GUNGA DINS

Conservatives speak of the “Left” to describe politicians and their supporters who view big government as the solution to all problems. Want more jobs? No problem. Just prime the compliant media (CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, New York Times, etc.) with fairy tales about “shovel ready jobs” and Voila!, they’re carrying water for the Democrats like modern day Gunga Dins. Want a national health care plan that ensures government bureaucrats armed with ten thousand pages of regulations will control and ration private medical decisions? That’s easy, too. Just give the media lap dogs their daily talking points about how evil “right wingers” are blocking health care for the poor and wavering Democrats fall in line. Want to increase our debt by trillions without presenting a plan to reform entitlements? Have the media blame the Tea Party.

Clearly a battle is joined between two differing views. Progressives believe the government is best suited to control our commerce and every aspect of our lives, whereas, Conservatives believe that excessive government stifles individual initiative, creates dependency, and pushes us closer to economic and social ruin.

The mainstream news media in this country falsely touts its objectivity while aligning itself with and fully promoting Left Wing/Progressive views.  I would love to see documentation of the number of times that major media news anchors routinely refer to Democrat politicians as “Left Wing,”  or even “Liberal,” versus the number of times Republican politicians are referred to as “Right Wing,” or “Conservative.” The fact is that the large media, with few exceptions, do not recognize that President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and dozens of Democrats are to the far left of the majority of Americans. Sadly, the same media that failed to vet candidate Obama protects the Left’s behind, while daily demonizing the Right.

Jim Littlejohn

Concerned Coastal Voters

Gualala, CA 

BLAME

I can’t recall another moment in American history where our nation’s leadership has been so inept and unwilling to deal with reality. Granted President Obama inherited a fiscal crisis, but he has made it infinitely worse by piling on trillions more in spending, including the infamous ObamaCare scam. Unlike the detailed Paul Ryan plan, Obama’s (unwritten) deficit reduction plans have been floating chimeras of fairy dust, wisps of smoke containing no substance.

It’s one thing to focus on a reelection campaign, but it’s a shameful failure of Presidential leadership to allow the country’s credit rating to go down the tubes  for short-term political gain. And that’s exactly what has happened. Quotes from Obama and his minions over the past few weeks clearly show that the President’s main concern was cutting a deal to extend the debt ceiling through the 2012 election, not to make serious cuts in our staggering deficit.

After partying much of last week and enjoying a long weekend at Camp David, the President finally decided to reassure the American people that all will be okay. It had the opposite effect. In fact, the speech was so inept that even the liberal press expressed concern about its lack of substance.

This is serious, folks. Action is needed now, not later. Instead, the President and his supporters are doing their usual schtick of blaming others for the Administration’s failures. Their first reaction was to blame Standard and Poor for declaring the credit downgrade. Then, on the Sunday talk shows, Democrat disciples dragged out freshly-printed talking points referring to the “Tea Party downgrade,”  a ludicrous charge easily refuted by facts.

Shooting the messengers has become the modus operandi of this Administration, but leadership is about solving problems not blaming others. 

Jim Littlejohn

Concerned Coastal Voters

Gualala, CA

PALTRY NUMBERS (Letter to Independent Coast Observer)

President Obama’s approval rating for handling the economy has been abysmally low for months, somewhere in the mid-30s. June’s disappointing job data will likely drive those numbers even lower. In June, the unemployment climbed to 9.2 %, with an overall gain of only 18,000 jobs. Even that paltry number is likely much lower. The New York Post reported that Obama’s Labor Department reduced the number of employed in May to show an artificial June increase. Labor also added 131,000 job numbers for phantom “start-up” businesses as a ploy to keep positive job growth numbers.

Now the President wants to sucker punch the Republicans by forcing them to agree to a trillion dollar tax hike in return for promises to cut entitlement spending and/or reform the tax codes. Republicans know that tax hikes would occur but the promised reforms would not. Democrats would quickly spend new tax revenues and then blame any bad economic news on Republicans. Obama has waited until the last minute to start promising reforms of complicated programs that would require months or years to resolve. It’s foolish for Republicans to give serious consideration to anything he says about deficit reduction. Under his leadership, the deficit has mushroomed by $4 trillion in less than three years, and ObamaCare, with its myriad regulations and requirements, is yet to be fully unleashed.

Why is the President suddenly fixated on a bipartisan solution to the Aug. 2 debt-ceiling “crisis” when the Democrats have not even bothered to pass a budget in over two years? Throughout 2009, Democrats controlled all three branches of government and the word “bipartisan” wasn’t even in their vocabulary. Did Obama and the Democrats learn anything from their November 2010 shellacking? Apparently not. But the voters did, and 2012 is looming on the horizon.

Jim Littlejohn

Concerned Coastal Voters

Gualala, CA  95445