Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on October 17, 2008, 05:27:17 AM
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WSJ:
A Liberal Supermajority
Get ready for 'change' we haven't seen since 1965, or 1933.Article
If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.
Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.
The nearby table shows the major bills that passed the House this year or last before being stopped by the Senate minority. Keep in mind that the most important power of the filibuster is to shape legislation, not merely to block it. The threat of 41 committed Senators can cause the House to modify its desires even before legislation comes to a vote. Without that restraining power, all of the following have very good chances of becoming law in 2009 or 2010.
- Medicare for all. When HillaryCare cratered in 1994, the Democrats concluded they had overreached, so they carved up the old agenda into smaller incremental steps, such as Schip for children. A strongly Democratic Congress is now likely to lay the final flagstones on the path to government-run health insurance from cradle to grave.
Mr. Obama wants to build a public insurance program, modeled after Medicare and open to everyone of any income. According to the Lewin Group, the gold standard of health policy analysis, the Obama plan would shift between 32 million and 52 million from private coverage to the huge new entitlement. Like Medicare or the Canadian system, this would never be repealed.
The commitments would start slow, so as not to cause immediate alarm. But as U.S. health-care spending flowed into the default government options, taxes would have to rise or services would be rationed, or both. Single payer is the inevitable next step, as Mr. Obama has already said is his ultimate ideal.
- The business climate. "We have some harsh decisions to make," Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned recently, speaking about retribution for the financial panic. Look for a replay of the Pecora hearings of the 1930s, with Henry Waxman, John Conyers and Ed Markey sponsoring ritual hangings to further their agenda to control more of the private economy. The financial industry will get an overhaul in any case, but telecom, biotech and drug makers, among many others, can expect to be investigated and face new, more onerous rules. See the "Issues and Legislation" tab on Mr. Waxman's Web site for a not-so-brief target list.
The danger is that Democrats could cause the economic downturn to last longer than it otherwise will by enacting regulatory overkill like Sarbanes-Oxley. Something more punitive is likely as well, for instance a windfall profits tax on oil, and maybe other industries.
- Union supremacy. One program certain to be given right of way is "card check." Unions have been in decline for decades, now claiming only 7.4% of the private-sector work force, so Big Labor wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place since the 1930s. The "Employee Free Choice Act" would convert workplaces into union shops merely by gathering signatures from a majority of employees, which means organizers could strongarm those who opposed such a petition.
The bill also imposes a compulsory arbitration regime that results in an automatic two-year union "contract" after 130 days of failed negotiation. The point is to force businesses to recognize a union whether the workers support it or not. This would be the biggest pro-union shift in the balance of labor-management power since the Wagner Act of 1935.
- Taxes. Taxes will rise substantially, the only question being how high. Mr. Obama would raise the top income, dividend and capital-gains rates for "the rich," substantially increasing the cost of new investment in the U.S. More radically, he wants to lift or eliminate the cap on income subject to payroll taxes that fund Medicare and Social Security. This would convert what was meant to be a pension insurance program into an overt income redistribution program. It would also impose a probably unrepealable increase in marginal tax rates, and a permanent shift upward in the federal tax share of GDP.
- The green revolution. A tax-and-regulation scheme in the name of climate change is a top left-wing priority. Cap and trade would hand Congress trillions of dollars in new spending from the auction of carbon credits, which it would use to pick winners and losers in the energy business and across the economy. Huge chunks of GDP and millions of jobs would be at the mercy of Congress and a vast new global-warming bureaucracy. Without the GOP votes to help stage a filibuster, Senators from carbon-intensive states would have less ability to temper coastal liberals who answer to the green elites.
- Free speech and voting rights. A liberal supermajority would move quickly to impose procedural advantages that could cement Democratic rule for years to come. One early effort would be national, election-day voter registration. This is a long-time goal of Acorn and others on the "community organizer" left and would make it far easier to stack the voter rolls. The District of Columbia would also get votes in Congress -- Democratic, naturally.
Felons may also get the right to vote nationwide, while the Fairness Doctrine is likely to be reimposed either by Congress or the Obama FCC. A major goal of the supermajority left would be to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition.
- Special-interest potpourri. Look for the watering down of No Child Left Behind testing standards, as a favor to the National Education Association. The tort bar's ship would also come in, including limits on arbitration to settle disputes and watering down the 1995 law limiting strike suits. New causes of legal action would be sprinkled throughout most legislation. The anti-antiterror lobby would be rewarded with the end of Guantanamo and military commissions, which probably means trying terrorists in civilian courts. Google and MoveOn.org would get "net neutrality" rules, subjecting the Internet to intrusive regulation for the first time.
It's always possible that events -- such as a recession -- would temper some of these ambitions. Republicans also feared the worst in 1993 when Democrats ran the entire government, but it didn't turn out that way. On the other hand, Bob Dole then had 43 GOP Senators to support a filibuster, and the entire Democratic Party has since moved sharply to the left. Mr. Obama's agenda is far more liberal than Bill Clinton's was in 1992, and the Southern Democrats who killed Al Gore's BTU tax and modified liberal ambitions are long gone.
In both 1933 and 1965, liberal majorities imposed vast expansions of government that have never been repealed, and the current financial panic may give today's left another pretext to return to those heydays of welfare-state liberalism. Americans voting for "change" should know they may get far more than they ever imagined.
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And this is exactly what the American public has to be reminded of a hundred times a day.
That if McCain doesn't get in this country and our freedoms are gone for many years if not forever.
And that is also why the MSM fears the negativity from th Republicans - because they know this is true and they want it though most Americans I doubt do.
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Liberals pretend that only President Bush is preventing the U.S. from adopting some global warming "solution." But occasionally their mask slips. As Barack Obama's energy adviser has now made clear, the would-be President intends to blackmail -- or rather, greenmail -- Congress into falling in line with his climate agenda.
APJason Grumet is currently executive director of an outfit called the National Commission on Energy Policy and one of Mr. Obama's key policy aides. In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency "would initiate those rulemakings" that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that "in the absence of Congressional action" 18 months after Mr. Obama's inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.
Well, well. For years, Democrats -- including Senator Obama -- have been howling about the "politicization" of the EPA, which has nominally been part of the Bush Administration. The complaint has been that the White House blocked EPA bureaucrats from making the so-called "endangerment finding" on carbon. Now it turns out that a President Obama would himself wield such a finding as a political bludgeon. He plans to issue an ultimatum to Congress: Either impose new taxes and limits on carbon that he finds amenable, or the EPA carbon police will be let loose to ravage the countryside.
The EPA hasn't made a secret of how it would like to centrally plan the U.S. economy under the 1970 Clean Air Act. In a blueprint released in July, the agency didn't exactly say it'd collectivize the farms -- but pretty close, down to the "grass clippings." The EPA would monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of "lawn and garden equipment" as well as everything with an engine, like cars, planes and boats. Eco-bureaucrats envision thousands of other emissions limits on all types of energy. Coal-fired power and other fossil fuels would be ruled out of existence, while all other prices would rise as the huge economic costs of the new regime were passed down the energy chain to consumers.
These costs would far exceed the burden of a straight carbon tax or cap-and-trade system enacted by Congress, because the Clean Air Act was never written to apply to carbon and other greenhouse gases. It's like trying to do brain surgery with a butter knife. Mr. Obama wants to move ahead anyway because he knows that the costs of any carbon program will be high. He knows, too, that Congress -- even with strongly Democratic majorities -- might still balk at supporting tax increases on their constituents, even if it is done in the name of global warming.
Climate-change politics don't break cleanly along partisan lines. The burden of a carbon clampdown will fall disproportionately on some states over others, especially the 25 interior states that get more than 50% of their electricity from coal. Rustbelt manufacturing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania will get hit hard too. Once President Bush leaves office, the coastal Democrats pushing hardest for a climate change program might find their colleagues splitting off, especially after they vote for a huge tax increase on incomes.
Thus Messrs. Obama and Grumet want to invoke a political deus ex machina driven by a faulty interpretation of the Clean Air Act to force Congress's hand. Mr. Obama and Democrats can then tell Americans that Congress must act to tax and regulate carbon to save the country from even worse bureaucratic consequences. It's Mr. Obama's version of Jack Benny's old "your money or your life" routine, but without the punch line.
The strategy is most notable for what it says about the climate-change lobby and its new standard bearer. Supposedly global warming is the transcendent challenge of the age, but Mr. Obama evidently doesn't believe he'll be able to convince his own party to do something about it without a bureaucratic ultimatum. Mr. Grumet justified it this way: "The U.S. has to move quickly domestically . . . We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus."
Normally a democracy reaches consensus through political debate and persuasion, but apparently for Mr. Obama that option is merely a nuisance. It's another example of "change" you'll be given no choice but to believe in.
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“Under an Obama administration, it is not far-fetched to see the day when liberal federal judges decide that religious organizations must lose their tax exemptions should they refuse to employ homosexuals or others they regard as engaging in deviant behavior. Court challenges against those who believe homosexual behavior is sinful seem to be occurring with greater frequency... The aim of the gay rights lobby is to destroy all remnants of biblical values and societal norms. Gay rights advocates will take their agenda to federal courts as soon as sufficient numbers of liberal judges are there to give them what they want. Watch them vote in overwhelming numbers for Barack Obama. He is their future. This election is, among other things, about the future of the majority and whether we want this country to be shaped by the courts, or by ‘we the people’.” —Cal Thomas
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Watch them vote in overwhelming numbers for Barack Obama. He is their future
And that is what Rachel Maddow is all about - her agenda.
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Ummm, , , who is Rachel Maddow?
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My advice: Invest in metals. Guns, ammo and canned food.
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I've always regarded Paul Volcker highly.
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WSJ
NEW YORK -- At 81 years old, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker is getting a second chance to shape his legacy with a presidential hopeful more than 30 years his junior.
Mr. Volcker has emerged as a top economic adviser to Sen. Barack Obama during a presidential campaign dominated by a global financial crisis. Their growing bond is paying dividends for each man.
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Associated Press
FAST FRIENDS: Sen. Barack Obama with former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker during a meeting with the senator's top economic advisers last month.
Mr. Volcker delivers gravitas and credibility to Sen. Obama, people in the Obama camp say, as well as ideas and approaches to the economic crisis. "Volcker whispering in Obama's ear will make even Republicans comfortable, because he's a hero of the right and a supporter of a strong dollar," says John Tamny, a supply-side economist and Republican.
On Tuesday, Mr. Volcker is scheduled to appear on the campaign trail with Sen. Obama for the first time. At a round-table discussion with voters in Lake Worth, Fla., he'll "give his view on the state of the economy and the credit markets, and what needs to be done to fix them," says one campaign adviser. Longtime Fed watchers are amused that Mr. Volcker, known for his muttered statements during Fed meetings in the 1980s, will be in a political role on the stump.
For Mr. Volcker, a connection with Sen. Obama could help burnish his record as Fed chairman. The cigar-chomping central banker from 1979 to 1987, he received blame for driving up interest rates and tipping the U.S. into the deepest recession since the Great Depression. But Mr. Volcker is just as well known for taming the runaway inflation of that era. His stock has risen in recent months as his gruff warnings about the risks of deregulating the financial sector have come to look prescient. His successor's reputation, meanwhile, has come under a cloud. Alan Greenspan is under criticism that the low interest rates and deregulatory ideology of his tenure contributed to today's crisis.
With nearly every day presenting a fresh financial emergency, Sen. Obama has persuaded Mr. Volcker, who travels the globe for economic meetings and occasionally disappears on fly-fishing trips, to be at the ready; Mr. Volcker now keeps a cellphone on him at all times. And though he still doesn't own a computer (his assistant prints out emails for him), he's gotten used to Sen. Obama's rapid-fire messages sent from a BlackBerry device.
The Obama-Volcker relationship continues to evolve, campaign advisers say. At the start, Sen. Obama sought advice from Mr. Volcker and other outside voices through his economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, a 39-year-old University of Chicago professor. But starting with the demise of Bear Stearns Cos. in March and continuing today, Sen. Obama speaks directly and often with Mr. Volcker about the intricacies of the financial crisis and possible solutions. They've become "collaborators," as one aide puts it.
For example, when the U.S. Treasury put forth a plan to set up a $700 billion rescue fund to buy up toxic assets, Sen. Obama quickly backed it on the advice of Mr. Volcker. Like other prominent economists, Mr. Volcker also advocated early on for the recapitalization of banks. On this advice, Sen. Obama proposed direct equity infusions in banks in his frequent conference calls with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The idea, initially rejected by Mr. Paulson, was finally proposed last week by the administration, in an effort to get banks lending again to businesses and each other.
Relying on Mr. Volcker
Sen. Obama's team of economic advisers includes two former Treasury secretaries, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, and in some decisions, Mr. Volcker doesn't reign supreme. The candidate's latest proposal, for example, a $60 billion stimulus package, was initially fought by the former Fed chief on the grounds that Americans were already overspending. Moreover, he is unlikely to take a long-term role in any Obama administration.
Associated Press
Paul Volcker, delivering a lecture last week in Singapore, where he warned that the U.S. and Europe are facing recession from the financial crisis.
But for now, and going into the campaign's final weeks, aides say Sen. Obama is increasingly relying on Mr. Volcker. His staff now routinely reviews policy proposals and speeches with Mr. Volcker. Conference calls and face-to-face meetings of the Obama economic team are often reorganized to accommodate his schedule. When the team discusses the financial crisis, "The most important question to Obama: What does Paul Volcker think?" says Jason Furman, the campaign's economic-policy director.
The two men have developed an ease with each other, say aides, even as their styles appear to differ: Sen. Obama, who tends to use the Socratic method from his law-school training, examines all points of view and debates them. With a more formal and direct demeanor, Mr. Volcker likes to go straight to solutions.
In last week's final presidential debate, after Republican John McCain raised questions about his rival's ties, Sen. Obama said, "Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker...who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House."
Some Democrats have speculated that, if elected, Sen. Obama could name Mr. Volcker to a post, possibly even as Treasury secretary, for a limited time. Banking and Wall Street executives are pushing the two campaigns to name a new secretary shortly after the election to reassure markets during the transition. The Obama campaign wouldn't comment on possible appointments.
"I just want to be helpful, because I believe Sen. Obama -- in his person, in his ideas and in his ability to understand and articulate both our needs and our hopes -- brings the strong and fresh leadership we need," Mr. Volcker said in an interview in New York. Mr. Volcker wouldn't provide details of his policy suggestions or his personal relationship with Sen. Obama.
After leaving the Fed 20 years ago, Mr. Volcker stopped smoking cigars, became a professor at Princeton University and spent more time fly-fishing. His corner office overlooking Fifth Avenue is filled with photographs and statues of fish, as well as a pillow inscribed: "Work is for people who don't know how to fish."
Following a stint as chairman of a boutique investment-banking firm, Mr. Volcker largely steered clear of joining any Wall Street companies. He set up his own office in Rockefeller Center, where he consults for companies and governments. He has served on a few corporate boards, such as UAL Corp., Prudential Insurance Co. of America and Nestlé SA. He also participated on commissions including the United Nations committee to investigate corruption in its oil-for-food program, and an inquiry launched by Swiss banks to determine which accounts belonged to Holocaust victims.
The bond between Messrs. Obama and Volcker started with a dinner invitation. In June 2007, Mark Gallogly, co-founder of Centerbridge Partners, a New York private-investment firm, and an early supporter of Sen. Obama, invited a dozen financial executives to meet the senator, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President Gary Cohn, Merrill Lynch & Co. President Greg Fleming and Mr. Volcker.
Along with the invitation, Mr. Volcker received from Mr. Gallogly a "briefing package" containing some speeches by Sen. Obama and news articles about him. Mr. Volcker also read the two books written by the senator.
In the private dining room at a Capitol Hill restaurant, Mr. Gallogly seated Mr. Volcker directly across from Sen. Obama, who at the time was considered a long shot to win the Democratic nomination over Sen. Hillary Clinton. Returning late that night on a flight to New York, Mr. Volcker told the group he was "genuinely impressed" with the Illinois senator.
That message was eventually passed along to Sen. Obama's advisers in New York, Michael Froman, a friend from Harvard Law School and a Citigroup Inc. executive, and Jenny Yeager, a fund-raiser. Ms. Yeager told Obama headquarters in Chicago that Mr. Volcker seemed "interested" in the candidate, but in two months no one had followed up with the ex-central banker for fund raising or anything else.
When Sen. Obama's economics adviser, Mr. Goolsbee, heard about Mr. Volcker's interest, he immediately got excited. "Paul Volcker is a legend! We don't want to use his contacts for money, we want to pick his brain," he recalls saying to a campaign operative.
Starting in late summer 2007, Mr. Goolsbee had regular discussions with Mr. Volcker. He incorporated Mr. Volcker's ideas, including his early concern that the housing downturn would snowball into a larger financial crisis, into Sen. Obama's policy positions. In a September 2007 speech at Nasdaq, Sen. Obama predicted that because of oversight lapses and abusive practices that cause the public to doubt financial results, "the markets will be ravaged by a crisis in confidence."
An Early Endorsement
In early January 2008, when Sen. Clinton was pounding her rival over his lack of experience and stature, Sen. Obama phoned Mr. Volcker to ask for his endorsement. (At that time, billionaire investor Warren Buffett had refused to take sides between the Democratic contenders, saying he would support whoever got the nomination.) Mr. Volcker, a long-time Democrat who had mostly stayed out of partisan politics, agreed, and wrote out his statement in longhand.
The presidential candidate's first big economic address took place in March at Cooper Union in New York. Mr. Volcker's fingerprints were evident in the speech. The onetime central banker had long been vigilant about strong regulatory oversight; as Fed chairman he rejected big banks' attempts to repeal Depression-era laws to engage in more risky practices like investment banking. New financial institutions and instruments have since led to the repeal or relaxation of those laws, and Mr. Volcker told Sen. Obama that the U.S. regulatory structure must be strengthened and updated for the 21st century.
With Mr. Volcker sitting in the front row, Sen. Obama told the audience at Cooper Union that the current financial-regulatory framework must be "revamped." He faulted deregulation for the growing economic crisis. "Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it."
Once Sen. Obama became the expected Democratic nominee in June, and the economy became the central campaign issue, his chats with Mr. Volcker picked up. Mr. Goolsbee would get emails from Sen. Obama's traveling aide Reggie Love or his senior strategist David Axelrod with the message: "BO wants to call Volcker. What's his number again?"
Emergency Meetings
In the past two months, financial crises have come one after another, picking up speed with the federal government's July effort to bolster big mortgage insurers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As the contagion from the subprime mortgages and risky mortgage credit swaps threatened to topple other institutions, Sen. Obama asked for "emergency meetings" with his economic team, about a dozen advisers including Mr. Volcker and Mr. Buffett.
At the first group meeting in Washington in late July, Sen. Obama said he wanted to hear from each adviser on the worsening economic downturn and asked Mr. Volcker to go first. "The very health of the credit markets is at stake," Mr. Volcker said, according to one attendee. He urged strong action to restore confidence, particularly in the U.S. banking system.
When Sen. Obama raised the prospect of a package of spending and tax measures to "stimulate" the economy, Mr. Volcker disapproved. "Americans are spending beyond their means," he told the group. A stimulus package would delay the belt-tightening and savings needed, he added, proposing instead better regulation and assistance to banks.
Laura Tyson, economics adviser for President Bill Clinton and a professor at University of California, Berkeley, disagreed. "Americans can't help but spend beyond their means because they've had no income growth while their costs on gas and food have skyrocketed." She suggested spending money to rebuild infrastructure and create jobs. Even as some others agreed with Ms. Tyson, Mr. Volcker didn't budge. Sen. Obama delayed putting out a new stimulus package, but stressed that he wanted to find the "right balance" of possible assistance.
When the bailout bill became a political football and the markets seized up, Sen. Obama called the second in-person meeting of his financial team on Sept. 26 in Miami. Mr. Volcker initially said he would have to call in because he was leaving for Europe that day. Sen. Obama, according to campaign aides, called him with a personal plea.
The next morning, the senator seated Mr. Volcker beside him, an arrangement that was photographed by the media entourage covering the campaign. Mr. Volcker told the group he had changed his mind about an economic-stimulus package due to the global recession, but he couldn't stay to hear the discussion about the approach because he had to catch a plane to Europe.
In the past two weeks, with the stock market's drastic volatility and weak economic indicators, Sen. Obama presented his $60 billion package, which contains tax cuts and spending to provide public-works jobs to struggling Americans.
On Monday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke endorsed the idea of another stimulus package, giving a boost to Democratic lawmakers who are considering one. But congressional Republicans have so far shown little interest in a second spending bill.
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What happens when the voter in the exact middle of the earnings spectrum receives more in benefits from Washington than he pays in taxes? Economists Allan Meltzer and Scott Richard posed this question 27 years ago. We may soon enough know the answer.
Barack Obama is offering voters strong incentives to support higher taxes and bigger government. This could be the magic income-redistribution formula Democrats have long sought.
Sen. Obama is promising $500 and $1,000 gift-wrapped packets of money in the form of refundable tax credits. These will shift the tax demographics to the tipping point where half of all voters will receive a cash windfall from Washington and an overwhelming majority will gain from tax hikes and more government spending.
In 2006, the latest year for which we have Census data, 220 million Americans were eligible to vote and 89 million -- 40% -- paid no income taxes. According to the Tax Policy Center (a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute), this will jump to 49% when Mr. Obama's cash credits remove 18 million more voters from the tax rolls. What's more, there are an additional 24 million taxpayers (11% of the electorate) who will pay a minimal amount of income taxes -- less than 5% of their income and less than $1,000 annually.
In all, three out of every five voters will pay little or nothing in income taxes under Mr. Obama's plans and gain when taxes rise on the 40% that already pays 95% of income tax revenues.
The plunder that the Democrats plan to extract from the "very rich" -- the 5% that earn more than $250,000 and who already pay 60% of the federal income tax bill -- will never stretch to cover the expansive programs Mr. Obama promises.
What next? A core group of Obama enthusiasts -- those educated professionals who applaud the "fairness" of their candidate's tax plans -- will soon see their $100,000-$150,000 incomes targeted. As entitlements expand and a self-interested majority votes, the higher tax brackets will kick in at lower levels down the ladder, all the way to households with a $75,000 income.
Calculating how far society's top earners can be pushed before they stop (or cut back on) producing is difficult. But the incentives are easy to see. Voters who benefit from government programs will push for higher tax rates on higher earners -- at least until those who power the economy and create jobs and wealth stop working, stop investing, or move out of the country.
Other nations have tried the ideology of fairness in the place of incentives and found that reward without work is a recipe for decline. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher took on the unions and slashed taxes to restore growth and jobs in Great Britain. In Germany a few years ago, Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder defied his party's dogma and loosened labor's grip on the economy to end stagnation. And more recently in France, Nicolas Sarkozy was swept to power on a platform of restoring flexibility to the economy.
The sequence is always the same. High-tax, big-spending policies force the economy to lose momentum. Then growth in government spending outstrips revenues. Fiscal and trade deficits soar. Public debt, excessive taxation and unemployment follow. The central bank tries to solve the problem by printing money. International competitiveness is lost and the currency depreciates. The system stagnates. And then a frightened electorate returns conservatives to power.
The economic tides will not stand still while Washington experiments with European-type social democracy, even though the dollar's role as the global reserve currency will buy some time. Our trademark competitive advantage will be lost, and once lost, it will be hard to regain. There are too many emerging economies focused on prosperity and not redistribution for the U.S. to easily recapture its role of global economic leader.
Tomorrow's children may come to question why their parents sold their birthright for a mess of "fairness" -- whatever that will signify when jobs are scarce and American opportunity is no longer the envy of the world.
Mr. Lerrick is a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
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http://www.nypost.com/seven/10202008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/america_the_weak_134398.htm?&page=0
AMERICA THE WEAK
US RISKS TURMOIL UNDER PREZ O
Posted: 4:51 am
October 20, 2008
IF Sen. Barack Obama is elected president, our re public will survive, but our international strategy and some of our allies may not. His first year in office would conjure globe-spanning challenges as our enemies piled on to exploit his weakness.
Add in Sen. Joe Biden - with his track record of calling every major foreign-policy crisis wrong for 35 years - as vice president and de facto secretary of State, and we'd face a formula for strategic disaster.
Where would the avalanche of confrontations come from?
* Al Qaeda. Pandering to his extreme base, Obama has projected an image of being soft on terror. Toss in his promise to abandon Iraq, and you can be sure that al Qaeda will pull out all the stops to kill as many Americans as possible - in Iraq, Afghanistan and, if they can, here at home - hoping that America will throw away the victories our troops bought with their blood.
* Pakistan. As this nuclear-armed country of 170 million anti-American Muslims grows more fragile by the day, the save-the-Taliban elements in the Pakistani intelligence services and body politic will avoid taking serious action against "their" terrorists (while theatrically annoying Taliban elements they can't control). The Pakistanis think Obama would lose Afghanistan - and they believe they can reap the subsequent whirlwind.
* Iran. Got nukes? If the Iranians are as far along with their nuclear program as some reports insist, expect a mushroom cloud above an Iranian test range next year. Even without nukes, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would try the new administration's temper in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.
* Israel. In the Middle East, Obama's election would be read as the end of staunch US support for Israel. Backed by Syria and Iran, Hezbollah would provoke another, far-bloodier war with Israel. Lebanon would disintegrate.
* Saudi Arabia. Post-9/11 attention to poisonous Saudi proselytizing forced the kingdom to be more discreet in fomenting terrorism and religious hatred abroad. Convinced that Obama will be more "tolerant" toward militant Islam, the Saudis would redouble their funding of bigotry and butchery-for-Allah - in the US, too.
* Russia. Got Ukraine? Not for long, slabiye Amerikantsi. Russia's new czar, Vladimir Putin, intends to gobble Ukraine next year, assured that NATO will be divided and the US can be derided. Aided by the treasonous Kiev politico Yulia Timoshenko - a patriot when it suited her ambition, but now a Russian collaborator - the Kremlin is set to reclaim the most important state it still regards as its property. Overall, 2009 may see the starkest repression of freedom since Stalin seized Eastern Europe.
* Georgia. Our Georgian allies should dust off their Russian dictionaries.
* Venezuela. Hugo Chavez will intensify the rape of his country's hemorrhaging democracy and, despite any drop in oil revenue, he'll do all he can to export his megalomaniacal version of gun-barrel socialism. He'll seek a hug-for-the-cameras meet with President Obama as early as possible.
* Bolivia. Chavez client President Evo Morales could order his military to seize control of his country's dissident eastern provinces, whose citizens resist his repression, extortion and semi-literate Leninism. President Obama would do nothing as yet another democracy toppled and bled.
* North Korea. North Korea will expect a much more generous deal from the West for annulling its pursuit of nuclear weapons. And it will regard an Obama administration as a green light to cheat.
* NATO. The brave young democracies of Central and Eastern Europe will be gravely discouraged, while the appeasers in Western Europe will again have the upper hand. Putin will be allowed to do what he wants.
* The Kurds. An Obama administration will abandon our only true allies between Tel Aviv and Tokyo.
* Democracy activists. Around the world, regressive regimes will intensify their suppression - and outright murder - of dissidents who risk their lives for freedom and justice. An Obama administration will say all the right things, but do nothing.
* Women's rights. If you can't vote in US elections, sister, you're screwed. Being stoned to death or buried alive is just a cultural thing.
* Journalists. American journalists who've done everything they can to elect Barack Obama can watch as regimes around the world imprison, torture and murder their foreign colleagues, confident that the US has entered an era of impotence. The crocodile tears in newsrooms will provide drought relief to the entire southeastern US.
Sen. John McCain's campaign has allowed a great man to be maligned as a mere successor to George W. Bush. The truth is that an Obama administration would be a second Carter presidency - only far worse.
Think Bush weakened America? Just wait.
Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."
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"I think at this point there needs to be a focus on an immediate increase in spending and I think this is a time when deficit fear has to take a second seat . . . I believe later on there should be tax increases. Speaking personally, I think there are a lot of very rich people out there whom we can tax at a point down the road and recover some of the money."
-- Barney Frank, October 20, 2008
The election is still two weeks away, but we are already living in the world of Obamanomics. In fact, on fiscal policy we've been living in that world at least since February when the Bush Administration conceded to the Congressional priority of Keynesian fiscal "stimulus." That didn't work very well, but no matter. Spurred on by Barack Obama, Democrats in Congress are preparing Round Two, this time in the form of $150 billion to $300 billion in new spending.
APIf we may borrow a phrase, this is the triumph of hope over experience. The one thing Washington hasn't failed to do in recent years is spend, yet the economy doesn't seem to have improved on the event. Brian Riedl, a budget expert at the Heritage Foundation, has calculated that in 2008 Congress enacted $332 billion of "emergency" supplemental spending bills, only half of which was for the Iraq war. Do you feel stimulated?
The nearby chart shows the arc of tax policy and economic growth across the Bush years. After the dot-com bust, President Bush compromised with Senate Democrats and delayed his marginal-rate income tax cuts in return for immediate tax rebates. The rebates goosed spending for a while but provided no increase in incentives to invest. Only after 2003, when the marginal-rate cuts took effect immediately, combined with cuts in dividend and capital gains rates, did robust growth return. The expansion was healthy until it was overtaken by the housing bust and even resisted recession into this year. Mr. Bush and Congress returned to the rebate formula in February, but a blip in second-quarter growth has now ended as the economy heads into recession. The Dow plunged again yesterday with a 514-point drop.
The latest plan is even worse than the spring round of $100 billion or so in tax rebate checks. At least rebates allowed taxpayers to spend their own money. Under this stimulus the government will tax or borrow $150 billion to $300 billion in order to spend the money on social and pork-barrel programs. The latest draft would direct dollars to food stamps, another expansion in unemployment insurance, home heating subsidies, more aid to states and cities, and "infrastructure" like roads, bridges and public transit. Because of Davis-Bacon wage requirements on these brick and mortar projects, a portion of the dollars would coincidentally flow to the Democrats' biggest campaign contributors: unions. Call it a political "rebate" check.
On Tuesday Senator Obama said this spending would create millions of new jobs by closing a federal "investment deficit." Over the past eight years the federal budget has exploded by more than $1.1 trillion, much of it for the very programs that Democrats want to spend more on. Let's start with infrastructure. Three years ago Congress passed a transportation bill of more than $286 billion. The transportation budget is up 22% after inflation in the past eight years. Roads and bridges can help economic growth if they increase productivity by more than the amount they cost in higher taxes or borrowing. But not if they are bridges to nowhere as so many of these projects are.
Further Reading
By Karl Rove
The Tax Argument Still Works 10/23/2008
Obama's plans are giving voters pause.
How about aid to local communities? That spending has soared by 91% after inflation in eight years. The education budget is up 57%. Welfare programs are up 30%. Only two years ago Democrats were calling the Tom DeLay Republicans spendthrift. Now they say there's an "investment deficit."
Federal budget deficits are not something we obsess about, but eventually this new spending has to be paid for, and Barney Frank's comments only underscore that big tax increases are coming. The prospect of these tax increases is now hanging over the economy like a pall, as investors and businesses wonder where and how heavily an Obama Administration and Congress would strike. The pall is likely to continue well into 2009, as millions of Americans delay their investment decisions until they know how much their after-tax returns are likely to fall.
If Mr. Obama really wants a "stimulus," he'll announce that given the condition of the economy he won't raise taxes at all. Meanwhile, all of us are getting a preview of Obamanomics in action.
Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.
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Comments Obama's First 100 Days
by Patrick J. Buchanan
10/28/2008
Undeniably, a powerful tide is running for the Democratic Party, with one
week left to Election Day.
Bush's approval rating is 27 percent, just above Richard Nixon's Watergate
nadir and almost down to Carter-Truman lows. After each of those presidents
reached their floors -- in 1952, 1974, 1980 -- the opposition party captured
the White House.
Moreover, 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans think the nation is on the
wrong course, and since mid-September, when McCain was still slightly ahead,
the Dow has lost 4,000 points -- $5 trillion to $6 trillion in value.
Leading now by eight points in an average of national polls, Barack Obama
has other advantages.
Not a single blue state is regarded as imperiled or even a toss-up, while
Obama leads in six crucial red states: Florida, North Carolina, Virginia,
Ohio, Missouri and Colorado. Should McCain lose one of the six, he would
have to win Pennsylvania to compensate for the lost electoral votes. But the
latest Pennsylvania polls show Barack with a double-digit lead.
Lately moving into the toss-up category are Nevada, North Dakota, Montana
and Indiana. All voted twice for George W. Bush.
Not only is Obama ahead in the state and national polls, he has more money,
is running far more ads, has a superior organization on the ground, attracts
larger crowds, and has greater enthusiasm and more media in camp. And new
voter registrations heavily favor the Democrats.
Though Congress is regarded by Americans with a disdain bordering on
disgust -- five of six Americans think it has done a poor job -- Democratic
majorities are certain to grow. Indeed, with Democrats favored by 10 points
over Republicans, Nancy Pelosi's majority could grow by 25 seats and Harry
Reid could find himself with a filibuster-proof majority of 60 senators.
Democrats already have 49, plus two independents: Socialist Bernie Sanders
and Independent Joe Lieberman. Their challengers are now ahead in New
Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Minnesota, Oregon and
Colorado, with a chance of picking up Georgia, Alaska, Kentucky and
Mississippi.
We may be looking at a reverse of 1980, when Reagan won a 10-point victory
over Jimmy Carter, and Republicans took the Senate and, working with Boll
Weevil Democrats, effective control of the House.
With his tax cuts, defense buildup and rollback policy against the "Evil
Empire," Reagan gave us some of the best years of our lives, culminating in
America's epochal victory in the Cold War.
What does the triumvirate of Obama-Pelosi-Reid offer?
Rep. Barney Frank is calling for new tax hikes on the most successful and a
25 percent across-the-board slash in national defense. Sen. John Kerry is
talking up new and massive federal spending, a la FDR's New Deal.
Specifically, we can almost surely expect:
-- Swift amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and a drive to
make them citizens and register them, as in the Bill Clinton years. This
will mean that Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona will soon move out
of reach for GOP presidential candidates, as has California.
-- Border security will go on the backburner, and America will have a
virtual open border with a Mexico of 110 million.
-- Taxes will be raised on the top 5 percent of wage-earners, who now carry
60 percent of the U.S. income tax burden, and tens of millions of checks
will be sent out to the 40 percent of wage-earners who pay no federal income
tax. Like the man said, redistribute the wealth, spread it around.
-- Social Security taxes will be raised on the most successful among us, and
capital gains taxes will be raised from 15 percent to 20 percent. The Bush
tax cuts will be repealed, and death taxes reimposed.
-- Two or three more liberal activists of the Ruth Bader Ginsberg-John Paul
Stevens stripe will be named to the Supreme Court. U.S. district and
appellate courts will be stacked with "progressives."
-- Special protections for homosexuals will be written into all civil rights
laws, and gays and lesbians in the military will be invited to come out of
the closet. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dead.
-- The homosexual marriages that state judges have forced California,
Massachusetts and Connecticut to recognize, an Obama Congress or Obama court
will require all 50 states to recognize.
-- A "Freedom of Choice Act" nullifying all state restrictions on abortions
will be enacted. America will become the most pro-abortion nation on earth.
-- Affirmative action -- hiring and promotions based on race, sex and sexual
orientation until specified quotas are reached -- will be rigorously
enforced throughout the U.S. government and private sector.
-- Universal health insurance will be enacted, covering legal and illegal
immigrants, providing another powerful magnet for the world to come to
America, if necessary by breaching her borders.
-- A federal bailout of states and municipalities to keep state and local
governments spending up could come in December or early next year.
-- The first trillion-dollar deficit will be run in the first year of an
Obama presidency. It will be the first of many.
Welcome to Obamaland!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West
Lost the World, "The Death of the West,", "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic,
Not an Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong."
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From the WT forum:
I have resigned myself to the fact that Barack Obama, wlll be our next President, and that my Taxes and Fees, will go up in a BIG way.
To compensate for these increases, I figure, that the Customer will have to see an increase in my fees to them of about 10%.
I will also have to lay off 6 of my employees.
This really bothered me as I believe we are family here and didn't know how to choose who will have to go.
So, this is what I did:
I strolled thru the parking lot and found 8 Obama bumper stickers on my employees cars. I have decided these folks will be the first to be laid off.
I can't think of another fair way to approach this problem.
If you have a better idea, let me know.
I'm sending this letter to all the Business owners that I know.
Works for me.
__________________
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Geopolitical Diary: President-Elect Barack Obama
November 5, 2008 | 0509 GMT
Barack Obama was elected president of the United States on Tuesday. The popular vote gave him a solid majority, but nowhere near a landslide. His electoral majority was decisive. Most significant of the night, the Democrats now control both houses of Congress and in the Senate are close to — but not quite at — a veto-proof majority. They decisively control two branches of government. Indeed, it is likely that they will be able to appoint one or even two justices to the Supreme Court in the next four years, controlling that as well. Obama will have more control of the federal government on his first day in office than most presidents ever achieve in their entire tenure.
The crucial question will be whether it makes a difference. The shift from a Bush presidency to an Obama presidency will be a laboratory for testing one of Stratfor’s key contentions, which is that ideology and personalities are of secondary importance to the external forces that limit, shape and constrain a leader’s options. The change between the government of the United States elected in 2004 and the government that will take power in January is as dramatic a shift in personalities and ideologies as is likely in the American system. The issue will be how much room for maneuver Obama will actually have, particularly in foreign policy.
Consider: Obama has pledged to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, although his time frame is unclear. If he does withdraw them, he will have to deal with Iranians sooner rather than later, as they will want to move into any power vacuum left in Iraq. If the Iraqi government is unable to govern, or parts of it are under Iranian influence, obviously Iranian influence in Iraq will surge. This of course will deeply concern Saudi Arabia, which has been frightened of Iranian power since the Iranian revolution. Obama will face the choice of either leaving the Saudis to their own devices or containing the Iranians.
The strategy he has said he would follow would be to negotiate with the Iranians. He would have to reach an understanding with them that would create a neutral Iraqi government and allow the United States to withdraw, yet have a credible guarantee from Iran to respect Iraqi neutrality and keep it as a buffer zone. What can the United States offer Iran that matches the importance of Iraq to them?
That will be the point at which Obama will first show whether he can carve a new path or whether he will be trapped in the same reality the Bush administration faces. Unless he can reach an understanding with the Iranians, he cannot simply withdraw. We cannot imagine an offer to Iran that would cause Tehran to give up the goal of the domination of Iraq. But that is the laboratory experiment: Can Obama craft a solution that others can’t see? If he can, then his withdrawal plan can be executed. If he can’t, then it can only be executed at a huge potential cost prior to the next presidential election — and popularity among presidents is fleeting. Obama has won the presidency and therefore has shown himself to be a master politician. He does not want to create a disaster and lose the next election. Therefore, the question is: What will he do to fulfill the centerpiece pledge of his foreign policy?
This is not a trick question, and the least important matter is whether Stratfor’s methodology is validated or not. What is important is that Obama, having won the election, will now have to face a range of foreign policy issues that will challenge his ideology and policies, and where his personality will matter little. He will be dealing with people like Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao and Angela Merkel, none of whom are swayed by charisma and all of whom govern countries with interests very different than those of the United States.
When policies encounter realities, harsh things happen to presidents. Most presidents are worn down by them. Some accommodate themselves. A few — a Lincoln or a Franklin Delano Roosevelt — find opportunities that no one else can quite see. The first test for Obama will be Iraq, to find an exit that isn’t disastrous but fulfills his commitments. We don’t see the path. It will be interesting to see if Obama can invent one — not only on Iraq but on a range of foreign policy issues that he’s addressed.
Tell Stratfor What You Think
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Obama’s Challenge
November 5, 2008
By George Friedman
Related Special Topic Page
The 2008 U.S. Presidential Race
Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States by a large majority in the Electoral College. The Democrats have dramatically increased their control of Congress, increasing the number of seats they hold in the House of Representatives and moving close to the point where — with a few Republican defections — they can have veto-proof control of the Senate. Given the age of some Supreme Court justices, Obama might well have the opportunity to appoint at least one and possibly two new justices. He will begin as one of the most powerful presidents in a long while.
Truly extraordinary were the celebrations held around the world upon Obama’s victory. They affirm the global expectations Obama has raised — and reveal that the United States must be more important to Europeans than the latter like to admit. (We can’t imagine late-night vigils in the United States over a French election.)
Obama is an extraordinary rhetorician, and as Aristotle pointed out, rhetoric is one of the foundations of political power. Rhetoric has raised him to the presidency, along with the tremendous unpopularity of his predecessor and a financial crisis that took a tied campaign and gave Obama a lead he carefully nurtured to victory. So, as with all politicians, his victory was a matter of rhetoric and, according to Machiavelli, luck. Obama had both, but now the question is whether he has Machiavelli’s virtue in full by possessing the ability to exercise power. This last element is what governing is about, and it is what will determine if his presidency succeeds.
Embedded in his tremendous victory is a single weakness: Obama won the popular vote by a fairly narrow margin, about 52 percent of the vote. That means that almost as many people voted against him as voted for him.
Obama’s Agenda vs. Expanding His Base
U.S. President George W. Bush demonstrated that the inability to understand the uses and limits of power can crush a presidency very quickly. The enormous enthusiasm of Obama’s followers could conceal how he — like Bush — is governing a deeply, and nearly evenly, divided country. Obama’s first test will be simple: Can he maintain the devotion of his followers while increasing his political base? Or will he believe, as Bush and Cheney did, that he can govern without concern for the other half of the country because he controls the presidency and Congress, as Bush and Cheney did in 2001? Presidents are elected by electoral votes, but they govern through public support.
Obama and his supporters will say there is no danger of a repeat of Bush — who believed he could carry out his agenda and build his political base at the same time, but couldn’t. Building a political base requires modifying one’s agenda. But when you start modifying your agenda, when you become pragmatic, you start to lose your supporters. If Obama had won with 60 percent of the popular vote, this would not be as pressing a question. But he barely won by more than Bush in 2004. Now, we will find out if Obama is as skillful a president as he was a candidate.
Obama will soon face the problem of beginning to disappoint people all over the world, a problem built into his job. The first disappointments will be minor. There are thousands of people hoping for appointments, some to Cabinet positions, others to the White House, others to federal agencies. Many will get something, but few will get as much as they hoped for. Some will feel betrayed and become bitter. During the transition process, the disappointed office seeker — an institution in American politics — will start leaking on background to whatever reporters are available. This will strike a small, discordant note; creating no serious problems, but serving as a harbinger of things to come.
Later, Obama will be sworn in. He will give a memorable, perhaps historic speech at his inauguration. There will be great expectations about him in the country and around the world. He will enjoy the traditional presidential honeymoon, during which all but his bitterest enemies will give him the benefit of the doubt. The press initially will adore him, but will begin writing stories about all the positions he hasn’t filled, the mistakes he made in the vetting process and so on. And then, sometime in March or April, things will get interesting.
Iran and a U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq
Obama has promised to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, where he does not intend to leave any residual force. If he follows that course, he will open the door for the Iranians. Iran’s primary national security interest is containing or dominating Iraq, with which Iran fought a long war. If the United States remains in Iraq, the Iranians will be forced to accept a neutral government in Iraq. A U.S. withdrawal will pave the way for the Iranians to use Iraqi proxies to create, at a minimum, an Iraqi government more heavily influenced by Iran.
Apart from upsetting Sunni and Kurdish allies of the United States in Iraq, the Iranian ascendancy in Iraq will disturb some major American allies — particularly the Saudis, who fear Iranian power. The United States can’t afford a scenario under which Iranian power is projected into the Saudi oil fields. While that might be an unlikely scenario, it carries catastrophic consequences. The Jordanians and possibly the Turks, also American allies, will pressure Obama not simply to withdraw. And, of course, the Israelis will want the United States to remain in place to block Iranian expansion. Resisting a coalition of Saudis and Israelis will not be easy.
This will be the point where Obama’s pledge to talk to the Iranians will become crucial. If he simply withdraws from Iraq without a solid understanding with Iran, the entire American coalition in the region will come apart. Obama has pledged to build coalitions, something that will be difficult in the Middle East if he withdraws from Iraq without ironclad Iranian guarantees. He therefore will talk to the Iranians. But what can Obama offer the Iranians that would induce them to forego their primary national security interest? It is difficult to imagine a U.S.-Iranian deal that is both mutually beneficial and enforceable.
Obama will then be forced to make a decision. He can withdraw from Iraq and suffer the geopolitical consequences while coming under fire from the substantial political right in the United States that he needs at least in part to bring into his coalition. Or, he can retain some force in Iraq, thereby disappointing his supporters. If he is clumsy, he could wind up under attack from the right for negotiating with the Iranians and from his own supporters for not withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq. His skills in foreign policy and domestic politics will be tested on this core question, and he undoubtedly will disappoint many.
The Afghan Dilemma
Obama will need to address Afghanistan next. He has said that this is the real war, and that he will ask U.S. allies to join him in the effort. This means he will go to the Europeans and NATO, as he has said he will do. The Europeans are delighted with Obama’s victory because they feel Obama will consult them and stop making demands of them. But demands are precisely what he will bring the Europeans. In particular, he will want the Europeans to provide more forces for Afghanistan.
Many European countries will be inclined to provide some support, if for no other reason than to show that they are prepared to work with Obama. But European public opinion is not about to support a major deployment in Afghanistan, and the Europeans don’t have the force to deploy there anyway. In fact, as the global financial crisis begins to have a more dire impact in Europe than in the United States, many European countries are actively reducing their deployments in Afghanistan to save money. Expanding operations is the last thing on European minds.
Obama’s Afghan solution of building a coalition centered on the Europeans will thus meet a divided Europe with little inclination to send troops and with few troops to send in any event. That will force him into a confrontation with the Europeans in spring 2009, and then into a decision. The United States and its allies collectively lack the force to stabilize Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban. They certainly lack the force to make a significant move into Pakistan — something Obama has floated on several occasions that might be a good idea if force were in fact available.
He will have to make a hard decision on Afghanistan. Obama can continue the war as it is currently being fought, without hope of anything but a long holding action, but this risks defining his presidency around a hopeless war. He can choose to withdraw, in effect reinstating the Taliban, going back on his commitment and drawing heavy fire from the right. Or he can do what we have suggested is the inevitable outcome, namely, negotiate — and reach a political accord — with the Taliban. Unlike Bush, however, withdrawal or negotiation with the Taliban will increase the pressure on Obama from the right. And if this is coupled with a decision to delay withdrawal from Iraq, Obama’s own supporters will become restive. His 52 percent Election Day support could deteriorate with remarkable speed.
The Russian Question
At the same time, Obama will face the Russian question. The morning after Obama’s election, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that Russia was deploying missiles in its European exclave of Kaliningrad in response to the U.S. deployment of ballistic missile defense systems in Poland. Obama opposed the Russians on their August intervention in Georgia, but he has never enunciated a clear Russia policy. We expect Ukraine will have shifted its political alignment toward Russia, and Moscow will be rapidly moving to create a sphere of influence before Obama can bring his attention — and U.S. power — to bear.
Obama will again turn to the Europeans to create a coalition to resist the Russians. But the Europeans will again be divided. The Germans can’t afford to alienate the Russians because of German energy dependence on Russia and because Germany does not want to fight another Cold War. The British and French may be more inclined to address the question, but certainly not to the point of resurrecting NATO as a major military force. The Russians will be prepared to talk, and will want to talk a great deal, all the while pursuing their own national interest of increasing their power in what they call their “near abroad.”
Obama will have many options on domestic policy given his majorities in Congress. But his Achilles’ heel, as it was for Bush and for many presidents, will be foreign policy. He has made what appear to be three guarantees. First, he will withdraw from Iraq. Second, he will focus on Afghanistan. Third, he will oppose Russian expansionism. To deliver on the first promise, he must deal with the Iranians. To deliver on the second, he must deal with the Taliban. To deliver on the third, he must deal with the Europeans.
Global Finance and the European Problem
The Europeans will pose another critical problem, as they want a second Bretton Woods agreement. Some European states appear to desire a set of international regulations for the financial system. There are three problems with this.
First, unless Obama wants to change course dramatically, the U.S. and European positions differ over the degree to which governments will regulate interbank transactions. The Europeans want much more intrusion than the Americans. They are far less averse to direct government controls than the Americans have been. Obama has the power to shift American policy, but doing that will make it harder to expand his base.
Second, the creation of an international regulatory body that has authority over American banks would create a system where U.S. financial management was subordinated to European financial management.
And third, the Europeans themselves have no common understanding of things. Obama could thus quickly be drawn into complex EU policy issues that could tie his hands in the United States. These could quickly turn into painful negotiations, in which Obama’s allure to the Europeans will evaporate.
One of the foundations of Obama’s foreign policy — and one of the reasons the Europeans have celebrated his election — was the perception that Obama is prepared to work closely with the Europeans. He is in fact prepared to do so, but his problem will be the same one Bush had: The Europeans are in no position to give the things that Obama will need from them — namely, troops, a revived NATO to confront the Russians and a global financial system that doesn’t subordinate American financial authority to an international bureaucracy.
The Hard Road Ahead
Like any politician, Obama will face the challenge of having made a set of promises that are not mutually supportive. Much of his challenge boils down to problems that he needs to solve and that he wants European help on, but the Europeans are not prepared to provide the type and amount of help he needs. This, plus the fact that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq requires an agreement with Iran — something hard to imagine without a continued U.S. presence in Iraq — gives Obama a difficult road to move on.
As with all American presidents (who face midterm elections with astonishing speed), Obama’s foreign policy moves will be framed by his political support. Institutionally, he will be powerful. In terms of popular support, he begins knowing that almost half the country voted against him, and that he must increase his base. He must exploit the honeymoon period, when his support will expand, to bring another 5 percent or 10 percent of the public into his coalition. These people voted against him; now he needs to convince them to support him. But these are precisely the people who would regard talks with the Taliban or Iran with deep distrust. And if negotiations with the Iranians cause him to keep forces in Iraq, he will alienate his base without necessarily winning over his opponents.
And there is always the unknown. There could be a terrorist attack, the Russians could start pressuring the Baltic states, the Mexican situation could deteriorate. The unknown by definition cannot be anticipated. And many foreign leaders know it takes an administration months to settle in, something some will try to take advantage of. On top of that, there is now nearly a three-month window in which the old president is not yet out and the new president not yet in.
Obama must deal with extraordinarily difficult foreign policy issues in the context of an alliance failing not because of rough behavior among friends but because the allies’ interests have diverged. He must deal with this in the context of foreign policy positions difficult to sustain and reconcile, all against the backdrop of almost half an electorate that voted against him versus supporters who have enormous hopes vested in him. Obama knows all of this, of course, as he indicated in his victory speech.
We will now find out if Obama understands the exercise of political power as well as he understands the pursuit of that power. You really can’t know that until after the fact. There is no reason to think he can’t finesse these problems. Doing so will take cunning, trickery and the ability to make his supporters forget the promises he made while keeping their support. It will also require the ability to make some of his opponents embrace him despite the path he will have to take. In other words, he will have to be cunning and ruthless without appearing to be cunning and ruthless. That’s what successful presidents do.
In the meantime, he should enjoy the transition. It’s frequently the best part of a presidency.
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I think taoist-engineer has some good points.
It's shameful that in a country as rich and prosperous as we are that people are rejected for medical care or are given sub quality care based upon ability to pay.
And a few of my relatives are doctors; even they agree the system needs fixing. And a good friend is a physician in Canada; overall she says it works quite well.
Health care or lack thereof is one of the major causes of bankruptcy. If you don't have a employer sponsored plan an individual plan can easily cost over $10,000
per year. I can afford it, but many cannot. So they go without insurance and pray they don't get sick. is that a solution?
Everyone says "national health insurance will not work", yet what is Medicare? My father, my mother, and others I know are on Medicare. Most if not all
seem relatively happy with the system. And most doctors accept medicare patients. Why can't something similar be done for all Americans?
Something needs to be done...
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JDN,
Address your disreputable lies about Michelle Malkin before you pollute any other topic.
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I think GM we have already resolved this problem; simply SUCK IT UP, AND MOVE ON...
It was good advice - I suggest you take it.
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JDN,
I suggest you act like a man for probably the first time in your life and address your unfounded and dishonorable smear of Michelle Malkin.
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Gee GM you are really a sore loser... It happens...
As has been pointed out, YOU LOST (BIG TIME) SUCK IT UP, AND MOVE ON...
May I suggest you get over it... and move on...?
If you have something to say, post. If not, don't.
Time to move on...
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I suggest you retract your dishonorable lies about Michelle Malkin. As far as losing. I didn't lose, America did. This will become evident in time.
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GM:
I agree with you that JDN should retract his apparently baseless accusations about MM. That said, I trust that the point has been noted by those reading and that they will adjust how much weight to give to future accusations by JDN. Lets move forward on this please.
Taoist Engineer:
Thank you not only for your thoughts, but the grace with which you share them. Please forgive me for asking you to repost them in the "Politics of Health Care" thread and I will be glad to answer them there.
All:
Here's this from today's WSJ:
============
Now that Barack Obama has vanquished John McCain, he faces a much greater foe: Democrats on Capitol Hill. They've humbled the last two Democratic Presidents -- and with their enhanced majorities next year, they'll be out to do it again.
APMr. Obama may appreciate the threat, because yesterday he offered Clinton White House veteran Rahm Emanuel a job as his chief of staff. But even that savvy, relatively sane liberal will have difficulties grappling with the fearsome committee chairmen and liberal interest groups that did so much to sabotage Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Meet the President-elect's real opposition:
David Obey. The Appropriations Chairman wants to slash defense spending as a money grab for more social programs and entitlements. Fellow spender Barney Frank recently added that a military budget cut of 25% was about right. A military crash diet wouldn't leave the funds for the surge in Afghanistan that Mr. Obama advocates, and it's a sure way to hand the national security issue back to the GOP.
Chuck Schumer. The Senate Democrat and his friends are already threatening banks if they don't lend more money instantly under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Other political masters want to use Tarp to nationalize large swaths of U.S. industry such as the Detroit auto makers or to bail out states like New York that are in debt. If Mr. Obama doesn't want to have to pass a Tarp II, he'll have to say no.
George Miller. Some Democrats are starting to target the tax subsidies for 401(k)s and other private retirement options. Mr. Miller, who heads the House Education and Labor Committee, calls them "a big failure" and recently held a hearing to ponder alternatives, including nationalizing pensions and replacing them with special bonds administered by Social Security. The proposal has also caught the eye of Jim McDermott, who chairs the relevant Ways and Means subcommittee. Mr. Obama won big with his promise of tax cuts for the middle class, which doesn't square with attacks on middle-class nest eggs.
John Conyers. The man running House Judiciary is cheerleading the Europeans who want to indict Bush officials for war crimes. Other Democrats are thinking about hearings and other show trials. This is far from the postpartisan reconciliation that Mr. Obama preaches.
Henry Waxman. With President Bush soon to be out of office, the Californian's team of Inspector Clouseaus at House Oversight won't have any "scandals" left to pursue. The word in Washington is that Mr. Waxman is looking to unseat John Dingell as Chairman of Energy and Commerce, in order to shove aside a global warming moderate. That could pave the way for huge new energy taxes. Voters will punish Mr. Obama if they get hammered every time they fill up the gas tank or buy groceries.
Pete Stark. The Chairman of a crucial House subcommittee dealing with health care doesn't think Mr. Obama's proposal to significantly federalize the insurance market goes far enough. He wants a single-payer system like Canada's. Mr. Obama may want to strike a deal with Senate Republicans on health care, but Mr. Stark will be pulling him left at every turn.
All of these feudal lords -- and many others -- also come with their own private armies: the interest groups that compose the money and manpower of today's Democratic Party. The American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch and others on the anti-antiterror left want Mr. Obama to limit the surveillance and other tools that have prevented another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense will insist on onerous caps -- that is, taxes -- on coal and other carbon energy. Those won't help Mr. Obama carry Ohio and Indiana again in four years.
The trial bar wants an end to arbitration in disputes in return on its Senate investment, while the National Education Association will try to gut No Child Left Behind accountability standards. And organized labor will insist on a major push to pass "card check," which would end secret-ballot elections for unions. If Mr. Obama wants to mobilize the business community against him while squeezing moderate Democrats, he'll go along with that right from the start.
While many voters may think they've voted for "change" in Mr. Obama, they also handed power to the oldest forces in the Old Democratic Party. Jimmy Carter campaigned as a moderate and outsider, but Congressional liberals quickly ran his budget director, the economic centrist Bert Lance, out of town. Then they overrode Mr. Carter's veto of a pork-barrel water bill. Mr. Carter referred to the tax committees as "ravenous wolves" after they transformed his tax reform into a special-interest bouquet. Next came Reagan.
Bill Clinton also campaigned as a moderate, but in his first two years he was unable to govern as Congress pursued liberal priorities, including a big boost in taxes and spending. Recall Roberta Achtenberg as the scourge of the Boy Scouts and Joycelyn Elders calling for the legalization of drugs? Mr. Clinton chose -- or was forced -- to take up gun control and HillaryCare before welfare reform. Next came Newt Gingrich.
Maybe Mr. Obama has absorbed these lessons, but even if he has he'll have to be tough. The Great Society liberals who dominate Congress are old men in a hurry, and they'll run over the 47-year-old neophyte if he lets them.
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**The start of the great Obama-depression. Watch capital flee his "soak the rich" socialism!**
http://in.reuters.com/article/usMktRpt/idINN0531971420081105
RPT-FACTBOX-U.S. stocks on the day after presidential elections
Thu Nov 6, 2008 3:25am IST
NEW YORK, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Wall Street hardly delivered a
rousing welcome to President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday,
dropping by the largest margin on record for a day following a U.S.
presidential contest.
The slide more than wiped out the previous day's advance, the
largest Election Day rally ever for U.S. stocks.
The following table shows the percentage rise or decline in the
Dow Jones industrial average .DJI, Standard & Poor's 500 index
.SPX and Nasdaq composite index .IXIC on the day after a U.S
presidential election and who won the Election Day vote.
Year Dow S&P Nasdaq President elect
2008 -5.05 -5.27 -5.53 Barack Obama
2004 +1.01 +1.12 +0.98 George W. Bush
2000 -0.41 -1.58 -5.39 No decision: G.W. Bush v Al Gore*
1996 +1.59 +1.46 +1.34 William Clinton
1992 -0.91 -0.67 +0.16 William Clinton
1988 -0.43 -0.66 -0.29 George H. W. Bush
1984 -0.88 -0.73 -0.32 Ronald Reagan
1980 +1.70 +1.77 +1.49 Ronald Reagan
1976 -0.99 -1.14 -1.12 James Carter
1972 -0.11 -0.55 -0.39 Richard Nixon
1968 +0.34 +0.16 --- Richard Nixon
1964 -0.19 -0.05 --- Lyndon Johnson
1960 +0.77 +0.44 --- John Kennedy
1956 -0.85 -1.03 --- Dwight Eisenhower
1952 +0.40 +0.28 --- Dwight Eisenhower
1948 -3.85 -4.15 --- Harry Truman
1944 -0.27 0.00 --- Franklin Roosevelt
1940 -2.39 -3.14 --- Franklin Roosevelt
1936 +2.26 +1.40 --- Franklin Roosevelt
1932 -4.51 -2.67 --- Franklin Roosevelt
1928 +1.20 +1.77 --- Herbert Hoover
1924 +1.17 --- --- Calvin Coolidge
1920 -0.57 --- --- Warren Harding
1916 -0.35 --- --- Woodrow Wilson
1912 +1.83 --- --- Woodrow Wilson
1908 +2.38 --- --- William Taft
1904 +1.30 --- --- Theodore Roosevelt
1900 +3.33 --- --- William McKinley
1896 +4.54 --- --- William McKinley
* George W. Bush ultimately was determined the winner of the 2000
election.
Source: Reuters EcoWin
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**It won't be long before that big glass of "Hopeandchange" flavored kool-aid starts tasting pretty bitter to the American public.**
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aj_ayFUP0riQ&refer=worldwide
U.S. Stocks Post Biggest Post-Election Drop on Economic Concern
By Elizabeth Stanton
Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The stock market posted its biggest plunge following a presidential election as reports on jobs and service industries stoked concern the economy will worsen even as President-elect Barack Obama tries to stimulate growth.
Citigroup Inc. tumbled 14 percent and Bank of America Corp. lost 11 percent as the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and Dow Jones Industrial Average sank more than 5 percent. Nucor Corp., the largest U.S.-based steel producer, slid 10 percent after bigger rival ArcelorMittal doubled production cuts amid slowing demand. Boeing Co., the world's second-largest commercial planemaker, lost 6.9 percent after UBS AG forecast a 3 percent drop in global air traffic next year.
``We had an election yesterday; that doesn't mean the problems go away,'' said Kevin Rendino, a Plainsboro, New Jersey- based money manager at BlackRock Inc. who oversees $10 billion. ``We still have an economic slowdown.''
The S&P 500 tumbled 52.98 points, or 5.3 percent, to 952.77, erasing yesterday's 4.1 percent rally. The Dow retreated 486.01, or 5.1 percent, to 9,139.27. The Russell 2000 Index of small U.S. companies fell 5.7 percent to 514.64. The MSCI World Index of 23 developed markets decreased 2.5 percent to 982.98.
The slide halted an 18 percent rebound from the S&P 500's five-year low on Oct. 27. The benchmark for U.S. equities has lost more than 35 percent this year, the steepest annual plunge since 1937, and Obama will have to contend with an economy pummeled by the fastest contraction in manufacturing in 26 years and the lowest consumer confidence.
Biggest Rally Erased
The market's decline came a day after the biggest presidential Election Day gain since the New York Stock Exchange first opened for trading on a voting day in 1984.
The report by ADP Employer Services showed companies cut 157,000 jobs in October, the most since November 2002 when the U.S. was emerging from a recession. The Institute for Supply Management said service industries in the U.S., which make up 90 percent of the economy, contracted by the most on record.
About 1.3 billion shares changed hands on the NYSE, 11 percent less than the three-month daily average.
Citigroup lost $2.05 to $12.63 and Bank of America plunged $2.78 to $21.75. The S&P 500 Financials Index sank 8.8 percent after extending declines late in the day following Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Meredith Whitney's prediction on CNBC that the mortgage market will contract and more than $2 trillion in available credit-card lines will be pulled from the system.
Whitney also said potential loan modifications under an Obama administration will hurt banks and diminish their appetite for risk.
$6 Trillion Lost
The S&P 500 has lost about 39 percent since it peaked at 1,565.15 on Oct. 9, 2007, as the U.S. economy contracted 0.3 percent last quarter and credit-related losses and writedowns by global financial firms approached $700 billion. More than $6 trillion was erased from U.S. equities this year by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Nucor sank $4.16 to $35.50. Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal reported third-quarter profit that fell short of analyst estimates, said its global output will drop by more than 30 percent, and forecast fourth-quarter earnings will fall as much as 48 percent. The company's New York-registered shares slumped 22 percent to $24.88, their biggest retreat in seven years.
Boeing fell $3.67 to $49.55. Its share price, which rose 28 percent from Oct. 10 through yesterday, ``is at least six to nine months from bottoming and beginning to mover higher again,'' David E. Strauss, a New York-based analyst at UBS, wrote in a report. Aircraft deliveries may tumble 29 percent from 2009 to 2012, the analyst said.
`Continued Softening'
Textron Inc. lost $1.71, or 9.2 percent, to $16.93. The world's biggest business-jet maker through its Cessna unit reduced the number of Citation jets it plans to deliver next year, citing ``continued softening in the global economic environment.''
Stocks extended their retreat even as Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, said Democrats may seek two economic stimulus measures if President George W. Bush limits the size of a plan to be considered during the post-election ``lame- duck'' session. Obama's party captured at least 19 seats in the House and at least five in the Senate, expanding its congressional majority.
General Growth Properties Inc. tumbled almost 50 percent to $2.25 for the biggest drop in the S&P 500. The U.S. mall owner that has lost more than 90 percent of its market value on concern it won't be able to refinance debt coming due this year reported a wider third-quarter loss and suspended its quarterly dividend.
Bond Insurers
MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc. slumped after the bond insurers posted wider losses than analysts estimated. MBI fell 22 percent to $8.16. Ambac, dropped from the S&P 500 in June, fell 41 percent to $2.01. Slumping credit markets forced the companies to increase reserves for claims.
Pioneer Natural Resources lost 15 percent to $24.79. The oil and natural-gas producer in North America and Africa reported third-quarter earnings that missed analyst estimates and said it will cut drilling activity.
Sara Lee Corp. slid 14 percent to $10.20. The maker of frozen cakes and Jimmy Dean sausages said full-year profit will be less than it previously estimated because of falling foreign currencies and waning demand in Europe.
Marsh & McLennan Cos. fell 12 percent to $26.06. The world's second-biggest insurance broker said profit dropped 78 percent in the third quarter amid the slowing U.S. economy and price declines for commercial coverage and reinsurance.
Earnings Season
Most companies in the S&P 500 have managed to increase profits even as the economy slows. Of the 386 companies that reported third-quarter results so far, 232 posted higher earnings than in the year-earlier period. Still, profits are down 7.4 percent on average after accounting for losses at financial companies.
Medco Health Solutions Inc. climbed 9.1 percent to $41.47 for the biggest of only 13 advances in the S&P 500. A surge in use of generic and mail-order prescription drugs fueled a 38 percent increase in third-quarter profit at the largest U.S. drug benefits manager.
Molson Coors Brewing Co. gained 8.3 percent to $41.78. The third-largest U.S. beer maker reported market-share gains in Canada and the U.K. and said it expects to achieve total cost savings from its joint U.S. venture with SABMiller Plc six months early.
Chesapeake Energy Corp. climbed 8.2 percent to $24.83 on speculation it will be acquired by BP Plc.
General Motors Corp. slipped 16 cents, or 2.8 percent, to $5.56. GM, the biggest U.S. automaker, needs government aid because ``time is very short'' to stop its collapse, Roger Altman, an adviser to the automaker and Obama, said in an interview.
Recession Rallies
The S&P 500 Index may be on the cusp of a rally by Inauguration Day, based on the speed of its tumble from last year's peak and the time it took stocks to gain before recessions ended in 1975, 1982 and 1991, data compiled by Bloomberg show. This year's plunge in stocks suggests that equity investors anticipate an economic contraction as severe as the one that began under Richard Nixon that will end in July.
The S&P 500's slump since last year's high is the steepest for a comparable period since the gauge fell 43 percent in the 13 months ended in October 1974, Bloomberg data show.
1970s Recession
The economy then was mired in a recession that lasted 16 months and ended in March 1975, five months after the equity market began its rebound. During the recessions of 1982 and 1991, the S&P 500 began to climb four months and five months before the economy started to recover, respectively.
Based on the market's history of anticipating economic recoveries, the S&P 500 may embark on its next bull market in February, about a month after Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20.
Stocks gained yesterday after the 17th straight decline in a key interest rate, a sign that as much as $3 trillion of emergency funds provided by governments to resuscitate bank lending are working. The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, that banks charge each other for three month loans in dollars fell again today to the lowest level since December 2004.
To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Stanton in New York at estanton@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: November 5, 2008 20:19
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**If Barry-O was smart, he'd resign right now. He made history, now put someone who isn't a socialist novelty act in charge.**
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081106/wall_street.html
AP
Stocks extend decline as economic woes mount
Thursday November 6, 10:52 am ET
By Tim Paradis, AP Business Writer
Wall Street extends decline as jobless claims, retailers' sales fan recession worries
NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street recoiled again Thursday, sending stocks lower for a second straight day as new readings on retail sales and jobless claims fanned investors' worries that the economy is in recession.
New claims for unemployment benefits did dip by 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted level of 481,000, according to the Labor Department. But jobless claims above 400,000 are considered recessionary levels, and have run above that figure for 16 weeks. Also, long-term claims jumped to 3.84 million, the highest level in 25 years. The numbers arrive a day ahead of the key October jobs report, a widely watched barometer of the economy's health.
Meanwhile, retailers are releasing October sales figures that indicate consumers are pulling back their spending sharply. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reported a better-than-expected 2.4 percent rise in October sales at stores open for at least a year, but investors are worried about other specialty retailers; Limited Brands Inc. and Gap Inc., for example, posted worse-than-expected sales drops.
In midmorning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 169.17, or 1.85 percent, to 8,970.10.
Broader stock indicators also declined. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 20.54, or 2.16 percent, to 932.23, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 35.82, or 2.13 percent, to 1,645.82.
Stocks appeared to draw some support following interest rate cuts by central banks in Europe. The Bank of England slashed its key interest rate by a bold 1.5 percentage points Thursday; the Swiss Central Bank cut its own key rate by a surprising half-point; and the European Central Bank lowered its key rate by a half-point.
On Wednesday, Wall Street plunged as investors considered once again how deep and protracted a U.S. recession President-elect Barack Obama will face in January when he is sworn in. After a string of huge gains in stocks, jitters returned to the market, driving the Dow down nearly 500 points. All three major indexes dropped more than 5 percent.
A late Wednesday warning by Cisco Systems Inc. added to investors' nervousness and weighed on the technology-heavy Nasdaq. The world's largest maker of computer networking gear said orders fell off sharply last month, suggesting to the market that the weak economy and tight credit markets are taking a larger-than-expected toll on many companies. Cisco fell 49 cents, or 2.8 percent, to $16.90.
And in other troubling corporate news, Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp. reduced its annual earnings forecast Thursday to less than a third of what it was in previous fiscal year. Toyota tumbled $12.65, or 15.7 percent, to $67.72.
The dollar traded mixed against most other major currencies, while gold prices rose.
Light, sweet crude fell $4.27 to $61.03 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Bank-to-bank lending rates fell for the 19th straight day, a sign that banks are becoming more willing to lend. The London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, for three-month dollar loans dipped to 2.39 percent from 2.51 percent.
The three-month Treasury bill, considered the ultimate safe asset, saw its yield dip further to 0.38 percent from 0.42 percent late Wednesday. In general, a lower yield means higher demand, but it is also affected by the federal funds rate.
In Asian trading, Japan's Nikkei index fell 6.53 percent, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fell 7.08 percent. In afternoon trading in Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 3.22 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 5.01 percent, and France's CAC-40 fell 3.73 percent.
New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com
Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com
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**Impeach Obama, before it's too late!**
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081106082217.v53hc2v7&show_article=1
Stocks slide, Toyota warns of 'unprecedented' crisis
Nov 6 04:22 AM US/Eastern
Stocks Fall As Investors Ponder Obama Presidency
Asia Shares Slide, Toyota Hit
Toyota Motor slashed its profit forecast Thursday, warning the global auto industry faces an "unprecedented" crisis as Asian stocks tumbled on fears the US is sinking deeper towards recession.
The Japanese giant became the latest automaker to reveal plunging profits due to the financial crisis, following on the heels of BMW, Nissan and Honda.
Toyota , vying with General Motors for the title of the world's top automaker, cut its annual profit forecast by more than half after a terrible year so far.
It now expects a 68 percent plunge in net profit to 550 billion yen (5.6 billion dollars) -- the first drop in nine years.
"The financial crisis is negatively impacting the real economy worldwide, and the automotive markets, especially in developed countries, are contracting rapidly," Toyota executive vice president Mitsuo Kinoshita said.
"This is an unprecedented situation."
Elsewhere in the transport sector, European aircraft manufacturer Airbus warned it expects a sharp reduction in new orders in 2009 as the global economy slows.
Amid the gloomy news, Asian stock markets fell heavily. Japan's Nikkei stock index plunged 6.53 percent even before the Toyota warning, which came after the close of trade.
The drop wiped out gains seen a day earlier on hopes that US president-elect Barack Obama will get to work on fixing the world's largest economy in the face of the worst financial crisis in decades.
"Now that the event is over, investors are sobering up and looking at the economic gloom," said Mizuho Investors Securities broker Masatoshi Sato.
Seoul ended with a loss of 7.6 percent while Sydney shed 4.3 percent. Hong Kong shares were down 6.4 percent at midday.
The sharp falls came after the Dow Jones index slid 5.05 percent on Wall Street on Wednesday as investors braced for a gloomy economic ride after the euphoria of Obama's election victory faded.
"Dismal macroeconomic data and poor corporate results reminded investors that we are only at the start of a deep recession," Dariusz Kowalczyk, chief investment strategist at CFC Seymour in Hong Kong, wrote in a note.
The euro dropped to 1.2854 dollars in Tokyo afternoon trade, down from 1.2962 late Wednesday in New York. The dollar fell to 97.70 yen from 98.33.
Investors were anticipating further cuts to interest rates on Thursday by both the Bank of England (BoE) and the European Central Bank amid fears of recessions in Europe's biggest economies.
Some economists are even forecasting the BoE would follow up last month's emergency half-point reduction to 4.50 percent with a cut of 100 basis points.
In Japan, the lower house of parliament approved a plan to inject capital into ailing banks if needed to contain the fallout from the financial crisis.
Markets were also looking ahead to crisis talks on the global financial turmoil in Washington on November 15 between leaders of the Group of 20 rich countries and major developing economies.
Leaders will likely agree on an "action plan" including near-term steps to help fix the global economy, a senior US official said Wednesday.
As efforts to contain the financial crisis continued, the International Monetary Fund approved a 16.4 billion dollar loan aimed at rescuing Ukraine .
Europe's biggest economy, Germany , approved a stimulus package costing 23 billion euros (30 billion dollars) to pump up the ailing economy.
In the US, fresh data added to the gloom over the economic outlook. A report by the Institute for Supply Management showed activity in the services sector shrank more sharply than anticipated in October.
A survey showing the US private sector shed 157,000 jobs in October added to worries ahead of official figures due Friday that are expected to show a rise in the jobless rate from a five-year high of 6.1 percent in September.
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**Russia, not cutting a break to our woefully unready president-elect.**
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/
About that Test...
While President-elect Obama basks in the glow of his electoral victory, our adversaries are apparently working on that "test" that Joe Biden talked about.
Just hours after Mr. Obama president-elect, Russia announced that it will base surface-to-surface missiles within range of our planned missile defense site in Poland.
According to Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, Moscow will deploy short-range SS-26 Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad region to "neutralize" the planned missile defense system. He also stated that Russia plans to jam a radar located in the Czech Republic, used to detect in-bound missiles and guide the Polish-based interceptors.
With a range of at least 400 km, Iskander missiles based in Kaliningrad would be able to target the defensive site in Poland. The proposed deployment is the most serious challenge to U.S. plans to base missile defenses in eastern Europe. Washington has stated (repeatedly) that the defensive shield is designed to protect the continent from missiles launched from rogue states, such as Iran. Moscow rejects that argument, claiming that the system is actually aimed at Russia.
While Moscow has long opposed U.S. missile defenses in Europe, the timing of today's announcement is no accident. Mr. Medvedev and his political puppet master, Vladimir Putin, are quite aware of yesterday's election results in the United States. With the departure of George Bush, who championed the deployment, the Russians are mounting a challenge to his successor, who is opposed to "unproven" missile defense systems.
In some respects, the SS-26 movement to Kaliningrad is the first "shot across the bow" of the incoming administration. Moscow is waiting to see if Obama has "steel in his spine," and will stand up to a deliberate Russian provocation. So are our eastern European allies, who wonder if the new president will stand with them against the Russian bear.
***
On a related note, Iran is warning the U.S. "not to violate its airspace." Get ready for that 3 a.m phone call.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/11/06/russia-has-some-change-ready-for-obama/
Get ready for the changes under Obama:
America will change from being rich. America will change from being a superpower. Chug that kool-aid, Hopeandchangers!
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GM:
This is some important stuff. Would you please start posting these matters on the Russia-US thread?
Thank you,
Marc
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http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/11/6/the-obama-stock-market-correction-2.html
The Obama Stock Market Correction
November 06, 2008 05:40 PM ET | James Pethokoukis
Since Election Day, the stock market, as measured by the S&P 500, is down a smidgen over 10 percent. That's what we call a "correction." Of course, the decline is really part of a broader bear market which has seen the S&P 500 fall some 42 percent. Hey, Obama already warned us that it's going to be "a long road and a steep climb." Maybe if we doubled/tripled/quadrupled/quintupled that big stimulus package ... What I really wonder is what stocks would be doing if we lowered the capital gains tax rate to zero ...
**Impeach Obama in '08, before it's too late!**
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a9Oq499c._cA&refer=worldwide
U.S. Stocks Tumble in Market's Worst Two-Day Slump Since 1987
By Lynn Thomasson
Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks slid, sending the market to its biggest two-day slump since 1987, after jobless claims jumped and the shrinking economy crushed earnings at companies from Blackstone Group Inc. to News Corp.
Blackstone, the largest private-equity firm, fell 12 percent after posting the biggest quarterly loss in its 18 months as a public company. News Corp. sank 16 percent after the media company controlled by Rupert Murdoch said ad sales decreased. Chevron Corp. fell 6.4 percent as oil tumbled to a 19-month low, while an unexpected decrease in chain-store sales dragged down 25 of 27 shares in the S&P 500 Retailing Index.
``We're a long way from the end of the economic challenges,'' said Mike Morcos, who helps manage $1 billion at Old Second Wealth Management in Aurora, Illinois. ``Earnings next year are going to be significantly lower and estimates are going to continue to come down.''
The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 5 percent to 904.88, extending its two-day loss to 10 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 443.48 points, or 4.9 percent, to 8,695.79. The Russell 2000 Index of small U.S. companies declined 3.7 percent to 495.84. The MSCI World Index of 23 developed markets lost 5.9 percent to 925.09.
The two-day tumble following Election Day wiped out more than half of the market's rebound from a five-year low on Oct. 27. Both the S&P 500 and Dow average posted their biggest two-day slides since plunging more than 24 percent as rising borrowing costs helped spur the market crash of October 1987.
Europe Slides
BP Plc led a 5.6 percent retreat in Europe's benchmark index even after the Bank of England unexpectedly cut its benchmark interest rate by 1.5 percentage points to 3 percent to contain damage from a recession. Switzerland's central bank and the European Central Bank reduced their main lending rates by 50 basis points.
The S&P 500 is down 38 percent this year, poised for the steepest annual retreat since 1937. The benchmark for U.S. equities has plunged 42 percent since its record in October 2007 after the U.S. economy shrunk in two of the last four quarters.
The VIX, as the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index is known, climbed 17 percent to 63.68. The measure tracks the cost of using options as insurance against declines in the S&P 500.
``It's just been a steady, steady sell,'' said Alan Gayle, the Richmond, Virginia-based senior strategist at Ridgeworth Investments, which oversees about $70 billion. ``The pain and frustration and anxiety of these volatile moves from one day to the next has discouraged a lot of investors to move to the sidelines.''
Lost Jobs
About 481,000 workers filed initial jobless claims last week, the Labor Department said today in Washington, exceeding the 477,000 projected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The number of people staying on benefit rolls was the most since February 1983.
A report tomorrow will probably show U.S. employers eliminated jobs in October for a 10th consecutive month, based on economists' estimates.
Earnings at companies in the S&P 500 that have reported third-quarter results fell 9.2 percent on average, Bloomberg data show. Analysts expect full-year profits to drop 7.7 percent, according to a compilation of analysts' estimates.
S&P 500 energy companies lost 6.1 percent as a group, as oil declined for the third time this week. Crude for December delivery retreated 6.9 percent to $60.77 a barrel, the lowest settlement since March 2007.
Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company, tumbled $3.73 to $69.96, while Chevron Corp. slid 6.4 percent to $70.11.
Tech Slump
Cisco Systems Inc. declined 2.6 percent to $16.94. The biggest maker of networking equipment forecast the first revenue drop in five years because of the financial crisis.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. tumbled 11 percent to $3.17. The second-largest maker of personal-computer processors plans to cut 500 jobs, about 3 percent of the workforce, as part of its effort to return to profitability.
Technology companies in the S&P 500 lost 5.4 percent collectively. Dell Inc., Intel Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. fell more than 5 percent.
Amazon.com Inc. sank 9.2 percent to $47.22. The largest Internet retailer was cut to ``hold'' from ``buy'' at Citigroup Inc., which noted the shares' surge of as much as 36 percent since third-quarter results and concerns consumer spending will slow.
GM's Survival
General Motors Corp. had the steepest decline in almost a month, tumbling 14 percent to $4.80. The largest U.S. automaker is focused on winning government aid to survive through 2009, not to help a merger with Chrysler LLC, as it uses cash faster than it forecast, people familiar with the plans said. GM plans to give an update on liquidity when it reports third-quarter results tomorrow.
Tyco Electronics Ltd. fell the most in more than a year, slumping 12 percent to $16.78. Fiscal fourth-quarter profit slid 55 percent on restructuring costs and the company forecast a ``significant'' drop in sales and earnings this period.
News Corp.'s Class A shares tumbled $1.53 to $8.26. Fiscal 2009 profit will drop in the ``low to mid teens'' in percentage terms, the company said after previously forecasting a gain of 4 percent to 6 percent.
Financial stocks in the S&P 500 fell 6.7 percent as a group, led lower by Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. The group is down 52 percent in 2008 as the slowing economy raises concern banks will be hit by more bad loans after the subprime mortgage market's collapse led to $690 billion in credit losses worldwide.
Blackstone's Loss
Blackstone tumbled $1.05 to $7.55 after the financial crisis eroded the value of the businesses and real estate it has acquired, triggering a quarterly loss excluding items of $502.5 million. Blackstone had been expected to break even, based on the average estimate of seven analysts in a Bloomberg survey.
Wells Fargo declined 9.2 percent to $28.77 after the biggest bank on the U.S. West Coast said it plans to sell stock to fund the purchase of Wachovia Corp. The bank also said losses from the acquisition will be less than previously expected.
The bank, which disclosed the share offering yesterday in a statement, had said it would raise as much as $20 billion to fund the deal. That was before the Treasury said it was buying $25 billion of Wells Fargo's preferred shares.
Libor Declines
The slump in financials came even as the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, for three-month loans in dollars dropped 12 basis points to 2.39 percent today, the lowest level since November 2004, according to the British Bankers' Association.
Las Vegas Sands Corp., billionaire Sheldon Adelson's casino company, posted the biggest drop since becoming a publicly traded company with a 33 percent plunge to $7.85 after saying it may default on debt and face bankruptcy.
Big Lots Inc. plunged 26 percent to $17.31 for the steepest decline in the S&P 500. The largest U.S. seller of overstocked and discontinued items said third-quarter profit may be below its prediction.
October same-store sales fell 0.9 percent at U.S. chain stores, the first drop in seven months, and declined 4.2 percent excluding Wal-Mart, the International Council of Shopping Centers said. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected a 0.7 percent increase.
Excluding the effect of the shifting Easter holiday, it's the first decline since at least 2000, according to research firm Retail Metrics LLC.
Grocers Gain
Whole Foods Market Inc. climbed 1.7 percent to $10.48. The largest U.S. natural-foods grocer received a $425 million equity investment from Leonard Green & Partners LP.
Kroger Co., the biggest U.S. supermarket chain, added 1.1 percent to $26.99. Safeway Inc., the third-largest, rose 2 percent to $22.03.
Analysts are lowering fourth quarter and 2009 profit forecasts for U.S. companies as third-period results miss projections at the highest rate in almost 11 years.
Companies in the S&P 500 may see fourth-quarter earnings advance 15 percent, down from 42 percent projected at the end of August, according to a Bloomberg survey of analysts. Profits in 2009 may grow 13 percent, analysts say, compared with the 24 percent predicted two months ago.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lynn Thomasson in New York at lthomasson@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: November 6, 2008 17:04 EST
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http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/10/24/obama-dems-seek-to-end-401-k-plans/
Obama, Dems Seek to End 401(k) Plans
By Mark Impomeni
Oct 24th 2008 9:00AM
Filed Under:eDemocrats, Barack Obama, 2008 President
Sen. Barack Obama's Democratic allies in Congress are looking into a radical new plan that would fundamentally change the way Americans save for retirement. House Democrats recently heard testimony on the idea and, under a potential Obama administration, would likely move to put it in place. Democrats want to seize the money that workers currently invest in their 401(k) plans and replace the popular retirement savings accounts with a one-size-fits-all government sponsored retirement account. Under the scheme, Americans would be forced to transfer all of their hard earned retirement savings from their 401(k) to the government.
The government would contribute $600 a year to fund each account and would pay a rate of return of around three percent in interest. The government would also mandate that each worker contribute 5% of their yearly salary to the accounts. Under current law, workers with 401(k) plans contribute to their retirement accounts and earn interest tax free. The Democrats' plan would end those tax breaks, amounting to as much as a 15% tax hike on each American worker.
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) said recently that Democrats had better ideas for the $80 billion that Americans contribute to their 401(k) plans each year. "We have to start thinking about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that's not doing what we say it should." Sen. Obama would likely sign on to the plan as president.
Obama, McDermott, and Congressional Democrats miss the point that under current law, Americans have control over their retirement savings, where and how it is invested, and when and how much they contribute. The idea to nationalize retirement savings is another example of Democrats' socialist proclivities. They want control of Americans' retirement to reside in Washington DC, not on Main St., all in the name of "retirement security."
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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081107/D949OQU00.html
States consider billions in cuts as deficits widen
Nov 6, 7:32 PM (ET)
By JULIET WILLIAMS
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - The nation's economic meltdown is taking state budgets down with it - especially in California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Thursday he wants to close a $11.2 billion gap in part by raising sales taxes on everything from cars to Disneyland tickets.
Several other states are confronting billion-dollar deficits. Some, including Massachusetts, North Carolina and Wisconsin, have ordered broad and deep cuts in spending, while others have only begun to consider how to compensate for their revenue wells drying up.
