Back Then We Thought It Was Cool

This article is from American Thinker.

Back then we thought it was cool
By Randy Fardal

Recent recantations by avid Obama supporters, including financial celebrity Jim Cramer, are reminiscent of the late actor, Yul Brynner. Brynner was an avid smoker who, on learning that he was dying of lung cancer, recorded the following message to be played after his death: Don't Smoke

Listening to Cramer essentially link Obama to America's economic cancer, you might notice some parallels between supporting Obama and smoking cigarettes.

To young people, supporting Obama and smoking cigarettes both look cool and both make them feel good. And despite dire warnings from responsible adults, lots of their friends also do both and, so far, nothing bad has happened to them.

Older and wiser smokers gradually realize that cigarettes cost them a huge portion of their earnings, increase their health care costs, and make them feel helpless because cigarette makers control their lives. Older and wiser Democrats must be saying the same about Obama -- just four months after they voted for him.


According to MSN Money, "A 40-year-old who quits smoking and puts the savings into a 401(k) earning 9% a year would have nearly $250,000 by age 70." --Probably about the same amount lost by the average 401(k) owner since Obama was elected.

Cigarette companies now acknowledge that their products are potentially addictive and harmful, but they once implied that smoking was healthy. They might not have run "Hope" ads, but they did run ads in the 1940s with this headline:

More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.

Likewise, Obama's economy doctors claim that transferring wealth from working Americans to his supporters is not addictive to the recipients and will improve our economic health. And if those 1940s smoking doctors were still alive, they also could be part of Obama's bogus scientific consensus excuse for imposing crippling taxes to combat his manmade global warming hoax.


Now that financial surgeon generals like Cramer have begun to establish a link between Obama's policies and America's economic cancer, why not follow the lead of the anti-smoking activists that demanded warning labels on cigarette packages? Something like this could be posted prominently on Obama's forehead:

And since anti-smoking activists demand astronomical taxes to "cover the costs of smoking to society", why not institute similar tax rates on Obama voters to cover the societal costs of his leftist programs? In states that have high concentrations of Obama voters, such as New York, most of the price of a pack of cigarettes goes to taxes. Likewise, a 90 percent income tax on New York Obama voters seems fair.

Furthermore, perhaps a multi-trillion-dollar class action lawsuit could be filed against Obama. After all, he knowingly pushed highly addictive wealth transfers and deliberately withheld evidence from numerous global trials that extreme government spending causes major economic health risks. The uncaring egomaniac also denies that "second hand deficits" harm the economic health of our children.

Finally, he must have violated some FTC rule against predatory pricing by advertising his product with the promise of "tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans". Then, once he had driven his only remaining competitor out of the market, he jacked up the price by trillions. If not predatory pricing, it must be false advertising.

Last month, Russian prime minister and former Soviet KGB leader Vladimir Putin also warned against following Obama's leftist policies. That's akin to the Soviet Union giving us a warning from its grave, just as Russian-born Yul Brynner did from his.

You can read the entire article and check out the links here

In case you are not aware of Putin's warning, this is what he had to say.

Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the statet's role absolute, Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.

Sounding more like Barry Goldwater than the former head of the KGB, Putin said, Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.

Putin also cautioned the US against using military Keynesianism to lift its economy out of recession, saying, in the longer run, militarization won't solve the problem but will rather quell it temporarily. What it will do is squeeze huge financial and other resources from the economy instead of finding better and wiser uses for them. Putin's comments come in sharp contrast to Russia's own military buildup and expansion.

Putin also echoed the words of conservative maverick Ron Paul when he said, we must assess the real situation and write off all hopeless debts and assets. True, this will be an extremely painful and unpleasant process. Far from everyone can accept such measures, fearing for their capitalization, bonuses, or reputation. However, we would conserve and prolong the crisis, unless we clean up our balance sheets.

Hell has indeed frozen over when the Ruskies get it but Obama doesn't.

“The time for enlightenment has come. We must calmly, and without gloating, assess the root causes of this situation and try to peek into the future