Tuesday 19 June 2012

How Many Camels is Obama Worth?


Al-Shabaab, the Somali offshoot of al-Qaeda, has offered a bounty of ten camels to “whoever reveals the hideout of that idiot Obama.”  It’s their response to the US State Department's recent announcement of a reward of several million dollars for information on the whereabouts of the movement’s leadership. 

I wonder, perhaps, if the Somalis are being a little too generous in their assessment of the beleaguered President’s worth.  Ten camels seems excessive for a man who recently said that the American private sector was “doing fine”, an assessment, I would hazard, not quite in keeping with the experience of most people struggling with the economic realities of Obama World. 

I wonder also what ordinary Americans make of their president’s worth.  While pondering this deep question they may perhaps consider what they themselves are now worth after four less years.  Unfortunately I can’t give the depreciation in round camel figures but the dollar value is alarming enough.  The Federal Reserve report published at the end of last week shows that the net worth of a typical middle class American family has fallen from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 today.  I’m guessing that’s a heck of a lot of camels. 

The Dear Leader, struggling to turn attention away from the dire state of the debt-laden economy, says that America faces a straight choice between him and a return to the policies of George W Bush under Mitt Romney.  What would that involve exactly?  Why, spending trillions of dollars that the country does not have, open-ended, expensive and unwinnable foreign wars, an escalating economic downturn, slow job creation and ever more layoffs.  Wait a moment – I’ve just drawn a picture of the last four years.  Vote Obama and get Bush?  No, vote Obama and get Obama. 

The President’s negative campaigning calls to mind the concluding lines of Hilaire Belloc’s poem Jim.  Do you know it?  If not it goes like this – “And always keep a-hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse.”  Could things get any worse than they are at present?  It hardly seems possible. 

Just think about it, think about the last four years.  Obama’s attempts to stimulate the economy – more trillions in the black hole – stimulated next to nothing.  His health care reforms are of such prodigious complexity that they would even defy the intellect of Einstein.  He was awarded a peace prize for no peace.  His foreign policy initiatives have spluttered and died.  He has alienated Israel, America’s one true friend in a troubled region.  His Afghanistan campaign is creeping towards an ignoble end.  If that’s not bad enough I now understand that America has been covertly arming militants in Syria, seemingly blind to the fact that the Islamists among them have been involved in a murderous pogrom of local Christians. 

But it’s never Obama’s fault, oh no, it’s always somebody else.  His White House motto clearly has to be the buck stops anywhere but here.  Meanwhile on we go.  It’s never mind the economy, stupid - it’s legalising the residency of illegals; it’s gay marriage; it’s a kulturkampf with the Catholic Church; it’s all sorts of trendy liberal causes that are just so meaningful to Americans in the midst of their present presidential woes. 

Al-Shabaab should really devote those camels to better ends.  America, though, may feel it’s got the better of the deal.  

10 comments:

  1. I haven't smoked a Camel for decades, but I'm sure that, like the vast price increase of all cigarettes since the jihad against tobacco smokers began in the 1960s, most of the price is tax.

    I'm sad Obama turned out such a disappointment, but I'm not really surprised. The smug cabal that hijacked US politics in the 1950s by control and manipulation of communications will be the very last group to understand that, in accomplishing its ends, it has ensured its own failure.

    Like the ambitious architects of the EU, America's clever rulers managed to install all the devices and tools they needed to force politics, law, education, information into a machine they could steer anyway they wished, neatly bypassing all those nasty neighbourhoods where ordinary, less intellectual Americans might care to linger. They have created a broad, straight super-highway direct to the liberal gated-community of their dreams.

    But the rest of America is not happy to have been cut off from the twisting byways and alternative routes that lead to their own dream destinations, and that means pile-ups and slow-downs near the exit ramps.

    The difference between the American Dream we have been told we ought to want, and the American Dreams we really want is growing wider each election cycle, and the cost and energy needed to disguise that gap harder to maintain. In reality, every president since Eisenhower has failed because the America they having been pushing us towards is the not the America where we wish to be led. Poster Boy Obama is just the latest failure in a long line of disappointments.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Calvin, I never fail to be impressed by the depth of your understanding. You really do probe well below the surface. It's not something I'm used to, even from the most intelligent of my American contemporaries.

      Delete
  2. Romney will soon be the next American president, it doesn't matter very much who is in office, what matters is where your place in the scheme of things is. Hard work gets you nowhere intelligent work does. During the great American depression of the thirties some people were in soup kitchen lines while others were amassing fortunes. There will always be those that have little and those that are well off but there must be kept a delicate balance. Social economic disparity can not be let deteriorate to a level where there is mass discontent which is ripe for rebellion and class warfare. No matter who is in the white house I have managed to get by and lately things are looking pretty good at least for me so far. Good health is by far most important and as globalist foreign policy goes, who knows what the powers that be have in mind just be glad that you are a Roman citizen and enjoy the perks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anthony, I'm happy for you. Actually, in so many ways, I would rather be an American citizen, Obama or not. It's become a second home for me. Despite all of the problems I still see America as the last refuge from tyranny. You could not live as we are starting to live in Europe.

      Delete
  3. Awesome blog!
    Check out mine too. ")

    alyssasaluta.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's a bloody shame. I really want the 10 camels, but I don't know where Obama is...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Camels are pretty expensive, you might laugh, but they really are. Obama is not worth the hoof of a camel. Nobel peace prize? I wonder how much PR he had to get that. Leaving the ally Israel? Listen to the way Israeli leaders and politicians talk trash about anyone who doesn't follow their tracks. Israel is another story, but the bottom line is that Israel wants to obtain whatever it wants even if it is not in the best interest of America and Americans. If a person wants to become a leader he/she should take responsibility for their decisions,actions and words. In short, Obama is not literally a leader. He is trying to be, but it doesn't seem to be working well for him. Maybe in another lifetime but not this one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lama, on that point we are in complete agreement. :-)

      Delete