Schwarzenegger wants $4.5 billion in cuts; one of his proposals would force state employees to take a day off each month without pay and give up two holidays. But he says cuts alone aren't enough to deal with a steep drop in revenue, and he proposes $4.7 billion in tax hikes, including a three-year, 1.5-percentage-point increase in the sales tax.
"We have a dramatic situation here and it takes dramatic solutions ... and immediate action," Schwarzenegger said as he called the Legislature back into session to deal with the shortfall. "We must stop the bleeding."
California's bleak new projections come just six weeks after Schwarzenegger signed this year's budget, which made $7.1 billion in cuts to services to help close a $15.2 billion deficit.
"I'm not a believer in taxes, I'm not a believer of increasing fees. It's just under these circumstances it's necessary to do," Schwarzenegger said.
California relies heavily on capital gains taxes, which have plunged along with the stock market. Sales taxes also have plummeted as consumers have cut off nonessential spending. And California is among the states hardest hit by falling housing prices.
The state controller issued a statement saying California runs "the very real risk" of a severe cash shortage by the end of the year and may have to resort to borrowing so it can balance its books. Its deficit is now 11 percent of general fund spending and could double by next fiscal year if not addressed immediately, the controller said.
The shortfall in Arizona is even worse, on a percentage basis, than California's. Gov. Janet Napolitano on Thursday said the state's deficit had grown to an estimated $1.2 billion, or 12 percent of general fund spending, forcing lawmakers into a likely special session by the end of the year.
The deficit in Washington state is projected at $3.2 billion, but could grow by the time officials get an update later this month.
Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons and the Legislature have cut spending by $1.2 billion because of declining tax revenue, but Gibbons warned lawmakers they might have to cut another 14 percent when they go into session in February.
Wisconsin's governor has ordered state agencies to trim 10 percent to cover a $3 billion hole over two years, while North Carolina's governor has ordered several departments to make do with 5 percent less. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick announced last month that the state would eliminate up to 1,000 jobs and make more than $1 billion in cuts and spending controls to bridge a growing budget gap.
New York Gov. David Paterson last week asked Congress for as much as $8.6 billion from an economic stimulus measure Democrats are considering. He already has called a special session for later this month to tackle a $1.5 billion deficit for the fiscal year that ends in April and warned that New York's deficit could hit $47 billion by 2012.
California's crisis has brought a change in rhetoric from Schwarzenegger. Since taking office in 2003, he has blamed "autopilot spending" by the Legislature whenever California has confronted fiscal woes, but on Thursday he said, "It is now a revenue problem rather than a spending problem."
His proposed sales-tax increase would apply to items as varied as cars and amusement park and sporting game tickets. For the first time, the sales tax also would be applied to services such as vehicle, appliance and furniture repairs, veterinarian services and even greens fees for playing golf. Taxes on alcohol also would increase.
The sales tax plan met immediate opposition from some in the business community. Peter Welch, president of the California New Car Dealers Association, said raising vehicle prices by hundreds of dollars is the last thing his faltering industry needs.
"The fact of the matter is we are in an historic car recession (that's) bordering on a depression," he said. "We actually think we need an economic stimulus package to get people to come in and buy cars. This is just the opposite."
Other revenue could come from raising the registration fee for vehicles by $12 and taxing companies that extract oil from California, which Schwarzenegger said would generate $528 million this year.
The governor also wants to accelerate hundreds of millions of dollars in public works spending to spark job creation. At the same, the newly unemployed would struggle more under his plan. He wants to tighten eligibility for unemployment benefits because the state's unemployment insurance fund is on the brink of insolvency.
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Associated Press Writers Judy Lin and Steve Lawrence contributed to this report.
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GM; I live in CA. It truly is a problem and what the article says is true. For me it's simple; I spend less or I try to make more.
I believe in a balanced budget, plus a little surplus (savings). But for the State it is more difficult I suppose.
Good article, but do you have a comment?
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We're just starting to see the start of the great Obama-depression. "Soak the rich" socialism is going to kill off our already damaged economy. Capital is fleeing, and as the dems try to grasp all the money they can for their "New Deal II", it'll drag us to the bottom.
Meanwhile, the world's hotspots will burst into flame.
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If I have my datum correct, spending has increased over 40% under Gov P-whipped.
My wife just mentioned this to me a little while ago, and this article is the first I have read on it. Something like this (imposing sales tax on my teaching income) could be the straw that breaks the camel's back and drives us out of CA.
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I understand; other than my "day job" I do a lot of photography. Recently, if I do a photo shoot, and if I obey the law you are charged sales tax for the prints (fair) AND sales tax for my shooting time.
It used to be services were not taxed.
That being said, GM's article pointed out and you know there is a problem in CA. I doubt if simply lowering taxes will solve the problem. Nor will raising taxes please very many people.
And cutting services is difficult; but something needs to be done or even CA (great weather; I bet you stay here :-D ) is going to have problem. My point; it is not easy to please all the people
and grow as a state. CA is lucky, it has fabulous weather, beaches, mountains, etc. to attract people, but still...
Any comments as to the solution?
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The plan that would work on the state and national level:
1. Cut taxes. Just as California's taxes and over-regulation has been chasing business to other states, the dems plan to do on a massive level nationally. Just look at California as the dem's test track. Like what you see? Just wait.
2. Cut government spending. No deficits. This means all the wonderful, touchy-feely programs the dems love to burn other people's money on have to go. Just do the core gov't services that are actually mandated by law. Roads, bridges, fire, law enforcement, EMS. Liberals want free health care for the poor? Create non-profits and fund them out of your own pockets. You''l get more bang for your buck anyway.
3. Return to a culture of self-reliance. Like or not, we are broke. "New Deal II" will only make it worse, and won't work anyway. We are responsible for ourselves, and gov't can't and won't be there as the "good mommy" the dems love to imagine. Very bleak times await us. Grird up and brace for impact.
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I understand and basically agree, I like the idea of no deficits. I live within my means and avoid debt.
But, fire, law enforcement, prison guards, county and state employees, teachers, etc.
all want a big raise. And some of them make big bucks. AND some of them have powerful unions.
Fair? I don't know, but the money has to come from someplace.
And people (voters) like their services. Even "touchy-feely" although I agree many are a joke and definitely not necessary.
My point, it's not that easy. And lowering taxes "may" retain business, but CA is lucky, it has a lot else to offer. Other states do not.
The rust belt might die.
It's easy to lower taxes. Everyone is in favor of that! But no deficit, well that is another story....
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I too think GM has it right.
Gov. P-whipped has done the opposite what he promised to do to get elected. No spending cuts- instead MASSIVE increases. If he simply had frozen spending we would be fine right now. Instead Gov. Global Warming has been galvanting around sucking up and selling out to his wife's friends and family.
Tom McClintock was very good and very knowledgeable on these issues when he was in the State Legislature. He just ran for US Congress. Does anyone know if he won?
Changing subjects, BO does not have to be a Clusterfcuk , , ,
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If Barack Obama ran for president by calling for a heavier hand of government, he also won by running one of the most entrepreneurial campaigns in history.
Will he now grasp the lesson his campaign offers as he crafts policies aimed at reigniting the national economy? Amid a recession, two wars, and a global financial crisis, will he come to see that unleashing the entrepreneur is the best way to raise the revenue he needs for his lofty priorities?
Like every entrepreneur, Mr. Obama's rise was improbable. An unusually-named, African-American first-term senator defeated two of the most powerful incumbent political brands, the Clintons and John McCain. Like many upstarts, he won by changing the rules of the game.
Mr. Obama, following FDR's mastery of radio and JFK's success on TV, is the first candidate to fully exploit the Web. The community organizer seemed to realize that new social networking and video technologies were perfect for politics. It didn't hurt that Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes worked for the campaign. "What ultimately transformed the presidential race," Joshua Green of The Atlantic wrote in June, "was not the money that poured in from Silicon Valley but the technology and the ethos."
The results of Mr. Obama's decentralized Web effort were staggering: 8,000 Web-based affinity groups, 50,000 local events, 1.5 million Web volunteers, and 3.1 million donors who contributed almost $700 million. Republicans, Charlie Cook reported on Nov. 3, believe their large but impersonal centralized databases could not match the tacit knowledge, individual initiative and agility of Mr. Obama's diffuse social networks.
Such creativity could bubble up because Mr. Obama was stable at the top. Not just anyone could recruit an army of volunteers and let them run free, establishing their own networks, offices and events. Because Mr. McCain lurched from one message and tactic to the next with dramatic frequency, his supporters froze. They spent more time defending or deciphering his shifting policies and tactics than they did organizing and persuading. Mr. Obama's even temper and relentlessly consistent message, on the other hand, encouraged supporters to take risks without the worry of being blindsided.
The key question now is how will Mr. Obama govern? Will he stick with the policies he ran on or adopt the approach that he won with?
The only way a president can maximize economic growth is to unleash diffuse networks of entrepreneurs. As economist Bob Litan of the Kauffman Foundation says, "Government can't compel growth." But Mr. Obama's plans -- "card check" legislation to allow workers to unionize a workplace without a secret ballot election; curbing free trade; a government-led "green economy"; and higher tax rates on capital and entrepreneurs -- do not reflect his campaign's deep trust in individuals.
A thought experiment, Mr. President-elect: What if as your campaign raised more and more money it was taxed away and given to Mr. McCain to level the field? Or think of this: What if you were not allowed to opt out of the public financing scheme that left Mr. McCain with a paltry $84 million, about a quarter of your autumn total?
Opting out of monopolistic, closed or centralized systems is often the path to innovation. Sometimes we opt out through the relaxation of regulations. More often, technology allows us to leap, obliterate or ignore the obstacles altogether.
So on education, why doesn't Mr. Obama take Charles Murray's advice? Instead of spending ever more billions to send ever more students to get often-meaningless, four-year college degrees, we should disaggregate the higher education market using the Web and skill-specific short courses and accreditation exams.
Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School makes a similar argument for K-12 education, where we mindlessly follow a century-old way of doing business. Get rid of this manufacturing era, "value chain" model -- where we take inputs (students), add value (sometimes), and spit them out the other end -- in favor of a "user network" model where unique students with distinct learning styles plug in to smart software and tutoring tools that deliver a customized education.
On health care, let's face facts. We are not going to "solve" the entitlements crisis by gouging American producers to pay for the current Medicare/Medicaid abomination. Much better to transcend the issue with medical innovations and an entrepreneurial, consumer-driven market where more physicians go into medical technology, more nurses replace doctors, more technologies replace doctor visits, and, with properly-aligned incentives and real prices, more citizens take better care of their own health and thus their pocket books. The only way to escape current predictions of scarcity is the unforeseen abundance that entrepreneurship can bring.
Finally, Mr. President-elect, here's a secret: Insist on a strong and stable dollar. It worked wonders for presidents Reagan and Clinton. A weak dollar killed Messrs. Nixon, Ford, Carter and Bush 43. In the same way that Mr. Obama's millions of entrepreneurial volunteers took comfort in their leader's calm, steady, disciplined approach, entrepreneurs need the predictability and discipline of a stable currency to unleash their unpredictable innovations.
Mr. Obama should throw away his tax-regulate-and-centralize white papers. Instead, he should follow his campaign playbook and trust the networked masses. The best way to harness their power is to undo the reins.
Mr. Swanson is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Global Innovation at The Progress & Freedom Foundation.
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I agree with the sentiment that we are screwed if and when Democrats take over all branches of government. Still I respectfully request a clearer title for this thread a) in the recognition that the forum already lacks quantity and quality of opposing views and b) in wishing for the discussion to be something I can share with a teenage daughter as prepares for citizenship.
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Editor’s Note: The following is an internal Stratfor document produced to provide high-level guidance to our analysts. This document is not a forecast, but rather a series of guidelines for understanding and evaluating events, as well as suggestions on areas for focus.
1. The U.S. presidential transition begins: Between the crises in Iraq, negotiations with Iran, the war in Afghanistan, the slow-motion disintegration of Pakistan and Russia’s resurgence, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is going to have his plate full on Jan. 20, 2009. In reality, it is full now. The Russians in particular are pulling out all the stops to impose a reality on the incoming American president. This means that unless Obama plans on letting the Russians ride roughshod over their near abroad, he not only needs to come up with a counterpolicy quickly, he needs to work with the outgoing administration to implement that policy well before Inauguration Day. That will require Obama and his team getting up to speed on not just Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, but also on Iraq and Pakistan — locations he needs to have at least partially locked down if he is to have a free hand to deal with Moscow. Our sources tell us that the Obama team was requesting recommendations from the Bush team less than 24 hours after the election results were made official. This is going to be the fastest transition in history — and it needs to be. Obama’s presidency will, for all practical purposes, commence next week. So watch, record and — above all else — probe accordingly.
Related Special Topic Page
Intelligence Guidance
2. The global financial summit: Obama’s first act as “president” will be to attend (so far in an unofficial role) the global financial summit Nov. 15 in Washington, where the Europeans will attempt to force a European-style financial management program on the American system. Obama may be more willing to hear the Europeans out on the topic than the Bush administration, but he is not going to give away the farm — certainly not so long as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are advising both Bush and Obama. (This goes doubly so for Bernanke, since the Fed chairman does not serve at the president’s pleasure; he will survive the transition’s head-chopping regardless.) We need to investigate to find out specifically what the Europeans are going to ask for at the summit — and what they plan to bring to the table in exchange.
3. Russia’s summits: On the day before the financial meeting, the Russians will be holding simultaneous summits with the European Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The summits will feature the Russians offering a series of carrots and brandishing a (larger) number of sticks. Before Obama can decisively take the reins, the Russians have a window in which to force their preferred world on their neighborhood. They will not spare the horses. Or the neighbors.
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**The dems will do for America, what they've done for California**
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon1023lm.html
Lawrence J. McQuillan
Californians Voting with Their Feet
The state government’s stifling economic policies are worsening the downturn and driving citizens elsewhere.
23 October 2008
With the implosion of its storied investment banks and the future of Wall Street in doubt, New York will suffer the effects of the financial crisis more acutely than many states. But the crisis reaches epicenters outside of Manhattan as well. Chief among them is the world’s eighth-largest economy: California.
Several key economic indicators point to grim news for the Golden State in the aftermath of the Wall Street meltdown. The state’s unemployment rate has jumped to 7.7 percent, its highest rate in 12 years and the third-worst in the United States. In Riverside County, 40 percent of homes sold in the past year are in foreclosure. Unfortunately, California’s government doesn’t seem interested in solving the state’s economic problems.
California continues to be burdened with high taxes, punitive regulations, huge wealth-transfer programs, out-of-control spending, and lawsuit abuse. And there’s no end in sight to the state’s fiscal madness. The “balanced budget” signed only a few weeks ago by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger already runs a deficit of as much as $5.5 billion. Last week, to cover state expenditures for the rest of the fiscal year, the state sold $5 billion in short-term notes. Schwarzenegger bought $100,000 worth himself.
Analysts already project that next fiscal year’s budget will be billions in the red. State spending has increased at a faster rate under Schwarzenegger than under his predecessor, Gray Davis. Every year, California puts taxpayers on the hook for yet more spending without any reform of the government’s boneheaded economic policies. It’s not surprising, then, that California ranks fourth-to-last in the Pacific Research Institute’s 2008 U.S. Economic Freedom Index, published in association with Forbes. The Index measures how friendly or unfriendly each state’s government policies are toward free enterprise and consumer choice. Its rankings derive from a comprehensive evaluation of fiscal, judicial, and regulatory indicators such as tax rates, state spending, occupational licensing, environmental rules, income redistribution, tort reform, and prevailing-wage laws.
When he arrived in Sacramento, Schwarzenegger promised to end government overreach. He pledged to “blow up” boxes in the state’s organizational chart, “tear up the credit card” for state legislators, and curtail taxes. Thus far, though, any “Schwarzenegger effect” on state governance has been difficult to discern. Since 2004—Schwarzenegger’s first full year in office—California’s economic-freedom ranking in the PRI index improved only two places, from an abysmal 49 to 47. And $5 billion of new debt will do nothing to bolster the Governator’s self-proclaimed reputation as a fiscal hawk.
By contrast, Nevada, California’s neighbor to the east, boasts a much more favorable economic environment. Nevada ranked sixth among the states in economic freedom, an improvement from 2004, when it placed twelfth. But the model of economic freedom among the states is slightly further east—South Dakota. The Mount Rushmore State imposes no corporate-income tax, no personal-income tax, no personal-property tax, no business-inventory tax, and no inheritance tax. States in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains tend to be the most economically free. States in the Northeast tend to be the least free. (New York has ranked dead last since 1999.)
Americans vote with their feet, and strong economic freedom draws workers and businesses. According to United Van Lines, South Dakota ranked seventh in inbound migration in 2007. That’s one way of saying that lots of people are moving there. Nevada ranked second. By contrast, California tallied more outbound shipments than inbound. People are fleeing California partly because of economic aggravation. For every one-place improvement in a state’s Index ranking of economic freedom, its net migration per 1,000 people typically increases by one person. This means that for Michigan, the top-ranked outbound state, a one-spot improvement in economic freedom would result in a net increase of about 10,000 people moving into the state—resulting in much-needed new consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, and investors.
Economic freedom—or the lack thereof—affects states in multiple ways. Migration alters the political map through congressional apportionment. Current projections suggest that California’s mass exodus will deprive it of a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2010 census. Economic freedom also impacts pocketbooks. In 2005, per-capita income in the 15 most economically free states grew 31 percent faster than in the 15 states with the lowest levels of economic freedom. Policies friendly to economic freedom help states shore up their finances, too. The 15 freest states saw their general-fund tax revenues grow at a rate more than 6 percent higher than the 15 states with the least economic freedom. California lawmakers should keep these figures in mind as they grapple with the state’s yawning budget deficit.
In short, economic freedom is not an academic exercise or a zero-sum game. It benefits workers, businesses, and governments alike. When one state expands economic freedom, it puts pressure on its neighbors also to improve, or risk competing at a disadvantage for people and capital. With luck, Nevada’s example will spur California to embrace serious reforms. Otherwise, a stagnant economy brought on by the financial crisis will plague the Golden State far longer than necessary.
Lawrence J. McQuillan is director of business and economic studies at the Pacific Research Institute and coauthor of the 2008 U.S. Economic Freedom Index.
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IF BO backs off our missile defense in Poland he is going to have "pussy" tattooed on his forehead.
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Geopolitical Diary: Obama's Visit to the White House
November 10, 2008
U.S. President George W. Bush has invited President-elect Barack Obama to the White House. Such visits are normal protocol, and wives are part of the visit. Many times such visits come later in the transition, provide for a photo opportunity that assures the country that the transition is amicable and leave policy issues out of it. It will be interesting to see if this meeting has more substance, because there are certain issues that are not only pressing, but on which Obama and Bush might need to coordinate — even if they have different policies.
The first is obviously the G-20 meeting to be held in Washington on Nov. 15. Labeled as Bretton Woods II by some European leaders, the meeting is intended to discuss the future of the international financial system. Some Europeans want to create a robust international regulatory regime — or as might be put by cynics, a means whereby the Europeans have increased control over the American financial system. The first meeting will not be the last. A process is going to be put in place at this meeting. Bush’s inclination is to resist the more extreme European demands. It is not clear what Obama’s policy is. Obama will not be at the meeting, under the principle that the U.S. has only one president at a time — and to hold open his options. But his presence will be felt. These talks will set up the process under which Obama will negotiate. Bush and Obama might want to discuss this.
Second, there is Iran. Prior to the election, the administration was leaking the idea that Bush would establish low-level diplomatic relations with Iran after the election and before the winner — now known to be Obama — takes office. The theory was that such relations were essential and that Bush wanted to take the onus of establishing relations away from his successor, freeing him to deal directly with the Iranians. The Iranians formally congratulated Obama on his victory — the first such congratulations since the Iranian revolution. Obama, at his press conference, reacted coolly to the congratulations, reiterating demands that Iran stop nuclear development and not support terrorist groups. Obama is again keeping his options open. However, if the leaks from the administration genuinely signaled a desire by Bush to open diplomatic relations to free Obama to negotiate while Bush takes the heat, then Obama will have to let Bush know that he wants this — or at least go on record with Bush that he doesn’t.
Finally, there is the question of a coordinated stance on Russia. The Russians have just announced that they intend to deploy Iskander short-range ballistic missiles in Kaliningrad as a counter to a U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) installation slated for Polish soil. Obama’s advisers have also insisted that their camp has made no firm commitments on this installation either way, repudiating claims by Polish President Lech Kaczynski that the new American president-elect had assured him of firm support during a phone conversation on Nov. 8. On Nov. 7, news leaked that investigators from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have discovered the obvious, which is that Georgian troops started the war with Russia by attacking South Ossetia first. The deployment of missiles, the caution on BMD deployment in Poland and support for the Russian version of what happened in Georgia all combine to create new issues and opportunities in U.S.-Russian relations. It remains Bush’s responsibility to deal with this, but clearly, knowing where Obama wants to go on this would be useful to the transition.
The Russia question can hold, but the other two issues are pressing. It would be extremely useful to the international markets to know what the American position at the G-20 is going to be and whether it will remain the same after Jan. 20, 2009. The markets have all the uncertainty they need and could use a joint position. The Iranian recognition issue is critical. We suspect that Bush is prepared to move on this but needs an indication that this is the direction Obama wants to go. It is pointless and possibly harmful to open diplomatic relations if Obama is heading in a different direction.
All transition periods have important questions, but normally there is little need for coordination. Things will wait and if policies change, they change. In the case of the G-20 and Iran, that is not quite the way it is. True, the world will not end if Bush zigs and Obama zags, but in these two matters it would be enormously helpful if a seamless position could be devised. Russia is somewhat less pressing, but Obama already seems to have taken a position, and therefore the issue is in play.
The question is whether Obama is ready to define even preliminary positions on either the G-20 or Iran. Election rhetoric is very different from policy formation, and no president-elect, a week after his election, is quite ready to implement policy. But the G-20 is days away, and the situation in Iran is fluid. It will be interesting to see if the Nov. 10 meeting between Bush and Obama is tea and a tour, or a serious working session. Obviously, aides can work out a detailed coordination, but the principals have to seal the deal. We will find out on Monday what kind of transition we have, and what might happen in the interim.
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Moved to "First Amendment" per our esteemed Global Moderator's request.
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1285.msg22913#new
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Woof BBG:
Nice post!
May I be a tad anal and ask you to post it on the Free Speech (or is it The First Amendment?) thread?
TIA,
Marc
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**Iran, Russia and others can't withstand a prolonged drop in the global price of oil, so they will be forced to act soon.**
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Gathering Storm
An Iranian Sajjil missile is launched from a test site west of Tehran (Associated Press photo via Fox News)
Barack Obama's first international "test" moved a bit closer to reality today, with Iran's test of a new, solid-fuel missile that can strike targets in Israel--and southeastern Europe--more accurately (and with less warning) than other missiles in Tehran's inventory.
Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammed Najjar identified the missile as the Sajjil, which was launched from a test complex western of Tehran. The two-stage system has a reported range of 1,200 miles, allowing it to reach targets as far away as Greece and Israel. Iranian officials claim that the Sajjil is Iran's first medium-range missile to use solid fuel technology, similar to that found in more advanced systems produced by Russia, China and the West.
While the test launch was a major step for Iran's missile program, it also represented another failure. U.S. defense officials report that th Sajjil suffered an engine failure in the early stages of its flight and traveled only 180 miles, less than 20% of its advertised range. Similar failures have also occurred in past launches of extended range versions of the Shahab-3, Tehran's first medium-range ballistic missile.
Unlike the Sajjil, the Shahab-3 uses liquid fuel to power its engines. While liquid-fuel engines represent proven technology, they also pose operational problems. The missile must be fueled before launch, raising the potential for accidents--or detection by intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems. It can take up to an hour to fuel an older Iranian SCUD or Shahab-3 and in some cases, the missile must be elevated to firing position before the propellant and oxidizer can be loaded.
By comparison, solid fuel is stable and can be stored in the missile for extended periods of time. That decreases the "signature" associated with operations--you don't need oxidizer and propellant trucks following your launcher vehicle around the countryside. With a smaller signature, it becomes more difficult to spot (and interdict) missile operations.
That problem is further compounded by the rapid response time of solid fuel missile systems. With liquid fuel missiles, there is often a lag between the receipt of launch orders and the actual event, increasing the vulnerability of the weapon--and its crew--to enemy interdiction efforts. The problem is particularly acute in Iran's ballistic missile force; many of its Shahab-3 launchers cannot raise a fully-fueled missile, meaning that the airframe must be elevated prior to fueling operations.
Those difficulties are largely eliminated by the use of solid-fuel missiles. With the propellant (and warhead) already on-board, a solid-fuel system can respond much more rapidly to operational tasking. Using standard "shoot-and-scoot" tactics, a Sajjil crew could fire their missile and move to an alternate site for re-loading and new tasking. That makes the job of "Scud hunting" (or, in this case, MRBM hunting) that much more difficult.
Additionally, Iran has taken steps to help conceal its missile and rocket forces, improving their prospects for survivability. In the spring of 2005, for example, western intelligence analysts were surprised to find pre-surveyed launch sites for SCUDs and battlefield rockets near the Persian Gulf coastline. The sites had been used in a late-winter exercise involving Iranian missile units, but the deployment locations weren't discovered until well after the training ended. That discovery underscores the difficulty associated with finding ballistic missiles and rockets in the field.
Tehran has also developed a concealed launch site which could support a surprise attack against Israel, U.S. targets in the Gulf region, or locations in southeastern Europe. When Iran's missile base at Bakhtaran was built several years ago, analysts noted a rather unusual feature in one of the underground bunkers. Iranian engineers left a rather wide opening in the top of the bunker, which was burrowed beneath a hill.
More detailed analysis revealed the opening was actually a launch shaft for Shahab-3 missiles, which are based at the facility. The underground cavern was large enough to allow a missile to be elevated to launch position and fired through the shaft. Using the subterranean complex, Iranian crews could prepare and fire the missile with little chance of detection. It was an ideal facility for staging a "bolt from the blue" strike against one of Iran's enemies.
Development of the Sajjil will make that scenario even more likely. A solid-fuel system is a much safer option for an underground launch, since the missile uses a more stable propellant. Couple that with improved reaction times, and you have an ideal weapon for the Bakhtaran complex. Clearly, Iran's new missile has significant technical hurdles to overcome, but those challenges are not insurmountable.
And, of course, Tehran is continuing its quest to develop a nuclear warhead, capable of delivery by medium and long-range missiles. That represents the ultimate weapon for for a first-strike system, like the one tested today in the Iranian desert.
***
ADDENDUM: So, how does the missile launch figure into the "challenge" for Mr. Obama? Consider this possibility: Iran would benefit from a crisis that sends oil prices spiraling. Tehran typically stages major military exercise in the late winter/early spring that includes ballistic missile units. The next Sajjil test could well occur during that time frame, part of an Iranian effort to provoke the U.S. and test the mettle of the new commander-in-chief. This won't be the last time that Mr. Obama (and his advisers) have to deal with Tehran's new missile.
Today's event also underscores the importance of the recent deployment of a U.S. X-band radar to Israel. Capable of detecting missile launches at long range, the radar will give Israeli officials an additional 60-70 seconds of warning time, critical in any "surprise attack" scenario.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/11/13/a-nifty-demonstration-of-democratic-fiscal-management/
A nifty demonstration of Democratic fiscal management
posted at 9:55 am on November 13, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
Those of us on Barack Obama mailing lists have wondered why the masters of fundraising haven’t stopped pushing for more donations. After all, Obama won … last week. Recounts won’t affect the substantial victory; this isn’t 2000. Yet we keep getting e-mails, supposedly from people like Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, and especially David Plouffe, telling us that Obama and the DNC desperately need more of our money — and Andrew Malcolm does the math. He reprints the missive from Plouffe:
Here’s what he said:
“We’ll get to work transforming this country. But first, we need to take care of the DNC.”
Did we hear that right? Now that Obama’s the president-elect, the top priority is the Democratic National Committee?
To drive home the point elsewhere in the same e-mail Plouffe adds: “Before we do anything else, we need to pay for this winning strategy.”
Don’t worry, you still get the Victory T-shirt for this $30. But it sounds like pretty much everything else is on hold. This change stuff is looking to be an expensive process, even before it gets started.
The DNC raised $100 million dollars on top of the $600+ million raised by Obama. The latter was a record-breaking number, and the DNC’s wasn’t too bad, either. Instead of simply spending what they raised, though, Howard Dean took out massive loans that left the Democrats in the red by $15 million.
In government, we call that deficit spending, something Democrats decried during the 2006 elections. And who gets to pay for all the overspending and fiscal mismanagement? The contributors who already coughed up record amounts of money for Hope and Change, that’s who. And the new administration will hold the Hope and Change hostage until it gets all of the loose change possible first, Plouffe tells us.
In a way, this is truth in advertising. The Democrats have given us a clear example of how they will govern for at least the next two years. In fact, we may all wind up wearing shirts that say, “The government took all of my wealth, and all they shared was this lousy T-shirt.”
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I think many political parties and candidates on BOTH sides of the aisle have at one time or another taken out loans and overspent on their campaign.
What's new about the DNC asking for more donations to pay off their debt?
This isn't a partisan practice.
Actually, the DNC is looking for voluntary donations. They are trying to solve their deficit problem. That's more than Bush ever did with our deficit.
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Well, tis a rare event but, apart from the tedious boilerplate about Bush, I'm in agreement with JDN on this one.
However, the following presages exactly the sort of weakness that I fear from a President BO:
JOHN R. BOLTONArticle
Presidential transitions provide the opportunity to predict how an incoming administration will govern. While the Obama transition is proceeding largely behind the scenes, commentators have been hard at work examining the emerging evidence to reach sweeping conclusions about the administration's likely direction.
While it is much too early to reach any firm conclusions, a few substantive events have taken place. Consider, for example, the established tradition of a president-elect's series of calls to world leaders, to introduce himself and receive their congratulations. One of Barack Obama's first such conversations took place last Friday with Polish President Lech Kaczynski.
From the press reports and statements regarding their brief exchange it seems Messrs. Obama and Kaczynski drew radically different conclusions on a critical issue -- missile defense. Mr. Kaczynski raised the subject, given the recent U.S.-Polish agreement to base missile defense assets in Poland. In the words of the Polish press statement about the call, Mr. Kaczynski heard Mr. Obama say "that the missile defense project would continue."
The Obama transition promptly issued a rebuttal: "President-elect Obama made no commitment on it. His position is as it was throughout the campaign -- that he supports deploying a missile defense system when the technology is proved to be workable."
This was a remarkable statement. Mr. Obama contradicted a head of state, clinging to a campaign position that could most kindly be described as weak and ambiguous. The statement also reflected a naiveté in the structuring of such transition conversations -- and future dealings with truly unfriendly foreign leaders -- that could have been avoided.
Importantly, the Obama-Kaczynski telephone call must be seen in the context of Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's speech just two days before, where he threatened to base Russian missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave, targeting our proposed missile defense deployments in Poland. Mr. Medvedev's words were more than just a direct challenge to President-elect Obama on missile defense. They were also a direct challenge to the Polish government, which reached an agreement with the Bush administration just days after the Russian invasion of Georgia. The Poles were out on a limb, and Mr. Medvedev was testing the strength of that limb and the strength of the incoming U.S. president. Both now look disturbingly weak.
To be sure, one could argue that the Poles should not so quickly have issued an unequivocal statement without checking with Mr. Obama's handlers. But so too the Obama team should have understood that foreign leaders, both friends and adversaries, are in a state of high tension, hoping to get the president-elect to give his stamp of approval for their agendas before the inertia of the permanent government gets in the way.
Mr. Kaczynski's gambit may have been the first, but it won't be the last, and those hundreds of Obama foreign-affairs advisers should have known it was coming. The Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs, Arab-Israeli affairs and a host of other critical problems are thundering toward Mr. Obama as Jan. 20 approaches.
Freeing America from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty's antiquated constraints is rightly regarded as one of President Bush's most significant achievements. In 2001, we believed that the Russian strategic threat had eased. But the emerging threats from rogue states possessing a few nuclear-capable ballistic missiles required that we develop adequate defenses -- especially because many emerging nuclear-weapons states do not accept the same calculus of deterrence that maintained the Cold War's uneasy nuclear standoff. The demise of the ABM Treaty allows America to defend itself from these threats.
For a new Obama administration to retreat from this achievement, as many in the arms-control "community" have advocated, would be a significant step backward. His campaign position about deployment after the technology is "proved" is an excuse never to deploy missile defenses -- because nothing in the military field is ever conclusively proven for all time. Rebuffing Mr. Kaczynski is also precisely the wrong response to Mr. Medvedev's provocation. It will surely be read as weakness, and not only in Moscow. In fact, Moscow announced yesterday there would be no more missile-defense negotiations before Jan. 20.
How should Israel and the Arab world now contemplate the prospects for rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the prospects for turmoil there and enhanced Iranian influence in the Middle East? Will North Korea -- whoever is in charge -- now kick back and wait for Jan. 20? The list of questions is far longer than the list of Mr. Obama's answers.
To repeat, it is much too early to draw larger conclusions from this one episode. On the existing postelection evidence, we cannot tell whether Mr. Obama will govern on the left or the center-left, or whether he is simply passive and risk-averse. But on balance, his conversation with Mr. Kaczynski points toward a weakening of the U.S. defense posture, indifference to allies under duress, and the need to satisfy his natural constituency within the Democratic Party. Let us now await the next pieces of evidence.
Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations"
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That's more than Bush ever did with our deficit
Wow, speaking of Glib Cognitive Dissonance, are you really conflating how the national debt is handled with how the DNC handles its debt? I realize Bush it the root of all evil and controls sundry nefarious plots that would put the Illuminati to shame, but last time I looked Congress held a purse string or two.
The absurdity doesn't end there. By reneging on his promise to accept federal campaign funds BHO managed to outspend McCain several times over. By what factor is hard to pin down as the act of reneging removed BHO from oversight. McCain, on the other hand, snared himself both by accepting federal funds and then by being forced to abide by McCain Feingold. Don't get me wrong, I think that latter piece of legislation is an utter abomination that directly impinges on First Amendment freedoms, and it's amusing to watch the resulting petard hoist, but imagine the media narrative if the roles were reversed: filthy rich Republicans break promise and bludgeon honorable black guy who played by the rules to defeat by grossly outspending him. Guess the standards don't apply the same way when your guy wins.
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I concede it was a bit glib :-) and "boilerplate". Sorry, you are right, but he is leaving soon and who will I have :-D
I also concede your point; Congress (both sides of the aisle) is at fault.
The "glib" comment however was in response to the implication in the posted article that deficit spending by the DNC
on their campaign means that they will not be fiscally responsible. My point in response was that the Republican side as well led by Bush these
past 8 years has not been fiscally responsible with my tax dollars; I don't care about voluntary contributions.
My primary point was that BOTH sides of the campaign often overspend and the winner recoups his money after victory; period.
And no, in politics when you win (again on both sides of the aisle) the same standards don't apply. To some degree, (unfortunately) I think that
when you win the same standards (versus the loser) don't apply to most things in life.
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My point in response was that the Republican side as well led by Bush these past 8 years has not been fiscally responsible with my tax dollars; I don't care about voluntary contributions.
Ha! Fiscally responsible legislators. Next you'll be demanding sober Vicars.
And no, in politics when you win (again on both sides of the aisle) the same standards don't apply. To some degree, (unfortunately) I think that
when you win the same standards (versus the loser) don't apply to most things in life.
Alas, these days when vying for the win the same standards don't apply, witness the various mea culpas emerging as media outlets deconstruct their coverage of Palin et al.
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As bad as a spender as Bush was, it is deranged and disingenuous for Dems to point the finger on this-- for their complaint about him was always that he wasn't spending enough-- not to mention that when they control the House of Representatives control over spending is theirs.
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Ha! Fiscally responsible legislators. Next you'll be demanding sober Vicars.
Isn't "responsible legislator" an oxymoron?
And "sober Vicars"; well, that too could be an oxymoron but at least the ones I have drank with (one in particular)
are sincere and honest. More than I can say for many legislators.
As for blaming Bush, I think there is plenty of blame to go around and yes, while the House is Democrat, it has
not always been that way. I just wish Bush, i.e. the republican party had been more fiscally responsible. I mean
democrats are suppose to spend :-D but republicans are suppose to keep a tight purse. Look at the mess we
are in when the both team up and spend and print money.
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I just wish Bush, i.e. the republican party had been more fiscally responsible. I mean
democrats are suppose to spend but republicans are suppose to keep a tight purse. Look at the mess we
are in when the both team up and spend and print money.
No debate at all there. Indeed, as everyone writes myopic op eds about how the Repubs are now doomed I'm hoping this last election serves to prune the party of it's non-fiscally conservative and non-libertarian impulses. It'll be interesting to see how the God Squad side of the party influences the recovery.
On the flip side, across the aisle certainly doesn't have much call to become anything but more of the same. It'll be interesting to see how they handle their "mandate." Already a bunch of rumblings from the Bush loathers that investigations pend; think that impulse has big backfire potential.
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The smartest thing Obama could do is be very centrist and curb the worst impulses of the left. The Kossacks will gurantee he's a one term president if he continues to pander to them now.
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"I just wish Bush, i.e. the republican party had been more fiscally responsible. I mean
democrats are suppose to spend but republicans are suppose to keep a tight purse. Look at the mess we
are in when the both team up and spend and print money."
Mostly amen to that! Worth noting though is that it is a mistake for Reps to allow Dems to maneuver them into being "the tax collector for the nanny state." Part of Reagan's genius was that he knew how to avoid this trap.
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Well I am not sure this is in the right thread. My reasoning is that the "end of the empire" tone summarizes the attitude of the left. The US has spread around the world like an empire and with it forcing on the world it's toxic mix of capatalizism, and democracy for the benefit of course of white men of European origin. This is I think the thesis of BO and his supporters and the root how they will see to it that our country will now be relegated to bac seat status. They claim that we should lead the world away from this. Basically BO will bring the rest of the world to the front of the bus and the US can move to towrds the back of the bus. so I feel the piece belings here as the left plans on making us into a weakened state equal to all others. And I really do beleive BO has hated America every bit as much as MMoore.
****Michael Moore to tackle economy
Next doc to have an end-of-the-empire tone, sources say
By Steven Zeitchik
Nov 13, 2008, 01:00 AM ET
Updated: Nov 13, 2008, 02:33 PM ET
Michael Moore (Getty Images photo)
When Paramount Vantage and Overture announced Michael Moore's long-gestating follow-up to "Fahrenheit 9/11" in May, executives stressed the film's foreign-policy scope. "This is going to tackle what's going on in the world and America's place in it," Paramount Vantage chief Nick Meyer said.
But as the political winds shifted in the months before the election -- and gusted after it -- Moore subtly began reorienting his movie. Instead of foreign policy, the film's focus now is more on the global financial crisis and the U.S. economy.
The untitled movie will contain an end-of-the-empire tone, say those familiar with the project, and Moore no doubt hopes that this will give it a more general feel that will untether it from a specific political moment.
But some political and entertainment experts wonder how much Moore's incredulousness and occasional pessimism about the state of U.S. policy, which served the filmmaker well during the George W. Bush years, will play in the current hopeful climate brought on President-elect Barack Obama.
"If Moore offers a prescription for how to improve things, he may indeed find an audience that at this moment is eager for change," said Craig Minassian, an entertainment consultant and former Bill Clinton aide. "But it's going to be hard for him. What this election shows is what's right with America, and sometimes what Michael Moore does is highlight what's wrong with America."
In the meantime, a focus on the collapsing markets brings its own risk, Minassian said. "The problem with the financial crisis is that it's changing so quickly. I'm not sure how relevant is going to be in six months, and I'm not sure if people want to hear it; my sense is they already have a pretty good idea of a lot of the people who are to blame for it."
An election favoring the Democrats would remove some of the factors that put Moore in vogue both in the U.S. and abroad during the Bush years -- and pushed his three theatrical movies during that time to more than $300 million in worldwide boxoffice.
It's worth noting that Moore famously shoots a lot of footage and makes many critical decisions later in the production process, so the tone could still shift; it's tricky to know what any Moore movie will ultimately look like before he completes the film.
Overture and Vantage declined comment.
Still, Moore is feverishly shooting, and the movie is expected to come out as early as this spring, with Vantage and Overture hoping to capitalize on the current high levels of political awareness.
Moore has also said that in some ways he sees the movie less as a sequel to the Middle East-themed "Fahrenheit 9/11" than as a bookend to "Roger & Me," the director's breakthrough nearly two decades ago. That movie featured the U.S. economy and the auto industry at its center, and that, if nothing else, could again prove a timely theme.
Michael Moore to tackle economy
Next doc to have an end-of-the-empire tone, sources say
By Steven Zeitchik
Nov 13, 2008, 01:00 AM ET
Updated: Nov 13, 2008, 02:33 PM ET
When Paramount Vantage and Overture announced Michael Moore's long-gestating follow-up to "Fahrenheit 9/11" in May, executives stressed the film's foreign-policy scope. "This is going to tackle what's going on in the world and America's place in it," Paramount Vantage chief Nick Meyer said.
But as the political winds shifted in the months before the election -- and gusted after it -- Moore subtly began reorienting his movie. Instead of foreign policy, the film's focus now is more on the global financial crisis and the U.S. economy.
The untitled movie will contain an end-of-the-empire tone, say those familiar with the project, and Moore no doubt hopes that this will give it a more general feel that will untether it from a specific political moment.
But some political and entertainment experts wonder how much Moore's incredulousness and occasional pessimism about the state of U.S. policy, which served the filmmaker well during the George W. Bush years, will play in the current hopeful climate brought on President-elect Barack Obama.
"If Moore offers a prescription for how to improve things, he may indeed find an audience that at this moment is eager for change," said Craig Minassian, an entertainment consultant and former Bill Clinton aide. "But it's going to be hard for him. What this election shows is what's right with America, and sometimes what Michael Moore does is highlight what's wrong with America."
In the meantime, a focus on the collapsing markets brings its own risk, Minassian said. "The problem with the financial crisis is that it's changing so quickly. I'm not sure how relevant is going to be in six months, and I'm not sure if people want to hear it; my sense is they already have a pretty good idea of a lot of the people who are to blame for it."
An election favoring the Democrats would remove some of the factors that put Moore in vogue both in the U.S. and abroad during the Bush years -- and pushed his three theatrical movies during that time to more than $300 million in worldwide boxoffice.
It's worth noting that Moore famously shoots a lot of footage and makes many critical decisions later in the production process, so the tone could still shift; it's tricky to know what any Moore movie will ultimately look like before he completes the film.
Overture and Vantage declined comment.
Still, Moore is feverishly shooting, and the movie is expected to come out as early as this spring, with Vantage and Overture hoping to capitalize on the current high levels of political awareness.
Moore has also said that in some ways he sees the movie less as a sequel to the Middle East-themed "Fahrenheit 9/11" than as a bookend to "Roger & Me," the director's breakthrough nearly two decades ago. That movie featured the U.S. economy and the auto industry at its center, and that, if nothing else, could again prove a timely theme.****
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The only time the nations of the world howl louder than when they scream their hatred for us, is when they need us to rescue them.
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My post on the coming of the next M Moore movie with a reported theme about the economy but in the context that America as an "empire" is over is on line with how BO thinks. Both people have a deep resentment of our country and feel that American capitalism and democracy spreading around the globe is imperialism or emipire like. And as those on this board know they will be sure to put a stop to that.
The 50 states of the union will become the US is one of the 195 states of the world.
I don't get why the US has to lead the world in a way that contributes to its own shrinking.
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- Pajamas Media - http://pajamasmedia.com -
Obama’s Very Bad Start
Posted By Stephen Green On November 14, 2008 @ 12:00 am In . Most Popular 05, . Positioning, Elections 2008, Gun Control, Opinion, Politics, US News | 220 Comments
Monday, our own Jennifer Rubin wrote a column called “[1] The GOP Gets Off to a Bad Start.” Let’s take a look at the other side of the issue. It seems like our president-elect is keeping himself busy picking unnecessary fights. Is this the way Obama will conduct business with Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, or is it just a case of a new president finding his footing?
Obama vs. Pelosi/Green Machine vs. Jobs
On the Detroit bailout, Obama has hinted that he wants to make sure the money goes to retooling for [2] clean, fuel efficient cars. Just like the original $25 billion Department of Energy bill was supposed to do. Nancy Pelosi is most worried about the UAW and jobs and would probably pump fresh blood into an entire city of the dead to save a single union job. So it looks like Obama and Pelosi are going to clash — and soon. Some reports indicate that GM will be down to its minimum operating cash before the end of the year — and that would make Chapter 11 all but a foregone conclusion. Detroit needs cash, but for what? The Obama Plan or the Pelosi Plan?
Obama vs. Southern Democrats on Guns
Obama is also gearing up for a fight with southern Democrats. After being mostly silent on guns during the campaign, Obama’s Web site has recently added or restored language indicating the return of the “[3] assault weapons ban” on scary-looking rifles. Southern Democrats paid with their jobs for Clinton’s ban back in 1994. You might expect the new Blue Dog Dems to join hands and sing Kumbaya with House and Senate Republicans to block a new Scary Looking Rifles Law.
Obama vs. Republicans
OK, so maybe this item is no real shocker, but it still seems a little early in the game for Mr. Post Partisan to be dissing Republicans. And yet, Obama has already soiled relations with the GOP, thanks to [4] leaks from his meeting with President Bush on Monday. Obama might just give us the most ethical administration ever — I mean, anything can happen. But it’s already shaping up to be the most indiscrete. If Obama wants to reach across the aisle, that’s great. He just shouldn’t do so with a joy buzzer in his hand.
Obama vs. Europe
Speaking of indiscretion, Obama doesn’t seem to have a clue on how to treat American allies. During the primary race, he threatened to crack down on major threats like Canada — a position he probably/maybe/sort of backed off from in backdoor talks with the Canadian government. In Europe, Obama is already to the left of most every major EU leader. Then last week, Obama [5] told Poland one thing about missile defense in private and told Russia quite another thing in public. In other words, he’s doing his best to spoil relations with Poland, which will have repercussions throughout Eastern Europe, too. Our allies have got to wonder where Obama stands. I think we all do.
Obama vs. Everybody (Eventually) on Taxes
Obama promised to raise taxes only on the lower-upper class on up. Then we got hints that taxes would go up for the upper middle class, too. And now we’re learning that Team Obama has plans to raise taxes on people who do evil things like [6] own cars. Or just drive them. Which by my count is … pretty much everybody.
More ominously, unless we get middle class entitlement reform out of the Democrats, then eventually everybody’s taxes are going up. Way up. And “eventually” comes closer every year, as the Baby Boomers have begun to retire and place new financial strains on our retirement and health care transfer-payment systems. Alternately, Washington can give us a big round of inflation — a hidden tax which will do for your 401(k)… what Washington has already done to your 401(k).
So it’s true — Obama really is bringing people together. He’s bringing them together … against Barack Obama. While it’s true that Republicans got off on the wrong foot this week and last, so did Obama. And if he keeps it up, then the Republicans might not be the minority party for too very much longer.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamas-very-bad-start/
URLs in this post:
[1] The GOP Gets Off to a Bad Start: http://pajamasmedia.com//pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-gop-gets-off-to-a-bad-start/”
[2] clean, fuel efficient: http://pajamasmedia.com//www.thetruthaboutcars.com/between-the-lines-barack-obamas-shot-across-detro
its-bow/”
[3] assault weapons ban: http://pajamasmedia.com//www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=4227”
[4] leaks from his meeting: http://pajamasmedia.com//www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_081112.htm
[5] told Poland one thing about missile defense in private and told Russia quite another thing in public: http://pajamasmedia.com//news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7717669.stm
[6] own cars: http://pajamasmedia.com//www.thenewspaper.com/news/25/2594.asp
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A German friend asked me what I thought of the election. Here's my response:
> Hello Marc
>
> I'm very, very impressed how honourably Republicans are handling the
> setback.
Forgive me the crankiness, but note the contrast with the Dems over the two
Bush victories.
>I was impressed with Senator McCain's strength restraining the audience to
>boo during his last speech.
What a frustrating candidate McCain was! So many mediocrities, so many
hesitations, so many failures to get the analysis right, so many failures to
spot and capitalize on weaknesses, , , , and then moments of sheer class and
quality-- like his concession speech.
> What is your personal opinion on Obama's victory?
The most hopeful thing I can say is that it is really hard to say who he is
or what he truly stands for.
I greatly fear that he will legalize some 10-20 million illegal Mexicans and
enable them to easily become citizens via low meaningless standards and
enable them to bring multiples of their numbers into the US. Apart from the
economic questions raised by this, there is the matter that these tens of
millions will mostly vote Democrat and the political landscape will change
America from center-right to center-left and we then will head down the road
towards Europe.
IF he goes with the liberal left twaddle on the economy, then we are
seriously fcuked. If he turns the American tax code into a welfare program,
then it may not be possible to undo the damage for it will become
untouchable. He does not seem to grasp that taxing business drives it
off-shore. He thinks that global warming is both real and man-made and
looks to try to impose central control of the economy in the name of
stopping it. Profoundly foolish and damaging!
OTOH if he goes with serious, somber people like Volcker or Summers at
Treasury, it will be a good sign that the adults are in charge of some
aspects of his economic policy. His chief of staff selection can be
interpreted as preparing himself to deal with the Demogogue wing of his
party.
I greatly fear for BO's desire to give away US sovereignty to international
organizations (UN et al)
If he goes with the Bambi (a nice gentle deer in children's stories)
approach to foreign affairs, then the world is fcuked. His weakness on
Iraq leaves him little bargaining leverage with Iran. As Iran goes nuke, I
fear terrible consequences.
He has made bellicose noises about Pak-Afg, but IMHO no one has a coherent
strategy there for us. I am better informed than most (I think) but I
cannot say what our strategy is. As it is, we fear to take on the opium
because of its economic importance to the people there and as long as it is
there, much of the money/power goes to the enemy. There is no win in this
circle for us and with no win, we lose.
Bush has left a mess with Russia and now, given Euro spinelessness, we have
no good options. Bush's stupidity in recognizing Kosovo has enabled
Russia to take the two provinces in Georgia; the larger point of which is to
make clear that it can take the pipeline any time it wants. The true issue
is access to central Asian gas and oil-- as we have discussed. I like Jack
Wheeler's idea of building a pipeline from central Asia through Afg-Pak and
thus create a form of wealth generation that gives us true leverage in
Afg-Pak as well as undercutting Russia's chokehold on Euro energy.
OTOH the man seems unusually calm and centered and capable of extraordinary
changes in his position without his groupies caring or noticing.
THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES!!!
Marc
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***Bush has left a mess with Russia and now, given Euro spinelessness, we have
no good options. Bush's stupidity in recognizing Kosovo has enabled
Russia to take the two provinces in Georgia; the larger point of which is to
make clear that it can take the pipeline any time it wants. The true issue
is access to central Asian gas and oil-- as we have discussed. I like Jack
Wheeler's idea of building a pipeline from central Asia through Afg-Pak and
thus create a form of wealth generation that gives us true leverage in
Afg-Pak as well as undercutting Russia's chokehold on Euro energy.***
Crafty,
I like the parts about your fears of BO. Mine too. I suspect BO is RADICAL left and is prepared to go as far left as he can get away with. He might test the waters but he would obviously love going towards Pelosi et al. He has hung around with many US hating raidcals and he occasionally slpis and lets out his tru feelings which include his resentment of America and what it has always stood for. He will have us all driving electric minicars, he will run from Iraq ASAP, Iran will have nucs (though there IS NO political will in the US to stop this so its not totally BOs fault. etc.
With regards to the above could you expand on what W did wrong with Kosovo, Russia and what is this pipeline all about and how would expanding a pipeline through a dangerous part of the world help us? Shouldn't we be drilling off our shores and get off foriegn oil?
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Well, drifting briefly outsdie the parameters of this thread:
As best as I can tell, our support of Kosovo breaking away is a break from the understandings of international law. Redrawing international boundaries is a true Pandora's box. Due to its many border regions where ethnic Russians are a small minority, the priniciples enunciated by the US in supporting the breakaway of Kosovo can readily be applied to various situations which would challenge the territorial integrity of Russia itself. Russia was EXTREMELY emphatic that Kosovo should not breakaway and basically we laughed and said "Watcha gonna do about it?" -- so Russia was delighted to hoist us on our own petard when it applied them to the two regions of Georgia where ethnic Russians are in the majority.
(In dealing with Russia IMHO at all times we need to keep our eye on the demographic ball-- Russian birth rates are FAR below replacement levels. Every day Russia has fewer Russians, and the ones they have are older. This makes the Russians in their "near abroad" e.g. Ukraine, doubly important to them.)
Concerning the pipeline issues: Europe, especially Germany, gets a lot of gas from western Russia and Russia gets a lot of gas from central Asia-- without which it could not export its western gas to Europe. Supplying Europe gives Russia huge leverage over Europe.
There is a lot of gas and oil in central Asia. If that oil and gas could reach world markets through pipelines not controlled by Russia, it would help get Europe from under the Russian thumb. One such pipeline currently exists-- and it runs through Georgia. Russia's conquest of northern Georgia has made clear that there is nothing that the US or Europe will do about it (see e.g. the Russia-Europe thread entry of this morning) and hence that the pipeline which runs through Georgia does so at Russian whim. Thus plans for additional pipelines are being mothballed. What private company would invest now the tens of billions of $$$ required?
Outside the box thinker Jack Wheeler (google him, he is an interesting guy) suggests building a pipeline from central Asiaa though Afg and Pak. This he thinks would give Afg and Pak some skin in the game for productive activities (at present what does Afg have except for opium?) AND foil Russian attempts to control Europe's energy supplies.
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His friends advise Barack Obama to launch a "New" New Deal. Maybe that's because the old New Deal is sinking fast.
Mr. Obama's one deeply false note during the campaign was his harping on "deregulation" as if that were the source of current troubles. His real problem is the crack-up of the world FDR built.
AP
Barack Obama gets taken for a ride by the UAW.
Fannie Mae was a New Deal creation, subsidizing the securitization of mortgage debt. FDR's successors piled on the subsidies for housing debt and incentives directed at low-income borrowers. Kaboom.
Then there's the UAW, born in 1935. For decades the UAW steadily traded away domestic auto market-share to imports and transplants to keep its aging membership toiling away toward their golden pensions and collecting wages and benefits twice those of their competitors. It worked for a while . . .
Mr. Obama must be looking around and beginning to suspect he will be pouring his political capital, along with considerable taxpayer capital, down bottomless holes for the next four years. He won't be building a legacy as the new FDR, but cleaning up after the last one.
Fannie and its twin, Freddie Mac, have already come back for a second helping of taxpayer money as their once-profitable business model devolves into a politically directed subsidy machine for propping up home prices and delaying foreclosures. Their next meltdown, in government hands, is all but written in the cards.
AIG, an otherwise healthy insurance company that went bust betting on housing debt, has already consumed taxpayer loans and capital injections nearly as big as AIG's $200 billion market cap when it was one of the world's most admired firms. AIG still has a valuable insurance business, but ignoramuses in Congress and the press are busy destroying it. The company sells many of its products through busy independent agents. It uses lush "seminars" to encourage them to sit still for pitches about why AIG should still be trusted despite AIG's purgatory in the headlines. But these seminars only produce more outraged grandstanding from the political commentariat.
It will take years for the government to get AIG off its hands, and there likely won't be much value left for taxpayers when it finally does.
But the really giant sucking sound is the auto sector, getting ready to gobble up whatever hopes Mr. Obama might have had for an ambitious, forward-looking presidency.
He and Nancy Pelosi naturally insist that any "bailout" must hit multiple bogies. They want UAW jobs to be preserved. They want the shibboleth of energy independence advanced. They want "green" cars to please the Tom Friedmans of the world. They want to tell taxpayers they're getting more for their money than just a bailout of Detroit.
All this makes sense to a politician, but not to any practical person, who knows that multiple bogies are bound to be conflicting bogies. You could just barely envision a bailout that wouldn't necessarily be a disastrous waste of money, one that would help Detroit create a competitive cost structure in pursuit of building products that are competitive in the marketplace. But this is just the opposite of what Mr. Obama and his Democrats have in mind.
Prepare to witness, then, the awesome capacity of an unreformed Detroit to consume taxpayer billions with nothing to show for it.
That Mr. Obama had been sent by history to assuage the insecurities of the middle class with a "New" New Deal was always a tad detached from reality anyway. The reason is those giant legacies of existing New Dealism known as Social Security and Medicare, about which he was careful to say nothing intelligible during the campaign. These programs worked for a while too, but now their expected revenues are (in present value) about $99.2 trillion short of the expected outlays required to assure present and future workers their promised comfort in retirement.
Then again, Mr. Obama did say something in his campaign about tax rebates for all these payroll taxpayers. He also said something about government matching contributions to incentivize today's low- and middle-income workers to save for their own retirement.
Voilà, personal accounts funded by payroll-tax givebacks -- strangely similar to the solution our current president promoted to help workers escape the impending insolvency of the government retirement programs. Mr. Obama envisioned himself extending FDR's work. He may end up finishing George Bush's.
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I listened to that miserable c-sucker, Barney Frank on National People's Radio this morning, flacking for the UAW bailout. Not satisfied with burdening taxpayers with the Fannie/Freddie mess he helped create, now he's getting ready to saddle us with this mess. F-ing wonderful. :roll:
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Barack Obama's widely leaked selection of Timothy Geithner as his Treasury Secretary is certainly a sign of the financial times: About Mr. Geithner's views on taxes and economics, the world knows very little. His specialty at the Clinton Treasury and as President of the New York Federal Reserve has been negotiating bailouts and otherwise navigating through financial panics.
AP
Timothy Geithner with Ben Bernanke.
His first and primary task, in other words, will be to serve as Secretary of Bailouts. For that job, Mr. Geithner is probably the best choice short of Paul Volcker, and he guarantees the smoothest transition from the current Treasury team. He won't have to be introduced to the various Wall Street and Federal Reserve players, and he knows as well as anyone which banks are vulnerable and likely to threaten the larger financial system.
This continuity is especially important given that the credit markets have taken a major step backward since Barack Obama's election. Stocks are off some 15%, credit spreads have widened again, and bear raids are once more targeting Citigroup and other financial companies. The uncertainty over Mr. Obama's team and its direction has itself been fueling the lack of confidence, so we're glad to see the President-elect getting on with the show.
Mr. Geithner's political style is to listen first, which by itself makes him a better choice than Harvard economist Larry Summers, who would find a way to condescend to Albert Einstein. Mr. Summers is reportedly slated to run Mr. Obama's National Economic Council in the White House. The Treasury Secretary has typically been the most prominent Administration voice on the economy, but Mr. Summers is not the sort merely to play honest broker. Mr. Geithner, who once worked for Mr. Summers, will have to work to avoid being seen as second fiddle.
Mr. Obama's political adviser, David Axelrod, also sent a useful signal yesterday by hinting on "Fox News Sunday" that an immediate tax increase may be off the table. In his Saturday radio address, Mr. Obama said that his first priority will be a huge new spending and middle-class tax cut "stimulus" -- perhaps as large as $500 billion. "The main thing right now is to get this economic recovery package on the road, to get money in the pockets of the middle class, to get these projects going, to get America working again, and that's where we're going to be focused in January," added Mr. Axelrod.
The prospect of a tax hike during a recession has been a prominent source of investor anxiety. The President-elect would be smarter still if he announced that he won't allow the lower Bush tax rates to expire after 2010 as they are scheduled to do. The last thing frightened investors want to see now is a lower after-tax return on risk-taking and investment.
What Mr. Geithner thinks about taxes is something of a mystery -- and that's not the only one. As a protégé of Mr. Summers and Robert Rubin, the 47-year-old may share their view that tax rates don't matter much to investment choices. On the other hand, he hasn't declared himself in public on the issue as far as we know.
In today's Opinion Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Secretary of BailoutsJindal's MedicineThe Sidwell Choice
TODAY'S COLUMNISTS
The Americas: Election Fraud in Nicaragua
– Mary Anastasia O'GradyInformation Age: When Even Good News Worsens a Panic
– L. Gordon Crovitz
COMMENTARY
The Fed Is Out of Ammunition
– Christopher WoodWhat a Single Nuclear Warhead Could Do
– Brian T. KennedyChange Our Public Schools Need
– Terry M. MoeBush Does the Right Thing for Darfur
– Kenneth RothFor that matter, most of his work in public life has been done in backrooms or as a loyal Sancho Panza. During the Clinton years, he assisted Mr. Summers on various international bailouts. And during the current panic, he has properly deferred in public to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke or Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Now Mr. Geithner will have to become the Administration's chief financial spokesman, so it will be useful for the Senate to sound him out during confirmation hearings.
All the more so because some of his bailout decisions have been less than successful. Mr. Geithner was the driving force behind the government takeover of insurance giant AIG -- a "rescue" that has itself twice had to be rescued with more taxpayer capital. The most frustrating part of the AIG episode has been the New York Fed's lack of transparency, both about the nature of the "systemic risk" that required the takeover and why it was superior to bankruptcy. This is another subject worthy of confirmation scrutiny, not least as an indication of Mr. Geithner's standards for future interventions.
Mr. Geithner was also on the Fed's Open Market Committee when it made its fateful decisions to keep real interest rates negative for so long, fueling the credit mania that has since turned to panic. Those monetary decisions are typically led by the Fed Chairman, but Mr. Geithner never dissented. While a Treasury Secretary doesn't directly make monetary policy, his private advice can be critical to Fed decisions. This is another area ripe for Senate exploration.
We suppose in that sense there is some rough justice in Mr. Geithner's nomination. Having been present at the creation of the current mess, he can help clean it up by avoiding some of the same mistakes.
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A 3rd Bush term is what Obama called a McCain Presidency. But if Obama wants to delay all tax cuts and delay all tax increases, isn't he saying that the current Bush tax rates are JUST RIGHT! Let's see what his new team says... - Doug
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Obama’s Pro-Growth Economic Team?
A liberal-conservative consensus?
By Larry Kudlow
When President-elect Obama had a chance to squash the tax-hike threat once and for all at his news conference Monday, he took a pass and let the question linger for another day. But his new economic cabinet appointments strongly suggest there will be no tax hikes next year.
Stocks, for one, like what they’re seeing from Obama’s latest cabinet selections. On Friday, Obama announced Tim Geithner will be his Treasury man, and on Monday he made Larry Summers his White House economics tsar and named Christine Romer to the top spot in the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Stocks rallied 900 points across this stretch. That’s not the end of the stock story. Markets also like the new super-TARP government plan to bailout Citigroup, which effectively guarantees the banking system with a massive insurance-like policy. But markets may also sense a little pro-growth good news in the Obama policy mix.
When asked about tax hikes on Monday, Obama said the debate is between repeal and not-renewal. In other words, repeal the Bush tax cuts in 2009, thereby raising tax rates on capital gains and successful earners, or wait until the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. Investors want to hear the latter, and Mr. Obama said his team will make a recommendation.
Here’s my thought on his team. Summers, Geithner, and Romer will all recommend no tax hikes in a recession. Maybe for Keynesian reasons; maybe a nod to supply-siders. Obama talked about a liberal-conservative consensus. But what’s especially encouraging is the appointment of Ms. Romer, who easily could serve as CEA head in a Republican administration (just like Geithner could have been McCain’s Treasury man).
About a year and half ago economist Don Luskin sent me a long article about taxes by Christine and her husband David Romer, who were writing for the National Bureau of Economic Research. From the introduction: “The resulting estimates indicate that tax increases are highly contractionary. . . . The large effect stems in considerable part form a powerful negative effect of tax increases on investment.”
Later in the article, the Romers write: “In short, tax increases appear to have a very large, sustained, and highly significant negative impact on output.”
That’s what makes the Romer appointment so interesting. In fact, there is no question that Obama’s economic team is right of center. All three are market-oriented. They’re also pro-free-trade. Hopefully Summers and Geithner maintain the Robert Rubin King Dollar policy of the Clinton years. And if Ms. Romer can stop tax hikes, that will help the greenback even more.
At a minimum, both Romer and Geithner could have served under Gerald Ford or George H. W. Bush. But they may be more pro-growth than that. Romer’s study of the damage of tax hikes on the economy and her emphasis on investment are right on target. In a New York Times story, a former Treasury colleague of Geithner’s says, “he’s no liberal.” As for Summers, while he has been mau-maued by Democratic feminists and some of the unions, he is a tough, clear-headed thinker who has for years tried to merge Keynesian and supply-side policies. No mean feat.
Now here’s the rub: all this talk about a $700 billion stimulus package. I hate to be the one to pull the plug, but government cannot spend our way into prosperity. The wish list of Democratic spending initiatives includes short-term tax rebates, massive new transportation bills, even more education money, exotic green-technology spending, a big-government embrace of health care, and heaps of cash for UAW-Detroit carmakers. None of that will stimulate economic growth.
Economist Paul Hoffmeister has it right: We need to invigorate incentives to produce and invest. Let me take it even further. We need to revive the dormant animal spirits, which have been beaten down by a brutal bear market in stocks, the ongoing housing slump, and all the myriad blockages to credit availability. A bunch of new spending won’t do the trick. Lower tax rates will.
Government policy must make it clear that new successes will be handsomely rewarded. This will be Obama’s greatest challenge. While he may not raise taxes in 2009 — a good thing — he hasn’t yet come up with a new bolt of electricity that will hardwire the serious risk-taking that lies at the heart of free-market capitalism. Right now, the missing electric bolt is lower tax rates and greater rewards for new risk investment by investors, successful earners, and business.
On the plus side, however, Mr. Obama talks optimistically. That’s good. He says he’s hopeful about our future. And he says he is confident that American spirits will be resilient in this difficult time. That’s Reagansesque, Kennedyesque, and FDResque. But while FDR’s big-spending and regulating prevented economic recovery, Kennedy and Reagan opted for across-the-board supply-side tax-rate reductions to get America moving again.
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Barack Obama's choice of Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State is either a political master stroke, or a classic illustration of the signature self-confidence that will come back to haunt him. We're inclined toward the latter view, but then Mr. Obama is the one who has to live with her -- and her husband.
APThe President-elect's political calculation seems clear enough: Better to have the Clinton machine as allies than as critics on the outside of his Administration. His early choices are loaded with Clintonians of various stripes, from John Podesta to run his transition team, Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff, Eric Holder at Justice, and now the former first lady herself as chief diplomat.
This is startling for a candidate who explicitly promised Democrats in the primaries that he offered an escape from the Clinton political method. But perhaps Mr. Obama figures any disillusion will be minor and that this will unite the Democratic Party behind him. Much as retaining Robert Gates at the Pentagon may mute attacks from some Republicans, the choice of Mrs. Clinton will help to insulate Mr. Obama from attacks by fellow Democrats. He also disarms the Clinton campaign and fund-raising machinery for any potential challenge in 2012.
These political calculations must be predominant, because Mrs. Clinton brings no special policy expertise to the job. Her best attribute may be her undeniable work ethic. She has focused on foreign policy in her Senate committee assignments, but without much notable influence on policy or events. Her criticism of the Bush foreign policy has echoed the conventional view that the Administration wasn't diligent enough in trying to talk to the Iranians, the North Koreans and other hard cases. In other words, Mrs. Clinton is likely to pick right up where Condoleezza Rice and Nick Burns left off trying to negotiate with these enemies in the second Bush term.
It's also strange if Mr. Obama is trying to invoke the Clinton Presidency as a foreign-policy golden age. We recall it mostly as an era of illusory peace as problems festered with too little U.S. attention. Al Qaeda was left unchecked, Saddam Hussein banished U.N. inspectors and exploited Oil for Food, North Korea embarked on a secret nuclear program, Russia's post-Cold War spring faded, and Pakistan's A.Q. Khan spread nuclear-bomb technology around the world.
Mr. Obama's biggest gamble is associating his Presidency with the Clinton political circus. At least as Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton will have a specific role, as opposed to the ill-defined mandate of a Vice President. (Speaking of the Veep-elect, with Mr. Gates and the Clintons around, what's left for Joe Biden to do? State was the job he's long wanted, and he must be dying inside trying to abide by Team Obama's gag order.)
Flashback: Clinton's Foreign Funders
The Riady Connection – 07/21/00Mr. Gore's Scandal – 03/03/00The Obstruction of Justice Department? – 09/30/99Clinton's Johnny – 04/06/99But that still leaves Bill Clinton and his gift both of irrepressible gab and for inevitable controversy. His post-Presidency has been more or less a vast fund-raising operation -- for himself, his library and legacy, and his charitable causes. Mr. Obama said yesterday that Mr. Clinton has agreed to disclose the 200,000 or so donors to his foundation, and what a list it is likely to be. Look for Arab sheikhs, Latin American monopolists and assorted dubious characters.
The potential for blatant conflicts of interest with Mrs. Clinton's new role is great, and in appointing her Mr. Obama seems to be betting that the disclosure will diminish the problem. Given the Clinton history with the Riadys of Indonesia, Johnny Chung, the Lippo Group and Arkansas compadre Thomas "Mack" McLarty's business travels through the Americas, we hope the President-elect knows what he's getting into. The Senate has an obligation to inspect and make public the Clinton global fund-raising machine check by check, with names, dates and precise amounts.
In today's Opinion Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Travels With HillaryMumbai and ObamaMore Immigration Losers
TODAY'S COLUMNISTS
Global View: Media Narratives Feed Terrorist Fantasies
– Bret StephensMain Street: What's Good for GM Could Be Good for America
– William McGurn
COMMENTARY
Georgia Acted in Self-Defense
– Mikheil SaakashviliAIG Needs a New Deal
– Maurice R. GreenbergGovernors Against State Bailouts
– Rick Perry and Mark SanfordIn choosing Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama is also hiring someone he can't easily fire. This is usually a mistake, as President Bush learned with Colin Powell. The ability to let an adviser take the blame for a policy blunder is crucial to protecting Presidential credibility. But if Mr. Obama tries to let Mrs. Clinton go, he will be taking on the entire Clinton entourage -- not just Bill, but Carville, Begala, Ickes, Blumenthal, McAuliffe and so on. That same chorus will work to burnish her reputation via media leaks at the expense of her colleagues -- and the President -- when there is a mistake to explain.
Perhaps Mr. Obama will prove to be crafty enough to manage all of this and the other egos he is assembling. One good sign is that his choice as his National Security Adviser, former Marine General James Jones, is a commanding enough presence to mediate bureaucratic disputes. Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice never adequately did that in their first term.
On the other hand, the transition spin that Mr. Obama's Cabinet choices are inspired by Abraham Lincoln's "Team of Rivals" also suggest more than a little hubris. Honest Abe had to deal with jealous advisers and treacherous generals to win the Civil War. We're not sure even that would be adequate preparation for the raucous, uncontrollable political entitlement that has always driven the Clintons.
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And bill's reported interest in the hill's senate seat is obviously designed to hold her seat for her as backup. If politically advangeous for her to quit or be fired as sos she can always return to her seat that the bill is holding for her and launch her run for 2012 from there.
The Clinton's have BO surrounded. Time will tell.
And this whole idea of hill being painted as some sort of centrist is bull. How the clinton team spins and the msm falls for it hook line and sinker.
Does anyone in their right mind actually think that the clintons want BO to be successful?
How can anyone think it is good for us by having a sos whose sole reason d'etere is to promote her own career?
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"Barack Obama's choice of Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State is either a political master stroke, or a classic illustration of the signature self-confidence that will come back to haunt him. We're inclined toward the latter view, but then Mr. Obama is the one who has to live with her -- and her husband."
I think it was VDH who wrote before the election that the only people you see with this much confidence are Ivy League Sophomores, certainly not someone who has ever run a business.
I noticed in his Hillary intro that he took the opportunity to trivialize the sincerity of anything either may have uttered in the context of a contested campaign. Don't confuse marketing with governing. Saying what needed to be said to win votes doesn't mean he meant any of it. Shame on the voters who thought otherwise.
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And anyone could wonder why Americans are not cynical or skeptical of our leaders?
IS he really picking the most qualified candidate as the clintonites suggest or picking one for political reasons which is NOT in our nation's best interests as much as his own.
His own words suggest the latter:
Obama Disputed Hillary Clinton’s Credentials Before He Applauded Them
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
By Matthew Cover
President-elect Obama names Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to be his secretary of state.(AP photo)(CNSNews.com) – President-elect Barack Obama designated Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to be his next secretary of state Monday, despite having spent much of the previous two years questioning her foreign-policy credentials.
During the campaign for the Democratic nomination, Obama mocked Clinton’s primary claim that she possessed the necessary foreign policy experience to be president.
“What exactly is this foreign policy expertise?” Obama said to reporters in March, while flying from a campaign event in Texas. “Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no.”
In spite of these doubts, Obama praised Clinton’s credentials Monday, saying she would be able to advance America’s interests due to her knowledge of world affairs and familiarity with world leaders.
“She is an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence, who knows many of the world's leaders, who will command respect in every capital, and who will clearly have the ability to advance our interests around the world,” he said.
Obama said that his new foreign policy team, which will be led by Clinton, would change America’s foreign policy for the better.
“I am confident that this is the team that we need to make a new beginning for American national security,” he told reporters at the announcement.
However, Obama had expressed exactly the opposite view of Clinton during the primary campaign.
“It’s what’s wrong with politics today. Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected,” Obama said in a January radio ad. “Hillary Clinton. She’ll say anything and change nothing.”
Obama also said Monday that he picked Clinton for her intelligence, toughness and work ethic, noting that his new team would need to pursue a new strategy around the globe.
“She possesses an extraordinary intelligence and toughness, and a remarkable work ethic,” the president-elect said of Clinton.
He added that his new team must “pursue a new strategy that skillfully uses, balances, and integrates all elements of American power: our military and diplomacy, our intelligence and law enforcement, our economy and the power of our moral example.”
But last year, Obama’s campaign specifically said that the candidate didn’t need the advice of someone like Clinton, “someone whose ideas were more in line with those of President George W. Bush” than with Obama’s.
“Barack Obama doesn’t need lectures in political courage from someone who followed George Bush to war in Iraq,” the campaign said in a December 2007 statement.
A few months later, Obama reinforced the sentiments of his campaign, saying that Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy wasn’t the change Americans wanted.
“Real change isn’t voting for George Bush’s war in Iraq and then telling the American people it was actually voting for more diplomacy,” he said in March.
In his introduction of Clinton on Monday, however, Obama also seemed to contradict the prior statements of two of his top incoming advisors; both of whom said that Clinton had never been involved in foreign policy issues before.
Greg Craig, incoming chief counsel, said of Clinton in a March conference call: “There’s no evidence that she participated or asserted herself in any of the crises that took place during the eight years of the Clinton presidency. White House records show that she was consistently absent when critical decisions were being made and that her trips abroad were largely ceremonial.”
Susan Rice, Obama’s choice to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, meanwhile, said that a First Lady doesn’t deal with international issues.
“There is no crisis to be dealt with or managed when you are First Lady,” Rice said in March. “You don't get that kind of experience by being married to a commander-in-chief.”
In the most hotly debated dust-up of the primary season – over Clinton’s famous “3 a.m.” ad asking which candidate would better handle a crisis call at three in the morning -- Obama himself said Clinton had already failed the foreign policy test.
“The question is, what kind of judgment will you exercise when you pick up that phone,” Obama said. “In fact, we’ve had a red-phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. Sen. Clinton gave the wrong answer.”
On Monday, meanwhile, Obama called Clinton “a friend, a colleague, a source of counsel.”
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Don't hire whom you can't fire :lol:
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WSJ
Barack Obama's choice of Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State is either a political master stroke, or a classic illustration of the signature self-confidence that will come back to haunt him. We're inclined toward the latter view, but then Mr. Obama is the one who has to live with her -- and her husband.
APThe President-elect's political calculation seems clear enough: Better to have the Clinton machine as allies than as critics on the outside of his Administration. His early choices are loaded with Clintonians of various stripes, from John Podesta to run his transition team, Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff, Eric Holder at Justice, and now the former first lady herself as chief diplomat.
This is startling for a candidate who explicitly promised Democrats in the primaries that he offered an escape from the Clinton political method. But perhaps Mr. Obama figures any disillusion will be minor and that this will unite the Democratic Party behind him. Much as retaining Robert Gates at the Pentagon may mute attacks from some Republicans, the choice of Mrs. Clinton will help to insulate Mr. Obama from attacks by fellow Democrats. He also disarms the Clinton campaign and fund-raising machinery for any potential challenge in 2012.
These political calculations must be predominant, because Mrs. Clinton brings no special policy expertise to the job. Her best attribute may be her undeniable work ethic. She has focused on foreign policy in her Senate committee assignments, but without much notable influence on policy or events. Her criticism of the Bush foreign policy has echoed the conventional view that the Administration wasn't diligent enough in trying to talk to the Iranians, the North Koreans and other hard cases. In other words, Mrs. Clinton is likely to pick right up where Condoleezza Rice and Nick Burns left off trying to negotiate with these enemies in the second Bush term.
It's also strange if Mr. Obama is trying to invoke the Clinton Presidency as a foreign-policy golden age. We recall it mostly as an era of illusory peace as problems festered with too little U.S. attention. Al Qaeda was left unchecked, Saddam Hussein banished U.N. inspectors and exploited Oil for Food, North Korea embarked on a secret nuclear program, Russia's post-Cold War spring faded, and Pakistan's A.Q. Khan spread nuclear-bomb technology around the world.
Mr. Obama's biggest gamble is associating his Presidency with the Clinton political circus. At least as Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton will have a specific role, as opposed to the ill-defined mandate of a Vice President. (Speaking of the Veep-elect, with Mr. Gates and the Clintons around, what's left for Joe Biden to do? State was the job he's long wanted, and he must be dying inside trying to abide by Team Obama's gag order.)
Flashback: Clinton's Foreign Funders
The Riady Connection – 07/21/00Mr. Gore's Scandal – 03/03/00The Obstruction of Justice Department? – 09/30/99Clinton's Johnny – 04/06/99But that still leaves Bill Clinton and his gift both of irrepressible gab and for inevitable controversy. His post-Presidency has been more or less a vast fund-raising operation -- for himself, his library and legacy, and his charitable causes. Mr. Obama said yesterday that Mr. Clinton has agreed to disclose the 200,000 or so donors to his foundation, and what a list it is likely to be. Look for Arab sheikhs, Latin American monopolists and assorted dubious characters.
The potential for blatant conflicts of interest with Mrs. Clinton's new role is great, and in appointing her Mr. Obama seems to be betting that the disclosure will diminish the problem. Given the Clinton history with the Riadys of Indonesia, Johnny Chung, the Lippo Group and Arkansas compadre Thomas "Mack" McLarty's business travels through the Americas, we hope the President-elect knows what he's getting into. The Senate has an obligation to inspect and make public the Clinton global fund-raising machine check by check, with names, dates and precise amounts.
In today's Opinion Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Travels With HillaryMumbai and ObamaMore Immigration Losers
TODAY'S COLUMNISTS
Global View: Media Narratives Feed Terrorist Fantasies
– Bret StephensMain Street: What's Good for GM Could Be Good for America
– William McGurn
COMMENTARY
Georgia Acted in Self-Defense
– Mikheil SaakashviliAIG Needs a New Deal
– Maurice R. GreenbergGovernors Against State Bailouts
– Rick Perry and Mark SanfordIn choosing Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama is also hiring someone he can't easily fire. This is usually a mistake, as President Bush learned with Colin Powell. The ability to let an adviser take the blame for a policy blunder is crucial to protecting Presidential credibility. But if Mr. Obama tries to let Mrs. Clinton go, he will be taking on the entire Clinton entourage -- not just Bill, but Carville, Begala, Ickes, Blumenthal, McAuliffe and so on. That same chorus will work to burnish her reputation via media leaks at the expense of her colleagues -- and the President -- when there is a mistake to explain.
Perhaps Mr. Obama will prove to be crafty enough to manage all of this and the other egos he is assembling. One good sign is that his choice as his National Security Adviser, former Marine General James Jones, is a commanding enough presence to mediate bureaucratic disputes. Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice never adequately did that in their first term.
On the other hand, the transition spin that Mr. Obama's Cabinet choices are inspired by Abraham Lincoln's "Team of Rivals" also suggest more than a little hubris. Honest Abe had to deal with jealous advisers and treacherous generals to win the Civil War. We're not sure even that would be adequate preparation for the raucous, uncontrollable political entitlement that has always driven the Clintons.
-------------------------------
PD WSJ
President-elect Barack Obama said yesterday that Eric Holder, his nominee for attorney general, "has the combination of toughness and independence" needed for the job.
The key questions here are "toughness" about what and "independence" from whom?
Certainly Mr. Holder was tough during his time as No. 2 official in the Clinton Justice Department. He overrode the recommendations of career prosecutors and consistently carried out Attorney General Janet Reno's "see no evil "approach to the burgeoning Clinton scandals, whether they involved illegal Asian fundraising during the 1996 campaign or Al Gore's "no controlling legal authority" meeting at the Buddhist temple in Los Angeles. In every case, Ms. Reno and her department declined to appoint independent counsels to investigate matters.
As for "independence," Mr. Holder didn't exercise much in the last hours of the Clinton White House, when he was caught up in the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, who had been convicted of oil trading with the radical Islamic regime in Iran. Pressing for a pardon for Mr. Rich was his lawyer, Jack Quinn, a former White House counsel.
After the pardon was granted, it became clear that Mr. Rich didn't even qualify. Under Justice Department guidelines, pardons are supposed to be requested no sooner than five years after the completion of a sentence in a criminal case. As a fugitive, Mr. Rich wasn't eligible since he didn't serve his sentence, but the prosecutors in his case were never consulted about the pardon decision.
Mr. Holder later testified that he told White House counsel Beth Nolan the day before the pardon was issued that he was "neutral, leaning toward favorable" on the matter. The Associated Press also discovered that "to make matters worse, Holder had asked Quinn for his help in becoming attorney general in the event then-Vice President Al Gore won the 2000 election."
Mr. Holder told Congress that with hindsight he wouldn't have supported the pardon, saying he never learned the details of the case amid the flurry of last-minute pardons issued by the White House. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen suggests the pardon episode tells us Mr. Holder "could not say no to power. The Rich pardon request had power written all over it." This is "independence"?
Critics of the pardon spanned party lines, including not only Clinton confidant Lanny Davis but Rep. Henry Waxman, then ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, who called the pardon an end-run around the judicial process. In the press, it was widely noted that Mr. Rich's former wife, Denise, has contributed $450,000 to Mr. Clinton's presidential library, $1.1 million to the Democratic Party and at least $109,000 to Hillary Clinton's Senate candidacy.
All in all, Mr. Holder seems an odd choice to bring "real change" and the new ethical tone that President-elect Obama promised during the campaign. Here's hoping Senators don't give the charming but slippery Mr. Holder a pass during his confirmation hearings.
-- John Fund
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By NEIL KING JR.
WASHINGTON -- James Jones, President-elect Barack Obama's new national security adviser, said a U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan will work only if other changes take hold there, including a strengthening of the judiciary and national police force.
Retired Marine Gen. James Jones, President-elect Barack Obama's pick for national-security adviser, says that a troop surge in Afghanistan will work only if an effort is also made to bolster the government.
In an interview Tuesday, the retired Marine Corps general said Mr. Obama's campaign pledge to move as many as 10,000 U.S. troops from Iraq to Afghanistan must mesh with a concentrated international effort to bolster government and eradicate the vast heroin trade.
"You can always put more troops into Afghanistan," he said. "But if that's all you do, you will just be prolonging the problem."
Gen. Jones's prescription for what ails Afghanistan offers a glimpse at the role he will likely play as Mr. Obama's right-hand man on national security and the top foreign-policy referee within the White House.
In announcing Gen. Jones this week as his pick to head the National Security Council, Mr. Obama emphasized the general's military and diplomatic experience. "He has commanded a platoon in battle, served as supreme allied commander in a time of war, and worked on behalf of peace in the Middle East," Mr. Obama said Monday.
More
WSJ's Neil King talked with James Jones, Obama's new national security adviser. Read some excerpts from their interview.
Gen. Jones will have to mediate between the likes of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was nominated as secretary of state. The Obama White House also will teem with such strong personalities as Rep. Rahm Emanuel, named as chief of staff, and Larry Summers, the incoming head of the National Economic Council.
For his part, Gen. Jones tends toward the sober and methodical. He said he has "every reason to believe" the team can work together. "We have a serious boatload of problems facing us and the only way out of it is for us all to pull on the same oar," he said. Gen. Jones's friends say that despite 40 years in the Marines Corps, his conversations are profanity-free. The general has a penchant for words like "holistic" and "embryonic."
Mr. Obama has often mentioned the need to turn more U.S. military attention toward Afghanistan, and describes South Asia as the biggest menace to U.S. security.
The Jones pick met with approval from European diplomats, many of whom know the general from his years in Belgium as the military head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But Gen. Jones put much of the blame for Afghanistan's deepening woes on NATO's military effort that he said "has let too many things slip through the cracks."
An internationalist at heart, Gen. Jones said the incoming administration is eager to enlist the support of Europe and the rest of the world to grapple with the challenge of Iran and its nuclear program. He said it was too early to talk specifics on Iran policy.
Gen. Jones brings an unusual resume to the White House post. He spoke English and French as a child in Paris, where his father was an International Harvester executive. He played basketball at Georgetown University, where he graduated from the School of Foreign Service before joining the Marine Corps. He commanded a platoon for two years in Vietnam. In the early 1980s, he served as a Marine liaison to the Senate. His boss was the future Sen. John McCain.
Obama's Advisers
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See some of the people expected to join the new administration.
He also has nurtured close ties to the Democrats, serving as a senior military assistant in the Clinton Pentagon, and then as Marine commandant. Under President Bush, he became the military head of NATO in 2003 and took charge of all U.S. forces in Europe.
