Bill O'Reilly seems convinced that President Obama is doomed to failure, largely because he's surrounded by "extremists of the far left" like the SEIU, who are the cause of the continuing stock-market declines. At least, that was his theory about the continuing non-performance of Wall Street in his Talking Points Memo segment last night:
O'Reilly: The truth is that far-left extremists are unleashed, and are going for the gold. Their code words are "social justice" and "shared sacrifice." "Social justice" means empowering the government to seize the assets of affluent Americans and redistribute them to the less well off. "Shared sacrifice" means punitive taxation on high-wage earners and corporations. Now, that of course is socialism.
I don't know about you, but it sounds to me like he's describing progressive taxation as "punitive" and taxation generally as "seizing the assets of affluent Americans." It's hard to tell when he starts spinning the dials on the O'Reilly Decoder Ring.
Leading the way is the radical-left Service Employees International Union, a huge supporter of Barack Obama, and a force that represents 2 million workers in the USA and Canada. That union, allied with George Soros and Miss Pelosi, is pushing for a dramatic change in America -- a change that would badly damage our capitalistic system, which these people feel is unjust. Very quietly, the SEIU is buying a lot of airtime.
Hmmmm. Could that yet-unspoken "change" that "would badly damage our capitalistic system" be the Employee Free Choice Act? O'Reilly never says. Or is it just ... socialism? Either way, it sounds pretty durned evil.
O'Reilly: OK. Seeing the danger, the Wall Street Journal editorialized today, and I quote, "The market has notably plunged since Mr. Obama introduced his budget last week, and that should be no surprise. The document was a declaration of hostility toward capitalists across the economy."
So, now we understand what's really happening in Washington. While President Obama may well be trying to fix the economy -- he has to if he wants to get re-elected -- he's also allowing radical elements of the Democratic Party to damage the economic core of America. That's why the economic pain is getting worse. Obama's not only facing a nasty recession, he's being battered by the far left, and unless he stands up to them, he and we will face dire consequences.
Ah, that explains it. It's not the complete gutting of the global economy by conservative governance that's causing the economy to continue to tank. Indeed, we can already judge, a mere two weeks out, the effectiveness of Obama's economic strategy by the mere fact that the stock markets continue the death spiral wrought by Republican malfeasance.
Corporate Republicans have gotten so used to having their way that the very intimation of a few old-fashioned progressive institutions -- like labor unions and a decently distributed tax burden -- are sending them into conniptions. I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Especially when labor unions become their big new bogeymen.
