O: PRAISE BE . . . TO ME!
With the world on the brink, prez puts out his 'Best of Bam' list
FLIP on your TV and the news is grim. Wall Street soars while small towns shutter Main Street stores. Our government’s computer systems are regularly hacked, the IRS is targeting citizens instead of just (over)taxing them, and the VA is killing the veterans they’re supposed to heal. Racial tensions are through the roof, with another city going up in flames every few months. Our leaders blame the heavy hand of police instead of mobs hurling Molotovs.
Syria, Iraq and Libya are in ruins as ISIS inspires terror around the globe. The Russian bear is on the prowl, and China continues to expand its military influence in Asia and beyond. As our enemies slap each other on the back, our allies weep at our incompetence.
The American people had gotten so angry at the record of our so-called elites that they elected outsider Donald Trump to “drain the swamp” and “burn it down.”
But close your lying eyes and take a step back. Obama’s eight years in office have actually been fantastic. Don’t believe it? Just ask the president himself.
On Thursday, the White House released a self-congratulatory list of all Obama’s amazing accomplishments in his two terms in office. Apparently, in 2008, America was a smoldering hellscape ravaged by bloodthirsty neocons, greedy banksters, and intolerance lurking behind every Bush. But then the clouds parted, a rainbow framed the warming sun, and the smartest, kindest, boldest leader ever strode into our imperial capital on a white gender-indeterminate unicorn.
In less than a decade, he fixed the economy, delivered health care, united Americans, granted peace to the world, and healed the planet itself. My name is Obamandias, President of Presidents; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
You gotta hand it to the guy: He’s not encumbered with excess humility.
Obama credited himself with “the longest streak of job creation on record” but forgot to mention all those would-be workers who were downgraded to part-time or left the workforce altogether.
“Today, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, another 20 million American adults know the financial security and peace of mind that comes with health insurance,” the president boasted. Meanwhile, Americans have lost their doctors, watched their costs soar as services drop, and insurers flee the marketplace.
But the greatest communicator of our age was only warming up. “Over the past eight years, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland.” Where to begin? Perhaps with Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, or Orlando, but who’s counting?
Obama even takes credit for gay marriage despite strongly opposing it to get elected. Nice to see he finally agrees with fringe radicals like Dick Cheney and the Koch brothers who endorsed it for years.
Over nearly 2,000 words and more than a dozen graphs, Obama presents a Potemkin America that stands astride the globe, citizens dance arm in arm, and paychecks fall from the sky. But this is a standard tactic of the progressive left — insisting that politicians can fix all ills and how horrible things were before their guiding hand.
A particularly odd example of this was Mayor de Blasio’s press conference at the Brooklyn Museum Thursday. The mayor unveiled a photo exhibit comparing the bad, old days of graffiti-covered subways and urban blight to the shiny Big Apple of today.
“This is extraordinary in comparison to that past, and this exhibit is so powerful,” de Blasio said. “I urge everyone to really look at it because it reminds us of all of the work that went in to changing things.”
Even if most of that work preceded him, and was accomplished by the mayors he loathes — Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg.
And even as de Blasio spoke those words, City Hall staffers hurriedly pulled down the museum exhibit. No member of the public got to see it — the photos were just part of the show.
Obama and de Blasio are obsessed with getting the “credit” they feel they deserve. The main issue Democrats face, they argue, is not communicating just how successful they’ve been. Why can’t the nation, the city, realize how wonderful they are?
Perhaps if Obama and de Blasio spent their careers creating great results, they wouldn’t have to waste so much time creating slick charts and art installations for propaganda.