Gen. Jones spent most of the last two years running an energy task force at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a job that he said reinforced his conviction that the U.S. "urgently needs a comprehensive energy strategy." He intends to make that quest a key part of his new job, and to enlarge the National Security Council to include a top energy adviser.
Gen. Jones also hit on a key foreign-policy theme of the incoming administration: that the U.S. must be judicious in its use of hard power. "There is power and then there is influence," he said. "If we say what we mean and do what we say, that will help forgo the classic use of power in the military sense."
The international fascination with this year's presidential election, Gen. Jones said, reinforced his view that U.S. influence isn't waning as rapidly as some critics say. "I am not ready to concede yet that American era is behind us," he said.
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I think Dick makes good points but I still think the he/cans don't quite get it. I am really attracted to BO's analytic approach. I personally like the idea of dealing with our country's problems by getting all the ideas on the table and finding the best course of action. BO learns all points of view and then tries to find something that connects the dots. The cans do not have many intellectuals pols who seem to look at all points of view and make a logical rational analytic argument as to why their way is best.
They just yell the usual slogans, freedom, less government, less taxes yada yada yada. Explain to me how our country is going to deal with the problems we face today with just these slogans. Where are any intellectuals from the right telling us why the left is wrong - if they are. Sarah Palin cannot do this (at least not yet). And that is why she will not win one independent of left person over.
<<<< OBAMA-HILLARY COALITIONGEORGIA RESULTS POINT OUT STRATEGY FOR FUTURE
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann 12.4.2008 We have written before that the message of the November election results for us is simple: Conservatism and the free enterprise system are too important to leave their protection to the morons who run the Republican Party! So when even the ability to filibuster seemed on the verge of being taken from the forces of conservative government, we decided to act directly by helping to raise funds for independent expenditure groups who willing to run the kind of ads and do the sort of cyber-roots campaigning that it seemed to us was essential to stop the slide in conservative fortunes and to guarantee that the Democrats would not get the elusive but crucial 60th vote in the Senate. The challenge presented itself on Election Day when Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss failed to win the 50% of the vote necessary to avoid a runoff. In the runoff, won by Chambliss this past Tuesday, the Democrats had their final shot at getting the 60 votes they will need in the Senate to cut off debate and jam through any legislation they wish.
Over the past four weeks, we have reached out to you and to the Fox News audience for donations to independent expenditure groups to finance their independent expenditure in the Georgia Senate race. We didn’t ask anyone’s permission or co-ordinate with any of the powers-that-be. These organizations grasped the essential point that the way to appeal to Georgia voters was to explain the Senate rules and to underscore that Obama might be able to pass his most radical agenda — unchecked — if the Democrats won in the Georgia Senate runoff which pitted Chambliss against Democratic challenger Jim Martin.
The geniuses who run the Republican Party, as always, had it wrong. The conventional wisdom was that Chambliss should stress his record and Martin’s liberalism as if the national balance in the Senate were not on the line. But we insisted that the essential point that it was the fact that Chambliss was the potential 60th seat that would impel Georgians to flock to the polls. Independent expenditure groups ran almost a million dollars of ads in Georgia (a huge amount for a medium sized state) emphasizing the need to stop Obama from getting a super majority in the Senate.
And it worked. Where most polls had projected a narrow Chambliss victor of two to four points, he won with a resounding fourteen point margin. Rather than being trampled by a rush of Democratic voters, the Republican candidate was propelled to a big victory by a huge conservative turnout, no doubt impelled and catalyzed by the efforts of media and internet campaigning financed by independent expenditure groups!
Now, even if the Democrats cheat Minnesota out of the services of Senator Norm Coleman and put Al Franken in his place, the filibuster will be safe, a weapon to defend our freedom.
This is the second time that this strategy of using independent expenditure groups to get out the right message has worked. When McCain disdained any media which attacked Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, independent expenditure groups jumped in and aired ads exposing the relationship. The result was that instead of Obama cruising to the predicted ten to twelve point victory forecast in most polls, the undecided vote all broke against him and he won by only six points – not enough to win the supermajority he coveted in the Senate. And this week, his efforts were frustrated again by the Chambliss win in Georgia.
So this sets the pattern for resistance to Obama’s socialist agenda over the next four years. When a crucial test is underway, we will appeal for your donations to independent expenditure groups to wage the battle with no holds barred. And, together, maybe we can do a lot to save the country!>>>>
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"I am really attracted to BO's analytic approach."
His temperament/disposition seem quite good.
"I personally like the idea of dealing with our country's problems by getting all the ideas on the table and finding the best course of action."
And this is exactly what worries me. It is simply another variation of "the best and the brightest" approach that has been tried before and left disasters in its wake. There ARE certain Facts of Life that governmental edict cannot fcuk with. It cannot repeal the law of gravity and it cannot repeal the law of supply and demand (e.g. taxes and regulations on productivity) or repeal certain Darwinian realities. Ultimately it is Hayek's "fatal conceit" that the best and the birghtest are better than the Invisible Hand of the Tao (a.k.a. "the Market")
"BO learns all points of view and then tries to find something that connects the dots."
And this too concerns me. I worry that the man's gift for glibness leaves him deluding himself as much as it does others into believing that all conflict can be finessed. It is no accident that this thread's name includes the term "cognitive dissonance" :evil: :lol: I hope he is not our next Jimmy Carter.
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Crafty,
I do not say you are wrong. You may be right.
But how about proving it to me?
Simply saying the Dems are wrong is what bothers me and the majority of Americans. We have other countries that are now moving up to our economic level and competing with us. We have issues and problems the free markets may not be able to address.
And actually one idea to always be on the table is DO NOTHING.
This should be on the table. But it is Cans *responsibility* to explain in a thoughtful way why this is best. I am convinced we shouldn't have big government. I am also convinced we can't have total dregulation and allow greed to go unchecked. There has to be a balance. Both are needed. You have the left that wants a nanny governmnet that soves everything and you have the right saying government is for military, law and order and that's about it. Both are wrong. The answer is in the middle. And that is where the majority of Americans lie. Why can't any cans address this????
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I also look forward to more from Crafty and others on this. Especially for CCP to offer specific ideas of what middle ground we can find between free enterprise and a centrally planned, social engineering based model.
The answer I believe to runaway profits and greed is competition. There isn't a problem with people acting in the best interest of themselves, their family or their business until we build artificial barriers for new competition. I would be hard-pressed to point out obscene wealth without finding some form of government imposed barriers to competition.
You might recall the books by Harvard Prof. Clayton Christensen regarding creative destruction. Technological monopolies are temporary and the one who holds the monopoly is in the worst position to develop and introduce the new, disrupting technology of the next cycle.
Same with heirs and second generations of wealth. Which Rockefellers for example now control new business sectors with risk taking and new innovation or are they all just in the business of giving it away?
Obscene profits from energy and oil come from anti-supply legislation. Drilling restrictions would seem to hurt the suppliers, but as OPEC knows so well is that anything that artificially restricts supply and locks out competition actually boosts the profits of those who already have supply. Just like minimum wage laws mostly boost those who already have a job.
In auto manufacturing, no one but a UAW member with the exact same contract can work any particular job. There is zero competition and zero incentive for innovation.
Yet look at freer industries and you sees products improve faster, prices fall faster and new products overtake old one faster.
CCP: "it is [Republi]Cans *responsibility* to explain in a thoughtful way why this (freedom in markets) is best."
Absolutely, that is the key IMO. Very few can explain the benefits of free markets and certainly not in soundbites. Also it is next to impossible in the context of your opponent running millions of dollars of simplified soundbites, e.g. 'my opponent voted against the minimum wage' or supported 'tax cuts for the wealthy'. Explaining that the alternative would involve choosing government at the federal level to establish private sector wages at the local levels, and to explain the oddity that real tax cuts necessarily go to those who pay the taxes just isn't that easy.
Rightsizing government involves getting the public sector to do what it does best and the private sector to do what it does best, a question that never seems to get asked. We need to stop the blending and overlap of private and public, GSEs, fannie Mae, and governments picking winners and propping up losers. It isn't that we don't have or need investigators and regulators like the SEC, Justice Dept. and Senate Banking Committee. It's that they need to get focused and up to speed with stopping frauds and the anti-competitive schemes of our time.
On the other extreme, Obama could not even put someone into his administration from the private sector to head "Commerce" and has no one on his economic team that ever started a business.
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There is a posting on the political economics thread that is pertinate to the discusion of free markets in this thread. It was a real eye opener for me and should be referenced here. It is number 138 by Sb MIG. I am not sure how to link to it here but here is an attempt.,http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1467.msg23266#msg23266 (http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1467.msg23266#msg23266)
The gist I took away was we do not have free markets and big business does not want free markets. When liberals say free markets don't work IMHO they are referring to the markets we have now and not true free markets. Just stirring the pot have a look at Sb Mig's post.
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Much agreement with what Doug just said.
"the right saying government is for military, law and order and that's about it."
IF ONLY THIS WERE TRUE OF THE REPUBLICANS THESE PAST EIGHT YEARS!! As Freki's post comments just now, the Republican Party is often the Patrician Party of the Pachyderms of Big Business.
There ARE people with the the Republican Party who can do this-- first and foremost IMHO is Newt Gingrich. Unfortunately he allowed the Fred Thompson boomlet, which I suspect he was as appealing to the same constituencies as he would, to deter him from running. Fred also can be an articulate advocate (see e.g. the URL of the clip of him I posted the other day on the Meltdown on , , , I think it was Political Rants) but by being a lazy fcuk during the campaign, he wasted the oportunity for Newt.
A busy day ahead of me. This is all the comment I have time for at the moment. I will close by commenting that if you want what I believe to be some rather good advocacy, then in this forum you have come to the right place :-D
Speaking of which, if we want to continue on this particular point, may I suggest that the Political Economics thread is where we do it?
TAC!
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Paul Moreno
Obama and the "Second Bill of Rights"
Have we given up not just the Constitution, but the Declaration of Independence as well? An Obama presidency, with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, could go a long way toward the completion of a European-style social welfare state that was begun in the New Deal.
In a 2001 interview on Chicago public radio, Obama lamented that “the Supreme Court never ventured into the issue of the redistribution of wealth.” The problem, he said, was that the court “didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution… that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberty.”
In this perhaps unguarded moment, Obama became one of the few liberal politicians candid enough to admit that the Constitution poses a fundamental obstacle to their agenda.
This is a popular theory in academic circles. It is the fundamental argument of Cass Sunstein, a colleague of Obama’s at the University of Chicago Law School (now on his way to Harvard), who is often mentioned as an Obama adviser and potential Supreme Court nominee, and the author of The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We need it More than Ever.
The second bill of rights idea derived from two famous speeches that Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave—one at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club during the 1932 campaign and his 1944 annual message to Congress. In the Commonwealth Club address, he spoke of the advent of “enlightened administration,” which would redistribute resources in accordance with an “economic declaration of rights.” In his 1944 message to Congress, Roosevelt said that “our rights to life and liberty”—the negative liberty to which Obama referred, had “proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.” He claimed that “In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights.” This bill of rights included the right to a job, the right to food and recreation, the right to adequate farm prices, the right to a decent home, the right to medical care, and the right to a good education.
Of course, these are not “rights” at all—not in the sense that the framers and ratifiers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution used the term--but entitlements. From the founding until the twentieth century, the American regime assumed that government’s purpose was to secure pre-existing natural rights—such life, liberty, property, or association. Everyone can exercise such rights simultaneously; nobody’s exercise of his own rights limits anyone else’s similar exercise. Your right to life or to work or to vote does not take anything away from anyone else. We can all pursue happiness at once. Entitlements, on the other hand, require someone else to provide me with the substantive good that the exercise of rights pursues. The right to work, for example, is fundamentally different from the right (entitlement) to a job; the right to marry does not entitle me to a spouse; the right to free speech does not entitle me to an audience.
The New Deal is often described as a “constitutional revolution.” In fact, it was much more than that. It involved a rejection not just of the structure and principles of the Constitution, but those of the theory of natural rights in the Declaration of Independence—that, as Jefferson put it, governments are instituted in order to secure our rights. Roosevelt envisioned not a new constitution, but a new idea of what Sunstein calls “a nation’s constitutive commitments.”
As to this problem, Sunstein says that “The best response to those who believe that the second bill of rights does not protect rights at all is just this: unembarrassed evasion.”
Roosevelt anticipated no constitutional problem for the New Deal, for “Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form.”
Of course, there were severe constitutional problems with the New Deal, and Roosevelt ended up in a nasty campaign to “pack” the Supreme Court, the political reaction to which effectively ended the New Deal.
The economic bill of rights agenda has proceeded in fits and starts ever since, under the labels Fair Deal, Great Society and, it may be, whatever slogan will attach to “spreading the wealth around.”
Obama and academic liberals lament that the Supreme Court, once under the control of liberals in the Warren years, didn’t do more to advance economic equality. And most observers think that Obama will only have the chance to replace retiring liberals with new liberals on the current Court. The larger point is that liberals won’t need the court to implement the economic bill of rights, so complete will their majority be in the political branches.
Thus the real “change” for the American people, as Obama so candidly put it, is whether we want to repeal not just the Constitution, but the Declaration of Independence, in order to establish an entitlement state, or not.
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/58356.html
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Exactly so.
I am in most hearty agreement with BBG about the primal importance of what is at stake here.
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http://www.reason.com/news/show/130594.html
We Are the Green Team
Will Obama's environmental advisors spearhead a new global warming treaty by next year?
Ronald Bailey | December 16, 2008
On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama revealed the "Green Team" that will guide his energy and climate change policies. Its members include Nobel physicist Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy; former New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection chief Lisa Jackson as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Carol Browner, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton, as the White House's "energy/climate czar," a position tasked with leading the Obama administration's battle against man-made global warming.
Their nominations came just after the United Nations' annual climate change conference sputtered to an indecisive close at Poznań, Poland last week. Climate negotiators from nearly 190 countries made little headway toward a new global warming treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. At the Bali climate change conference in 2007, negotiators promised that the world would adopt binding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions limits at the 2009 Copenhagen conference.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, industrialized nations are supposed to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases—chiefly carbon dioxide—by an average of 5 percent below the levels emitted in 1990. According to the latest United Nations data, the emissions from former Soviet Bloc Kyoto Protocol signatories fell 37 percent, largely due to the collapse of their economies. On the other hand, emissions from modern industrialized Kyoto signatories rose by 3.7 percent. For example, between 1990 and 2004, Canada's emissions increased 27 percent, Australia's 25 percent, Japan's 6.5 percent, Italy's 12 percent, Turkey's 72 percent, and Spain's 49 percent. Emissions from non-Kyoto parties rose steeply from 1990 levels as well, including China's by 47 percent, India's by 55 percent, and the United States' by 16 percent. China is now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. In fact, global emissions grew by 28 percent during this decade, three times faster than the 9 percent increase that occurred in the 1990s.
Turning these global emissions trends around may be much harder than United Nations analysts previously thought. A sobering new study in the journal Climate Research by researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado, for instance, suggests that it is unlikely that most developing countries will be able to afford new low-carbon energy technologies on their own. "There is simply no evidence that developing countries will somehow become wealthier and be in a position to install more environmentally friendly technologies," says Patricia Romero Lankao, an NCAR sociologist who is the lead author of the study. The study projects that the economic growth of many poor countries will overwhelm increases in energy efficiency, resulting in ever higher emissions of greenhouse gases.
During the negotiations at Poznań, representatives of the developing countries pointed out that rich countries have loaded up the atmosphere with extra carbon dioxide as their economies grew. They argued that as a matter of climate justice, poor countries can either use cheap carbon-based energy to lift their people out of poverty or else rich countries can agree to install more expensive low-carbon energy production technologies in their countries. As part of a new global climate treaty, poor countries want rich countries to pay $50 to $80 billion per year into a climate adaptation fund to finance their energy transformation. Why this form of foreign aid would be any more effective than the massive failed programs of the past is not addressed.
For years, the United States has been cast as the villain in the global warming negotiations, contrasted against the ecological saints that make up the European Union. However, during the Poznań conference, EU leaders squabbled over a plan to reduce the EU's emissions by 20 percent below their 1990 levels by 2020. Disappointed environmental activists argue that this commitment is a "mirage," and that the EU will actually cut its emissions by around 4 percent.
Meanwhile, the world waits to see what Barack Obama will do. During the campaign, Obama pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020—which implies a decrease of 16 percent from current emissions. In order to do this, Obama wants to impose a cap-and-auction system that would ration the amount of greenhouse gases that businesses would be allowed to emit. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), who opposes carbon emissions limits, has dubbed Obama's proposal a "cap-and-tax" scheme. Each year, under Obama's plan, the feds would set the number of tons of greenhouse gases that could be emitted and then auction that number of permits to the companies and organizations that need to emit them. Thus the auction functions as a variable tax on carbon.
Besides raising revenue for the government, the goal of such a rationing scheme is to increase the price of energy produced by burning fossil fuels, thus spuring the development of low-carbon and no-carbon energy supplies. At his press conference introducing his new Green Team, Obama promised to address the "long-term threat of climate change" with "a 21st-century economic recovery plan that puts Americans to work building wind farms, solar panels, and fuel-efficient cars." But will the Obama administration be ready to cut a deal on a new global climate change treaty at Copenhagen one year from now?
Some political progressives don't think so. For example, Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, told the Associated Press, "The U.S. won't be in a position to negotiate with specific targets and timetables in 2009." Why? Because she thinks that the new Obama administration won't have time to finish domestic climate change legislation by next December. In addition, Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, noted at his ClimateProgress blog, "It is all but inconceivable that Obama can deliver the 67 votes in the Senate needed to ratify a global climate treaty—no matter what happens in the 12 months between Poznań and Copenhagen."
Inconceivable? Well, yes. As Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Obama's emissary at the Poznań talks, explained to Reuters, "What's important is that we go to Copenhagen understanding that no treaty is going to pass the U.S. Senate unless it is a global solution. China, India, Russia—all countries have to be part of the solution." The big, rapidly growing developing countries must make some kind of commitment to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions, or it's a no-go in the U.S. Senate. On Monday, President-elect Obama also stated, "Just as we work to reduce our own emissions, we must forge international solutions to ensure that every nation is doing its part." Recall that back in 1997, the U.S. Senate voted 95 to 0 for a resolution opposing any global warming treaty that did not include emissions reduction commitments from developing countries. As a result, President Bill Clinton never bothered to submit the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate for ratification.
President-elect Obama and his Green Team have their work cut out for them if they plan to meet the Copenhagen deadline. They must persuade not just American citizens but citizens of both rich and poor countries that they will have to start paying substantially more to heat and cool their homes, drive their cars, and run their factories in order to avert the indeterminate threat of man-made global warming.
Ronald Bailey is reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.
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NOAA's Ark
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, December 22, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Transition: President-elect Obama chooses as his science adviser and head of our weather research agency two global warming activists who believe your SUV is driving us over a climate cliff.
Personnel is policy, the political cliche goes, and on Saturday the Obama administration's policy on global warming became clear.
He nominated Harvard physicist John Holden to be his science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, and marine biologist Jane Lubchenco to head to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Both are global warming true believers. "Global warming is a misnomer," Holden said a year ago in a speech at Harvard. "It implies something gradual, something uniform, something quite possibly benign, and what we're experiencing is none of those. There is already widespread harm . . . occurring from climate change. This is not just a problem for our children and grandchildren."
There is indeed widespread harm being done by changes in the weather as the nation is gripped by subzero cold and record snowfalls that have reached spots like Las Vegas and Malibu, Calif. The earth is cooling and has been for the last decade due to a decline in solar activity and changes in Pacific Ocean currents.
Holden's proposed cures to warming are, well, interesting. In that Harvard speech last November, he presented a "top 10" list of options. No. 1 was "limiting population," as if man was a plague upon the Earth, a major tenet of green dogma.
Never mind that with more bodies come more minds and more ideas for cleaner and more efficient technology. He does not say how we would do that. Adopt China's one-child policy perhaps?
Second on his list was reducing per capita GDP. Holden's long term goal is "equal per-capita emissions rights," meaning that a country may only emit an amount of carbon commensurate to the number of its persons, not on the basis of its production.
For example, the U.S. would be allowed to release only about 20 times as much carbon as Ecuador, although the U.S. produces 144 times the goods and services.
Interestingly, he puts nuclear power at No. 7, calling it a risky waste-producing option that includes the danger of proliferation. Never mind that here and around the world nuclear power has reduced the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by billions of tons. France gets 80% of its electricity from the atom, recycles its waste, and no one in the City of Lights glows in the dark.
And after the U.S. economy tanks, he says America and the rest of the developed world must pay "the up-front costs, offering assistance to developing countries," as they move to the new, green economy. This would be a global redistribution of wealth, but we have to spread the green around.
As for Lubchenco, she has warned that even if the world abruptly shifts away from fossil fuels, the oceans will continue to soak up carbon dioxide and become more acidic. She recommends protecting marine life by reducing overfishing, cutting back on nutrient runoff and creating marine reserves to protect marine ecosystems.
The irony here is that offshore oil platforms have been demonstrably good for marine life by serving as artificial reefs. Louisiana fishing tours head right for the offshore rigs where fish feed and congregate.
Much of the nutrient runoff she mentions is caused by the increased planting of crops for biofuels such as ethanol to replace petroleum. This has created dead zones for marine life in places like Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico while raising food prices around the globe.
This is change and advice we'd be wise to ignore.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=314842335792193
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This could be filed a lot of places, but with a trillion dollar trough planned, there will be a lot of swine emerging.
Corruption's cost, beyond Blagojevich
'Rent-seeking' hurts society and perverts the work of government.
By Donald J. Boudreaux
from the December 23, 2008 edition
Fairfax, Va. - Gordon Tullock is not a household name. It's a shame that he's not. In contrast, disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is a household name. It's a shame that he is.
These two men have little in common except that Mr. Tullock, an eminent economist, is the first scholar who systematically grasped and explained why the actions of politicians such as Mr. Blagojevich are so harmful to the rest of us.
It takes no genius to understand why Blagojevich sought to enrich his purse and enlarge his power by allegedly trying to sell a US Senate seat. Four-year-old children understand self-interest and aren't shocked by it. And all sensible adults understand that politicians are no less self-interested than are bankers or beauty queens. As H.L. Mencken observed long ago about homo politicus: "...it is to his interest to augment his powers at all hazards, and to make his compensation all the traffic will bear."
Understanding just how actions such as Blagojevich's create widespread harm, however, is more involved than it appears.
Obviously, a governor who uses his appointment powers to feather his own nest is a scoundrel. And such ill-begotten appointees are likely to be inferior, so the public suffers.
But this is only the tip of the antisocial iceberg. As Tullock first recognized (in a paper published in 1967), enormous amounts of resources – including human talent – are wasted in the pursuit of government privileges.
The income derived from possessing a special privilege is called "rent" (which, by the way, has nothing to do with the monthly payments that tenants make to landlords). Rents themselves are just a transfer of value from some people to others. So, for example, when each American pays an extra $10 annually for sugar because of the special protections that Uncle Sam gives to American sugar farmers, that $10 winds up in the hands of sugar farmers. Each of us who doesn't grow sugar is worse off by $10, while those who do grow it are better off by the sum total.
Sugar consumers' losses are balanced by sugar farmers' gains. On net, then, it appears that society comes out even.
But that's not the case. Tullock's insight is that the very ability of government to create lucrative special privileges diverts resources from socially productive pursuits into wasteful ones.
Knowing that government is willing and able to impose tariffs that will protect them from foreign competition – and knowing that such protection will raise their incomes – sugar farmers understandably spend some of their resources farming government rather than farming their land.
Such lobbying can reap advantages worth millions. So it's understandable that companies spend considerable effort courting politicians who can bestow such privileges. That's wasteful. Time, energy, and other materials that could be used to expand the output or improve the quality of goods and services are instead used to lobby government for narrow benefits that may harm society at large. And the larger the potential gain from being granted such a privilege – that is, the larger the rents – the more intense will be rent-seekers' incentives to chase after them. That puts tremendous pressure on – and gives tremendous leverage to – politicians.
It's easy to look at the Blagojevich case and see a failure of personal ethics. It is about character. But it's also about how government itself creates the very conditions for corruption. Think of all the special privileges governors can bestow: subsidies for stadiums, public-works contracts, special taxes and fees, not to mention myriad regulations with myriad loopholes. Chief executives – mayors, governors, and presidents – are supposed to be the chief enforcers of the law. Today, though, they are also chief bestowers of privileges. As such, the trading of favors is intense, leaving little bandwidth for actual public service. Society loses.
He didn't use the phrase "rent seeking," but Blagojevich captured the toll it takes in an interview he gave in 2005: "There's a loneliness and a certain sadness [to this job] because you have to isolate yourself to some extent. There are so many people who want so many different things from you." He was more right than he knew. Blagojevich's shenanigans – though probably illegal in ways that grants of other special privileges aren't – are nevertheless appropriately seen as a product of the rent-seeking culture that today's increasingly unconstrained government engenders.
During the campaign, both Barack Obama and John McCain pledged to limit the influence of lobbyists and special interests. But you can't stop politics as usual when government grows. And as Washington embarks on a trillion-dollar-plus shopping spree, the conditions that cultivate rent-seeking – and thus corruption – are sure to grow, too.
The antidotes for this poison are integrity and constitutionally limited government. The need for them has never been greater.
• Donald J. Boudreaux, a professor of economics at George Mason University, is the author of "Globalization."
Find this article at:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1223/p09s01-coop.html
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The most thoughtful and interesting debate of the two-year-long presidential campaign occurred last August at Saddleback Church between John McCain and Barack Obama, moderated by Saddleback pastor Rick Warren. So it is notable that President-elect Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at his Inauguration next month has brought forth hyperpartisan invective from the Democratic left. It has spent the past week conveying to the world its disappointment and disgust with the choice of Pastor Warren because he opposes gay marriage and abortion.
APJoe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said that "By inviting Rick Warren to your Inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender [LGBT] Americans have a place at your table."
The head of People for the American Way, Kathryn Kolbert, is "deeply disappointed." She says Mr. Obama should have picked someone with "consistent mainstream American values."
Perhaps the most telling comment came from a "very disappointed" Rep. Barney Frank, who pointed out that during the campaign Senator Obama's "stated commitment to LGBT rights won him the strong support of the great majority of those who support that cause." Mr. Frank is putting down a marker; the left will monitor whether the new President deserves their continued support after the Warren-blessed Inauguration.
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During the famous and corrosive Culture Wars, both sides accused the other of unremitting intolerance. Our own longstanding view has been that conferring protected legal status on the most politicized issues in those disputes, such as abortion and gay marriage, properly belongs inside the political system of the states, where diverse populations can work toward a political settlement.
Californians did so in November when they voted to pass Prop. 8, in effect disapproving of legal status for gay marriage. Rick Warren, an evangelical minister, as well as the Mormon Church worked for Prop. 8's passage. It won by about 52% to 47%.
Afterwards, some gay leaders said their side would have to work harder to make more voters understand their arguments. More publicized, though, were the acts of retribution taken by gay activists in California against individuals whom campaign-contributions showed to have supported Prop. 8. Some were forced out of their jobs.
For about a generation, many on the left have believed that active and unapologetic intolerance of the right was justified because its views on matters such as abortion and gay rights were simply unacceptable. This moral somersault may work for them, but to the average American voter, a full-throated assault on the likes of Rick Warren for being "wrong" on two of many issues looks like simple intolerance.
The person in this drama for whom the leftwing Democratic habit of moralized intolerance could be a problem is Barack Obama. The left loaded up heavily in its support of candidate Obama, first against the Clinton machine -- always thought to be too willing to compromise with the center -- and then in the general campaign. These elements in the Democratic Party know what they want Barack Obama to deliver on judges, the environment, global warming and lifestyle rights litigation.
Mr. Obama's choice of Rick Warren for the Inaugural's invocation suggests that he is intent on using the momentum of his remarkable victory to build a governing coalition for the long haul. The silver lining for Republicans may be that the left won't let him do that.
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I admit I was a bit surprised at the level of intensity of anger leveled at BO particularly on MSNBC,
Yet I question what the choice of Rick Warren means since it is purely and solely a symbolic gesture and PR move rather than anything of substance. I am suspect that this is a superficial ploy to lull the right into complacency while the choices that matter with regard to real policy change will be as left as BO can get away with.
Others have posed this thought as well.
I don't yet believe BO is forming any kind of coalition between right and left for the "long haul". We shall see.
Why is it gays think they have to scream their arguments at us even louder as though that will be effective? It is simply annoying me more as probably with many other people.
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Arguably it IS effective-- at least some are intimidated.
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Warning: the author has conservative views on some subjects, and disclosure: I omitted the last part of the column where she went on to criticize the chance that Obama will favor free trade... one of the few things that Bill Clinton got right.
Comments about the UN came up here recently on a different subject. Same goes for Law of the Sea Treaty - don't join organizations where countries like Cuba have an equal vote to that of the U.S. Even if they gave us 50 votes we should stay away from treaties that lead to international taxation and-or loss of freedom and sovereignty. - Doug
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Obama's Plan to Rejoin the World Community
by Phyllis Schlafly
http://townhall.com/columnists/PhyllisSchlafly/2008/12/23/obamas_plan_to_rejoin_the_world_community?page=full&comments=true
When Candidate Barack Obama declared himself a "citizen of the world" before thousands of cheering German socialists, and later pledged to "rejoin the World Community," those weren't just his usual platitudes about "change." Those words sounded the trumpet for his specific and far-reaching globalist agenda.
Obama plans to use his presidential power to get the Democratic-majority Senate to ratify a series of treaties that would take us a long way toward global rule over our money, our laws, our military, our courts, our customs, our trade and even our use of energy. Here are the treaties he says he wants.
The U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which Ronald Reagan rejected in 1982, is high on Obama's list. LOST has already created the International Seabed Authority (ISA) in Jamaica and given it total regulatory jurisdiction over all the world's oceans and all the riches on the ocean floor.
Corrupt foreign dictators dominate LOST's global bureaucracy, and the United States would have the same vote as Cuba. Likewise for LOST's International Tribunal in Hamburg, Germany, which has the power to decide all disputes.
Even worse, LOST gives the ISA the power to levy international taxes. The real purpose of the taxing power is to compel the United States to spend billions of private-enterprise dollars to mine the ocean floor and then let ISA bureaucrats transfer our wealth to socialist, anti-American nations.
Next on Obama's list is the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which was signed by Bill Clinton but rejected by the Senate in 1999. It would prohibit all nuclear explosive testing and thereby allow our nuclear arsenal to deteriorate until the American people are defenseless against rogue regimes such as Iran and North Korea.
A new Global Warming Treaty is starting to be written at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Poland in order to replace the Kyoto Agreement, which George W. Bush and our Senate refused to ratify. The new treaty would force dramatic reductions in our use of energy -- i.e., our standard of living -- and impose the "strong international norms" that Obama seeks.
Obama is toadying to his feminist friends by pushing ratification of the U.N. Treaty on Women, known as CEDAW. It was signed by Jimmy Carter in 1980 and persistently promoted by Hillary Clinton, but the Senate has so far had the good judgment to refuse to ratify it.
This treaty would require us "to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women," to follow U.N. dictates about "family education," to revise our textbooks to conform to feminist ideology in order to ensure "the elimination of any stereotyped concept of the roles of men and women" and to set up a federal "network of child-care facilities."
Article 16 would require us to allow women "to decide number and spacing of their children." Everyone recognizes this as feminist jargon for a U.N. obligation to allow abortion on demand.
Like all U.N. treaties, the U.N. Treaty on Women creates a monitoring commission of so-called "experts" to ensure compliance. The monitors of the Treaty on Women have already singled out Mother's Day as a stereotype that must be eliminated.
Another U.N. Treaty on the list is the U.N. Treaty on the Rights of the Child, which was signed in 1995 by Bill Clinton but wisely never ratified by our Senate. This is a pet project of the people who believe that the "village" (i.e., the government or U.N. "experts") should raise children rather than their parents.
This treaty would give children rights against their parents and society to express their own views "freely in all matters," to receive information of all kinds through "media of the child's choice," to use their "own language," and to have the right to "rest and leisure." This treaty even orders our schools to teach respect for "the Charter of the United Nations."
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As we complete the appointment of Democrats to the senate in 5 states: MN, DE, CO, IL and NY - to make 59 Democrats joining however many RINO's that share no show no affinity to principles of conservatism or constitutional limits, on a positive note I wanted to point out that 'control' of the senate requires 67 votes, not 51 or 60 as commonly quoted. Major changes require 2/3 of the senate including ratifying treaties, starting the amendment process and convicting the impeached.
Don't let them hide those types of changes, Kyoto for example or new government powers, in ordinary bills.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/05/obama-names-clinton-crony-whos-never-worked-in-intelligence-to-head-cia/
Ok, so now the empty suit places another empty suit in charge of the CIA. What could possibly go wrong? :roll:
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http://formerspook.blogspot.com/
Monday, January 05, 2009
The Wrong Choice
More than a few spooks, current and former, are shaking their heads over the appointment of Leon Panetta as the next CIA Director.
Mr. Panetta is the consummate Washington insider who is best know as Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff during the Monica Lewinsky episode. Before that, he was Clinton's first Director of the Office of Management and Budget and a Democratic Congressman from California for 16 years, serving primarily on the Budget and Agriculture Committees.
In the early days of his political life, Panetta was actually a Republican, working as an aide to California Senator Thomas Kuchel before joining the Nixon Administration. During his first stint in Washington, Panetta served as assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and later ran the Office for Civil Rights. He left the administration--and the GOP--in 1971, accusing the White House of being "soft" on enforcement of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
Readers will note a common theme in Panetta's professional life: the wholesale lack of intelligence experience. While Mr. Panetta is certainly acquainted with the intel community and his capabilities, he has never served (let alone, led) an intelligence organization, or served on a Congressional panel charged with its oversight.
To be fair, many CIA Directors have come from outside the intelligence community. And, some of them, such as John McCone, who served during the Kennedy Administration, have performed admirably. At the other extreme, some of the career intelligence officers (or those with prior intel experience) have been miserable failures. So, Panetta's limited exposure to the intelligence community doesn't disqualify him for the CIA post, or predict failure during his tenure.
But these are critical days for our intelligence apparatus, including the agency that Mr. Panetta will lead. When the Bush Administration entered office eight years ago, it inherited a CIA that was dysfunctional, highly politicized and woefully inept at its critical missions of intelligence collection and analysis.
Since then, three different men--George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden--have tried to reform the agency, with varying degrees of success. During their respective tenures, the CIA has added thousands of new operatives and analysts, and there is some evidence that the new hires (and their more experienced colleagues) are making a difference. After all, there hasn't been a terrorist attack on American soil since 9-11, and the CIA deserves some credit for that remarkable record.
Still, the agency is far from healthy. Elements within the CIA have pursued a strident, anti-administration agenda, under-cutting President Bush's policies on Iran's nuclear program and other issues. Case in point: the intelligence community's infamous 2007 assessment of Tehran's nuclear ambitions--largely based on CIA analysts--which effectively ended any chances for U.S. military action against Iran. The long-term consequences of that analytical power play have yet to be determined.
To advance the reform agenda at Langley, the CIA clearly needs an experienced hand. But there are more compelling reasons to put a career intelligence officer in charge of the agency. The threat facing our nation remains very real; a recent study suggests that terrorists will stage a chemical or biological attack inside the United States during the next five years. Meeting that challenge requires a leader who doesn't need on the job training, and will hold his organization to the highest standards of tradecraft and professional conduct.
Mr. Panetta is a capable administrator and experienced political operative, but he's the wrong man to lead the CIA at this critical juncture. His nomination also reflects badly on President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team. Most of his national security team was announced last month. Delaying the CIA announcement until the New Year suggests that the appointment was something of an afterthought, or that the job was rejected by more qualified candidates.
Obviously, the job of CIA Director doesn't carry the power it once did. The agency chief now works for the Director of National Intelligence, who oversees the functions of 16 organizations that form our intel system. But in a community of "equals" some agencies are more important than others, and the Central Intelligence Agency clearly falls in that former category.
The next CIA chief faces three herculean challenges: keeping the agency fully engaged in the war on terror; reigning in political elements that want to dictate U.S. policy, and avoiding another intelligence debacle like the one that preceded the 9-11 attacks. It's a tall order for any director, but those tasks are made more difficult by today's economic uncertainly, which may result in budget cutbacks for the intelligence community.
As a former OMB Director, Mr. Panetta is a veteran of federal budget wars. But even if he preserves the CIA's share of the intel pie, there is no evidence that he has the background or expertise to employ those assets in the most effective manner. Just one more reason that the Panetta nomination is so disappointing--and potentially dangerous.
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ADDENDUM: Mr. Obama is entitled to the CIA Director of his choice. But the selection of Leon Panetta is a reflection of the next commander-in-chief and his own, limited intelligence experience. A few weeks ago, the president-elect named retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair as the new Director of National Intelligence. Like Mr. Panetta, Admiral Blair has a long resume as a leader and administrator. But in terms of intel, his only experience is as a consumer.
The big-picture view is even more disturbing. President-elect Obama, a man who is decidedly short on national security experience, has appointed a pair of neophytes to fill our most important intelligence positions. Those men, in turn, are supposed to advise him on the most critical (and sensitive) intel and national security issues. That planned "arrangement" doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
And, for what it's worth, California Senator Diane Feinstein, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, isn't exactly pleased with the Panetta nomination.
Others have suggested that Panetta may be a sop to liberal bloggers and activists who torpedoed John Brennan, the CIA veteran said to be Mr. Obama's first choice to run the agency. Brennan was unacceptable to those elements of the Obama coalition because of his support for the "forceful" interrogation of suspected terrorists.
If Panetta is a peace offering to the moon-bat brigade, it's all the more reason to oppose his confirmation as CIA Director.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/06/what-the-panetta-appointment-means/
What the Panetta appointment means
posted at 10:57 am on January 6, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Barack Obama sent a message with the selection of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, but apparently didn’t think enough people understood it. He sent a stronger message yesterday with his choice of Leon Panetta for Director of CIA, and this time, it’s unmistakable. Political considerations will trump competence and experience, even in the most critical roles Obama has to fill:
President-elect Barack Obama stunned the national intelligence community by selecting Clinton White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta, a longtime Washington insider with little intelligence experience, to serve as the next head of the CIA.
The decision — which was also met with wariness on Capitol Hill — reflects a desire to change the intelligence power structure, officials close to the selection said yesterday. Obama has chosen retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair as the director of national intelligence, a job he intends to reinforce as the “lead horse” on intelligence issues, an official close to the selection process said.
Panetta, 70, is widely regarded as a good manager who knows the government bureaucracy well. Panetta, a former eight-term member of Congress who has run a think tank in California for the past decade, has no significant ties to the agency that Obama has criticized for using harsh interrogation methods. Panetta has openly objected to the use of such methods, writing in an essay last year that the United States “must not use torture under any circumstances.” Obama had trouble filling the CIA slot in part because other candidates were perceived as tainted for having supported aspects of the Bush administration’s interrogation and intelligence programs.
Yet Panetta, who also served as director of President Bill Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget, has no institutional memory of the intelligence agency and no hands-on experience with its thorniest challenges, including the collection of human intelligence overseas. His lack of experience drew immediate questions, most notably from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who said she was not briefed on his selection and learned about it from news accounts.
The US is currently fighting an asymmetrical war on two hot fronts, but more to the point, in every corner of the world. We need our best people at the helm at Defense and in the intelligence arenas, people with insight into the problems and challenges facing America at war. Barack Obama either doesn’t understand that or cares less about security than he does about politics.
Leon Panetta only has indirect experience with intelligence. As budget director in the Clinton administration, Panetta has familiarity with their funding, and Panetta also served on the Iraq Study Group for several months, which looked at the role that intelligence failures played in our invasion and during the occupation. There must be thousands of people more qualified to run the CIA from an experience and competence standpoint, including several members of Congress, notably Jane Harman, who should have chaired the House Intelligence Committee in the last session of Congress but ran afoul of Nancy Pelosi.
Even the notion of “change” doesn’t apply here. Obama has no executive experience in government, and neither does Panetta, but Panetta hardly represents a breath of fresh air in Washington. He’s another Clinton-era retread, only in this case, put in charge of an organization about which he knows nothing. He’s there to exercise Obama’s political will and nothing more.
Obama deserves the benefit of the doubt on his political appointments, but this is one selection that should get a lot of scrutiny from Congress. If Obama wants a political hatchet man in a high-level appointment, have Panetta run OMB — or Commerce, where there’s a late opening. America deserves the benefit of experience and wisdom in the position of CIA director.
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Done appointing moderates? Yasser Arafat was a "peace partner"???
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Dennis Ross and diplomacy-derangement syndrome
January 7, 2009 Paul Mirengoff http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/01/022493.php
Marc Ambinder reports that Barack Obama will make Dennis Ross his "chief emissary" to Iran. This strikes me as bad, though hardly surprising, news.
Ross' presents himself as reasonable and moderate in his writings and television appearances. But in social settings, when the cameras are off, he can come across quite differently. In such a setting, I heard him say of Hurricane Katrina that people already think we don't care about the rest of the world and now it turns out that we don't care about our own people either. This kind of vicious, stupid remark is the stuff of left-wing bloggers, not U.S. "emissaries."
But my main objection to Ross isn't Bush-derangement syndrome, but rather diplomacy-derangement syndrome. By this I mean boundless faith in diplomacy which, when possessed by a diplomat, probably reflects boundless faith in himself.
For roughly a decade, Ross persisted against all the evidence in believing that Yasser Arafat was a "peace partner" with whom Israel and the U.S. should negotiate and to whom Israel should make concessions. If Ross could believe this, the odds aren't terribly long that he believes, or will come to believe, that negotiations with, and concessions to, Ahmadinejad (as evil as Arafat and even more dangerous) and the Iranian regime are just what the doctor ordered.
At that point, for diplomats with diplomacy-derangement syndrome, "getting to yes" can easily become an imperative, without serious regard to the cost of getting there or what (if any) the actual benefits of "yes" may be. The resulting mischief is likely to be great, as was the case for Israel the last time Ross was an "emissary."
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Intelligence Failure
By Ralph Peters
New York Post | Thursday, January 08, 2009
WOULD you ask your accountant to perform brain surgery on your child? That's the closest analogy I can find to the choice of Democratic Party hack Leon Panetta to head the CIA.
Earth to President-elect Obama: Intelligence is serious. And infernally complicated. When we politicize it - as we have for 16 years - we get 9/11. Or, yes, Iraq.
The extreme left, to which Panetta's nomination panders, howled that Bush and Cheney corrupted the intelligence system. Well, I worked in the intel world in the mid 1990s and saw how the Clinton team undermined the system's integrity.
Al Qaeda a serious threat? The Clinton White House didn't want to hear it. Clinton was the pioneer in corrupting intelligence. Bush was just a follow-on homesteader.
Now we've fallen so low that left-wing cadres can applaud the nomination of a CIA chief whose sole qualification is that he's a party loyalist, untainted by experience.
The director's job at the CIA isn't a party favor. This is potentially a matter of life and death for thousands of Americans. But the choice of Panetta tells us all that Barack Obama doesn't take intelligence seriously.
Mark my words: It'll bite him in the butt.
After the military, the intel community is the most complex arm of government. You can't do on-the-job training at the top. While a CIA boss needn't be a career intelligence professional, he or she does need a deep familiarity with the purposes, capabilities, limitations and intricacies of intelligence.
Oh, and you'd better understand the intelligence bureaucracy.
Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), who was blindsided - and appalled - by the Obama mafia's choice, has the essential knowledge of how the system works. She, or a similar expert, should have gotten this nod. But the president-elect wanted a clean-slate yes-man, not a person of knowledge and integrity.
We're witnessing the initial costs of Obama's career-long lack of interest in foreign policy, the military and intelligence. He doesn't think the top job at the CIA's important and just wants political cover on that flank. (Guess we got Panetta because Caroline Kennedy has another engagement.)
Forget a "team of rivals." Obama's creating a campaign staff for 2012.
Of course, he's reeling from the shrill rage of the Moveon.org crowd over his nomination of grown-ups to be his national-security adviser, director of national intelligence, administrator of veterans' affairs and, yes, secretary of state. (By the way, how could Hillary be dumb enough to accept a job where success is impossible?)
Panetta's appointment is a sop to the hard left, a signal that intelligence will be emasculated for the next four - or eight - years.
Think morale's been bad at the CIA? Just wait.
Conservatives played into this scenario by insisting that any CIA analysis that didn't match the Bush administration's positions perfectly amounted to an attack on the White House. Well, sorry. The intelligence community's job isn't to make anybody feel good - its core mission is to provide nonpartisan analysis to our leaders.
To be a qualified D-CIA, a man or woman needs a sophisticated grasp of three things: The intel system, foreign-policy challenges and the Pentagon (which owns most of our intelligence personnel and hardware). Panetta has no background - none - in any of these areas. He was never interested.
If you handed Leon Panetta a blank map of Asia, I'd bet my life he couldn't plot Baghdad, Kabul or Beijing within 500 miles of their actual locations. (Maybe he can see China from his California think tank?)
This shameless hack appointment is the first action by the incoming administration that seriously worries me. Get intelligence wrong and you get dead Americans.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/08/oh-my-three-sources-tell-guardian-obama-plans-to-talk-to-hamas/
Three sources tell Guardian Obama plans to talk to Hamas
posted at 7:30 pm on January 8, 2009 by Allahpundit
Barack Obama, April 2008:
“We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel’s destruction. We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist and abide by past agreements.”
“Hamas is not a state. Hamas is a terrorist organization,” he said.
The Guardian, tonight:
The Guardian has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp.
There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on in his administration, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive.
Richard Haass, a diplomat under both presidents Bush who was named by a number of news organisations this week as Obama’s choice for Middle East envoy, supports low level contacts with Hamas provided there is a ceasefire in place and a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation emerges…
Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at the Georgetown school of foreign service, said it was unlikely Obama would move to initiate contacts with Hamas unless the radical faction in Damascus was crippled by the conflict in Gaza. “This would really be dependent on Hamas’s military wing having suffered a real, almost decisive, drubbing.”
I bet they feel silly now for unendorsing him.
What’s changed in nine months? For one thing, the ceasefire’s come and gone per Hamas’s choosing, reminding the world yet again that they can’t be ignored. Terrorism works, as Alan Dershowitz likes to say, and never more so than here if the crisis they provoked succeeds in landing them a seat at The One’s table. Beyond that, with the election over, Obama no longer needs Hamas as a fig leaf for his policy of dialogue with Iran. I wrote about this endlessly during the campaign: The three reasons he gave in April for not chatting with them — terrorism, rejectionism, and dealbreaking — apply equally well to Iran, but meeting with Iran is the cornerstone of the foreign policy Change he promised. How then to prove his Zionist credentials to pro-Israel voters? Simple — draw a meaningless artificial distinction between Iran and Hamas based on the fact that one’s a sovereign state and the other isn’t. He’ll talk to terrorist states threatening Israel with nuclear weapons, but terrorist groups threatening them with Qassam rockets? Why, he’s far too much of a Likudnik for that. Except of course he’s not, which is why that meaningless artificial distinction is now reportedly — and quietly — being discarded.
Exit question one: Anyone heard recently from our new Secretary of State? She seemed quite troubled during the campaign by the thought of listening to Hamas. Exit question two: Second look at this report from November? Exit question three: He’s not going to try to spin this as okay because it wouldn’t involve “direct presidential diplomacy,” is he? I.e., “When I said I wouldn’t talk to Hamas, I meant *I* wouldn’t talk to Hamas. Hillary, on the other hand…”
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http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=6587400
Arrogant Conceit: Obama Thinks He Can Reform The Economy
Obama's Interventionist Reforms Go in Precisely the Wrong Direction
Opinion By JOHN STOSSEL
Dec. 24, 2008—
Barack Obama wants to use the recession to remake the U.S. economy.
"Painful crisis also provides us with an opportunity to transform our economy to improve the lives of ordinary people," Obama said.
His designated chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is more direct: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" (http://tinyurl.com/5n8u58).
So, they will "transform our economy." Obama's nearly trillion-dollar plan will not merely repair bridges, fill potholes and fix up schools; it will also impose a utopian vision based on the belief that an economy is a thing to be planned from above. But this is an arrogant conceit. No one can possibly know enough to redesign something as complex as "an economy," which really is people engaging in exchanges to achieve their goals. Planning it means planning them.
Obama and Emanuel want us to believe that their blueprint for reform will bring recovery from the recession.
Yet, we have recovered from past recessions without undertaking a radical social and economic transformation.
In fact, reform would impede recovery.
This is not the first time a president chose reform over recovery. Franklin Roosevelt did it with his New Deal, and the result was long years of depression and deprivation. Roosevelt's priorities were criticized not just by opponents of big government but by none other than John Maynard Keynes, the British economist whose theories rationalized big government. Before FDR had been in office a year, Keynes wrote him an open letter, which was printed in The New York Times:
"You are engaged on a double task, Recovery and Reform; -- recovery from the slump and the passage of those business and social reforms which are long overdue. For the first, speed and quick results are essential. The second may be urgent, too; but haste will be injurious. ... [E]ven wise and necessary Reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate Recovery. For it will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action. ... Now I am not clear, looking back over the last nine months, that the order of urgency between measures of Recovery and measures of Reform has been duly observed, or that the latter has not sometimes been mistaken for the former."
Note Keynes's concern. Government interventions, such as the cartelizing of industry through the National Recovery Administration, "will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action." In other words, investors will not take the risks necessary for recovery if their profits and freedom are subject to unpredictable government action. Economic historian Roberts Higgs calls this phenomenon "regime uncertainty."
Keynes's letter apparently had little influence on Roosevelt, who stuck to his plan. In his second inaugural address a few years later, FDR feared that signs of recovery had jeopardized his reform plans by removing the sense of emergency: "To hold to progress today, however, is more difficult. Dulled conscience, irresponsibility and ruthless self-interest already reappear. Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster! Prosperity already tests the persistence of our progressive purpose."
What a shame. Free people enjoying their lives make it harder for the administration to forcibly impose its utopian vision on them.
Obama wants to act quickly. In the name of stimulating the economy, he plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars the government does not have to convert the economy from carbon-based fuels to "green" alternatives. Even if that were a good idea -- and it's definitely not -- it would not bring recovery. Any money the government spends must be taxed, borrowed or conjured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, and that will reduce sound private investment.
Obama has no real wealth to inject into the economy. He can only move around existing money while inflation robs us of purchasing power. Meanwhile, private investors who might have produced a better engine, battery, computer, cancer treatment or other wealth-creating and life-enhancing innovations, hold back for fear that big government will undermine productive efforts.
The way to a lasting recovery is to greatly lighten the burdens of government. Then free Americans will save and invest.
Grand interventionist reforms go in precisely the wrong direction.
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The original is at http://scottgrannis.blogspot.com/ so if there is any problem with the formatting here, then go there.
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Obama's fatal conceit
Obama gave a dire speech today at George Mason University. It sounded impressive, but only if you take it at face value and fail to check the facts or question the logic. He was in full-blown Keynesian mode, arguing that massive government spending is the only thing that can save the day. Here are some key quotes, followed by my rebuttals:
We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime - a crisis that has only deepened over the last few weeks.
As I've been pointing out for some time, the economic and financial fundamentals have actually been improving over the last few weeks.
Manufacturing has hit a twenty-eight year low.
He's evidently referring to the ISM manufacturing index. But that index does not measure manufacturing activity, it only measures the percent of respondents who see things getting worse or better; it's a diffusion index, not a level index. Industrial production, as measured by the Fed, is down only 6% from its all-time high, and is 83% above the level of 28 years ago. This is a gross misrepresentation of reality. Shame on all those intelligent economic advisors who let him get away with such a blatant twisting of the statistics.
Many businesses cannot borrow or make payroll.
The economy is not suffering from a shortage of credit, as I've noted repeatedly. All measures of lending to U.S. businesses show rising trends. Bank lending is at or near all-time highs.
We arrived at this point due to an era of profound irresponsibility that stretched from corporate boardrooms to the halls of power in Washington, DC.
Corporate boardrooms had very little to do with this crisis. The principal causes of the crisis stretch back to the creation by Congress of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, unique for-profit enterprises that were encouraged to take on increasing levels of risk that were ultimately guaranteed by taxpayers. It was not for lack of regulation that everything came tumbling down—there were plenty of rules in place and plenty of regulatory bodies, but they either failed to act or were discouraged from acting by politicians. Congress bears a heavy burden of the responsibility for the crisis, yet Congress is now being put in charge of fixing the mess.
We cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth, but at this particular moment, only government ... can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy - where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit.
The first clause is absolutely correct, but then he suspends disbelief and reverts to flawed Keynesian thinking and contradicts himself. Spending is not the source of economic growth; were it so we could simply spend our way to prosperity. We can only consume what we produce. Recovery efforts should be directed at increasing work, investment, and production, not at trying to stimulate consumer spending
We need to put money in the pockets of the American people, create new jobs, and invest in our future.
Every dollar the government puts in the pockets of the people is a dollar that comes from the pocket of someone else; how can that result in a bigger or stronger economy? How can the government create jobs that are better or more productive than those created by the private sector? How can government decide what investments are going to produce attractive returns for our future?
We will modernize more than 75% of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of two million American homes, saving consumers and taxpayers billions on our energy bills.
Is "modernizing" federal buildings going to produce a return on investment superior to what the private sector could get if its money were not appropriated? I doubt it. Is improving the energy efficiency of a small sector of our economy going to make any difference at all to the planet Earth?
To get people spending again, 95% of working families will receive a $1,000 tax cut.
The majority of working families pay little or no income tax, so this is not a tax cut he's talking about, it's a handout. This is likely to restrain the economy's ability to grow, since it rewards those who aren't producing a lot and punishes those who are (since they won't receive the handout and will have to foot the bill for it). And besides, we've tried rebates before and the results have been dismal. It's almost as bad as throwing money down the drain.
We'll continue the bipartisan extensions of unemployment insurance.
This will only delay the onset of recovery, since it reduces the incentive of the unemployed to find work. We've done this every time the economy slows down, and the main result is to simply increase the ranks of the unemployed. It's a nice humanitarian gesture, but like every government action, it leads in many cases to unintended consequences.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan won't just throw money at our problems - we'll invest in what works.
The fatal conceit of politicians is on display here: how in the world are government bureaucrats going to decide "what works?" A handful of people are going to be making multi-billion dollar decisions using taxpayer money. The potential for waste, fraud, and inefficiency is staggering.
I could go on, but for now, 'nuff said.
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Gm-- This is the third or fourth time you have posted a poorly sources smear regarding Obama and Israel . If you do it again I think you should have to make a donation to your local food pantry or something :-D. Just to be clear and I have said it before it would be bad if Obama talks to Hamas. I really don't see that happening
Obama won't deal with Hamas, 'Post' told
Jan. 10, 2009
Jerusalem Post staff , THE JERUSALEM POST
The incoming Obama administration will not abandon US President George W. Bush's doctrine of isolating Hamas, the chief national security spokesperson of the Obama transition team has told The Jerusalem Post.
US President-elect Barack Obama "has repeatedly stated that he believes that Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel's destruction, and that we should not deal with them until they recognize Israel, renounce violence, and abide by past agreements," said Brooke Anderson in a statement to the Post.
Those conditions match the international Quartet's longstanding demands from Hamas, shared by Israel.
The Obama spokesperson was responding to an article in Britain's Guardian daily on Friday, which asserted that three people with knowledge of discussions held in the Obama camp said that while the president-elect will not approve direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, his advisers are urging him to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, in light of the growing recognition in Washington that ostracizing the terror group is counter-productive policy.
"The president elect's repeated statements [about not dealing with Hamas] are accurate," Anderson said. "This unsourced story is not."
The US state department designated Hamas a terrorist organization, and in 2006 Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.
"Secret envoys, multilateral six-party talk-like approaches. The total isolation of Hamas that we promulgated under Bush is going to end," Steve Clemons, the director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, was quoted by the Guardian as saying.
"You could do something through the Europeans. You could invent a structure that is multilateral. It is going to be hard for the neocons to swallow," he said. "I think it is going to happen."
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1231424907657&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
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Rachel wrote: "GM-- This is the third or fourth time you have posted a poorly sourced smear regarding Obama and Israel . "
From my observations so far, even quoting Barack Obama from the campaign, the debates or positions posted on his campaign website would also not be reliable sources for predicting what Obama would do as President.
Why would he meet freely with the leaders of Iran but not have 'low level contacts' with Hamas.
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Continuity We Can Believe In
By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: January 11, 2009
Barack Obama made news Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”: The White House dog will likely be a Labradoodle or a Portuguese water dog.
I’ve got to say I’m a little disappointed. These are nice, friendly, generally obedient breeds (or in the case of the Labradoodle, a crossbreed). But what a missed opportunity! Obama could have made a bolder, edgier choice, like a mini-Australian shepherd. I happen to know one well. He’s very smart, a bit neurotic, devoted to his master (if sometimes confused about whether he or the master is the master), and always looking for people to herd. A mini-Aussie would have fit right into a White House populated by Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Joe Biden et al. Instead, Obama’s going with a no-drama canine alternative.
And he seems to be going for the no-dramatic-change-in-policy-in-the-White-House alternative as well. Consider Obama’s reaction when George Stephanopoulos played a clip of Dick Cheney counseling Obama not to implement his campaign rhetoric until he’s fully briefed on the details of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policy.
“I think that was pretty good advice, which is I should know what’s going on before we make judgments and that we shouldn’t be making judgments on the basis of incomplete information or campaign rhetoric. So I’ve got no quibble with that particular quote,” said Obama. Usually, presidents pretend their campaign positions are more than “campaign rhetoric.” Not Obama.
Obama did note that he differs with Cheney on “some things that we know happened,” including waterboarding. And he did reiterate his pledge to close Guantánamo. But he warned that it was “more difficult than I think a lot of people realize,” explaining that while he was committed to the rule of law, he wasn’t interested “in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up.”
And at one point he returned, unbidden, to the much-maligned vice president, commenting, “I thought that Dick Cheney’s advice was good.”
Perhaps the president-elect was just being polite. Or perhaps he just enjoys torturing (metaphorically!) some of his previously most ardent supporters who want Dick Cheney tried as a war criminal.
In fact, Stephanopoulos asked about that. He pointed to a popular question on Obama’s Web site about whether he’ll appoint a special prosecutor to investigate “the greatest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping.” Obama stipulated that no one should be above the law. But he praised C.I.A. employees, and said he didn’t want them “looking over their shoulders and lawyering.” He took the general view “that when it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.”
With respect to the Middle East, Obama didn’t even say we’d gotten much wrong in the past. Asked by Stephanopoulos whether his policy would build on Bush’s or would be a clean break, Obama answered, “if you look not just at the Bush administration, but also what happened under the Clinton administration, you are seeing the general outlines of an approach.” So: No break.
Meanwhile, the Obama transition team’s chief national security spokeswoman, Brooke Anderson, was denying a press report that Obama’s advisers were urging him to initiate low-level or clandestine contacts with Hamas as a prelude to change in policy. Anderson told The Jerusalem Post that the story wasn’t accurate, and reminded one and all that Obama “has repeatedly stated that he believes that Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction, and that we should not deal with them until they recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by past agreements.”
On Iran, Obama did say he’d be taking “a new approach,” that “engagement is the place to start” with “a new emphasis on being willing to talk.” But he also reminded Stephanopoulos that the Iranian regime is exporting terrorism through Hamas and Hezbollah and is “pursuing a nuclear weapon that could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.” He said his willingness to talk would be combined with “clarity about what our bottom lines are” — one of them presumably being, as he’s said before, no Iranian nuclear weapons. And he demonstrated a sense of urgency — “we anticipate that we’re going to have to move swiftly in that area.”
So: After talks with Iran (if they happen) fail to curb Iran’s nuclear program, but (perhaps) impress other nations with our good faith, we’ll presumably get greater international support for sanctions. That will also (unfortunately) fail to deter Iran. “Engagement is the place to start,” Obama said, but it’s not likely to be the place Obama ends. He’ll end up where Bush is — with the choice of using force or acquiescing to the idea of a nuclear Iran.
And he’ll probably be calling Dick Cheney for advice.
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***He’ll end up where Bush is — with the choice of using force or acquiescing to the idea of a nuclear Iran.***
Well, does Kristol think BO would use force against Iran?
There is zero indication of that. He already said that any use of nucs by Iran against Israel would be met with a disprotionate nuclear response. This tells us right there he is not going to use force to stop Iran from acquiring nukes and is using the deterrant of assured destruction.
Anything else is "diplomacy". Iran knows this. That is why they will get what the nukes they want. Unless they fold from within first.
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"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." --Thomas Jefferson
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Speak of cognitive dissonance, the leader of the free world is about to be inaugurated in a city that is going to be locked down tight.
"Something Will Happen"
January 14, 2009 12:02 PM by S.M. Oliva | Other posts by S.M. Oliva | Comments (6)
Armed thugs attacked a Chicago commuter train this morning, brandishing semi-automatic weapons and forcing passengers off the train before they were forcibly searched. The siege lasted nearly two hours.
The thugs, of course, called themselves "police," who said they were looking for a "suspicious" man, so identified by a Metra ticket agent because he was asking "unusual questions that were security based" and reportedly boarded the train carrying a firearm. The suspicious man, of course, also belonged to the police - specifically, the U.S. Secret Service.
This doesn't bode well for next Tuesday, when the Washington DC subway system will be pushed to the brink of collapse by the coronation of Barack Obama. The outgoing president has already declared a "state of emergency" in DC, extending that designation beyond the usual hurricanes and other natural disasters. As Kathryn Muratore noted at LewRockwell.com,
Welcome to the inauguration of the "leader of the free world." You may only enter the city through these designated roads and transit systems. You will only have access to the inauguration after passing through a security checkpoint, where you will be treated with suspicion. There will be thousands of armed men surrounding you at the ceremony and parade. But, hey, that's the price of freedom!
John Catoe, the general manager of Washington Metro, said "something will happen" to the subway system on January 20. He's not being vague for the sake of scaring people. Catoe has the impossible task of accommodating the largest one-day increase in demand in the transit system's history without any of the tools that would be available in a market economy. He can't increase prices beyond the normal "rush hour" ceiling imposed by Metro's politician-dominated board of directors. He's been told to increase the system's operating capacity far beyond its normal limits - maximum train service for 17 consecutive hours - and local politicians are demanding even more service hours. To add further pressure, "security" officials continue to close individual subway stations and major roadways - remember, the government has a road monopoly for a reason - to maximize the chance the system will collapse under its own weight.
Now just think what will happen if there's a repeat of this morning's Chicago incident, and heavily-armed "police" storm an overcrowded Metro train. The first day of Barack Obama's reign could be very costly indeed.
http://blog.mises.org/archives/009239.asp
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So police are armed thugs?
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So police are armed thugs?
Think there's some hyperbole in the article's lead, but you have to admit that a train being evacuated at gunpoint because a Secret Service agent was doing his job makes for a Charlie Foxtrot.
The article's larger point that BHO's inauguration has lead to unprecedented security precautions. I'm a member of an area Medical Reserve Corps assigned to an evac center about 20 miles outside the city and so have been tracking the preparations. They are projecting crowds of 2 million, and predict 200 hospital admissions off that sized crowd. Every hotel room in the city is booked, a lot of hospital staff lives in Virginia, but all roads from VA are closed down so staffing DC hospitals is proving to be a logistics problem.
I work a lot of first aid at concerts/charity events where the weather is mild, the conditions good, and access to climate controlled treatment areas easy to find. Never ceases to amaze me how many people show up to these events in inappropriate footwear and don't have their hydration and other environmental needs covered. Switch to DC where a lot of folks will be walking in from several miles out, temps are anticipated to be in the 20s, folks won't be allowed to carry anything larger than a fannypack or large containers of fluids, and most are expecting to spend the day in DC. Sound like a recipe for disaster to me.
I can't speak to the legal justifications and mechanisms for creating this logistics nightmare, but a lot of elements are in place for an unpleasant day on a large scale. For a candidate who spouted a lot of egalitarian boilerplate, BHO's inauguration incorporates a lot of limitations that are going to make for a very interesting day.
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May I suggest we return to the coming 8.3+% of GDP deficit spending? And the near complete absence of free market response to it? WTF!?! Even guys like Martin Feldstein are caving in!
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Steve Forbes hasn't:
"With all thy getting get understanding."
Steve Forbes 02.02.09, 12:00 AM ET
Yay, Stocks!
Amazingly, equities will end the year up. Most shareholders will experience something they've forgotten existed: capital gains. True, the economy is now in a bad slump, and the Obama initiatives (see below) will do little, if any, long-term good. But the forces of recovery will break through. As they always do, stocks will rise before the economy does. There will be volatility aplenty, but imperturbable bulls will be smiling a year from now.
Other Comments
Big Bar to Robust Recovery: Bad Ideas
The U.S. is enacting a "stimulus" program of gargantuan peacetime proportions to rejuvenate our recessed economy. We are not alone in this. Japan, China, Europe and numerous other nations are doing the same--not yet as big as our program but based on the idea that governments can rekindle growth.
It's all mostly wasted effort.
Governments are indeed critical to economic growth--but not in the manner we see unfolding here. While times and circumstances change, principles of economic growth do not. The basic ones have stood the test of time:
--The rule of law, especially property rights.
--Money that is stable in value, which the dollar manifestly has not been.
--Low tax rates.
--Ease of starting a new business.
--Minimal barriers to doing business, whether overseas (low or no trade barriers) or domestic (no internal cartels or onerous licensing procedures).
Despite its sheer size, the impact of the new President's fiscal program, after the initial euphoria, will be painfully limited. Instead of a jolt like from downing a six-pack of Red Bull, we'll get the economic equivalent of a tepid cup of decaffeinated tea. In fact, the waste and misuse of much of the money--inevitable in any quick, massive government-managed or -directed program--will negate much of the good in parts of this infrastructure-spending package.
While the economy will start to grow again in a few months--because of extra liquidity now being pumped in by the Fed, lower energy costs and very low inventory levels--the Obama programs could well impede or retard the pace of this nascent expansion. It could be a minor version of the way FDR's incessant experiments in the 1930s--price and wage controls, massive regulation, huge tax increases, forced unionization--severely damaged the U.S.' climb out of the Great Depression.
The blunt truth is that government spending is a poor substitute for private business and consumer investing and spending. Were it otherwise, the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War, and Japan, which had numerous Obamaesque stimulus packages in the 1990s, would have boomed instead of remaining dead in the water in what was a 12-year recession.
Why this belief in government spending? After surveying the wreckage of the Great Depression, British economist John Maynard Keynes posited that markets left to themselves were inherently unstable and that government intervention could prevent debilitating economic slumps.
"In the long run we are all dead," Keynes once famously quipped. Alas, Keynesian dogma never dies.
If entrepreneurs and businesses are not investing and consumers are not spending adequately, the idea goes, then government can come in and fill the void. "Voilà!" The economy will bounce back. In short, government can mobilize idle money via higher taxes and borrowings (Obama's money would all come from borrowing) and put it to work. It might even print some extra money--Keynesian economists still see a little bit of inflation as a positive for economic growth. The economic battery is recharged. Businesses recover their animal spirit, consumers their propensity to spend.
So why did such an approach fail so miserably in the 1930s? Economists such as Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would say it was because Washington didn't spend enough.
What about Japan's spending binge in the 1990s that still left its economy stagnant? That's waved away because of Japanese peculiarities, such as the intimate ties between banks and cabals of affiliated Japanese companies, or something like that.
What about western Europe, which has had a massive government presence during the last 30 years but has created only a small fraction of the private-sector jobs that the U.S. has? Spenders just ignore that and prattle on about the wonderful quality of life western Europeans enjoy.
Despite adverse experience, the Keynesian stimulus idea has a viselike hold on policymakers, pundits and academics. It ignores the actual reasons that we experience slowdowns. As Joseph Schumpeter, the 20th century's foremost economist, observed, dynamic growth in the standard of living requires constant innovation--and volatility. One example of innovation leading to volatility is traditional media. Even without the current economic slump, this area would still be undergoing Internet-generated convulsions.
Events can also roil economies, as we experienced after 9/11. But most often, bad government policies bring on the most damaging downturns. The Great Depression was ignited by trade wars, high taxes and bad monetary policies. The great inflation of the 1970s was caused by the Federal Reserve's excessive money printing. The current crisis was brought on by the weak dollar, the reckless extravagances of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and regulatory errors, such as mark-to-market accounting.
Government spending doesn't deal with any of these things.
There Are Tax Cuts, and Then There Are Tax Cuts
One hopeful sign of the new President's pragmatism is his call for a $300 billion tax cut, although the bulk of it would consist of refundable tax credits--giving people money even if they owe no federal income tax. That's still better than Uncle Sam's shoveling out money quickly and wastefully on dubious "infrastructure" projects. Liberal Democrats, though, are criticizing the idea--they can't stomach the thought of letting individuals instead of bureaucrats have direct control over the money.
While Obama's trial balloon has some good parts to it, such as small businesses' being able to expense most capital expenditures up to $250,000, the proposal's effectiveness is mitigated by Keynesian ideology. Giving people money is not the way to get sound, long-term economic growth. The Bush rebates of early last year were a dud in that respect. People liked getting the money, but they used it to pay down debt or stashed it in their savings accounts. Even if they had spent it, the impact would have been a one-time shot.
The flaw here is that such tax changes ignore incentives. Tax rates affect behavior enormously. Low tax rates provide incentive for people to work more productively, entrepreneurs to take more risks and business executives to boost their capital expenditures. Rebates or refundable tax credits have minimal impact in boosting risk-taking and rewarding success.
Obama's idea also ignores the increasing deadweight-overhang of the expiration of the big reductions in the capital gains levy and personal taxes on dividends passed in 2003. If Obama were to announce that these low rates would stay in place and that our business profits tax (the second highest in the developed world) would be sharply cut--say, from 35% to 25%--and that the typical middle-class tax bracket of 25% would be permanently reduced to 15%, that would give the economy a really powerful positive kick upward. And it would end up generating new revenue instead of massive gone-forever outlays.
Earth to Bernanke
Another bad idea that continues to hurt us is the federal Reserve's belief in the Phillips curve, which posits that there's a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. If you want more prosperity, you have to accept higher inflation; if you want less inflation, you have to accept a less robust economy. Experience has repeatedly shown this theory to be hokum. In both the 1980s and 1990s inflation came down--and we had one heck of a run of prosperity as well.
Yet Ben Bernanke and his fellow Fedsters cling to the idea like King Kong to Fay Wray. The latest example: The Fed let it be known at its December meeting that it was considering establishing an inflation target rate. In Bernanke's strange world the big bugaboo is that a deflationary mind-set might take hold in the U.S. as the recession deepens. Setting a target for inflation "might help forestall the development of expectations that inflation would decline below desired levels."
What planet are these people on? Most folks know that the current price-cutting frenzy of retailers and other producers is intended to move inventory. Deflation comes about when the real value of the dollar goes up sizably and permanently. There's no danger of that happening right now. And as for a "desired level" of inflation--if the Fed did its job correctly and kept the dollar strong and stable, it wouldn't have to worry about inflation or deflation. The Fed's target should be "flation." Period.
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/forbes/2009/0202/013.html
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So the standard leftist anti-second amendment gibberish is already up on the whitehouse.gov web site, according to NRO. I wish one of these fools was able to tell me what an assault weapon is. . . .
Christ, this feels like a rerun:
Now Obama Debuts Pledge to Make Guns 'Childproof'
Surprising very few of us, we see that once in office, Obama is more open about his gun control efforts at WhiteHouse.gov:
Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.
How, precisely, does the Obama Administration plan on "making guns in this country childproof"? Mandatory trigger locks?
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWNiNjhjYTUxZTNhMjNlZTQ1OTcwNWJhZjMxZDM4Njg=
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Would you please post that on the "We the well armed people" thread?
I am thinking it is time to bring this thread to a close now that BO is President.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aOYw.awwsNSg&refer=worldwide#
U.S. Stocks Slide in Dow Average’s Worst Inauguration Day Drop
By Elizabeth Stanton
Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks sank, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst Inauguration Day decline, as speculation banks must raise more capital sent financial shares to an almost 14-year low.
State Street Corp., the largest money manager for institutions, tumbled 59 percent after unrealized bond losses almost doubled. Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp. slumped more than 23 percent on an analyst’s prediction that they’ll need to take steps to shore up their balance sheets. The Dow’s 4 percent slide was the most on an Inauguration Day in the measure’s 112-year history, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and the Stock Trader’s Almanac.
“All the banks are going to have to recapitalize,” said Greg Woodard, portfolio strategist at Manning & Napier Advisors Inc., which manages $16 billion in Fairport, New York. “That’s not done. That’s in front of them, and we don’t want to try to get in front of that trade.”
The S&P 500 plunged 5.3 percent to 805.22. The S&P 500 Financials Index fell 17 percent to below its lowest closing level since March 1995 as concern European banks need more capital also weighed on the group. The Dow average slid 332.13 points to 7,949.09. Both the Dow and S&P 500 retreated to two- month lows.
The S&P 500 is off to its worst start to a year, shattering the biggest rally since World War II, as analysts cut earnings estimates by a record 83 percentage points and companies signal worse to come.
The S&P 500 is down 11 percent in the first 12 trading days of 2009, exceeding last year’s 9.2 percent drop, according to data compiled by Bloomberg going back to 1928. The decline helped erase more than two-thirds of a 24 percent rally since Nov. 20 as optimism that government spending would revive the economy evaporated.
‘Effectively Insolvent’
U.S. financial losses from the credit crisis may reach $3.6 trillion, according to New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini, who predicted last year’s economic and stock-market meltdowns.
“If that’s true, it means the U.S. banking system is effectively insolvent because it starts with a capital of $1.4 trillion,” Roubini said at a conference in Dubai today. “This is a systemic banking crisis.”
Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index retreated 2.1 percent today, led by banks and technology companies. It fell almost 2 percent yesterday after Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc forecast the biggest-ever loss by a U.K. company. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index retreated 2.1 percent today.
Obama Sworn In
Barack Obama became the 44th U.S. president today, inheriting the most severe economic crisis since Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in 76 years ago. The turmoil has dragged the world’s largest economies into recession, caused more than $1 trillion of losses at financial institutions and prompted a sell-off in global stock markets.
Treasuries fell for a second day on speculation Obama will sell record amounts of debt to battle the recession. The dollar strengthened for a second day against the euro.
State Street lost $21.46 to $14.89 for the biggest drop in the S&P 500 and the stock’s steepest tumble since at least 1984. Unrealized losses on fixed-income investments rose to $6.3 billion at Dec. 31 from $3.3 billion at Sept. 30, the company said. Unrealized losses on assets held in conduits increased to $3.6 billion from $2.2 billion.
Bank of New York Mellon Corp., the world’s largest custodian of financial assets, fell 17 percent to $19, its lowest closing price since 1997.
Financials Tumble
Financial companies posted the biggest drop among the S&P 500’s 10 main industry groups as all 81 shares fell.
Wells Fargo, the largest bank on the U.S. West Coast, slid 24 percent to $14.23. Friedman Billings Ramsey Group Inc. analyst Paul Miller lowered his earnings estimates and price target, in addition to predicting a dividend cut.
Bank of America, the biggest U.S. lender by assets, fell the most in the Dow average, sliding 29 percent to $5.10. FBR’s Miller estimated Bank of America needs at least $80 billion of additional capital.
“You don’t want to be anywhere close to these common stocks because you don’t know how much new stock is going to be issued,” said Wayne Wilbanks, who oversees $1.1 billion as chief investment officer at Wilbanks Smith & Thomas in Norfolk, Virginia. “If one wants to invest in this space I would focus almost exclusively on the preferred shares,” he said, because that’s the same type of stock the government is purchasing.
The U.S. government has taken preferred equity stakes in at least 257 banks including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York and State Street since October under its Troubled Asset Relief Program aimed at stabilizing the banking system.
‘Aggregator’ Bank
Regions Financial Corp. fell 24 percent to an almost 24- year low of $4.60 after reporting a record fourth-quarter loss. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lost 21 percent to $18.09, the lowest since October 2002.
Obama’s advisers are considering options for dealing with troubled assets still clogging banks’ balance sheets, according to people familiar with the matter. Among alternatives: setting up a government-backed “bad” or “aggregator” bank to hold the securities, or leaving the assets on banks’ books and providing a government guarantee.
‘Atmosphere of Cynicism’
“The risk of investing in financials remains relatively high,” said Alan Gayle, senior investment strategist at RidgeWorth Capital Management in Richmond, Virginia. “There’s an atmosphere of cynicism and disbelief with regard to a lot of these turnaround stories.” RidgeWorth manages $70 billion.
Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. slid 9.4 percent to $37.25. Goldman Sachs advised selling the designer of the U.S. Olympics team’s official uniform as consumer spending shifts from “aspirational to desperational.”
Alcoa Inc., the largest U.S. aluminum producer, sank 11 percent to $8.35. Aluminum declined for the seventh straight day in London on speculation that demand will weaken as the housing slump worsens.
To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Stanton in New York at estanton@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: January 20, 2009 16:47 EST
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/20/inaugural-benediction-pray-that-white-will-embrace-what-is-right/
Feel the post-racial healing!
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Last night Rachel Maddow the flaming liberal whose mo is to bash republicans was beaming ear to ear while quoting Pat Buchanan passionately claiming a passage from BOs speech was glorious and great.
She fails to note that the passage was clearly the reiteration of conservative values, honesty, hard work, self reliance, etc.
The question is still out whether BO is serious about this stuff or is this stealing conservative philosophy for his rhetoric while at the same time he builds up the huge nanny entitlement state?
Time will tell.
Rachal Maddow would have been disgusted and critical if a republican said the exact same thing. But as long as its their guy the democrat leftist most liberal guy in the Senate saying it....
Now that she doesn't have W to kick around anymore watch her now go into protect and promote "down all our throats" BO and the crat agenda. Though I admit she criticized him for his picking Warren because that was against her personal gay agenda which spills out and drenches all her so called reporting/journalism or whatever one wants to call it.
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Now that he is President, I've deleted the word "Coming" from the title of this thread.
The Lord helps those who help themselves. Time to man up and do what we can to protect America from the Keynesian clusterfcuk that I fear cometh and so much more.
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/WEnotrich1.wav
Who says Obama voters don't understand economics.....
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I'm hearing that the CBO is saying by BO's own numbers, the stimulus package will cost $6,700 per family and assuming they create every job they say they will :roll: each job will cost $217,000 to create. :roll: :roll: :roll: Oh, and most of the stimulus won't begin for two to ten years. :roll:
We are so fornicated , , ,
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- Pajamas Media - http://pajamasmedia.com -
Obama Snubs Medal of Honor Recipients
Posted By Mr. Wolf On January 22, 2009 @ 10:46 am In . Column1 01, History, Media, Politics, US News | 42 Comments
Here it is less than 72 hours into a new administration and the blogs have already been burning up the internet over a major snub by our new president.
What is the slight that they’re feeling? What’s got them all bunched up? A party — one the new president failed to show up for.
Every four years during inauguration evening (the galas began in 1809), groups vie for a visit from the incoming president, his wife, and anyone from his ticket. For decades, the “official” and “unofficial” galas have hoped to get a short visit from the president. He would take a few turns on the dance floor, say a few words to those gathered, and move on to the next one. Typically, these galas and balls consist of groups of people that have a common theme or background — from youth groups (H.O.P.E. Inaugural Youth Ball) to the National Council on Women ball. Which ones the new president attends say much about his priorities (right or wrong) and which demographics he may hold in high esteem.
In this case, the American Legion, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, and the Paralyzed Veterans of America, as well as other veteran’s groups, were sponsoring their gala that has coincided with the inaugural evening since Eisenhower took office in 1953. In total, nine presidents and 56 years have gone by, and each inaugural evening the new president arrived to thank the veterans and Medal of Honor recipients in attendance. As one of the “unofficial” balls, it meant quite a bit to have the president show up and make an appearance.
Except this time.
The president and first lady, for the first time in those ensuing 56 years, did not make an appearance at the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball. In attendance at the gala were 48 of the 99 living recipients of our nation’s highest honor. Of the 99 who are still with us, not even half are in any condition or possess the wherewithal to travel to such an event. And by the next inauguration, likely half of those won’t be with us.
Making this evening even more special was the fact that it is the 50th anniversary of the Medal of Honor Society, which has been working hard to reach out to people to educate them about its members.
The new president’s perceived “slights” against the military have made veterans and military members quite sensitive to how President Obama treats them. From calling for a pullout from Iraq during the campaign to forgoing a visit to injured GWOT vets in Germany, we have kept an eye on his every move and decision with regards to our nation’s finest. This “change” appears to have set the tone for the rest of his administration. To forgo a tradition of greeting the veterans who’ve received the highest honor in order to attend galas featuring Hollywood elites was just a bit too much to bear.
Even in his inaugural address to the nation, he mentioned the sacrifices of veterans of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, but failed to mention (or deliberately ignored) the veterans of our current sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan. That gives more credence to the feeling that he just no longer cares about the sacrifices being made on behalf of our country and the service that so many Americans have made over the years.
In the blogsphere, reaction was swift and vocal. At the blog [1] This Ain’t Hell But You Can See It from Here, which was one of the first to post on this issue, writer “TSO” writes about his getting to meet and interview six of the Medal of Honor recipients at the gathering. He was there to meet the heroes and also to get a chance to see the president (given the former tradition of his attending). Jonn Lilyea, of the same blog, then calls attention to the fact that the president did not attend. The negative comments were swift in coming, with most of them being unprintable.
In a fair and just world this country would accept no excuse and no reason for this snub and he’d be held in scorn for this. But since he has no honor, nor do many/most of his supporters they’ll overlook this issue. (Shovelhead)
And that was just one of the nicer ones.
From commenters at [2] Ace of Spades:
The judgment question isn’t that he should’ve gone to this and didn’t; it’s that he could’ve gone to this and didn’t. (Firehorse)
Little Green Footballs had over one thousand comments on the issue. Suffice it to say, none were any prettier than those above.
The fact that all the other presidents, of both parties, were able to attend the ball and not be seen as choosing Hollywood and rappers over sacrifice and honor says volumes about our new president and the direction he is taking us.
Two days into his job as president and he’s already got a lot of ground to make up with those who truly count — the ones who’ve laid down their lives for their country.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-snubs-medal-of-honor-recipients/
URLs in this post:
[1] This Ain’t Hell But You Can See It from Here: http://www.thisainthell.us/
[2] Ace of Spades: http://pajamasmedia.comwww.ace.mu.nu
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090123/pl_afp/usattacksjusticepoliticsobamasign/print;_ylt=AuIoQulg7kEXYlvMD2S9_FCtOrgF
Obama 'declared end' to war on terror: media
Fri Jan 23, 6:58 am ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama "declared an end" to his predecessor's "war on terror" and began to heal the US reputation abroad when he ordered the Guantanamo Bay prison to close, US editorialists wrote Friday.
Obama's order to close the detention facility within a year, end coercive interrogations and shut secret overseas CIA prisons sent a strong signal to the world and presented a new post-September 11 era, wrote The Washington Post.
"President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects," the Post said.
"With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the 'war on terror,' as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the US government in battling its enemies will not be limitless," it said.
"In a broad swipe at the Bush administration's lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after September 11, 2001," the Post added.
"It was a swift and sudden end to an era that was slowly drawing to a close anyway, as public sentiment grew against perceived abuses of government power."
The Los Angeles Times pointed out the ambiguities that remain: it was still not clear what would be done about the 245 prisoners languishing in the jail, nor how their court cases would be resolved.
But the paper hailed Obama for having reversed Bush policies.
"President Obama has begun the rehabilitation of this country's reputation when it comes to the treatment of suspected terrorists," the Times wrote.
"Obama deserves credit for ending the worst of the Bush administration's excesses in the 'war on terror' ... But the orders contain ambiguities that demonstrate how hard it will be to unwind the tangle that President Bush created."
The Chicago Tribune mulled the possibility of holding the remaining Guantanamo terror suspects "as prisoners of war for the duration of the conflict or until they no longer pose a threat."
The fight against violent extremism remains fraught with difficulty, it noted.
"Assuring fairness and civilized conditions for the accused, while protecting the nation from bloodthirsty enemies, is harder in this war than in most," the Tribune wrote.
"But the new administration can do better than the last one did."
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Concerning GM's post on the snub to Medal of Honor recipients, it may be worth noting that the most recent war whose veterans he praised in his Inaugural was Vietnam.
What of our troops in Iraq?!? Afghanistan?!?
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As a moderate Republican I have been critical of some of the rhetoric from the likes of Rush, Hannity, Inghram, Coulter. I don't necessarily disagree with their philosophy but more their strategy. I don't feel that just talking about freedom, less government, less taxes, more capitalism alone as the end all answer to all our problems is correct. It is too simplified and certainly not going to appeal to wider audiences. There must be a better way of redefining this in a way that also sends a message to the majority of people out there that they are included in this view. Most people just see the rich getting richer, they see thier health premiiums rising, they see the their bills, their debts piling up and the above rhetoric, as a truly great American and human being, Colin Powell said, ain't going to win them over. And that *IS ALL* that the Repbulcian pundits are offering. That is why we lost and lost big.
That said about the conservative pundits BO is not winning me over with this kind of talk. That does not mean I am all for his agenda of huge big government and an expanded welfare state and soaking form some to pay for the failures of other. BO ain't going to win me over with this kind of talk. There is no honeymoon for me. I now agree with the likes of Mark Levin that Republicans need to come out swinging and keep swinging. They must not get steamrolled. BO's policies will fail. We are pouring good money after bad. We will have weak kiss ass foreign policy built on celebritism, pomp, and bullshit. That is not to let W and the previous group of Republicans off the hook. Thye helped get us into this mess and BO inherited it.
