Today is Presidents Day and here’s the question on everybody’s mind: is Barack Obama the worst president in the history of the United States?

As a boy I would roll around on the living room floor groaning in pain when President Nixon gave a televised speech.  Not physical pain—psychic pain.  Old enough to be interested in current affairs but young enough to have a child’s instinct for bad people, I knew without a shred of doubt that Nixon was a nasty old liar.

When he would shake his flabby jowls at the TV camera trying to look especially sincere, I couldn’t contain myself.  “Mom!  Dad!  How can you stand this jerk?” I would tactfully inquire.

My parents were unhappy about my attitude.  In their minds, the sitting president deserves respect no matter what.  I got the distinct impression that Dad wasn’t overly enthused about Nixon himself but being a dignified adult, and a Republican, and having voted for the guy multiple times in multiple decades, he was kind of stuck trying to make lemonade.

When Nixon resigned from the presidency in disgrace shortly after his vice president resigned for being an out-and-out crook, it felt like the old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.”  I was confident that no worse man would occupy the White House in my lifetime.

My confidence was misplaced.  Ford was a good and decent man with no consensus, Carter was a misguided redneck moonbat dismissed by voters after one term, Reagan was a great American who loved this country with all his heart, and Bush One was a misguided blueblood moonbat dismissed by voters after one term—but after those guys came Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton was a really bad man.  Bad enough to make Nixon look good.  Draft dodger, cheater, serial rapist, sell-out to the communist Chinese, and closet socialist with borderline anti-American sentiments, he damaged the country in ways that are still felt.  Just a few weeks ago the Chinese introduced a stealth fighter that uses technology stolen from us, and shortly before that they began deploying a new anti-ship “carrier killer” missile that uses technology stolen and purchased illegally during the Clinton administration.

Furthermore, take a look at the two biggest U.S. disasters of the last half century—the 9/11 attack by Muslims and the financial collapse in 2008—and you’ll see Clinton fingerprints all over both of them.

Need a concrete example to support that claim?  Jamie Gorelick, Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton administration, was responsible for “the wall” that prevented intelligence agencies from sharing information with the FBI about terrorists in the U.S., which enabled the 9/11 suicide attacks.  Then, as Vice Chairman of the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) from 1997 through 2003 she presided over a $10 billion accounting scandal while implementing the destructively liberalized lending policies which led to the financial collapse in 2008.  She was also involved in the controversial Justice Department decision in 1997 to deny an FBI request for an independent prosecutor to investigate the funneling of Chinese political contributions to Clinton and Gore.  All that from just one Clinton administration official.

Like Nixon, Clinton had a knack for manufacturing false sincerity that made my skin crawl.  When he stared into the television cameras on January 26, 1998, with Hillary standing by his side and syrupy unctuosity dripping from his lips, and said, “I want to say one thing to the American people.  I want you to listen to me.  I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” I almost barfed in my La-Z-Boy.

Watching Clinton was like watching Nixon minus the jowls.

Six months after that exercise in phony sincerity, of course, “Miss Lewinsky” gave federal prosecutors a blue dress stained with the Cum… er, Commander-in-Chief’s semen and I decided—this time for sure doggone it—that no worse man would occupy the White House in my lifetime.

Alas! once again history disappointed.  On January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama took the oath as 44th President of the United States of America.

Most people don’t comprehend the enormity of the disaster which is the Obama presidency.  The shenanigans of Nixon and Clinton pale in comparison.  Dishonest, lazy, morally corrupt, spiritually empty, disconnected from the overall zeitgeist of American and Western civilization, intellectually narrow minded, and personally unaccomplished to a rather stunning degree, Obama has presided over a federal government which seized power and eroded freedom and damaged the nation so quickly and thoroughly that it boggles the mind.

