Obama The Producer

An imaginary review of Obama's one-term Presidency from the press in 2012-

Another advisor compared Obama to Max Bialystock, the con man from the Mel Brooks' film "The Producers." In the movie, Bialystock sells 100% ownership of the play to dozens of investors. "Barack Obama sold 100% shares in his presidency to every constituency imaginable and they all thought they were at the front of the line after inauguration day."

You know, I don't think that's too far from the mark- and the astonishing thing about Obama's campaign has been the outlandish declarations he's made. Quite apart from the messianic "the seas no longer rising" nonsense are the proclamations that electing him will cause events quite beyond his control to suddenly come to pass. And not a single member of the press corps thinks to ask, "but how are you going to ensure that 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012 when that depends on technological advances not currently in sight?"

Investing millions of dollars of taxpayers' money doesn't necessarily mean that new, reliable technologies can not only be developed- and in a manner which makes them economically feasible- but also deployed on a practical, large scale.

Here's another one - Obama says he wants to tax oil companies’ windfall profits and use some of the money to help motorists pay for more expensive gasoline.

So oil companies are going to be forced to pay higher taxes so that money can be passed on to motorists to pay for gas- in short Obama is ensuring that gas prices rise even higher as the oil companies charge more to make up for the shortfall in their profits. They aren't going to just pay those taxes without finding a way to offset that cost- it's not going to come from their profits in other words. And given that millions of Americans have money invested in 401s and the like, what's this tax and the artificially increased price going to do to their share prices, their retirement plans?

Or, how about this- how is Obama, who is not a scientific genius I hasten to add, going to invent hybrid cars which get 150mpg and then ensure that 1 million of them are sold- all within the next seven years? Does he have some secret invention up his sleeve which enables this outlandish fuel efficiency? To put it in perspective, the current crop of hybrid cars generally get in the region of only 30-4ompg. Obama seems to think that just getting elected with make these cars not only become incredibly more efficient but they'll get that way without significantly rising in cost too.

One more, moron genius Obama makes this declaration - Finally, I will call on businesses, government, and the American people to meet the goal of reducing our demand for electricity 15% by the end of the next decade.

One small question- where does he think the energy to charge all those hybrid cars he wants people drive is going to come from? So, how is he going to reduce consumption (note he doesn't call for an increase in efficiency of products) while mandating policies designed to significantly increase consumption? We'll not even go into how he expects his green job revolution to come off if businesses are limited in how much electricity they can use for manufacturing.

Does he think that because he says it must be so that it can magically be done? If so, his impressions of what a President can accomplish are wildly over-inflated.

And these claims and policies should be enough for most people to question his supposed intelletual superiority that we're always hearing about.