With all that I said about my reservations of some of the simpleton rhetoric from Rush et al, the following from BO pisses me off and ain't goin to make me a fan of him (not that I ever was). Rush et al are certianly correct that BO is big time socialist and is right to hope he fail in some ways with his huge country destroying socialist programs (although not that we otherwise would want him to fail):
(PS the conservative George Will to me look like fools to have met with BO. He is used them hook line and sinker. I thought they were smarter than that. I guess they fall for fanfare and celebritism like most everyone else.)
***January 23, 2009
WASHINGTON -- President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.
"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.
One White House official confirmed the comment but said he was simply trying to make a larger point about bipartisan efforts.
"There are big things that unify Republicans and Democrats," the official said. "We shouldn't let partisan politics derail what are very important things that need to get done."
That wasn't Obama's only jab at Republicans today.
In an exchange with Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) about the proposal, the president shot back: "I won," according to aides briefed on the meeting.
"I will trump you on that."
Not that Obama was gloating. He was just explaining that he aims to get his way on stimulus package and all other legislation, sources said, noting his unrivaled one-party control of both congressional chambers.
"We are experiencing an unprecedented economic crisis that has to be dealt with and dealt with rapidly," Obama said during the meeting.
Republicans say the $825 billion price tag is too big a burden for a nation crippled by debt and that it doesn't do enough to stimulate the economy by cutting taxes.
"You know, I'm concerned about the size of the package. And I'm concerned about some of the spending that's in there, [about] ... how you can spend hundreds of millions on contraceptives," House GOP Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) later said.
"How does that stimulate the economy?"
But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs countered: "There was a lot of agreement in that room about the notion that we're facing an economic crisis unlike we've seen in quite some time ... that we must act quickly to stimulate the economy, create jobs, put money back in people's pockets."
Gibbs disagreed with those who called the meeting window dressing.
"The president is certainly going to listen to any ideas," he said.
"He will also go to Capitol Hill the beginning of next week to talk to Republican caucuses and solicit their input and their ideas."
With Post Wires***
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Obama last week: "I won" [we'll do it my way!] Bush in 2004: "Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, ... I've earned capital in this election -- and I'm going to spend it ..."
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CCP regarding Rush, Hannity, Coulter: "[I am] a moderate Republican...I don't necessarily disagree with their philosophy but more their strategy." - I agree, and I'm not a moderate Republican. But these people are not R. strategists. They are entertainers and pundits. They are selling viewership and listenership, not hope, change or electoral success.
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The argument that the rich keep getting richer I think is moot after this present downturn. The rich get richer in an up economy because they are invested. The rich get poorer in a collapse because they are invested. Look at the famous quote from JFK about rising tides lift all boats. For the rich it lifts a bigger boat. We simply don't have a way to lift all but the rich though we keep trying to concoct schemes.
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I was moved by a post about 'Soviet Britain' where in some areas the government is 70% of the economy. The move towards socialism by both parties, but in this case, Obama-Pelosi, is not rhetoric or scaremongering. It is the elephant in the room.
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"...conservative George Will to me look like fools to have met with BO. He is used them hook line and sinker. I thought they were smarter than that. I guess they fall for fanfare and celebritism like most everyone else." - No, they aren't smarter than that and they aren't smarter than Obama. And me neither. My first reaction was that he is reaching out... A day later I think I read it more accurately, that he had a pro-life evangelist at a ceremony, that he broke bread with a few conservatives, etc. These are attempts to inoculate himself against the inevitable repeat of affiliations and liaisons with people like Jememiah Wright, Ahkmad 'dinejad etc.
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While I rant about 'His Glibness', I am constantly reminded that Sarah Palin didn't answer a question about what she reads, but Barack Obama to my knowledge has never been asked what book he has EVER read about the free-enterprise system that is not anti-free-enterprise.
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SHERMAN FREDERICK: The ugly side of the inauguration
Obamamania's mean streak
Ironic that on Inauguration Day, when President Barack Obama told Americans it was time to take personal responsibility and "grow up" as a country, some of his supporters behaved like spoiled children in booing George W. Bush.
And, sadly, neither Obama nor any leader in the public spotlight that day seized the moment to admonish the boorish behavior.
It would have been nice had Obama had the presence of mind in his inaugural speech to not only allude to scripture in saying it's time to put away "childish things" but to also have told the boo-birds that their behavior was inappropriate and the embodiment of those "childish things."
He might have said: "Isn't it enough to be just happy for me? When you boo the former president, you fail to understand what this solemn event is all about -- the peaceful transition of power. This is not a football game. Nor is it a Third World bloodless coup. This is American democracy at work. If you can't respect that, then leave. Now."
But no one mustered the courage to say that. While I thought Obama's speech was otherwise thought-provoking and worthy, he missed an opportunity to call out these boors and chastise their behavior. By not doing so, I am afraid that Obama essentially condoned this kind of mob intolerance. There is already a hateful mean streak among some Obamamaniacs. Left unchecked, it can fester into something quite un-American and un-democratic.
In case you missed it, when President George W. Bush was announced to the crowd, some booed loudly, shocking even the commentators on the official Obama network, MSNBC. One section of onlookers sang, "Nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye." And, finally, as Bush left the White House, one deep thinker took the opportunity to give the "one-finger salute," thus saying more about himself than anything else.
This from a movement that fancies itself all about peace, love and global karma.
Now look, it would be a mistake to paint all Democrats and Obama supporters with the actions of these few on Inauguration Day. And, according to news reports, some in the crowd tried hard to shush the boo-birds. That is a hopeful sign.
But let's also not ignore the obvious. There is a growing faction of the American left that seeks revenge more than righteousness.
Intolerant of dissenting views, this faction thinks as comedian Janeane Garofalo does that some members of the opposing political party should be "jailed." Terrorist acts (such as mailing envelopes of white power to Mormon temples because the gay marriage vote in California went the church's way) are seen by this faction as understandable and acts of legitimate political expression.
There is also an ugly racial component to it. We first saw it with Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who said, among other things, that white America had deliberately inflicted black Africa with AIDS.
When the Rev. Wright first hit the national stage, we hardly knew what to make of his irrational and separatist statements. Consequently, we pretty much ignored the substance of Wright's racially divisive rhetoric and focused on it as a day-to-day political story. It made us more comfortable, I think.
But in light of the things we saw at the inauguration, it may be time to revisit the dangers of intolerance and hate -- no matter the color of the person who makes them -- and nip this ugly mean streak in the bud.
As our president said, it is time to grow up.
Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@reviewjournal.com) is publisher of the Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media.
Find this article at:
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/38291659.html
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As the piece points out, what if it had been Bush?
Sunday, January 25, 2009
And on the fifth day, subpoenas were served to Obama's senior staff
On Saturday morning, the list of subpoenas served by the U.S. Attorney's office in the Governor Rod Blagojevich case was made public. The list included one major surprise for the new administration.
A veritable "who's who" of Obama staffers, surrogates and affiliates were among those served with subpoenas. Put simply, within one week of President Barack Obama's administration taking office, it is already under significant legal scrutiny that will -- at a minimum -- take precious time away from dealing with the country's monumental economic and foreign policy challenges.
And, once again, the mainstream media is AWOL, unwilling to report on this very newsworthy story.
Among those served with subpoenas were:
David Axelrod, Obama's "Karl Rove" and the biggest surprise on the list. Obama's team issued a report in December that said his staff had no "inappropriate contact" with Blago, so the inclusion of Axelrod is a bit of a shock.
Valerie Jarrett, Blago's "Senate Candidate 1", a real estate management executive and political hack of the first order. Her ties to failed and fraudulent real estate deals in Chicago were the subject of numerous investigations and should have instantly disqualified her for any public office.
Rahm Emanuel was already deeply involved in the case with some reports describing as many as 21 conversations with Blago's office during the period in question.
Tony Rezko, Obama's first advocate, fundraiser and adviser, was convicted last year on numerous charges related to kickbacks, and is now awaiting sentencing. Rezko is "cooperating with authorities, FBI Agent Daniel Cain said in an affidavit."
Others served include:
• Patricia Blagojevich, first lady
• River Realty, her former employer
• Friends of Blagojevich, the governor's campaign committee
• Citizens for Blagojevich, his former committee
• Robert Blagojevich, the governor's brother and campaign chairman
• Christopher Kelly, former adviser and fundraiser for governor
• Alonzo Monk, former Blagojevich chief of staff, now a lobbyist
• Milan Petrovic, lobbyist and campaign fundraiser
• John Wyma, former Blagojevich adviser, now a lobbyist
• Paul Rosenfeld, lobbyist
• J.B. Pritzker, wealthy Chicagoan whom Blagojevich might have considered to replace Obama in U.S. Senate
• Gery Chico, former Chicago school board president and one-time U.S. Senate candidate
• Doug Scofield, former Blagojevich adviser, now a consultant
• Scofield Communications
• Service Employees International Union
• Tom Balanoff, SEIU Illinois president
• Change to Win, an SEIU-affiliated activist group
• Sam Zell, owner of the Chicago Tribune
• Nils Larsen, an adviser to Zell
• The Chicago Tribune
• The Tribune Co., the newspaper's parent company
• Michael Vondra, owner of asphalt and construction companies
• Gerald Krozel, vice president of a concrete company
• John Johnston, president of Balmoral Park racetrack
• Fred Yang, Washington, D.C.-based Blagojevich consultant
• Garin Hart Yang Research Group, Yang's firm
• William Knapp, Washington, D.C.-based Blagojevich consultant
• Squire, Knapp & Dunn, Knapp's firm
• Doug Sosnick, political consultant
Blago's "Senate Candidate 3", Jan Schakowsky, was not served with a subpoena, but will have some questions of her own to answer in the days to come.
Let's recap, shall we? In the first week, Obama has not cut taxes -- the only proven way to revive the economy -- despite promising to do so for "95% of working Americans" (which was almost certainly a lie, but let's wait and see); signed an order to close Gitmo, certain to make America less safe; and promoted abortion on a global scale.
Oh, and most of his senior staff was served with subpoenas.
I can hardly wait for week two.
Update: Thomas Lifson offers the critical thought experiment: imagine if Rove, and not Axelrod, had been the subject.
Hat tips: Don Surber (for the title as well as the story) and Larwyn. Linked by: Thomas Lifson at the invaluable American Thinker, The Anchoress, SondraK, The Real Barack Obama, CannonFire, DequalsS, Bill Baar's West Side and The Astute Bloggers. Thanks!
Labels: Crime, Democrats, MSM, Obama
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/01/and-evening-and-morning-were-fifth-day.html
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***CCP regarding Rush, Hannity, Coulter: "[I am] a moderate Republican...I don't necessarily disagree with their philosophy but more their strategy." - I agree, and I'm not a moderate Republican. But these people are not R. strategists. They are entertainers and pundits. They are selling viewership and listenership, not hope, change or electoral success.***
Hi Doug. Yes but the msm always points to them as spokespeople for Republicans. They are out there everyday reaching out to Republicans in a way no one else in the party can. Yes occasionally we see Rove, Newt or a few others on FOX but otherwise the party has no one.
So while a I do agree some of what they say I am not sure if it is more hurtful or helpful. They are the most heard spokepeople for the party right now. We see a few senators (Boehner) and what not, but otherwise that's it. With so few MSM voices.....
I really do think BO is conning the right and everyone else. I think he is a giant far lefty in heart, theory, and practice and he is playing the middle and right for fools. I've seen enough to think this guy is playing the part, "make you think you are one of them and you will be able to change them" (right out of the Saul Alinsky writings).
My impression he will subtly slide in all the big government programs he can get away with.
And the George Wills of the world will idly sit and smile like Timothy Leary.
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January 26, 2009
Green Stimulus: Tying Economic Package to Energy and Environment Plan Is Not Workable
by Ben Lieberman
WebMemo #2245
There is plenty of reason to believe that Congress's proposed stimulus package will not work. A recent Heritage Foundation analysis noted that such government spending "cannot be stimulative because every dollar that government spending 'injects' into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. Rather than create new purchasing power, these policies merely redistribute existing purchasing power."[1]
Even worse than being a zero-sum game, government spending creates less economic activity than if the money had been left in the private sector.[2]
This misallocation of resources is only worsened with the attempt to fashion a green stimulus, as the spending projects deemed environmentally acceptable tend to be ones that are especially questionable from an economic standpoint. A better approach would involve removing the impediments to private investment rather than substituting them with misguided public investment.
A Green Stimulus Is a Contradiction in Terms
First and foremost, it should be noted that a green stimulus is an inherent contradiction in terms. The environmental movement itself is, by design, anti-growth. After all, these are the individuals and organizations that regularly fight to stop new factories, power plants, and construction projects. For them, environmental concerns, real or exaggerated, almost always trump economic ones, and it is rare for them to be lacking an excuse to oppose a project. Several leading environmentalists even admit that reduced economic growth is part of their strategy. For example, scientist and activist John Holdren, President Obama's choice for chief science advisor, once stated that "[a] massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States."[3]
The environmental movement's many successes in imposing this agenda has for decades been a drag on the economy and a net destroyer of jobs, especially high-wage blue-collar jobs in such areas as manufacturing and energy production. And even when environmental obstructionists do not ultimately prevail, their routine use of protracted litigation and other delay tactics would almost certainly negate any attempts at an immediate boost to the economy.
Granted, the environmental community does support some politically correct projects for things like renewable energy, public transportation, and efficiency improvements in buildings. These types of endeavors will comprise the green component of the stimulus package. But in terms of economic activity and jobs, these items are miniscule compared to the myriad activities environmentalist continue to oppose, including virtually all heavy industry, the production and use of the fossil fuels, and many if not most major construction projects such as new roads and housing developments.
Overall, an economy that tries to operate to the satisfaction of environmental activists will be a substantially weakened one, and an attempt at a stimulus via a greening of the economy will always be self-defeating and a net job killer.
To the extent the new Administration and Congress pay heed to the wishes of environmental activists, they will be embarking on an anti-stimulus package that will swamp even the largest stimulus. This will be even truer if the 800-pound gorilla of anti-stimulus packages--a crackdown on fossil energy use in the name of combating global warming--is ever imposed.
Renewable Energy Is Anti-Stimulus
Part of the green stimulus involves using taxpayer dollars to subsidize renewable energy, especially wind and solar for electric generation and biofuels for transportation. This would backfire and hurt the economy. It is well established that affordable energy is critical to economic health, and higher energy costs will hurt the prospects for an economic recovery and post-recovery growth. But virtually all of the alternative energy sources that are part of the green stimulus are more expensive than their conventional counterparts.[4]
If renewables like wind and solar energy or biofuels were economically competitive, they would already be in growing use without federal subsidies. The fact that they currently enjoy many government handouts and apparently need even more from the stimulus package is a red flag that they cost too much. Indeed, this is why federal efforts to pick winners and losers among energy sources invariably end up backing losers: The winners are the ones that do not need Washington's help.
Support for renewables would likely cost more jobs than are created. For example, subsidies for wind and solar energy would, at least from the narrow perspective of the wind and solar industries, create new jobs as more of these systems are manufactured and installed. But the tax dollars needed to help pay for them cost jobs elsewhere, as would the pricey electricity they produce.
The only reason to consider promoting these renewables is for their environmental benefits, which are questionable in most cases. But the economic argument for saddling the nation with this costlier energy falls completely flat. Some suggest that an entire "new" economy could be based on renewable energy sources, but the only thing new about it would be how weak and globally uncompetitive it is.
Throwing New Money After Old
Most of the ideas that comprise the green stimulus are not new. Things like public transit and energy efficiency programs have long been accorded politically correct status and have been the favorites of Washington spenders for decades--with little to show for it.
There already are a host of federal laws providing subsidies for public transportation as well as tax code provisions encouraging its use. And the 2005 and 2007 energy bills added to the array of existing programs encouraging energy efficiency, from new home appliance and automobile efficiency standards to tax breaks encouraging the use of insulation and other energy-saving devices in homes and commercial buildings.
As is the case with renewable energy, such past federal efforts have a mixed track record. For example, decades of generous federal funding has propped up a number of transit systems with inadequate ridership (less than 2 percent of all passengers and 5 percent of commuters use public transit), which along with other problems negates any economic and environmental benefits.[5] And while market forces have led to increased energy efficiency in nearly all energy-using products and industrial processes, there are a number of federally mandated efficiency measures that have backfired, from energy-saving clothes washers whose performance was panned by Consumer Reports to automobile fuel economy standards that were found by the National Academy of Sciences to make vehicles less safe.[6]
Removing Environmental Impediments: A Real Stimulus Package
There are better options for creating worthwhile economic activity. The real way toward a stimulus is through the private sector, and much could be done by streamlining environmental impediments to private sector growth and job creation.
For example, consider the benefits of removing the legal and regulatory roadblocks to increased domestic oil and natural gas production.[7] Vast energy-rich onshore and offshore areas are currently off-limits, and energy companies are eager for the opportunity to expand into them. In sharp contrast to the renewable energy expenditures in the stimulus package, the jobs created by increased domestic oil and natural gas drilling would be paid for entirely by the private sector. And the extra production would lower oil and natural gas prices, thereby providing further economic benefits that accompany affordable energy--the exact opposite of what happens when the government tries to foist uncompetitive renewables onto the market.
The Wrong Stimulus
A stimulus package can create makework jobs, including green makework jobs, but since these jobs require federal funding that must come from somewhere else where jobs are being lost, the exercise is zero-sum at best. And after the green stimulus money is spent, the end result is primarily boondoggles with little long-term economic value. The private sector could better use those resources, especially if legal and regulatory impediments are removed.
Trying to spend ourselves rich has always proven to be a bad idea. And trying to simultaneously spend ourselves rich and green would be even more disappointing.
Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst in Energy and the Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
[1]Brian M. Riedl, "Why Government Spending Does Not Stimulate Economic Growth," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2208, November 12, 2008, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/bg2208.cfm.
[2]Ibid.
[3]John Holdren, Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1973), p. 279.
[4]See International Energy Agency, "Projected Costs of Generating Electricity: 2005 Update," Executive Summary, at http://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/ElecCostSUM.pdf (January 26, 2009).
[5]See Ron Utt, "Washington Metro Needs Reform, Not a Federal Bailout," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 1665, October 16, 2007, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm1665.cfm; Randall O'Toole, "Does Rail Transit Save Energy or Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions?" Cato Institute Policy Analysis, April 14, 2008, at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-615.pdf (January 26, 2009).
[6]ConsumerReports.org, "Washers & Dryers: Dirty Laundry," June 2007, at http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/appliances/washing-machines/
washers-and-dryers-6-07/overview/0607_wash_ov_1.htm (January 26, 2009);National Academy of Sciences, "Effectiveness and Impact of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards," 2002, p. 3.
[7]David Kreutzer, "The Economic Case for Drilling Oil Reserves," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2093, October 1, 2008, at http://www.heritage
.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm2093.cfm.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm2245.cfm
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/27/the-obama-al-arabiya-interview/
The Obama al-Arabiya interview
posted at 10:06 am on January 27, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Barack Obama decided to give al-Arabiya the honor of getting his first one-on-one interview as President of the United States, and while that might have been a good strategic decision, Obama’s performance didn’t cash in on it. Instead of offering both openness and a tough assessment of the problems the Arabs have to solve for themselves, Obama seemed more interested in feelings than national security. And in at least one instance, Obama accepted a strange paradigm from his interviewer that underscored his naiveté:
Q: I want to ask you about the broader Muslim world, but let me – one final thing about the Palestinian-Israeli theater. There are many Palestinians and Israelis who are very frustrated now with the current conditions and they are losing hope, they are disillusioned, and they believe that time is running out on the two-state solution because – mainly because of the settlement activities in Palestinian-occupied territories.
Will it still be possible to see a Palestinian state — and you know the contours of it — within the first Obama administration?
THE PRESIDENT: I think it is possible for us to see a Palestinian state — I’m not going to put a time frame on it — that is contiguous, that allows freedom of movement for its people, that allows for trade with other countries, that allows the creation of businesses and commerce so that people have a better life.
And, look, I think anybody who has studied the region recognizes that the situation for the ordinary Palestinian in many cases has not improved. And the bottom line in all these talks and all these conversations is, is a child in the Palestinian Territories going to be better off? Do they have a future for themselves? And is the child in Israel going to feel confident about his or her safety and security? And if we can keep our focus on making their lives better and look forward, and not simply think about all the conflicts and tragedies of the past, then I think that we have an opportunity to make real progress.
But it is not going to be easy, and that’s why we’ve got George Mitchell going there. This is somebody with extraordinary patience as well as extraordinary skill, and that’s what’s going to be necessary.
I included the entire question and answer to give the entire context of this exchange, in which Obama faltered badly. The main driver of Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t settlements, and hasn’t been for some time. It’s the rocket launches coming from Hamas in Gaza, and to a lesser extent from Islamic Jihad there as well. How can we know this? Israel hasn’t had to conduct a military exercise in the West Bank for years, where the settlements are located. On the other hand, they’ve had to conduct several military operations in Gaza in the few years since Ariel Sharon dismantled the settlements there.
Obama should have reminded his interviewer of those facts. That’s a big failure, and a missed opportunity to get the record straight in the Arab world. And there’s more, as Scott Johnson points out:
Q: President Bush framed the war on terror conceptually in a way that was very broad, “war on terror,” and used sometimes certain terminology that the many people — Islamic fascism. You’ve always framed it in a different way, specifically against one group called al Qaeda and their collaborators. And is this one way of –
THE PRESIDENT: I think that you’re making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations — whether Muslim or any other faith in the past — that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name.
And so you will I think see our administration be very clear in distinguishing between organizations like al Qaeda — that espouse violence, espouse terror and act on it — and people who may disagree with my administration and certain actions, or may have a particular viewpoint in terms of how their countries should develop. We can have legitimate disagreements but still be respectful. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians and we will hunt them down.
But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship.
Again, the naiveté comes through clearly in this exchange. The terrorist organizations themselves have a wide base of support among Muslims in the Arab world, as well as with the Iranian government, if we include Hamas and Hezbollah. Obama makes al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah sound like the Baader-Meinhofs or the tax-resister militias here in the US. They’re not. They’re well-funded and strongly supported, at least until that support starts costing people more than they’d like. Terrorism doesn’t begin and end with AQ at all, and if Obama doesn’t understand that, then he’s extremely ill-prepared for his task in the next four years of stopping terrorists, a task at which Bush succeeded after 9/11.
Unlike some others, I didn’t mind Obama’s decision to grant al-Arabiya this honor. Obama has a great deal of popularity in the Muslim world, and that can be a great asset to the US if used properly. Obama could have taken the opportunity to explain some hard truths while extending the hand of friendship. Instead, he took the opportunity to pander.
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I agree 100% concerning the remaining "satanic verses" within Islam. Until these dark strands in Islam are rejected by Muslims, there is a fundamental problem. One of the many thoughts I have on "all this" is that success/victory will come when the struggle is defined as Civilization vs. Barbarism instead of Civilization vs Islam. Having kicked the butt of "AQ Prime", it strikes me that PART of a coherent strategy is to allow/encourage the Muslim world to define itself in a new way, so taken by themself we might finesse our way into saying that the President's words are not THAT bad. Unfortunately the larger context is that President O seems determined to throw away success in Iraq and enable Iran to go nuke while meandering pointlessly in Afg-Pak, so I fear the net result will be a return to pre-Bush weak horse status-- which will be seen -- correctly?-- as an utter surrender of American will.
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A lot of Americans, and other innocents around the world will suffer and die because of Obama and the left. We are not going to cower our way to victory.
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I fear you are right.
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I was just in another law enforcement training class last week where we were getting trained for responding to domestic jihadist attacks. There is good intel the savages plan to butcher our children in large numbers. Think the world changed on 9/11/01, just wait....
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I agree 100% concerning the remaining "satanic verses" within Islam. Until these dark strands in Islam are rejected by Muslims, there is a fundamental problem.
The rejecting of the "dark strands" in Islam would include rejecting Mohammed himself and most of his teachings.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/27/good-news-iran-to-be-nuke-capable-this-year-says-think-tank/
Good news: Iran to be nuke-capable this year, says think tank
posted at 2:10 pm on January 27, 2009 by Allahpundit
I laughed when Drudge put the siren up for this, not because the news is predictable but because the think tank that issued the report actually has been predicting it for years. How slow has this slow-motion trainwreck been? May 2006: IISS pronounces Iranian nukes “inevitable.” January 2007: IISS warns that Iran could have the bomb in two years. May 2007: IISS describes how Iran’s built its own nuclear black market, one which, if the Times of London is to be believed, is now suddenly running low on yellowcake. Too late, alas:
Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make a single nuclear weapon later this year, the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) predicts…
However, the survey reports doubts over US Intelligence estimates that Iran halted its work on nuclear weapons six years ago.
This points to Tehran’s continued development of long-range ballistic missiles able to reach targets in Israel and beyond.
The IISS recommends a mixture of carrot and stick as the best international response.
The boldfaced part is, of course, a reference to the garbage NIE that tied Bush’s hands by claiming Iran no longer had a weapons program, even while the classified version acknowledged suspicions that they had fully a dozen or so covert nuclear sites that had never been visited by inspectors. Now it’s The One’s mess, and while we keep hearing about carrots, we don’t hear so much about sticks. Here’s the most significant exchange from his otherwise Bushian Al-Arabiya interview. What’s missing?
Q Will the United States ever live with a nuclear Iran? And if not, how far are you going in the direction of preventing it?
THE PRESIDENT: You know, I said during the campaign that it is very important for us to make sure that we are using all the tools of U.S. power, including diplomacy, in our relationship with Iran.
Now, the Iranian people are a great people, and Persian civilization is a great civilization. Iran has acted in ways that’s not conducive to peace and prosperity in the region: their threats against Israel; their pursuit of a nuclear weapon which could potentially set off an arms race in the region that would make everybody less safe; their support of terrorist organizations in the past — none of these things have been helpful.
But I do think that it is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are, but where there are potential avenues for progress. And we will over the next several months be laying out our general framework and approach. And as I said during my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.
Not so much as a perfunctory “Iranian nukes are unacceptable.” In fact, Reuel Marc Gerecht pleads with Leon Panetta today in WaPo to beef up the CIA’s Iran intelligence, not in the expectation that it’ll stop Iranian nukes but in the belief that those nukes are now unstoppable and that we’d better get good at containment fast. Exit question: Do we dare start a pool for when news first breaks that Iran’s got the bomb? I’m guessing October.
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Exit question: Do we dare start a pool for when news first breaks that Iran’s got the bomb? I’m guessing October.
We will figure out they have one when it goes off. Obama is going disarm Iran with puppy dogs, hugs, sun shine and counseling. None of it will work but we wont find out until its to late.
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The last time I recall this much disrespect to a former President from active top government officials was after Nixon. Naturally, it is the same liberal left which used every opportunity to destroy the Republicans even while destroying the morale of our country. Here we go again. Destroy the morale of our nation to prove that you are the chosen ones as opposed to the other political party.
BO is doing nothing to stop this. Shove it down our throats that we were at fault for all the ills of the world, that everything wrong with the world was due to the Republicans, that we disrespected everyone, we don't speak French, we all think all Muslims are terrorist murderers, and on and on. Does anyone else see the similarities? If history repeats itself we will see an eventual resurgence of nationalism like Reagan brought to the USA in 1980. I guess that might not happen if in four years the majority of people here are either born elsewhere and or on the public dole and beholden to their Democrat masters.
The real reason the world might be happy (if even true vs Clinton style BS) with BO is only that they might get something from us that they wern't going to get before. I am not in any mood for handing out more of our sovereignty.
***Clinton says world "exhaling" with Obama at top
Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:22pm EST
By Sue Pleming
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested on Tuesday the world was breathing a sigh of relief that President Barack Obama had replaced George W. Bush and was working to fix the damage he had caused.
In her first news conference as top U.S. diplomat, Clinton said excitement over the change in power was "reinforced time and time again" during her welcome calls in recent days with foreign counterparts.
"There is a great exhalation of breath going on in the world as people express their appreciation for the new direction that's being set and the team that is put together by the president," Clinton said.
"We have a lot of damage to repair."
Pressed, Clinton said her remarks should not be viewed as a wholesale repudiation of the Bush administration, adding there would be continuity on some policies.
"It not any kind of repudiation or indictment of the past eight years so much as an excitement and an acceptance of how we are going to be doing business," she said.
Many Arab and European allies opposed the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq and its human rights record, especially the treatment of terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison, which Obama has promised to close within a year.
Clinton said, without being specific, there were areas of the world that also felt they had been either overlooked under Bush or had not been given the appropriate attention.
Generally, world leaders have praised Obama's election but analysts say his honeymoon could be short-lived as he tries to grapple with the global economic crunch, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Arab-Israeli conflict and other challenges.
Some allies have already shown resistance to Obama's early requests. For example, France has indicated it will not send more troops to Afghanistan and the European Union failed on Monday to agree to offer any concerted aid to help Obama close down Guantanamo Bay prison.
"In Europe and elsewhere, there is a disconnect between Mr. Obama's popularity and receptiveness to his likely policies," The Washington Post commented in an editorial on Monday.
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http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/rwj/2009/01/27/how-much-i-support-our-president/
How Much I Support Our President
by R.W.J.
America wanted change and we got it. Apparently the first thing that changed is that dissent is no longer the highest form of patriotism. Rush Limbaugh found that out when he was accused of wanting the President to fail. How dare he not support our President! According to Jon Stewart what Rush said was almost treasonous.
As someone who did not vote for President Obama, I don’t want to be lumped in with the haters, so here is a list of examples showing just how much I support our President:
I support him as much as Code Pink supports our troops.
I support him as much as N.O.W. supports Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
I support him as much as the Hollywood community supported Theo Van Gogh.
I support him as much as Nancy Pelosi supports the Catholic Church’s teachings on life.
I support him as much as Al Gore supports cutting down on his personal carbon footprint to save the world.
I support him as much as John Edwards supports The National Enquirer’s right to publish pictures of his girlfriend and baby.
I support him as much as Western gay rights groups support Mehdi Kazemi.
I support him as much as the Castro brothers support Oscar Biscet’s right to free speech.
I support him as much as Ted Kennedy supports renewable wind energy off the coast of his summer mansion.
I support him as much as Bill Clinton supports Hillary’s ambitions for higher office.
I support him as much as the National Education Association supports the rights of students and parents to get a quality education over the security of a teacher’s job.
I support him just as much as he supports the right of a baby who survives an abortion to not spend its only living moments waiting to die in a storage room.
I hope that clears everything up. Now could someone please tell what time the oceans are going to start receding because I’d really hate to miss that one.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/28/ahmadinejad-to-obama-apologize/
Kneel, kafir!
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http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/boot/52431
20 or 30 Years Ago?
Max Boot - 01.28.2009 - 9:35 AM
“America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task.”
So said our new president in his interview Tuesday with Al Arabiya, the Arabic-language satellite news channel. At first the words washed over me. Then I did some simple math. Let’s see… 20 or 30 years ago… that would be 1989 or 1979.
What was happening in relations between America and the Muslim world back then? Not relying on memory alone, I consulted Bernard Grun’s reference book, The Timetables of History.
It turns out that in 1989 U.S. fighters shot down two Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra. The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan, creating a vacuum that would eventually be filled by the Taliban. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death for “blasphemy.” Hundreds died in Lebanon’s long-running civil war while Hezbollah militants were torturing to death U.S. Marine Colonel William “Rich” Higgins, who had been kidnapped the previous year while serving as a UN peacekeeper in Lebanon.
And 1979? That was an even darker year-in many ways a turning point for the worse in the Middle East. That was, after all, the year that the shah of Iran was overthrown. He was replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini, who launched a war against the West that is still unfolding. One of the first actions of this long struggle was the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran and all of its personnel as hostages. The same year saw the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which led to the growth of the mujahideen, some of whom would later morph into Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This was also the year that Islamic militants temporarily seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, an event that drove the Saudi royal family to become ever more fundamentalist.
In other news in 1979, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, was hanged by General Zia al-Hak, inaugurating a long period when Pakistan would be under the effective control of the army in alliance with Islamic militants. That year mobs also attacked U.S. embassies throughout the Muslim world from Kabul and Islamabad to Tripoli. The one bright spot in 1979 was the signing of the Camp David Accord between the US, Egypt, and Israel, which did not, unfortunately, auger a “new” Middle East as many optimists hoped.
So this is the sort of “partnership” between the U.S. and the Middle East that President Obama would like to see? If his predecessor had suggested any such thing he would by now be a subject of ridicule for late-night comedians and daytime talk show hosts, and rightly so.
This is actually a revealing slip. To wit, it reveals two things: First, Obama’s profound ignorance about most aspects of foreign policy, including the recent history of the Middle East. A second, and related point, is his tendency to blame the ills of the region on the previous administration-something that is only possible if you started following the Middle East around 2001 and have little idea of what came before. It is then all too easy to claim, as Obama did on the campaign trail, that it was George W. Bush’s “disengagement” from the peace process and his “disastrous” war with Iraq that messed up the Middle East. Only someone with a longer view would realize how profoundly messed up the region was long before Bush came into office.
Even if we go back before the current era of religious extremism that began in earnest in 1979 we find evidence that from the American perspective the Middle East was hardly a happy place. Think of the OPEC oil embargo that began in 1973, the numerous wars between Israel and the Arabs, Eisenhower’s landing of marines in Lebanon in 1958, the Suez Crisis of 1956, the overthrow of Iran’s prime minister in 1953, and so on.
To the extent that we had any stability in the region it was purchased at the expense of alliances with distasteful regimes like those of the Shah of Iran and the Saudi royal family, once considered the “twin pillars” of American policy in the Middle East. Obama is dreaming if he thinks there was a wonderful “partnership” with Arab or Muslim regimes that he can “restore.”
UPDATE: In the comments section, “Elen” writes: “I wonder if Columbia/Harvard education is overrated or Obama is simply an idiot. I think the answer is both.” I think the answer is neither. From everything I have seen, Obama is a smart man who received a good education at Columbia and Harvard. The problem is that he spent his entire career in domestic policy and politics. He has little knowledge or background in national security affairs—probably about the same amount as anyone who was kind of paying attention in college more than twenty years ago but hasn’t paid much attention since. My guess is that when it comes to foreign policy he knows only marginally more than Sarah Palin—another smart person who simply didn’t have to bone up on this subject before running for national office. You can see the difference when Obama is talking—he is crisp and confident on domestic issues, halting and uncertain on foreign issues. I only hope for all of our sakes that he is a fast learner.
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Change Terrorists Can Believe In
By Joseph Klein
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, January 29, 2009
As he promised during the campaign, President Obama has signed an executive order directing the closure of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay within a year. This is clearly an offering to his leftist base of supporters, who will be immensely grateful. It's also a move that has been well received at the United Nations, where UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay described Obama’s action as representing a good day for the rule of law.
As it happens, Obama signed the order on the same day it was reported that a Saudi-born Guantanamo terror detainee named Said Ali al-Shihri, who had been released and sent back to Saudi Arabia to enroll in a Saudi "rehabilitation program" for former jihadists, has returned to his old terrorist ways instead. That should be no surprise, naturally, in the incubator of terrorism that is Saudi Arabia.
Al-Shihri left Saudi Arabia and resurfaced in Yemen where he has been restored to a prominent position in terrorist circles. He is now an al-Qaeda commander in Yemen, which is re-emerging as a terrorist safe-haven. Last September, he proved his terrorist mettle with his involvement in a car bombing outside the American embassy, killing 16 people.
Al-Shihri is not the only Guantanamo alumnus who has resumed terrorist activities. The Pentagon believes that dozens of former Guantanamo detainees have “returned to the fight” against America.
There are 245 prisoners still being held at Guantanamo. Obama is embarked on a course that will either release them or try them under the full constitutional protections afforded criminal defendants in American courts. What is to be done with dangerous captives who cannot be brought to trial for risk of revealing intelligence secrets or because evidence against them was elicited under coercive interrogation techniques? Some may be released on legal technicalities and if no other country agrees to take them, possibly permitted to remain in the United States, where they will be able to set up sleeper al-Qaeda cells on our soil.
Apparently, it is now more important to make sure that foreign terrorist suspects enjoy all of the rights guaranteed to the American people by our Constitution than it is to ensure to the American people the security in their lives, liberties, and property that the Constitution lays down as a primary obligation of the federal government.
And if the United Nations has its way, the former captives may even be awarded damages for their ‘pain and suffering’ while they were detained. UN torture investigator Manfred Nowak has claimed, for example, that inmates eventually freed from Guantanamo should be entitled to sue the United States if they have been "mistreated" according to his notion of what constitutes torture or other forms of cruel, inhumane, or degrading punishment.
President Obama has kept another of his campaign promises by signing an executive order making the Army Field Manual govern interrogation techniques for all United States Government personnel including the CIA. While leaving the door slightly ajar for very limited undefined exceptions, the enhanced interrogation techniques that have helped keep us safe since 9/11 are a thing of the past.
According to the outgoing director of national intelligence, Admiral Michael McConnell, the intelligence community needs interrogation techniques beyond what are contained in the Army Field Manual. They will not get such flexibility under the new executive order, however, which also prohibits the CIA from holding prisoners in third countries.
The Army Field Manual for Human Intelligence Collector Operations is a publicly available document posted on the internet. It provides the terrorists with a roadmap as to how they are likely to be interrogated and the expected psychological outcomes. Some portions resemble a psychology textbook. With a bit of role-playing as part of their training, hardened terrorists will have little problem in learning how to manipulate their interrogators.
Obama’s primary mistake is to virtually remove the element of surprise from future interrogations. Keeping the enemy guessing on what we may or may not do and how we do it is essential in the kind of asymmetric war we are fighting with the terrorists, who capitalize on their own use of surprise. Acting in calculated, predictable steps within a set of publicly available rules that signal exactly what the terrorist suspects can expect while in detention removes any incentive on their part to cooperate.
The toughest sanction in the Army Field Manual is the limited separation of an unlawful enemy combatant from his fellow detainees, which requires higher levels of approval before it can be imposed. It will have little effect on terrorists trained to handle such conditions.
Separation of enemy combatants can mean solitary confinement. It may also include psychological feelings of isolation and loss of a sense of control brought on by perceptual or sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, the induction of fear and hopelessness, and the use of sensory overload, temperature or environmental manipulation.
However, the Army Field Manual prohibits the use of "excessive noise"; "excessive dampness"; or "excessive or inadequate heat, light or ventilation." And the manual bans any program of sleep deprivation that does not permit a detainee at least four hours of sleep a night. Just to put this into perspective, consider how many college students regularly get less than four hours a night of sleep.
The manual does permit some detainees to be blind-folded and to be given earmuffs for up to 12 hours at a time under medical supervision when physical isolation is not feasible.
These measures are about as bad as it gets for the terrorist suspects under the Army Field Manual. They are a snap to prepare for during terrorist training sessions.
Everything that is permitted and prohibited is spelled out in great detail. There are no potential surprises.
The Army Field Manual states that "all prisoners and detainees, regardless of status, will be treated humanely. Cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is prohibited. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 defines ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ as the cruel unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. This definition refers to an extensive body of law developed by the courts of the United States to determine when, under various circumstances, treatment of individuals would be inconsistent with American constitutional standards related to concepts of dignity, civilization, humanity, decency and fundamental fairness."
Under the Army Field Manual’s application of this sweeping prohibition, interrogators cannot even mock the passages in the Koran that serve as the basis for the most dangerous jihadists’ fanatical beliefs, much less deprive these captives of their incendiary religious tracts altogether.
Yet UN officials such as its torture investigator Manfred Nowak are not satisfied. He believes, for example, "[W]hen isolation regimes are intentionally used to apply psychological pressure on detainees, such practices become coercive and should be absolutely prohibited." Since Nowak thinks that virtually all instances of detainee isolation constitute mistreatment, he will assert that detainees subjected to isolation under the Army Field Manual’s interrogation methods must be compensated for any supposed "psychological damage."
Terrorist rights groups such as the National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU are of the same mindset as Nowak. They believe that the Army Field Manual’s interrogation methods, even those governing the carefully controlled use of isolation and requiring that the use of sleep deprivation last for no more than 20 hours a day during any 30 day period, constitute cruel and unusual punishment. These misguided leftists are more concerned about the psychological welfare and comfort level of their terrorist suspect clients, whom they fear will become depressed, irritable and disoriented, than they are about the lives of their fellow citizens. Claiming that such treatment is inhumane and therefore illegal under the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the advocates for terrorist suspects threaten to go to court on behalf of their clients whom they believe should be treated as conventional prisoners of war with full constitutional and Geneva Convention protections.
The Geneva Conventions do require that "[P]risoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." (Emphasis added.) A prisoner of war would have to be treated as if he or she were in the U.S. military, with the same living conditions as our own military forces.
The Army Field Manual follows this protocol for detainees who actually qualify as prisoners of war. Detainees eligible for POW status are provided with privileges and procedural protections that go beyond the baseline prohibition of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment that extends to all detainees including unlawful enemy combatants. However, it is simply laughable to think that denial of POW status as so defined under the Geneva Conventions to terrorist suspects can equate to torture or any other form of truly inhumane treatment. On the contrary, it means only denying special privileges and procedural protections to individuals who refuse to abide by even the most minimal set of civilized norms and laws of war, not to mention the same norms set forth in the Geneva Conventions themselves. Al Qaeda and other Islamic fanatical terrorists come nowhere close to qualifying for POW status and the advantages that come with it.
As a rational society, we should be able to agree that being "exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind" in the course of an interrogation is not torture or otherwise inhumane treatment but rather a reasonable if unpleasant burden imposed on foreign terrorist suspects caught in connection with hostilities aimed against the United States and who may have valuable information on more planned attacks. The Army Field Manual already gives them far more sanctuary than they are worth by prohibiting interrogators from using the kind of physical and mental stress that is everyday practice in boot camp for our own soldiers.
President Obama has said that he signed the executive orders closing Guantanamo and ending the use of enhanced interrogation methods to demonstrate to the world that the United States will not sacrifice its core democratic values in order to achieve national security. In fact, he is on a path toward sacrificing both. In his desire to please his political base and opinion-makers at the United Nations and other elite forums, Obama may unfortunately be giving our mortal enemies the tools to undermine our democratic values and to continue their hostilities against us with renewed strength.
Joseph A. Klein is the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom.
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Obama's bold first week
President Obama succeeded in eliminating four of Bush's 'wars' in his first days in office.
Rosa Brooks L.A. Times
January 29, 2009
Barack Obama ended four wars during his first week as president. With just a few words and strokes of his pen, the president ended the war on terror, the war on Islam, the war on science and the war on women.
In his first executive orders, Obama effectively dismantled the elaborate structures that supported the Bush administration's "war on terror." On Jan. 22, he ordered the closure of the Guantanamo prison and a halt to the much-criticized military commission trials. He closed secret CIA prisons, required that the Red Cross have access to detainees and mandated that interrogations of detainees -- whether by the military, the CIA or anyone else -- comply with the rules laid out in the Army Field Manual.
That means: No more torture. No waterboarding, beatings, sexual humiliations or deprivation of food or medical care. And in case anyone's confused, the order makes it clear that those seeking guidance "may not rely on any interpretation of the law governing interrogation ... issued by the Department of Justice between September 11, 2001, and January 20, 2009." (That means you, John Yoo).
The war on Islam is also over. Officially, of course, it never existed. But that's how the "war on terror" looked to many around the world, a misunderstanding fueled by the war in Iraq and the irresponsible rhetoric of many Bush administration officials.
After 9/11, the United States had widespread international support -- including within the Islamic world -- for military action in Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda and oust its Taliban hosts. But when that morphed into an open-ended U.S. effort to go to war in more "target-rich" environments (read: Iraq), regardless of the lack of connection to 9/11, U.S. actions struck many Muslims as motivated by generic hostility to Islam. The fact that U.S. officials from George W. Bush on down seemed fuzzy about the differences between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and tended to ignore the very different ideologies that motivate different militant organizations, added to the sense that the U.S. considered Islam itself the problem.
But by giving his first televised interview to Al Arabiya, a channel watched throughout the Arab world, Obama made it clear that the U.S. isn't at war with Islam itself. "The Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives," he said. "There are extremist organizations -- whether Muslim or any other faith ... that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name.... Our administration [will] be very clear in distinguishing between organizations like Al Qaeda -- that ... espouse terror .... and people who may disagree with my administration" in legitimate ways.
Obama also ended the undeclared Bush administration war on science. In his inaugural speech, he promised to "restore science to its rightful place." Reversing years of Bush administration disregard of scientific evidence on global climate change, Obama ordered the Transportation Department to set new fuel-efficiency standards and ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to rethink its Bush-era refusal to allow states such as California to impose anti-pollution standards more stringent than federal ones.
The undeclared war on women? Also over. On Jan. 23, Obama reversed the "Mexico City policy," which prohibited recipients of U.S. foreign-assistance funds from providing abortions or even providing information about abortions. Family planning groups worldwide will no longer have to choose between providing honest information and receiving crucial funding.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that these assorted "wars" were only metaphors, incapable of producing real harm. The "war on terror" was practically a gift to Osama bin Laden: Our detention and interrogation policies probably fueled far more terrorism than they prevented. Ditto for the Bush administration's undeclared war against Islam.
The Bush administration's replacement of science with ideology was equally devastating: How many lives will be lost or blighted as we all pay the price for a decade of denial about the human causes of global warming? And some estimate that as many as 500,000 women worldwide have died since 2001 as a result of botched abortions, many of which might have been prevented if the Mexico City policy hadn't pushed abortions and abortion counseling underground in many countries.
Obama's job is just beginning. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will be far harder to end.
Still, not bad for a week's work.
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Tis rare to find so much specious reasoning packed in so little space.
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Since you live in the LA area, I thought you might like it and I didn't want
you to miss it. :evil:
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The Left Angeles Times is very much a part of the political ecosystem in which I live and it torments me on a regular basis, thank you very much :-P :lol:
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Remember this phrase "At least Bush kept us safe". The next mass casualty attack on US soil is all on the Empty-suit now.
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JDN,
Keep in mind that LAX, LA and Orange county sites are known to be targets for al qaeda. Imagine the irony of a newly released Gitmo terrorist butchering someone dear to you in your hometown. The blood will be on your hands just as much as on Barry's.
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Well here is the union payoff. So BO Is telling us that the big union perks that US auto makers got was not part of the problem with the US auto industry's financial woes. I supose he is telling us that union members create jobs and help to stimulate the economy too. I don't recall ever reading Abe Lincoln speaking such propaganda. This guy ain't no Lincoln irregardless of what his cratic base of fans claim. The idea of "middle class" task force is a great political maneuver though it is obvious their solutions will all include big government and angles to lock in a Democratic party stranglehold on voters. The Republicans need to come up with a counter middle class plan. Let BO show his cards first though. I still agree with the likes of Colin Powell and Mort Kondrake in that Repbulcians are not addressing issues in a way that is going to attract new faces to the party. That is where I believe Rush is wrong.
***Obama touts middle-class task force lead by Biden
Reuters AP – President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, speaks in the East Room of the White … WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama issued a series of executive orders Friday that he said should "level the playing field" for labor unions in their struggles with management.
Obama also used the occasion at the White House to announce formally a new White House task force on the problems of middle-class Americans, and installed Vice President Joe Biden as its chairman.
Union officials say the new orders by Obama will undo Bush administration policies that favored employers over workers. The orders will:
_Require federal contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change.
_Reverse a Bush administration order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their exclusive bargaining representatives.
_Prevent federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.
"We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests," Obama said during a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
"I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem. To me, it's part of the solution," he said. "You cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement."
Signing the executive orders was Obama's second overture to organized labor in as many days. On Thursday, he signed the first bill of his presidency, giving workers more time to sue for wage discrimination.
"It's a new day for workers," said James Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who attended the White House ceremony with other union leaders. "We finally have a White House that is dedicated to working with us to rebuild our middle class. Hope for the American Dream is being restored."
Of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families, Obama said, "We're not forgetting the poor because they, too, share our American dream."
He said his administration wants to make sure low-income people "get a piece" of the American pie "if they're willing to work for it."
The president and vice president said the task force includes Cabinet departments whose work has the most influence on the well-being of the country's middle class, including the departments of education, commerce, health and human services and labor.
"With this we have a single, highly visible group with one single goal: to raise the living standards of the people who are the backbone of this country," Biden said.
He pledged that the task force will conduct its business in the open, and announced a Web site, http://www.astrongmiddleclass.gov, for the public to get information. He also announced that the panel's first meeting will be Feb. 27 in Philadelphia and will focus on environmental or "green jobs."***
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Not of much significance compared to the clusterfcuk coming down the rails, but a little factoid which speaks volumes:
Speaking of heat, Barack Obama is feeling it in the Oval Office. But that's just because the thermostat is cranked up. "He's from Hawaii, O.K.?" said his senior adviser, David Axelrod. (Wait, we thought he was from Indonesia. Er, Chicago. Oh, never mind.) "He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there." So what about Obama's admonition in May? "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times," he said, "and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK." Obviously, he didn't mean that he couldn't keep his home at 72 during the winter.
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I'm confused, I mean I like the guy, but "He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there."
Yet a few days ago, he said,
"My children's school was canceled today, because of what? Some ice," Obama said, and all at the table started laughing.
"As my children pointed out, in Chicago school is never canceled," he continued. He said that in their old hometown, "you'd go outside for recess in weather like this. You wouldn't even stay indoors."
The President said he would have to bring "some flinty Chicago toughness" to Washington.
Asked if he was calling Washingtonians wimps, Obama responded: "I'm saying that when it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things."
So does he like it hot or cold?
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Hence the title of the thread :lol:
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Suddenly Obama has Muslim roots
Steven Edwards: Suddenly Obama has Muslim roots
Posted: January 28, 2009, 10:45 AM by Kelly McParland
Full Comment, U.S. Politics, Steven Edwards
During the U.S presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s handlers vigourously pointed out his Christian faith whenever the misconception arose he may be Muslim (even though the politically correct response should have been his religion doesn’t matter).
The handlers also roundly denounced any conservative commentator who might mention (mischievously, admittedly) his Arabic middle name, Hussein.
They charged that such usage was "fear mongering."
Once elected, however, he personally insisted on his middle name being spoken at his swearing-in ceremony.
And now – in a gesture to the Muslim world – he has not only granted the first sit-down interview of his presidency to a pan-Arab television network, but uses the occasion to gush about his Muslim ties.
"I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries," Obama tells Hisham Melhem, the Washington bureau chief of Saudi-owned Al Arabiya, which is based in Dubai.
Indeed, Obama’s Kenyan father, Barack Sr., was born into a Muslim family – though he became an atheist before arriving in Hawaii, where Obama Jr. was later born.
Obama also famously spent four years as a boy in Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim country.
All that’s fine, except why was no one allowed to talk much about it before he snagged the Electoral College majority?
Obama’s unprecedented decision to shun American domestic networks over his first sit-down appeared aimed at sending a signal to the Muslim world that his administration marks a distinct break with that of George W. Bush.
Like we didn’t get that message from his pledge to close the detention camps at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba without so much as a plan for where he’ll transfer its terror suspects.
But much of the interview, broadcast Tuesday, offered troubling stuff for anyone who believes the West isn’t to blame for the Islamic world’s wrath.
Obama agreed with Melhem’s inference that Bush’s use of terms like "war on terror" and "Islamic fascism" demonized all Muslims.
"I think you’re making a very important point, and that is the language we use matters …" Obama said.
"We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name."
True. But there was nothing particularly Bushist about the "war on terror" term, and a helpful Wikipedia entry explains how it dates at least to the 19th century.
Obama confirmed he intends to address the Muslim world from a Muslim capital during the first 100 days of his presidency, but resisted Melhem’s bid to know which one.
Of course, the smart money is on the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, while you can pretty much rule out Baghdad.
"You're going to see me following through with dealing with a drawdown of troops in Iraq, so that Iraqis can start taking more responsibility," he said.
Obama explained he is going to educate people in both the United States and the Muslim world on how to get along.
"My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives," he said.
"My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy." I thought the presidents sole responsibility was to the american people and protecting american interests?????
So that’s the simple formula we’ve been we’ve been missing. Stay tuned to the new president for a couple of deftly worded, and theatrically delivered speeches – and centuries of Western-Islamic division will miraculously disappear.
Citing Iran’s threats towards Israel, and its "pursuit of a nuclear weapon," Obama said the Islamic republic had "acted in ways that [were] not conducive to peace and prosperity."
"But I do think it is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran," he added.
Better hurry. Iran will have enough uranium to make a single nuclear weapon later this year, the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies said Tuesday at the launch of its annual global review of military powers.
The fact is there have been plenty of talks, incentive packages and UN Security Council resolutions calling on Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.
After the interview was broadcast Tuesday, Iran responded to the "extended hand" Obama said he was offering the Islamic republic.
"We are awaiting concrete changes from new U.S. statesmen," said an Iranian government spokesman. "On several occasions our president has defined Iran’s views and the need for a change in U.S. policies."
Even by Obama’s account, there will be no effective "change in U.S. policies." Washington and the West will still want to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. Hence, don’t expect Tehran to see the offer of "more diplomacy" to be anything more than a gift of the time they still need to perfect the nuclear process.
Key parts of Obama’s interview to the Muslim world were a collective mea culpa.
"We sometimes make mistakes; we have not been perfect," he said as one explanation as to why there is so much hate in the Muslim world for the United States.
In other words, it’s America’s and, by extension, the West’s fault we’ve been under attack these past years.
He offered a similar apology when explaining his instruction to George Mitchell, the former Senator he appointed to begin seeking a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
"What I told him is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating …" he said. "So let’s listen."
Oddly, the interviewer Melhem came across as the most honest of the pair when he admitted that, throughout the Muslim world, there was a "demonization of America" that’s become "like a new religion" – complete with "converts and high priests."
That’s the sort of reality Obama needs to get his head around – instead of saying the equivalent of: "We’re wrong, you’re right."
National Post
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/b...lim-roots.aspx
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/31/iran-to-obama-your-willingness-to-talk-proves-your-weakness/
Iran to Obama: Your willingness to talk proves your weakness
posted at 6:15 pm on January 31, 2009 by Allahpundit
Like CJ says, that fist sure looks clenched.
US President Barack Obama’s offer to talk to Iran shows that America’s policy of “domination” has failed, the government spokesman said on Saturday.
“This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed,” Gholam Hossein Elham was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.
“Negotiation is secondary, the main issue is that there is no way but for (the United States) to change,” he added.
Surprised by the knock on capitalism from jihad HQ? Don’t be. The enemy of Iran’s enemy is its friend, which is why they’ve buddied up to anti-American socialist regimes via the Nonaligned Movement with a special emphasis on Chavez. International opinion matters, especially to Democrats, and digs at capitalism help advance Iran’s cause internationally even if they’re not exactly a raison d’etre for Islamic fundamentalists. (See also Bin Laden talking up Noam Chomsky and dumping on corporations in his last video message.) The significance of this isn’t that they’re using The One’s outreach to their own ends; self-aggrandizing propaganda is what Islamists do, after all, which is why Israel kicking the hell out of Hamas for a few weeks somehow gets spun as a Hamas victory. The significance is that it shows how obsessed the regime is with the perception that it’s winning its ideological battle with the west, to the extent that even rare attempts at rapprochement from the U.S. are sneered at as crude concessions of defeat. Like I’ve said before, that bodes very, very ill given how much national pride they’ve invested in the nuclear program. How can they make a deal with America to give up nukes when they’ve built their identity on defiance of America? Why, it’s practically a national slogan.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/obamas_hypocritical_law.html
January 31, 2009
Obama's Hypocritical Law
Andrew Thomas
In a windfall for trial lawyers nationwide, President Obama struck a blow for employees who want to sue their employers for alleged pay discrimination. However, an inconvenient report from CNSNews.com last September indicates that candidate Barack Obama paid the women on his staff 78% of the salaries of his male staff members from October 2007 through March 2008. Coincidentally, this is almost exactly the same pay disparity that President Obama himself decries in the "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act" he just signed into law Thursday.
Two questions arise: 1) Will the mainstream media pick up this story of presidential hypocrisy? 2) Will any of Obama's female staff members sue him for discrimination? Sadly, the answer to both of these questions is most likely NO.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/obama_hates_white_people_and_w.html
January 31, 2009
Obama hates white people and wants them to die
Rick Moran
With nearly 1.5 million people in the mid-west without power during a cold snap, what other possible reason is there that this new "competent" administration and FEMA would be failing so spectacularly in helping in this natural disaster?
It's got to be that Obama hates white people and wants them to die!
Of course, I am just aping what lefty blogs were saying about Bush less than 24 hours after Katrina's hurricane winds stopped blowing. But AP is reporting that Midwest disaster relief people are none too pleased with our new president's FEMA.
In Kentucky's Grayson County, there are 25 National Guardsmen there to help - but no chain saws to cut away fallen limbs and trees. EM Director Randell Smith is quoted as saying, "We've got people out in some areas we haven't even visited yet," Smith said. "We don't even know that they're alive."
Smith is also quoted as saying that FEMA is a "no show."
What's that? Here we are 5 days after the storm ended and still no FEMA? I demand a Congressional investigation. And let's get all the anchors and media people down here pronto. People's lives are at stake. For all we know, there are babies being eaten and people jumping off their roofs committing suicide because FEMA is nowhere to be found.
And where is our president? Shouldn't he be visiting these ravaged areas? It must be that he HATES WHITE PEOPLE AND WANTS THEM TO DIE. That is the only possible explanation for this incredible failure of our national government to relieve the suffering of these people.
Isn't it interesting that now that we have a Democrat as president that all of a sudden, disaster relief is a state and local matter and the federal government should stand aside and allow them to do their jobs?
Just wondering...
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I guess the good news it that any single payer scheme may be DOA with Daschel in the saddle (assuming he dodges his tax troubles.
Piece has foul language I'm too lazy to redact.
The Daschles: feeding at the Beltway trough
Even for the most cynical observer of Washington sleaze, Tom and Linda Daschle's exploits are quite striking.
Glenn Greenwald
Feb. 01, 2009 |
(updated below - Update II)
When Barack Obama announced in early December that he had selected Tom Daschle to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services as well as his "health care policy czar," Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi -- who had spent several months studying the inner workings of the 2006 Congress in order to profile its limitless corruption -- wrote the following reaction on his blog:
I know several reporters who are either officially or unofficially on "Whore Factor" duty, watching the rapidly kaleidoscoping transition picture and keeping track of the number of known whores and ghouls who for some reason have been invited to befoul the atmosphere of the next administration.
Obviously there has been some dire news on that front already. When Obama picked Tom Daschle to be the HHS Secretary, I nearly shit my pants. In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger. True, he is probably only the second-biggest whore for the health care industry in American politics — the biggest being doctor/cat-torturer Bill Frist, whose visit to South Dakota on behalf of John Thune in 2004 was one of the factors in ending Daschle's tenure in the Senate.
But in picking Daschle — who as an adviser to the K Street law firm Alston and Bird has spent the last four years burning up the sheets with the nation's fattest insurance and pharmaceutical interests — Obama is essentially announcing that he has no intention of seriously reforming the health care industry. . . .
Regarding Daschle, remember, we're talking about a guy who not only was a consultant for one of the top health-care law firms in the country, but a board member of the Mayo Clinic (a major recipient of NIH grants) and the husband of one of America's biggest defense lobbyists — wife Linda Hall lobbies for Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. Does anyone really think that this person is going to come up with a health care proposal that in any way cuts into the profits of the major health care companies?
How serious Obama is about health care reform remains to be seen. Obama supporters argue that Obama needs someone like Daschele, with credibility within the health care industry, in order to achieve real reform. That's the standard explanation for most of what Obama does (he's only courting the establishment in order to change it), and though highly skeptical, I'm personally willing to withhold judgment until the actual evidence is available regarding what Obama actually does.
But there's no need to withhold judgment on Daschle himself. He embodies everything that is sleazy, sickly, and soul-less about Washington. It's probably impossible for Obama to fill his cabinet with individuals entirely free of Beltway filth -- it's extremely rare to get anywhere near that system without being infected by it -- but Daschle oozes Beltway slime from every pore.
Before he was elected to Congress 30 years ago from South Dakota, he had very, very few skills outside of the political arena. He was an Air Force intelligence officer for three years in the early 1970s, then worked for six years as an aide to South Dakota Sen. James Abourezk, then was elected to the House and then the Senate, where he became Majority Leader. So he's spent virtually his entire adult life working on Capitol Hill.
Despite that (or rather: precisely because of it), after being defeated for re-election to the Senate in 2004, he was able almost immediately to begin earning millions of dollars every year from firms and companies that depend on exerting influence in Congress:
The release of the financial statement [Daschle] submitted to the Office of Government Ethics [] details for the first time exactly how, without becoming a registered lobbyist, he made millions of dollars giving public speeches and private counsel to insurers, hospitals, realtors, farmers, energy firms and telecommunications companies with complex regulatory and legislative interests in Washington.
Daschle's expertise and insights, gleaned over 26 years in Congress, earned him more than $5 million over the past two years, including $220,000 from the health-care industry, and perks such as a chauffeured Cadillac, according to the documents.
Other than his ability to know how to swing doors wide open in Congress, what "expertise and insights" worth that level of compensation does Tom Daschle have? It's pure legalized influenced peddling, and -- upon being booted out of the Congress -- he ran right to it as quickly as he could and engorged himself at the trough as hungrily as possible.
In doing so, he followed perfectly in the footsteps of his second wife, Linda, who served as the Clinton administration's Acting Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, and then, once she left her position running the agency that regulates the airlines industry, returned to her extremely lucrative lobbying practice with her largest clients being American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Boeing, Lockheed and various airports and airport executive associations -- the very companies that she had been regulating. She began lobbying the Senate on behalf of those clients as soon as Tom left the Senate, where -- needless to say -- he has many "friends" and others who remain loyal to him, and she is continuously successful in defeating measures to impose greater regulations on the airline industry and to obtain other massively beneficial legislation for them.
In 2002, Washington Monthly editor Stephanie Mencimer wrote a thorough exposé detailing how the couple has spent many years in Washington intertwining their political power and private-sector interests, including their joint role -- he as a Senator and she as FAA administrator -- "to reduce safety inspections of an air-charter company owned by a family friend," one which, in 1993, "crashed in a snowstorm in Minot, North Dakota, killing the pilot and three doctors on their way to a reservation clinic" (after numerous accusations of serious wrongdoing, an Inspector General report cleared her of wrongdoing). Time and again, companies with a very substantial stake in legislation before the Daschle-run Senate paid huge fees to his wife. As Mencimer wrote:
So here's a case where a senator's wife gets a high-ranking government job, which in turn boosts her earning power as a lobbyist. She then represents clients who have business with and give money to her husband. Those clients pay her big bucks to help fight safety regulations and to win government money -- money which helps pay the senator's mortgage. Yet so far, the press and congressional ethics hawks have largely given the Daschles a pass. So why isn't this a bigger story?
Mostly because no one in Congress has the slightest interest in raising it. Democrats certainly don't want to attack one of their own, and as they point out in defending the Daschles, Republicans are married to lobbyists, too. In addition, both Republicans and Democrats are beneficiaries of Linda Daschle's clients. "This town is so bizarre that Linda Daschle may even deliver campaign contributions to Trent Lott," says the Heritage Foundation's Ron Utt. Indeed, she freely admits to giving campaign contributions to Republicans.
So who's left to scrutinize the relationship? The answer is the press. But Daschle has them covered too. Unlike Hillary a decade ago, Linda Daschle is a Beltway insider who understands the rules of the game. The main rule is that the effects of your actions, no matter how dubious---say, weakening airline safety---are never grounds for a scandal so long as you first, disclose your actions, and then, don't violate the ethics rules in the process. If Tom or Linda Daschle had secretly taken a free pair of Superbowl tickets from Northwest Airlines and then pushed the airline bailout plan, that would be a big story. But the fact that Tom Daschle takes thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Northwest and his wife's firm collects $200,000 a year to lobby for them is no problem at all.
As Mencimer points out, they know how to stay on the right side of what is strictly legal. There's no evidence they did anything illegal, but it is still blatantly sleazy and corrupt -- exactly the sort of legalized sleaze and corruption that Barack Obama, as a centerpiece of his campaign, vowed to combat. And it's unlikely to matter for exactly the reason Mencimer said: there are very few people in Washington who could criticize this sort of behavior without being guilty of the most extreme hypocrisy imaginable. The oh-so-sophisticated media stars are far too worldly to care about any such access-buying. And when one adds on to that the fact that Daschle is a member in good standing of the incestuous Senate club that must confirm him, it is difficult to see anything happening here other than easy confirmation, no matter how many more incriminating details are revealed (and this is to say nothing of the fact that Daschle was Senate Majority Leader from 2001-2004 when the Democrats perfected the art of submission to the Bush agenda, including the 2002 vote for the Iraq War, which Daschle supported).
Other than his being more extreme than most, and the fact that he and his wife work in tandem as a public-private team, there isn't anything particularly unusual about how Tom Daschle functions. He's quite emblematic of the Beltway syndrome. But that's the point: while it's unreasonable to expect that Obama will be able to avoid all ethically questionable individuals, it seems rather unnecessary to take one of the most ethically compromised Beltway mavens and place him in charge of a massive industry, one that has been lavishing him with undeserved wealth for the past several years.
UPDATE: I also can't help but contrasting this passage detailing how Tom and Linda ended up married, from The Washington Monthly article . . . :
Yes, it's true: Before Mrs. Daschle was Mrs. Daschle, she was Miss Kansas, 1976.
Petite and blond, with perfect, straight white teeth, Daschle is still strikingly beautiful at 46. But she has a vise-like handshake you wouldn't expect from a beauty queen that suggests the steely interior necessary to survive in Washington power circles. . . .
She met Tom Daschle on a work trip to South Dakota. At the time, Tom Daschle was a freshman congressman, married to the woman who in 1978 had helped him ring 40,000 doorbells and go on to unseat an incumbent by 14 votes. By 1984, Tom had divorced his first wife, with whom he had three children, and married Linda . . .
. . . . with this 2003 clip of Tom Daschle, explaining to Jon Stewart that gay marriage must not be allowed because "a man and a woman have a sacred and a traditional cultural bond within this country. . . it's a statement of fact: society is embracing the marriage of a man and a woman, and by and large, that's the way it should be . . . DOMA is the statute and I don't think it's unconstitutional":
Tom Daschle Pt. 2
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Stand-Up Comedy
When they met, Tom was 33 and married with three children, and Linda was 23 and single. They married once he divorced his first wife. It's amazing how many politicians love to self-righteously tout what a "sacred and traditional cultural bond" is the male-female marital union even as they parade around with their much-younger latest wife, whom they met while still enmeshed in a "sacred and traditional bond" with their first wife.
UPDATE II: Back in June, 2008, when Barack Obama violated his clear commitment to filibuster any bill containing telecom immunity by doing the opposite: voting for cloture on such a bill and then voting of the bill itself, it was -- as Matt Stoller noted at the time -- Tom Daschle who defended Obama's behavior in The Washington Post, by invoking the two leading all-purpose, Obama-justifying clichés: "Those who accomplish the most are those who don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Barack is a pragmatist."
What Daschle (and The Washington Post) didn't note, but Stoller did, is this:
The kicker of course, is that [Daschle's firm] Alston and Bird did work lobbying on immunity for telecoms on FISA [they were AT&T's FISA lobbyist - .pdf], even serving as a recruitment bed for the McCain campaign. And that's what is really going on. Bribery. Tom Daschle goes in the Washington Post and makes the argument that Obama is being pragmatic by caving to big business on a core issue of civil liberties. He preaches the virtues of bipartisanship while working at a firm whose McCain supporting lawyers also support immunity for telecom interests. Meanwhile, Daschle and his wife are and did make enormous sums of money lobbying for the firms benefiting from Obama's so-called pragmatism. It's a sick, perverted, corroded system whereby perpetual political losers like Matt Bennett and affable status quo lobbyists like Tom Daschle push their agenda through journalists like Jonathan Weisman, without any disclosure whatsoever about possible conflicts of interest. And it's bipartisan and flows through the leadership of both parties.
Tom Daschle is going to end up in a powerful position within the Obama administration, either head of HHS or Chief of Staff. He's going to use the millions he and his wife have made to throw parties, give gifts, have a wonderful life, go to important conferences like Davos, and generally preach in favor of "moderation' and 'bipartisanship". What's important here is that we on OpenLeft and in the blogs in general be educated about who these people really are. Tom Daschle's belief is that moderation and moving to the center is pragmatic, and it is. Or at least it is for Tom Daschle. How else would he make a million dollars a year with his friend Bob Dole [who recruited him to join Alston & Byrd]?
In comments, Jim White wrote: "After reading this post, the only response is to go take a shower. The filth comes through the screen." As Matt Taibbi put it: "In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle."
-- Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/01/daschle/
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GM posted: "However, an inconvenient report from CNSNews.com last September indicates that candidate Barack Obama paid the women on his staff 78% of the salaries of his male staff members from October 2007 through March 2008."
But the Ledbetter matter addressed the issue of SAME pay for SAME job. Without job descriptions, experience, etc. one cannot
make a comparison. That's the trouble with numbers... especially in a small sampling.
By the way; in the same the same CNSNews.com blog that you referenced, you "forgot" to finish and post;
NOW President Kim Gandy did not view the pay disparity as a problem.
“It depends on what positions they’re in,” Gandy told CNSNews.com. “Certain positions are paid more than other positions. I do know quite a number of women very high up in his staff and in his campaign who are extraordinarily strong supporters of women’s rights. We don’t advocate people be hired because of their gender. We advocated people be hired and paid without regard to their gender.”
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GM posted: "However, an inconvenient report from CNSNews.com last September indicates that candidate Barack Obama paid the women on his staff 78% of the salaries of his male staff members from October 2007 through March 2008."
But the Ledbetter matter addressed the issue of SAME pay for SAME job. Without job descriptions, experience, etc. one cannot
make a comparison. That's the trouble with numbers... especially in a small sampling.
By the way; in the same the same CNSNews.com blog that you referenced, you "forgot" to finish and post;
**I did not "forget" anything. I posted the entire article from http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/obamas_hypocritical_law.html which was at the top of the post.**
NOW President Kim Gandy did not view the pay disparity as a problem.
“It depends on what positions they’re in,” Gandy told CNSNews.com. “Certain positions are paid more than other positions. I do know quite a number of women very high up in his staff and in his campaign who are extraordinarily strong supporters of women’s rights. We don’t advocate people be hired because of their gender. We advocated people be hired and paid without regard to their gender.”
**Shocking! I bet NOW was outraged at the accusations against Clarence Thomas, yet very quiet when a certain president had a exploitative relationship with an intern. Yes?**
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**A nice example of the "Do as I say, not as I do left".**
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg032702.asp
March 27, 2002 4:15 p.m.
The Clinton Record
Let’s roll the videotape.
Enough already.
A while back I promised not to write any more Clinton-bashing columns. Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt. (Seriously. It reads: "My President Soiled the Country and All I Got Was this Lousy T-Shirt!") But this is getting ridiculous. In the last month or so there's been an outpouring of revisionism so profound it reminds me of the days when the Soviets would mail replacement pages for the official encyclopedia of the Soviet Union based upon who had fallen in or out of favor during any given week.
Thanks to Frank Rich, David Brock, Joe Klein, Hendrik Hertzberg, and numerous others (including Monica Lewinsky herself), we are now supposed to believe that pretty much all conservative opponents of Bill Clinton were twisted little snitches, hacks, and hypocrites, or, simply, sweaty-palmed pervs while the former president was nobly all-too-human.
Oh wait, that's what they've been saying all along.
The difference now is that conservatives have moved on — just like the liberals begged us to. There's a war on you know? Bill Clinton, no doubt, spends his time in his Harlem office eating bucket after bucket of fried-chicken skins while constantly asking his "secretary" to come in and pick up the pencils he "accidentally" dropped in front of his desk. So, most of us ask, why bother with him?
Anyway, the major problem with the new revisionism is there's very little new to it. To the extent there are any fresh revelations the bulk of them come from David Brock's bitchy new book, which seems to be intellectual Viagra for folks like Frank Rich. In the New York Times Magazine, Rich wallows in Brock's muck in order to denounce how dirty it all is (See Bill Buckley's column on this point.)
The title of Rich's coprophilic essay is "Ding Dong the Cultural Witch Hunt is Dead." Rich's thesis is a common one, which would make sense since he carved out a niche as the Bartles and James of New York liberalism — a mid-market distiller of low-potency conventional wisdom. Denouncing the majority of conservatives as "gargoyles and lunatics," Rich giddily notes "the almost unending hypocrisy of so many of Brock's circle in journalism and politics." Insert usual examples here. He continues later, "For a political movement that wanted to police sexual "lifestyles" and was pathologically obsessed with trying to find evidence that Hillary Clinton was a lesbian, the New Right of the 90's was, in Brock's account, nearly as gay as a soiree in Fire Island Pines."
WALKING IN HALF-WAY THROUGH
Without engaging in Rich's and Brock's delight in airing people's dirty laundry in order to denouncing dirty-laundry airing, suffice it to say the problem with this analysis is that it leaves out a lot of history. Indeed, a theater reviewer by training (and a good one), Rich should know that's it's not fair to judge a play if you've only seen the second act.
This may sound juvenile, but they started it. It was the cultural Left which declared that the "personal is political." Indeed, that was a feminist slogan. In the 1980s it was conservatives who argued, in effect, "boys will be boys" and it was the Left who said "not on your life." Liberals disinterred the archaic verb "womanize" in order to lay siege to John Tower. Liberals — agents of the government no less — invaded Robert Bork's private life, investigating his video rentals. Liberals chanted "you just don't get it!" with Maoist fury over the perfidy of Clarence Thomas's alleged joke about a pubic hair and for asking a longtime employee and friend to go out on a date. The whole thing was like Milan Kundera's The Joke — except liberals weren't laughing.
Liberals celebrated the most insane and dangerous ideologues of the Left who told us that "sex is rape" and that all men were horrid, lecherous evil creatures. As a result, liberals — like Hillary Clinton and her nodding husband — created a vast web of rules, laws, and secular customs designed to police the sexual lives of Americans.
And this was all against a backdrop of liberals denouncing conservatives as awful, evil, heartless, greedy, nasty people simply because of the policy positions they took. You like tax cuts and the free market? Oh, well then you're greedy and unfeeling. From homelessness to the Contras, it was the penchant of the Left to equate policy positions with ones spiritual or moral worth. This practice continues today, though perhaps with slightly less intensity.
Anyway, getting back to "sex policing," it was the conservatives — or, more broadly, the Right since libertarians have been consistent on this stuff from the beginning — who fought a losing battle against the Orwellian aims of sexual-harassment laws and the hysteria which created them. National Review, for example, remained consistent on this point before and after Bill Clinton came on the scene, repeatedly noting that while Bill Clinton was a lecherous cretin, the sexual-harassment laws he found himself ensnared in were idiotic.
Considering David Brock's narcissism (show us your nipple again Dave) and Frank Rich's prurience, it's no wonder they don't understand what Brock's role in the culture wars actually was. Brock was popular for no other reason than that he was a sign conservatives were going to start fighting back. Brock describes himself in those days as "a Jew in Hitler's army." As offensive as this is, it's between him and his therapist. But for all of the talk about how he was a "hatchet man," liberals forget that he was one hatchet-wielder against an army. If you want to say that conservatives were the author of this tawdry chapter in American history, that's fine. But, keep in mind that if you do say such things you are revealing the fact that you are either a liar or a fool.
HYPOCRISY, AGAIN
Moving on, I am at a complete and total loss as to how conservatives are the greater hypocrites in this passion play.
First, let's divide up the competing brands and strands of hypocrisy. If I say all people who drink too much beer are reprobates while I continue to go through beer like Bluto in Animal House, that is a kind of hypocrisy to be sure. But, if I pass a law or advocate the passage of a law which bans beer drinking for everybody, while I continue to drink beer, that's a whole other level of hypocrisy. It is one thing to express a fealty to a cultural norm, it is another thing entirely to try to impose that norm by force of law.
Now, let's see. As a general proposition, who was the champion of sexual-harassment laws? Hmm, seems to me it was the party of Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and Chris Dodd. Who celebrated Anita Hill as a martyr in the cause for ever-more draconian sex laws and regulations? Seems to me it was that cadre of humorless feminist lawyers and activists lead by the likes of Hillary Clinton (who has called Anita Hill her hero), Gloria Steinem, Pat Schroeder, et al. Don't tell me I'm wrong, I went to college in a bastion of feminism in the late 1980s and I took notes.
In every measurable sense, it was the cultural Left which dropped a thick tarp of laws and regulations — from speech codes on campuses to mandatory education on how to talk to women in the workplace — over the society. And yet, what happened when Bill Clinton was revealed to be precisely the sort of sub-par person we all knew he was?
Well, golly. Gloria Steinem proposed in the pages of the New York Times a "one free grope rule," whereby male employers were now allowed a free chance to do something worse than anything Clarence Thomas was ever accused of (besides, by the time Bill Clinton had groped Monica, he'd already laid more hands on more women than a guard searching for contraband at a women's prison).
Liberals cheered Katie Roiphe when she wrote, also in the Times, "There is nothing inherently wrong . . . with [Monica Lewinsky's] attempt to translate her personal relationship with the President into professional advancement." Feminist author Jane Smiley, writing in The New Yorker, forgave Clinton because he was simply acting out of a human "desire to make a connection with another person."
Meanwhile, Ken Starr, who was nominally the man in charge of defending these laws liberals put in place, was denounced by liberals across the spectrum because, in the words of Richard Cohen, Clinton was being "mortified, subjected to an Orwellian intrusion by the gumshoes of the state." I don't remember liberals feeling that way when they picked Ken Starr to invade Bob Packwood's privacy and read his diary — an intrusion far worse than anything Clinton went through.
I could go on for hours with this kind of stuff. But here's my favorite. Carol Mosley Braun, recall, was the woman who won her Senate seat by running entirely on the "issue" of Clarence Thomas. Her opponent in 1992 had voted to confirm Thomas, and the media cited Braun's victory as exhibit A of the "feminist backlash." During the Lewinsky scandal, she appeared on Meet the Press to defend the president of the United States playing Baron-and-the-Milkmaid with an intern by sagely noting: "Thirty years ago women weren't even allowed to be White House interns."
FINALLY
And then there's Bill. The revisionists would have us believe that the Independent Counsel's final report on Whitewater, etc., is the final proof that the whole fuss over Bill was a giant waste of time.
It may have been a waste of time, I grant you, but it was not conservatives who wasted it. I will not now — nor have I ever — condoned every tactic and statement of everybody on the Right in the various Clinton battles. But, the fact remains that the Clintons sought out every opportunity to stretch their troubles out. This is a point that even the editors of the New York Times felt obliged to concede last Sunday.
It always struck me as a prime example of the dysfunction-enabling ethos of the liberal establishment; Bill Clinton would not loosen his white-knuckled grip on his deceptions and obfuscations but conservatives were the "obsessed" and "maniacal" ones for not being able to "just let it go."
But don't get me wrong here. I find the legalistic critiques of Bill Clinton to be woefully insufficient. Robert Ray's final "exoneration" is almost meaningless to me because I never thought the case against Bill Clinton should rest on such petty complaints. Oh sure, the charges were serious and relevant. Indeed, I can think of a half-dozen charges that should have warranted impeachment that were never even leveled against him. But the law should be considered the minimum standard for a president's conduct, not the only standard.
Bill Clinton was a shabby and shameless man. The rest is commentary and, frankly, he's not worth the effort to provide any more of it.
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GM; Sorry, I sourced and quoted the original article; I guess the American Thinker did the editing not you.
As for Clinton and his intern; I find that particularly deplorable since she was in essence entrusted
into his care. I would not want my daughter "cared for" in that matter. It's worse, if possible,
since supposedly he was the/our President; it cannot be excused as just some irrelevant dirty old man.
Money is one thing, that is much much worse. It is a breach in trust.
I honestly don't know what NOW's reaction was at the time, but anything else but condemning the action
is wrong.
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http://www.davekopel.org/NRO/2001/The-Left's-Power-Politics.htm
When violence and harassment against women doesn't matter
Many feminists are very concerned about protecting women from sexual harassment, which they define so broadly as to include a man asking a fellow employee for a date, or two men telling a dirty joke which a woman overhears. These feminists tend to support a legal rule of always believing the alleged victim, even when there is no corroborating evidence. "Women, don't lie" about sexual harassment, they claim.
But most of these same feminists remained silent, or were actively hostile, when Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, and other women credibly accused Bill Clinton of rape, assault, and indecent exposure; the accusations were backed by substantial supporting evidence.
During the impeachment case, Stanford University Law Professor Deborah L. Rhode served as Deputy Counsel to the House Judiciary Democrats. She claimed that President Clinton's sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky did not matter because it was consensual. But in 1988, regarding allegations of Gary Hart's consensual sexual relationships, Rhode claimed, "Womanizing degrades and objectifies women in general … For positions involving moral leadership, these questions are relevant."
Feminists complained about Paula Jones using a sexual harassment lawsuit to pry into Bill Clinton's consensual sexual activities. Yet this complaint ignored the fact that the very law that allowed Jones's attorneys to question Clinton was a 1994 law that Clinton had signed, a move that they had championed.
Betty Friedan, of the National Organization of Women, fulminated that Clarence Thomas was unfit to serve on the Supreme Court because he had allegedly talked dirty to Anita Hill ten years before. When Paula Jones reported that Bill Clinton had indecently exposed himself and ordered a state employee to perform fellatio on him, Betty Friedan responded blithely, "What's the big deal? She wasn't killed, She wasn't harassed. She wasn't fired."
There were some feminists who refused to defend Clinton, but they were hardly a majority of the most-prominent leaders of the movement. For this majority, it is fair to ask whether the welfare of the victims of rape and other sex crimes is less important than the perpetuation of political power by any means necessary.
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At least the dems that love to raise and spend taxes are very dilligent about paying them, right?
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http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1998/05/williams199805
Lowering the bar
Clinton and Women
President Clinton’s sordid entanglements with Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, and now Monica Lewinsky have drawn barely a squeak of protest from the powerful writers, lawyers, activists, politicians, and academics who call themselves feminists. As they struggle with fresh allegations from Kathleen Willey, the author reveals some ugly truths about the women’s movement and the commander in chief.
by Marjorie Williams May 1998
Okay, class, let’s review: The man in question has been sued for sexual harassment over an episode that allegedly included dropping his trousers to waggle his erect penis at a woman who held a $6.35-an-hour clerical job in the state government over which he presided. Another woman has charged that when she asked him for a job he invited her into his private office, fondled her breasts, and placed her hand on his crotch. A third woman confided to friends that when she was a 21-year-old intern she began an affair with the man—much older, married, and the head of the organization whose lowliest employee she was. Actually, it was less an affair than a service contract, in which she allegedly dashed into his office, when summoned, to perform oral sex on him. After their liaison was revealed, he denied everything, leaving her to be portrayed as a tramp and a liar. Or, in his own words, “that woman.”
Let us not even mention the former lover who was steered to a state job; or the law-enforcement officers who say the man used them to solicit sexual partners for him; or his routine use of staff members, lawyers, and private investigators to tar the reputation of any woman who tries to call him to account for his actions.
Can you find the problems with his behavior? Take your time: these problems are apparently of an order so subtle as to escape the notice of many of the smartest women in America—the writers, lawyers, activists, officeholders, and academics who call themselves feminists.
When news broke that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was investigating whether President Clinton had lied under oath about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, or encouraged others to lie, the cacophony that ensued was notable for the absence of one set of voices: the sisterly chorus that backed up Anita Hill seven years ago when her charges of sexual harassment nearly stopped Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
With very few exceptions, feminists were either silent or dismissive this time. “If anything, it sounds like she put the moves on him,” said Susan Faludi, author of Backlash. Betty Friedan weighed in, but only to huff her outrage that Clinton’s “enemies are attempting to bring him down through allegations about some dalliance with an intern…. Whether it’s a fantasy, a set-up or true, I simply don’t care.”
It was not until former White House volunteer Kathleen Willey appeared on 60 Minutes in mid-March to make public the allegation she had formerly made in a deposition—that Clinton had manhandled her during a private meeting in which she sought a paying job—that some feminists began to make reluctant noises of dismay. The National Organization for Women (NOW), which until then had found itself “unable to comment responsibly,” averred that “Kathleen Willey’s sworn testimony moves the question from whether the president is a ‘womanizer’ to whether he is a sexual predator.”
But NOW’s change of heart was by no means typical of feminist activists. Many others hung tough. Anita Perez Ferguson, president of the National Women’s Political Caucus—the premier group promoting female participation in American politics—described Willey’s charges as “quantity rather than quality, in terms of my feelings.” She continued, “There’s no question that it’s disturbing…. But to come to any judgment now is definitely not something that I think is timely.”
With the exception of a few Republicans, women in Congress—including several swept to power by female outrage over the Senate’s treatment of Anita Hill—have shown an equal agility of mind. Their excuses range from the procedural stonewall (“What is important for the American people to know is that there is a process in place to deal with these allegations,” in the words of Senator Barbara Boxer) to the creative inversion (What about Ken Starr’s “humiliation” of the women he dragged before the grand jury?, fumed Representative Nancy Pelosi) to the truly fanciful twist on gender politics (“Not so many years ago, a woman couldn’t be a White House intern,” said a straight-faced Senator Carol Moseley-Braun on Meet the Press).