We are not the same country we were two years ago.  We no longer make our own health decisions, we do not drill for offshore oil anywhere, we barely drill for onshore oil because of procrastination on permits and cancellation of oil leases, we have abandoned plans to return to the Moon or travel to Mars, we no longer possess a vehicle to take men into space (one trip left for each of the three shuttles, and that’s it) or even have plans to build such a vehicle, we no longer own military air superiority because Obama ended the F-22 program, our quarter-century commitment to missile defense has been indefinitely sidelined by budget reductions, we watch as private property (car dealerships, corporate bonds, bank stocks, mortgage holder rights) is confiscated by the government at the whim of the White House, the Internet is no longer free of government control, Washington, D.C.’s popular charter school voucher program has been ended (abandoning the children of our nation’s capital to educational purgatory), staunch European allies like Poland and the Czech Republic and Great Britain have been stabbed in the back (unbelievably, Obama gave Russia secret information about Great Britain’s nuclear capability to bribe them into ratifying the New START treaty—if anybody else did that it would be considered treason), Middle East allies like Turkey and Egypt have moved into radical Muslim hands, we’ve spent hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars to reward the president’s labor union supporters and build bullet trains to nowhere and electric cars nobody wants and windmills that produce electricity so expensive that nobody can afford to buy it (so the government borrows more money to subsidize it), tens of millions of people around the world are starving because of skyrocketing food prices caused by America’s silly decision to use edible corn to make ethanol for automobile gas tanks, the number of chronically unemployed Americans has risen to nearly 20% (a rate not seen since the Great Depression) where it stubbornly sits in spite of the fact that the number of federal government jobs has dramatically increased (the unemployment rate in the Washington, D.C., metro area is only 5.6%), for the first time in our nation’s history the Executive Branch routinely ignores and defies the Judicial Branch (offshore drilling moratorium, campaign finance ruling by the Supreme Court, Obamacare ruling by Judge Vinson) and, most ironically, a majority-white nation which two years ago was evolved enough to elect a black president is now mired in racial antipathy and antagonism reminiscent of where we were half a century ago.

Worse than all of that put together, the United States of America declared bankruptcy on November 3, 2010.

You might have missed the announcement or not recognized it.  A nation going bankrupt is different than you or me going bankrupt.  Nobody padlocks the country’s doors or repossesses the national car or cuts off the First Lady’s credit card… delightful as that might sound to impoverished taxpayers watching her lavish lifestyle.  Nobody stands in front of a bankruptcy judge and pleads for relief from the country’s debts.  Instead, somebody in a position of power, recognizing that the amount of debt has become impossible to handle, makes the fateful decision to “monetize the debt,” which is a polite, innocuous-sounding term meaning the government will run its printing presses full blast and simply manufacture money out of paper and then use it to make the debt payments it cannot make through regular means.

Ben Shalom Bernanke, Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve, made the announcement about the Obama administration’s decision to monetize our national debt.  He chose November 3 because it was the day after the national elections.  The timing was important.  The elections were already destined to be historically horrific for Democrats, a landslide for Republicans, and the administration didn’t want to make it even more obvious how badly they’ve mismanaged the mightiest economy on Earth.

Specifically, Bernanke announced that the Federal Reserve would print $600 billion over the course of eight months and ship the money over to the U.S. Treasury so they could make payments on the national debt.  Six hundred billion dollars of new paper currency.

To put that in perspective, to make our debt payments for the next year we are going to print enough money to increase the M3 money supply of the entire world—which includes cash, consumer-account deposits, checkable accounts, CDs, long-term deposits, travelers’ checks, money-market funds, and every other kind of money possessed by anybody anywhere on the planet—by over one percent.  Just with paper U.S. dollar bills.

For more perspective, the total amount of U.S. currency in circulation inside the U.S. at the time of Bernanke’s announcement was estimated to be much less than $600 billion… so we are in such bad shape financially that we are more than doubling the amount of dollar bills we have in circulation.

President Obama reacted to our embarrassing and frightening debt situation by completely ignoring it.  On February 14, Valentine’s Day, the president announced a federal budget for the year beginning October 1, 2011, which proposes $3.7 trillion of spending on $2.6 trillion of income for an estimated amount added to the national debt of $1.1 trillion.

With our nation facing perhaps its worst crisis—official national debt at $14 trillion, unfunded liabilities estimated at $113 trillion, the humiliation of debt monetization announced to the world last November, and food and fuel prices beginning to skyrocket as the Federal Reserve’s new bills begin to circulate—he buried his head in the sand and pretended the crisis doesn’t exist.

Not exactly a love note from the president to the United States on Valentine’s Day… but then who really thinks this president loves his country?



