Counting him out
The far left Washington Post sent President Barack Obama out last week with an unexpected swift kick, enumerating what it called "Obama's biggest whoppers," as measured by its Fact Checker.
Although the Fact Checker began during the 2008 presidential campaign, it did not operate during the first two years of his presidency and then only sporadically through his first term.
All of Obama's "whoppers" received Four Pinocchios, the most doled out by the Fact Checker and annually put him on the list of the biggest Pinocchios of the year.
His top fibs, of the more than 250 statements that were checked, in chronological order:
- "More young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across America."
- "We signed into law the biggest middle-class tax cut in history."
- "90 percent of the budget deficit is due to George W. Bush's policies."
- "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it."
- "The Capitol Hill janitors just got a pay cut."
- "The day after Benghazi happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism."
- "I didn't call the Islamic State a 'JV' team."
- "Republicans have filibustered 500 pieces of legislation."
- "The Keystone pipeline is for oil that bypasses the United States."
- "We have fired a whole bunch of people who are in charge of these [Veterans Administration] facilities."
However, the Post did not list the most egregious whopper, which is also the most comprehensive (which Obama delivered this month): "We have not had a major scandal in my administration."
By the numbers
The numbers are in, and former President Barack Obama is the only United States president who did not preside over an economy with a single year of 3 percent or higher economic growth.
Experts have said the country requires a growth rate of 3.0 percent to defend itself and pay its bills. Indeed, the country averaged 3.79 percent in real gross domestic product (GDP) growth from 1790 to 2000.
"The rate of real economic growth," Louis Woodhill wrote in RealClearMarkets in 2016, "is the single greatest determinate of both America's strength as a nation and the well-being of the American people."
As it is, Obama will wind up the fourth worst president in average annual real GDP growth at 1.457 percent. Only Herbert Hoover (-5.65 percent), Andrew Johnson (-0.70 percent) and Theodore Roosevelt (1.41 percent) were worse.
The former president's predecessor, the much maligned George W. Bush, averaged 2.10 percent but had two years, 2004 and 2005, above 3.0 percent.
President Trump has said he wants to move GDP growth above 3.5 percent to 4 percent. If he does it, we'll all be better off. If he doesn't, he'll certainly hear about it.
Do as we say, not as we do
Hypocrisy rarely gets in the way of Democrats trying to make a point, and that was the case several times last week in Senate hearings over Cabinet nominees of now-President Donald Trump.
One instance came when Democratic senators questioned U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., the president's nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. They were concerned that he may have violated a law that prevents members of Congress from using information they obtain from their work to gain an advantage in trading stocks.
Price, who had reported the transaction in question and had no role in it since it was done by his broker, nevertheless failed to bring in the dough from that deal or others that would equal the percentage of moolah raked in by his Democratic inquisitors over the same period.
While the congressman's net worth increased almost $1.3 million between 2009 and 2014 (about 10 percent), that of Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., rose 88 percent, that of Sen. Robert Casey Jr., D-Pa., jumped 81 percent and that of Sen. Al Franken climbed 44 percent.
Meanwhile, when Democrats pressed Treasury secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin on his legal offshore Cayman Island accounts, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, had to remind his colleagues that "at least two of President Obama's nominees that now serve in his Cabinet had Cayman Island holdings." That included the then-Treasury secretary Jack Lew, who Hatch said "also ran a business unit at Citigroup, a bailed out mega bank from which he received close to a million dollars in bonuses" (and which was sanctioned by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for selling toxic assets that harmed investors).
When you've had enough
Democrats, desperate to save face in the wake of Hillary Clinton's stunning loss of the presidential election and the Republicans' retention of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, have fallen all over themselves trying to pick nits on the Cabinet nominees of President Donald Trump.
The nominees and Republican members of the various committees examining the nominees have been patient, but last week Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., had had enough.
After Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., ripped into Treasury secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin over his career as a banking official, Roberts had a suggestion.
"Sen. Wyden," he said, "I've got a Valium pill here you might want to take just a suggestion, sir."
The humorless Wyden didn't take him up on the offer.