My own sampling of feminist opinion found women offering an astonishing array of strategies for avoiding the elephant in the living room:
See no evil … “It will be a great pity if the Democratic Party is damaged by this,” the feminist writer Anne Roiphe told me. “That’s been my response from the very beginning—I just wanted to close my eyes, and wished it would go away.”
Hear no evil … “We do not know what happened in the Lewinsky case,” said Kathy Rodgers, executive director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. “The only thing that is clear is that the facts are not clear.”
Speak no evil … “We’re trying to think of the bigger picture, think about what’s best for women,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation.
If the hypocrisy and the powers of denial are impressive, one must consider that these women have had a lot of practice. Feminists have all along muffled, disguised, excused, and denied the worst aspects of the president’s behavior with women—especially in their reactions to Paula Jones, whose sexual-harassment suit they have greeted with attitudes ranging from tepid boilerplate support to outright hostility.
In the Lewinsky case, it has fallen to their enemies to state the obvious. “The C.E.O. of a corporation wouldn’t have had time to pack up his briefcase before he was fired for this,” says Barbara Ledeen, executive director for policy at the Independent Women’s Forum, the Washington-based group that has achieved a certain cachet for its condemnations of traditional feminism.
“The president should be setting some sort of example in the workplace,” says the outrageous libertarian writer Camille Paglia, who has gained prominence in part for denouncing liberal feminists. “That’s all I’m talking about. In. The. Workplace…. Since when did the president use the interns as a dessert cart? ‘Mmmmm, she looks good!’ When did that become okay?”
The chief reason for feminists’ continued support of Clinton is clear: Clinton is their guy. Clarence Thomas was their enemy. Bob Packwood, a liberal Republican who was the next habitual boor to walk the plank, was a harder case for feminists, but in the end they tied the blindfold. Clinton, though, is the hardest case, because he is the most reliably supportive president they’ve ever had.
But if political opportunism is the main cause of their current blindness, it’s not the only one. And it’s worth examining all the reasons in detail. For you can find in them a road map to everything that ails liberal feminism today: political self-dealing, class bias, and dedication to a bleak vision of sexual “liberation” that has deprived them of what was once the moral force of their beliefs.
Feminists are quick to say that any charges of hypocrisy lodged against them are the work of the anti-Clinton right. “It’s a twofer for them,” says Smeal. “If they can get the president, great. And if they can get feminism, even greater.”
So it seems appropriate to say here that I am a feminist and a registered Democrat. Many of the feminist activists in Washington are women I’ve known for years as sources; I feel an open sympathy for much of the work they do. Yet I also feel something close to fury over their failure to call Clinton to account for his actions. My anger may be bred, in part, by my own past willingness to “put in perspective” Clinton’s questionable behavior with women—enough, at least, to vote for him twice. I can’t defend my own past complicity, but I can say that what follows is not the brief of a practiced Clinton hater.
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GM; I get your point, but you are speaking to the choir. I never have been a fan of NOW. I prefer to ignore them
although sometimes they are so loud it is hard to do.
In general, though, I don't think it is a left or right issue; democrat or republican; Democratic Hart as well as Republicans have been driven from office
for their peccadilloes.
As for Clinton, whether he committed these alleged acts or not I don't know nor did I pay much attention. As for the
intern, that was a matter of trust and it bothered me deeply. Her parent's trusted him to educated and protect her;
it is an honor to be an intern in the White House; instead her job duties seemed to include everything but actual "sex". :?
I take the same attitude towards teachers that have sex with their students. Or employers. It's wrong. Also, I don't respect a few local
policemen I know of who stop women on some pretense and then ask them out. It is an abuse of authority and trust.
But I doubt if all this has much to do with The Cognitive Dissonance of his Glibness except that history has and will repeat itself; but it
is not a republican or democratic, left or right issue. It's just wrong if you are in a position of authority and trust.
But the Ledbetter case was about equal pay for equal work for the same job. I happen to think that is the right thing to do
whether you are republican or democrat.
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GM: "At least the dems that love to raise and spend taxes are very diligent about paying them, right?"
- I wonder if anyone other than his opponents has noticed what a pattern of disaster his appointments have been.
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- I wonder if anyone other than his opponents has noticed what a pattern of disaster his appointments have been.
I think a big part of the problem is the lack of honest individuals in D.C, and the willingness of pretty much everyone in the Capitol building to "overlook" small "mistakes" (people in glass houses, after all...)
And am I just a goody two shoes, or does no one pay their taxes these days? I must have been doing it wrong all these years... :lol:
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The reason I wonder about the hoopla with Phelps and post it here is because I contrast his use of marijuana with a President who additted not only to this using cocaine. It seemed as though it was never an issue with the new Abe Lincoln ("a youthful indiscreetion"). So why should anyone care about this which in my opinion is about as serious as getting a speeding ticket?
Michael Phelps MILWAUKEE – Michael Phelps doesn't seem to be in much hot water with his sponsors despite being photographed inhaling from a marijuana pipe. From apparel company Speedo to luxury Swiss watchmaker Omega, several sponsors are standing by the 23-year-old swimming phenom — at least for now — and have accepted his public apology. Other big companies, like Visa Inc., Subway and Kellogg Co., aren't talking yet.
Experts say if Phelps doesn't stick to the straight and narrow, he could hurt his chances at future endorsements. And there's no guarantee he won't be dropped quietly once the furor dies down.
Phelps, who won a record eight gold medals at this summer's Olympics in Beijing, acknowledged "regrettable" behavior and "bad judgment" after the photo appeared Sunday in the British tabloid News of the World.
The paper said the picture was taken during a November house party while Phelps was visiting the University of South Carolina.
Phelps handled the situation well by apologizing and saying he regretted his actions, said John Sweeney, director of sports communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Phelps went a step further and promised "it will not happen again."
In 2004, after the Athens Games, a then-underage Phelps was arrested for drunken driving. He pleaded guilty, apologized and again said he wouldn't make the same mistake again.
Sweeney said if Phelps is caught transgressing a third time, he could stand to lose many sponsorships — and the public's trust. For now, the public and his sponsors could look past it. After all, he said, President Barack Obama has acknowledged using marijuana and he still got elected.
"My prediction would be that this will pass," he said with caution. "If it does happen again, it'll be twice the story and it will hurt him."
Swiss watchmaker Omega said Phelps' actions were a private matter and "nonissue" while Speedo called Phelps a "valued member of the Speedo team."
Sports performance beverage PureSport's maker, which tapped Phelps to be spokesman for its first national advertising campaign, also said Monday that it stands by him but it said it does not condone his behavior.
"We applaud the fact that he has taken full and immediate responsibility for his mistake and apologized to us, his fans and the public and we support him during this difficult time," said Michael Humphrey, chief executive of Human Performance Labs.
Hilton Hotels Corp., whose relationship with Phelps dates to 2007, likewise stuck with him.
"We continue to support Michael Phelps as an athlete whose numerous athletic feats outshine an act of regrettable behavior," the statement said.
But former sponsor Rosetta Stone, the foreign-language tutorial vendor, which had a one-year deal with the athlete that ended Dec. 31, did not like the news.
"We do not condone his activities and are disappointed in his recent judgment," Rosetta Stone said in a statement.
Both AT&T Inc. and PowerBar nutrition bar makers Nestle SA, two other big sponsors, quietly ended their relationships with Phelps at the end of 2008. Neither company would comment on the photo or describe the duration or value of their contracts.
Companies are getting pickier about their marketing and sponsorships amid the recession, when they need to get the most impact for what money they do spend on marketing, said Joe Terrian, assistant dean in the college of business at Marquette University.
It makes sense that, say, Speedo and PureSport would continue to support Phelps because their products are ones that he uses for his sport, Terrian said. But companies with products not directly linked to athletics, like foodmaker Kellogg and credit card company Visa, may not see him as kindly.
Terrian said that, given the 2004 incident, sponsors may look to cut their ties soon.
"Do you want to risk those sponsorship dollars when money is really, really tight?" he said. "I think that some of them will think twice."
Visa, Kellogg, Subway and 505 Games did not immediately return multiple messages left by The Associated Press seeking comment.
A spokesman at sports marketing agency Octagon, which represents Phelps, said the athlete is taking this seriously.
"He has spoken with his sponsors to personally apologize. We are encouraged by their support," the spokesman said.
Terrian said Phelps's sponsors could be looking in their contracts for so-called 'morality clauses' — ways that they can back out of deals if certain instances happen. Those became more widespread after Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant was charged with rape in 2003. Those charges were dismissed.
More companies could choose to end their relationships with Phelps quietly. And those whose ads he stars in could publicize such a move as evidence of "their goodwill and social responsibility," Sweeney said.
But Sweeney said companies may be willing to overlook indiscretions depending on how prominent an athlete is. A minor indiscretion could get a minor athlete tossed from a sponsorship, but it could take a bigger incident to bring down a bigger athlete, he said. Considering Phelps's unique accomplishment, sponsors still may want him.
"There's only one of him," Sweeney said of Phelps. "There's only one person with eight gold medals, and there's probably going to be one for a long time."
AP Sports Writer Rob Harris in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.
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There's a very funny post on the Phelps pot affair over on the Libertarian thread of the SCH forum. I'm thinking any discussion of this will be a better fit there than on this thread here.
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GM; I get your point, but you are speaking to the choir. I never have been a fan of NOW. I prefer to ignore them
although sometimes they are so loud it is hard to do.
In general, though, I don't think it is a left or right issue; democrat or republican; Democratic Hart as well as Republicans have been driven from office
for their peccadilloes.
**The difference is the double standards. When dems cross the lines, the MSM actively covers up/minimalizes the acts, and in Clinton's case most feminists put power politics over their supposed values.**
As for Clinton, whether he committed these alleged acts or not I don't know nor did I pay much attention.
**He did.**
As for the intern, that was a matter of trust and it bothered me deeply. Her parent's trusted him to educated and protect her;
it is an honor to be an intern in the White House; instead her job duties seemed to include everything but actual "sex". :?
I take the same attitude towards teachers that have sex with their students. Or employers. It's wrong. Also, I don't respect a few local
policemen I know of who stop women on some pretense and then ask them out. It is an abuse of authority and trust.
But I doubt if all this has much to do with The Cognitive Dissonance of his Glibness except that history has and will repeat itself; but it
is not a republican or democratic, left or right issue. It's just wrong if you are in a position of authority and trust.
But the Ledbetter case was about equal pay for equal work for the same job. I happen to think that is the right thing to do
whether you are republican or democrat.
**The Ledbetter law won't be about right or wrong, but about litigators shaking down businesses and the costs getting passed on to consumers.**
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**Remember all the outraged feminists? Oh wait, they were too busy calling Sarah Palin a c*nt.**
http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/36234
Obama only talks good game on gender pay equity
Submitted by SHNS on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 15:17.
By DEROY MURDOCK, Scripps Howard News Service
editorials and opinion
"Now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work," Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said August 28 in his convention acceptance speech. He told the crowd in Denver: "I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons."
Obama's campaign website is even more specific. Under the heading "Fighting for Pay Equity," the women's issues page laments that, "Despite decades of progress, women still make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. A recent study estimates it will take another 47 years for women to close the wage gap with men at Fortune 500 corporate offices. Barack Obama believes the government needs to take steps to better enforce the Equal Pay Act..."
Obama's commitment to federally mandated pay equity stretches from the Rockies to Wall Street and beyond. And yet it seems to have eluded his United States Senate office. Compensation figures for his legislative staff reveal that Obama pays women just 83 cents for every dollar his men make.
A watchdog group called LegiStorm posts online the salaries for Capitol Hill staffers. "We have no political affiliations and no political purpose except to make the workings of Congress as transparent as possible," its website explains. Parsing LegiStorm's official data, gleaned from the Secretary of the Senate, offers a fascinating glimpse at pay equity in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body.
The most recent statistics are for the half-year from October 1, 2007 to March 31, 2008, excluding interns and focusing on full-time personnel. For someone who worked only until, say, last February 29, extrapolating up to six months' service simplifies this analysis. Doubling these half-year figures illustrates how a year's worth of Senate employees' paychecks should look.
Based on these calculations, Obama's 28 male staffers divided among themselves total payroll expenditures of $1,523,120. Thus, Obama's average male employee earned $54,397.
Obama's 30 female employees split $1,354,580 among themselves, or $45,152, on average.
Why this disparity? One reason may be the under-representation of women in Obama's highest-compensated ranks. Among Obama's five best-paid advisors, only one was a woman. Among his top 20, seven were women.
Again, on average, Obama's female staffers earn just 83 cents for every dollar his male staffers make. This figure certainly exceeds the 77-cent threshold that Obama's campaign website condemns. However, 83 cents do not equal $1.00. In spite of this 17-cent gap between Obama's rhetoric and reality, he chose to chide GOP presidential contender John McCain on this issue.
Obama responded August 31 to Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's Republican vice-presidential nomination. Palin "seems like a very engaging person," Obama told voters in Toledo, Ohio. "But I've got to say, she's opposed -- like John McCain is -- to equal pay for equal work. That doesn't make much sense to me."
Obama's criticism notwithstanding, McCain's payment patterns are the stuff of feminist dreams.
McCain's 17 male staffers split $916,914, thus averaging $53,936. His 25 female employees divided $1,396,958 and averaged $55,878.
On average, according to these data, women in John McCain's office make $1.04 for every dollar a man makes. In fact, all other things being equal, a typical female staffer could earn 21 cents more per dollar paid to her male counterpart -- while adding $10,726 to her annual income -- by leaving Barack Obama's office and going to work for John McCain.
How could this be?
One explanation could be that women compose a majority of McCain's highest-paid aides. Among his top-five best-compensated staffers, three are women. Of his 20-highest-salaried employees, 13 are women. The Republican presidential nominee relies on women -- much more than men -- for advice at the highest, and thus, best-paid levels.
If anyone on McCain's Senate staff is unhappy, McCain's male staffers might complain that they seem to get a slightly raw deal.
In short, these statistics suggest that John McCain is more than fair with his female employees, while Barack Obama -- at the expense of the women who work for him -- quietly perpetuates the very same pay-equity divide that he loudly denounces. Of all people, the Democratic standard bearer should understand that equal pay begins at home.
(Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. E-mail him at deroy.Murdock(at)gmail.com)
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/02/03/great-news-iran-launches-satellite-on-rocket-that-could-become-icbm/
No worries! Nothing a few "talks without preconditions" can't fix.....
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- Pajamas Media - http://pajamasmedia.com -
Tom Daschle Withdraws: Another Ethics Casualty for Obama
Posted By Jennifer Rubin On February 3, 2009 @ 10:53 am In . Feature 01, Money, Politics, US News | 73 Comments
How quickly they fall. Tom Daschle, who just yesterday had the full backing of President Barack Obama, has announced he is withdrawing his name from consideration as Health and Human Services secretary. For both Daschle and Obama, it has been a rough ride, calling into question the latter’s judgment and skill as a chief executive.
President Barack Obama rode into Washington on a veritable cloud of goodwill and sky-high expectations. The mainstream media had swooned over his transition with some justification. They had swooned over his inaugural speech with far less. But hopes, even among conservatives, were high for a break from business as usual, a degree of bipartisan pragmatism and a can-do approach to solving the nation’s economic problems. But in a mere two weeks, the thrill is gone and nagging questions have begun.
Most glaringly, we have been treated to a raft of embarrassing personnel issues. Tim Geithner made it through the confirmation hearing but Bill Richardson did not; nor did the “[1] chief performance officer” who could not perform the task of paying all her own taxes. Then Tom Daschle, who just yesterday garnered the support of President Obama and Democrats in the Senate, has now announced he is backing out. This followed a storm of criticism from not just conservatives who are aghast at the tax cheats and revolving-door-ism. [2] Marie Cocco summed up:
No need to fumble for words that sum up the stew of hypocrisy, arrogance, and insiderism that is the unfolding saga of Tom Daschle. This is the audacity of audacity. … The rationale for confirming Geithner was that he is a financial wizard — one of a handful of people, it was argued, with the experience and intellect necessary to manage the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression. But surely there is more than one Democrat capable of managing the Department of Health and Human Services. And undoubtedly there is more than one — there are perhaps, hundreds — as committed to the cause of revamping the health care system. Daschle isn’t indispensable. But he is indefensible.
And [3] Richard Cohen was no less critical:
Taken individually, the tax problems of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the health and human services secretary-designate, Tom Daschle, don’t amount to much. Together, though, they amount to a message: If you are beloved by this administration, you don’t necessarily have to play by the rules. Both Geithner and Daschle are good men, but their appointments send the message that Washington’s new broom sweeps a bit like the old one.
The Daschle debacle is not the only problem bedeviling the Obama team. This follows a slew of ethics waivers which has made the so-called ethics rules (prohibiting ex-lobbyists from working on issues for which they previously lobbied) into Swiss cheese. The [4] good-government types are fuming. And even the MSM has noticed the pattern, which includes an ethics waiver for William Lynn, a former lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon who has been nominated for the Pentagon’s number two job.
[5] TIME magazine explains:
But the controversy over the waivers, which have been criticized by both Democratic and Republican senators, is just one of the perception problems dogging Obama’s new ethics policy. Another issue stems from the people nominated to the administration who have worked in the lobbying business but are not technically lobbyists — people, in other words, like Tom Daschle, or former Senator George Mitchell, the new Middle East peace envoy who had previously served as the chairman of a law firm that has done lobbying and legal work for many clients in the region, including the leader of Dubai.
In short, we are back to the very same Washington, D.C., brew of sleaze, double standards, ethical lapses, and hypocrisy. That it comes from an administration which ran on such a sanctimonious platform only makes it that much more disappointing and indeed infuriating.
But that’s not all. Aside from the ethics issues, the number one priority, the Obama stimulus plan, has run aground. The administration’s stimulus bill has become the subject of widespread criticism from [6] conservatives and [7] mainstream outlets alike for its porked-up spending plans and insufficient attention to fulfill the president’s directives for a temporary and targeted response to the recession. What was supposed to garner bipartisan support has instead invigorated the Republican opposition. As ABC’s [8] The Note summed up: “Team Obama lost the early battle to define the bill — which has become a pork-stuffed monstrosity, instead of economic salvation wrapped in legislation.”
On foreign policy the record is more mixed. The president’s declaration that he will close Guantanamo, as soon as he has figured out what to do with the prisoners, brought conservative criticism and has proven to be [9] unpopular with voters who, come to think of it, don’t like the idea of moving dangerous terrorists to their neighborhoods or releasing them to the battlefield. And liberals are miffed that the Bush-era terrorist [10] rendition program has been retained or indeed expanded. President Obama’s apologetic interview with Al-Arabyia was panned by conservatives and lauded by liberals (but, tellingly, was not echoed by his new secretary of state and was greeted with contempt by Ahmadinejad.)
It is fair to ask: what’s wrong? Several things, it appears, are at work here.
First, the Obama team certainly does not place ethical standards or the appearance of ethical standards above other concerns (e.g., avoiding embarrassment or getting a key player). Now this should come as no surprise from the team which promised to work within the public campaign financing rules and then decided it was better not to. In the course of the campaign, however, against the dreaded Republicans this passed muster. In the glare of the White House press corps lights when expectations are higher, it induces biting criticism and even anger.
Second, Obama has never been an expert legislator and has, it seems, lost control of his own stimulus bill. By deferring to the House Democrats he lost the policy and political high ground. Now an astounding [11] 54% of Americans either want a major reworking of the bill or to block it entirely. The president and his advisors seem to have mistaken his own personal popularity with both the public’s and the Republicans’ willingness to accept anything he and the Democrats could dream up.
And finally, the Republicans have played their cards well on the stimulus — speaking in respectful tones about the president, displaying heretofore unheard of unity, and hammering at the excessive and unwise aspects of the stimulus bill. By holding their ground, they have forced Obama into a tight corner. He must now either revise the bill or pass it on his own. And by standing on principle, they have denied the president the chance to do what he has done successfully throughout his career; namely, to claim the mantle of bipartisanship while advocating a far-left agenda.
Now, President Obama’s approval numbers are still high, but they are [12] floating steadily back to earth. This is the messy business of governing — when rhetoric comes up against reality and the sky-high expectations of supporters are ratcheted down, bit by bit.
It was never realistic to expect President Obama would reinvent politics, but it would have been nice had he not sacrificed his principles quite so quickly. It has not earned him any brownie points. Instead, conservatives are revived, liberals are dismayed, and the general public is left wondering: Didn’t we vote for something better than this?
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/tom-daschle-another-ethics-casualty-for-obama/
URLs in this post:
[1] chief performance officer: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/02/03/1778480.aspx
[2] Marie Cocco: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/daschle_is_indefensible.html
[3] Richard Cohen: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/02/AR2009020202054.html
[4] good-government types: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/23/william-lynn-obamas-first_n_160512.html
[5] TIME magazine: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1876550,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
[6] conservatives: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/100dyjdy.asp
[7] mainstream: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/31/AR2009013101535.html
[8] The Note: http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/02/the-note-2309-s.html
[9] unpopular: http://www.gallup.com/poll/114091/Americans-Approve-Obama-Actions-Date.aspx
[10] rendition program: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/52402
[11] 54%: http://www.gallup.com/poll/114097/Americans-Support-Stimulus-Major-Changes.aspx
[12] floating steadily back: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls
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http://www.douglasfarah.com/article/447/understanding-the-islamist-agenda-and-negotiations.com
Feb 2, 15:42
Understanding the Islamist Agenda and Negotiations
There are many good reasons for wanting to talk directly to one’s enemies, particularly states that pose a direct threat to one’s security. The Obama administration, facing a host of domestic problems and inheriting the ineffective policies of the previous administration in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, has incentives to want to get the Iran issue contained, at a minimum.
The same can be said for the Afghanistan crisis, which is lurching from bad to worse. The Taliban, flush with opium money, is making inroads while the corrupt and ineffective government fiddles, and Kabul is close to burning.
But one has to be clear that the other side wants some sort of serious back and forth. This is what is missing in both cases.
One must start from a recognition of what it is Iran wants: the abolition of Israel, the unimpeded sponsorship of armed non-state actors (Hezbollah and Hamas, with the dalliance with al Qaeda when convenient), and imposition of a global theocracy. None of these issues is negotiable.
From this Wall Street Journal piece, it is quite clear that Iran sees nothing to be gained by talks, and much to be gained by trying to humiliate the incoming administration. Perhaps they are simply recognizing the reality that their basic goals leave little room for substantive negotiations.
It seems to me that Fareed Zakaria makes serious mistake in his assessment of Afghanistan policy in calling for talks with the Taliban.
This is largely for the same reason: the lack of a understanding of what the Taliban want and what they are.
Like the Iranians (yes, the Taliban is Sunni and wahhabist, and yes the Iranians are Shi’ite and they have much disdain for each other on many issues) the Taliban has as its bottom line the establishment of a global Islamist caliphate that starts in Afghanistan and from there, the world.
The differences with al Qaeda are cultural clashes and discomfort with the way the Arab forces treat the Taliban, but not over fundamental beliefs, tactics or strategy. A world under Sharia law, as understood by both groups, is a divine mandate and therefore not negotiable.
Zakaria writes that:
The United States is properly and unalterably
opposed to al-Qaeda. We have significant differences with the Taliban on many issues—democracy and the treatment of women being the most serious. But we do not wage war on other Islamist groups with which we similarly disagree (the Saudi monarchy, for example). Were elements of the Taliban to abandon al-Qaeda, we would not have a pressing national security interest in waging war against them.
That is simply not true. As he notes later, al Qaeda (the old guard, perhaps less relevant than ever) is essentially a parasite, living off host groups and nations. But in the case of the Taliban, the host has welcomed the parasite, fed it, clothed it, protected it and embraced it.
The idea that the Taliban would, in a verifiable way, renounce and cut ties to al Qaeda, is simply not realistic. The idea that we should stand by and deal with-and likely assure the ascent to power of-a group whose basic philosophy is to return everything they can back to the Middle Ages is an abandonment of everything we claim to stand for. The fact that we tolerate Saudi Arabia’s abysmal behavior is no reason to watch another country fall under the worst kind of enslavement and barbarism.
Finally, the line about having no pressing national security interest in the Taliban repeats exactly the misguided analysis that led the Taliban to facilitate the execution of the 9/11 attacks. Every major attack (1998 East Africa bombings, USS Cole, 9/11) were carried out by non-state actors (al Qaeda) operating from a “failed” state or sympathetic state (Taliban and Sudan).
Dialogue is a useful, vital tool in international relations. But it is only useful when the bottom lines of both sides are understood and the areas of overlap can be discussed. Otherwise, it is a waste of precious time and resources.
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Woof All:
This thread is in danger of becoming a ghoulash of everything about BO which annoys us. GM, I'm thinking that the piece you post better belongs in one of the threads on WW3, our strategy vs. Islamo-fascism, the Afg-Pak thread etc.
Anyone interested in responding to it please do so in one of those threads.
Thank you,
Marc
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Well, speaking of goulash. . . .
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
The Impending Obama Meltdown [Victor Davis Hanson]
Some of us have been warning that it was not healthy for the U.S. media to have deified rather than questioned Obama, especially given that they tore apart Bush, ridiculed Palin, and caricatured Hillary. And now we can see the results of their two years of advocacy rather than scrutiny.
We are quite literally after two weeks teetering on an Obama implosion—and with no Dick Morris to bail him out—brought on by messianic delusions of grandeur, hubris, and a strange naivete that soaring rhetoric and a multiracial profile can add requisite cover to good old-fashioned Chicago politicking.
First, there were the sermons on ethics, belied by the appointments of tax dodgers, crass lobbyists, and wheeler-dealers like Richardson—with the relish of the Blago tapes still to come. (And why does Richardson/Daschle go, but not Geithner?).
Second, was the "stimulus" (the euphemism for "borrow/print money") that was simply a way to go into debt for a generation to shower Democratic constinuencies with cash.
Then third, there were the inflated lectures on historic foreign policy to be made by the clumsy political novice who trashed his own country and his predecessor in the most ungracious manner overseas to a censured Saudi-run press organ (e.g., Bush is dictatorial, the Saudi king is courageous; Obama can mend bridges that America broke to aggrieved Muslims (apparently Tehran hostages, Rushdie, serial attacks in the 1990s, 9/11, Madrid, London never apparently occurred, and neither did feeding Somalis, saving Kuwait, protesting Chechnya, Bosnia/Kosovo, billions to Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinians, help in two Afghan wars, and on and on).
Fourth, there was the campaign rhetoric of Bush shredding the Constitution—FISA, Guantanamo, Patriot Act, Iraq, renditions, etc.—followed by "all that for now stays the same" inasmuch as we haven't ben hit in over seven years and can't risk another attack.
Fifth, Gibbs as press secretary is a Scott McClellan nightmare that won't go away, given his long McClellan-like relationship with Obama (McClellan should have been fired on day hour one on the job). Blaming Fox News for Obama's calamities is McClellan to the core and doesn't work. He already reminds me of Rev. Wright's undoing at the National Press Club—and he will get worse.
Six, Biden is being Biden. Already, he's ridiculed the chief justice, trashed the former VP, bragged on himself ad nauseam in Bidenesque weird ways, and it's only been two weeks.
And the result of all this?
At home, Obama is becoming laughable and laying the groundwork for the greatest conservative populist reaction since the Reagan Revolution.
Abroad, some really creepy people are lining up to test Obama's world view of "Bush did it/but I am the world": The North Koreans are readying their missiles; the Iranians are calling us passive, bragging on nukes and satellites; Russia is declaring missile defense is over and the Euros in real need of iffy Russian gas; Pakistanis say no more drone attacks (and then our friends the Indians say "shut up" about Kashmir and the Euros order no more 'buy American").
This is quite serious. I can't recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century (far worse than Bill Clinton's initial slips). Obama immediately must lower the hope-and-change rhetoric, ignore Reid/Pelosi, drop the therapy, and accept the tragic view that the world abroad is not misunderstood but quite dangerous. And he must listen on foreign policy to his National Security Advisor, Billary, and Sec. of Defense. If he doesn't quit the messianic style and perpetual campaign mode, and begin humbly governing, then he will devolve into Carterism—angry that the once-fawning press betrayed him while we the people, due to our American malaise, are to blame.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDA1MTkzYTc4NjA5MWQxOGNjMzU3YmZiYTJhZDQ5YTY=
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Is the Honeymoon Over?
Share Post PrintFebruary 5, 2009 Posted by John at 3:28 PM
Or is it just a lovers' quarrel? It's too early to tell, but things are already getting testy at Robert Gibbs' press conferences. Today one of the White House reporters [UPDATE: Jake Tapper, I believe; who, to be fair, has never been an Obama groupie] asked Gibbs about the waivers that the Office of Management and Budget gives to some cabinet and other appointees to release them from ethics constraints to which President Obama claims to be committed:
QUESTION: Robert, two questions. One's a housekeeping one. In the name of the transparency that you and the president herald so much, is there any way we could get the copies of the waivers that the OMB issues to allow certain cabinet posts or deputy posts...
(CROSSTALK)
GIBBS: I'll check.
QUESTION: ... free of the ethics constraints that you put up? And, also, the disclosure forms that your nominees put out that go to the Office of Government Ethics, that somehow they're not able to e- mail or, you know, put on the Web, is there any way we can get copies of those?
GIBBS: Yes, I will check. I don't -- I don't know how those forms are distributed.
QUESTION: Just based on listening to the president's rhetoric, I'm sure it's something he'd want to do.
GIBBS: Well...
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) question is...
GIBBS: Knowing of your crystal clarity on his opinion, I'll certainly check.
QUESTION: He doesn't believe in transparency?
GIBBS: Did you have another more pertinent question?
QUESTION: I think that's pretty -- I think it's fairly pertinent, your cabinet nominees and whether or not they pay their taxes and whether or not they have speaking fees with all sorts of industries they're suppose to regulate. I think that's fairly pertinent. You don't?
GIBBS: Obviously I do. And obviously the -- the president does.
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***I can't recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century (far worse than Bill Clinton's initial slips).***
I agree with all about this piece but in defense of BO I would say I don't recall a similarly disastrous economic situation in half a century. People are trying to convince us the late 70s was worse when Reagan took over but that is horse feathers.
Yeah we had inflation, gas lines, unemployment but I don't remember anyone saying then that the world economy could collapse.
I don't remember this kind of fear and near panic. It seems far worse now. I don't remember deficits of a trillion the closing in on the financial collapse of social security, medicare, the investment banking system, healthcare systems, and the rest.
I also don't recall the impatience we see now. I don't recall everyone hanging on every word, every breadth, every heartbeat coming out of DC like now. The 24 hr news cycle, or maybe it isn't really "news" but the 24 hr endless information cycle has helped drive us all nuts. If there was no FDIC, and government stimulus we would already have had 1929 all over again. Everyone would have been stepping all over each other to withdraw every thing they had out of the banking system. I the big question still remains - are we just delaying the inevitable or actually preventing the collapse?
So while I do agree with the criticism of BO I must admit he is taking the helm at the worst possible time in over half century.
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I would offer the possiblity that what he is trying to do is scaring the bejeezus out of the market. The collapse really got going when it became clear that McCain was going to pander and that BO was going to win.
For the record, Bush pandered too. Virtually no one, even in the Rep party is getting the analysis right-- a classic credit bubble (the Fed's negative interest rates, the FMs, the CRA, etc and all that was leveraged from these). The solution methinks is to be found in a blend of supply side and Austrian economics. This not being remotely on any serious political radar screen, the market is right to freak out. The fcukers in Washington are in the process of committing major historic errors. The world economy is fragmenting, the uni-polar moment of the US is done, and we are led by Hamlet, a.k.a. His Glibness who throws away Iraq to depend on the Russians to supply his decision to go in heavy to the Afg quagmire in order to prove he is tough-- all the while groveling with the Iranians and their nukes, and groveling to the Russians (prediction Star Wars in easter Europe is done for and the Russian sphere of influence will recoalesce).
Fcuk!!!
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***The solution methinks is to be found in a blend of supply side and Austrian economics***
Please tell me more of Austrian economics.
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***The solution methinks is to be found in a blend of supply side and Austrian economics***
Please tell me more of Austrian economics.
All you can eat right here:
http://www.mises.org/
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The fcukers in Washington are in the process of committing major historic errors.
Amen to that. The world is collapsing around them and all they can babble on about is "partisan politics". So what happens when things really do fall apart? (that's a rhetorical question)
Disgusting...
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So when will the MSM start giving Biden the Dan Quayle treatment?
Biden douses Democrats with reality
By Jared Allen
Posted: 02/06/09 11:26 AM [ET]
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — President Obama may have fired up House Democrats at their annual retreat on Thursday night, but Vice President Biden arrived Friday morning to extinguish the flames.
Biden, in an overly subdued manner, repeatedly told Democrats that the challenges they face as members of Congress — as a party and as leaders of the country — are “daunting.”
“There has never been the constellation of crises we face right now,” Biden said. “And we have no historical precedent to look back on, other than our grit. Our determination.”
For his part, President Obama also struck that tone in describing the atmosphere facing the country and its elected officials. But where Obama combined reality with optimism and inspiration the previous night, Biden did anything but.
Recounting a conversation he had with Obama in the Oval Office earlier in the week regarding the economic stimulus bill and other matters, Biden said the two came to the realization that: “If we do everything right… there’s still a 30 percent chance we’re going to get it wrong.”
Biden said the doom-and-gloom manner in which he and the president have been speaking — and on a morning where the government reported a loss of an additional 598,000 jobs — was “not hyperbole.”
But “it’s not that things are so bad now,” Biden said, “it’s what happens if we miss.”
As the Senate worked toward passing its version of the economic stimulus package on Friday, Biden said he may be called on to “go see my old colleagues,” perhaps a nod to his new role in breaking tie votes in the Senate. That line yielded one of the vice president’s few standing ovations.
At the same time, Biden conveyed to the House Democratic Caucus that regardless of which particular chamber or which end of Pennsylvania Avenue ends up with more of its priorities in the legislation, the fate of the entire party is inextricably linked.
“You can do everything right in the House and we can do everything wrong in the White House, and you’re toast,” and vice versa, Biden said, alluding to future elections.
“We’re all in this together,” he continued. “The only thing we can get wrong is not reaching a consensus among ourselves … and showing the American people that we’re thinking small.”
But the former senator from Delaware credited the House for doing the opposite, and he praised House Democratic leaders for “thinking big” and passing a bill reflective of that mentality.
“You stepped up in a big way in the House,” the vice president said. “You were ready to take what was not always an easy pill to swallow with your votes, and you acted in a timely way.”
After 20 minutes of admittedly unprepared remarks on the state of the economy, Biden acknowledged that he was off message.
“Let me move to what I was supposed to talk about, which is foreign policy,” he said.
But even on the new topic, Biden returned to the dour tone and pessimistic assessment he had offered on the county’s domestic policy front.
Biden said real progress was visible in Iraq — he compared the situation to a football team being 20 yards away from the end zone — but admitted that any victory is far from certain, and he reiterated that a victory through military means alone is unattainable.
An endgame in Iraq is “doable,” he said, but it will require “a lot of hard, hard work.”
And he described the road ahead as “incredibly perilous,” speaking about how he, Obama and Democratic leaders must “shift our focus from Iraq to Afghanistan.”
The challenges facing diplomats and the military in Afghanistan are “daunting,” Biden said — challenges that he warned are “insurmountable, from a historical perspective.”
“[In Afghanistan] I think we’re closer to being on our 20-yard line with 80 yards to go, to continue this ridiculous metaphor.”
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/biden-douses-democrats-with-reality-2009-02-06.html
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What's wrong with what Biden said? It's refreshing to hear cold reality being bluntly spoken versus glib comments.
"But even on the new topic, Biden returned to the dour tone and pessimistic assessment he had offered on the county’s domestic policy front.
Biden said real progress was visible in Iraq — he compared the situation to a football team being 20 yards away from the end zone — but admitted that any victory is far from certain, and he reiterated that a victory through military means alone is unattainable. An endgame in Iraq is “doable,” he said, but it will require “a lot of hard, hard work.”
And he described the road ahead as “incredibly perilous,” speaking about how he, Obama and Democratic leaders must “shift our focus from Iraq to Afghanistan.”
The challenges facing diplomats and the military in Afghanistan are “daunting,” Biden said — challenges that he warned are “insurmountable, from a historical perspective.”
“[In Afghanistan] I think we’re closer to being on our 20-yard line with 80 yards to go, to continue this ridiculous metaphor.”
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Context, dude. He's been taken to the woodshed for running his mouth and, by his own admission, he was off message. After his "they are going to test this guy" remarks, you'd think he'd check with the boss before going extemporaneous and on the record.
But hey, don't get me wrong, I expect the next four year will be a lot more amusing with his unctuous, self-aggrandizing, and off the cuff style exhibited in front of the cameras he can't help but preen before.
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Yeah, I understand "context" and "taken to the woodshed for running off his mouth" but you've got to (?) admit
he is on target. To say that "victory is far from certain" in Iraq and that it still "requires a lot of hard work"
is true. And the challenges in Afghanistan ARE truly "daunting". On another post, everyone here even seems to agree it's "daunting".
Biden is refreshing in his candor. I prefer this approach to how Obama/Bush and his handlers carefully package their words.
But yes, you are right; I am sure he is going to be reigned in and taken to the woodshed.
Yet, I wish more politicians from both parties would simply be more blunt and honest rather than speak politicalize.
I mean which do you want to hear; Biden's off the cuff honest style or Obama/Bush eloquent and unctuous style, while avoiding the issues?
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Yeah, I understand "context" and "taken to the woodshed for running off his mouth" but you've got to (?) admit
he is on target. To say that "victory is far from certain" in Iraq and that it still "requires a lot of hard work"
is true.
Particularly if you cut and run.
And the challenges in Afghanistan ARE truly "daunting". On another post, everyone here even seems to agree it's "daunting".
Daunting on a good day. Downright scary with a POTUS who shows scant understanding of things military, seems to seek to fight the good war in Afghanistan while ignorant of logistic challenges, as he binds the hands of intelligence gatherers and proposes to cut military budgets and programs.
Yet, I wish more politicians from both parties would simply be more blunt and honest rather than speak politicalize.
I mean which do you want to hear; Biden's off the cuff honest style or Obama/Bush eloquent and unctuous style, while avoiding the issues?
Bush as "eloquent"? You heard it here first, folks
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My comopany does alot of business in Israel. In talking to several contacts today i said "you guys must be happy to have Rahm in the white house". Never in my life have i ever heard the F-Bomb dropped so many times, nor have i heard a man compared to poop in so many ways, the camp david accords came up several times, im under the impression that they felt it was a bad deal for Israel......... i dont think they like him. Our partner who runs our Israeli office told me after that he knows Rahm personally and has a national reputation of being a weasle who will sell Israel down the river for the right price.
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Huss,
Interesting take on Emanuel. A weasel? No wonder he fit right in with the Clintons. I am not as convinced BO is as wise as some give him credit for.
What are their thoughts on Netenyahu who according to drudge appears to be headed for a win to be Israeli Prime minister again?
I liked his comment that Israel's survival trunps the global economy with its implications clear.
Comments like these may just pressure the US as well as other nations like even China and Russia to pressure Iran to back down lest their economies go further down the garbage can.
I wondered if that was not his goal. I full confidence he will have what it takes to do what is necessary.
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CCP,
They seem hopefull that Netenyahu will reverse the damage done to Israels integrity via the peace process. One of them made the comment that Obama can choke on it.
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Downright scary with a POTUS who shows scant understanding of things military
Speaking of lacking eloquence...where was Bush's deep military knowledge?
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Downright scary with a POTUS who shows scant understanding of things military
Speaking of lacking eloquence...where was Bush's deep military knowledge?
Bush didn't surround himself with retards and pacifists....ie Obama's pick to head up the CIA, the guy is a mindless puppet.
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Speaking of lacking eloquence...where was Bush's deep military knowledge?
He didn't have it. And it showed. Then he hired people who did. And that showed. Think there's a lesson there for the lame idealists currently conducting foreign policy?
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Bush didn't surround himself with retards...
We could debate this one for the next four years, so I'll leave it...
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A wise call! :lol: Forward everyone please!
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This thread has become quite a catch-all thread and I'd like to suggest that it become more of a repository of snide commentary :lol: and that efforts at serious discussion take place on specific issue oriented threads.
For example, I just posted a WSJ piece on His Glibness's apparent preparations to appease Russia by sacrificing missile defense of Europe from Iran in the Big Picture WW3 thread.
Like it or not, His Glibness is the president and we need to articulate what we want FOR America, what we think America should do.
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February 9, 2009
Biden's Munich Speech: Obama Administration Foreign Policy Projects Weakness and Confusion
by Nile Gardiner, Ph.D.
WebMemo #2280
In a major speech at the February 7 Munich Security Conference,[1] Vice President Joe Biden outlined the Obama Administration's foreign policy vision for the first time on the world stage. It was an address designed to reach out to leaders in both Europe and the Middle East, "on behalf of a new Administration determined to set a new tone in Washington, and in America's relations around the world."
Biden's speech should be viewed as one of the weakest projections of U.S. leadership on foreign soil in recent memory. The message was confused, apologetic, over-conciliatory, and remarkably lacking in substance and detail. It was the kind of speech, heavy in platitudes and diplo-speak, that could easily have been given by a continental European bureaucrat nestled in Brussels, Paris, or Berlin. It was not the voice of the most powerful nation on earth.
The Vice President went to great lengths in his speech to avoid offending America's enemies, such as Iran and Hamas, or her strategic competitors, such as Russia. One could have been forgiven for thinking that the world was largely at peace rather than facing the threat of global terrorism or a dangerous rogue regime aggressively seeking nuclear weapons capability.
Biden's remarks touched on several key areas, from Iran to NATO reform--all of which gave major cause for concern--and left critical questions unanswered.
Iran
The Vice President confirmed the new Administration's willingness to enter into direct negotiations with the Islamist regime in Tehran.
In essence, Biden offered a quid pro quo deal with Iran--the kind the European Union has offered for several years with absolutely nothing to show for it except spectacular failure. Such a deal is based on the naïve premise that the Iranian theocracy is a normal state actor that plays by the rules of diplomacy and can be negotiated with. What was missing in Biden's remarks was any explicit statement of consequences--actions ranging from tougher economic and military sanctions or the use of force against Iran's nuclear facilities--that could be inflicted on the dictatorial government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the ruling mullahs if they do not comply. There was no appeal to European Union countries such as Germany to tighten their own sanctions on Tehran or calls for Russia and China to strengthen U.N. Security Council sanctions.
Missile Defense
The Vice President stated that the United States "will continue to develop missile defenses to counter a growing Iranian capability, provided the technology is proven to work and cost effective." However, Biden gave no pledge to press ahead with a third-site missile defense system in Eastern and Central Europe, sowing the seeds of further confusion in Poland and the Czech Republic, two key U.S. allies who have agreed to participate in the defense system by hosting missile interceptors and early warning radar. In addition, National Security Adviser James Jones confirmed in an interview with the British Observer newspaper that plans for third-site defenses had been "put on ice," a decision that, accord to according to a senior NATO official, is a clear overture to Moscow.[2]
Russia
Aside from a refusal to recognize the breakaway Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, there was little evidence in Biden's speech that the Obama Administration intends to adopt a tough line toward Russian aggression in its "Near Abroad" or attempts to bully and intimidate its neighbors in the Caucasus as well as Eastern Europe. Significantly, Biden made no mention of U.S. support for Georgian and Ukrainian membership in the NATO Membership Action Plan or Russia's brutal invasion of Georgia last summer.
The willingness of the Obama team to bring Moscow into its negotiations over Third Site sets a dangerous precedent and is a clear signal that the Russians may be given a bigger say over NATO expansion plans. As Biden put it in his speech, "the last few years have seen a dangerous drift in relations between Russia and the members of our Alliance--it is time to reset the button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should work together." Strategically, it would be both naïve and risky for the new Administration to turn a blind eye toward an increasingly belligerent and nationalist Moscow that is actively flexing its muscles in Europe and across the globe.
NATO
While reiterating the importance of the NATO alliance and the need for its renewal in the 21st century, the Vice President supports policies that will undermine the organization and weaken American influence within it. In Munich, Biden backed the full reintegration of France into "NATO structures," and French officers are reportedly in line to take two senior alliance command positions: Allied Command Transformation and Joint Command Lisbon.[3] Biden also made it clear in his Munich address that the United States will "support the further strengthening of European defense, an increased role for the European Union in preserving peace and security, (and) a fundamentally stronger NATO-EU partnership."
These changes would give Paris (and its key ally Berlin) an extraordinary degree of power and influence within the organization, out of all proportion to its minimal military role in alliance operations. Such a move would ultimately shift power away from Washington and London and toward continental Europe, undoubtedly paving the way for the development of a Franco-German driven European Union defense identity within NATO.
Afghanistan
Biden identified the war in Afghanistan as a top foreign policy priority for the Obama Administration, calling for close cooperation with America's allies in Europe as well as the government of Pakistan. The Vice President, however, avoided the thorny issue of many European nations' failure to pull their weight in the conflict, an oversight that projected weakness and an unwillingness to challenge European complacency and indifference.
Despite all the fashionable rhetoric in European capitals about Iraq being a distraction to the war against the Taliban, on the battlefields of Afghanistan over two-thirds of the more than 50,000 troops serving as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force are from the English-speaking countries of the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia. These nations have also taken 85 percent of the casualties. Britain has more troops (8,900) in the country than all the other major European Union powers combined, many of which, like Germany, cower under dozens of "caveats" aimed at keeping their soldiers out of harm's way.
War on Terrorism
Significantly absent from the Vice President's address was any reference to the war on terrorism or the need for the United States and its allies to be prepared for a long hard battle against Islamist terrorism. Biden spoke in soft terms of "a shared struggle against extremism" and of "a small number of violent extremists [who] are beyond the call of reason," as well as the need to seek with the Muslim world "a new way forward based on mutual interest and mutual respect." There was no indication given of the sheer scale of the global fight against al-Qaeda and its allies. Al-Qaeda is mentioned just once in Biden's speech, and only within the context of Afghanistan.
The Vice President also avoided directly mentioning terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel. There were no words of support for Israel's recent offensive against Hamas in Gaza, suggesting a significant shift away from open support for Israel by the new U.S. Administration.
Biden also chose to ignore altogether the extraordinary success of U.S. counterterrorism operations in Iraq through the surge and the huge improvement in security in the previously war-torn country that enabled the overwhelmingly peaceful Iraqi provincial elections to take place at the end of January.
A Celebration of Soft Power
Vice President Biden delivered what was in essence a quintessentially European-style speech on German soil. It was an address that tried to be all things to all people, lacking in concrete policy prescriptions and cloaked in vague statements designed to cause minimal offense in foreign capitals, including those of America's worst enemies. Biden's address was above all a celebration of "soft power," cynically re-branded by the Obama Administration as "smart power."
American leadership is not a popularity contest but the hard-nosed projection of U.S. interests. Rather than projecting strength and decisiveness internationally, the new Administration's approach to foreign policy appears muddled and incoherent. Biden's words revealed a foreign policy with a dangerously soft underbelly, one that will quickly be exploited by America's opponents on the world stage.
Washington must stand up to the Iranian nuclear threat, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the global menace of al-Qaeda, and Russian intimidation in Europe with strength, resolve, and conviction. A foreign policy capable of meeting such challenges must include a willingness to wield maximum force where necessary, deploy a comprehensive missile shield in Europe, and increase military spending in the defense of the United States and the free world.
Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., is director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.
[1]Vice President Joseph R. Biden, speech at the 45th Munich Security Conference, February 7, 2009, at http://www.securityconference.d
e/konferenzen/rede.php?menu_2009=&menu_konferenzen=&s
prache=en&id=238& (February 8, 2009).
[2]Ian Traynor, "Obama Administration Offers Olive Branch to Russia and Iran," The Guardian, February 7, 2009, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/
world/2009/feb/07/us-russia-iran-biden-obama (February 8, 2009).
[3]Ben Hall and James Blitz, "Command Accord Presages French Return to NATO," Financial Times, February 5, 2009, at: http://www.ft.com/cm
s/s/0/fbc2122a-f323-11dd-abe6-0000779fd2ac.html (February 5, 2009).
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Europe/wm2280.cfm
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This thread has become quite a catch-all thread and I'd like to suggest that it become more of a repository of snide commentary :lol: and that efforts at serious discussion take place on specific issue oriented threads.
For example, I just posted a WSJ piece on His Glibness's apparent preparations to appease Russia by sacrificing missile defense of Europe from Iran in the Big Picture WW3 thread.
Like it or not, His Glibness is the president and we need to articulate what we want FOR America, what we think America should do.
This is a lost 4 years, President Empty-suit is going to get innocents killed and we'll be paying for decades, if not longer for the mistake of electing him.
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Republicans Shut Out of Stimulus Conference Negotiations
by Connie Hair
02/11/2009
Republicans have caught the Democrats in a midnight “stimulus” power play that seeks to cut Republican conferees out of the House-Senate negotiations to resolve a final version of the Obama “stimulus” package. Staff members from the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) met last night to put together the “stimulus” conference report.
They intend to attempt to shove this $1.3 trillion spending bill through in the dead of the night without Republican input so floor action can take place in both chambers on Thursday.
I spoke with House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) moments ago about this latest version of Democratic “bipartisanship.” Pence told me, “I think the American people deserve to know that legislation that would comprise an amount equal to the entire discretionary budget of the United States of America is being crafted without a single House Republican in the room.”
How many Senate RINOs will go along with this? Probably, just enough for the Dems to get away with it.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30667
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- Pajamas Media - http://pajamasmedia.com -
Obama Hopelessly Adrift on Foreign Policy
Posted By Kim Zigfeld On February 10, 2009 @ 12:37 am In . Column2 01, . Positioning, Europe, Homeland Security, Russia, US News, World News | 36 Comments
A truly frightening exchange occurred between Barack Obama and Helen Thomas at Obama’s first press conference on Monday. Here is the [1] transcript excerpt:
All right. Helen? This is my inaugural moment here.
(LAUGHTER)
I’m really excited.
QUESTION: Mr. President, do you think that Pakistan and — are maintaining the safe havens in Afghanistan for these so-called terrorists? And, also, do you know of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?
OBAMA: Well, I think that Pakistan — there is no doubt that, in the FATA region of Pakistan, in the mountainous regions along the border of Afghanistan, that there are safe havens where terrorists are operating. And one of the goals of Ambassador Holbrooke, as he is traveling throughout the region, is to deliver a message to Pakistan that they are endangered as much as we are by the continuation of those operations and that we’ve got to work in a regional fashion to root out those safe havens. It’s not acceptable for Pakistan or for us to have folks who, with impunity, will kill innocent men, women and children. And, you know, I — I believe that the new government of Pakistan and — and Mr. Zardari cares deeply about getting control of the situation. We want to be effective partners with them on that issue.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
OBAMA: Well, Mr. Holbrooke is there, and that’s exactly why he’s being sent there, because I think that we have to make sure that Pakistan is a stalwart ally with us in battling this terrorist threat. With respect to nuclear weapons, you know, I don’t want to speculate. What I know is this: that if we see a nuclear arms race in a region as volatile as the Middle East, everybody will be in danger. And one of my goals is to prevent nuclear proliferation generally. I think that it’s important for the United States, in concert with Russia, to lead the way on this. And, you know, I’ve mentioned this in conversations with the Russian president, Mr. Medvedev, to let him know that it is important for us to restart the — the conversations about how we can start reducing our nuclear arsenals in an effective way so that …
(CROSSTALK)
OBAMA: … so that we then have the standing to go to other countries and start stitching back together the nonproliferation treaties that, frankly, have been weakened over the last several years. OK.
QUESTION: Why do you have to speculate on who has …
(CROSSTALK)
OBAMA: All right.
Sam Stein, Huffington Post. Where’s Sam? Here. Go ahead.
This may well be one of the most horrifying excerpts from a press-conference transcript in U.S. presidential history. It’s hard to know where to begin in documenting the carnage.
First, in the middle of one of the great economic crises the country has experienced, at his very first press conference, and just before being asked about Islamic terrorism and nuclear weapons, Obama is joking like a schoolboy.
Second, Obama states: “It’s not acceptable for Pakistan or for us to have folks who, with impunity, will kill innocent men, women and children.” For us? Perhaps by this bizarre statement Obama meant not only Pakistan but any country assisting terrorists must be opposed by U.S. policy, but it came out sounding as if the U.S. was somehow itself fostering terrorism.
Third, Obama states: “With respect to nuclear weapons, you know, I don’t want to speculate. What I know is this: that if we see a nuclear arms race in a region as volatile as the Middle East, everybody will be in danger.” Isn’t a nuclear arms race already underway in the Middle East? Isn’t it Obama’s job to know which countries there have such weapons, without speculating?
And then finally, inevitably, Obama jumps the rails. He states: “And one of my goals is to prevent nuclear proliferation generally. I think that it’s important for the United States, in concert with Russia, to lead the way on this. And, you know, I’ve mentioned this in conversations with the Russian president, Mr. Medvedev, to let him know that it is important for us to restart the — the conversations about how we can start reducing our nuclear arsenals in an effective way so that we then have the standing to go to other countries and start stitching back together the nonproliferation treaties that, frankly, have been weakened over the last several years.”
So Obama has announced that the U.S. can’t stop nuclear proliferation unless the U.S. itself abandons nuclear weapons, even as Obama has failed to make any strong statement in support of a missile defense shield for Europe. Essentially, then, he’s suggesting that the moral power of unilateral disarmament is the best and indeed only way to stop proliferation in the Middle East.
And that’s not the worst of it. This was the only reference to Russia that occurred in the entire press conference, and Obama injected it on his own (shame on the White House press corps for not asking him a single question about Putin’s neo-Soviet nightmare). The U.S. stands now at a major crossroads in world history. With the Russian economy facing a steep and dire recession (its stock market down 80%, its foreign reserves down 50%, and its currency down 30%), the U.S. has a massive amount of leverage to compel Russia to make democratic changes or face an arms race similar to the one provoked by Ronald Reagan which drove the USSR into the ash can of history. We’ve just seen yet another addition to the horrifying litany of political murder during the Putin years with the killing of human rights attorney [2] Stanislav Markelov and firebrand reporter Anastasia Baburova, and yet not only did Obama not announce new pressure on the Kremlin, he spoke about Dmitri Medvedev as if he were not only the legitimate ruler of the country but a trustworthy partner on the nuclear problem.
Not a word from Obama about the Markelov killing, or about Russia’s equally terrifying litany [3] of race murder, or about the fact that Medvedev’s “election” was shamelessly rigged after all serious opposition had been purged from the ballot, or about the fact that Medvedev support an extension of the presidential term widely viewed as a platform for the return of Russia’s real ruler, Vladimir Putin, to permanent formal power. Not a syllable about how Medvedev has begun abolishing the right to trial by jury, not a peep about Russia’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism, both directly and through Syria and Iran. Nothing about the fact that Russia just booted the U.S. out of a key [4] military base in Kyrgzystan, signed a [5] cooperation pact with Cuba, [6] bribed Belarus into forming an anti-U.S. air defense program and [7] started building military bases in the territory it seized from Georgia in Abkhazia.
Instead, Obama appears to let Russia off the hook, conveniently releasing the pressure of the nuclear arms race at exactly the moment the Kremlin needs him to do so. How can Russia possibly take this statement as anything other than an open invitation to escalate its crackdown on democracy and its efforts to dominate its neighbors?
Putin’s government is becoming increasingly unhinged as the pressure of economic failure and open public protests increases. It is [8] spying on opposition political groups in the same way that got Richard Nixon driven from office. Putin delivered an unsettling, [9] crazy-sounding speech at the Davos economic forum, and then made an even more delusional attack on Dell CEO Michael Dell. And when the Fitch ratings agency downgraded Russia’s debt rating because of its massive economic setbacks, Putin’s [10] only response was to call for the creation of Russian ratings agencies that would give Russia higher scores! In this light, how can we see Obama’s comment about Medvedev as being any different from George Bush’s infamous claim to have looked in Vladimir Putin’s eyes, glimpsed his soul, and found him trustworthy?
And then, for a cherry on top of this rancid sundae, Obama takes a question from, of all places, the Huffington Post, without giving a similar opportunity to any conservative blogger. So much for bipartisanship! CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, Bloomberg, Reuters, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and, of course, we can’t forget the Huffington Post in the roll call of mainstream journalism! One has to wonder, of course, if George Bush would have been allowed to get away with taking questions from Michelle Malkin.
What’s perhaps the most amazing (and ironic) of all, however, is that the Huffington Post is actually doing a better job of calling Putin’s Russia on the carpet than Obama himself. It has recently given blog space to both dissident opposition leader [11] Oleg Kozlovsky and leading Kremlin critic [12] Robert Coalson. Even the rhetoric of the [13] United Nations of late has been more convincingly pro-democracy than that of the Obama administration, and so has that of various European leaders.
Obama, meanwhile, is behaving in exactly the way one would expect a leader with no foreign policy experience or credentials to behave. In other words, he’s hopelessly and depressingly adrift.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-hopelessly-adrift-on-foreign-policy/
URLs in this post:
[1] transcript: http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/president/39344092.html?elr=KArks8c7PaP3E77K_3c::D3aDhU
ec7PaP3E77K_0c::D3aDhUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr
[2] Stanislav Markelov: http://pajamasmedia.com../../../../../blog/surprise-political-murders-continue-in-russia/
[3] of race murder: http://pajamasmedia.com../../../../../blog/russian-hate-crimes-on-the-rise/
[4] military base: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world/europe/06russia.html?_r=1&ref=world
[5] cooperation pact: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct2=us/0_0_s_0_0_t&usg=AFQjCNGoB4xFUImiS9VW5XR4UES9IzVL
gA&cid=1297918530&ei=XWODSbiLBI32Mbq80skC&url=http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-01-30-
voa31.cfm
[6] bribed Belarus: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1016/42/374405.htm
[7] started building: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct2=us/0_0_s_6_0_t&usg=AFQjCNFivvlmhB507YdAMIAZjkEuGStB
6A&cid=1297465783&ei=XWODSbiLBI32Mbq80skC&url=http://uk.reuters.com/article/gc07/idUKLQ3
6012320090129
[8] spying on opposition political groups: http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/editorial-mr-putins-kitchen/
[9] crazy-sounding speech: http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/special-extra-russia-is-ruled-by-a-psychopath/
[10] only response: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jj73UJWw-IDUL1HU5WqDhvPBfqcA
[11] Oleg Kozlovsky: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oleg-kozlovsky
[12] Robert Coalson: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-coalson
[13] United Nations: http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/editorial-just-say-nobama-2/
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Most of the points are good, but this simply is silly:
"Second, Obama states: “It’s not acceptable for Pakistan or for us to have folks who, with impunity, will kill innocent men, women and children.” For us? Perhaps by this bizarre statement Obama meant not only Pakistan but any country assisting terrorists must be opposed by U.S. policy, but it came out sounding as if the U.S. was somehow itself fostering terrorism."
No, you moron, his obvious intended meaning is that it is unacceptable both to Pakistan and the US to have terrorists. While I doubt the veracity of the statement with regard to Pak, the meaning taken by this piece concerning his language with regard to the US is childish.
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Remember when the Empty-suit said this:
"We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."
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This is a lost 4 years, President Empty-suit is going to get innocents killed and we'll be paying for decades, if not longer for the mistake of electing him.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/12/obamas-outrageous-oversight/
EDITORIAL: Obama's outrageous oversight
Thursday, February 12, 2009
President Obama clearly didn't do his homework before ordering the suspension of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. We have learned that even his own legal counsel admitted that Mr. Obama erred in discussing details about terrorism with families of victims last week, and that the administration was ignorant of a key point that terrorists exploit to their advantage. In his rush to fulfill a campaign promise to his more fervid anti-war supporters, the president's legal oversights risk the disclosure of some highly classified information to terrorists.
Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 that was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11, was present at last Friday's White House meeting of families of terrorism victims. Her impression was that President Obama was saying the right words in general, but when it came to specifics he was uncertain, uninformed, and sometimes just plain mistaken. Ms. Burlingame is an attorney who has followed closely the legal aspects of the terrorism cases, and her detailed, probing questions were met with stammers, stares, and statements that betrayed an understanding of the law that was, she said, "flat out wrong."
Case in point: the president's knowledge of the role of the Classified Information Procedures Act or CIPA. This law governs the way in which classified information is used in trials. The Sixth Amendment guarantees defendants the right to confront their accusers and the evidence against them, but the government has an important interest in cases such as these in keeping sources and methods secret. Under CIPA rules, in cases where classified information is used, the government has the option of sharing the information with the defendant, or not using it.
The Bush administration sought to avoid this potential national security threat by resorting to other procedures in which 6th Amendment issues did not arise. But President Obama believes that the model for terrorism cases is the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. Of course a number of those plotters escaped justice (some were found later hiding in Saddam's Iraq, but that's another story). More important, because of the openness of that process, al Qaeda learned a great deal about how to do a much better job next time - and even the classified information from that trial was in Osama bin Laden's hands within weeks.
The terrorists have learned a great deal about conducting legal guerrilla war, using rules like CIPA to their advantage. Notice that more and more terrorists are dismissing their appointed lawyers and representing themselves. This gives them direct access to the classified documents that will be used in evidence against them. In this way they can learn about U.S. intelligence sources and methods - how they were targeted, what information was collected, and who may have been the traitors in their midst. Even if the names of sources are omitted, for example someone who was present at a key planning meeting, the terrorist defendant will know enough about the circumstances to be able to narrow it down. After all, the terrorist is familiar with every aspect of the events; he knows much more about them than the intelligence community.
The alternative to handing over the secrets is for the government to not use the evidence in question. That creates the incongruous situation in which the defense wants to maximize the amount of evidence that implicates them, and the prosecution wants to minimize it. (Our legal system was not designed to accommodate defendants who welcome being put to death.) According to Ms. Burlingame, Obama's answer to this conundrum was "there is no reason we have to give [the terrorists] everything." Evidently the former editor of the Harvard Law Review seems to think that one of his powers as president is personally to pick and choose which constitutional rights apply to terror defendants and which do not. That's the very thing they were criticizing President Bush for.
White House Counsel Greg Craig, often seen whispering in the president's ear during question periods, admitted later to Ms. Burlingame that the chief executive was getting the facts of the law wrong during the discussion with the families. Craig asked her if CIPA covers a case in which terrorists defend themselves, noting that "this is something we hadn't contemplated." If nothing else, this admission of ignorance is more evidence that the decision to rush ahead with closing Guantanamo and shutting down the military tribunals was ill-conceived, poorly planned, and may ultimately be injurious to our national security. The president may talk a good game about "swift, certain justice," but it is becoming clear that justice will not be swift, is highly uncertain, and in the end may not even be just.
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Keep this phrase handy, Obots: "At least Bush kept us safe".
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Keep this phrase handy, Obots: "At least Bush kept us safe".
Wasn't it during Bush's watch that 9/11 happened?
Bush "kept us safe" ???
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Since 9/11.
Although as a quick reminder, the first attack on the WTC happened in 1993, the start of Clinton's first term. AQ metastasized under his watch with multiple attacks on us while he tried to use standard law enforcement methods to engage them. Remember the USS Cole and African embassy bombings? Remember the strikes on AQ camps only during Monica-gate? If I recall correctly, most if not all 9/11 operational assets arrived in the US in 1998 to begin training for 9/11.
Keep in mind that Bush had the hanging chad legal fights and the dems impeding his cabinet appointments so that he had only about 1/3 of his nat'l security cabinet picks in place on 9/11.
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CCP:
I've moved your very good post to the Electoral thread: http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1709.new#new
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The party of the most open administration ever, the one that will keep those pesky lobbyists in place has got copies of the stimulus bill to K Street, but not to congress or the press. . . .
Congressional Offices Don't Have the Stimulus Bill, Lobbyists Do
February 12, 2009 04:14 PM ET | Paul Bedard | Permanent Link | Print
By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers
We're receiving E-mails from Capitol Hill staffers expressing frustration that they can't get a copy of the stimulus bill agreed to last night at a price of $789 billion. What's more, staffers are complaining about who does have a copy: K Street lobbyists. E-mails one key Democratic staffer: "K Street has the bill, or chunks of it, already, and the congressional offices don't. So, the Hill is getting calls from the press (because it's leaking out) asking us to confirm or talk about what we know—but we can't do that because we haven't seen the bill. Anyway, peeps up here are sort of a combo of confused and like, 'Is this really happening?'" Reporters pressing for details, meanwhile, are getting different numbers from different offices, especially when seeking the details of specific programs.
Worse, there seem to be several different versions of what was agreed upon, with some officials circulating older versions of the package that seems to still be developing. Leadership aides said that it will work out later today and promised that lawmakers will get time to review the bill before Friday's vote.
Check out more of the new Washington Whispers.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2009/2/12/congressional-offices-dont-have-the-stimulus-bill-lobbyists-do.html
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GM's post about Chinagate leading to 911 moved to the Homeland Security thread.
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Moving GM's post on BO not believing the NIE report either over to the Iran thread.
Folks:
I'd like to repeat that now that he is President, I'd like to see this thread become less important-- and for threads for posts to be determined more about the subject matter e.g. if it is about BO and Iran, then maybe it belongs in the Iran thread and not this one. Otherwise this thread becomes one giant cluster of incoherent crankiness.
TIA,
Marc
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Annoyingly produced interview (where'd he find that tie?) that nonetheless leaves Reid looking like an Orwellian idiot. Reminds me of some discussions I've had around here. . . .
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7mRSI8yWwg&eurl=http://www.ihatethemedia.com/harry-reid-says-income-taxes-voluntary[/youtube]
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I tangentially mention that this is the sort of article that belongs in this thead , , ,
Obama and the American dream
The most serious threat to American liberty is the illusion that symbols create reality.
As I watched the inauguration of America’s 44th president, I wondered what the commotion was about. It was billed as a larger than life historical event that would usher in a new era of change, but where was the tangible evidence for such a grandiose notion? Scenes of ecstatic joy, bringing multitudes of people to cry, break into song and exhibit a whole range of emotions, must find their rationale in a person's track record -- in real historical achievements. What exactly had Barack Obama done to inspire such hope?
We Filipinos are media junkies; decades-long exposure to American news and soap operas had convinced us that racism was defeated long ago. If this was Obama’s achievement it was old news, an old story. Moreover in his case the racism narrative of slavery and segregation was a borrowed one, not something from his own heritage. Stories are the stuff of symbols and, surely, America’s 44th president must have his own story—something in the tradition of Augustus Caesar, Joan of Arc, Gandhi, Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul II who were all heroic achievers.
By contrast, there is nothing very remarkable about what Barack Obama has done with his life so far. That he is an African-American with a diverse background within the context of America’s racial past may be enough these days to make him a symbol of hope, but it is hope premised on his potential to deliver great deeds, not on historical acts as in the case of the heroic figures mentioned above. In the case of Obama, the symbol precedes the story and the story precedes the acts.
Not until Obama acts will we know his true story and be able to judge whether it is a good story, capable of inspiring great deeds all round. If, for example, the new president were to honestly address the evils besetting the modern world -- not only wars in the guise of liberation to protect American interests, but also, at home, the destruction of marriage and the war on the unborn child (both of which disproportionately afflict black Americans) -- then he might begin to shine as a real symbol.
Obama's symbolism is very like that of America itself. Like the Obama story, the American story is also premised on potential. Disregarding what the New World’s settlers did to the Native American, the pilgrims’ background story of the oppressed seeking -- and finding -- liberty served as the perfect recipe for the American symbol as it has been officially known.
But the premise of liberty in the American story is but a potential and has remained in potency since the unfurling of the Stars and Stripes.
Proof that the story of the American symbol has not been actualized can be culled from America’s behavior, its policies, and most especially the popular ideas and lifestyles it has introduced to the world and established as norms: consumerism as the lifeblood of a capitalism oblivious to global warming and the logic of good values; liberalism as the essence of freedom; and imperialism as the motive of charity in the form of aid and intervention. All these ambiguities have left their mark on developing countries like my own.
The question now is whether Obama will actualize the American story. Will he write the story of the symbol and do the acts that should have preceded the story in the first place? Will Obama be that larger than life symbol that has been so grandiosely represented by America?
There is a serious threat to America, and it is not terrorism, global warming, or the economy; these are but consequences of the real threat. It is the illusion that symbols create reality.
An empty symbol cannot sustain itself. Like art and literature that are unable to capture the nature of things, they are forgotten. This is what sets apart the classics from the rest. Moreover, classics are filled with symbols which can be directly associated with reality, and so they stand the test of time and last. Symbol making seems to have become a frivolously empty process with empty stories, devoid of reason. This is what I thought as I watched the faces and various displays of emotion during the inauguration.
Ironically, the television screen that enabled me to watch Obama-mania in full flight is largely responsible for this state of affairs. Marshall McLuhan best captured it’s ambiguity in 1964 when he coined the phrase, “the medium is the message.” The visual media’s confusion of the reel and the real has become the very life of our times. Life imitates the media and reason has been replaced by the emotional force of personalities and symbols.
Hopefully, Obama will actualize the story of that American dream which has remained in potency for centuries. If he decides to do the acts needed to complete the story of the symbol that has been stamped on him, headlines will change and much of America’s (and the world’s) problems will eventually disappear. This is the real story of America—that it has yet to be great and that it has the potential to be so. I believe it can be realised.
Caterina F. Lorenzo-Molo is an Assistant Professor of the University of Asia and the Pacific's (UA&P) School of Communication (SCM) in the Philippines. She teaches and does research in communication ethics. Her articles have been published in Public Relations Review, Media Asia and Asia Business & Management (ABM). She is a mother of three young girls.
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WSJ: Transparency? Hah!
In his closing remarks on the stimulus bill yesterday, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey called it "the largest change in domestic policy since the 1930s." We'd say more like the 1960s, which is bad enough, but his point about the bill's magnitude is right. The 1,073-page monstrosity includes the biggest spending increase since World War II, but more important is the fine print expanding the role of the federal government across the breadth of American business, health care, energy and welfare policy.
Given those stakes, you might think Congress would get more than a few hours to debate it. But, no, yesterday's roll call votes came less than 24 hours after House-Senate conferees had agreed to their deal. Democrats rushed the bill to the floor before Members could even read it, much less have time to broadcast the details so the public could offer its verdict.
The Opinion Journal Widget
Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page.
So much for Democratic promises of a new era of transparency. Only this Tuesday the House unanimously approved a resolution promising 48-hour public notice before holding a roll call. Even better, the bill could have been posted on the Internet, as candidate Barack Obama suggested during the campaign. Let voters see what they're getting for all this money. Not a chance.
This high-handed endgame follows the pattern of this bill from the start, with Republicans all but ignored until Democrats let three GOP Senators nibble around the edges to prevent a filibuster. With their huge majorities, Mr. Obey and Democrats got their epic victory. But far from a new, transparent way of governing, this bill represents the kind of old-fashioned partisan politics that Tom DeLay would have admired.
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The White House's missing documents
By: Josh Gerstein
February 17, 2009 08:46 PM EST
In his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations, realigned and expanded two key White House policymaking bodies and extended economic sanctions against parties to the conflict in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire.
Despite the intense scrutiny a president gets just after the inauguration, Obama managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps.
The moves escaped notice because they were never announced by the White House Press Office and were never placed on the White House web site.
They came to light only because the official paperwork was transmitted to the Federal Register, a dense daily compendium of regulatory actions and other formal notices prepared by the National Archives. They were published there several days after the fact.
A Politico review of Federal Register issuances since Obama took office found three executive orders, one presidential memorandum, one presidential notice, and one proclamation that went unannounced by the White House.
Two of Obama's actions on regulatory reform were spotted by bloggers, lobbying groups and trade publications after they emerged in the Federal Register.
There was no apparent rhyme or reason to the omissions. A proclamation Obama issued on February 2 for African-American History Month was e-mailed to the press and posted on the White House web site. But another presidential proclamation the same day for American Heart Month slipped by.
Such notices were routinely released by the White House press office during prior administrations — making their omission all the more unusual given Obama’s oft-repeated pledges of openness.
Most of the documents were posted to the White House web site Tuesday night, after Politico inquired about their absence. “It was a simple oversight,” a spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said.
One order Obama signed Feb. 5 expanded the National Economic Council to 25 people by adding the Secretary of Health and Human Services; Secretary of Education Arne Duncan; senior adviser Valerie Jarrett; “climate czar” Carol Browner and two other officials.
Another order the president signed the same day added two slots to the Domestic Policy Council, bringing it to a total of 26 people. Some slots were reassigned. The chief technology officer was among those added to the panel, while “AIDS Policy Coordinator” was removed. It was unclear if that was a substantive change, simply reflected plans to keep the AIDS czar post at the State Department, or perhaps both.
Another Obama executive order, signed January 30, canceled two Bush-era executive orders relating to regulatory review. The White House did release chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s memo halting regulations in the works at federal agencies, but didn’t release another Obama memo setting a 100-day deadline for agency heads to recommend a new regulatory review process. The memo indicates that Obama may want to do some things differently on the regulatory front than the last Democrat in the White House, Bill Clinton.
Also waylaid was a notice Obama signed February 4 extending sanctions against some nationals of Cote D’Ivoire because of what he termed “the massacre of large numbers of civilians, widespread human rights abuses, significant political violence and unrest, and attacks against international peacekeeping forces leading to fatalities.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18969.html
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For the love of all that is good and holy.......... please keep your trash in your side of the border. Why the heck did obama meet with the opposition party while on his visit to Canada? Its like he was trying to make our Conservative PM look like a clown. I kinda like having a PM that loves freedom, he is in the final stages of dismantling our gun registry. The last thing we need now is obama encouraging the liberal socialists to topple our sitting govt.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...hub=TopStories
Liberal Leader Ignatieff gets 30 minutes with Obama
Updated Thu. Feb. 19 2009 7:39 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff got the 30 minutes he wanted with President Barack Obama Thursday.
Ignatieff said that "serious business" was accomplished in his meeting with Obama, and they spoke about hot topic issues such as Afghanistan and U.S. trade protectionism.
It is protocol for foreign dignitaries to meet with the Official Opposition when they visit Canada.
Ignatieff told CTV News that Obama expressed his concern about Afghanistan, and thought the mission was "drifting."
The Liberal leader hinted that his party may not insist that Canada honour its pledge to withdraw troops from Afghanistan by 2011.
He said a 2011 withdrawal is his party's "current" position but said if Obama convinced Prime Minister Stephen Harper to stay longer, he would cross that bridge when it happens.
Obama said he did not press Harper to extend the Afghan mission.
However, Ignatieff said he thought the most interesting part of his conversation with Obama was regarding the president's attempts to work with Republicans in Washington.
"I said to him that one of the things that inspires me about him is that he's trying to get above partisanship and reach across the aisle," Ignatieff said.
Bob Rae, Liberal MP for Toronto-Centre and one of Canada's most well-known politicians, seemed as excited about Obama's visit as ordinary Canadians were.
Rae, who attended the meeting, said he was "struck by how down to earth" Obama was and said that president made eye-contact with everyone.
"I think it's fair to say that we were charmed by Obama. It's hard not to be," Rae said.
Ignatieff seemed equally smitten by the charismatic American, calling Obama a "political genius."
The Liberal leader, who graduated from Harvard and later taught there, noted that Harvard-alum Obama and he had mutual friends.
"He was even kind enough to say he read a few of my books," Ignatieff, a prolific author, said.
after reading this, two words come to mind.......... "circle jerk"
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Friday, February 20, 2009
Enough Already [Victor Davis Hanson]
Many have weighed in on Eric Holder's "cowards" slur. He obviously hasn't paid much attention to college campuses, where the obsession with race permeates departments, curricula, hiring, faculty profile, student events, funding, etc. Bumper-sticker identification and hair-trigger readiness to accuse someone of racism to further a particular ideological or even personal agenda are now 30 years old and institutionalized in higher education.
He is right on one count, however — in the university, public schools, journalism at large, the foundations, and politics, there is a reluctance in one aspect to broach the subject. It is absolutely taboo to suggest that personal behavior, particular ingrained attitudes, and pernicious cultural assumptions — far more than contemporary racial oppression — could have contributed to ordinately high rates of drug use, crime, illegitimacy, unemployment, high-school drop-out rates, sexist attitudes toward women, and incarceration among a subset of young African-American males.
One can cite data, and refer to it in the spirit of finding constructive solutions. Yet that will most often result in suffering the slur of racism, given that so many are invested in the industry of racial grievance, as Holder himself has unfortunately demonstrated. It is not encouraging that in the first real public speech, the Attorney General of the United States has denigrated the American people as "cowards."
In that regard, what is cowardly is once again pandering to an audience about race rather than challenging people to transcend race and accept that it should be incidental, not essential, to one's character. More to the point, Holder himself had a teachable moment a few years ago to stand up and talk truth to power when he was asked to participate in a tawdry scheme to pardon a fugitive on the FBI's most-wanted list who had donated amply to the various Clinton political operations. Instead, he voted present.
I hope this is not more of the Carteresque style of blaming the American people. We've already heard from the Energy Czar that we in California have apparently abused our landscape, caused record droughts (still raining and snowing here in California), and so can expect soon to grow no more food, given that we've really used up our agricultural infrastructure rather than miraculously fed the world the last century. Our president has characterized us as "dictating" in the Middle East, in contrast to the Saudi authoritarian's "courage." Our secretary of state has said America too often has been impulsive and ideological. Gorism and 'you did it to yourselves' thinking is already rampant among some science and environmental appointees.
All this moral posturing and incrimination lead to the sort of nemesis we saw with the "highest ethical standards" devolving into Daschle, Geithner, Killefer, Lynch, Richardson, Solis, etc. (and silence about Blago, Burris, Murtha, Rangel etc). Does anyone remember that decades ago, a flip-the-channel collective response met Jimmy Carter every time he put on the cardigan sweater and begin to lecture America about what was wrong with it rather than trying to uplift Americans' spirits to meet new challenges?
02/20 09:33 AM
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmJkOWQyZDcwZmMwMzc0ZDUxOTg5Mjk5ZjhkY2JlNWU=
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C'mon, Obots. Tell us what a great job Ogabe is doing and how we've got it all wrong.
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February 20, 2009
Stimulus Plan Ensures Boom Sector: Oversight
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
WASHINGTON — The first hiring spree to result from the $787 billion stimulus plan might not involve construction workers or teachers but government auditors, investigators and lawyers who will try to track all of the taxpayer money being spent on economic recovery.
With the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress under pressure to show that the stimulus money will be put to good use, the bill President Obama signed this week directs more than $350 million to oversight, virtually guaranteeing boom times in the field of government accountability.
The stakes, financially and politically, are huge. Republicans who criticized the stimulus plan as a bloated spending bill have already announced a “stimulus watch” program, intended to seize on any signs of waste or mismanagement and turning them into ammunition for the 2010 elections.
But just as with the billions for schools, infrastructure projects and state aid, the stimulus will channel so much money so fast to some two dozen inspector-general offices, as well as a new Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, that it might be difficult to spend it all wisely.
And some experts warn that the government might now need auditors for its auditors and new overseers for inspectors general, who typically answer directly to Congress.
The $350 million for oversight dwarfs the $50 million that Congress provided last fall to create a special inspector general’s office to oversee the $700 billion financial system bailout. The new stimulus package includes roughly $253 million for inspectors general, $84 million for the transparency board, and an additional $25 million for the Government Accountability Office. The general perception that the Bush administration mishandled the financial bailout has only added pressure for oversight of the stimulus.
David M. Walker, former head of the Government Accountability Office, said setting strict conditions on the use of stimulus money ahead of time would be more important than increasing scrutiny by auditors after the fact.
“If you don’t have appropriate conditions set up front, you are going to end up having a lot of disappointments,” Mr. Walker said, pointing to the financial-system bailout as an example.
“After spending $350 billion where we still don’t know where all the money went, people are asking, ‘Well, what did we get for it?’ You ought to be able to say: ‘This is where it went. This is what it was for. This is what they did with it. And this is what we think the impact was.’ ”
Finding qualified auditors and investigators to supervise such a vast increase in government spending might be a challenge in itself, and some experts on government accountability programs warned that spending more on oversight did not always guarantee better results.
“A lot of times Congress thinks that waving around the term ‘inspector general’ is just the magic potion that will fix everything without always thinking it through,” said Beverley C. Lumpkin, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group, who has studied inspector general offices.
Because the stimulus law requires tight accounting of the money, including the posting of expenditures to a public Web site, www.recovery.gov, some inspectors general say they are legally obligated to lead by example and will have to post every job that they fill and every investigation they undertake — an accounting of the accounting.
Todd J. Zinser, the inspector general at the Commerce Department, said he would potentially add as many as 30 employees to an existing staff of about 120, using $16 million provided to his office in the stimulus — $10 million to oversee a program to expand broadband Internet service and $6 million for other programs.
The money amounts to a huge increase for an office whose total 2008 budget was roughly $23 million.
Mr. Zinser said that most of the new positions would be in the agency’s four field offices, and that he was planning to carefully track the stimulus money used by his own office in the same way as the stimulus spending by the Commerce Department as a whole, on initiatives like new broadband Internet service.
In some cases, the oversight offices face the same challenges as those confronting local and state agencies as they plan to expend stimulus money, trying to figure out how quickly they can hire staff, whether they should hire permanent employees who might have to be laid off down the line or enlist independent contractors on a temporary basis.
Some Republicans complained that by naming only executive branch officials to the transparency board, the Democratic administration had shut them out of the oversight process.
Other lawmakers, including Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, have questioned whether the stimulus law creates new bureaucracy that will undermine the independence of individual inspectors general.
Thomas E. Gavin, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, said the administration was committed to rigorous oversight. “The president has made clear that the Recovery Act is to be the most transparent, accountable legislation ever,” Mr. Gavin said.
Several inspectors general said the speed at which the White House hopes to disburse the stimulus money posed heightened risks.
Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, said tracking the agency’s $700 billion budget would require each auditor to oversee about $1 billion in spending — an impossible task. But careful deployment can provide effective oversight, Mr. Levinson said.
“You make sure that you are avoiding the largest financial problems and at the same time are providing a sentinel effect, conveying a sense that you are on the job, you are policing the field,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/politics/20stimulus.html?_r=1&ref=politics
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**Ok, someone explain to me how Gitmo terrorists deserve constitutional rights, but Tibetans and Chinese citizens don't.**
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/02/21/hillary-we-wont-let-human-rights-get-in-the-way-of-trade-with-china/
Hillary: We won’t let human rights get in the way of trade with China
posted at 10:15 am on February 21, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
After all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over both human-rights violations and trade-pact cheating in China from the Left during the last eight years, one would expect a Democratic administration to take a much tougher line on both. With Hope and Change coming to the White House, Obama voters had every right to think that their new hero (bigger than Jesus Christ!) would lead the way to Truth and Justice. For Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though, the answer to WWJD and WWBOD is — what Bush did:
Amnesty International and a pro-Tibet group voiced shock Friday after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed not to let human rights concerns hinder cooperation with China.
Paying her first visit to Asia as the top US diplomat, Clinton said the United States would continue to press China on long-standing US concerns over human rights such as its rule over Tibet.
“But our pressing on those issues can’t interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis,” Clinton told reporters in Seoul just before leaving for Beijing.
T. Kumar of Amnesty International USA said the global rights lobby was “shocked and extremely disappointed” by Clinton’s remarks.
Hillary wanted to stress that human rights are important, but that the Obama administration has its priorities. They appear to be ranked in this order:
Business (trade).
Business (energy policy).
Security (North Korea and Taiwan).
Reminding China not to enslave, beat, and kill people.
I think that the Bush administration put security first, followed by trade and human rights — and got pilloried for it by Democrats over the last eight years. We heard nothing but how Bush wanted to suck up to Beijing, and that he didn’t care about people, blah blah blah. Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t recall a statement by Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell that baldly stated that the US cared less about human rights than trade than this statement from Hillary Clinton does.
I’m torn on this. The apparent pragmatism of the Obama foreign-policy team encourages me, but not as much as their fumbling amateurishness discourages me. Most of us care about human-rights violations (and so did the Bush administration), but to give the game away in the opening days takes all the pressure off of Beijing for the next four years. They know that the US will give them a pass on human rights as long as they keep trading with the US and toss Obama a few bones on climate change.
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cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/21/clinton.china.asia/index.html
"Human rights cannot interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises," Clinton said in talks with China's foreign minister.
It would seem, Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness no longer applies.
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Just imagine the howls if Bush were to appoint someone who made this statement to an intelligence chair.
Chas Freeman: The ChiComs Were "Overly Cautious" at Tiananmen Square
Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman has been tapped as the next chairman of the National Council of Intelligence (NIC), according to Foreign Policy. And while there is a fair amount of grumbling about his ties to the Saudi royal family (having been paid $1 million to lobby on their behalf) and his views on Israel, this 2006 Freeman mail to a listserv called CWF, uncovered by the Weekly Standard, is pretty stunning:
From: CWFHome@cs.com [mailto:CWFHome@cs.com]
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 9:29 PM
I will leave it to others to address the main thrust of your reflection on Eric's remarks. But I want to take issue with what I assume, perhaps incorrectly, to be yoiur citation of the conventional wisdom about the 6/4 [or Tiananmen] incident. I find the dominant view in China about this very plausible, i.e. that the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than -- as would have been both wise and efficacious -- to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at "Tian'anmen" stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.
For myself, I side on this -- if not on numerous other issues -- with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be. Such folk, whether they represent a veterans' "Bonus Army" or a "student uprising" on behalf of "the goddess of democracy" should expect to be displaced with despatch from the ground they occupy. I cannot conceive of any American government behaving with the ill-conceived restraint that the Zhao Ziyang administration did in China, allowing students to occupy zones that are the equivalent of the Washington National Mall and Times Square, combined. while shutting down much of the Chinese government's normal operations. I thus share the hope of the majority in China that no Chinese government will repeat the mistakes of Zhao Ziyang's dilatory tactics of appeasement in dealing with domestic protesters in China.