From Reno, Nevada, USA

February 24, 2011 - I wish more people would get a clue. Good for you for your research. - Lea D., Illinois

February 23, 2011 - America, all the freedoms we have available, are due, in part, to our first ammendment rights, (as stated in the Constitution) initiated in spirit by Thomas Paine with his book “Common Sense”. We have this freedom to voice our opinions. Can you imagine how some countries, with their thousands of years old traditions, customs, religions and way of governing themselves might feel attaining freedom suddenly? The imperative is to establish parameters in order to keep order. We, in America, have developed these parameters over a period of time and with the foundations of basic rights (as found in our Constitution) and fine tuned with laws scrutinized by our morality. We all need Order to exist in the Chaos. James voiced his opinion, based with facts, on the subject of politics. The subject, in this case, is our president, Barack Obama. The facts are based on knowledge from sources that I’m sure are reputable as well as I know James. His opinion on these facts are, however, subjective and worthy of debate. So, let’s discuss the topic of President Obama and not the author of the opinions. What are the facts you know that form your opinions? - Doug, Tennessee

February 23, 2011 - Hi Jim and Sam: I agree. - Lea D., Illinois

February 22, 2011 - TreVonne, you should do a guest-post stating your point of view.  Saying that someone is ignorant is futile without a reasonable rebuttal.  I would be interested in reading your perspective and why you feel so strongly opposed to the information that he has given. - Samantha, Michigan

February 22, 2011 - I both love and hate reading your articles. I love knowing that you actually take the time to do the research, crunch the numbers, and then share the knowledge in layman's terms. I hate how scary it looks when all the facts are put together this way. I always leave with a sinking feeling in my gut. Sounds like you're taking quite a beating for speaking out in truth, but hey the truth hurts sometimes. - Samantha, Michigan

February 22, 2011 - I am appalled at the level of stupidity my family has taken this to. "This" meaning your post, your opinion. The comments that are being posted about you from the family of which I am a member show blatant disregard for your opinion and have been taken to a level of ignorance that I do not want to be a part of. Just because we have a "Black" president, doesn't mean he is a good president. Don't get me wrong, I like President Obama; I think that his heart is in the right place. I honestly believe that he wants to bring about a change in this country. But he can't do that by himself. The whole world seems to be against him now. The USA has a terrible rep for bestowing love and honor on its people and then bringing them down. But back to my original point. That generation of relatives who don't know anything about politics, except what they hear on TV, (and who can believe that) should keep their personal opinions to themselves. I fully support you and your right to say what you think. Keep on doing what you're doing. I absolutely support you and love you. - Star, Tennessee

J.P. replies: Geez, this is turning into a family squabble.  For the benefit of non-family, Star is referring to more than TreVonne's comment - there is apparently a vitriolic FaceBook exchange taking place among family members about this column and my political views in general.  I can't see it because TreVonne "unfriended" me before he started it, but that's probably a good thing because when it comes to political debate I am not exactly a healer.  As for the column above, I am confident about my facts, assured of the correctness of my viewpoint, and sanguine about the anger it generated.  Oh, and thanks for reading my stuff everybody!  Don't forget to click on the ads!

February 21, 2011 - He is the worst president ever! Democrats are kicking themselves in the ass for voting such a fool into office, he's a terrorist!! He would rather fuck around playing basketball or going to the bears games instead of do anything for this country! Him and jenifer granholm can both jump off a cliff! Every day is closer till he's outta the whitehouse!! - Bob R., Michigan

February 21, 2011 - This scary video adds to what you've said: Unbelievable! Looks like nobody is minding the store. - Patti C., Michigan

February 21, 2011 - Are you serious? I can't believe you are with a member of my family. Your views disgust me and I hadn't felt the need to say anything until today. You are entitled to your viewpoint, however idiotic it maybe, but I believe your ignorance might be contagious so I can't continue to be your friend. - TreVonne J., Las Vegas

February 21, 2011 - GEEZ!!! A Black man elected by a White majority is responsible for the demise of these great United States in 2 years? Everybody knows that a Black man, yes, even the President has limited power. Trust me, the last word still comes from a White man. BTW, I'm not a racist. You see, I'm a Black woman married to a white man. Which is why I know this feedback will never make it to the column. So, there, Mr. JPattitude!!!! - Eve, Reno

J.P. replies: Guess you were wrong about your feedback making it to the website, eh?  And yes, the president has limited power (or at least he did before Obama), but when all he has to deal with is a pair of nincompoops like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and his political party has a super majority in the Senate, there is nothing to stop him.  Everything I listed above has occurred since Obama took office and by his instigation.

February 21, 2011 - Well said Jim. - Charlie H., Reno