150 reasons why Obama is the worst president ever

Poor Jimmy Carter. For the better part of four decades, he was universally regarded as the most lackluster chief executive and biggest loser to occupy the White House. That gave him a certain countercultural distinction in a twisted kind of way. Move over, Jimmy. In a new book, “150 Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History” (Victory Books, $13.99), authors Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan make their case for why the current occupant of the Oval Office is more incompetent, ill-intentioned and dangerous to America’s long-term interests than even the peanut farmer from Georgia. With 511 footnotes over 274 pages, this work offers a comprehensive review and new nuggets of information on the 44th president’s tenure for even the most diehard political junkies.

This book has a serious mission. “History will want Obama to be viewed favorably because he’s the first black president,” the authors explain. “But we can’t afford to let political correctness rewrite his true record. We have a responsibility to ensure that history won’t gloss over Obama’s failures, so future generations won’t be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.” One problem with a book like this is that during such a scandal-plagued administration as Barack’s, the catalog of sins is outdated as soon as it is printed. Thus, this volume, which covers The One’s first term, doesn’t delve into recent revelations about the IRS targeting Tea Party activists and other conservatives, federal surveillance on journalists, the National Security Agency snooping on innocent private citizens, the Watergate-level cover-up of the Benghazi attacks, and whatever new turpitude is revealed today. For that, the reader will have to wait for the sequel. In the mean time, here are six excerpts from the 150 reasons why the United States has been harmed by Barack Obama’s first four years as the most powerful man in the world:

Reason #1: Stimulus failure. To hear Obama tell it in 2009, the passing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would usher in a new era of American prosperity. Obama promised the American people that by spending hundreds of billions of dollars we would keep unemployment low, reduce poverty, create a new green economy, and provide shovel-ready projects that would rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. None of that happened. All we got for our huge investment was a mountain of new debt, a long list of failed “green energy” companies, an infrastructure that remains insufficient, and a “recovery” adding fewer jobs than needed to keep up with population growth.

Reason #5: Unemployment over 8% for 43 months. Perhaps the most significant broken promise of Obama’s stimulus was that it would keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent. This was the promise Obama and White House economists made to sell the stimulus to the public. Had Obama’s projections been a reality, the economy would have recovered to roughly where it had been prior to the 2008 financial crash. Not only did unemployment not stay below 8 percent, it hit 10.1 percent in October of 2009. The actual U3 unemployment rate [the official rate calculated by the Labor Department] at the end of Obama’s first term was 7.8 percent. Obama promised it would be 5.2 percent with the stimulus.

Reason #19: Largest deficits in history. It should come as no surprise that under a president who sees government as the answer to all of life’s problems that the deficit would skyrocket. Not only did it skyrocket, but Obama has given us the highest U.S. deficits in history: $1.4 trillion, $1.3 trillion, $1.3 trillion, and $1.1 trillion. Breitbart.com’s William Bigelow put these numbers into perspective: “There have never been deficits remotely approaching these; the last year of George W. Bush’s tenure, the deficit was less than half-a-trillion dollars.”

Reason #29: Tax dollars for terrorist groups. On a Friday night in April of 2012, it was revealed that Barack Obama bypassed Congress in order to send $192 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Funding for the PA had been frozen by Congress after PA President Mahmoud Abbas requested that the United Nations recognize a Palestinian state. Obama claimed his waiver was important to the national security of the United States. A bizarre claim indeed since his actions came just months after the terrorist group Hamas became a partner with the PA.

Reason #44: Killing the Keystone XL Pipeline. Under Obama, we’ve seen energy prices continually go up. Taking meaningful steps to make America more energy independent would go a long way towards reducing the prices of energy. Instead, we’ve seen Obama waste billions on failed green-energy companies and refuse to tap into domestic energy sources. The Keystone pipeline would deliver 700,000 barrels a day of crude oil from Canada to coastal Texas oil refineries. Delivering oil via pipeline is more cost effective than shipping via rail. The pipeline would also create an estimated 20,000 jobs. More jobs and cheaper energy are exactly what this country needs, but Obama chose to deny TransCanada’s permit.

Reason #109: White House snitch line. In August 2009, a rather Orwellian blog post on the official White House blog called on Obama’s supporters to submit “scary chain emails and videos,” “rumors,” “emails” and even “casual conversation” to a specific White House email address so the Obama administration could “keep track of all of them.” Later, Obama’s reelection campaign would follow suit with an “Attack Watch” page on which registered Obama supporters could denounce their fellow Americans for expressing anti-Obama opinions. . . . It was a page for Obama supporters to report on fellow citizens who were speaking ill of the president. This kind of thing might be typical in countries ruled by dictators, but it is completely contrary to American values and the right of free speech.

Brett M. Decker is Editor-in-Chief of Rare. Follow him on Twitter @BrettMDecker. Disclosure: This book cites Rare Content Editor Matt Cover and numerous articles published by Brett M. Decker from previous positions.