I await the brickbats of those who insist on a politically correct -- i.e. non Burkean conservative -- view.
Chas
You got that? The" truly unforgivable mistake" the Chinese authorities made at Tiananmen was not the brutal massacre of peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators, but rather "the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud." The Chinese communists were not "rash," but rather "overly cautious."
According to the Chinese Red Cross, 2,600 hundred people died during the crackdown, but "quickly retracted that figure under intense pressure from the government. The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded."
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/131843.html
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Even The Root is leaving the bandwagon? Platitudes just aren't cutting it any more even for the diehards :?
But don't worry because the lead over at theroot.com is "The GOP's Nutty Negro" which even I find offensive.
Which side looks more like the Confederacy everyday again?
http://www.theroot.com/views/straight-talk-address?GT1=38002
By Saaret
Created 02/23/2009 - 16:21
The Straight Talk Address
We need information not just inspiration from the president tonight.
tsamuel
President Obama needs to explain in simple terms how his expensive economic recovery plans will work. We need information not just inspiration.
<p>We need information not just inspiration from the president tonight.</p>
02/24/2009 06:16
It is a good thing that the president’s address to Congress tonight is not billed as a State of the Union. We all know the sorry state of the union right now, and no one really wants to spend an hour gawking at it in prime time. For Barack Obama, tonight is about successfully communicating the scale of the problems and sending a clear message that he is engaged in solving them.
There are those who say that confidence in Obama [1] is the only thing we have going for us, but that does not mean we should get just another inspirational speech. He needs to be very specific about how the mountain of taxpayer money that he has recently pumped into the economy will jolt it out of its vegetative state and get it moving again. He needs to correct the impression left last week by his treasury secretary that they don't know what they were doing.
Obama's 68 percent approval rating in one recent [2] poll serves as proof that Americans know that he inherited an economy on life support and are willing to give him a little time to restore it to health. But he can only play the bereft heir for so long. Real details are needed at this point in the game to keep Americans’ trust and our confidence in him high.
Jack Kennedy was in a similar situation when he delivered an address to Congress 10 days after his inauguration in 1961, and he did not hesitate to toss some of the blame back to the last administration for the tough economic times he encountered.
“Economic prophecy is at best an uncertain art—as demonstrated by the prediction one year ago from this same podium that 1960 would be, and I quote, ‘the most prosperous year in our history,’" Kennedy told his audience. In January 1960, the national unemployment rate was 5.2 percent. By the spring of 1961, it was 7.1 percent.
Similarly, in January 2008, the national unemployment rate was 4.8 percent, and by January 2009 it had jumped to 7.6 percent.
Last year President Bush declared: “In the long run, Americans can be confident about our economic growth. But in the short run, we can all see that that growth is slowing.”
In response to that “slowdown,” Bush was proposing his own stimulus package, which involved $600 rebate checks to individual taxpayers and $1,200 per household, and he threatened Congress not to load it up with pork. “That would delay it or derail it, and neither option is acceptable,” Bush said. “This is a good agreement that will keep our economy growing and our people working, and this Congress must pass it as soon as possible.”
Congress did pass it, with 81 votes in the Senate and 380 in the House. (Obama, the bipartisan president, could only dream of such numbers.) But after Bush’s comments, the economy did not keep growing, and people did not keep working. In fact, 3.8 million people stopped working.
Obama should avoid such dicey predictions; of particular concern is his talk about a 50 percent cut in the deficit by 2012. There is no minimizing the drag that huge federal deficits have on the economy, but in light of the kind of money we've been spending lately, the idea that half of a $1.3 trillion deficit could be erased in four years seems like an incongruous component in a conversation about harsh realities and tough choices. In its broad outlines, the Obama deficit reduction plan is based on an end to the Iraq war and higher taxes on rich people, of which there are considerably fewer than there used to be. It is time to move from broad outlines to specifics of the fix and resist the urge to tell us what we want to hear.
Former President Bill Clinton thinks Obama has been too glum [3] in his delivery and demeanor lately. Easy for him to say. At his last State of the Union in 2000, Clinton was able to declare: “We begin the new century with over 20 million new jobs; the fastest economic growth in more than 30 years; the lowest unemployment rates in 30 years...”
What does Obama have to be so damn cheerful about?
Appearing less glum is not going to get Obama out of the woods on this one. If he is seeking advice from past presidents, he should look to Kennedy, not Clinton. In his 1961 address, Kennedy told Congress plainly:
“To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past.”
Indeed. Obama just needs to give it to us straight. We can deal.
Terence Samuel is deputy editor of The Root.
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February 27, 2009
The WaPo gets the shakes at O-dacity.
James Lewis
You and I know what an unbelievable series of high-risk gambles Obama is taking with the future of this country. None of the liberals I've talked to so far have the faintest inkling of a smidgen of a notion of even a tiny whiff of an idea. They are so deep in the Obama bag that their frilly knickers are almost covered.
But David Broder, the "Dean" of liberal pundits presiding at the Washington Post itself, has finally caught on. Mr. Broder has the shakes over Obama's O-dacity. Good news! Here's one liberal who is in touch with reality, and he's scared out of his wits.
Writes Mr. Broder,
"The size of the gamble that President Obama is taking every day is simply staggering. What came through in his speech... Tuesday night was a dramatic reminder of the unbelievable stakes he has placed on the table in his first month in office, putting at risk the future well-being of the country and the Democratic Party's control of Washington." (italics added)
I've come to believe that the Obama crowd is naive to the point of stupidity. They are very intelligent, mind you. They have more academic degrees than the faculty of Harvard. But intelligent people are often deeply stuck in their fix-the-world fantasies, which makes them idiot savants. (There's a reason why that's a French term --- Moliere wrote a comedy about it four centuries ago.)
These people have never accomplished anything but suckering the voters --- and each other. Their policy genius, David Axelrod, is a PR agent. That helped with the campaign, but it means nothing for good government. They seem to have no concept of the economy. They want to impose a cap-and-trade system on "carbon emissions," like oil and coal. That comes down to making Monopoly money and forcing energy-using corporations to pay for it. They have no concept of productive investment compared to a wild spending spree on feel-good ideas, or on kickbacks to their buddies in Chicago. After all the "community organizer" hoo-hah they still learned nothing from the welfare fiasco that was inflicted on Black families by LBJ's War on Poverty, and which ended up hurting them more than anything Bull Connor could have done --- by way of family breakdown, helpless dependency, drugs, and gang warfare. They've just abolished Bill Clinton's (!) version of welfare reform, which was forced upon him by the Gingrich Congress, and which has ended up really helping people, not hurting them.
Conclusion: These folks are arrogant and ignorant. Intelligent, yes, articulate, yes, and utterly persuasive to millions of suckers, yes.
But reality has a harsh way with fools.
David Broder is now spotting the looming steam locomotive chugging his way, and he is seeing a grave danger to "the Democratic Party's control of Washington."
Too bad for the Democratic Party.
But what worries me very much is that Obama is "putting at risk the future well-being of the country," as Broder writes. That means you and me and all the things we care about. And Obama is much too arrogant to change his mind.
Watch for a bad train wreck down the road.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/02/the_wapo_gets_the_shakes_at_od.html at February 27, 2009 - 02:27:40 PM EST
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Knock me down with a feather twice-- once for Broder and once for Kinsley!
Liberal columnist Michael Kinsley, writing in the Washington Post, on the hidden dangers of deficit spending:
[E]ven if the stimulus is a magnificent success, the money still has to be paid back. The plan of record apparently is that we keep borrowing, spending and stimulating, faster and faster, until suddenly, on some signal from heaven or Timothy Geithner, we all stop spending and start saving in recordbreaking amounts. Oh sure, that will work.
There is another way. If it's not the actual, secret plan, it will be an overwhelming temptation: Don't pay the money back. So far, even as one piggy bank after another astounds us with its emptiness, there have been only the faintest whispers about the possibility of an actual default by the U.S. government. Somewhat louder whispers can be heard, though, about the gradual default known as inflation. Just three or four years of currency erosion at, say, 10 percent a year would slice the real value of our debt -- public and private, U.S. bonds and jumbo mortgages -- in half.
Anyone who regards the prospect of double-digit inflation with insouciance is either too young to have lived through it the last time (the late 1970s) or too old to remember. Among other problems, inflation works only as a surprise or betrayal. It can never be part of any public, official plan. Plan for 10 percent inflation, and you'll get 20. Plan for 20 and you'll need a wheelbarrow to pay for your morning Starbucks. But if that's not the plan, what is?
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The Broder piece IS a "knock me down with a feather" piece. The libs can deconstruct Republican criticism as obstructionist and party hack stuff but not Broder.
He stated the problem very well indeed.
BO, as my sister has pointed out, has ensured we will unlike the "greatest generation" of our parents and grandparents be know as the worst, "most selfish" generation.
I have come to the conclusion that BO has to fail and fail now. It will result in great pain but it is better if we get him and Pelosi and the other lunes out now rather again kick the can down the road.
But I have no faith in Republicans either. They blew it when they had the chance. To hear Tom Delay ciriticising the spending spree on cable the other day was weird being his own history of corruption and wildly spending bedfellows. We need a real Abe Lincoln.
When we start hearing Blacks criticising BO (other than the few tokens like, Michael Steele) than we know that Americans have awakened to the craziness of this spending spree. But I am not holding my breath.
As of now most Blacks are convinced that the time for reparations has come and they are mostly euphoric with the concept of evening the score (IMHO). I am saddened that so many of them still feel this way.
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A scathing piece of political humor. THIS is the way forward for we of the American Creed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4hrnbhIHDY&eurl
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I heard on a cable show yesterday Hitler and the occult how is was the "opportunity" of the Great Depression that directly led to the proliferation of Nazi after 1929. The Nazi party was not a serious contender for power until after the collapse of the stock market. While the Democrats are not Nazis there is this similarity with using an economic crash as a means to shove through soical change along with demogagory, propaganda, and centralization of power to the government.
Here is one piece to that effect though others can be found:
***Nazis on the Rise
The Great Depression
When the New York stock market crashed in October of 1929, the Great Depression struck Germany like a thunder bolt splitting a tree. Unemployment rate, poverty, hunger, and chaos increased rapidly. On the other hand, the Nazi party was delighted to see this occur. Bad times for Germany meant good times for the Nazis. Before the depression, the Nazi party was never much of a factor in the politics of Germany without much success in winning the government over the new Weimar Republic. However, when the depression hit, it gave the party a wonderful chance to shine and it ultimately paved a passage for the Nazis to ride all the way to the top.
By 1930, millions and millions of unemployed and poverty strickened citizens wanted changes to be made by the new Republic to help with the bad conditions. The Republic, however, was unable to make any effective changes to assist the people. At the same time, both sides of the extremist, with the communists on one end and the Nazis on the other end, promised extreme and drastic changes that might resolve the bad situations. In the 1930 election, both extreme parties won big over the Republic. However, the Nazis were extremely overjoyed as they beat the communist party by more than two million votes. This would begin a stretch of Nazi rule. Three years later, Hitler's dream finally came true. He was finally appointed as the chancellor or the head of the government. This would begin a reign of terror.
Propaganda
The propaganda of the Nazi party during and after the Great Depression was very successful. It appealed to many German citizens especially to their needs during those poor conditions. The propaganda ususally stressed improvements on unemployment, social security, war reparations to foreign countries and tariffs. However, the Nazi propagandist also influenced the general public on the Nazi concept of antisemitism against the so called "inferior race." The propaganda throughout the Nazi regime were mainly antisemitic against the Jews. However, the success of the propaganda and the great influence of the Nazis all led to the horrifying event of the Holocaust.
Nazi Theories
After Hitler's rise to the seat of the chancellor, the Nazi party fully adopted the racial theory of a race being more superior than another. It was this theoretical basis that led to the destruction of so many millions of Jews, Gypsies, handicapped, Soviet P.O.Ws, homosexuals, and other so called "inferior race." The idea of the Aryan race being the purist was fully planted into the minds of many Nazis including Hitler. Another theory Hitler believed in is total dictatorship. In his book Mein Kampf Hitler described the concept of unconditional authority belonging to the leader which in turn creates a totalirarian government and a dictatorship. Besides that, he also mentioned the Darwinistic concept of survival of the fittest with life always being a struggle. Again, his Darwinistic concepts allowed him and the Nazi to rise to the top creating a dominant and dictatorial government and also to terminate the so called "weaker race" and that was one of the reason that enabled the Nazis to be a huge success.
Hitler in Control
After Hitler came to power, situations began to change in the country of Germany. For beginners, Hitler called for a free election to be held in March. It was the last free election until 1949. Nazis, trying to ensure on the winning side, did everything to gather voters. Besides that, they also tried to eliminate their opponents. Just one week before the election, the government building of Reichstag caught fire. The Nazis, who most likely set the fire, blamed and accused the Communists for the fire. This way, the Communist were prevented from being at the election and the seats in the government. Hitler then slowly took control of the government after the election , but was able to do it without gaining power illegally. He, somehow was able to pass the Enabling Act through the cabinet which gave hime dictatorial power. The provisions of the legislature was unable to stop Hitler to become a dictator. Thus the legislature gave Hitler the absolute power to the country.****
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Another sensible analysis of BO's diatribe. When you think in these terms one can only come to the conclusion the BO is nuts and a total BS artist. Endless contradictions:
***Jan. 26, 2009
Obama shoots for Mars
By Larry Elder
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | President Barack Obama, on Tuesday night, gave his first presidential address before Congress. He looked good, sounded great, and delivered his address with poise and confidence. He entered the Capitol and made his way through the applauding throng like a modern-day Moses slowly parting the Red Sea.
The moment was certainly historic, and all Americans — or at least nearly all Americans — took pride in living in a country that went from a Constitution that defined a black as three-fifths of a person to one where a black person could be elected President of the United States. Some journey!
But when the applause died down, the President took out a scattergun and attempted to hit everything in sight. He confidently asserted his and our intention to overcome the current economic downturn and march toward an even brighter future.
How? Government/taxpayers will spend our way to the summit.
Every weekday NewsAndOpinion.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here.
He/Congress/we will "invest" in health care and education; "save or create" 3.5 million jobs; "cure cancer within our lifetime"; provide assistance to the states; "save our planet from the ravages of climate change"; save banks and other financial institutions while holding "accountable those responsible" for their problems; increase the size of the military; end torture (presumably he meant of our enemies); and cut the size of the deficit.
What?! Nothing about crafting a college football playoff?
After the President's speech, the political commentators fell over themselves in complimenting the President. Many said things like "he aimed high," "he set out an ambitious agenda," and "he outlined a vigorous list of expected accomplishments."
Economist Thomas Sowell uses a three-pronged test to examine government's "new ideas." 1) How much will it cost? 2) Who pays? 3) Will it work? Few of the post-speech analysts seemed to care.
One waited in vain for the political experts to point out that the President's spending spree must come from somewhere — taxes or borrowing or printing.
And, as an aside, how would the press have reacted had former President George W. Bush claimed — as did Obama — that America "invented the automobile"?
Suppose Bush steered a shopping cart down the aisle, packed it with everything in sight that he could grab, pushed it to the cashier, and then said, "You mean I gotta pay?"
The President, on Tuesday night, promised to both lower taxes and raise taxes. He promised to both reduce spending and increase it. He promised to expand education while simultaneously claiming that education begins in the home. He promised to bail out homeowners — "responsible" ones — while insisting that Americans take responsibility for living beyond our means and making bad choices.
He promised to provide financial assistance to states while never mentioning the states' fiscal irresponsibility. He said, "There are 57 police officers who are still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight because this plan prevented the layoffs their department was about to make," yet said nothing about whether that state budgeted or spent responsibly.
He unilaterally abolished the notion that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Under his administration, the free lunch not only exists, but government bureaucrats provide takeout or delivery.
The President, last night, mentioned no total price tag for all this largesse. He did say, however, that he intends to raise taxes on the 2 percent of Americans making more than $250,000. Somehow he expects to burden "the rich" still more and not affect their behavior. Already, the top 1 percent pays nearly 40 percent of all federal income taxes.
The President, as he said during the campaign, promised to lower taxes on 95 percent of Americans. Of course, nearly 30 percent of working Americans pay zero in federal income taxes. But they, too, will get checks. And, Obama said to applause, the "checks are on the way."
The President sketched out a federal government grab larger than any in the history of our nation. His administration intends to bail out and oversee everything from banks to car manufacturers to lemonade stands.
Be not afraid about waste, mismanagement or politically directed spending. To ensure that our money is spent properly, the Obama administration intends to post the allocations on the Internet, ensuring wise and appropriate fund distribution.
Do those who voted against the President "want him to fail"? No, those who opposed the President want America to succeed. The formula for that success has a long and impressive track record: lower taxes, rein in government spending, and promote free trade. Let's put it another way: Remove government's boot from the neck of the American worker, businessperson and entrepreneur.
Set them free. Watch what happens.****
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I'm wasn't the biggest fan of W, but draw your own conclusions...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIHz5tevLAw[/youtube]
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I'd love to spread that around but I know I am going to be asked when Bush was speaking. Do you have any idea Chad?
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I'd love to spread that around but I know I am going to be asked when Bush was speaking. Do you have any idea Chad?
That would be Labor Day, 2007.
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Is there a source or a URL with the datum? Sorry to be so relentless, but I don't want to get hung out to dry on this one , , ,
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Is there a source or a URL with the datum? Sorry to be so relentless, but I don't want to get hung out to dry on this one , , ,
No problem. http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/09/20070903-1.html check out what W is wearing and there is a transcript.
Be warned that "some" will try to tell you that Barry's speech was formal, so that is the reason the Marines seem so stiff. :roll:
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"...[Obama's] speech was formal, so that is the reason the Marines seem so stiff."
Yes, but the leaders and handlers in the front applaud and try to get some excitement going while the room of Marines remain stiff and silent.
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March 05, 2009
White House bars video of Biden speech
Rick Moran
So what's Joe Biden been up to lately?
Obama put the Human Gaffe Machine in charge of spending $800 billion in stimulus money which I guess will mean that he will be hand stamping the official Obama seal of the stimulus on all the projects. Can't imagine him being smart enough to do much else.
Now the White House has dispatched Biden to speak to labor leaders down in Florida where the union bosses will be rubbing elbows with the hoity toity crowd at the Fontainbleau Hotel (we hope they know which fork to use during the salad course - perhaps they'll just use their switchblades).
One thing about that Biden speech; the White House has nixed any video coverage of the event:
When Vice President Joe Biden speaks to the annual meeting of AFL-CIO officials at the plush Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach Thursday morning, television cameras will not be allowed to cover his speech - on orders from the White House, Fox News reported.
The Fontainebleau, which recently had a billion-dollar makeover, describes itself as "a spectacular blend of Miami's glamorous golden era and stylish modern luxury." It has 1,504 rooms and suites, 22 oceanfront acres, 11 restaurants and nightclubs including three signature name chef restaurants, a 40,000-square-foot spa, and a "sophisticated poolscape" with private cabanas.
The AFL-CIO Executive Committee told Fox News it is holding its meeting at the Fontainebleau because the hotel agreed to employ union workers as part of its renovation project.
A number of corporations are under fire for either holding or attempting to hold business meetings at resort hotels in these tough economic times.
After speaking to union members Thursday morning, Biden will tour Miami's Intermodal Center, a transportation project funded by the Democrats' economic stimulus bill.
So while their members are living hand to mouth and struggling to get by, the labor bosses will be living it up in Florida.
And the White House - fearing either a backlash against their buds in the labor leadership or are truly frightened of what gaffe Biden might let loose with - has said no to filming the Veep's address. My guess is, it's probably a little of both.
Attention my fellow brothers and sisters in labor unions: Don't you feel just a little like you've been had by these phonies? Wake up and take back your unions from these frauds.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/03/white_house_bars_video_of_bide.html at March 05, 2009 - 11:41:09 AM EST
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Chad:
Beautiful. One last request. What is the URL of the clip itself?
Thank you.
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Marc, we're gonna have to teach you how to get your geek on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIHz5tevLAw&eurl=http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1718.200
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19663.html
Any buyer's remorse yet, Obots?
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Is He Doing It On Purpose?
There's a school of thought that the Obama administration is deliberately damaging the economy and gutting the stock market, on the theory that doing so will make more people dependent on the government and pave the way for a far-left regime. Doug Ross makes the argument:
Consider that, in the teeth of a devastating recession, Obama has:
• Raised taxes on small businesses, the engines of entrepreneurship and job growth
• Raised the capital gains tax
• Lied about "tax cuts for 95% of Americans", offering instead $13 a week, achieved not through tax cuts, but by changing the federal withholding tables!
• Destroyed charitable giving by axing the tax breaks for 26% of all giving (or $81 billion in 2006)
• Proposed a carbon cap-and-trading scheme designed to punish oil companies and further tax consumers
Why would Obama inflict these destructive policies while the economy is collapsing? Simple. Each step strengthens the role of government in people's lives.
• Squelching the stock market kills its attractiveness as a parking lot for private capital. Combined with an increase in the capital gains tax, investors will swarm to bonds -- tax-free vehicles like municipal bonds, which benefit the growth of state and local government. And unions, of course.
• Carbon cap-and-tax will raise taxes on all Americans as the cost of goods and services will increase to address a non-existent threat.
• True tax cuts would grow the economy, which is why, of course, Obama shuns them. The last major recession was Jimmy Carter's malaise. It consisted of of double-digit inflation and unemployment. It was finally licked by across-the-board tax cuts for everyone (even the despised rich), which touched off a twenty-plus year run of prosperity.
• Charities reduce the role of government assistance for those in need. That, in Obama's world, can not be tolerated. That is why charities must be choked off and allowed to die. Especially faith-based institutions.
The only plausible explanation is that Obama's destruction of the economy is intentional.
It is based on a failed ideology that has never -- and can never -- succeed.
It is, I admit, an intriguing theory, but I don't buy it. Obama can't possibly want to be a one-term failure. That's what happened to Jimmy Carter, and Obama must know that it will happen to him, too, if his policies are perceived as dragging down the economy.
More likely the explanation is that Obama is an economic illiterate, and subscribes to the idea--which I think is rather common among Democrats--that what the government does has little impact on the economy. Obama likely believes that the economy will recover on its own, and in the meantime--in Rahm Emanuel's immortal words--he shouldn't let the crisis go to waste. So he enacts every left-wing measure that he wanted to do anyway, expecting that when the economy eventually recovers he can take credit for it, even though his policies, if anything, retarded and weakened the recovery.
That's a cynical strategy, although not quite as cynical as destroying the economy on purpose; the difference is that it may well work. - John Hinderacker Powerlineblog.com
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hSnEMV58F8&feature=channel_page
Obama's brain.
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- Pajamas Media - http://pajamasmedia.com -
Laughing at the Contradictions of Socialism in America
Posted By Oleg Atbashian On March 5, 2009 @ 12:35 am In . Column2 01, . Positioning, Culture, History, Humor & Fun, Politics, US News | 86 Comments
There was a time in recent American history when certain Soviet jokes didn’t work in translation — not so much because of the language differences, but because of the lack of common sociopolitical context. But that is changing. As President Obama is preparing us for a great leap towards collectivism, I find myself recollecting forgotten political jokes I shared with comrades while living in the old country under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Gorbachev. (I was too young to remember the Khrushchev times, but I still remember the Khrushchev jokes.) I also noticed that the further America “advances” back to the Soviet model, the more translatable the old Soviet jokes become. Not all Soviet advancements have metastasized here yet, but we have four more glorious years to make it happen.
One of my favorite political jokes is this:
The six dialectical contradictions of socialism in the USSR:
There is full employment — yet no one is working.
No one is working — yet the factory quotas are fulfilled.
The factory quotas are fulfilled — yet the stores have nothing to sell.
The stores have nothing to sell — yet people got all the stuff at home.
People got all the stuff at home — yet everyone is complaining.
Everyone is complaining — yet the voting is always unanimous.
It reads like a poem — only instead of the rhythm of syllables and rhyming sounds, it’s the rhythm of logic and rhyming meanings. If I could replicate it, I might start a whole new genre of “contradictory six-liners.” It would be extremely difficult to keep it real and funny at the same time, but I’ll try anyway.
Dialectical contradictions are one of the pillars in Marxist philosophy, which states that contradictions eventually lead to a unity of opposites as the result of a struggle. This gave a convenient “scientific” excuse for the existence of contradictions in a socialist society, where opposites were nice and agreeable — unlike the wild and crazy opposites of capitalism that could never be reconciled. Hence the joke.
Then I moved to America, where wild and crazy opposites of capitalism were supposedly at their worst. Until recently, however, the only contradictions that struck me as irreconcilable were these:
Economic justice:
America is capitalist and greedy — yet half of the population is subsidized.
Half of the population is subsidized — yet they think they are victims.
They think they are victims — yet their representatives run the government.
Their representatives run the government — yet the poor keep getting poorer.
The poor keep getting poorer — yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
They have things that people in other countries only dream about — yet they want America to be more like those other countries.
Hollywood cliches:
Without capitalism there’d be no Hollywood — yet filmmakers hate capitalism.
Filmmakers hate capitalism — yet they sue for unauthorized copying of their movies.
They sue for unauthorized copying — yet on screen they teach us to share.
On screen they teach us to share — yet they keep their millions to themselves.
They keep their millions to themselves — yet they revel in stories of American misery and depravity.
They revel in stories of American misery and depravity — yet they blame the resulting anti-American sentiment on conservatism.
They blame the anti-American sentiment on conservatism — yet conservatism ensures the continuation of a system that makes Hollywood possible.
I never thought I would see socialist contradictions in America, let alone write about them. But somehow all attempts to organize life according to “progressive” principles always result in such contradictions. And in the areas where “progressives” have assumed positions of leadership — education, news media, or the entertainment industry — contradictions become “historically inevitable.”
If one were accidentally to open his eyes and compare the “progressive” narrative with facts on the ground, one might start asking questions. Why, for instance, if the war on terror breeds more terrorists, haven’t there been attacks on the U.S. soil since 2001? Why, if George W. Bush had removed our freedom of speech, was nobody ever arrested for saying anything? And if Obama has returned us our freedoms, why was a man harassed by police in Oklahoma for having an anti-Obama sign in his car? Why would anyone who supports free speech want to silence talk radio? And why is silencing the opposition called the “Fairness Doctrine”?
After the number of “caring,” bleeding-heart politicians in Washington reached a critical mass, it was only a matter of time before the government started ordering banks to help the poor by giving them risky home loans through community organizers. Which resulted in a bigger demand, which resulted in rising prices, which resulted in slimmer chances of repaying the loans, which resulted in more pressure on the banks, which resulted in repackaging of bad loans, which resulted in a collapse of the banks, which resulted in a recession, which resulted in many borrowers losing their jobs, which resulted in no further mortgage payments, which resulted in a financial disaster, which resulted in a worldwide crisis, with billions of poor people overseas — who had never seen a community organizer, nor applied for a bad loan — becoming even poorer than they had been before the “progressives” in the U.S. government decided to help the poor.
As if that were not enough, the same bleeding hearts are now trying to fix this by nationalizing the banks so that they can keep issuing risky loans through community organizers. In other words, to prevent the toast from landing buttered side down, they’re planning to butter the toast on both sides and hope that it will hover in mid-air. Which also seems like a sensible alternative energy initiative.
If that doesn’t fix the problem, there’s always the last resort of a liberal: blame capitalism. It’s always a win-win. Today government regulators may be blaming capitalism for the crisis caused by their dilettantish tampering with the economy, but who do you think they will credit after market forces resuscitate the economy?
Years ago, living in America made me feel as though I had traveled in a time machine from the past. But after the recent “revolutionary” changes have turned reality on its head — which is what “revolution” literally means — I’m getting an uneasy feeling I had come from your future.
[1]
As your comrade from the future, I also feel a social obligation to help my less advanced comrades in the American community, and prepare them for the transition to the glorious world of underground literature, half-whispered jokes, and the useful habit of looking over your shoulder. Don’t become a [2] nation of cowards — but watch who might be listening.
Let’s start with these few.
People’s power:
Liberals believe they’re advancing people’s power — yet they don’t believe people can do anything right without their guidance.
People can’t do anything right — yet the government bureaucracy can do everything.
The government bureaucracy can do everything — yet liberals don’t like it when the government takes control of their lives.
Liberals don’t like it when the government takes control of their lives — yet they vote for programs that increase people’s dependency on the government.
They vote for programs that increase people’s dependency on the government — yet they believe they’re advancing people’s power.
Bush and the media:
The media said Bush was dumb — yet he won over two intelligent Democrats.
He won over two intelligent Democrats — yet the media said his ratings were hopeless.
The media said his ratings were hopeless — yet the 2004 electoral map was red.
The 2004 electoral map was red — yet the media said his policies failed.
The media said his policies failed — yet the economy grew and the war was won.
The economy grew and the war was won — yet the media said we needed “change.”
Public education:
Liberals have been in charge of education for 50 years — yet education is out of control.
Education is out of control — yet liberal teaching methods prevail.
Liberal teaching methods prevail — yet public schools are failing.
Public schools are failing — yet their funding keeps growing.
Their funding keeps growing — yet public schools are always underfunded.
Public schools are always underfunded — yet private schools yield [3] better results for less.
Private schools yield better results for less — yet public education is the only way out of the crisis.
Foreign radicals*:
Foreign radicals hate America — yet they’re all wearing American blue jeans.
They’re all wearing American blue jeans — yet they disdain American culture.
They disdain American culture — yet they play American music, movies, and video games.
They play American music, movies, and video games — yet they call Americans uncivilized.
They call Americans uncivilized — yet they expect Americans to defend their civilization.
They expect Americans to defend their civilization — yet they think American capitalism is outdated.
They think American capitalism is outdated — yet most of their countries require American handouts.
(* Some Democrat politicians have [4] similar opinions about their redneck constituents — yet they won’t shut up about how proud they are to have their mandate.)
Liberals and taxes:
Liberals want to help the poor — yet they won’t give money to charities.
They won’t give money to charities — yet they’d like the government to become a gigantic charity.
They’d like the government to become a gigantic charity — yet the money has to be taken from people by force.
The money has to be taken from people by force — yet they call it welfare.
They call it welfare — yet higher taxes make everyone poorer.
Higher taxes make everyone poorer — yet liberals find ways not to pay taxes.
Liberals find ways not to pay taxes — yet they get to be chosen to run the government.
Liberals and the CIA:
The CIA is a reactionary institution — yet its agents always leak information that helps liberals politically.
CIA agents always leak information that helps liberals politically — yet liberals say the CIA is clueless.
Liberals say the CIA is clueless — yet in their movies the CIA is running the world.
In their movies the CIA is running the world — yet they tell us that better intelligence could have prevented the war.
Better intelligence could have prevented the war — yet “enhanced interrogations” of captured terrorists must not be allowed.
Love and marriage:
Sex differences are the result of social conditioning — yet homosexuality is biological.
Homosexuality is biological — yet everybody is encouraged to experiment with it.
Everybody is encouraged to experiment with it — yet venereal diseases are treated at the taxpayers’ expense.
Venereal diseases are treated at the taxpayers’ expense — yet taxpayers have no right to impose standards since there are no moral absolutes.
There are no moral absolutes — yet gay marriage is an absolute must.
Gay marriage is an absolute must — yet family is an antiquated tool of bourgeois oppression.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/laughing-at-the-contradictions-of-socialism-in-america/
URLs in this post:
[1] Image: http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2009/03/time_machine_redsquare.jpg
[2] nation of cowards: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB123514880910734301.html
[3] better results for less: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3231
[4] similar opinions about their redneck constituents: http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/10/now-murtha-calls-voters-in-his-district.html
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Krauthammer pretty much what I feel - that BO is a massive liar and fraud. Yet Fox came out with a poll that shows he is still popular with a 64% approval and 55% are quite happy with the "soak the rich" theme and that it is "evening the playing field".
While truly wealthy people do have an extraordary advantage over the non wealthy and the rich are getting richer faster than any other group by idea of trying to even this out was not out and out confiscation of wealth to redistribute to your fans.
Hugely expanding government so the rest of us can pay for the salaries, health care, retirement and other benefits was not my idea of moderation.
These dopes who think getting a check ot two from BO is the answer to their problems are going to bring the whole house of cards down. It is remarkable how stupid some are. Did anyone see Michael Steele on Hughey the other night? I'm saddened to say that for most blacks apparantly it is all about pay back time - no more no less. Republicans are not going to attract many Balcks no matter what they do because it is all about the checks going into their pockets. :-(
***March 06, 2009
Deception at Core of Obama Plans
By Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the "$2 trillion dollars in savings" that "we have already identified," $1.6 trillion of which President Obama's budget director later admits is the "savings" of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 -- 11 years after George Bush ended it, and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely.
Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama's tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto the end. But that's a matter of scale, not principle.
All presidents do that. But few undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama's radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed.
The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this:
"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.
The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.
Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.
At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the entire banking system. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful homebuyers.
The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe in the first place.
And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.
What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.
Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Copyright 2009, Washington Post Writers Group****
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I'm saddened to say that for most blacks apparantly it is all about pay back time - no more no less. Republicans are not going to attract many Balcks no matter what they do because it is all about the checks going into their pockets.
Wow. Just, wow. About as closed minded and racist a comment that I've ever read on this forum.
Maybe African Americans don't want to be involved with a party who's members view them as monetary leeches who are out for "payback"?
Jesus...
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Care to explain how that statement is racist?
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As we continue with this CONVERSATION, lets all take at least three deep breaths and remember the code here.
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Miguel,
Maybe I missed it, but did you condemn Obama's "Typical white person" comment as racist? Or do you subscribe to the "only white people can be racist" paradigm?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/03/020088.php
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Actually it is only an observation from that program. It was about a black, Michael Steele trying to reach out to other Blacks.
The response from Hughey was to the effect that he has no problem with the rich getting richer even if faster than the rest, but that the other classes are staying put. I actually agree with him on that. The rest of the population seems to be unable to "get ahead" though I am not at all sure of the reasons. However, what struck me is he feels quite comfortable with BOs confiscation of wealth to give to them. More or less what have Republicans done for "us"?
Of course not all blacks feel this way but many do. It is obvious. It is obvious from many who call these shows. It is obvious from their hatred of Rebublicans. That said many whites and Latinos certainly feel the same way.
"Maybe African Americans don't want to be involved with a party who's members view them as monetary leeches who are out for "payback"?"
The Rebublicans are not racist. It is about the money. The racial thing is either intentional/unintentional delusion.
For me it is about people, of all stripes who want the government to take care of all their needs. The problem is that there is an ever decreasing proportion of the population that can support these dole outs. Meanwhile the whole country is going broke and increasingly into deeper debt.
FWIW though I am a doctor I would not be in BOs target range, or fit his description of being "rich" so I am not just thinking of my own pocket here.
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/283816.php
March 05, 2009
Beware Obama's Bearing Gifts (Part 2)
I fear this may become a continuing series. Which would suck, because I really don't like thinking about the Obamas.
However, the President has now given British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a gift to commemorate his visit to America. You will recall that lat night I wrote about the craptacular response of Michelle "The Klingon with Klass" Obama to the gifts her children received from the Browns.
But before I reveal the President's gift, let's review what he received from PM Brown so that a little perspective can be had:
Mr Brown's gifts included an ornamental desk pen holder made from the oak timbers of Victorian anti-slaver HMS Gannet, once named HMS President.
Mr Obama was so delighted he has already put it in pride of place in the Oval Office on the Resolute desk which was carved from timbers of Gannet's sister ship, HMS Resolute.
Another treasure given to the U.S. President was the framed commission for HMS Resolute, a vessel that came to symbolise Anglo-US peace when it was saved from ice packs by Americans and given to Queen Victoria.
Finally, Mr Brown gave a first edition set of the seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.
Those are classy gifts, and fully uphold the spirit of the US/UK special relationship. They are tasteful and, in the particular case of the pen made from the anti-slaver ship HMS Gannet, imbued with additional symbolic meaning that elevates them to a status in which one would not be surprised to find it on prominent display in the National Archives or in the Obama Presidential Library (opening, January 2013 with any luck).
So how did "Smart Diplomat in Chief" reciprocate? Did he, perhaps, have a pen forged out of the remnants of a M4-Sherman to commemorate the Patton-Montgomery deliverance of North Africa from Nazi control?
No, no, no. You see, that would take thought, and it isn't something you can just pick up on the spur of the moment at the White House Gift Shop. So what did our Boy President Barry give the Brits? What vestige of Americana will Gordon Brown receive on behalf of the British people to commemorate Brown's historic meeting with the American President?
Gordon Brown has been given a collection of 25 classic American films on DVD as his official gift from Barack Obama.
I think I'd ask for the pen back. But that's just me. The Brits, stiff upper lip and all, are much more guarded in their response.
No 10 had tried to keep the present a secret, refusing to answer reporters who asked what President Obama had given to mark the reaffirmation of the special relationship.
However, the Evening Standard discovered the truth through White House insiders.
One reason for the secrecy might be that the gift seems markedly less generous and thoughtful than the presents taken to Washington by the Prime Minister.
You don't say.
Just out of curiosity, I decided to take a guess at some of the movies that might be included in the DVD set, so I could figure out just how benevolent the Obama's were.
Let's see. How about the Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind and Casablanca?
You can buy a Wizard of Oz DVD for $2-$8 dollars online.
You can snag a copy of Gone With the Wind for $3.99 online.
And Casablanca (which you know is in there because it translates to "White House" and Obama can get in a plug for himself) will set you back $3.99 as well.
On the other hand, maybe it's just 25 Blaxpoitation films starring Jim Brown and Pam Grier. Who the hell knows?
(1974's "Foxy Brown" sells for $10.98 by the way. It might actually be less embarrassing if the Obamas did give the British PM 25 Blaxploitation films!)
In any event, I suppose that, as opposed to some lousy pen carved from the timbers of an anti-slaver ship, DVD's are fun for the whole family! Brown could always give them to the BBC to supplement their late night lineup perhaps. Think outside the box, people!
I'm gonna miss England when the Muslims take it over. My only solace is that I bet the British are saying the same thing about the United States.
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Well the polling data that 3 out of four Democrats agree with bigger governement and the taxation of the successful for dole outs to those who are for whatever the reason not, while 3 of four Republicans do not.
And there you have it in a nutshell.
Ant then when we have what , 40% who pay no Federal income tax, every expanding government employees whose livlihoods and pensions, and retirements are dependent on maintaining this, and a mindset of immigrants who are not what it was even 50 years ago, then we have a divided and bitter electorate.
The fact that 95% of blacks as well as large proportions of latinos, (as well as my fellow Jews - though the latter for different reasons - guilt perhaps) vote Democratic is pretty strong evidence that there are many in this country who see that evening the playing field is being on the dole.
Sorry but this if fact - the polls, election demographics are clearly proof of this.
One only has to watch the talk shows for a week to see that most of the spokespeople for these groups are saying exactly that though they often try deflect it, or camouflage it.
This does not make me a racist. Indeed the Republicans more than anything would love to have more "diversity" in their party.
Why cannot the Republicans not attract more minorities? Because they don't believe in big government dole outs.
That said the Republicans do not have an attractive alternative message or messenger as yet.
Just haveing a big fat white boistrous multimillionaire guy screaming about "freedom", "less government", "personal responsibility",
trickle down theory, etc. while the rich keep getting richer and the rest of us keep going no where, is not going to compete with the opposing political gamesmenship.
And having pundits screaming all we need are tax cuts and let the cards fall where they may especially while many who are losing jobs are not apying taxes to begin with .... well how many are going to vote for that.
I was gladdened to hear Newt rumors he may run in 2012. He is the only one so far with ideas, and a willingness and ability to
articulate past the dead end talk of limbaugh, hannity, coulter, and that group.
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Good points, though may I suggest the post might better belong in the "Future of the Rep party etc" thread?
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Its a good thing Obama isnt going to raise taxes........."not one cent".............. Talk about the biggest liar and most corrupt cabinet ever, and still the people are drinking it up.
New air fees part of President Obama's 2010 budget proposal
By: Michael Fabey
March 06, 2009
President Obama’s first budget proposal boosts funding to offset security costs throughout the transportation system and includes more money to improve the national airspace.
But the proposal also has raised an outcry because the administration plans to fund later security measures by raising airline passenger fees and starting new, direct user fees to replace current aviation taxes.
The administration earned some nods from travel pundits by proposing a five-year, $5 billion grant program for high-speed rail development and requesting about $800 million to help modernize the country’s air traffic control system.
The plan also includes an unknown amount of NASA money for research to "increase airspace capacity and mobility, enhance aviation safety and improve aircraft performance while reducing noise, emissions and fuel consumption," budget documents say.
The budget proposal, for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, slates an additional $55 million for the Transportation Department’s small-community air service programs to "fulfill current program requirements."
Finally, the spending plan identifies $64 million "to modernize the infrastructure used to vet travelers and workers. These funds will strengthen screening in order to reduce the risk of potential terrorism or other unlawful activities that threaten the nation’s transportation system."
Two changes in tax strategy that would directly affect airline passengers are an increase in the security fee assessed for passengers, now about $5 per roundtrip, and the repeal of some existing airline ticket taxes with "direct user charges," which would be imposed directly on airlines and other aircraft operators.
Critics pan user tax
House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) questioned the need to shift from excise taxes to user fees.
The spending plan provides scant additional details on what kind of increases or overall amounts the administration has in mind for either fee proposal. But the budget does note that the current security fee "only captures 36% of the cost of aviation security."
By increasing the security fee, the administration says it can raise enough money to "cover a majority of the estimated costs of passenger and baggage screening."
Kate Hanni, executive director of FlyersRights.org, said, "It’s going to be a tough pill to swallow for airline passengers to have to pay nearly three times more money to be treated as callously as they are by TSA."
The Air Transport Association said it would oppose any security fee increase, as it has done in previous administrations. The ATA said it is the government’s responsibility to fund and operate security procedures.
The Association of Corporate Travel Executives also opposed the security-fee increase.
"The Obama administration is attempting to fund the lion’s share of airport security through a user tax, primarily paid by corporations commissioning business travel or leisure travelers spending limited personal funds for a vacation," said ACTE Executive Director Susan Gurley.
"When terrorists or other criminals target an airliner or an airport, they are not attacking an industry nor a user group, but the nation," said Gurley. "The nation has an obligation to protect itself and this asset. Airport security should be paid for from the general tax fund."
If the government’s looking for a new funding font for security costs, Gurley suggested using the $400 million slated to build and $200 million to furnish the new U.S. Department of Homeland Security headquarters.
It’s a bit more complicated than that, said Vaughn Cordle of AirlineForecasts.
The way the Obama budget is structured — in concert with the administration’s economic stimulus package — the funding gap between the operational needs of the different departments, such as transportation and federal money sources, will widen and deepen as the next decade starts, Cordle said.
At the same time, he said, Obama will be looking for ways to reduce the deficit.
"The airline industry could look like a cash cow with higher taxes and fees," he said. At that point, he added, "Fares will have to go up and the industry will need to shrink even more."
His advice to fill in that financial gap: Downsize the air traffic control workforce, which would be one of the benefits of the system’s modernization.
http://www.travelweekly.com/article3_ektid190648.aspx
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Can't you see that they are helping us?
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2009/02/16/
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In a similar veing to HUSS's post:
March 6, 2009 12:00 AM
Waiting Game
He’s telling the poor he’s only soaking the rich, when he’s in fact soaking everyone.
By Jonah Goldberg
‘We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Barack Obama proclaimed many times during the campaign. He and his throngs of supporters preened in the glow of their own righteousness like cats in a puddle of sunlight. They were for “shared sacrifice” and a “new era of responsibility.” They wanted to put aside the “old politics” and the “tired arguments” of the past.
Well, where are those people now?
Obama brags — albeit dishonestly — that he’s only raising taxes on rich people. Ninety-five percent of the American people will get a tax cut, the president insists.
Well, which is it? Do the times demand shared sacrifice from us all, or from just 5 percent of Americans?
If I say to ten co-workers, “We all need to chip in together to get this done,” and then say, “So, Todd, open your wallet and give five bucks to everyone else in the room,” it would sound ridiculous. But when Obama says the same thing to 300 million Americans it’s called “leadership.”
“The problem with socialism,” Margaret Thatcher once said, “is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” What Obama is proposing isn’t socialism — yet — but it runs into the same problem. You could take all of the money made by the richest one percent in this country and it wouldn’t come close to covering government’s expenses — even if those rich people for some reason kept working.
Our income-tax system is already extremely progressive, and it provides roughly half of all government revenue (add corporate income taxes, and it covers nearly three-fifths of all government revenue). The top five percent of earners pay more than 60 percent of income taxes. The top ten percent of earners pay more than 70 percent. And the top half of earners pay just shy of 100 percent of income taxes. Estate and gift taxes are even more progressive.
Now, it’s true that the low-wage earners who pay no income taxes do contribute in other ways. Sales taxes, payroll taxes, and other hidden taxes take a mighty bite out of the working poor and lower-middle class.
And, thanks to Obama, the poor will pay even more. President Obama’s proposed carbon tax will raise the price of energy. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in early 2008, candidate Obama admitted as much: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
Liberals will defend Obama’s carbon tax by saying it’s vitally necessary to combat climate change, end our dependence on foreign oil, and boost our embryonic green industries like wind and solar. Fine, fine. We can have that argument, as weak as I think it may be.
But why isn’t Obama honest about the fact that he’s asking the working poor and middle class to pay even more? He’s the guy who talks such a big game about shared sacrifice. He’s the one talking about a “new era of responsibility.” Heck, that’s the title of his proposed budget — you know, the one that will irresponsibly explode the deficit?
Instead, Obama sticks to his promise that everyone who isn’t rich will get a “tax cut.” That tax cut, by the way, amounts to $13 dollars more a week for the typical worker, according to the Associated Press. In 2010, that cut will be worth $7.70 a week. Will that cover “skyrocketing” electricity rates? Or higher gas prices? How about higher prices for things that use energy to get manufactured, i.e. everything?
I don’t know the answer myself. Maybe $1.85 a day in 2009 and $1.10 in 2010 will cover that. But I doubt it, particularly when your job is outsourced to carbon-tax-free China or India. The point is that Obama’s rhetoric about shared sacrifice is bogus on every level.
He tells people they are the upright ones for supporting his policies when what he’s actually saying is that he’s taking from the rich and giving it to them. “Shared sacrifice” really means taking other people’s money, while “greed” is not wanting to give it up and “responsibility” is when the government takes it anyway.
In reality, he’s giving with one hand and taking with the other. He’s telling the poor he’s only soaking the rich, when he’s in fact soaking everyone. The amazing thing is that his supporters, rich and poor alike, buy it. No wonder they’re the ones they’ve been waiting for.
— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.
© 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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At Least He’s Calm
Obama’s supernatural calm is undisturbed by the financial mayhem.
By Rich Lowry
Last fall, Barack Obama was deemed by all the great and good as the man to save the country from its financial crisis because of his calm. As John McCain flailed around, Obama stayed steady, and commentators ascribed to him the most extraordinary leadership qualities based merely on his equipoise.
How is that working out? Well, the stock market has lost roughly 25 percent of its value in the past two months, destroying more than $2.6 trillion of wealth. But at least President Obama is calm.
The banking crisis weighs down the economy, with zombie institutions requiring ever more infusions of federal cash (Citigroup has taken $45 billion, and AIG $180 billion and counting). But Obama’s supernatural calm is undisturbed by the financial mayhem.
His Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, has gone from being such an indispensable man that he could get away with cheating on his taxes to serving as the butt of Saturday Night Live skits in the space of six weeks. His vague and unconvincing bank-rescue plan tanked the market, while he hasn’t yet fully staffed the upper echelons of his department. The New York Times reports of him and his team, “Some worry that political and financial constraints have made them reluctant to grapple with the full magnitude of the crisis.” If Obama worries, he does it calmly.
Despite its stated purpose of providing a temporary boost to the economy, Obama’s stimulus plan spends $200 billion in 2011 and beyond — at the same time liberal supporters of the stimulus complain that it doesn’t do enough in the near term. But Obama is serenely calm about it.
As the economy staggers into what seems will be at least the worst recession since World War II, he is proposing $1 trillion in tax increases, including a new broad-based levy on industrial activity. But he’ll impose the taxes very calmly.
With the nation’s finances strained dealing just with the fallout from the financial crisis, he is proposing a radical budget that will increase spending by at least $3 trillion above current projections during the next ten years. But all his new spending is suffused with a wondrous air of calm.
His budget makes unduly rosy assumptions about the near-term performance of the economy that are already being discredited, pockets fake savings by making absurd assumptions (e.g., that troop levels in Iraq will remain at 140,000 forever), and projects a $637 billion deficit in 2016 even after years of robust economic growth. But he is as calm as he is dishonest and profligate.
Calm is not in itself a leadership quality. Containing your emotions is important (see George Washington and the Duke of Wellington for a couple of history’s greatest examples), but calm is no substitute for courage, wisdom, or imagination. Calm can just as easily be an indication of arrogance as of nervy self-control, of aloofness as of coolness under fire.
The early returns on Obama’s calm aren’t encouraging. During the campaign, his overeager supporters in the press wanted to declare him a world-historical figure based on the flimsiest of evidence. The gravest crisis he had ever faced in his career was the Jeremiah Wright controversy, which he responded to with a disingenuous “race speech” defending Wright before dumping him.
As the financial crisis hit, he never took a position on the first AIG bailout. Perhaps this was the truest indication of his instincts on the financial crisis — namely, avoidance. To sidestep the politically risky imperative of asking Congress for even more funds to address the crisis, Geithner has resorted to complex schemes that haven’t yet been thoroughly formulated.
Perhaps Obama’s muddle-through approach to the banks will suffice until the natural resilience of the economy brings a recovery. Or perhaps, as Obama temporizes, the problem will get bigger and worse, discrediting his leadership and exposing the vision of his budget as, in the words of a headline in The Economist, “wishful, and dangerous, thinking.” Either way, Obama will be calm.
— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGM3MTAyNjZjNzVjNTJlMTMzOTdmYTk5ODBlY2Q5NzE=
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Although his personal history suggests he cares not for the investor class, the successful, the business class, he really should because without them he won't have any money to put into socialistic programs he really does care about.
Taxing toilet bowel flushes, and every mile we drive with electronic eavesdropping devices on our odometers will not be enough.
Amazing huh, how surprised so many people are at BOs leftism? There was NOTHING to suggest he was anything but.
You pretend to be Abe Lincoln well I'll give you Abe Lincoln:
*"You can fool some of the people all of the time...." That should be the theme of the Republicans.*
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BO is starting to get ciritcism from a few on the left and the MSmedia but only indirectly. Here Fineman criticizes him but them lets him off the hook at the end: " Obama is no socialist". No of course not, he just allows a massive socialist agenda pass because he doesn't want to hurt feelings. :?
Camille Paglia criticizes many of his aides, but just not the Obama. It's all their clumsiness - not his. Of course. Give the telepromter king credit whenever it may be due but criticize his aides when the opposite is due.
Go after Hillary when it is BOs obvious opinions/policies on the Palestinian - Israel issue that runs the show.
IF BO starts to fall in the polls this might just change. But I suspect until, then the media and the left will still suck up to BO.
"Sponsored ByA Turning Tide?
Obama still has the approval of the people, but the establishment is beginning to mumble that the president may not have what it takes.
Howard Fineman
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Mar 10, 2009 | Updated: 8:37 a.m. ET Mar 10, 2009
Surfer that he is, President Obama should know a riptide when he's in one. The center usually is the safest, most productive place in politics, but perhaps not now, not in a once-in-a-century economic crisis.
Swimming in the middle, he's denounced as a socialist by conservatives, criticized as a polite accommodationist by government-is-the-answer liberals, and increasingly, dismissed as being in over his head by technocrats.
Luckily for Obama, the public still likes and trusts him, at least judging by the latest polls, including NEWSWEEK's. But, in ways both large and small, what's left of the American establishment is taking his measure and, with surprising swiftness, they are finding him lacking.
They have some reasons to be concerned. I trace them to a central trait of the president's character: he's not really an in-your-face guy. By recent standards—and that includes Bill Clinton as well as George Bush—Obama for the most part is seeking to govern from the left, looking to solidify and rely on his own party more than woo Republicans. And yet he is by temperament judicious, even judicial. He'd have made a fine judge. But we don't need a judge. We need a blunt-spoken coach.
Obama may be mistaking motion for progress, calling signals for a game plan. A busy, industrious overachiever, he likes to check off boxes on a long to-do list. A genial, amenable guy, he likes to appeal to every constituency, or at least not write off any. A beau ideal of Harvard Law, he can't wait to tackle extra-credit answers on the exam.
But there is only one question on this great test of American fate: can he lead us away from plunging into another Depression?
If the establishment still has power, it is a three-sided force, churning from inside the Beltway, from Manhattan-based media and from what remains of corporate America. Much of what they are saying is contradictory, but all of it is focused on the president:
The $787 billion stimulus, gargantuan as it was, was in fact too small and not aimed clearly enough at only immediate job-creation.
The $275 billion home-mortgage-refinancing plan, assembled by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is too complex and indirect.
The president gave up the moral high ground on spending not so much with the "stim" but with the $400 billion supplemental spending bill, larded as it was with 9,000 earmarks.
The administration is throwing good money after bad in at least two cases—the sinkhole that is Citigroup (there are many healthy banks) and General Motors (they deserve what they get).
The failure to call for genuine sacrifice on the part of all Americans, despite the rhetorical claim that everyone would have to "give up" something.
A willingness to give too much leeway to Congress to handle crucial details, from the stim to the vague promise to "reform" medical care without stating what costs could be cut.
A 2010 budget that tries to do far too much, with way too rosy predictions on future revenues and growth of the economy. This led those who fear we are about to go over Niagara Falls to deride Obama as a paddler who'd rather redesign the canoe.
A treasury secretary who has been ridiculed on "Saturday Night Live" and compared to Doogie Howser, Barney Fife and Macaulay Culkin in "Home Alone"—and those are the nice ones.
A seeming paralysis in the face of the banking crisis: unwilling to nationalize banks, yet unable to figure out how to handle toxic assets in another way—by, say, setting up a "bad bank" catch basin.
A seeming reluctance to seek punishing prosecutions of the malefactors of the last 15 years—and even considering a plea bargain for Bernie Madoff, the poster thief who stole from charities and Nobel laureates and all the grandparents of Boca. Yes, prosecutors are in charge, but the president is entitled—some would say required—to demand harsh justice.
The president, known for his eloquence and attention to detail, seemingly unwilling or unable to patiently, carefully explain how the world works—or more important, how it failed. Using FDR's fireside chats as a model, Obama needs to explain the banking system in laymen's terms. An ongoing seminar would be great.
Obama is no socialist, but critics argue that now is not the time for costly, upfront spending on social engineering in health care, energy or education.
Other than all that, in the eyes of the big shots, he is doing fine. The American people remain on his side, but he has to be careful that the gathering judgment of the Bigs doesn't trickle down to the rest of us.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/188565© 2009 "
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/03/11/mercury/print.html
Heads should roll
President Obama's clumsy, smirky staff is sinking him -- and resurrecting a deflated GOP! Plus: Lay off Rush! And a Brazilian diva, up close and electric
By Camille Paglia
Mar. 11, 2009 |
Free Barack!
Yes, free the president from his flacks, fixers and goons -- his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship.
Heads should be rolling at the White House for the embarrassing series of flubs that have overshadowed President Obama's first seven weeks in office and given the scattered, demoralized Republicans a huge boost toward regrouping and resurrection. (Michelle, please use those fabulous toned arms to butt some heads!)
First it was that chaotic pig rut of a stimulus package, which let House Democrats throw a thousand crazy kitchen sinks into what should have been a focused blueprint for economic recovery. Then it was the stunt of unnerving Wall Street by sending out a shrill duo of slick geeks (Timothy Geithner and Peter Orszag) as the administration's weirdly adolescent spokesmen on economics. Who could ever have confidence in that sorry pair?
And then there was the fiasco of the ham-handed White House reception for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which was evidently lacking the most basic elements of ceremony and protocol. Don't they read the "Iliad" anymore in the Ivy League? Check that out for the all-important ritual of gift giving, which has cemented alliances around the world for 5,000 years.
President Obama -- in whom I still have great hope and confidence -- has been ill-served by his advisors and staff. Yes, they have all been blindsided and overwhelmed by the crushing demands of the presidency. But I continue to believe in citizen presidents, who must learn by doing, even in a perilous age of terrorism. Though every novice administration makes blunders and bloopers, its modus operandi should not be a conspiratorial reflex cynicism.
Case in point: The orchestrated attack on radio host Rush Limbaugh, which has made the White House look like an oafish bunch of drunken frat boys. I returned from carnival in Brazil (more on that shortly) to find the Limbaugh affair in full flower. Has the administration gone mad? This entire fracas was set off by the president himself, who lowered his office by targeting a private citizen by name. Limbaugh had every right to counterattack, which he did with gusto. Why have so many Democrats abandoned the hallowed principle of free speech? Limbaugh, like our own liberal culture hero Lenny Bruce, is a professional commentator who can be as rude and crude as he wants.
Yes, I cringe when Rush plays his "Barack the Magic Negro" satire or when he gratuitously racializes the debate over Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, who is a constant subject of withering scrutiny for quite different reasons on sports shows here in Philadelphia. On the other hand, I totally agree with Rush about "feminazis," whose amoral tactics and myopic worldview I as a dissident feminist had to battle for decades. As a student of radio and a longtime listener of Rush's show, I have gotten a wealth of pleasure and insight from him over the years. To attack Rush Limbaugh is to attack his audience -- and to intensify the loyalty of his fan base.
If Rush's presence looms too large for the political landscape, it's because of the total vacuity of the Republican leadership, which seems to be in a dithering funk. Rush isn't responsible for the feebleness of Republican voices or the thinness of Republican ideas. Only ignoramuses believe that Rush speaks for the Republican Party. On the contrary, Rush as a proponent of heartland conservatism has waged open warfare with the Washington party establishment for years.
And I'm sick of people impugning Rush's wealth and lifestyle, which is no different from that of another virtuoso broadcaster who hit it big -- Oprah Winfrey. Rush Limbaugh is an embodiment of the American dream: He slowly rose from obscurity to fame on the basis of his own talent and grit. Every penny Rush has earned was the result of his rapport with a vast audience who felt shut out and silenced by the liberal monopoly of major media. As a Democrat and Obama supporter, I certainly do not agree with everything Rush says or does. I was deeply upset, for example, by the sneering tone both Rush and Sean Hannity took on Inauguration Day, when partisan politics should have been set aside for a unifying celebration of American government and history. Nevertheless, I respect Rush for his independence of thought and his always provocative news analysis. He doesn't run with the elite -- he goes his own way.
President Obama should yank the reins and get his staff's noses out of slash-and-burn petty politics. His own dignity and prestige are on the line. If he wants a second term, he needs to project a calmer perspective about the eternal reality of vociferous opposition, which is built into our democratic system. Right now, the White House is starting to look like Raphael's scathing portrait of a pampered, passive Pope Leo X and his materialistic cardinals -- one of the first examples of an artist sending a secret, sardonic message to posterity. Do those shifty, beady-eyed guys needing a shave remind you of anyone? Yes, it's bare-knuckles Chicago pugilism, transplanted to Washington. The charitably well-meaning but hopelessly extravagant Leo X, by the way, managed to mishandle the birth of the Protestant Reformation, which permanently split Christianity.
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This makes my brain hurt. Maybe next we can set up a market for stimulus derivatives, eh?
Cities selling stimulus money
By Alfred Lee, Staff Writer
Posted: 03/09/2009 08:15:39 PM PDT
A few area cities have found an alternate way to use their federal stimulus money: selling it to other cities for cash.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority has allocated a minimum of $500,000 in federal stimulus funds to each of the 88 cities in the county for transportation-related projects. Unincorporated areas will benefit, too.
Several smaller cities, some without shovel-ready projects, are making deals with others to sell or swap such funds and replenish their general funds.
"The best way to see this is as a huge windfall for us because we do have the flexibility of using the general fund money now," city manager Shauna Clark of La Habra Heights said.
The city of Bradbury, with a population of roughly 1,000, is working on a deal to sell its $500,000 share of federal funding doled out by the MTA to the city of Torrance for $315,000 in cash for its general fund, according to Torrance officials.
Torrance, which was allocated $2.9 million by the MTA, plans to use the extra funds for a variety of street improvement projects, including a major reconstruction and expansion of Crenshaw Boulevard, one of the city's main thoroughfares, said city manager LeRoy Jackson.
La Habra Heights, a city of 6,000, has sold its $500,000 in federal funds to the city of Westlake Village for $310,000 cash. Irwindale, population 1,500, also sold its $500,000 to Westlake Village, for $325,000 cash.
Westlake Village, in turn, plans to use those federal funds for a multimillion dollar project improving the overpass and on-ramp near the Lindero Canyon Road exit off the 101 Freeway, said city manager Ray Taylor.
The city of Rolling Hills, population 1,900, sold its $500,000 share to the city of Rancho Palos Verdes for $305,000 cash. The city of Avalon has reached an agreement to swap its $500,000 with L.A. County.
Sierra Madre was courted by Pasadena, Arcadia and El Monte, but rather than take general fund money, has tentatively agreed to swap its $500,000 in stimulus funds for an equal $500,000 in future Measure R funds with nearby La Canada Flintridge.
Temple City and Hidden Hills have also been contacted by hopeful buyers, but have not yet given notice of any kind of deal, according to MTA officials.
Most of the deals still must be approved by the respective City Councils involved and by the MTA.
The MTA's authorization of such swaps amounts to a "cash giveaway out the back door," said Doug Johnson of the Rose Institute.
"The MTA pleads they have no money for transportation projects, and now they're just giving cash away and letting the cities auction it off to each other regardless of priority or project or what," Johnson said. "I'm just stunned and appalled."
Part of the reason the MTA did not simply reallocate the unused money, said chief planning officer Carol Inge, was that "our board wanted to give every city at least a chance to benefit from the stimulus package."
"The intent of the stimulus funds is to get jobs quickly, and I think it's a good thing to get them all over the county, and our cities have always been partnered with us in doing transportation improvements," Inge said.
The funding that the MTA plans to allocate to its cities totals some $215 million - a number that could rise to $315 million, pending a bill in the state legislature.
In a March 3 letter to all cities in its jurisdiction, MTA officials authorized the swapping and provided a list of cities that had not submitted enough projects qualified for stimulus spending.
The deadline to notify the MTA of a swap is Friday, March 13.
The move puts stimulus money in the hands of cities that are better-prepared, Inge said.
"I think that gives it to the cities who are better poised to get this federal money out quickly. They know how to go through the process, and they have the resources to get money."
Staff Writer Nathan McIntire contributed to this story.
alfred.lee@sgvn.com
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_11874886
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Wow, just wow. :cry:
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Woof,
President Obama, during a recent press conference, said that he wanted Congress to take up the matter of the Clinton gun ban again and make it permanent law this time. One of the reasons he gave for this was that guns bought at gunshows in the US, especially AR15 assault rifles, were being transported across the border to Mexico and were being used by the drug cartels. This was a baldface lie by Obama.
The Mexican government has not released any serial numbers from weapons capture from the cartels. So Obama has no idea where the guns came from. Now why wouldn't the Mexican government want to prove where the guns are coming from instead of just blaming the US? Well it's pretty much an open secret in Mexico that those brand spanking new AR's, are Mexican military issue.
Of course if Obama was serious about stopping anything from going into Mexico, he could close those big honking holes in our border down there. Oh I forgot, that might infringe on the rights of some illegal alien sneaking into our country. So yeah, his only option is to take American citizens rights away from them. Those ranchers along the borders can start tossing rocks at the drug cartels when the violence crosses over onto their property in the US. :-P
P.C.
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For the record, apparently the actions described in my post #253 have been reversed due to adverse publicity.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/16/even-obama-supporters-worried-about-white-house-incompetence/
Even Obama supporters worried about White House incompetence
posted at 9:37 am on March 16, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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I guess we can officially say that the honeymoon’s over. The New York Daily News, not exactly a pillar of conservative thought, finds itself wondering aloud about whether Barack Obama and his team have the competence to lead the nation. The whispers have grown into a chorus:
Not long ago, after a string of especially bad days for the Obama administration, a veteran Democratic pol approached me with a pained look on his face and asked, “Do you think they know what they’re doing?”
The question caught me off guard because the man is a well-known Obama supporter. As we talked, I quickly realized his asking suggested his own considerable doubts.
Yes, it’s early, but an eerily familiar feeling is spreading across party lines and seeping into the national conversation. It’s a nagging doubt about the competency of the White House.
Well, what did people expect? For the first time in decades and perhaps ever, America chose a President without executive experience in the public or private sectors, and without military command experience. If people expected smooth performance and cool competence from that kind of resume, then the best that can be said about them is that they indulged in self-delusion on a massive scale.
For the rest of us, this comes as no surprise at all. The failed appointments have managed to be less embarrassing than the ones that “succeeded”, such as Tim Geithner and Vivek Kundra. The administration keeps promising plans that never get delivered, and Obama all but abdicated to Nancy Pelosi during the Porkulus debacle. And that doesn’t even begin to cover Obama’s embarrassing performance during Gordon Brown’s visit, and Hillary Clinton’s shameful “I don’t understand multiparty democracy” tour at the EU.
Obama is in over his head, and so are his closest aides, such as Geithner, Hillary, and the entire team. The best we can hope is that on-the-job training can work quickly.
Update: Worse than Bush? Kevin McCullough makes that argument in his weekly column.
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Do I hear
Jimmy C?
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Well, Carter actually had a resume. Captain Teleprompter on the other hand.... :roll:
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http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2009/03/13/obama-breaks-own-signing-statements-standard/
Does he even understand what he reads off of the teleprompter?
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/16/american-legion-commander-angered-after-meeting-obama/comment-page-1/#comments
American Legion commander “angered” after meeting Obama
posted at 7:00 pm on March 16, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Apparently, the Obama administration hasn’t backed away from its plans to start offloading costs for wounded veterans to third-party insurance, which will make acquiring such insurance nearly impossible. The commander of the American Legion emerged from a meeting with President Obama “angered” at Obama’s insistence on generating revenue from those who sacrificed for American security:
The leader of the nation’s largest veterans organization says he is “deeply disappointed and concerned” after a meeting with President Obama today to discuss a proposal to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries. The Obama administration recently revealed a plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in such cases.
“It became apparent during our discussion today that the President intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan,” said Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion. “He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it.”
The Commander, clearly angered as he emerged from the session said, “This reimbursement plan would be inconsistent with the mandate ‘ to care for him who shall have borne the battle’ given that the United States government sent members of the armed forces into harm’s way, and not private insurance companies. I say again that The American Legion does not and will not support any plan that seeks to bill a veteran for treatment of a service connected disability at the very agency that was created to treat the unique need of America’s veterans!”
Commander Rehbein was among a group of senior officials from veterans service organizations joining the President, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki and Steven Kosiak, the overseer of defense spending at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The group’s early afternoon conversation at The White House was precipitated by a letter of protest presented to the President earlier this month. The letter, co-signed by Commander Rehbein and the heads of ten colleague organizations, read, in part, ” There is simply no logical explanation for billing a veteran’s personal insurance for care that the VA has a responsibility to provide. While we understand the fiscal difficulties this country faces right now, placing the burden of those fiscal problems on the men and women who have already sacrificed a great deal for this country is unconscionable.”
The Obama administration explains that it wants private insurers who sell coverage to vets to pay their fair share, but there are two things wrong with that argument. First, the United States has a moral obligation to provide treatment for those wounded in the service of their country. That’s a commitment we make to the people who enlist in military, and should not get outsourced.
Second, vets with service-related injuries and illnesses can only get third-party insurance because insurers know the US will cover all service-related medical treatment through the VA. If the government reneges on that commitment, it will put insurers on the hook for veterans already enrolled — but it will make it a lot harder for the next set of veterans to get insured. It will also raise costs to the rest of the insured by those companies, when the burden should fall on all Americans equally.
If the country needs more revenue streams, it should find some other way to find them than the backs of our wounded veterans. They’ve sacrificed enough. Shame on the Obama administration for attempting to weasel out of our commitment.
Update: This Ain’t Hell wonders when General Eric Shinseki will resign in protest.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/17/flashback-video-obama-on-sacred-trust/comment-page-1/#comments
Bush, for his flaws was a good man. Obama is a piece of lying garbage.
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Brilliance is Overrated
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
I have met very few parents or grandparents who have not characterized at least one of their offspring as “extremely bright” or even “brilliant” – usually beginning at the age of 2. The emphasis on the importance of the intellect is greater than ever.
That is why people were persuande into having their babies listen to Mozart after it was reported that listening to Mozart -- even in utero -- would make babies smarter. As an occasional orchestra conductor, I am delighted when anyone of any age is exposed to classical music. But love of music was not an issue here -- the Mozart-for-babies craze was about love of brains, not love of music. Likewise, those who can afford to do so vie with one another to have their children admitted to prestigious preschools and elementary schools.
This preoccupation with brains and intellectual attainment extends into adulthood. Most Americans upon hearing that someone has attended Harvard University assumes that this person is not only smarter than most other people but is actually a more impressive person. That is why, for example, people assume that a Nobel laureate in physics has something particularly intelligent to say about social policy. In fact, there is no reason at all to assume that a Nobel physicist has more insight into health care issues or capital punishment than a high school physics teacher, let alone more insight than a moral theologian. But people, especially the highly educated, do think so. That’s why one frequently sees ads advocating some political position signed by Nobel laureates.
Intellectuals, e.g., those with graduate degrees, have among the worst, if not the worst, records on the great moral issues of the past century. Intellectuals such as the widely adulated French intellectual Jean Paul Sartre were far more likely than hardhats to admire butchers of humanity like Stalin and Mao. But this has had no impact on most people’s adulation of the intellect and intellectuals.
So, too, the current economic decline was brought about in large measure by people in the financial sector widely regarded as “brilliant.” Of course, it turns out that many of them were either dummies, amoral, incompetent, or all three.
The adulation of the intellect is one reason President George W. Bush was so reviled by the intellectual class. He didn’t speak like an intellectual (even though he graduated from Yale) and for that reason was widely dismissed as a dummy (though he is, in fact, very bright). On the other hand, Barack Obama speaks like the college professor he was and thereby seduces the adulators of the intellect the moment he opens his mouth. Yet, it is he, not George W. Bush, who nearly always travels with teleprompters to deliver even the briefest remarks. And compared to George W. Bush on many important issues, his talks are superficial -- as reading, as opposed to hearing, them easily reveals.
Take, for example, one of the most complex and compelling moral issues of our time -- embryonic stem cell research. This is an excellent area for comparison since both presidents delivered major addresses on the exact same subject.
Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post has compared the two speeches. He has particular credibility on this score because he is a scientist (he has a medical degree from Harvard Medical School), a moralist, and has special interest in stem cell’s possibilities because he is a paraplegic from a diving accident. And, as he points out, “I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception.”
Krauthammer’s verdict?
“Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.”
“Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men.”
“Unlike Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.”
In a similar manner, I devoted two columns to analyzing Barack Obama’s widely hailed speech in Berlin when he was a candidate for president. I found it to be both vacuous and, to use Krauthammer’s words, “morally unserious in the extreme.”
But Obama sounds intelligent. As indeed he is.
The reason we have too few solutions to the problems that confront people -- in their personal lives as well as in the political realm -- is almost entirely due to a lack of common sense, psychological impediments to clear thinking, a perverse value system, to a lack of self-control, or all four. It is almost never due to a lack of brainpower. On the contrary, the smartest and the best educated frequently make things worse.
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March 18, 2009
The dumbest-ever team of the 'best and brightest' (updated)
Ed Lasky
We seem to have the stupidest team of "the best and the brightest" ever assembled in any administration. We have a blatantly illegal breaking of the NAFTA agreement as a sop to the Teamsters Union (Obama has stopped Mexican truckers from transporting goods into America, Mexico reacted by slapping tariffs on a wide-range of American goods); we have buy American provisions in the stimulus bill (violating WTO rules); Obama humiliated Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of England (our closest ally), by a series of actions that were not just rude but displayed a galling level of incompetency.
Then there is Timothy Geithner, the tax cheat charged with enforcing the letter of the tax law on the rest of us.
Now we have the Energy Secretary piling on: touting the option of using carbon tariffs as a "weapon" against our trading partners. The statement is clearly aimed at China-the largest owner of Treasury securities in the world who we will need to continue buying them to fund Obama's giveaways.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Tuesday advocated adjusting trade duties as a "weapon" to protect U.S. manufacturing, just a day after one of China's top climate envoys warned of a trade war if developed countries impose tariffs on carbon-intensive imports.
Mr. Chu, speaking before a House science panel, said establishing a carbon tariff would help "level the playing field" if other countries haven't imposed greenhouse-gas-reduction mandates similar to the one President Barack Obama plans to implement over the next couple of years. It is the first time the Obama administration has made public its view on the issue.
"If other countries don't impose a cost on carbon, then we will be at a disadvantage...[and] we would look at considering perhaps duties that would offset that cost," Mr. Chu said.
Li Gao, a senior Chinese negotiator from the National Development and Reform Commission, told Dow Jones Newswires Monday that a carbon tariff would be a "disaster," would prompt a trade war and wouldn't be legal under World Trade Organization agreements
"It does not abide by the rule of [the] WTO and, secondly, it's not fair," Mr. Gao said, adding that his delegation would relate China's concerns to U.S. officials.
Barack Obama all but declared himself a citizen of the world; he brought out worshipful crowds in Europe during the campaign. Are they having any doubts about him now?
Update (via Mark Steyn). Our media friends didn't publicize this the way they would have if the Bush White House had done it: when the White House announced a meet-and-greet with Brazil's president Lula Da Silva, they misspelled his name.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/03/the_dumbestever_team_of_the_be.html at March 18, 2009 - 03:59:10 PM EDT
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/18/video-busy-president-takes-break-from-economic-catastrophe-to-make-ncaa-picks/comment-page-1/#comments
Fiddling while Rome burns.
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Published: 03.18.2009
Mexico releases list of U.S. products that will see higher tariffs
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Products that face higher tariffs beginning today:
Mexico has released the list of U.S. products that will see tariffs of 10 percent to 45 percent. The move is in retaliation for the U.S. scrapping a test program allowing Mexican trucks to deliver goods beyond a U.S. border zone.
Among affected goods are certain fruits and vegetables, wine, juices, sunglasses, toothpaste and coffee, according to a government statement. Most tariffs are 10 percent to 20 percent, with unspecified fresh products subject to a 45 percent charge. The tariffs will apply to $2.4 billion of goods and take effect today.
Talks to diffuse the first trade dispute of President Barack Obama's administration can't begin until the U.S. has a Commerce Secretary, Economy Minister Gerardo Ruiz Mateos said. Discussions to resolve the dispute will start once his counterpart, Gary Locke, is confirmed by the Senate, the economy minister said.
Among the 90 products on Mexico's list are potatoes, cherries, mineral water, photocopy and toilet paper, as well as wireless phones, tickets for public events and the lottery. The list doesn't include corn.
"We're waiting to begin work," Ruiz Mateos said. "Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate hasn't designated our counterparts yet."
The tariffs "will have a big impact on the companies that export those items," said Sidney Weintraub, a specialist in international economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It could take them out of the market."
Mexico is the second largest U.S. export market for agricultural products, said John Murphy, vice president of Latin American affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He couldn't immediately say which companies would be most affected.
Editor's note: The list has been added in a box to the right of your screen.
Products that face higher tariffs beginning today:
Christmas trees 20 percent
Onions 10 percent
Cabbage 10 percent
Pears 20 percent
Apricots 20 percent
Strawberries 20percent
Potatoes 20 percent
Pork rind 20 percent
Almonds 20 percent
Cherries 20 percent
Fruit juice 20 percent
Soy sauce 20 percent
Mineral water 20 percent
Wine 20 percent
Beer 20 percent
Dog and cat food 10 percent
Manicure and pedicure tools 15 percent
Shampoo 15 percent
Hair conditioner 15 percent
Toothpaste 15 percent
Shaving products/after shave 15 percent
Deodorants and antiperspirant 15 percent
Dinnerware 15 percent
Statues and decorative artwork 20 percent
Copy paper 10 percent
Toilet paper 10 percent
Notebooks 10 percent
Pencils 20 percent
Event or lottery tickets 20 percent
Plastic identification cards 20 percent
Curtain rods or hanging tools for blinds 20 percent
Coffee makers 20 percent
Cordless telephones 20 percent
Sunglasses 15 percent
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Interesting take on AIG culpability in the white house. Contains a lot of links and formatting well worth pursuing:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/17/dodd/
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The WH or Geitner?
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The WH or Geitner?
Good question. I'd guess Geitner, though it looks like Greyhound is going to be doing some big biz, what with all the busses all these clowns are throwing each other under.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/19/confirmed-dvds-obama-gave-gordon-brown-are-the-wrong-format/
Confirmed: DVDs that Obama gave Gordon Brown are the wrong format
posted at 4:50 pm on March 19, 2009 by Allahpundit
Via Media Blog, one final cringeworthy indignity from the gifts that keep on giving. Until now I thought Obama’s team had spent about five minutes brainstorming on what to get Brown. I was wrong. It was more like two minutes.
What’s that term The One’s been using for his foreign policy? Ah, right. “Smart power.”
Alas, when the PM settled down to begin watching them the other night, he found there was a problem.
The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words “wrong region” came up on his screen. Although he mournfully had to put the popcorn away, he is unlikely to jeopardise the special relationship – or “special partnership”, as we are now supposed to call it – by registering a complaint…
A White House spokesman sniggered when I put the story to him and he was still looking into the matter when my deadline came last night.
By the way, when Obama’s unlikely gift was disclosed, a reader emailed me to ask if Clueless was among the films. Funnily enough, it was not.
What’d he get the Irish PM for St. Patrick’s Day, a kilt? Exit question: Seriously, as minor as this is, doesn’t someone deserve to be fired for it?
Update: Iowahawk e-mails to remind me that he called this 10 days ago, but, he says, “In Obama’s defense at least they weren’t Betamax.”
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**He'll get right on this, after Leno....**
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2009/03/standing-by-for-orders.html
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Standing By for Orders?
According to our senior commanders in the Pacific, the U.S. military is prepared to shoot down North Korea's Tapeodong-2 missile when it is launched next month.
If it is called upon.
That's an important caveat, because there is no indication (yet) that President Obama has given that order. At this point, we're roughly two weeks away from the DPRK's planned launch window, and comments from Admiral Timothy Keating, the Commander of U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) suggest the shoot down directive has not been issued.
More from the AP via Breitbart:
Admiral Keating told senators at a hearing that there was a "high probability" that the United States could knock down a North Korean missile. Gen. Walter Sharp, the U.S. commander in South Korea, said the threat "is real."
[snip]
Keating said the United States is getting "reasonable intelligence" reports that give a close look at North Korea's activities.
"We'll be prepared to respond," he said, adding that "the United States has the capability" to shoot down any missile.
In terms of "reasonable intelligence," Admiral Keating means the U.S. has some idea of Pyongyang's plans, in terms of an actual satellite launch, or a long-range missile test masquerading as a satellite shot. We may not have conclusive data, but through the use of advanced imagery techniques and MASINT (Measures and Signatures Intelligence) sensors, the intel community has probably made a preliminary call, favoring one scenario over the other.
Put another way, the Obama Administration (at this point) should have enough information to make a call, and issue a warning to the DPRK. Prior to the last TD-2 test in 2006, the U.S. put land and sea-based missile defenses on higher alert, and publicly promised to shoot down the missile, if it threatened our interests, including American allies in the region. The intercept became unnecessary when the long-range missile fell apart, roughly 100 seconds into its flight.
So far, Mr. Obama has refrained from making a similar vow, creating some confusion among military leaders and our Asian partners. Keating made similar remarks a couple of weeks ago, earning a verbal rebuke from White House aides, who claimed that the admiral's comments were unhelpful and could upset diplomatic overtures to North Korea.
As we noted previously, the logic of this approach is apparently lost on Japan as well. Tokyo has threatened to intercept the TD-2 if it threatens Japanese territory--a virtual certainty--using its Kongo-class destroyers, equipped with the same Aegis radar system and SM-3 interceptor missiles found on U.S. naval vessels.
Without better coordination, we could well witness a Japanese combatant knock down the North Korean missile while we stand by and watch. While the Japanese have the inherent right of self-defense, the ramifications of that intercept would be felt throughout Northeast Asia and beyond. Even South Korea, the most likely target for any North Korean military action, would be uneasy over Japanese forces taking defensive action against the DPRK.
Reading between the lines of Admiral Keating's testimony, he appears to be prodding Washington for some kind of guidance on the pending TD-2 launch. His assets include several ballistic missile defense ships assigned to the 7th Fleet (home ported in Japan), as well as land-based interceptor missiles in Alaska and tracking radars across the region, all designed to deal with this type of threat.
These resources can be rapidly deployed, placed on heightened alert and respond to the North Korean test. All that's required is an executive decision. Based on his testimony before Congress, it sounds like Admiral Keating is still awaiting orders, even at this (relatively) late hour.
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Fascinating. Perhaps it would be better in the North Korea thread?
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Top 10 gaffes by Barack Obama and Joe Biden
Posted By: Toby Harnden at Mar 20, 2009 at 16:35:26 [General]
Perhaps Barack Obama was just trying to make Joe Biden feel better by dropping his clanger on Jay Leno. Whatever the President was thinking, 60 days into their new administration it's time for a post-election Obama-Biden Top 10, in reverse order:
10. Just after he's been sworn in by him, the newly-minted Vice President Joe Biden gets the name of Justice John Paul Stephens, "one of the great justices" of the Supreme Court, calling him "Justice Stewart":
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiQpNWh98XU&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Ftoby%5Fharnden%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2F20%2Ftop%5F10%5Fgaffes%5Fby%5Fbarack%5Fobama%5Fand%5Fjoe%5Fbiden%5F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
9. Barack Obama jokes about Nancy Reagan having séances in the White House. He later called her to apologise after the AP noted that although she had consulted astrologers, "she did not hold conversations with the dead":
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59XB68F54kA&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Ftoby%5Fharnden%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2F20%2Ftop%5F10%5Fgaffes%5Fby%5Fbarack%5Fobama%5Fand%5Fjoe%5Fbiden%5F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
8. Joe Biden forgets the "website number" for the White House internet site designed to show how TARP money is being spent:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71pTSTwSzK0&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Ftoby%5Fharnden%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2F20%2Ftop%5F10%5Fgaffes%5Fby%5Fbarack%5Fobama%5Fand%5Fjoe%5Fbiden%5F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
7. Barack Obama mixes up the windows and doors at his new home:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RV3QxYBLhM&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Ftoby%5Fharnden%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2F20%2Ftop%5F10%5Fgaffes%5Fby%5Fbarack%5Fobama%5Fand%5Fjoe%5Fbiden%5F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
6. Joe Biden jokes about Chief Justice John Roberts fluffing the inauguration oath. The president is visibly annoyed with his veep and Biden later apologises:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7fsf8b1PcM&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Ftoby%5Fharnden%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2F20%2Ftop%5F10%5Fgaffes%5Fby%5Fbarack%5Fobama%5Fand%5Fjoe%5Fbiden%5F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
5. A Marine One double. First, on his maiden Marine One trip Obama breaches protocol and makes life uncomfortable for an enlisted marine by shaking the the serviceman's hand as he's saluting his commander-in-chief:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6wAn4NLv4&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Ftoby%5Fharnden%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2F20%2Ftop%5F10%5Fgaffes%5Fby%5Fbarack%5Fobama%5Fand%5Fjoe%5Fbiden%5F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Then - Gerald Ford, eat your heart out. Barack Obama bangs his head as he boards his helicopter:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKIycGw9GiA&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Ftoby%5Fharnden%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2F20%2Ftop%5F10%5Fgaffes%5Fby%5Fbarack%5Fobama%5Fand%5Fjoe%5Fbiden%5F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
4. Joe Biden tells his wife that he had the choice of being either Secretary of State or vice-president - an offer that was news to Obama aides and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when Jill Biden spilled the beans on Oprah:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEUd7UAG8uY&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Ftoby%5Fharnden%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2F20%2Ftop%5F10%5Fgaffes%5Fby%5Fbarack%5Fobama%5Fand%5Fjoe%5Fbiden%5F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
3. Gordon Brown presents the new President with: a pen holder carved from the timbers of HMS Gannett, a sister ship of HMS Resolute; the commissioning certificate of HMS Resolute; and a seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill. In return, the Prime minister gets 25 DVDS, which don't work in Britain:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEixe2SHzVw&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Ftoby%5Fharnden%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2F20%2Ftop%5F10%5Fgaffes%5Fby%5Fbarack%5Fobama%5Fand%5Fjoe%5Fbiden%5F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
2. Joe Biden tells a former Senate colleague who addresses him as "Mr Vice-President" to "give me a f---ing break":
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rwkb6ArNn4&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Ftoby%5Fharnden%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2F20%2Ftop%5F10%5Fgaffes%5Fby%5Fbarack%5Fobama%5Fand%5Fjoe%5Fbiden%5F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
1. The latest one takes the biscuit. Barack Obama jokes about the disabled on the Jay Leno show. Afterwards, he calls the head of the Special Olympics to apologise:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w20b8gL6SBI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Ftoby%5Fharnden%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2F20%2Ftop%5F10%5Fgaffes%5Fby%5Fbarack%5Fobama%5Fand%5Fjoe%5Fbiden%5F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
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Coming soon to a neighborhood or shopping center near you?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EglMVfUB74&feature=channel_page[/youtube]
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Will they be wearing brown shirts, like the asshat in the video?
