I don’t know if Barack Obama and the rest of the democrats wonder why we’re angry or not. Maybe they know perfectly well why we’re angry and they simply don’t care. They have their radical agenda and they’re sticking to it. And sticking it to all of us. 

At least Americans are waking up and taking notice. And they don’t like what they’ve found out. Not one little bit. It isn’t just health care. It’s everything. The Wall Street Journal makes the point that it’s the expanding role of government that’s riled Americans.

At August’s town-hall meetings, voters often started with complaints about health care, only to shift to frustrations about all the other things President Barack Obama and the Democrats have done or tried to do since January. The $787 billion economic-stimulus package, the government-led rescue of General Motors Corp. and climate-change legislation all came in for criticism.

“I have seen a level of dissatisfaction and even anger that I haven’t experienced in the years that I’ve been a member of Congress,” Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, told an audience at a health-care meeting in Kansas City on Monday.

Although the election is still far off, political forecasters predict that Democrats could run into trouble in the 2010 midterm vote.

“What we’re seeing now, both in terms of numbers and the feel out there, this is how big waves feel early on,” said Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed any talk of political doom hanging over the president and his party.

Let’s hope this is a big wave. I have a feeling it is. Sure, former presidents have had their share of protesters, but those were usually fringe groups. Your average American doesn’t usually protest anything – maybe a grumble here and there to friends and family, or even a shouting match; but nothing like this.

Another reason Americans are so angry is the sense they’re being lied to. How many Americans voted for Obama only to feel they were somehow scammed? The biggest scam is the way he sells his big government agenda by scaring people into thinking we’re facing the next Great Depression.

Allan Meltzer argues in The Wall Street Journal that there was no chance we were going to see 25% unemployment like we did in the 1930’s.

The facts we face today are very different than the grim reality Americans confronted between 1929 and 1932. True, this recession is not over. But it would have to get improbably worse before it came close to the 42-month duration of the Great Depression, or the 25% unemployment rate in 1932. Then, the only safety net was the soup line.

The current recession is also much less severe than the 1937-38 Depression. A more accurate comparison is to the 1973-75 recession. Today’s recession is as deep and most likely won’t be much longer than the one we experienced some three decades ago. By pointing this out, I do not intend to minimize the damage that the economic crisis has had on individuals and businesses. But as policy makers make decisions in order to alleviate the recession, they are not helped when economists overstate its severity. [...]

So why do many opinion makers insist on inaccurate and frightening analogies that overstate the severity of present conditions? I believe there are several reasons.

First, there is a strong political motivation to make this recession out to be worse than it actually is. The Obama administration wanted to make it appear as though it saved us from an incipient disaster, so it overstated its achievements. The White House also wanted to foist its huge “stimulus” program on the country in order to redistribute income. That pleased many Democrats, but did very little to restore growth.

Many others repeated the administration’s hyperbolic claims. One reason is because there is genuine uncertainty about what has happened and what is likely to come. Short-term forecasts have major errors, and extrapolation of current data adds to misinformation. Then there are economists who would like to see government take a larger role in the economy. They’ve chosen to use the recession as a pretext for arguing for this change.

If there is another Great Depression, it will be the result of this administration and congress’s disastrous policies.

No wonder Americans are so angry. It will be interesting to see how many show up in Washington, DC on September 12. It may be more than any of us could have imagined.

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