around. Yawn. Let’s worry about the Feds usurping states rights.
Good that Dino didn’t have any problem with George W. Bush’s pronounsations; of course, Mr. Bush knows Spanish.
Many of the 87,000 people affected by the Gulf oil spill are back at work but my wife isn’t and neither are the 15.4 million out-of-work Americans Mr. Obama promised he would help. We should tar him for that but the email didn’t go there.
I use a Teleprompter. So does your favorite soap star but the email didn’t go there. Let’s tar everyone for that, eh?
Every president spends “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to go out of town; it’s the cost we pay to keep them alive until election day but the email didn’t go there.
And so on.
The “facts” ain’t quite what the emailer would like us to believe. That’s too bad because Mr. Obama’s factual performance is so bad for the country that we don’t have to make things up.
“The email tells a story about how atrocious it is in Obamaland,” Dino said. “‘Tis better to lie in a good cause than tell the truth in a bad one.”
That’s the leftist mantra he used to deride. Now both sides believe ideology trumps facts.
It doesn’t.