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Yet another czar!
Here's a taste of his thinking: http://www.stopsunstein.com/media/pdf/Sunstein%20quote%20file.pdf
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http://www.al.com/birminghamnews/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1237709752152800.xml&coll=2
Obama volunteers hunt budget support in Birmingham, Alabama grassroots campaign
Sunday, March 22, 2009
ANNA VELASCO
News staff writer
Volunteers fanned out across the Birmingham area and Alabama Saturday to pump up enthusiasm for President Barack Obama's budget proposal in much the same way they did to win over voters during the presidential campaign.
About 30 volunteers in Birmingham canvassed shopping areas and other high-traffic locations to talk about the need for health care reform, an education overhaul and environmentally friendly energy development.
"If we don't change these three things in the next 10 to 15 years, America is over as we know it," Chris DeHaven, told the group of volunteers before they went their separate ways.
Obama's plan faces criticism from Republicans and others who say it's too expensive. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report Friday saying Obama's agenda would cause huge budget deficits, forcing the country to borrow $9.3 trillion in the next decade.
Those who gathered at Kelly Ingram Park in downtown Birmingham were urged to enlist others who share Obama's vision and to stay away from trying to convert naysayers.
"We're looking for supporters," said DeHaven of Hoover, one of the event's organizers. "We're not looking for a fight. That will come later, when we have an army."
The volunteers are part of Organizing for America, the same grassroots, national network credited in large part with Obama's quick rise from obscurity to president. Birmingham and 11 other sites statewide were part of a national push this weekend by Organizing for America to trumpet Obama's spending proposal.
Across the metro area, volunteers gave their opinions about why Obama's plan is good for the country's future. Then they asked those willing to sign a pledge of support for the budget. Supporters' e-mail addresses and other contact information were collected, to keep people engaged and to recruit more volunteers.
Leanne Townsend of Hoover also helped organize Saturday's event. She has been a member of the Obama grassroots network since March 2007.
"Our group in Birmingham has been very involved," Townsend said. "We're still very energetic. We all worked so hard during the campaign. We can't just stop."
E-mail: avelasco@bhamnews.com
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Obama’s Amateur Hour on 60 Minutes
Posted By John Hawkins On March 23, 2009 @ 1:30 am In . Feature 01, Media, Politics | 144 Comments
Many of us, at certain times during our lives, have believed we could do a better job than the president of the United States, just as we thought we’d do a better job than the coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers or the network executive who greenlighted [1] Real Chance of Love.
The problem tends to be that what looks so crystal clear from the outside, usually in hindsight, appears confusing, muddled, and difficult to fathom when you’re actually going through it.
That’s why experience matters, particularly executive experience, and it’s a big part of the reason why Barack Obama has done such a mediocre job so far.
Obama is a silver-tongued political novice who has managed to be in the right place at the right time.
Now, if you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And if you’re a politician like Barack Obama, who has gotten everything he has in life by being slick and sounding confident, every problem looks like something that can just be talked away.
That tendency was on display in his 60 Minutes interview, a “grilling” which would be considered a softball interview for a Republican (”Wow, that’s a great swing set for your kids to play on. How are they liking the White House so far?”) but was still probably tougher than any interrogation Obama has received since he entered the White House. (After all, he even admitted that he gets lost in the White House “repeatedly.”)
Each time Obama got a tough question, he did what sociopathic politicians have done for decades: he lied, dodged, and talked out of both sides of his mouth. The best example of that was near the beginning of the interview when Steve Kroft asked Obama about the AIG bonuses.
Was Obama surprised by the hostility to the AIG bonuses. His answer?
I wasn’t surprised by it. Our team wasn’t surprised by it.
Well, that begs the question: if the Obama administration wasn’t surprised by the furor, why did they [2] work with Chris Dodd to safeguard the bonuses that were in the bill? It just makes no sense. What does Obama expect us to believe? That he thought it would be cathartic for Americans to yell in outrage at his incompetence, so his administration made sure the bonuses, the same ones he later criticized, were included in the stimulus for that reason? These are the sort of very obvious bald-faced lies that Democrats like Barack Obama are perpetually allowed to get away with by sympathetic liberal reporters who don’t want to make “their side” look bad.
Another telling exchange, if you know what to look for, was Kroft’s question about the constitutionality of the attempt to tax away the bonuses of the AIG executives and Obama’s answer:
Kroft: I mean, you’re a constitutional law professor. Do you think this bill is constitutional?
Obama: Well, I think that as a general proposition, you don’t want to be passing laws that are just targeting a handful of individuals. You want to pass laws that have some broad applicability. And, as a general proposition, you don’t want to use the tax code to punish people. I think that you’ve got a pretty egregious situation here that people are understandably upset about. So, let’s see if there are ways of doing this that are both legal, that are constitutional, that uphold our basic principles of fairness, but don’t hamper us from getting the banking system back on track.
Now at first glance, that might seem to be a thoughtful answer. However, when you delve down into it, what you find is that is like many of Barack Obama’s comments, it’s utterly divorced from what he intends to do, while giving people on both sides of the case the impression that he agrees with them.
What’s really going on? Barack Obama’s administration, along with Chris Dodd, put a provision in the stimulus bill allowing companies like AIG to collect bonuses. After it became known and the public got angry, the same Democrats who supported that provision pretended to be outraged and whipped up a fury. Now, they’ve come up with a “[3] bill of attainder” that clearly violates the Constitution and Mr. “Constitutional Law Professor” fully intends to sign it if it makes it to his desk. Is any of that communicated in his answer? No — and that’s why listening to Barack Obama actually tells us very little about what he intends to do.
However, there were a couple of instructive moments in the interview when one was able to get a sense of the instinctual leftism that is guiding Barack Obama, now that he’s so far out of his depth that he can’t even see the surface.
The first was when Kroft noted that a lot of people in the banking industry are not going to stay in New York and work for $250,000 a year if they can make more money elsewhere — so does Obama really want to set salary caps for them? Obama’s condescending response, which sounded like something that should be in Mao’s Little Red Book, Volume 2, was as follows:
What I’ve told them directly, because I have heard some of this, is they need to spend a little time outside of New York. Because if you go to North Dakota or you go to Iowa or if you go to Arkansas, where folks would be thrilled to be making $75,000 a year without a bonus, then I think they’d get a sense of why people are frustrated. I think we have to understand the severity of the crisis that we’re in right now. The fact is, because of bad bets made on Wall Street, there have been enormous losses. There were a whole bunch of folks who, on paper, if you looked at quarterly reports, were wildly successful selling derivatives that turned out to be completely worthless.
First of all, it’s worth noting that Obama earned [4] 2.5 million dollars from his book sales in 2008 and brings home a cool $400,000 a year for being president. What do you think the folks down in North Dakota, Iowa, and Arkansas think of that? Why is Barack Obama more deserving of that money than someone who works at a bank? If you say they’re taking the public’s money, well — newsflash — every government employee, including Barack Obama, is taking the public’s money. Setting those sort of arbitrary salary limits for bank employees — driven not by the market, but by what some economically illiterate politician thinks is “fair” — is practically guaranteed to have adverse consequences down the line.
Beyond that, it’s extraordinarily troubling, given our current situation, that Obama is trying to pawn this entire crisis off on Wall Street when [5] Congress created the whole mess by forcing banks to give loans to people who were bad risks. That’s not to say irresponsible people on Wall Street are completely blameless, but “bad bets on Wall Street” certainly weren’t at the root of this economic downturn.
So, here’s where we are: the same government that created this crisis with their incompetence is now blaming it all on Wall Street and promising to fix it. No wonder the American people are terrified that we’re about to slip into a long-term depression.
The other illuminating moment in the interview came when Kroft brought up Dick Cheney’s criticism of closing Guantanamo Bay. Again, the unbearable lightness of Barack Obama came shining through like a beacon. Here is the first key quote from Obama’s response,
After all these years, how many convictions came out of Guantanamo? How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn’t made us safer.
If Obama believes that the purpose of Gitmo is to get “convictions” of terrorists, you have to question whether he has even the most basic understanding of the war on terror he’s currently in charge of fighting.
Gitmo is there to hold captured terrorists, to keep them from killing more Americans, and for interrogations that are designed to gain information for that same purpose. Obviously, terrorists held at Guantanamo can’t participate in new attacks, but even the limited amount of info that has been revealed publicly has shown that [6] we’ve gotten a lot of actionable intelligence from interrogations at Gitmo,
Interrogating Gitmoites yields priceless intelligence. Al-Qaeda bigwig Abu Zubaydah kept mum until interrogators played him the Red Hot Chili Peppers - at high volume. After they turned down the stereo, Zubaydah unmasked al Qaeda agents Omar al-Faruq, Rahim al-Nashiri and Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed switched from taciturn to talkative after a few minutes of unpleasant but non-fatal waterboarding. With his guidance, counter-terrorists nabbed accused butchers such as Majid Khan, Bali bomber Hambali, Rusman “Gun Gun” Gunawan, Yazid Suffat, Jose “Dirty Bomber” Padilla and Iyman Faris, who conspired to plunge the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River.
This is what we’re abandoning — but, for what? When Kroft asked Obama what comes next for the terrorists imprisoned at Gitmo, he didn’t seem to know,
Well, I think we’re going to have to figure out a mechanism to make sure that they are not released on U.S. (inaudible), but do so in a way that is consistent both with our traditions, a sense of due process, and international law.
So Obama has announced we’re closing Gitmo, but he still hasn’t figured out what comes next? Isn’t that a bit of an issue, since we have these terrorists in hand, will presumably be capturing more, and even the New York Times is admitting that European nations are “[7] hedging” on helping us with Gitmo inmates? Shouldn’t Obama have thought this all the way through before he decided to close down Guantanamo Bay?
For people looking for signs of straight talk, competence, or substance from the glib teleprompter junky who inhabits the White House, sadly there was precious little of it in his 60 Minutes performance.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama%e2%80%99s-amateur-hour-on-sixty-minutes/
URLs in this post:
[1] Real Chance of Love.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Chance_of_Love
[2] work with Chris Dodd to safeguard the bonuses: http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/03/what_obama_doesnt_know_about_w.php
[3] bill of attainder: http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/03/the_unconstitutional_aig_bonus.php
[4] 2.5 million dollars: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/19/AR2009031903521.html
[5] Congress created the whole mess: http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/02/rwns_walter_williams_interview.php
[6] we’ve gotten a lot of actionable intelligence: http://www.nypost.com/seven/07062007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/lets_expand_gitmo_opedcolumnists_der
oy_murdock.htm
[7] hedging: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/world/16gitmo.html?partner=rss
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- Faster, Please! - http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen -
The I’s Had It
Posted By Michael Ledeen On March 22, 2009 @ 2:22 pm In Uncategorized | 28 Comments
President Obama has devoted a lot of time to foreign policy this past week, focusing like a laser beam on three countries that begin with the letter “I.” He gave star billing in Washington to the prime minister of Ireland (who was treated a lot better than British Prime Minister Gordon Brown), during the course of which each read the other’s prepared text, perhaps a new departure in international diplomacy. He also sent a letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano (a member of the now defunct Communist Party), expressing confidence that the United States and Italy would work together “to overcome the current global political and economic hardships and build a safer world.” The only problem with the letter was that the Italian president does not make policy; that power resides with the prime minister and his cabinet. Perhaps the White House czars have issued an ukaz stipulating that the American president writes only to his peers, and thus instead of addressing himself to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, President Obama wrote to a man who holds an almost entirely ceremonial position.
This imprecision produced the predictable kerfluffle in Rome, as the leftist media and intellectuals pondered the event and concluded that Obama had deliberately stiffed Berlusconi. The Italian prime minister thus joins his British counterpart in wondering what hope they are supposed to find in the recent change in diplomatic protocol in Washington.
Then the president turned his charm on the Iranian mullahs, releasing a video message to everyone celebrating Persian New Year, Norooz (or Nowrooz). He began by explaining the holiday to the Iranians:
“This holiday is both an ancient ritual and a moment of renewal, and I hope that you enjoy this special time of year with friends and family.”
If he was trying to make nice to the mullahs, he should have omitted the “ancient ritual” reference, since that ritual–featuring bonfires (symbols from the ancient Zoroastrian faith) through which people leap and around which they dance–is banned in Iran, and anyone who engages in the ancient ritual is subject to beatings, arrest, and torture. So, rather like the unfortunate “overcharge” button that Secretary of State Clinton gave the Russian foreign minister, the hoped-for change in our “relationship” with Iran got off to an unfortunate start.
The president continued with warm words for the Iranian people:
“Nowruz is just one part of your great and celebrated culture. Over many centuries your art, your music, literature and innovation have made the world a better and more beautiful place. “
True enough, but the whole idea of the Message to Iran was political, and he might have mentioned the long tradition of great and celebrated Persian political thought. After all, the first known human rights “document” came from Cyrus the Great, and its message is daily rejected by the regime of the Islamic Republic.
Then he provided his vision of the Iranian peoples’ belief in hope and change. “You will be celebrating your New Year in much the same way that we Americans mark our holidays,” he earnestly intoned, “by gathering with friends and family, exchanging gifts and stories, and looking to the future with a renewed sense of hope.”
NOT. Most Iranians look to the future with a deepening mood of despair. The mullahs have long since wrecked the economy, and things are getting worse now, what with the price of oil at one-third its recent highs. The single word that best describes the state of the Iranian people–to whom Obama explicitly directed these words–is “degradation.” The drop in Iranian birth rates during the reign of the mullahs is the most dramatic in the history of fertility statistics, and is now below replacement. The level of opiate addiction is five times that of China at the time of the Opium Wars. Any Iranian hearing the American president talk of renewed hope, would wonder if he was thinking of the Iranians in Beverly Hills, who rule the place.
To the country’s leaders, Obama offered still more hope for change: “We seek…engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.” I don’t know exactly what that means, except that the “conflict management” crowd insists that Iranian leaders want to be respected. My own view is that they want to be feared, but let’s move on.
“The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right…and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization. And the measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy, it is your demonstrated ability to build and create.”
The mullahs no doubt loved the first sentence, not because of the happy thought about the “community of nations,” in which Iran’s leaders most assuredly do not believe (they want Islamic domination of the whole thing), but because you can read the phrase as a coded message that means “we’re not going to try to change the nature of the regime.” If so, it was a foolish concession, both because it condemns the Iranian people to continued oppression and misery, and because the very existence of America threatens the Islamic Republic. The Iranians would rather live like Americans, and despite thirty years of pathetic fecklessness from one president after the next, they still hope that the day will come when we rescue them–or at least help them rescue themselves–from the hated mullahcracy.
As for the president’s call for “peaceful actions,” it jars with the reality the mullahs have created. Nobody pays much attention to Iraq any more, but Coalition forces have arrested a considerable number of (Iranian) Quds Force officers there. Their mission was to kill as many Iraqis and Americans as possible, as they routinely confess to their interrogators. Incredibly, these killers are routinely released in a year or less, whereupon, like the terrorists at Guantanamo, they resume their murderous activities. They are now sponsoring a new tactic: exploding motorcycles. We’ve seen two already in recent weeks, and there will be more. And they’re fueling both Shi’ite and Sunni terrorists in Afghanistan.
So for Obama to say that Iran will only take its place as a major player if they embrace peace and abandon “terror or arms,” is nonsense. They have become a major player, at least on the American agenda, precisely because of terror and (nuclear) arms.
I suppose it’s possible that Obama thought that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nezhad would end the Islamic Republic’s thirty-year war against America, and sit down with him to define the details of Iran’s new status in world affairs. But they aren’t interested. The supreme leader gave Obama the back of his one good hand, starting with an important question: who is in charge in Obama’s Washington?
“We don’t know who is the real decision maker in America,” Khamenei wickedly responded, “the President or the Congress. But we underlined that the Iranians decide on the basis of definite calculations not on emotions.” And then, for the umpteenth time, he laid down the conditions for improved relations:
“Has your enmity with the Iranian nation ended? Have you released the Iranian assets or cut the sanctions? Have you quit negative propaganda against Iran? Have you ended your absolute support to the Zionist regime?” He even advised Obama to have his words translated, but not by “Zionist translators.”
In other words, Obama has to shut up about Iranian-supported terrorism, drop sanctions, release the Iranian money blocked in this country, and abandon Israel (oddly, this last condition does not seem to have been reported either in the New York Times–which ran an AP story–or the Washington Post. Probably they assumed we knew it already, so there was no reason to spend precious pennies on extra ink and newsprint). Happy New Year.
The most interesting part of Khamenei’s speech had to do with Iran, not the United States. More than half the speech dealt with internal matters, not international affairs. He warned darkly that the country was facing a severe internal crisis. He called for a campaign against “economic and social corruption,” and exhorted Iranians to fight the “disease of wasting,” stating, rather shockingly, that one-third of bread and one-fifth of water was currently being wasted. Thus, it is necessary to change the “pattern of consumption,” which Khamenei defined as both a religious and rational issue.
All of which brought him to the upcoming (June 12th) elections. Everybody must vote, he said (most Iranians have boycotted recent elections as a sign of contempt for the regime and its pretense of fair elections). He went out of his way to say that he would not endorse a single candidate, and that it was up to the people, not to him, to elect the next president. Then he added that, while he had felt it necessary to publicly support the government (meaning Ahmadi-Nezhad) on occasion, this should not be taken as an endorsement.
If I were Ahmadi-Nezhad, I would see this as a vote of no confidence from my boss. And you can be sure that many Iranians will see it the same way. The most interesting candidate is Mir Hossein Mousavi, the former prime minister (under Khomeini, during the Iran-Iraq War) who has been largely out of politics for twenty years. An artist and architect, Mousavi is an old “new face.” The Iranian version of Hope and Change, I suppose. Khamenei seems to like him (otherwise he’d endorse someone else), and perhaps, against all the odds, the internal situation is seen as so grave that even the supreme leader is willing to contemplate real change, and some small degree of freedom for the people.
One thing is for sure: having failed to gain Khamenei’s endorsement, Ahmadi-Nezhad’s best hope is support from Washington; that Obama makes unilateral concessions, thus demonstrating that the current Iranian policies are the right ones. The best American tactic at the moment is probably to shut up about “respect,” keep the Iranian terrorists in jail, step up the tempo of financial sanctions (Obama smartly renewed the existing ones a few days ago), and strike against the terror bases where the jihadis are trained and armed. That would further discredit Ahmadi-Nezhad, demonstrate that Obama’s velvet glove covers a mailed fist, and give hope for change to the Iranian people.
UPDATE: Jamie Kirchik at The New Republic has produced [1] the video Obama should have. And Ron Radosh delivers another [2] stern lesson to Roger Cohen, the New York Times’s candidate for the Walter Duranty 2009 award, bestowed on the journalist who has done most to advance the cause of tyranny.
Update 2: Obama won’t take no for an answer: “The President believes it’s time for that change, and regardless of any response, the President is hopeful that the Iranian leadership will work to change the way that they do business.”
Article printed from Faster, Please!: http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2009/03/22/the-is-had-it/
URLs in this post:
[1] the video: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/03/20/tnrtv-kirchick-s-new-year-greeting-for-i
ran.aspx
[2] stern lesson: http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/03/23/roger-cohens-continuing-nonsense-is-he-making-barack-ob
amas-iran-policy/
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George Will does a nice job today of exposing the glibness and his troubled policies. We are now to the left of Sweden on government meddling in private sector affairs.
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The Toxic Assets We Elected
By George Will
WASHINGTON -- With the braying of 328 yahoos -- members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate legal earnings of a small unpopular group -- still reverberating, the Obama administration Monday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.
TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and, last week, some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab automobile company is on its own: "The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories."
More From RCP: 10 States in the Biggest Budget Trouble
Another embarrassing auditor of American misgovernment is China, whose premier has rightly noted the unsustainable trajectory of America's high-consumption, low-savings economy. He has also decorously but clearly expressed sensible fears that his country's $1 trillion-plus of dollar-denominated assets might be devalued by America choosing, as banana republics have done, to use inflation for partial repudiation of improvidently incurred debts.
From Mexico, America is receiving needed instruction about fundamental rights and the rule of law. A leading Democrat trying to abolish the right of workers to secret ballots in unionization elections is California's Rep. George Miller who, with 15 other Democrats, in 2001 admonished Mexico: "The secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose." Last year, Mexico's highest court unanimously affirmed for Mexicans the right that Democrats want to strip from Americans.
Congress, with the approval of a president who has waxed censorious about his predecessor's imperious unilateralism in dealing with other nations, has shredded the North American Free Trade Agreement. Congress used the omnibus spending bill to abolish a program that was created as part of a protracted U.S. stall regarding compliance with its obligation to allow Mexican long-haul trucks on U.S roads. The program, testing the safety of Mexican trucking, became an embarrassment because it found Mexican trucking at least as safe as U.S. trucking. Mexico has resorted to protectionism -- tariffs on many U.S. goods -- in retaliation for Democrats' protection of the Teamsters union.
NAFTA, like all treaties, is the "supreme law of the land." So says the Constitution. It is, however, a cobweb constraint on a Congress that, ignoring the document's unambiguous stipulations that the House shall be composed of members chosen "by the people of the several states," is voting to pretend that the District of Columbia is a state. Hence it supposedly can have a Democratic member of the House and, down the descending road, two Democratic senators. Congress rationalizes this anti-constitutional willfulness by citing the Constitution's language that each house shall be the judge of the "qualifications" of its members and Congress can "exercise exclusive legislation" over the District. What, then, prevents Congress from giving House and Senate seats to Yellowstone National Park, over which Congress exercises exclusive legislation? Only Congress' capacity for embarrassment. So, not much.
The Federal Reserve, by long practice rather than law, has been insulated from politics in performing its fundamental function of preserving the currency as a store of value -- preventing inflation. Now, however, by undertaking hitherto uncontemplated functions, it has become an appendage of the executive branch. The coming costs, in political manipulation of the money supply, of this forfeiture of independence could be steep.
Jefferson warned that "great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities." But Democrats, who trace their party's pedigree to Jefferson, are contemplating using "reconciliation" -- a legislative maneuver abused by both parties to severely truncate debate and limit the minority's right to resist -- to impose vast and controversial changes on the 17 percent of the economy that is health care. When the Congressional Budget Office announced that the president's budget underestimates by $2.3 trillion the likely deficits over the next decade, his budget director, Peter Orszag, said: All long-range budget forecasts are notoriously unreliable -- so rely on ours.
This is but a partial list of recent lawlessness, situational constitutionalism and institutional derangement. Such political malfeasance is pertinent to the financial meltdown as the administration, desperately seeking confidence, tries to stabilize the economy by vastly enlarging government's role in it.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/24/obama-at-50-50/
The public starts to notice the empty-suit behind the podium.
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The American President bows to the Wahabbi king of Saudi Arabia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S60U-hl35Gw
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By Penn Jillette
Special to CNN
Editor's note: Penn Jillette -- the larger, louder half of Penn & Teller -- is a magician, comedian, actor, author and producer.
Penn Jillette says counterintuitive actions sometimes work -- and other times fail spectacularly.
(CNN) -- Counterintuitive action makes a fellow feel smart. When I first got my driver's license, I took my old Ford Falcon into the Greenfield Public High School parking lot when it was freshly covered with fresh powder on top of wet slippery Western Massachusetts snow and ice. I turned fast, gunned it and lost control of the car in a skid.
I turned into the skid and instantly gained control of my car. Telling someone to turn into a skid, that's crazy talk. It seems so wrong, but my Dad knew it worked. Dad suggested I do it over and over in the parking lot, so I would conquer my intuition to be ready when a real emergency arose on a real road. Counterintuitive actions prove we can trust real knowledge and do the opposite of what we feel makes sense.
I'm a fire-eater. There is some technique to fire-eating, but most of the practice goes into learning that one's mouth is wet enough, most of the heat goes up enough, and cutting the oxygen leg off the fire triangle (it's now a fire tetrahedron, but I learned fire-eating a long time ago) with one's mouth really does put the fire out.
It took watching a professional whom I trusted do it -- a lot of trust and a lot of practice -- before my first reaction, when my mouth started to burn from the lit torch in my mouth, was to put the torch deeper in my mouth, close my mouth around the torch and put it out.
Handling fire seems like a superpower. There are whole seminars and self-help jive centered on fire-walking, which is hustled as "mind over matter," or "empowerment" but is really just counterintuitive physics. As long as the fire walk is set up right and you keep moving, you can even hope and pray to be burned, while yelling counter-self-help slogans such as "I do not have any power to do this" and "universe, please burn my little piggies," and you'll be fine.
Whether it's fire walking or knowing that the Earth is round, everyone seems to dig counterintuitive thinking. Many dig it when our president explains we're going to spend our way out of debt. That's way against all the intuition we've developed in our adult lives. Spending our way out of debt doesn't work often, does it? It's crazy talk. Didn't a lot of people try that spending out of debt thing?
I live in Vegas, and I see people by the side of the road with cardboard signs who seem like they might have tried that spending their way out of debt thing. Or maybe they tried the all too intuitive "crack will make me feel healthy again" thing. I don't know.
Didn't lots of people try piling up debt on credit cards and buying houses they couldn't afford in hopes of solving all their financial problems? I've tried spending more than I was going to earn (remember, I was carny trash, that's why I know how to eat fire), and it way didn't work. Spending more money than I had to spend put me more in debt, just like my silly intuition warned me.
President Obama is so damn smart. He just drips smart. He clearly understands stuff that we could never understand. He's trustworthy. If Obama were teaching fire-eating, we would all learn fast. If he told you that the burns would be minor and the fire would go out when you closed your mouth, you'd believe him. If I weren't twice his weight, I'd fall back with my eyes closed into his caring arms in one of those cheesy '70s church trust exercises. He could talk me into anything.
Obama tells us that we can spend our way out of debt. He tells us that even though the government had control over the banks and did nothing to stop the bad that's going on, if we give them more control over more other bank-like things, then they can make sure bad stuff doesn't happen ever again. He says we can get out of all those big wars President Bush caused by sending more troops into Afghanistan. And I don't know. I really don't know.
I trusted my Dad that turning into a skid would work. I trusted my carny mentor, Doc Swan, that closing my mouth around a burning torch would put it out. They were right. Maybe the United States borrowing more money than I could imagine in a billion years with a billion computers and a billion monkeys typing on them, will get us out of financial trouble. I really don't know. It's certainly true that many counterintuitive things are true, and when you have the guts to do something counterintuitive that works, it's really cool. It's a superpower under our yellow sun.
But there are some things that are just intuitive. Did you know, that if you're going 100 mph, directly at a very, very thick, reinforced concrete wall, and you speed up, so you're accelerating right when you hit the wall that the accident you have is going to be much worse than if you'd jammed on the brakes as soon as you saw the wall at the end of the street? Did you know that? It's exactly what everything you know and feel would tell you, and it's exactly true. Most times when you're driving, or playing with fire, or handling money, the thing that makes sense to you is also true.
I way hope we're turning into a skid and not accelerating into a concrete wall.
Note: Reading this article does not give you the information you need to really eat fire, fire walk or even turn into a skid. Do not try any of it. You really need a trained professional to teach you, and most important you need to sign something that says Penn Jillette and CNN are not in any way responsible for your inevitable injuries.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Penn Jillette.
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Remember when the savior of the world stated Americans need to speak more than English?
"We need to say more than merci beaucoup".
How come he wasn't speaking French to the French when he was there giving a town hall meeting?
Yet he has not problem humiliating our own country by going around the world stating we tortured people.
The Russians, the Indians, the Chinese, the Iranians - they must all be happy beyond belief at having a anti-American demigogue as President. The Europeans of course love the guy who is going to give away control of the world's richest country's economy to Europeans.
And yet our own MSM hails BO.
:x
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The NO MERCI BEAUCOUP comment made think you might like this. Crafty if this is not a good place for this let me know where you might want it. Just put it here because of the comment. Enjoy
p.s. Im the guy on the accordian
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loQDuOn27w[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loQDuOn27w
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Freki,
I don't have flashplayer.
What does it do?
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Krauthammer is only partly correct. Yes BO's ultimate goal is socialism by taking from the upper classes in the US and giving to the lower classes. But it is far worse, delusional, and crazy. He wants to take from the haves in the US and give to the lower classes of the world! His presidency is not about advancing the interests of US citizens, but is about advancing socialism around the world using his position here to do it!
BO obviously doesn't believe in the US model that *everyone has a chance*. BO obviously believes that the successful have unfairly beaten or kept down the less successful. He is fully of the philisophical camp that beleives the US is to blame for much of the world's ills. We are an imperialist selfish money grubbing nation that has caused climate change, and for everyone to righly hate us because we "dictate" to the world rather than "listen". The fact that most of these same haters would love to come here goes unnoticed (including his own family many of whom are illegally here). Yes, BO beleives it is the responsibility of those with any money whatsoever, (no matter how hard they worked for it or earned it) to give it away to those who have less.
What is even more nuts, and Charles doesn't take it to this next logical conclusion, is that BO applies this attitude not only to the classes here in the US but between classes in the US and around the world. It is now the responsibility of the those who earn anything in the US to support the world. The world's obligation to us is merely to spend our money "wisely".
Folks the nerve of this guy to stand there in France and say how he will gladly give more money to countries in need if only their officials just don't steal it. Whose money is he giving away? It ain't his. When are Americans going to stand up to this cook?
And the liberal, crat-leaning MSM is following this nut down the path of leading the US to I have no idea but it ain't what it has been for 200 years. Why? Some believe in this I guess. Some just hate Repubs so much they will follow any crat to oblivion I guess.
In any case, here is Charles's article but he falls short the last step I outlined above:
****Obama's Ultimate Agenda
By Charles Krauthammer
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Five minutes of explanation to James Madison, and he'll have a pretty good idea what a motorcar is (basically a steamboat on wheels; the internal combustion engine might take a few minutes more). Then try to explain to Madison how the Constitution he fathered allows the president to unilaterally guarantee the repair or replacement of every component of millions of such contraptions sold in the several states, and you will leave him slack-jawed.
In fact, we are now so deep into government intervention that constitutional objections are summarily swept aside. The last Treasury secretary brought the nine largest banks into his office and informed them that henceforth he was their partner. His successor is seeking the power to seize any financial institution at his own discretion.
Despite these astonishments, I remain more amused than alarmed. First, the notion of presidential car warranties strikes me as simply too bizarre, too comical, to mark the beginning of Yankee Peronism.
Second, there is every political incentive to make these interventions in the banks and autos temporary and circumscribed. For President Obama, autos and banks are sideshows. Enormous sideshows, to be sure, but had the financial meltdown and the looming auto bankruptcies not been handed to him, he would hardly have gone seeking to be the nation's credit and car czar.
Obama has far different ambitions. His goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation's income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax.
Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission.
Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism. (Asked by Charlie Gibson during a campaign debate about his support for raising capital gains taxes — even if they caused a net revenue loss to the government — Obama stuck to the tax hike "for purposes of fairness.") The elements are highly progressive taxation, federalized health care and higher education, and revenue-producing energy controls. But first he must deal with the sideshows. They could sink the economy and poison his public support before he gets to enact his real agenda.
The big sideshows, of course, are the credit crisis, which Obama has contracted out to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and the collapse of the U.S. automakers, which Obama seems to have taken on for himself.
That was a tactical mistake. Better to have let the car companies go directly to Chapter 11 and have a judge mete out the bitter medicine to the workers and bondholders.
By sacking GM's CEO, packing the new board, and giving direction as to which brands to drop and what kind of cars to make, Obama takes ownership of General Motors. He may soon come to regret it. He has now gotten himself so entangled in the car business that he is personally guaranteeing your muffler. (Upon reflection, a job best left to the congenitally unmuffled Joe Biden.)
Some find in this descent into large-scale industrial policy a whiff of 1930s-style fascist corporatism. I have my doubts. These interventions are rather targeted. They involve global financial institutions that even the Bush administration decided had to be nationalized and auto companies that themselves came begging to the government for money.
Bizarre and constitutionally suspect as these interventions may be, the transformation of the American system will come from elsewhere. The credit crisis will pass and the auto overcapacity will sort itself out one way or the other. The reordering of the American system will come not from these temporary interventions, into which Obama has reluctantly waded. It will come from Obama's real agenda: his holy trinity of health care, education and energy. Out of these will come a radical extension of the welfare state; social and economic leveling in the name of fairness; and a massive increase in the size, scope and reach of government.
If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: "fair," leveled and social democratic. Obama didn't get elected to warranty your muffler. He's here to warranty your life.****
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Well at least the Crats are consistent. No longer do Americans help themselves. It has become, "what can goernment do for me?"
The national scene is the same. No longer does a liberal led America ask what it must do for itself whan faced with a problem.
As per Hillary and the rest of the crew it is now, "we must ask the *world* to deal with our problems.
We must go the UN. We must join hands with the world and let them tell us what to do.
****Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Wednesday for world action to "end the scourge of piracy" as U.S. warships raced to confront pirates who hijacked a U.S.-flagged ship off the coast of Somalia.
American crew members aboard the hijacked ship were able to regain control of the vessel Wednesday, but the ship's captain still is being held hostage on a smaller boat.
"We are deeply concerned and we are following it very closely," Clinton said.
"Specifically, we are now focused on this particular act of piracy and the seizure of a ship that carries 21 American citizens. More generally, we think the world must come together to end the scourge of piracy," she said.
U.S. Navy officials told FOX News on Wednesday afternoon that its closest ship was 300 miles away, which would place it 15 hours from the vessel, known as the Maersk Alabama.
A defense official said the ship's captain is being held captive on board a lifeboat belonging to the ship. Four pirates are in the lifeboat and according to the official there is no clear evidence that a pirate remains captive with the U.S. crew.
"We are able to confirm that the crew of the Maersk Alabama is now in control of the ship," said Kevin Speers, a spokesman for Maersk Lines Limited. "The armed hijackers who boarded this ship earlier today have departed, however they are currently holding one member of the ship's crew as a hostage. The other members of the crew are safe and no injuries have been reported."
Speaking on the ship's satellite phone, one of the 20 crew members said they had been taken hostage but managed to seize one pirate and then successfully negotiate their own release.
"All the crew members are trained in security detail in how to deal with piracy," Maersk CEO John Reinhart told reporters. "As merchant vessels we do not carry arms. We have ways to push back, but we do not carry arms."
John Harris, CEO of HollowPoint Security Services, which specializes in maritime security, said that the crew's overtaking the pirates could help prevent future hijackings, especially since the military can't protect the entire high seas.
Related StoriesFor Somalis, Piracy Road to Power, Prosperity
Photo EssaysSomali Pirates Seize 20 Americans
"Any time you can get intel from them, they can give you any kind of significant information, they more than likely will not, but anything we can get will always help us in the future," Harris told FOX News.
"Naval vessels ... can't be everywhere at one time, just like law enforcement," he said, noting that the U.S. Navy has been protecting the most vulnerable shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean.
"If you saturate an area long enough in the shipping lanes, if you saturate it with war ships long enough, they venture out. In this case that's what they did. They want 350 miles out of the coast where no Naval vessels were present," he said.
Click here for photos.
As for the boldness of the pirates taking a ship operating under a U.S. flag, Harris said pirates don't care which ship they grab.
"We have not seen it matters at all. This is a business to them. They are not intended on carrying what cargo we're carrying. All they want to do is see a dollar figure. They know if they catch a big ship, they get big money. All they want is ransom out of this. They are not worried about crew or cargo," Harris said.
Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman said earlier Wednesday he has "no information to suggest the 20 crew members of the Maersk Alabama have been harmed by the pirates."
During its one communication with the ship, Maersk was told the crew was safe, Reinhart said. He would not release the names of the crew members.
Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, said that it was the first pirate attack "involving U.S. nationals and a U.S.-flagged vessel in recent memory."
Wednesday's incident was the first such hostage-taking involving U.S. citizens in 200 years. In December 2008, Somali pirates chased and shot at a U.S. cruise ship with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel.
The top two commanders of the ship graduated from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, the Cape Cod Times reported Wednesday.
Andrea Phillips, the wife of the captured captain, Richard Phillips of Underhill, Vt., said her husband has sailed in those waters "for quite some time" and a hijacking was perhaps "inevitable."
The Cape Cod Times reported his second in command, Capt. Shane Murphy, was also among the 20 Americans aboard the Maersk Alabama.
Capt. Joseph Murphy, a professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, says his son is a 2001 graduate who recently talked to a class about the dangers of pirates.
The newspaper reported the 33-year-old Murphy had phoned his mother to say he was safe.
The 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama was carrying emergency relief to Mombasa, Kenya, at the time it was hijacked, for the Copenhagen-based container shipping group A.P. Moller-Maersk.
Robert A. Wood, Deputy State Department Spokesman, told reporters the ship was carrying "vegetable oil, corn soy blend and other basic food commodities bound for Africa."****
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The DC school system is abysmal. Private schools funded in part by a voucher program do a better job of teaching at .25 the cost of the DC system. Yet "open administration" Obama appointees are trying to disappear the voucher system and hope no one notices:
Previous: A Flagging Obama Transparency Effort
Whitehurst: “Duncan Is Not Lying”
Posted by Andrew J. Coulson
Brookings senior fellow Grover Whitehurst has just come to the defense of education secretary Arne Duncan over charges that Duncan sat on (or remained “willfully ignorant” of) a study showing that the D.C. voucher program is boosting achievement. The Senate passed a bill sunsetting funding for the program on March 10, but Whitehurst contends Duncan wouldn’t have known about the study’s results until a week or so later (it was released on April 6th).
Until last November, Whitehurst was head of the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), which released the new voucher study. He obviously knows its timelines and procedures. But even Whitehurst acknowledges that there is ”substantial reason to believe that the secretary didn’t want to draw attention to the report,” citing the choice of a Friday release (Friday releases were deliberately discontinued by the IES years ago) and the mysterious absence of the news briefing that typically accompanies the release of such reports.
So what is a fair observer to think of Secretary Duncan based on Whitehursts’ revelations? Duncan may not have had an opportunity to sit on the report, because he may not have known about it. But Duncan had ultimate control over its release and it looks as though he went out of his way to bury it.
Why would a secretary of education bury a study showing that one government program (vouchers) produces better outcomes than another government program (D.C. public schooling) at one quarter the cost? No flattering explanation comes to mind. Perhaps someone else will come forward to defend Duncan on this point.
Or perhaps the secretary himself might like to share with the American people why this study was buried at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in the basement of an abandoned building with a hand scrawled “beware of leopard” sign affixed to it. Maybe he would like to let us know why he isn’t touting private school choice as a model for the states to emulate at a time when outcomes are languishing and money is tight. The only justification he has offered for not doing so is risible: it doesn’t serve enough kids. As Cato’s David Boaz pointed out earlier today, it is only limited in size because, uh…, Congress statutorily limited its size. We know that many more parents would like vouchers. We know from the international evidence that the supply of schools rises to meet demand, just as supply rises to meet demand in other fields.
But we also know that the Democratic party is beholden to the teachers unions and that the National Education Association sent a letter to congressional Democrats — not to all of Congress, mind you, it’s addressed “to Democrats” — demanding that they kill the D.C. voucher program.
Because of the constant pressure exerted by the NEA, Democrats who might otherwise have supported the program have voted to let it — and the hopes of 1,700 poor kids — die. To reverse their decision, a countervailing public pressure must be brought to save it.
And that is why Grover Whitehurst is mistaken when he says that ”the future of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is far more important than the contretemps” over the secretary’s handling of the voucher study. The future of the program depends on that “contretemps.” Were it not for the public outcry, there would be no political pressure on Democrats to rethink their decision to feed these children back into the D.C. public schools.
And as someone who is much happier under divided government than under the unitary rule of either major party, I hope that Democrats figure out that long-term political calculus demands support for educational freedom. When the $100 billion ”stimulus” spending on public schools accomplishes little or nothing — as it will — the public will be even angrier at the politicians extorting them into those schools. And the party associated with defending that system to the bitter end against the wishes of families won’t recover for a long while.
Andrew J. Coulson • April 10, 2009 @ 7:00 am
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/04/10/whitehurst-duncan-is-not-lying/
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/10/rove-biden-should-develop-a-habit-of-truth-telling/
Imagine this sociopath in the job.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/10/president-pantywaist/
President Pantywaist
POSTED AT 12:55 PM ON APRIL 10, 2009 BY ED MORRISSEY
Charles Krauthammer and Gerald Warner take up where Jackson Diehl left off in analyzing Barack Obama’s Grand Tour this month. Both men sound warning alarms over Obama’s tendency to surrender large swaths of the American agenda in return for getting nothing at all. And while Krauthammer wonders whether Obama has a sense of his own American identity, Warner wonders whether Obama has any sense at all.
First, Krauthammer:
Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.
And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.
He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.
From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.
And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he’ll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they’re not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?
When Austria is mocking you, you’re having a bad week. Yet who can blame Frau Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?
I thought that would win the Scorn Award for the week, but that’s just a warm-up for Warner. The British columnist for the Telegraph has a new name for Obama — well, two, actually:
So The One retired triumphant, having secured a massive contribution of 5,000 extra troops - all of them non-combatant, of course - which must really have put the wind up the Taliban, at the prospect of 5,000 more infidel cooks and bottle-washers swarming into the less hazardous regions of Afghanistan.
Then came the dramatic bit, the authentic West Wing script, with the President wakened in the middle of the night in Prague to be told that Kim Jong-il had just launched a Taepodong-2 missile. America had Aegis destroyers tracking the missile and could have shot it down. But Uncle Sam had a sterner reprisal in store for l’il ole Kim (as Dame Edna might call him): a multi-megaton strike of Obama hot air. …
President Pantywaist is hopping mad and he has a strategy to cut Kim down to size: he is going to slice $1.4bn off America’s missile defence programme, presumably on the calculation that Kim would feel it unsporting to hit a sitting duck, so that will spoil his fun.
Watch out, France and Co, there is a new surrender monkey on the block and, over the next four years, he will spectacularly sell out the interests of the West with every kind of liberal-delusionist initiative on nuclear disarmament and sitting down to negotiate with any power freak who wants to buy time to get a good ICBM fix on San Francisco, or wherever. If you thought the world was a tad unsafe with Dubya around, just wait until President Pantywaist gets into his stride.
The White House says it will take more than a few days for Obama’s impact to be felt, but I think they’re underestimating their President. Obama’s impact was plain to see. He drew great crowds for his American Humility Tour, and it played well — as bowing and scraping always does to those whom one bows and scrapes. Europe might like the whiff of surrender coming from Obama, but they made it plain that it would result in no movement on the American agenda. Actually, that’s not entirely true; as Diehl points out, Obama mostly neglected to even mention the American agenda.
John Kennedy had the insight to realize that he blew his performance with Nikita Khrushchev in 1961. Newt Gingrich allowed for the possibility that Obama might come to the same realization after this disaster of a foreign tour. Will President Pantywaist recover, a la Kennedy, or wallow in the self-delusional spin his White House provided this week, a la Jimmy Carter? Let’s hope it’s the former, because the world is far too dangerous a place for America to have a President Pantywaist.
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What an upstanding family.
Barack Obama's brother banned from Britain over 'sex assault' lie
By Justin Penrose 11/04/2009
THE brother of U.S. President Barack Obama has been barred from Britain after lying to police when accused of a sexual assault.
Samson Obama – known as Abo – gave a false name to officers interviewing him after he was alleged to have tried to sexually assault a teenage girl in this country last November.
It was claimed that he approached a group of teenage girls, tried to sexually assault one of them, and then followed them into a nearby cafe. He was said to have become aggressive and was asked to leave by the owner.
The police were called and Samson was arrested.
He denied the assault and police did not prosecute him, but he accepted a police caution for a public order offence. At the time of his arrest Abo was living illegally at his mother Kezia’s house in Bracknell, Berks, but after the incident returned to his native Kenya.
And last week he had a visa application to return to Britain rejected. Home Office staff ruled that allowing him into Britain was “not conducive to the public good”.
The news will be embarrassing to the US President, who gave half-brother Abo a personal tour of the White House in January when he attended the historic inauguration. Abo, 41, and Barack, 47, are both sons of Barack Snr, a former goatherder from Kenya.
Abo’s mother Kezia was Barack Senior’s first wife in Kenya and the president’s mother is his second wife Ann Denham, a white American from Kansas.
Barack Snr left America in 1965 with his third wife to return to Africa where he rekindled his relationship with Kezia and Abo was born. He was killed in a car crash when the President was 21.
Abo and Barack first met in 1987 when Barack traced his family in Kenya.
Ever since, they have become extremely close, meeting several times and speaking regularly on the phone. Abo’s mother, Kezia, is Barack’s stepmum and takes pride of place at family gatherings following the death of Barack’s mother Ann in 1995.
Immigration officers have discovered that at the time of his arrest Abo had been living illegally with Kezia in Bracknell for the past seven years (seems to be the family way).
He claimed to police that he was a bin man called Henry Aloo – but bizarrely gave them Kezia’s address.
His DNA, fingerprints and photograph were taken.
Abo was given a caution for a public order offence but he denied sexual assault. Detectives did not take any further action on the alleged attack.
Abo left Britain for Kenya and in January applied for a family UK visa to visit his mother Kezia, 67. He had to provide a fingerprint as part of the application and checks matched him with the man accused of the assault. Days later Abo asked for his passport back to get a visa to attend his brother’s inauguration at the White House.
Despite the British authorities knowing Abo’s past, he was allowed to overnight at Heathrow on the way to Washington in January to attend the historic event.
But when he applied again for a family visa in February he was confronted with the allegations at the UK Borders Agency office in Nairobi.
Abo denied that the offences related to him and claimed that his “passport had been stolen”. To support his visa application Abo submitted documents showing that he had a business in Nairobi – but the documents were forged, according to the Kenyan authorities.
The documents were supposed to back up his claim that he would not attempt to claim asylum in the UK, and to deny claims that he had been an illegal immigrant in the UK from 2001 to 2008.
An UK Borders Agency source said: “Nobody could believe that a close member of President Obama’s family was accused of a sex attack, even though he denied it. The fact is that when he was accused he gave another man’s identity to avoid being detected as an illegal immigrant.
“When he applied for a visa to visit his mother again we had little choice but to deny him entry.”
A spokesman for the UK Border Agency said: “We oppose the entry of all individuals to the UK where we believe their presence is not conducive to the public good.”
In Barack’s 1995 book, Dreams from My Father, he writes of meeting Abo for the first time and how he expressed disappointment that the portable tape recorder Barack brought for him as a gift was not a Sony.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-sto...5875-21272142/
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Tax activists have been mailing tea bags to the white house. I think tampons or sanitary napkins would be of more use to the empty-suit. It took Carter years to get his hostage crisis.
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The What Of Nations?
A pandering Obama praised Europe's 'leading role in the world.' Actually, Europe exercises almost no leadership, even in Europe.
Published Apr 11, 2009 George Will, Newsweek
"He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that's an earthquake."
—Arthur Miller, "Death of a Salesman"
President William Howard Taft understood how political cant can bewitch the speaker's mind. Listening to an aide natter on about "the machinery of government," Taft murmured, "The young man really thinks it's a machine." The current president's U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, was on Sunday television recently explaining why she thinks Iran, now several decades into its pursuit of nuclear weapons and close to consummation, might succumb to the siren song of sweet reason and retreat from success. Doing so, she said, would enable Iran "to be a responsible member of the international community"—perhaps not the highest priority for a regime that denies the Holocaust happened, and vows to complete it—and "enter the community of nations." Otherwise Iran will face "the full force of the international community."
Rice really thinks there is a community out there. To believe that is to believe, as liberals do, that harmony is humanity's natural condition, so discord is a remediable defect in arrangements.
Click here to find out more!
Regarding North Korea's missile launch, Rice was very stern. She said the U.N. Security Council would "meet," and there would be "consultation with our partners," who "all need to come together" and "add to" the 2006 U.N. resolution that North Korea had just disregarded, the one that demanded a halt to future missile-related activity, including launches. The Security Council met. It could not even bring itself to say North Korea's launch had violated the resolution against launches.
In the 1950s, conservatives vowed to "roll back" the Iron Curtain. Rice spoke of "ensuring that we roll back" North Korea's nuclear program. She took heart from what she called "some serious dismantlement" of North Korea's principal reactor. Actually, the reactor was not dismantled but disabled, an easily reversible act. Fuel rods were removed and the cooling tower was destroyed. The rods can be reinserted. The reactor can operate without the cooling tower—warm water would be released, which might kill lots of wildlife, but, then, the regime kills lots of North Koreans, even though that supposedly causes frowns to crease the faces of the supposed community of nations.
Perhaps Rice thinks the mere existence of the U.N. proves the existence of an international community. If so, she should spend some communitarian time with our allies the Saudis. The Obama administration has decided to join them as members of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which the Bush administration boycotted because it includes despotic regimes that are ludicrous auditors of other nations' respect for human rights.
An unmarried 23-year-old Saudi woman became pregnant when abducted and gang-raped. She was convicted of adultery and sentenced to a year in prison—and to a perhaps fatal 100 lashes after her child is born. Another woman was visited by two men—one had been breast-fed by her; the other was bringing her bread. Convicted of the crime of being in the presence of men who are not family members, she was sentenced to 40 lashes, which is perhaps a death sentence for a 75-year-old. The "community of nations" that liberals like Rice believe in certainly has what liberals celebrate: diversity.
If there is a "community of nations," then "Yes, we can" do this and that. But if not?
During Barack Obama's trip abroad, during which he praised himself by disparaging his predecessor and deploring America's shortcomings, he took pandering to a comic peak, combining criticism of America with flattery of Europe, when he deplored America's "failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world." Actually, as the crisis of aggression and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans demonstrated a decade ago, Europe plays almost no leadership role, even in Europe, which remains a geographical rather than a political denotation.
Quantcast
Europe's collective existence through NATO might be ending. Afghanistan, the supposed "graveyard of empires," might be the burial ground of NATO, which is 60 years old and showing signs of advanced senescence. Officially, NATO says the Afghanistan campaign is vital; actually, it promises a mere 5,000 more troops, none of them for combat. Most of the NATO nations that grudgingly send dribs and drabs of troops to Afghanistan send them enveloped in caveats that virtually vitiate their usefulness, including the stipulation that they shall not be put in harm's way. Tom Korologos, who was U.S. ambassador to Belgium from 2004 to 2007, recalls that when Belgium finally agreed to send a few hundred troops from its unionized "army"—average age: 40—other caveats concerned bottled water, a certain ratio of psychiatrists to troops and a requirement that dust be kept to a minimum.
In Europe, during his first star turn on the world stage, the president learned, or should have, that charm and two euros will almost get him a copy of the International Herald Tribune. Out there in the blue, flying high, selling himself, he found out how far he can go on a smile and a shoeshine.
America's enemies are not smiling back. Those are smirks, not smiles.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/13/obama-vindicates-bush-again/
Obama vindicates Bush, again
posted at 10:16 am on April 13, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
When will Barack Obama apologize to George Bush? He spent the entire campaign impugning Bush’ handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, claiming that they required access to federal courts and that military detentions were not necessary. On Friday, Obama took another big step towards Bush by deciding to fight a federal court that essentially endorsed Obama’s views on the campaign trail:
The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight.
In a court filing, the Justice Department also asked District Judge John D. Bates not to proceed with the habeas-corpus cases of three detainees at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Afghanistan. Judge Bates ruled last week that the three — each of whom says he was seized outside of Afghanistan — could challenge their detention in court.Jim Geraghty’s axiom applies: All of Obama’s statements come with an expiration date — all of them. That actually is good news for the Right, since we disagree with most of Obama’s statements. This case is a a good example.
Terrorists and insurgents captured by military and intelligence personnel engaged overseas do not get habeas corpus. Not even the Nuremberg defendants got habeas corpus in American courts, the example Obama liked to use (and got wrong) on the campaign trail. Their military tribunals were the final word, as they should be with detainees at Bagram or at Gitmo.
I’m glad to see Obama coming to his senses on this point. This is change I can believe in, but Obama should apologize to Bush in every brief his DoJ files along these lines.
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Duncan the Mercenary, Obama the Coward
Posted by Adam Schaeffer
The Obama administration’s stance on the voucher program is transparently political and insulting. President Obama claims he wants to help the poor and improve education, and yet he has aided and abetted Congress in the murder of the only federal education program with evidence of sustained and increasing achievement gains for participants (and at a quarter of the cost).
From Bloomberg today:
A spending law signed by Obama last month will end a program that gives low-income parents tuition vouchers of as much as $7,500 a year to send their children to private schools. Among 54 participating schools are Sidwell Friends, where Sasha and Malia Obama are students, and Ambassador Baptist Church Christian School, where Sherrise Greene sends her two daughters and had wanted to enroll Marquis.
“I had high hopes that he would be attending with a scholarship with his sisters,” Greene said in an interview. “I’m just really hurt that it’s being ended, because I think it’s a good program.”
Ms. Greene should feel hurt. And she should be angry as well. Many of the scholarship parents are meeting tonight to force Congress and the administration to recognize that they are real people who will be hurt by this payoff to the teachers unions. I look forward to their protests.
The most loathsome character in this sordid story, perhaps . . . it’s difficult to choose . . . is Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. This self-proclaimed “reformer” had this to say to the parents of this wildly popular and proven program:
Duncan said the Education Department findings don’t warrant a continuation of the voucher program, except for children already enrolled. While some students showed “modest gains” in reading, those who had switched to private schools from “low performing” public schools showed no improvement, he said in an e-mailed statement.
How stupid and insignificant do Duncan and Obama think these parents and children are? The whole affair is disgusting.
Adam Schaeffer • April 15, 2009 @ 11:06 am
Filed under: Education and Child Policy
Tags: Arne Duncan, Congress, education, obama, Obama administration, parent, President Obama, private schools, public schools, school, spending, state, students, unions, voucher, voucher program, vouchers
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/04/15/duncan-the-mercenary-obama-the-coward/
A panel discussion of this travesty:
http://media.bulletinnews.com/playclip.aspx?clipid=8cb8b65f4adbac4
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Obama picked a pretend fight with the union over 'merit pay'. We have that already here in MN. As my friend describes the extra check his wife gets from the state each year, it's free money - for a middle school teacher in a nice suburban district where the teachers do their job and the kids show up ready and do the work assigned. It doesn't come out of the pocket of the mediocre teachers, who still get full pay, benefits, summers off, winter break, spring break, afternoons off, weekends off, retirement guarantees, did I mention family medical? The bonus comes from the already strapped taxpayers, and is above and beyond the above-market union contract pay. In the case of a federal bonus program, the money comes out of thin air, on top of the other 7 trillion unfunded forecast, devaluing every other dollar in the economy.
Vouchers OTOH cost nothing, just paying the per kid rate the taxpayer is already obligated to pay.
Obama faced an easy choice between putting his cute and smart daughters in the best private school available or in the public schools run by the teachers' unions - and he paid no political price for his decision. We were all supposed to be excited because of his race, but DC public schools are also largely black, isn't that exciting!
But the DC graduation rate is barely over 50%. In my daughter's public school it is over 98%. I contend that it is not the color of your skin but the prevalence of welfare dependency dollars in your district screwing up the families and priorities in the homes, neighborhoods and the schools that correlates best with academic deficiency.
Merit pay should go to the parents of the kids who show up ready and willing to learn across most of America. Shame on Obama and almost all Democrats for abandoning the kids in the neighborhoods and not letting them at least take the dollars the taxpayer is already spending on them and use it in the accredited educational institution of their choice.
I guess the BS term 'pro-choice' has some other meaning to them.
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April 20, 2009
Not a misprint: Obama seeks cuts of $100 MILLION to reduce deficit (updated)
Rick Moran
If this were April 1, I might be inclined to think it a media joke. Or that the White House press office is pulling our leg.
But it is not and it makes me worry for the sanity of President Obama that he could actually believe that cutting 1/37,000 of the federal budget will make a dent in the $1.75 (at least) TRILLION debt he's running up this year.
And the way the Obamapress is reporting this is hysterically funny - as if he is actually trying to cut the deficit. Here's one of the major Obama rags in the country, the LA Times:
President Obama, whose healthcare and economic stimulus initiatives threaten to dramatically inflate the federal budget deficit, heralded a new push Saturday to cut wasteful spending in Washington.
The president said that in coming weeks he would announce the elimination of "dozens of government programs." And he said he would ask his Cabinet secretaries on Monday for specific proposals to slash their departments' budgets, promising there would be "no sacred cows and no pet projects."
The president singled out a move by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to end consulting contracts to create seals and logos that he said had cost the department $3 million since 2003.
In case you are unaware, it wouldn't surprise me if DHS spends $3 million on exercise bikes for higher grade bureaucrats. They may spend that much on Kleenex for DHS offices.
And by the way, just what the hell was DHS doing spending millions of dollars on logos anyway? I know everyone in America wants a DHS T-shirt 'cause they're so kewl but can't they settle for a coffee mug with the Homeland Security seal on it?
Economist Greg Mankiw can't believe it either:
To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had be cut? By $3 over the course of the year--approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.
Is the president that out of touch that he doesn't know there are far riper trees to prune if he wants to go after government waste? The Pentagon always has a lot of bloat as do entitlement programs. Don't need a pair of pruning shears there, an ax will do just fine. Just keep hacking away until someone starts screaming - and then hack some more.
Energy, Transportation, HHS, Commerce, Education - the whole jiggling, fat laden, porky pig of a budget could stand a once over by those Department secretaries. Instead, what will be cut won't even count as being superficial. More like a bad PR joke or Obama's idea of responsible government - which, when you think about it, is pretty much the same thing.
Talking trillions and cutting billions would at least be in the ballpark. But saving $100 million dollars out of a budget of $3.6 trillion is a slap in the face to the taxpayer - a cynical public relations blitz. I hope it is not indicative of the way the president will approach deficit cutting in the future.
At the rate he's going, the sun will burn out before the deficit is reduced to a manageable level.
Hat Tip: Ed Lasky
Update - Randall Hoven adds:
First, $100 million is a lot of money. President Obama would have to appoint 2,940 more Tim Geithners to collect that much in back taxes (at $34,000 each). Yet there are only about 20 cabinet positions and perhaps a similar number of czars. I'm not sure even Barack Obama could come up with 2,900 more czars in only 90 days.
Secondly, Obama's willingness to spend 100 million fewer dollars means he thinks the economy is doing less badly than he had thought it was. After all, he once said,
"What do you think a stimulus is? It's spending - that's the whole point! Seriously."
The Congressional Budget Office estimated the 2009 federal deficit to be $1.8450 trillion. Once that $100 million is cut, it we be only $1.8449 trillion. If they could do that every 90 days, it would eliminate the 2009 deficit entirely by the year 6558. (Neglecting interest, of course. If we don't neglect interest, that $100 million represents about one week's worth of interest on 2009's deficit.)
It's not all good news, though. First, according to Al Gore's calculations, the oceans will be 900 feet above current levels by 6558. And right after, in the year 6559, they would have to start working off the $1.379 trillion deficit of 2010.
But it's a start. And for that, we must give President Obama credit.
Tom Suhadolnik adds:
Here is my attempt to bring Obama’s proposal into perspective for those who do not normally deal with billions and trillions in their daily lives.
Imagine you are the head of an average American family with a household income of $50,233.00. Now imagine you are faced with a life changing crisis: a family member becomes ill or someone is laid off. As the prospect of bankruptcy or foreclosure becomes more real you are forced to make tough decisions. You call your family members to a meeting and give them the bad news.
You start by spending a few minutes explaining the seriousness of the situation. You recount some stories about how the family has come together in the past. You close the pep talk with something about adversity building character.
Then you tell them what needs to be done to stave off disaster. You need the family to come together and slash the annual household budget by $1.39. It will take help from all the family members. It will certainly be painful. But in order to respond to the crisis the family must endure the 0.00278% cut in spending.
Your teenage son, mouth agape, stares at you. Your wife quietly wonders if you have forgotten to take your meds again. Your teenage daughter worries you might strike up a conversation with her date tonight and scare him away. And your 8 year old, always willing to help, places the change from her pocket on the kitchen table and begins counting.
In the years to come, your youngest will tell her grandchildren how she saved the family from financial disaster back in ought-nine with 5 quarters, 2 dimes and some lint.
Absurd? Not at all.
Obama’s budget for FY2010 is roughly $3,600,000,000,000.00. He is asking his cabinet members to find $100,000,000.00 in cuts. That is 0.00278% of FY2010 spending. That is the equivalent of the average American family cutting $1.39 from their annual budget.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/04/not_a_misprint_obama_seeks_cut.html at April 20, 2009 - 04:15:49 PM EDT
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The Apologists
by Patrick J. Buchanan
04/21/2009
For 50 minutes, Obama sat mute, as a Marxist thug from Nicaragua delivered his diatribe, charging America with a century of terrorist aggression in Central America.
After Daniel Ortega finished spitting in our face, accusing us of inhumanity toward Fidel Castro's Cuba, Obama was asked his thoughts.
"I thought it was 50 minutes long. That's what I thought."
Hillary Clinton was asked to comment: "I thought the cultural performance was fascinating," she cooed.
Pressed again on Ortega's vitriol, Hillary replied: "To have those first-class Caribbean entertainers all on one stage and to see how much was done in such a small amount of space. I was overwhelmed."
Thus the nation that won the Cold War, contained the cancer of Castroism in Cuba, liberated Grenada, blocked communist takeovers of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, and poured scores of billions in aid into this region was left undefended by its own leaders at the Summit of the Americas.
Nor was this the only unanswered insult. Hugo Chavez, who has called Obama an "ignoramus" and Bush "El Diablo," walked over to a seated U.S. president and handed him the anti-American tract "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent."
The book blames Latin America's failures on white Europeans.
It opens, "Renaissance Europeans ventured across the oceans and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations."
Civilizations? Before Pizarro and Cortez, the Inca and Aztec empires these conquistadors overthrew were into human sacrifice.
Evo Morales, the Aymaran president of Bolivia, who is using the race card against Bolivians of European descent, implied a U.S. role in an assassination plot against him.
Argentina's Cristina Kirchner, who allegedly received black-bag money from Chavez, ripped into America for its role in the 1980s. Under Reagan, America aided Britain in the Falklands War, after the Argentine junta invaded the islands, and assisted the Contras in their war of national liberation to oust Ortega's Sandinistas.
Again, Obama offered no defense of his country.
President Lula da Silva of Brazil, who blames the world financial crisis on "white, blue-eyed bankers," told Obama that any future Summit of the Americas without the Castro brothers was unacceptable.
Perhaps Obama believes in turn-the-other-cheek diplomacy, though it is hard to find much success in history for such a policy. Perhaps pacifism is in his DNA. Perhaps he shares the indictment of America that is part of the repertoire of every Latin demagogue.
Whatever his motive, in Trinidad, there were not two sides to the story. There were the trashers of America on the Latino left and a U.S. president who wailed plaintively, "I'm thankful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was 3 months old."
But, the Bay of Pigs, had it succeeded, would have given Cubans 50 years of freedom instead of the brutal dictatorship they have had to endure. And it took place four months before Barack was born.
Obama's silence -- signifying, as it does, assent -- in the face of attacks on his country is of a piece with the "contrition tour" of his secretary of state.
"Clinton Scores Points by Admitting Past U.S. Errors," was the headline over Saturday's New York Times story by Mark Landler:
"It has become a recurring theme of Hillary Rodham Clinton's early travels as the chief diplomat of the United States: She says that American policy on a given issue has failed, and her foreign listeners fall all over themselves in gratitude.
"On Friday, Mrs. Clinton said ... that the uncompromising policy of the Bush administration toward Cuba had not worked. ...
"The contrition tour goes beyond Latin America. In China, Mrs. Clinton told audiences that the United States must accept its responsibility as a leading emitter of greenhouse gases. In Indonesia, she said the American-backed policy of sanctions against Myanmar had not been effective. And in the Middle East, she pointed out that ostracizing the Iranian government had not persuaded it to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions."
Sandler wrote that Hillary brought to mind Bill Clinton:
"On a single trip to Africa in 1998 ... Bill Clinton apologized for American participation in slavery; American support of brutal African dictators; American 'neglect and ignorance' of Africa; American failure to intervene sooner in the Rwandan genocide of 1994; American 'complicity' in apartheid ... ."
Yet, as C.S. Lewis reminds us in "God in the Dock," "The first and fatal charm of national repentance is ... the encouragement it gives us to turn from the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing -- but, first, of denouncing -- the conduct of others."
Bewailing the policies of Bush as failures and standing mute in the face of attacks on his country and predecessors may come back to bite Obama.
For when Jimmy Carter assumed a posture of moral superiority over LBJ and Richard Nixon, by declaring, "We have gotten over our inordinate fear of communism," it came back to bite him, good and hard.
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Obama's Budget Follies
By George F. Will
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Monday morning the government braced for austerity, as the government understands that. Having sent Congress a $3.5 trillion budget, the president signaled in advance -- perhaps so his Cabinet members could steel themselves for the new asceticism -- that at the first meeting of his Cabinet he would direct the 15 heads of departments to find economies totaling $100 million, which is about 13 minutes of federal spending, and 0.0029 percent -- about a quarter of one-hundredth of 1 percent -- of $3.5 trillion.
If the Agriculture Department sliced the entire $100 million, that would be equal to 0.1 percent of its fiscal 2008 budget. The president, peering from beneath his green eyeshade at the secretary of agriculture, might remember this from The Post of Jan. 24:
"Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack . . . learned that his new workplace contains a post office, fitness centers, cafeterias and 6,900 employees. But he remained uncertain about exactly how many employees he supervises nationwide. 'I asked how many employees work at USDA, and nobody really knows,' he said."
The president's $100 million edict actually suggests an insufficiency in the river of federal assistance flowing out of Washington to the deserving poor, as that category is currently understood: incompetent car companies, reckless insurance companies, mismanaged banks, profligate state governments, etc. But political satirists, too, deserve a bailout from a federal government that has turned their material into public policy.
The president has set an example for his Cabinet. He has ladled a trillion or so dollars ("or so" is today's shorthand for "give or take a few hundreds of billions") hither and yon, but while ladling he has, or thinks he has, saved about $15 million by killing, or trying to kill, a tiny program that this year is enabling about 1,715 D.C. children (90 percent black, 9 percent Hispanic) to escape from the District's failing public schools and enroll in private schools.
The District's mayor and school superintendent support the program. But the president has vowed to kill programs that "don't work." He has looked high and low and -- lo and behold -- has found one. By uncanny coincidence, it is detested by the teachers unions that gave approximately four times $15 million to Democratic candidates and liberal causes last year.
Not content with seeing the program set to die after the 2009-10 school year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan (former head of Chicago's school system, which never enrolled an Obama child) gratuitously dashed even the limited hopes of another 200 children and their parents. Duncan, who has sensibly chosen to live with his wife and two children in Virginia rather than in the District, rescinded the scholarships already awarded to those children for the final year of the program, beginning in September. He was, you understand, thinking only of the children and their parents: He would spare them the turmoil of being forced by, well, Duncan and other Democrats to return to terrible public schools after a tantalizing one-year taste of something better. Call that compassionate liberalism.
After Congress debated the program, the Education Department released -- on a Friday afternoon, a news cemetery -- a congressionally mandated study showing that, measured by student improvement and parental satisfaction, the District's program works. The department could not suppress the Heritage Foundation's report that 38 percent of members of Congress sent or are sending their children to private schools.
The Senate voted 58 to 39 to kill the program. Heritage reports that if the senators who have exercised their ability to choose private schools had voted to continue the program that allows less-privileged parents to make that choice for their children, the program would have been preserved.
As the president and his party's legislators are forcing minority children back into public schools, the doors of which would never be darkened by the president's or legislators' children, remember this: We have seen a version of this shabby act before. One reason conservatism came to power in the 1980s was that in the 1970s liberals advertised their hypocrisy by supporting forced busing of other people's children to schools the liberals' children did not attend.
This issue will be back. In a few months, the appropriation bill for the District will come to the floor of the House of Representatives, at which point there will be a furious fight for the children's interests. Then we will learn whether the president and his congressional allies are capable of embarrassment. On the evidence so far, they are not.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/22/AR2009042203089_pf.html
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http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/gerald_warner/blog/2009/04/24/barack_obama_and_the_cia_why_does_president_pantywaist_hate_america_so_badly
Barack Obama and the CIA: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?
Posted By: Gerald Warner at Apr 24, 2009 at 18:41:00 [General]
If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.
Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.
That is why he opened Pandora's Box by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions on waterboarding and other hardline interrogation techniques. He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to rush to Langley, Virginia to try to reassure a demoralised CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda.
"Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks," he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding? Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them - or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.
So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers.
Obama promised his CIA audience that nobody would be prosecuted for past actions. That has already been contradicted by leftist groups with a revanchist ambition to put Republicans, headed if possible by Condoleezza Rice, in the dock. Talk about playing party politics with national security. Martin Scheinin, the United Nations special investigator for human rights, claims that senior figures, including former vice president Dick Cheney, could face prosecution overseas. Ponder that - once you have got over the difficulty of locating the United Nations and human rights within the same dimension.
President Pantywaist Obama should have thought twice before sitting down to play poker with Dick Cheney. The former vice president believes documents have been selectively published and that releasing more will prove how effective the interrogation techniques were. Under Dubya's administration, there was no further atrocity on American soil after 9/11.
President Pantywaist's recent world tour, cosying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America's enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners. His only enemies are fellow Americans. Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?
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Ok, this is not racist. :wink: BO is different from all the previous "white" presidents because he is "hip".
Is this code for, "he is black enough"? I don't know.
Well, if 6'4" Abe played, if there was a basketball in his day, he would have kicked BO's ass in B ball.
***For Obama, hipness is what it is
Sam Fulwood III Sam Fulwood Iii – Fri Apr 24, 5:06 am ET
During his first 100 days as president of the United States, Barack Obama revealed how different he is from all the white men who preceded him in the Oval Office, and the differences run deeper — in substance and style — than the color of his skin.
Barack Hussein Obama is the nation’s first hip president.
This, of course, is subject to debate. But watch him walk. Listen to him talk. See the body language, the expressions, the clothes. He’s got attitude, rhythm, a sense of humor, contemporary tastes.
This much is clear: Whether dealing with the Wall Street mess, shifting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan or fumbling to fill his Cabinet, Obama leans heavily on personal panache to push political policies. Truth be told, his style is rooted in something elusive and hard to define. Pure and simple, it’s hip.
“Being hip is being able to navigate your environment and others’ environments,” like the way Obama traverses racial boundaries, said John Leland, author of the definitive book “Hip: The History.”
“Obama has this awareness that other presidents haven’t had. He’s white, and he’s black. He’s an elitist, and he’s regular folk. He’s not pinned down to a perspective.”
Young is to hip as old is to fogey — an essential characteristic. Obama has modern instincts and attitudes that appeal to younger people, and more than any other president in recent memory, that makes him a role model. He is green, open, athletic, tech-savvy, healthy. And his hip image certainly isn’t hurt by his wife, who is so obviously cool — setting trends (Sleeveless! Tending her own garden!), confidently mingling with superstars, gracing magazine covers coast to coast.
Consider how, during the campaign, Obama used his personality — the smile, the jaunty stride and the hip-hop verbiage — to disarm critics, charm supporters and persuade fence sitters to elect him president. In an against-the-odds campaign, Obama never lost his poise as he forged a rapport with a new generation of voters while keeping old heads on his team. He could go professorial on the need for health care reform or describe the minutiae of Middle East politics. Still, he begged to bring his BlackBerry into the Oval Office, a signal that he intends to remain in touch with the 21st century. Very hip!
Once he settled into the White House, the hip parade didn’t subside. Early guests included pop artists Stevie Wonder (a campaign supporter), Alicia Keys, Will.i.am and Sheryl Crow — but also Sweet Honey in the Rock, a group of socially and politically active a capella singers with an indie, underground vibe.
Obama strutted onto Jay Leno’s stage and plopped down on the couch, making him the first sitting president to do that. He unveiled his March Madness basketball bracket from the Oval Office. And speaking of basketball, who missed the sight of POTUS dressed in all black, sitting courtside at a Bulls-Wizards game with a cup of beer and high-fiving a trash-talking fan? How hip was that?!
It’s so hip that school kids in Albany, N.Y., coined a term for it: “Baracking.” And it doesn’t stop there. Those in the know at Albany High greet each other by saying: “What’s up, my Obama?” and they respond to a sneeze with “Barack you.” Misbehavior is peer-corrected with the admonition, “Barack’s in the White House,” which translates, “Show some respect.”
Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, said it was “just really stunning” that kids were co-opting the president’s name as a term of endearment and identification.
“This is the most emblematic, positive thing that kids could say,” she said. “It’s connecting them to him, saying that there’s something special in the connection between them.”
John F. Kennedy understood the nexus of Hollywood glam and Washington power, but he wasn’t a hipster. Bill Clinton looked good in Ray-Bans and did a nice turn with the saxophone on “The Arsenio Hall Show,” but in his heart of hearts, Ol’ Bubba was a country boy from the Ozarks with a need-filled, wonky core — not hip.
Obama’s hipness reinforces that he’s different, yet he’s comfortingly familiar to Americans who want to revere their presidents as pedestal material while demanding that they be approachable as the guy next door.
So what’s hipness got to do with public policy? For Obama, everything.
His personal charisma is a nonverbal form of communication, sending seemingly conflicting messages: the need for radical and sacrificial change, yet the reassurance to Americans that he’s as sane and stable as the guy in the next barber’s chair, said Roger Wilkins, who recently retired as a history professor at George Mason University.
“Hipness is a way of presenting to the world that you know what’s going on and that you’ve got things under control,” said Wilkins, who served in the Johnson administration and has had up-close dealings with every president since Kennedy.
“For Obama, his hipness exudes power. He just keeps on moving, no matter what comes his way, and he doesn’t lose it. That’s being hip — and I don’t see any contemporary public figures whom I would think of as hip.”
True, Obama uses his hipster personality as a weapon. His enormous popularity is a bludgeon that demands political respect, if not support. For example, almost immediately after settling into the White House, Obama left Washington to campaign in Ohio, Michigan and other hard-hit states to sell his economic stimulus plan. It was an effective effort at charm-school diplomacy, garnering outside-the-Beltway support and applying pressure on Washington insiders to get on board the Obama train.
The implication was that if you were not on board, you were not hip — you were square. And who wants to be so uncool as to be on the wrong side of the hip president, other than a few vocal anti-cools, such as radio yakker Rush Limbaugh, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner and former Vice President Dick Cheney?
There have been a few other nationally recognized hip politicians: the late Rep. Adam Clayton Powell of New York; former California Gov. Jerry Brown, who is currently the state’s attorney general; and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown come to mind. For a brief period in the 1970s and 1980s, one might argue that Washington’s eternal pol Marion Barry was hip; that was before drugs, booze and women brought him low.
To be sure, the track record for hip politicians isn’t promising. History suggests that the power of personality has limitations in politics. It sours under public scrutiny.
So can it last? Can Obama’s hipness survive the weight and responsibility of the office? Maybe there’s a reason presidents aren’t hip. War-making, secrecy, aging, unpopularity, sternness and sobriety — these are decidedly unhip. And all that could come in the next 100 days, because hipness is a trendy thing, subject to popular whim.
For now, with approval ratings over 60 percent, Obama is hip. But he will have to find a balance between being hip and being powerful while sitting in the world’s most watched fishbowl.
“Hipness is what it is! And sometimes hipness is what it ain’t,” goes the famous song by Tower of Power. “There’s one thing you should know. What’s hip today might become passé.”
Sam Fulwood III wrote about race and politics for the Los Angeles Times’ Washington bureau for more than a decade and is a frequent contributor to The Root.com.***
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By SUZANNE SATALINE, JONATHAN D. ROCKOFF and CHRISTOPHER CONKEY
As secret missions go, this one was a flop.
On Monday morning, one of the 747s used to ferry around the U.S. president was dispatched to the Statue of Liberty, escorted by a fighter jet. Assignment: Get some fresh glamour shots of the plane.
The Air Force said the flight needed to remain confidential. So while New York police knew about it, as did at least one person in the mayor's office, regular New Yorkers remained in the dark.
As a result, to onlookers Monday all across downtown Manhattan -- where the World Trade Center once stood -- the photo shoot looked like a terrorist attack. People watched in horror as a massive aircraft, trailed closely by an F-16 fighter jet, banked and roared low near the city, in a frightening echo of the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
Fearing the worst, thousands of people streamed out of the skyscrapers and into the streets. Some buildings ordered evacuations. "Oh God, it was mayhem in here, just mayhem," says Rubin Shimon, manager of Styling Haircutters, a barbershop near Ground Zero. Many people took shelter in the shop to call loved ones on their cellphones.
It was all over in a half-hour or so. Then the finger-pointing began. "I'm annoyed -- furious is a better word -- that I wasn't told," said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a news conference. He'd been scheduled to talk about a swine-flu outbreak at a Queens school, but also sounded off at the federal government for its "badly conceived" flyover plan.
He chastised his own office for its role in keeping the flyover secret. On Thursday night, city officials say, a junior mayoral aide had been alerted to the flyover by the Federal Aviation Administration, which requested that it be kept secret. Someone in City Hall alerted the New York Police Department, but no public announcement was made.
Marc Mugnos was reprimanded for not apprising the mayor, and a disciplinary letter was placed in his file, a spokesman said. Mr. Mugnos couldn't be reached for comment.
Low-Flying Plane Causes Scare in Manhattan
1:44
A low-flying airplane escorted by military jets sent worried workers fleeing offices in the New York City area. The FAA said it was a "photo op" conducted by a unit of the Air Force.
The email sent to City Hall describes a "flying photo op" -- government-speak for a publicity photo -- to include two or possibly three passes over the area. The email, sent by an FAA official and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, lists flight patterns and specifies a photo-op altitude of 1,000 to 1,500 feet.
The email specifies that the information "only be shared with persons with a need to know" and "shall not be released to the public." It also says that, "Due to the possibility of public concern regarding [Department of Defense] aircraft flying at low levels, coordination with Federal, State and Local law enforcement agencies...has been accomplished."
The email's author, James J. Johnston, of FAA air traffic, declined to comment.
An Obama administration official said the mission was "classified" by the military and that the FAA, which controls much of the airspace over Manhattan, did what the military asked. "The mission was to send [the aircraft] up to get a picture of it flying around the Statue of Liberty," this person said. "They said they needed to update their photo files." President Obama wasn't aboard.
More
Vote: How does the Air Force One "photo op" affect your confidence in White House decision making?Wash Wire: Caldera Takes BlamePlane Scare Has Happened BeforeReaders' reactions: Plane 'Flying VERY Low'Readers' Photos: Jets Circle N.Y.Send photos to yourphotos@wsj.comThe New York photo shoot wasn't the only one planned. The White House had scheduled a follow-up session on May 5 or May 6 in Washington, D.C., according to two government officials. The D.C. flyover has now been canceled, a government official said.
Louis Caldera, a former Secretary of the Army who runs the White House Military Office, took the blame. "While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it's clear that the mission created confusion and disruption," he said. "I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused."
Mr. Caldera met Monday afternoon with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina "to hear the president's displeasure," an official said.
It was a beautiful spring day in the Big Apple -- perfect for picture taking. The aircraft, painted in White House livery, was trailed by one F-16 fighter jet. The aircraft had flown from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, across New Jersey, down the Hudson River and then circled the Statue of Liberty before heading off.
For many who witnessed the maneuver, it stirred dark memories. Andrew Wybolt, who works for Barclays PLC in a skyscraper that borders the Hudson, said people rushed for the windows when they heard the planes. "They just started sprinting and freaking out," he said.
Associated Press
Louis Caldera, pictured in 2006, took blame for the flight.
Thousands of workers from Merrill Lynch, American Express and other companies in the buildings that ring the former World Trade Center site hustled for the exits. Many stood outside their offices, nervously looking up into the sky, while hundreds of others walked north, along the West Side Highway, as thousands of people had done the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
"To do something like this to all these people who have already been through 9-11 is just wrong," said Greg Forman, a broker at the New York Mercantile Exchange, which is located in a building along the Hudson river, across the street from the World Trade Center site.
One block north, construction workers on the 43-story Goldman Sachs Group Inc. tower said they had a close-up view of the low-flying plane. "I saw that thing coming and ran down the stairs," said Eddie Navedo, who was clearing construction debris on the 23rd floor of the new building when he spotted the plane flying low over the river, then banking sharply to the west. "Everybody was saying, it's a terrorist attack."
Not everyone lost his cool. Mr. Shimon, the manager of the barbershop where people fled on Monday, was present for the attacks in 2001, and in fact at that time worked in a shop even closer to the World Trade Center than his current one. He watched the towers fall that day.
So did the events of Monday scare him? "To tell you the truth, not really," Mr. Shimon said. "I didn't think it was such a big deal. I'm a New Yorker."
—Jonathan Weisman, Alex Frangos and Michael Corkery contributed to this article
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Barack Obama already less popular than Nixon or Carter? Quelle Surprise! (Not)
Posted By: James Delingpole at Apr 28, 2009 at 16:39:36 [General]
Posted in: UK Correspondents , Eagle Eye
Tags:View More
america, approval ratings, Barack Obama, first hundred days, Obama, USA
It's official: Barack Obama is the second most reviled newbie president of the last forty years. A gallup survey today published in the Washington Times shows Obama to have an approval rating of just 56 per cent. The only president to have performed worse than that at the end of his first 100 days in office was Bill Clinton - and only then because it happened to coincide with the spectacular mishandling of the Waco siege, which might reasonably be laid at the door of ATF and FBI incompetence rather than presidential negligence.
Barack Obama: Nice kids, cute dog, shame about the politics
Obama's low approval ratings, however, are all of his own making. He campaigned as a healing moderate who would take the US beyond partisan politics and restore the economy; instead he has terrified all those Americans who rightly abhor the idea of adopting European socialist, with the most sweeping advance of the progressive agenda and growth in the power of the state since the days of FDR's New Deal.
His cheerleaders in the mainstream media deny this is so. "Public thinks highly of Obama" was USA Today's unbiased response to the polls, while the editor of Newsweek has argued he always campaigned as a progressive.
But the Post argues otherwise: 'In all three presidential debates, Mr. Obama promised to cut government spending and reduce the size of the deficit. He blamed the economic crisis on excessive deficits. At no time did candidate Barack Obama say that more deficit-spending was the solution.'
Is Obama really worse than Carter or Nixon, though? To help readers make up their own minds and in the spirit of unity and Obama-style non-partisanship, I hereby offer a helpful pro and con guide to Obama: the First 100 Days.
CON:
1. Pantywaist, surrender-monkey, I-feel-your-pain, kowtowing to countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia means that America is no longer just hated in the Muslim world. Now, it is hated AND laughed at AND despised.
2. Swingeing green tax measures will destroy US industry, enrich Al Gore, delight Michael Moore while costing the average US family - in Cap and Trade alone - an extra $3,900 a year.
3. Returning Winston Churchill bust, snubbing British prime minister guarantees that never again will the United Kingdom ride the rescue of the US's sorry ass next time there's another Pearl Harbor.
4. Universal healthcare program will cost US taxpayers at least $650 billion (expect this to expand, like builders' estimates by at least 100 per cent), giving a health service to match Britain's "Envy of the World": ie crowded, filthy, chaotic wards; long waiting lists; lower cancer survival rates; higher death toll; ever-growing expense; a service so bad you'll pay anything in private health insurance to avoid using it...
5. Economy showing no signs of recovery. Why should it? Obama's doing nothing to make it better.
6. US intelligence services rendered embarrassed, powerless and useless, thanks to "torture memos" peevishly released to discredit previous administration.
7. Proposed $2.4 TRILLION in new taxes will disincentivise even the most instinctively hard working Americans. Instead they will go on Atlas Shrugged style strike. Maybe they're right: it could be the only answer.
8. Galloping inflation caused by money printing. US to become next Zimbabwe, only without the elephants to poach and eat to stave off mass starvation.
9. Noises already made about "Right Wing Extremists" - ie war veterans, people with Ron Paul bumper stickers, anyone else who disagrees with any aspect of the progressive Obama program - suggests it won't be long before those 44 per cent (so far) of registered Obama-sceptics hear a midnight knock at the door.
10. Rules - lots and lots more oppressive, Euro-style nanny state style rules governing everything from how Americans dispose of their trash, to race relations to pet care to firearms ownership. It's for Society's good, you understand.
PROs
1. Nice kids
2. Cute-looking dog.
3. The way he offed those 3 Somali pirates was pretty cool.
4. Er....
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/james_delingpole/blog/2009/04/28/barack_obama_already_less_popular_than_nixon_or_carter_quelle_surprise_not
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"Barack Obama is the second most reviled newbie president of the last forty years. A gallup survey today published in the Washington Times shows Obama to have an approval rating of just 56 per cent. The only president to have performed worse than that at the end of his first 100 days in office was Bill Clinton"
Is this stat true? Wow!
Listening to the main stream media one would think BO is the *most beloved* Pres of all time after the first 100 days!
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I've always loved numbers...
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From NBC's Harry Enten
As we approach President Obama's official 100th day in office, his approval rating in the Gallup poll is average compared with past American presidents -- or is it?
Going back to Eisenhower, Obama's 65% approval rating in the most recent daily Gallup poll is equal to the average Gallup approval for the 10 preceding presidents. Kennedy and Johnson had approval ratings in the low 80s at their 100-day mark. President Ford, in the wake of Watergate and the pardon of President Nixon, had the lowest approval rating at 48%.
But when we look only at presidents in the past 40 years, Obama is near the top. His approval is 7-10 points higher than the approvals of the last three presidents. Since Nixon, in fact, only Reagan's 68% is higher than Obama's current approval rating currently possessed by Obama.
