Krauthammer decodes Obama's Grand Plan for America

It's been said if you give a fool enough rope, he'll eventually hang himself. Or in the case of our wordy resident of the White House, perhaps his egoistical need to hear the sound of his own voice will eventually bring about his downfall when the American public finally hears what he's saying.

Sir Charles Krauthammer is becoming quite adept at decoding Obamaspeak. His latest translation is of Obama's grand plan, which he unveiled in a speech that borrows its title from Jimmy Carter's failed presidency. He names his autobiography by stealing a title from crazy ol' Uncle Jeremiah Wright's sermon and now he steals his grand strategy title from a failed Democrat president? Is he nuts?

You really oughta read the whole thing, which Krauthammer calls The Sting, in Four Parts. As usual with swindles, Obama begins The Sting with an outrageously big lie, a real whopper.

The Whopper: The boast that he had "identified $2 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade." It takes audacity to repeat this after it had been so widely exposed as transparently phony. Most of this $2 trillion is conjured up by refraining from spending $180 billion a year for 10 more years of surges in Iraq. Hell, why not make the "deficit reductions" $10 trillion -- the extra $8 trillion coming from refraining from repeating the $787 billion stimulus package annually through 2019.

The Puzzler: He further boasted of his frugality by saying that his budget would reduce domestic discretionary spending as share of GDP to the lowest level ever recorded. Amazing. Squeezing discretionary domestic spending at a time of hugely expanding budgets is merely the baleful residue of out-of-control entitlements and debt service, which will increase astronomically under Obama. To claim these as achievements in fiscal responsibility is testament not to Obama's frugality but to his brazenness.

The Non Sequitur: "To make sure such a crisis (as we have today) never happens again," Obama proposes his radical health care, energy and education reforms, the central pillars of his social democratic agenda. But Obama's own words contradict this assertion. Notes The Washington Post: "But as his admirable summation of recent history made clear, these pursuits have little to do with the economic crisis, and they are not the key to economic recovery." Obama rarely fails to repeat this false connection. A crisis -- and the public's resulting pliability to liberal social engineering -- is a terrible thing to waste.

The Swindle: The Obama administration is spending money like none other in peacetime history. Obama is smart. He knows this is fiscally unsustainable. He has let it be known privately and publicly that he intends to cure the imbalance with entitlement reform.

An excellent strategy. If it takes throwing nearly $1 trillion of "porky" (to quote Sen. Charles Schumer) stimulus spending to soften up a Democratic Congress and make it amenable to real entitlement reform, then fine. Reforming Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would save tens of trillions of dollars, and make the current money-from-helicopters spending almost trivial by comparison.

I'm guessing that Krauthammer is Jewish, but not a particularly religious one, judging by some of his off-the-cuff comments, such as when John McCain's campaign came back from the dead and Sir Charles said he was considering changing his belief in the resurrection. I wonder now if he's beginning to feel a bit like a famous Jewish prophet, John the Baptist, who was "a voice crying in the wilderness." Krauthammer is one of the few pointing out The Sting is afoot.

But is anybody listening besides me?