Presidents
Approval %
Eisenhower
73%
Kennedy
83
Johnson
80
Nixon
62
Ford
48
Carter
63
Reagan
68
H.W. Bush
56
Clinton
55
W. Bush
57.5
65%
Based on Gallup polls taken within five days of 100-day mark. Some ratings are averages of two polls taken in that period.
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Gee, the average Obama voter who gets his/her news from the Daily Show and talk show monologues still supports the empty suit? Shocking! :roll:
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""Barack Obama is the second most reviled newbie president of the last forty years."
I also love numbers but took that headline to mean the second highest strong-disapprovals in 40 years which the approval numbers posted do not refute.
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Obama response to flu threat: ask congress for 1 1/2 billion emergency funding. There wasn't enough cushion in the first 10 trillion passed so far to handle 50 people sick with the flu. I guessed wrong; I thought he would appoint a bipartisan commission to look into it.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/28/faa-memo-feds-knew-scare-force-one-would-cause-panic/
Scare Force One.
Justify this, Obots.
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I am doubtless doomed to perdition because I enjoy watching this pompous fool step on his weenie.
May 01, 2009
Aren't you glad Sarah Palin isn't Vice President?
Ethel C. Fenig
Gosh, Tina Fey and other critics were absolutely correct; Sarah Palin is a lousy vice president because she lacks experience, has no understanding of the larger world and lacks gravitas.
As a result Janet Napolitano from the Department of Homeland Security and Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) had to scold the vice president for irresponsible remarks regarding the swine flu outbreak while Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs was forced t o interpret the remarks.
ABC News Political Punch has the quotes.
"I think the vice president if he had, if he could say that over again he would say if they're feeling sick they should stay off of public transit or confined spaces because that is indeed the advice that we're giving," Napolitano said on MSNBC.
"Well, I think that's a very unfortunate statement by the vice president. We just don't need that type of misinformation going out. I wish the vice president had checked with the center for disease control and preparedness before he made that statement," said Harkin. "As far as not riding on subways or planes, we're not going to shut down our system and that doesn't get to the nub of the problem anyway, so I think that's very unfortunate that this kind of misinformation got out."
TAPPER: Representatives of the travel industry have accused the vice president of coming close to fear mongering because of these comments. I'm wondering if you wanted to clarify or correct or apologize for the remarks that he made.
GIBBS: Well, I think the -- what the vice president meant to say was the same thing that, begun, many members have said in the last few days. And that is if you feel sick, if you are exhibiting symptoms -- flu-like symptoms, coughing sneezing, runny nose, that you should take precautions, that you should limit your travel, and I think he just -- what he said and what he meant to say.
TAPPER: With all due respect, I sympathize with you trying to explain the vice president's comments, but that's not even remotely close to what he said. He was asked about if a members of his family...
GIBBS: Look, I understand what he said, and I'm telling you what he meant to say, which was that... (LAUGHTER BY REPORTERS) ... if somebody is experiencing symptoms -- you heard the president say this last night -- if somebody is feeling sick, if somebody is exhibiting symptoms of being sick, then they should take all necessary precautions. Obviously, if anybody was unduly alarmed for whatever reason, we -- we would apologize for that. And I hope that my remarks and remarks of people at CDC and Secretary Napolitano have appropriately cleared up what he meant to say.
Oh? What's that you said? Sarah Palin isn't vice president but the oh so experienced, oh so worldly former Senator from the east coast state of Delaware who served in Washington DC for decades where he gained the necessary sophistication and gravitas is the vice president and is just a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Never mind.
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Joe Biden was the first clue that Obama would have trouble assembling a competent team, also a clue that he (Obama) is all about politics (neutral Democratic political choice) and nothing about finding the best and the brightest for the country. Reuters says the administration is "clarifying" his remarks. The administration should be "clarifying" why Obama picked Biden to be a heart beat away in the first place.
Kerry and Gore were buffoons and Bush often appeared to be one, but Obama is top-of-the-class intelligent while Biden was a bottom-of-the-class flounderer before finding comfort in the Democrat party. The coalition that elected Obama includes a strange combination highly educated liberal whites along with an underclass of minorities; blacks in particular are very proud of Obama. I don't understand why either group feels any identification with the Obama-Biden ticket rather than just with Obama.
Hard to come up with an analogy, but if the conservative candidate was a scholar like Victor Davis Hanson and the VEEP was Daffy Duck, I would vote for the ticket but only buy the sticker that said 'Hanson', not 'Hanson and the Duck'.
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I still remember Biden's howlers in his debate with Sarah Palin about Lebanon and Hezbollah-- from the man chosen for his int'l expertise to balance out His Glibness.
Anyway, , , here's this worrisome little item.
Soros Influenza
In other bad news from the Pentagon, "Democratic Party financier George Soros, who puts much of the blame for Islamic terrorists on America and former president George W. Bush, can celebrate his first foothold inside the Pentagon," writes columnist Rowan Scarborough. "It is in the person of Rosa Brooks, far-left former Los Angeles Times columnist." Brooks was also a lawyer for Soros' Open Societies Institute, which in turn is sugar daddy for MoveOn.org. She will now be "principal adviser" for Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, the Number 3 official and top policymaker at the Pentagon. This means that Brooks will have an influence on such things as budget, troop deployments and weapons purchases. She will also, according to the Pentagon, "develop cross-regional planning," which means she will hold sway over foreign relations.
In light of her coming role, her views on national security might be pertinent, and a look at Brooks' diatribes quickly reveals the problem. She compared President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler (how original) and called Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney "psychotics who need treatment." Perhaps most telling is this passage from a 2007 article: "[Al Qaeda] was little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs, well financed and intermittently lethal but relatively limited in their global and regional political pull. On 9/11, they got lucky -- but despite the unexpected success of their attack on the U.S., they did not pose an imminent mortal threat to the nation. Today, things are different. Thanks to U.S. policies, al Qaeda has become the vast global threat the administration imagined it to be in 2001." Uh, thanks to U.S. policies Rosa, al-Qa'ida has not made a successful attack on U.S. soil since 2001.
Sadly, however, the fact that a DoD undersecretary now has a total wingnut as an advisor isn't exactly earth-shattering news given the radicalism threaded throughout this administration. Barack Obama still has at least 1,359 days left.
PartiotPost
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Rosa Brooks
Look at the bright side Crafty, at least now you don't have to read her opinion once a week
in the LA Times! :evil:
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BO has been succesful at hiding from and fooling the majority of Americans into thinking he doesn't hate America and on his views that *America is the enemy* not the true enemies.
You know one almost has to start wondering if he works for our enemies.
He couldn't be a greater ally to them.
But the Cans still have no better alternative and most Americans are happy to go on the dole and be bought off apparantly - or so they think - until our taxes start to sky rocket. the taxes will be hidden as best as possible.
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May 03, 2009
Government by Thuggery - 'The Chicago Way'
Rick Moran
Man, when the White House plays hardball, they play it "The Chicago Way" - brass knuckles, groin kicks, and threats to destroy their adversaries.
And when confronted with allegations of their thuggery, instead of claiming their complete innocence, the administration practices another time honored "Chicago Way" custom and sneers "Prove it!"
Jack Tapper of ABC News - a guy who is turning into one of the few bulldog reporters on the White House beat - got this information from an attorney for one of the hedge funds involved in the Chrysler bankruptcy negotiations:
A leading bankruptcy attorney representing hedge funds and money managers told ABC News Saturday that Steve Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration's Auto Industry Task Force, threatened one of the firms, an investment bank, that if it continued to oppose the administration's Chrysler bankruptcy plan, the White House would use the White House press corps to destroy its reputation.
The White House said the story was false.
"The charge is completely untrue," said White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton, "and there's obviously no evidence to suggest that this happened in any way."
Thomas Lauria, Global Practice Head of the Financial Restructuring and Insolvency Group at White & Case, told ABC News that Rattner suggested to an official of the boutique investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners that officials of the Obama White House would embarrass the firm for opposing the Obama administration plan, which President Obama announced Thursday, and which requires creditors to accept roughly 29 cents on the dollar for an estimated $6.8 billion owed by Chrysler.
Lauria first told the story, without naming Rattner, to Frank Beckmann on Detroit's WJR-AM radio.
Perella Weinberg Partners,"was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight. That’s how hard it is to stand on this side of the fence," according to the attorney.
It turns out Perella's stake in Chrysler debt was small potatoes compared to big banks like JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Goldman. Do you think that the fact those banks got up to $100 billion in bail out money had anything to do with them embracing the administration's plan for Chrysler?
I think it also significant they sent out a deputy instead of Gibbs to deny the story. The crack about "obviously no evidence to suggest that this happened in any way," is typical "non-denial, denial for a president when they are caught doing something they shouldn't.
No doubt the White House press corps would eagerly do their master's bidding if told to destroy someone or some firm's reputation. At least most of them would. Jack Tapper of ABC just might be one of the last honest reporters in Washington which makes him extremely vulnerable. For the press, there is safety in the pack and Tapper taking on the role of Diogenes might be dealt with the same way that Mayor Daley of Chicago deals with reporters who displease him; the "Freeze-out" or "The Big Freeze." Tapper's sources in the WH, his access to high level administration officials, could disappear. Obama could conveniently forget to call on him at press conferences. Exclusive on camera interviews would be routinely denied.
In short, they might very well prevent Tapper from doing his job. But that's "The Chicago Way" and the White House is now in the hands of people who play that game with thuggish efficiency.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/05/government_by_thuggery_the_chi.html at May 03, 2009 - 11:33:44 AM EDT
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Taxpayers Deserve Better from the President
Posted by Tad DeHaven
President Obama’s estimated $17 billion budget cuts for fiscal year 2010 amounts to a measly .5 percent of the president’s total proposed spending, and 1.5 percent of the president’s proposed deficit for the coming fiscal year. His offerings to cut the budget should be dismissed as unserious. In fact, this is reminiscent of the Bush administration’s annual list of minuscule proposed cuts in the face of profligate spending and mounting federal debt.
President Obama says his efforts “are just the next phase of a larger and longer effort needed to change how Washington does business and put our fiscal house in order.” Promising more spending and more debt while celebrating relatively insignificant cuts and ignoring the looming entitlement crunch represents businesses as usual, not change. Current and future taxpayers deserved a serious proposal to reduce the government’s burden on their wallets and the struggling economy. Instead, the president’s first budget represents an attempt to shove the government’s hand deeper into the American peoples’ pockets and lives.
The president made several questionable statements in his address earlier today. He promised “long overdue investments” in education. But federal spending on education has already increased dramatically with no positive results. He spoke of “undertaking health care reform so that we can control costs while boosting coverage and quality” and “investing in renewable sources of energy.” Yet we know any type of reform will mean higher taxes, government rationing, and slower economic growth.
Tad DeHaven • May 7, 2009 @ 2:09 pm
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/05/07/taxpayers-deserve-better-from-the-president/
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Dick Morris has become my favorite opinion guy along with Dennis Miller. I guess because he says what I want to hear.
Who knows if he is right but he predicts the crash of BO. Unfortunately we will all go down with him while he gambles:
By Dick Morris 05.6.2009 Publish on TheHill.com on May 5, 2009
President Obama’s vision of the future is, apparently, an economy guided, steered and — when the occasion demands — commanded by the federal government. Some of the companies will remain private. Washington will take others over. But all will look to the White House, as to an orchestra conductor, for signals as to how and when and where to proceed.
This summary is the vision that emerges from the Chrysler bailout.
Whether or not one believes the claims of attorney Thomas Lauria (I do) that the investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners was strong-armed by the administration, the fact remains that the four firms that accepted the piddling offer of 29 cents on the dollar are all awash in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money.
Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase all dutifully approved the offer from Washington, while Perella Weinberg reportedly held out for 50 cents. Did the combined $90 billion the four compliant firms owed Washington in TARP funds make a difference in their passive acquiescence? You bet it did.
They shouldn’t have said yes. Clearly, Obama was not about to pull the trigger, which would have sent tens of thousands of autoworkers straight into unemployment. Politically, he would have had no choice but to cough up the $4.5 billion loan the feds just gave Chrysler with or without a debt settlement. The political pressures that have always operated on this Democratic president are still there and still in play.
Knowing the ultimate vulnerability of the administration position, any investment bank that was looking out for its clients would have demanded more than 29 cents. But Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase all had a higher calling — they had to appease King Barack I. To its credit, Perella Weinberg put its investors first.
But this little vignette shows exactly what the new rules of the game will be under this administration. It won’t be Soviet-style socialism or Reaganesque capitalism. The system will more resemble the Japanese arrangement where MITI, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, informally guided companies and told them what to do. In Japan, a nod usually suffices to command. In the United States, one has to use a hammer. But the result will be the same: compliant capitalism.
Companies will not look out for their shareholders or their employees or even their customers so much as watch the smoke signals from Washington to decide what to do. The markets won’t control decisions. Washington will.
The same balance of government control and nominal private ownership is evident in the mortgage rescue plan and the efforts to rekindle consumer lending. It will be manifest in the cap-and-trade legislation and in the priority that the administration will accord to green lending and job creation.
The strong-arming that obviously led up to the Chrysler deal will also be typical of the Obama industrial policy. When the chips are down, JFK’s pressure on U.S. Steel to lower its prices in 1962 will be the model for the Obama years. While terrorists need not fear any violation of their constitutional rights, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies will not be so fortunate.
At the core of the new policy will be the simple assumption that Washington knows best.
But it doesn’t. The stagnation of the Japanese economy in the past 20 years is eloquent testimony to the fact that government usually gets it wrong. Sometimes it makes the wrong decision because it fails to anticipate the market (as Japan did when it downplayed laptop computers and stressed mainframes). More often (as is normal in Japan), it is so in the thrall of special interests that it ends up articulating a consensus of those who would divide up the pie among them.
One way or another, the government usually runs the economy into the ground, as it will under King Barack I.
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Its hard not to like someone who brings the informed and passionate loathing of the Clintons that Dick Morris does. As a pollster he is in his element. Political econ? Well, methinks he sometimes confuses being on Fox with being an expert.
In this case though he is pretty much on the money-- sounds like he is channeling Glen Beck :lol:
GB I think though is deeper and clearer on what's at stake here. This is not what DM calls "compliant capitalism". This is liberal fascism and is quite similar to the economics of Mussolini.
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O'Reilly warned GB that the left would go after him with a vengence. And it will get personal and include his family. Like they are doing with Sarah Palin's daughter.
Anyway I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I read this:
"The Obama administration today unveiled program details of a $3.4 trillion federal budget for the fiscal year beginning in October, a proposal that includes substantial increases for a number of domestic priorities as well as a plan to trim or eliminate 121 programs for a savings of $17 billion."
Then says this:
"We can no longer afford to spend as if deficits don't matter and waste is not our problem," he said. "We can no longer afford to leave the hard choices for the next budget, the next administration -- or the next generation."
The lack of logic is (beyond) mind boggling and yet the MSM merrily trumpets his horn along for the ride.
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Among the cuts is the fund for law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. Reminds me of when the Obama campaign put it's porta-potties on top of a memorial for fallen officers at one campaign stop.
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One of the biggest stories in politics earlier this year was about California's budget teetering on the edge of a $42-billion deficit abyss. It only staved off insolvency when its legislature ended three months of gridlock to pass a budget with steep tax hikes and spending cuts. Guess what the Obama Administration is doing? It is telling Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that it will revoke nearly $7 billion in federal stimulus money unless the state restores legislated wage cuts for unionized health-care workers.
Obama Administration to federalism: Drop dead.
In its budget deal, California agreed to $74 million in wage cuts for unionized home health-care workers. The Service Employees International Union huffed to the higher power in Washington, which duly agreed to hold California's stimulus hostage.
Governor Schwarzenegger has sent a letter asking the feds to reconsider, noting the cuts were taken in response to "an unprecedented fiscal crisis." Even now the state faces an estimated cash-flow problem of some $17 billion by July.
Restoring the union money will require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, a task in California somewhat akin to moving the Sierra Nevadas. Still, it's worth noting where the Obama team ranks the political authority of a legislative enactment by the state of California versus the political clout of a union.
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White House: Budget deficit to top $1.8 trillion, 4 times 2008's record
Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer
On Monday May 11, 2009, 11:55 am EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With the economy performing worse than hoped, revised White House figures point to deepening budget deficits, with the government borrowing almost 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year.
The deficit for the current budget year will rise by $89 billion to above $1.8 trillion -- about four times the record set just last year. The unprecedented red ink flows from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout, the cost of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus bill, as well as a structural imbalance between what the government spends and what it takes in.
As the economy performs worse than expected, the deficit for the 2010 budget year beginning in October will worsen by $87 billion to $1.3 trillion, the White House says. The deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps.
For the current year, the government would borrow 46 cents for every dollar it takes to run the government under the administration's plan. In one of the few positive signs, the actual 2009 deficit is likely to be $250 billion less than predicted because Congress is unlikely to provide another $250 billion in financial bailout money.
The developments come as the White House completes the official release of its $3.6 trillion budget for 2010, adding detail to some of its tax proposals and ideas for producing health care savings. The White House budget is a recommendation to Congress that represents Obama's fiscal and policy vision for the next decade.
Annual deficits would never dip below $500 billion and would total $7.1 trillion over 2010-2019. Even those dismal figures rely on economic projections that are significantly more optimistic -- just a 1.2 percent decline in gross domestic product this year and a 3.2 percent growth rate for 2010 -- than those forecast by private sector economists and the Congressional Budget Office.
For the most part, Obama's updated budget tracks the 134-page outline he submitted to lawmakers in February. His budget remains a bold but contentious document that proposes higher taxes for the wealthy, a hotly contested effort to combat global warming and the first steps toward guaranteed health care for all.
Obama's Democratic allies controlling Congress have already made it clear that they will reject key elements of his plan. Already apparently dead is a plan to raise $267 billion over the next decade to pay for his health care initiative by curbing the ability of wealthier people to reduce their tax bills through deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes.
And the congressional budget plan approved last month would not extend Obama's signature $400 tax credit for most workers -- $800 for couples -- after it expires at the end of next year.
Obama's remarkably controversial "cap-and-trade" proposal to curb heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions is also reeling from opposition from Capitol Hill Democrats from coal-producing regions and states with concentrations of heavy industry. Under cap-and-trade, the government would auction permits to emit heat-trapping gases, with the costs being passed on to consumers via higher gasoline and electric bills.
Among the new proposals is a plan -- already on its way through Congress -- that would increase the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's borrowing authority from $30 billion to $100 billion in order to grant a two-year reprieve from higher deposit insurance premiums while the industry is struggling.
Also new are several tax "loophole" closures and increased IRS tax compliance efforts to raise $58 billion over the next decade to help finance Obama's health care measure. The money makes up for revenue losses stemming from lower-than-hoped estimates of his proposal to limit wealthier people's ability to maximize their itemized deductions.
The updated budget also would repeal an unintended tax windfall taken by paper companies that use a byproduct in the paper-making process as fuel to power their mills. The tax credits were never intended for paper companies, but now they could be worth more than $3 billion a year, according to a congressional estimate.
The budget would make permanent the expanded $2,500 tax credit for college expenses that was provided for two years in the just-passed economic stimulus bill. It also would renew most of the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, and would permanently update the alternative minimum tax so that it would hit fewer middle- to upper-income taxpayers.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/White-House-Budget-deficit-to-apf-15199183.html?.v=8
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Second post on the same subject.
May 11, 2009
Does the Deficit Matter?
By Richard Baehr
Barack Obama signaled to the ECNPC (the ever compliant national press corps) last week, that they should make a big deal of his proposed $17 billion in spending cuts for the 2010 fiscal year, many of which (40%) were originally proposed by George Bush a year ago and not accepted by the Democratic controlled Congress at that time.
Today comes word that the new estimate for the deficit for 2009 is about $100 billion higher than thought just a month ago (and that incremental deficit, more than 5 times the size of Obama's proposed cuts, will be run up just in the remaining five months of the fiscal year).
The 2010 deficit number has also been revised -- also likely higher by nearly $100 billion. Expect more increments to this number as the year goes on.
One thing we can count on is that every estimate from the Administration proves to be optimistic and self serving (e.g. the $7 trillion ten year accumulated deficit, that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated at $9.3 trillion, or a third higher than the Obama budget team estimate). The new estimates are for a deficit of over $1.8 trillion for fiscal 2009, and what the New York Times will likely call a "greatly reduced" deficit of just under $1.3 trillion next year.
For fiscal 2009, federal spending of about 3.5 trillion will be supported 54% by collected tax revenues, and the rest (near half) by debt. That has never happened before in this country's history -- neither the size of the deficit (the 2009 deficit is 4 times as large as 2008's prior record deficit of 450 billion, and the 2010 deficit is 3 times as large as that of 2008) nor the record share of the deficit ( near 50%) that needs to be financed by debt.
What do you call a country whose government is half supported by debt, much of it foreign? Probably one that the International Monetary Fund would consider a basket case that needed to be put on an expenditure diet. The words "banana republic" and "Argentina" come to mind.
We know that the Obama administration's answer to the puzzle about why the deficit is so large: taxes are too low. It explains why a few times each week, it seems, the Treasury Department introduces a new initiative designed to close some "loophole" for corporations or wealthy Americans, the two principal whipping boys for this Administration.
Obviously, every dollar the Administration wants to spend ($3.6 trillion next year) is believed to be essential, except for the 17 billion proposed to be cut (less than one half of one per cent of total spending). The government's financial picture at the moment, were it a family or a corporation, would be unsustainable, and laughable. But the Obama administration and the ECNPC, will tell us (or try to sell us) that we have entered a new age of responsibility where we are taking on the big problems where we need to spend more- health care, energy, education.
Paul Krugman, one of the Administration's favorite economists, is encouraging even more stimulus spending on top of the $787 billion already signed into law by President Obama.
Are Americans so foolish that they do not understand that their government cannot spend twice what it "earns"?
Will Americans at some point catch on that foreign nations may not support our reckless spending forever, and it will have to come from greatly increased taxes -- not just on the heavily demagogued high income share of the population (fewer than 3%), but mostly from the middle class?
Will people understand that to attract buyers for all this new debt, interest rates for government debt will have to go up, which in turn will raise interest rates for everyone else in the country as well, putting a real damper on future economic growth?
If the Administration were concerned with the deficit, they would delay much of the new spending on new health care initiatives and education programs, and the stimulus bill would have been directed more at economic growth and job creation, and far less at rewarding Democratic Party interest groups.
Were economic growth a real concern, the idea of pushing a multi trillion dollar cap and trade tax on American consumers and businesses would never be considered now, especially with such scant evidence of any man-made global warming actually occurring.
It is hard not to conclude that the primary purpose of economic policy in the current administration is simply to increase the size of the public sector and shrink the private sector. Chris Bowers, a left wing blogger, said it best a month back -- that "progressives" should be very pleased with the Obama administration, since in less than three months, they had already increased the government's share of the economy by more than 3%. Think about that one; the essence of progressive policy is not where government money is spent, or what it achieves, just that more and more (an ever growing share) is spent by government, not the people who support it (they will have less to spend, since it will be taken away in taxes).
For anyone who thinks we are seeing a temporary spending binge due to the recession, and that federal spending will recede over time, maybe they can provide me a list of all the mothballed federal spending programs that the Congress, in particular a Democratic controlled Congress, has ever eliminated in he past. We are entering an ear of greatly increased federal spending, higher taxes, deficits, and interest rates, and slower economic growth. For an administration supposedly concerned with future generations, they are doing their best to ensure that those future generations will have an enormous hole to dig out from.
Richard Baehr is chief political correspondent of American Thinker.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/does_the_deficit_matter.html at May 11, 2009 - 04:00:04 PM EDT
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The guy who is applauding and with Dem houses is responsible for the largest speding bills in our hsitory says this and the MSM (except for fox and talk radio) sits back and lets him get away with this:
****By Roger Runningen and Hans Nichols
May 14 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.
“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”
Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”
Earlier this week, the Obama administration revised its own budget estimates and raised the projected deficit for this year to a record $1.84 trillion, up 5 percent from the February estimate. The revision for the 2010 fiscal year estimated the deficit at $1.26 trillion, up 7.4 percent from the February figure. The White House Office of Management and Budget also projected next year’s budget will end up at $3.59 trillion, compared with the $3.55 trillion it estimated previously.
Two weeks ago, the president proposed $17 billion in budget cuts, with plans to eliminate or reduce 121 federal programs. Republicans ridiculed the amount, saying that it represented one-half of 1 percent of the entire budget. They noted that Obama is seeking an $81 billion increase in other spending.
Entitlement Programs
In his New Mexico appearance, the president pledged to work with Congress to shore up entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. He also said he was confident that the House and Senate would pass health-care overhaul bills by August.
“Most of what is driving us into debt is health care, so we have to drive down costs,” he said.
Obama prodded Congress to pass restrictions on credit-card issuers, saying consumers need “strong and reliable” protection from unfair practices and hidden fees.
“It’s time for reform that’s built on transparency, accountability, and mutual responsibility, values fundamental to the new foundation we seek to build for our economy,” the president said.
Obama called on Congress to send to him by May 25 a bill that would clamp down on what he says are sudden rate increases, unfair penalties and hidden fees. He also wants the measure to strengthen monitoring of credit-card companies.
House Bill
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the credit-card bill last month after adding a provision requiring banks to apply consumers’ payments to balances with the highest interest rates first. The bill also imposes limits on card interest rates and fees.
The Senate continued debating its version of the bill today. It would require credit-card companies to give 45 days’ notice before increasing an interest rate. It would prohibit retroactive rate increases on existing balances unless a consumer was 60 days late with a payment.
The president said Americans have been hooked on their credit cards and share some blame for the current system. “We have been complicit in these problems,” he said. “We have to change how we operate. These practices have only grown worse in the midst of this recession.”
The American Bankers Association, which represents card issuers, has warned lawmakers and the Obama administration against taking punitive action or setting requirements that are too stringent. Doing so, the lobby group says, would limit consumer credit and worsen a credit crunch.
Obama said that restrictions “shouldn’t diminish consumers’ access to credit.”
Uncollectible Debt
Uncollectible credit-card debt rose to 8.82 percent in February, the most in the 20 years that Moody’s Investors Service Inc. has kept records. Lawmakers have said they’re under increasing pressure from constituents to respond to rising interest rates and abrupt changes to consumers’ accounts.
Obama held a White House meeting last month with executives from the credit-card industry, including representatives from Bank of America Corp. and American Express Co. Afterward, he told reporters that credit-card issuers should be prohibited from imposing “unfair” rate increases on consumers and should offer the public credit terms that are easier to understand.
“The days of any time, any increase, anything goes -- rate hike, late fees -- that must end,” Obama said today at Rio Rancho High School. We’re going to require clarity and transparency from now on.”
He also said the steps he has taken to stimulate the economy and start the debate on overhauling the health-care system are beginning to take effect.
‘Beginning to Turn’
“We’ve got a long way to go before we put this recession behind us,” Obama said. “But we do know that the gears of our economy, our economic engine, are slowly beginning to turn.”
Taking questions from the audience, Obama repeated his stance that he wants legislation to overhaul the health-care system finished before the end of the year, saying it is vital to the economy.
Health-care costs are driving up the nation’s debt and burdening entitlement programs such as Medicare, the government- run insurance program for those 65 and older and the disabled.
The programs’ trustees reported May 13 that the Social Security trust fund will run out of assets in 2037, four years sooner than forecast, and Medicare’s hospital fund will run dry by 2017, two years earlier than predicted a year ago.****
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Feingold Blocks Bill to Honor Reagan
By Jackie Kucinich
Roll Call Staff
May 19, 2009, 12 a.m.
Republicans are trying to pass legislation in the next few weeks to kick off the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, and the only hurdle appears to be Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who is refusing to let the Senate vote on the bill.
Yesterday I was at a commencement at Lehigh and the speaker was Jeff Sachs the ultra liberal author economist.
He spoke about world poverty and world climate change. Fair enough. Then he got political. Jimmy Carter started to promote solar unitl Reagan came along and mocked Carter. Reagan then elevated our military presence in the Persian Gulf to open up the oil spigets that sent us on the planetary suicidal mission of destroying our planet, increasing war in the middle east, keeping us energy dependent all the while destroying hopes for world peace, the end of starvation, ignorance, and poverty, through US imperialism and world domination.
He implied we thus had Somalia, drought and the persistance of all the ills of the world and our collision course with the world population explosion was all due to Reagan's wrong headed theories. So for the last thirty years we were on the wrong trajectory.
The whole concept of "country" and culture is Midieval(sp?).
These are the kinds of people running America today.
To them, Reagan is a destroyer of worlds.
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This one could be posted so many places that I'm at something of a loss. Time to start an "Intelligence Matters" thread?
Democrats' Assault On the CIA
By Michael Gerson
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
In a little over 100 days, the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have delivered a series of blows to the pride and morale of the Central Intelligence Agency.
It began with the release of the Justice Department memos -- a move opposed by CIA Director Leon Panetta along with four previous directors. Then, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. did not rule out Justice Department cooperation with foreign lawsuits against American intelligence operatives. Then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of lying to her in 2002 about waterboarding, which she admitted learning about five months later anyway but did nothing to oppose because her real job was to "change the leadership in Congress and in the White House."
To stanch the CIA's bleeding morale, Democrats have tried reassurance. President Obama, speaking at CIA headquarters, took the Fred Rogers approach: "Don't be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we've made some mistakes. That's how we learn." Yes, children, hypocritical congressional investigations and foreign kangaroo courts are really our friends. House intelligence committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes sent a sympathy note to Langley: "In recent days, as the public debate regarding CIA's interrogation practices has raged, you have been very much in my thoughts." There should be a section at Hallmark for intelligence operatives unfairly accused of war crimes.
The only effective reassurance came from Panetta, who pointed out to Pelosi and others that the CIA actually keeps records of its congressional briefings. "Our contemporaneous records from September 2002," Panetta wrote, "indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaida, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed.' " A primary advocate of the "truth commission" has apparently misplaced her own supply.
Is there any precedent for a speaker of the House of Representatives seeking political shelter by blaming national security professionals? Or for a commander in chief exposing intelligence methods at the urging of the American Civil Liberties Union? Actually, such treatment has precedents. In 1975, the Church Committee nearly destroyed the human intelligence capabilities of the CIA. In the early 1990s, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan urged closing the agency entirely. The Clinton administration imposed massive budget cuts, leaving behind a demoralized institution.
And now Obama has described the post-Sept. 11 period as "a dark and painful chapter in our history." In fact, whatever your view of waterboarding, the response of intelligence professionals following Sept. 11 was impressive. Within days, the CIA had linked up with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and begun preparations to remove the Taliban. The counterterrorism center run of out CIA headquarters was the war on terror in the months after the attacks, making daily progress in capturing high-value targets. Now the president and his party have done much to tarnish those accomplishments. So much for the thanks of a grateful nation.
Contrast this affront to Obama's treatment of the military. When Gen. Ray Odierno argued that the release of military abuse photos would put American troops at risk, Obama quickly backed down. By one account, Odierno told the president, "Thanks. That must have been a hard decision." Obama replied: "No, it wasn't at all." Obama has deferred to his military commanders on the timing and strategy of American withdrawals from Iraq. And he has proposed an escalating military commitment in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- leading 51 House Democrats last week to vote against a military funding bill.
Defense writer Tom Ricks claims that Obama is being "rolled" by the military. Perhaps it is just an appropriate respect by the commander in chief for the troops at his command.
This obvious difference in treatment between military and intelligence is both paradoxical and hypocritical. Traveling recently in Iraq, Pelosi noted, "If we're going to have a diminished military presence, we'll have to have an increased intelligence presence." This has been the main Democratic argument against the whole idea of the war on terror -- that guns and bombs are no substitute for timely information. "This war on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement operation," Sen. John Kerry once claimed.
But this object of praise -- intelligence-gathering -- is again the object of liberal assault. "To put the matter at its simplest," writes Gabriel Schoenfeld, "American elites have become increasingly discomfited over the last decades by the very existence of a clandestine intelligence service in a democratic society."
But our democratic society still depends on intelligence officers -- just as surely as it depends on our men and women in uniform.
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BBG:
May I draw you attention to http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1024.50 ?
yip!
Marc
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May 21, 2009
The Results Are In: Stimulus Bill Neither Timely Nor Targeted
by Patrick Tyrrell
WebMemo #2454
Before the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (also known as the "stimulus bill"), President Obama and his chief economic advisor, Larry Summers, stressed that the government's response to the economic crisis needed to be "timely, targeted, and temporary." As predicted by a Heritage Foundation analyst,[1] the bill is neither timely nor targeted. Only time will tell if it is temporary.
Not Timely
Government agencies have spent only a tiny fraction of money planned to be spent in fiscal years 2009 and 2010. Moreover, agencies have not allocated most of the money that has been directed toward them for any named projects.
As of May 8, less than 8 percent of the spending scheduled for fiscal years '09 and '10 has taken place.[2] That 8 percent ($37 billion) had been spent almost entirely on Health and Human Services until the week of May 1, when $12 billion was spent in one week by the Department of Labor. Before the week of May 1, just 3.3 percent of scheduled '09 and '10 spending had occurred.
Of the $461 billion called for to be spent by the stimulus bill before the end of fiscal year 2010, just $37 billion has been doled out. Of that, $16 billion has been spent by the Health and Human Services department, $12 billion has been spent by the Department of Labor, and $6 billion has been issued in one-time payments to Social Security recipients. All of the other agencies combined have spent a total of $2.6 billion as of May 8.
Not Targeted
Fiscal year 2010 ends September 30, 2010, but the recession could end sooner than that. Indeed, a majority of economists surveyed in April predicted the recession will end in 2009.[3] Fed chairman Ben Bernanke also thinks the recession will end this year. The stimulus bill threatens to miss the very target it was meant to address.
Spending to fight an already-ended recession is unnecessary and wasteful. More diffusely, the specific spending programs targeted to fight the recession have mostly not been named.
Of the $461 billion of the stimulus bill the President's budget blueprint says will be spent in fiscal years 2009 and 2010, just $102 billion has even been targeted for specific outlays by government agencies. Once again, a large amount of this sum is allocated by the Health and Human Services Department. Several agencies (such as the Agency for International Development, NASA, and the National Science Foundation) have yet to say how any of the billions of dollars granted to them by the act will be spent. Just 22 percent of the fiscal years 2009 and 2010 stimulus spending has been planned by government agencies.[4]
The New Keynesianism
The new Keynesian philosophy fashionable among Washington policymakers is that government spending can pull an economy out of recession--that government spending "injects" new demand into the economy, thereby increasing GDP.
But every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. Rather than add new demand, government spending merely redistributes existing demand. Even transferring money from savers to spenders will not add new demand, because nearly all savings are banked or invested and then quickly made available for someone else to spend. Simply put, Congress cannot create new demand out of thin air, and this explains the repeated failure of Keynesian policies.
People Will Spend It Better
Congress should:
Call back unspent funds when it is clear the recession has waned, or
Call them back immediately and budget the unspent money for across-the-board tax cuts.
The former would be fiscally responsible, while the latter would be more effective at fighting the recession than continuing to wait for agencies to decide what to do with the money. Private citizens will spend the money more wisely, or in the case of some, save it. This would be better than having the money go to government overhead and squandering it on more unneeded programs that burn through the wealth of America's children.
Patrick Tyrrell is a Research Coordinator in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.
[1]Ronald D. Utt, "Stimulus Plan's Delayed Job Creation: Some Won't Get Jobs Until 2012 or Later," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2325, March 4, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/transportation/wm2325.cfm.
[2]White House Office of Management and Budget, A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2009) at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010
_new_era/A_New_Era_of_Responsibility2.pdf (April 29, 2009); Recovery.gov, "Investments by Agency," at http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content
/investments-agency (April 21, 2009); Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, letter to Hon. Nancy Pelosi, at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9989/hr1conference.pdf (April 21, 2009), and The Heritage Foundation calculations.
[3]Phil Izzo, "Economists See Rebound in September," The Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2009, at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1239213404
72201877.html (April 21, 2009).
[4]Ibid.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2454.cfm
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How Joe Biden Wrecked the Judicial Confirmation Process
The vice president can't complain if Republicans object to Obama's Supreme Court nominee.
By COLLIN LEVY
Vice President Joe Biden is widely praised for the expertise he brings in helping Barack Obama choose a replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Having served for three decades on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he is considered an asset both for his relationships with committee members and his familiarity with the nuts and bolts of judicial nominations. So let's have a look at how the confirmation process actually fared under Mr. Biden's leadership.
As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Biden was present for the nomination and confirmation of every currently sitting Supreme Court justice except for John Paul Stevens. In 1986, the year before Mr. Biden took over as committee chairman, Antonin Scalia was approved by the Senate in a vote of 98-0. Then came Robert Bork and a presidential election.
Before Judge Bork's nomination, Mr. Biden had said he would support him. And why not? He was widely considered a dazzling legal mind and had even received (during his confirmation to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals) a rating of "exceptionally well-qualified" from the liberal-leaning American Bar Association. "Say the administration sends up Bork," Mr. Biden told the Philadelphia Inquirer in November 1986, "and, after our investigations, he looks a lot like Scalia. I'd have to vote for him, and if the [special-interest] groups tear me apart, that's the medicine I'll have to take."
But by the time of the actual nomination, Democrats were promising to play "hardball" with President Ronald Reagan's nominees and Mr. Biden was running for president. Mr. Biden's Democratic colleagues lined up against the nominee. They were led by Sen. Edward Kennedy, who demonized him with a monologue on "Robert Bork's America," which he promised would be "a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions." Liberal groups joined the chorus for Mr. Biden to recant his earlier support, which he did, helping to defeat Mr. Bork's nomination.
Back then the tactics were considered shocking. Warren Burger, the former chief justice, said he was "astonished" by the comments he'd read about a nominee he thought was one of the most qualified he'd seen in 50 years. If the Senate rejected Mr. Bork, he said, "then they shouldn't have confirmed me."
Just one year after the conservative Mr. Scalia's unanimous confirmation the winds had changed dramatically. The Senate had hitherto proceeded on the principle that it owed the president deference on his judicial selections. No longer.
"The framers clearly intended the Senate to serve as a check on the president and guarantee the independence of the judiciary," Mr. Biden said in August 1987 in defense of his newfound opposition to Judge Bork. "The Senate has an undisputed right to consider judicial philosophy." With that marker placed, the ultimate winner of the seat vacated by Justice Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. was a nominee nearly devoid of political philosophy -- Anthony Kennedy.
Mr. Biden's obstruction was further rewarded by the first President Bush. In attempting to dodge controversy, he gave liberals David Souter, whose appeal was enhanced by the fact that he had been a federal judge for less than a year and had almost no paper trail.
By the time Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings came around, Mr. Biden's modus operandi was well known. In his book, "My Grandfather's Son," Justice Thomas recalls that before the Anita Hill inquisition began, Mr. Biden called him and said "Judge, I know you don't believe me but if the allegations come up I will be your biggest defender." "He was right about one thing," Justice Thomas wrote, "I didn't believe him."
Under Mr. Biden's leadership, holding up nominations to the nation's appeals courts also became a routine exercise. In 1988, the Senate Judiciary Committee delayed 17 months before refusing to confirm law professor and scholar Bernard Siegan to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because of his libertarian positions on economic issues. In 1992, Mr. Bush's nominee to the 11th Circuit, Edward Carnes, endured an eight-month delay and an attempted filibuster before finally being confirmed. By 1992, 64 judicial nominees were stuck in the senatorial muck waiting for the Judiciary Committee to give them a yea or nay.
The Senate obstructionism that began with Reagan's nominees thus became a game of political revenge as each new batch of nominees was made to suffer at the hands of one party for the treatment its nominees had received in the last round. Republicans blocked some of President Bill Clinton's nominees, including briefly, Sonia Sotomayor, the Second Circuit judge said to be on Mr. Obama's short list to replace Mr. Souter. Unable to bottle up Miguel Estrada in committee in 2003, Democrats filibustered him on the floor of the Senate. Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) held up as many as four judicial nominations for years in retribution for Republicans blocking Mr. Clinton's nomination of Helene White (she was confirmed for the Sixth Circuit last year). And so on.
The effect of this game has been toxic not only for the nominees but for the courts. Many circuits have suffered judicial emergencies, defined as vacancies on courts overwhelmed by their caseloads, or vacancies languishing more than 18 months on busy circuits. Some stood open longer. The Bush administration's 2006 appointment of Peter Keisler to fill the D.C. Circuit seat vacated by John Roberts was left to expire, unfilled, at the end of the administration.
True, Supreme Court nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito were confirmed -- but without the support of then Sens. Joe Biden or Barack Obama. Mr. Alito was confirmed by a vote of 58-42, the second narrowest margin in Senate history (after Clarence Thomas). Even Chief Justice Roberts's margin of 78-22 was contentious in historical terms. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed 93-3, Sandra Day O'Connor 99-0, John Paul Stevens 98-0, and David Souter 90-9.
What is in store for Mr. Obama's nominees remains to be seen. Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said he isn't inclined to the filibuster even if it is an option and most expect the president's Supreme Court choice will be confirmed.
As a matter of judicial philosophy, however, Mr. Obama has said he wants a nominee who "understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book." If that is considered by opponents as grounds for rejection Joe Biden will know where they're coming from.
Ms. Levy is a senior editorial writer at the Journal, based in Washington.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124294934268945409.html
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Testimony before
Judiciary Committee
United States House
May 21, 2009
The Obama Administration is abusing bankruptcy law to benefit a favored constituency, the United Auto Workers union. This threatens serious consequences:
Without the discipline of a real bankruptcy reorganization, General Motors and Chrysler may not be able to achieve the reforms that they need to survive and prosper.
The restructuring plans announced by both automakers are not bold enough. To gain a competitive edge, they will have to cut more dealers loose, put an end to the Byzantine system of work rules that stifles flexibility, and in general, make deeper cuts.
Selling Chrysler to a shell corporation for the purpose of divesting lenders of their rights is a stunning abuse of U.S. bankruptcy laws that threatens to upend this important resource for troubled companies.
The "rule of law" means clear, generally applicable laws by which individuals can organize their affairs and which are applied consistently, without respect to status. By favoring a union over creditors with superior rights, the Obama Administration has violated a fundamental principle of our constitutional government.
Striking down contractual rights arbitrarily, merely because they are inconvenient or expensive to the government, raises the costs of making and enforcing agreements across the economy.
Certain industries and businesses will suffer disproportionately: the automobile industry, heavily unionized industries, corporations that are faltering or undergoing reorganization, and already weakened financial institutions.
This episode of lawlessness began with legislation, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, that many at the time recognized as an illegally unbounded delegation of power from the legislative to the executive branch. It was that act which created the TARP that is now the Administration's slush fund for bailing out its allies and otherwise upsetting economic expectations. That outcome should be no surprise; unbridled discretion breeds unchecked power.
The bankruptcies of Chrysler and soon General Motors are a microcosm of the lawlessness that threatens our freedom and our prosperity. With its legislative power, Congress can put an end to the bailouts and begin the slow process of unwinding those that entangle us today.
My name is Andrew Grossman. I am Senior Legal Policy Analyst at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation.
My testimony this afternoon concerns the impact that the abuse of the bankruptcy system to bail out Chrysler and soon General Motors will have on the automobile industry, the rule of law, and the economy. This is an important issue, and I applaud the Committee for taking the time to address it and consider my comments.
Members of this Committee should focus on three points. First, that the U.S. auto industry itself has been harmed by the initiatives of the Bush and Obama Administrations that were meant to save it. Second, that the Obama Administration's abuse of bankruptcy to carry out its initiatives will serve as a precedent for others to sidestep the requirements of America's Chapter 11 reorganization process. The third point is that in rescuing Chrysler and General Motors, the federal government has trampled the rule of law in ways that will prolong our current recession unless Congress acts to rein in the excesses of the Administration's interventionist policies.
The auto industry, like AIG and like many of the banks now scrambling to extract themselves from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), may have been better off had the federal government followed the will of Congress and declined to intervene in their troubles. Though this counterfactual is difficult to prove--we will, of course, never know what would have happened in some alternative scenario--the major issues left unaddressed, or only partially addressed, in the government's reorganization strategy point to this conclusion. So, too, do a surprising number of indicators.
The Detroit-centered auto industry's collapse was the result of deep-seated structural problems that have been decades in the making--not just the recent drop-off in sales.To understand the extent of these problems, some history is required.
The combined market share of the Big Three U.S. automakers has been in decline for more than 35 years, since the oil crisis provided an opening for more fuel-efficient Japanese cars. In the 1980s, with the price of oil down, foreign carmakers gained market share on the strength of their quality, reliability, and prices, and quickly muscled in to the profitable luxury segment of the market. More recently, foreign automakers simply out-innovated their American competitors, investing heavily in smart, fuel-efficient vehicles that Detroit is now struggling to duplicate.
Those failures in management and leadership have been compounded by bad operational and governmental policy. Years of protectionism, such as import restrictions, complex fleet requirements, and regulations that raise costs for foreign producers, shielded the Big Three from competition in vital markets but allowed their creative juices to evaporate. Meanwhile, fat years and government interference allowed the automakers and their workers to put off restructuring their labor agreements, even as foreign competitors opened U.S. plants producing cars with fewer workers working at less cost and achieving greater quality. By 2008, these "legacy costs" dominated the U.S. automakers' balance sheets, and they spent $20 to $30 more per hour on labor than their competitors, even following minor concessions by the unions, and, due to inflexible work rules, continued to require more hours to produce a vehicle. Well aware of the writing on the wall, the Big Three and the United Auto Workers union demonstrated their cynicism in signing on to untenable labor agreements, under which the companies lose money on most small car sales, under the assumption that the taxpayers will eventually shoulder much of the burden.
The Big Three are also burdened with obsolete and expensive business structures. All are top-heavy with management and bureaucracy, compared to other manufacturing industries. They are also bogged down by too many nameplates that, due to state franchising laws, cannot easily be folded into other brands. As of December, General Motors manufactured and marketed automobiles under eight brands in the United States, including Chevrolet, Saturn, Pontiac, and Buick, in a market where few customers perceive any significant difference among them. Their antiquated and bloated dealership structures also prevent the Big Three from instituting modern and more flexible inventory-management practices and selling cars over the Internet.
In late 2006, shortly before the current economic slowdown, Ford separated itself from its two domestic rivals. Its new management team, led by former Boeing executive Alan Mulally, recognized both that the company needed a top-to-bottom revamp and that, without extraordinary commitment, this restructuring would probably fare no better than the many others Ford had undertaken over the decades. To commit itself to a major, years-long overhaul, Ford mortgaged its assets to the hilt, raising $23.6 billion to reorganize, develop new cars and technologies, and free itself of many of the legacy costs that sapped its competitiveness.
Already weakened by years of bad business decisions, the Big Three were hit hard by high fuel prices and then the economic slowdown. Though sales are down across the industry, buyers' interest in the Big Three's fleets has plummeted. For the first time in history, Detroit's share of the U.S. market dipped below 50 percent in 2008 and has fallen further since.
Ford, to date, has had the wherewithal and the resources to ride out the recession and weak auto market. General Motors and Chrysler, however, have not, and so late last year asked the federal government to give them the money needed to undertake the sort of reorganization already well underway at Ford.
The usual process for accomplishing this type of restructuring is bankruptcy--specifically a Chapter 11 filing. Under Chapter 11, bankruptcy affords companies that have hit hard times a fresh start and a chance to reorganize to take better advantage of their assets. Dire claims that bankruptcy is somehow equivalent to the end of a business--for example, some claimed that bankruptcy would imperil the employment of all of an automaker's workers--are simply incorrect. Instead, the reorganization process provides unique flexibility to unlock the fundamentally sound productive capabilities of a faltering business by freeing it of many obstacles to success, such as unviable contracts, crushing debt, and poor management. Reorganization is the usual tonic for businesses, like the Big Three, that need to adjust quickly to new economic realities but are, at their cores, sound, productive, and potentially profitable.
Yet after Congress declined to bail out General Motors and Chrysler, the Bush Administration and then the Obama Administration acted to accomplish the same end, drawing on funds that had been appropriated to shore up financial institutions under the TARP.
Bankruptcy has been, with Chrysler, and probably will be, with General Motors, a part of this process. As explained further below, the Obama Administration's Automotive Task Force (ATF) developed a plan to use several provisions of the bankruptcy code while evading most of its requirements. In this way, it could bail out Chrysler and General Motors for far less money than would otherwise be required--essentially by forcing others to pay for much of it--without relinquishing its effective control of either company or forcing favored constituencies, unions chief among them, to accept serious concessions.
The result is that neither company will go through the full Chapter 11 restructuring process but only, in the words of various Administration officials, a "quick dip" or "surgical bankruptcy." Thus, both will forgo the essential discipline of the Chapter 11 process, its narrow focus on finances and sustainability, that has made it so successful. Altering or evading this essential focus reduces the likelihood of achieving the goal: rehabilitating a business that has suffered financial failure and restoring it to profitability and, over the longer term, success.
Given the deep-seated nature of these companies' problems--how long they have persisted, how much they cut to the core of their businesses--it is obvious that meek efforts will not suffice. Yet, aside from the billions of taxpayer dollars being committed to them, meekness, rather than discipline, buttressed by tough talk characterizes the Obama Administration's approach. The result is that heavily touted reforms are less aggressive than could be expected in an ordinary bankruptcy reorganization. This imperils both companies.
One example is the rationalization of dealer networks. Both General Motors and Chrysler recently announced plans to sever their ties with some of their dealerships. Chrysler, relying on a provision of bankruptcy law that allows the setting aside of contracts, will drop 800 of its dealers, about a quarter of its total network, leaving about 2500. General Motors, meanwhile, notified 1,100 of is 6,000 dealers that their contracts will not be renewed next year; it hopes to cut another 900 to 1,300 dealers over the next few years, reducing its total to 3,600 to 4,000. Further reductions could come from attrition and consolidation.
These are, unambiguously, steps necessary to the survival of both automakers, but there is a real question as to whether they are enough. Even with the cuts, neither company will come close to matching Toyota's much-envied statistic of 1,100 car sales per dealer, per year, on average. If it meets its most aggressive goals, General Motors will still have, relative to that standard, an excess of 1,800 dealers. The result is that overhead and marketing expenses will remain too high, that dealers in some markets may face cannibalizing competition from cross-town rivals, and that many dealers will not be able to invest the money necessary to improve customer experience.
If the economy, and car sales, recover, both companies will find it tough to make further cuts. Outside of bankruptcy, both will be, once again, subject to restrictive state franchising laws that heavily penalize closures. For example, when General Motors shut down one underperforming and duplicative brand, Oldsmobile, in 2004, it had to pay dealerships over $1 billion in "financial assistance" to avoid lawsuits and is still, 4 years later, embroiled in litigation from former Oldsmobile dealers who declined to accept assistance or settle their claims. The costs could be even greater for cutting loose multiple-brand dealers.
There is also concern about which dealers are being cut and whether they are the right ones to go. As wards of the state, both automakers face intense pressure to make decisions that reduce political friction, rather than those that maximize economic gain. It would be difficult to believe, considering the ATF's deep involvement in both companies' plans, as well as the power of certain Members of Congress, that no political pressure was brought to bear and that all decisions were made entirely on the merits.
Unfortunately, such pressure, and such doubt, will accompany every decision made by General Motors and Chrysler in the months ahead. Some, for example, speculate that General Motors and Chrysler threw their support behind President Obama's new emissions and fuel efficiency standards at the behest of his Administration.[1] No doubt politics played some role in transforming the automakers' former intransigence on the issue.
As with dealers, both companies have begun the process of culling underperforming brands from their stables to reduce expenses and improve focus. Again, this is a necessary step, but questions remain as to whether it is enough. Does Chrysler need both the Chrysler brand and Dodge? And while General Motors was right to retire Pontiac, and Cadillac maintains its allure, does it need Chevrolet, Buick, and GMC, or do further opportunities to cut brands, and costs, exist? These questions could be answered in a regular Chapter 11 case, but outside of that context, there's little to guide the inquiry. Some industry analysts, however, have maintained for years that these extra brands only add costs and distraction, not value.
And once again, trimming brands in future years will be a difficult, expensive effort, due to the same state laws that make it hard to cut loose dealers. Efficiencies forgone now, during restructuring, may not be available in the future.
Labor is another area where the concessions made, though a big step in the right direction, may be insufficient to put General Motors and Chrysler on a level playing field with their competitors. At this moment, General Motors is locked in negotiations with the United Auto Workers, but Chrysler completed a deal with the union shortly before it entered bankruptcy. The new agreement will, in theory, eventually put hourly costs in line with those of the foreign automakers, known as "transplants," who build cars in the United States. It also trims benefits a bit (e.g., vision, dental, prescriptions for Viagra), reforms overtime calculations, and consolidates some skilled trades to reduce the complexity of work rules.
Some issues, however, were not fully addressed by the new agreement. Current employees, for example, will not be asked to take cuts in their base wage rates until at least 2011, if at all. At that point, the company and the union will enter into binding arbitration with the stated goal of equalizing "all-in" hourly wages with those of the transplant automakers. That agreement could potentially push equalization even further into the future; if auto sales have recovered by then, Chrysler may not be in a position to demand that its workers accept more cuts. The agreement also requires the automaker to continue making payments to the union-run Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) that provides health benefits to retirees and their families. Those payments will total $9.2 billion. Benefits for laid-off workers will also remain unusually generous. Some workers will be eligible to receive payments covering 50 percent or more of their gross pay for up to 2 years after being laid off. Given the need to shrink operations, this stands to be a significant expense.
Work rules also remain a barrier to competitiveness. The agreement does make some significant improvements to these Byzantine arrangements that govern nearly every facet of automobile production, but they will still reduce flexibility and efficiency, while imposing a bureaucratic, union-mediated process on all employer-employee relations that is expensive, time-consuming, and morale-sapping--for both sides. A better, though perhaps unlikely, outcome would have been scrapping plant-level work rules in favor of the more flexible approach taken at New United Motor Manufacturing (NUMMI), a Toyota and General Motors joint venture in California that regularly wins awards for its innovation and productivity. That approach is based on the one used at all of Toyota's facilities and is similar to those employed by other transplant automakers. This shortcoming alone leaves Chrysler, and almost certainly General Motors under its forthcoming agreement, at a major competitive disadvantage.
Also detrimental to General Motors and Chrysler is the difficulty that they will have accessing capital and debt markets. Lenders know how to deal with bankruptcy--it's a well understood risk of doing business. But the tough measures employed by the Obama Administration to cram down debt on behalf of the automakers were unprecedented and will naturally make lenders reluctant to do business with these companies, for fear they could suffer the same fate.[2] Even secured and senior creditors, those who forgo higher interest rates to protect themselves against risks, suffered large, unexpected losses. So nothing that either company can offer, no special status or security measure, can fully assuage lenders' fears that, in an economic downturn, they could be forced to accept far less than the true value of their holdings. At best, if General Motors and Chrysler have access to debt markets at all, they will have to pay dearly for the privilege. At worst, even high rates and tough covenants will not be enough to attract interest.
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Impaired access to debt and capital will stymie future restructuring, investment, and growth, reducing the likelihood that either company will fully rebound and, beyond that, prosper. There is the risk that this will lead to further government intervention, using taxpayer funds; rather than the lender of last resort, the federal government could become the first, and only, option.
Finally, there is the stigma of having accepted government funds. For months, auto executives asserted that consumers would not purchase cars manufactured by a company in bankruptcy. Poll after poll, however, showed that fear to be overblown, especially as consumers came to know more about the restructuring process. Meanwhile, as auto sales plummeted, General Motors and Chrysler lost the most, as Ford, the holdout, snatched their market share. There is a stigma to taking taxpayer dollars that, according to polls, is far worse than any attached to filing for bankruptcy. Fully 72 percent of those surveyed nationwide say they are more likely to purchase a Ford product because the company has not taken government money.[3] A Rasmussen poll found that 88 percent of Americans would prefer to buy a car from an automaker not receiving government aid.[4] And many articles published in newspapers and online have quoted individuals once devoted to GM brands or Chrysler (known as "Mopar" fans, after the company's auto-parts division) whose loyalty is now defunct--or shifted to Ford.
These downsides prove--as much as is possible at this time--that aggressive government intervention has had a negative effect on both Chrysler and General Motors, relative to the usual alternative, a regular bankruptcy, even one with some degree of debtor-in-possession financing provided by or (even better) merely guaranteed by the federal government. There is every reason to believe that unexceptional bankruptcies, though taking longer and demanding greater sacrifice, would have left both companies on firmer competitive footing. But for mostly political reasons, that is not what the Obama Administration chose to do. That it chose, however, to rely on portions of the bankruptcy code to implement its bailout plan raises concerns that it may have, in the process, altered that body of law.
Specifically, the Obama Administration's abuse of bankruptcy to carry out its initiatives could serve as a precedent for others to sidestep the requirements of the Chapter 11 reorganization process, thereby undermining what has been an extraordinarily successful tool to turn around troubled enterprises.
America's Chapter 11 process has been a model for the rest of the world. As one recent article describes, China's new bankruptcy law, its first, allows for reorganization of insolvent businesses and the "cramdown" of their debts, very closely tracking the U.S. model.[5]
Its success can also be judged in statistical terms. A recent article from Elizabeth Warren and Jay Lawrence Westbrook analyzes data from thousands of bankruptcy cases involving both small and large businesses.[6] They found that, among companies that, entering bankruptcy, had a plausible chance of reorganizing, between 65 percent and 72 percent were able to confirm a reorganization plan to exit bankruptcy.[7] And the rate is likely higher for larger firms.[8] This is an encouraging statistic, considering that all of these businesses had reached the point of insolvency or illiquidity at the time that they entered bankruptcy.
Warren and Westbrook also found that bankruptcy proceeds at a quick pace in most cases; the typical case is resolved in about 9 months.[9] While firm size is a factor, larger businesses only took an average of 4 months longer than smaller businesses.[10] And by 24 months, they report, nearly all cases were resolved.[11]
They summarize their findings thusly:
These data expose the heart of the efficiency question: is successful reorganization a rarity, available in a relatively small number of cases? Are the benefits of Chapter 11 achieved only at the expense of long delays? Our data...show that confirmation rates jumped to two-thirds or more among larger debtors, debtors that were able to survive the first nine months in bankruptcy, and debtors who at least proposed a plan to reorganize. The data reveal that the cases--both those that exit the system and those that confirm plans of reorganization--moved at a lively pace.
Those conclusions, however, describe a system that is premised on maximizing the value of an enterprise for (in the case of insolvency) the benefit of its creditors, who wield great control over the process. That is the system that the Obama Administration opted to circumvent.
In a normal case, a business files for bankruptcy and then has an "exclusivity period" of up to 18 months during which it can prepare a reorganization plan to present to its creditors. That plan, under Section 1129 of the Bankruptcy Code, must adhere to the "absolute priority rule," which simply mandates that senior creditors, such as those with security interests (like a mortgage or a car loan), are paid off before junior creditors. Further, creditors who, under the plan, are not paid in full and are slated to receive less than they would in a Chapter 7 liquidation--that is, when the assets of the business are sold off--have a chance to vote, as a class, on whether to accept or reject it.
Taken together, these rules protect creditors' contractual rights and ensure that bankruptcy law is used to promote economic efficiency, rather than for more nefarious purposes, such as enriching favored creditors at the expense of others. This is important because, within bankruptcy, a business has extraordinary power to accept or reject contracts, alter the terms of its debt, and even dismiss debt altogether. Without these rules, bankruptcy could easily be misused to defraud lenders and other creditors.
But Chrysler, which filed for bankruptcy on April 30, will never file a plan subject to the approval of impaired creditors. Though it is taking advantage of bankruptcy to exit contracts, such as with some dealers, and cram down its debt, it gets to skip the requirements of Chapter 11 reorganization thanks to a combination of aggressive lawyering, coercion, and intimidation, all courtesy of the Obama Administration.
The means to evading the law is a provision of the Bankruptcy Code, Section 363(b), which allows the sale of assets of the bankruptcy estate. Relying on that provision, the government arranged a sham sale of nearly the entire company to a newly created "Chrysler" capitalized by the government. The price? $2 billion, all of which would go to secured creditors for senior debt worth $6.9 billion, for a recovery of just 29 cents on the dollar. Meanwhile, one junior debtor, the UAW-administered VEBA, was slated to receive 43 cents on the dollar for its unsecured $11 billion claim, as well as 55 percent of the new Chrysler. In a typical case where senior debt-holders were not paid in full, the UAW, along with other junior creditors, would receive nothing.
In effect, the Administration used Section 363(b) to accomplish a sub rosa reorganization of Chrysler, financed in part by Chrysler's former senior debtors. It then transferred a large portion of that value, along with added value from additional bailout funds, to the UAW and Fiat, which is investing some technology, but no money, in its new joint venture with Chrysler.
This is exactly the kind of abuse--stealing from one party to give to another--that the bankruptcy code was designed to prevent.
This is not the first time that Section 363(b) has been used to sell essentially an entire company or its "crown jewel" assets, though it is certainly the most prominent. Courts have been justifiably wary of the practice and carefully scrutinized transactions to ensure that the law was not being abused. In an early case employing this legal "innovation," the Fifth Circuit rejected it outright, writing:
[T]he district court was not authorized by Sec. 363(b) to approve the [transaction]. In any future attempts to specify the terms whereby a reorganization plan is to be adopted, the parties and the district court must scale the hurdles erected in Chapter 11. See e.g. 11 U.S.C. Sec. 1125 (disclosure requirements); id. Sec. 1126 (voting); id. Sec. 1129(a)(7) (best interest of creditors test); id. Sec. 1129(b)(2)(B) (absolute priority rule). Were this transaction approved, and considering the properties proposed to be transferred, little would remain save fixed based equipment and little prospect or occasion for further reorganization. These considerations reinforce our view that this is in fact a reorganization.[12]
A more recent case stated the concern with Section 363(b) sales even more plainly: "The reason sub rosa plans are prohibited is based on a fear that a debtor-in-possession will enter into transactions that will, in effect, short circuit the requirements of Chapter 11 for confirmation of a reorganization plan."[13] That court went on to state:
[W]hether a particular settlement's distribution scheme complies with the Code's priority scheme must be the most important factor for the bankruptcy court to consider when determining whether a settlement is "fair and equitable" under Rule 9019 [concerning the settlement of controversies within classes]. The court must be certain that parties to a settlement have not employed a settlement as a means to avoid the priority strictures of the Bankruptcy Code.
Any court examining the Chrysler transaction would be compelled to reach the opposite conclusion. It is difficult to argue that what Chrysler is undergoing at present is not a reorganization. The Treasury, in fact, refers to the transaction as a "restructuring initiative" and to the new shell company as "the reorganized Chrysler."[14] Further, it describes the time period after the transaction as part of a "restructuring period."[15] Even more clearly, the transaction, unlike a sale to an established entity such as another company, had no economic substance. Finally, the distribution is hardly "fair and equitable;" it upends the Code's priority scheme, with junior creditors faring better than those holding senior claims.
In short, the entire point of using Section 363(b) was to force a very unfavorable plan on (understandably) recalcitrant secured creditors in violation of their contractual and property rights.
Lawyers justified the sale using much the same language as was employed in support of the Section 363(b) sale of Lehman Brother's brokerage unit, just after its parent had filed for bankruptcy, to Barclays Capital. They argued that Chrysler would precipitously decline in value, wreaking havoc throughout the supplier base, and that only a quick sale could prevent that end. Unlike in the case of Lehman, however, there was little evidence to support this claim, just hand-waving.
Under the Bankruptcy Code, creditors can object to a proposed sale. But reminiscent of the Sherlock Holmes tale about "the dog that didn't bark," banks that held the bulk of Chrysler's senior debt, and that were also TARP recipients and so subject to close scrutiny and regulation by the Treasury, declined to do so. Though an anonymous Administration aide told reporters that the White House forbade the use of TARP as leverage over these banks, other creditors saw early on in negotiations that TARP recipients were more willing than non-TARP parties to cut a deal on unfavorable terms.[16] The implication is that, whether they were explicitly ordered to or not, these banks were coerced into supporting the government-backed proposal.
And there were threats, too, after about 20 creditors banded together to form the "Chrysler Non-TARP Lenders Group" and challenge the Section 363(b) sale. This was just days after President Obama had put pressure on those who had rejected the Administration's previous offer, publicly blaming "investment firms and hedge funds" for Chrysler's bankruptcy, claiming that by rejecting the government's deal, they had "decided to hold out for...a taxpayer-funded bailout" and were "hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none."[17] (In reality, the hold-outs had offered a compromise plan under which they would receive 60 cents on the dollar, about the same as the UAW.) The group, representing teachers unions, pension funds, and school endowments, among others, moved to delay the sale, and the judge agreed to hold a hearing. But the effort would quickly fizzle, as members deserted the group in the face of death threats, criticism from lawmakers, and according to one prominent attorney, threats from the administration:
One of my clients," [attorney Tom ] Lauria told [radio] host Frank Beckmann, "was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight."[18]
After suffering days of abuse, the group folded, ending the leading objection to the sale.[19]
According to news reports, General Motors will follow a similar course at the end of this month, with an anticipated Section 363(b) sale to a new entity that would initially be owned by the federal government.[20] Secured lenders would be paid 28 cents on the dollar, while holders of the company's $27 billion in unsecured bonds would receive a 10 percent stake in the new company. The UAW, meanwhile, would receive $10 billion in cash and up to a 39 percent stake in the "new" General Motors in exchange for its $20 billion in unsecured debt--a far better payout than those to secured lenders and similarly situated bond holders. The government is also expected to take a big ownership stake.
These high-profile precedents threaten to change the nature of bankruptcy for businesses carrying heavy debt loads. Professor Mark Roe, of Harvard Law School, described this risk in a recent column:
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f the current deal becomes a strong bankruptcy court precedent, it'd throw priorities into question generally, because the tactics are easily imitated even without the government as the major player. In Chapter 11 reorganizations going forward, if a coalition of creditors and insiders can convince a judge to use the same structure as the Chrysler judge has provisionally approved, they can freeze out a creditor group who then couldn't call on any of bankruptcy law's normal protections.[21]
Insiders alone, as well, might wish to take advantage of this technique to keep their hold on the business, while dropping debt. Rather than persevere the rigor and discipline of the current bankruptcy system, and its inconvenient insistence on fair treatment of creditors, businesses will have another option: arrange a sham sale to a shell company, wiping out debts and other obligations in the process.
If this practice becomes more prevalent, it threatens to disrupt both lending and capital investment across the economy. This consequence is discussed further below.
Just as bad, it promises poor results. Businesses will be washed of their debt, but without realizing the efficiency gains of a real, profits-focused reorganization. Managers regularly overestimate their ability to turn around a failing business, and creditor control in bankruptcy provides an important check on this tendency. Cutting creditors out of the picture will only lead to more business failures, as firms opt to take the easy way out.
Congress should, the next time it takes up bankruptcy reform, study the use, or misuse, of Section 363(b) sales to evade the requirements of the bankruptcy code and frustrate the principles of fairness and rule of law on which it is premised.
It is appropriate here to discuss the rule of law, because in rescuing Chrysler and General Motors, the federal government has trampled it in ways that will hurt our economy.
The "rule of law" means clear, generally applicable laws by which individuals can organize their affairs and which are applied consistently, without respect to status. This was something that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution took very seriously. In three separate clauses of the Constitution--the Contracts Clause, the prohibition on bills of attainder (i.e., legislation that punishes particular individuals, as if they had been convicted of a crime), and the prohibition on ex post facto laws (i.e., criminal laws that apply retroactively)--they sought to limit the power of the government they were creating and of the states to intervene in lawful conduct.
James Madison, for one, understood that the temptation to do so would be irresistible otherwise. His explanation in Federalist No. 44 is worth repeating:
Our own experience has taught us, nevertheless, that additional fences against these dangers ought not to be omitted. Very properly, therefore, have the convention added this constitutional bulwark in favor of personal security and private rights; and I am much deceived if they have not, in so doing, as faithfully consulted the genuine sentiments as the undoubted interests of their constituents. The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less informed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding. They very rightly infer, therefore, that some thorough reform is wanting, which will banish speculations on public measures, inspire a general prudence and industry, and give a regular course to the business of society.
In this view, the consistent application of law is the assumption behind every other clause of the Constitution, the principle, without which, none life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness could be secure. It is, thus, a prerequisite to due process and protection against the arbitrary exercise of power--that is, tyranny.
When the rule of law is cast aside, for whatever seemingly pragmatic reason, it impairs the machinery of private ordering, such as contractual rights, that are at the core of our economic freedom and prosperity. The broad enforceability of contracts, tempered by several narrow doctrines of abrogation, makes it possible to conduct economic affairs with strong assurance that other parties will keep their promises or be held liable for failing to do so. In this way, people are able to order their affairs, in employment contracts, insurance contracts, service agreements, and the myriad of other contractual agreements that make modern life possible.
Striking down contractual rights arbitrarily, merely because they are inconvenient or expensive to the government, raises the costs of making and enforcing agreements across the economy by reducing the certainty of all agreements. Madison himself described the slippery slope that would result: The more the legislative or executive branch interferes in private affairs, the more who will demand that it interfere in their affairs, to their advantage, and the less the role private agreements will play in economic life. It is, in effect, a tax on contracting, for more contracts will require a lawyer's hand in drafting to avoid government abrogation. And where that is unavoidable, parties may decline to contract at all, costing the U.S. economy the surplus of their avoided transaction, while others may alter the terms of their agreements to reduce risk but also reward. Still others may shift their business to foreign shores that show greater respect for the rule of law.
We can predict who will suffer these consequences. The automakers, surely, will have only limited access to financial markets for years to come and pay usurious rates when they are able to borrow. Sadly, Ford will probably suffer the same fate, if to a slightly lesser degree, because the mere fact of its present solvency is not enough to guarantee that lenders' rights will not be gutted at some point in the future.
Quite perversely--or quite appropriately, depending on one's point of view--unionized industries may also see their cost of capital rise, hampering growth and hiring. The Obama Administration's transparent favoritism toward its political supporters in the United Auto Workers Union may lead other unions to demand the same: hefty payouts and ownership stakes in exchange for halfhearted concessions. Lenders know now that the Administration is unable to resist such entreaties. As one hedge fund manager observed, "The obvious [lesson] is: Don't lend to a company with big legacy liabilities, or demand a much higher rate of interest because you may be leapfrogged in bankruptcy."[22]
Perhaps the most affected will be faltering corporations and those undergoing reorganization--that is, the enterprises with the greatest need for capital. Lending money to a nearly insolvent company is risky enough, but that risk is magnified when bankruptcy ceases to recognize priorities or recognize valid liens. With private capital unavailable, larger corporations in dire straits will turn to the government for aid--more bailouts--or collapse due to undercapitalization, at an enormous cost to the economy. As Warren Buffet opined, "f priorities don't mean anything that's going to disrupt lending practices in the future."[23]
Professor Todd Zywicki offers an observation on this point: "Mr. Obama may have helped save the jobs of thousands of union workers whose dues, in part, engineered his election. But what about the untold number of job losses in the future caused by trampling the sanctity of contracts today?"[24]
Financial institutions--enterprises that the federal government has already spent billions to strengthen--will also be affected. Many hold debt in domestic corporations that could be subject to government rescue, rendering their obligations uncertain. It is that uncertainty which transforms loans into impossible-to-value toxic assets and blows holes in balance sheets across the economy.
Finally, there are the investors, from pension funds and school endowments to families building nest eggs for their future. General Motors bonds, like the debt of other long-lived corporations, has been long regarded as a refuge from the turmoil of equity markets. The once-safe investment held directly by millions of individuals and indirectly, though funds and pensions, by far more, are now at risk, which will be reflected in those assets' values.
The effects of abrogating the rule of law are broad and deep. They can be witnessed first-hand in any nation where contracts are unenforceable and the government's rule is arbitrary and absolute. They are also evident in the prosperity of nations:
[Economists Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny (LLSV)] documented empirically that legal rules protecting investors vary systematically among legal traditions or origins, with the laws of common law countries (originating in English law) being more protective of outside investors than the laws of civil law (originating in Roman law) and particularly French civil law countries. LLSV then used legal origins of commercial laws as an instrument for legal rules in a two stage procedure, where the second stage explained financial development. The evidence showed that legal investor protection is a strong predictor of financial development.[25]
Empirical studies also show that the rule of law has an impact on civil society, affecting such disparate variables as entrepreneurship, military conscription, and government control of the media.[26]
In sum, continued disregard of this fundamental principle threatens severe consequences.
This episode of lawlessness began with legislation, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, that many at the time recognized as an illegally unbounded delegation of power from the legislative to the executive branch.[27] It was that act which created the TARP that is now the Administration's slush fund for bailing out its allies and otherwise upsetting economic expectations.[28] That outcome should be no surprise; unbridled discretion breeds unchecked power.
What began with Congress can end with it, too. It is time to stop the economic adventurism that marked the last months of George W. Bush's Administration and the first of President Obama's. The bankruptcies of Chrysler and soon General Motors are a microcosm of the lawlessness that threatens our freedom and our prosperity. With its legislative power, Congress can put an end to the bailouts and begin the slow process of unwinding those that entangle us today.
[1] See Jake Tapper, Arnold Hypothesizes POTUS Told U.S. Automakers to Go Along with New Enviro Regs for Federal $, ABCNews.com, May 19, 2009, http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/05/arnold-hypothes.html.
[2] There is some evidence that this is already happening. See, e.g., Eric Berman, State to No Longer Invest in Federal Bailout Recipients, WIBC News, May 20, 2009, http://www.wibc.com/news/Story.aspx?ID=1094872 (describing how Indiana's State Treasurer ordered the managers of the state's investment funds, such as pensions, "not to buy any more bonds from Chrysler, GM, or banks covered by the bailout").
[3] Bill Vlasic, Choosing Its Own Path, Ford Stayed Independent, N.Y. Times, April 8, 2009, at B1.
[4] Ken Bensinger, GM, Chrysler sales hurt by mixed messages, L.A. Times, March 29, 2009.
[5] Michael Burke, Wei Cui, & Paul Jones, International Legal Developments in Review: 2006: Regional & Comparative Law, 41 Int'l L. 777, 784-787 (2007)
[6] Elizabeth Warren & Jay Lawrence Westbrook, The Success of Chapter 11: A Challenge to the Critics, 107 Mich L. Rev. 603, 607 (2009).
[7] Id. at 617-18.
[8] Id. at 635-37.
[9] Id. at 629.
[10] Id. at 637.
[11] Id. at 629.
[12] In Re Braniff Airways, Inc., 700 F.2d 935, 940 (5th Cir. 1983).
[13]In re Iridium Operating LLC, 478 F.3d 452, 466 (2nd Cir. 2007) (internal quotations omitted). The court approved the sale in this case only after it found that the transaction "had a proper business justification and was a step towards possible confirmation of a plan of reorganization and not an evasion of the plan confirmation process." Id.
[14] Press Release, Department of the Treasury, Obama Administration Auto Restructuring Initiative: Chrysler-Fiat Alliance, April 30, 2009, available at http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/tg115.htm.
[15] Id.
[16] Neil King, Jr., & Jeffrey McCracken, U.S. Forced Chrysler Creditors to Blink, Wash. Post, May 11, 2009, at A1.
[17] Remarks of President Barack Obama, April 30, 2009.
[18] Michael Barone, White House puts UAW ahead of property rights, Wash. Examiner, May 6, 2009.
[19] One challenge, though, is still pending. The Indiana State Teachers Retirement Fund, Indiana State Police Pension Trust, and Indiana Major Movers Construction Fund have asked the bankruptcy judge to block the sale, arguing that it is "illegal and tramples their rights," nothing more than a scheme to reward creditors the "government deems politically important." Objection of Indiana Pensioners, In Re Chrysler, No. 09-50002 (Br. S.D. N.Y. May 19, 2009), available at http://chapter11.epiqsystems.com/view
document.aspx?DocumentPk=8b2f9a28-04cd-4161-b3b6-50fc8e37ef9c.
[20] Chelsea Emery & Tom Hals, GM bankruptcy plan eyes quick sale to government, Reuters, May 19, 2009.
[21] Mark Roe, Stress-Testing Washington's Chrysler Bankruptcy Plan, Forbes, May 13, 2009.
[22] Caroline Salas, Fund Managers Burned by Obama Now Say They Are Wary, Bloomberg.com, May 20, 2009.
[23] Interview with Warren Buffet, CNBC, May 9, 2009, http://www.money
control.com/india/news/fii-view/best-dow-sp-returns-were-during
-recession-warren-buffet/396389/2.
[24] Todd Zywicki, Chrysler and the Rule of Law, Wall St. J., May 13, 2008, at A19.
[25] Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, and Andrei Shleifer, The Economic Consequences of Legal Origins, NBER Working Paper No. W13608, November 2007.
[26] Id.
[27] See, e.g., Todd Gaziano & Andrew Grossman, All Deliberate Speed: Constitutional Fidelity and Prudent Policy Go Hand in Hand in Fixing the Credit Crisis, Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2079, http://www.heritage.org
/Research/Economy/wm2079.cfm.
[28] See Andrew Grossman & James Gattuso, TARP: Now a slush fund for Detroit?, Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2170, December 12, 2008, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2170.cfm.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/tst052209a.cfm
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May 23, 2009, 6:00 a.m.
What Are We Stimulating?
The stimulus will do nothing for the economy, but it will advance the cause of statism.
By Mark Steyn
I was in Vermont the other day and made the mistake of picking up the local paper. Impressively, it contained a quarter-page ad, a rare sight these days. The rest of the page was made up by in-house promotions for the advertising department’s special offer on yard-sale announcements, etc. But the one real advertisement was from something called SEVCA. SEVCA is a “non-profit agency,” just like the New York Times, General Motors, and the State of California. And it stands for “South-Eastern Vermont Community Action.”
Why, they’re “community organizers,” just like the president! The designated “anti-poverty agency” is taking out quarter-page ads in every local paper is because they’re “seeking applicants for several positions funded in full or part by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)” — that’s the “stimulus” to you and me. Isn’t it great to see those bazillions of stimulus dollars already out there stimulating the economy? Creating lots of new jobs at SEVCA, in order to fulfill the president’s promise to “create or keep” 2.5 million jobs. At SEVCA, he’s not just keeping all the existing ones, but creating new ones, too. Of the eight new positions advertised, the first is:
“ARRA Projects Coordinator.”
Gotcha. So the first new job created by the stimulus is a job “coordinating” other programs funded by the stimulus. What’s next?
“Grantwriter.”
That’s how they spell it. Like in Star Wars — Luke Grantwriter waving his hope saber as instructed by his mentor Obi-Bam Baracki (“May the Funds be with you!”). The Grantwriter will be responsible for writing grant applications “to augment ARRA funds.” So the second new job created by stimulus funding funds someone to petition for additional funding for projects funded by the stimulus.
The third job is a “Marketing Specialist” to increase “public awareness of ARRA-funded services.” Rural Vermont’s economy is set for a serious big-time boom: The critical stimulus-promotion industry, stimulus-coordination industry, and stimulus-supplementary-funding industry are growing at an unprecedented rate. The way things are going we’ll soon need a Stimulus-Coordination Industry Task Force and Impact Study Group. By the way, these jobs aren’t for everyone. “Knowledge of ARRA” is required. So if, say, you’re the average United States senator who voted for ARRA without bothering to read it, you’re not qualified for a job as an ARRA Grantwriter.
I don’t want to give the impression that every job funded by the stimulus is a job coordinating the public awareness of programs for grant applications to coordinate the funding of public awareness coordination programs funded by the stimulus. SEVCA is also advertising for a “Job Readiness Program Coordinator.” This is a job coordinating the program that gets people ready to get a job. For example, it occurred to me, after reading the ad, that I might like to be a “Job Readiness Program Coordinator.” But am I ready for it? Increasing numbers of us are hopelessly unready for jobs. Ever since last November, many Americans have been ready for free health care, free daycare, free college, free mortgages — and, once you get a taste for that, it’s hardly surprising you’re not ready for gainful employment. I only hope there are enough qualified “Job Readiness Program Coordinators” out there, and that they don’t have to initiate a Job Readiness Program Coordinator Readiness Program. As the old novelty song once wondered, “Who Takes Care of the Caretaker’s Daughter While the Caretaker’s Busy Taking Care?” Who coordinates programs for the Job Readiness Program Coordinator while the Job Readiness Program Coordinator’s busy readying for his job? If you hum it, I’ll put in for the stimulus funding.
Oh, and let’s not forget the new job of “VITA Program Coordinator.” VITA? That’s “Volunteer Income Tax Assistance.” It’s an IRS program designed “to help low and moderate-income taxpayers complete their tax returns at no cost.” The words “no cost,” by the way, are used in the new Webster’s–defined sense of “massive public expenditure.” Whoops, I mean massive public “investment.” You might think, were you a space alien recently landed from Planet Zongo, that, if tax returns are so complicated that “low and moderate-income taxpayers” have difficulty filling them in, the obvious solution would be to make the tax code less complex. But that’s just the unfamiliar atmosphere on Planet Earth making you lighthearted and prone to cockamamie out-of-this-world fancies. Put in for a Job Readiness Program, and you’ll soon get with the program.
Of course, it’s not just “low and moderate-income taxpayers” who have difficulty completing their tax returns. So do high-income taxpayers like Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner. Tragically, they’re ineligible for the “Volunteer Income Tax Assistance” program. Indeed, the Treasury secretary seemed under the misapprehension that it was a “Volunteer Income Tax” program, which would be a much better idea. But, being ineligible for VITA, Secretary Geithner was forced to splash out $49.95 for TurboTax and, simply by accidentally checking the “No” box instead of “Yes” at selected moments, was able to save himself thousands of dollars in confiscatory taxation! Oops, my mistake, I meant that, tragically, by being unable to complete his tax return due to a lack of Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, Timothy Geithner was the only one of 300 million Americans to pass the Treasury Secretary Job Readiness Program.
SEVCA serves two rural counties with a combined total of a little over 40,000 households. If you wanted to stimulate the economy, you’d take every dime allocated to Windsor and Windham counties under ARRA and divide it between those households. But, if you want to stimulate bureaucracy, dependency, and the metastasization of approved quasi-governmental interest-group monopolies as the defining features of American life, then ARRA is the way to go. Oh, you scoff: ARRA, go on, you’re only joking. I wish I were. We’re spending trillions we don’t have to create government programs to coordinate the application for funds to create more programs to spend even more trillions we don’t have.
The stimulus will do nothing for the economy, but it will dramatically advance the cause of statism (as Mark Levin rightly calls it). Last week’s vote in California is a snapshot of where this leads: The gangster regime in Sacramento is an alliance between a corrupt and/or craven political class wholly owned by a public-sector union-bureaucracy extortion racket. So what if the formerly Golden State goes belly up? They’ll pass the buck to Washington, and those of us in non-profligate jurisdictions will get stuck with the tab. At some point, the dwindling band of citizens still foolish enough to earn a living by making things, selling things, or providing services other than government-funded program coordination will have to vote against not just taxes but specific agencies and programs — hundreds and thousands of them.
The bad news is our children will not enjoy the American Dream. The good news is they’ll be able to apply for an American Dream Readiness Assistance Coordination Grantwriter Program. May the Funds be with you!
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWUyM2QwYzhkMTc5MmQ3M2QyZGMzYjZhZWM0ZTMzOWE=
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/05/23/obama-hey-were-out-of-money/comment-page-1/#comments
"We're out of money......so let's really dig ourselves a hole with socialized medicine"!
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Yeah, a large number of straw men and non-sequiturs in that interview, which can be found here:
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/05/23/HP/R/18933/President+Obama+discusses+Foreign+and+domestic+issues+in+Exclusive+CSPAN+interview.aspx
Nice to see an interviewer finally squeezing his shoes.
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An Overleveraged Presidency
Barack Obama's risky initiatives.
by Fred Barnes
06/01/2009, Volume 014, Issue 35
Like a troubled bank, President Obama is overleveraged. When a bank makes risky loans and many of them default, the bank goes bankrupt (or gets bailed out). When a first-term president adopts risky policies and many of them fail, his prospects for sustained public approval and reelection diminish.
One of Obama's policies--the decision to close the Guantánamo prison within a year--has already gotten him in a jam. He has no plan for relocating most of the 241 detainees, and Congress refuses to fund the shutdown until he produces one. Both Congress and the public oppose transferring the prisoners to jails on American soil.
The president's distress was reflected last week in a speech in which he blamed the Bush administration for what he called the Guantánamo "mess." He said captured terrorists should never have been sent to Guantánamo, but he offered no alternative of what should have been done with them. Obama also denounced Bush officials for using tough interrogation tactics such as waterboarding to get information from terrorists. But a new poll by Whit Ayres for Resurgent Republic found a majority of Americans disagree with Obama and believe the tactics were justified.
So Obama, like a banker who made a bad loan, is confronted with a problem of his own making. The president said Bush acted too hastily in setting up Guantánamo. But Obama's announcement, two days after his inauguration, of a deadline for closing Guantánamo was a rash decision made in even greater haste.
Most presidents propose two or three risky policies in their first year--risky because there's a significant chance of failure to deliver what's promised. In 1981, President Reagan's policies of deep cuts in taxes and spending and aggressively confronting the Soviet Union were dicey. But the economy rebounded 18 months later and the Soviets buckled, though not until Reagan's second term.
Obama has outdone Reagan or any president since Lyndon Johnson, perhaps even since FDR, in risk-taking. He's adopted or proposed eight or nine risky policies (by my count). Re-election doesn't require all of them to succeed. If his policies bring about a briskly growing economy and nothing more, that may be sufficient for Obama to win a second White House term.
The president has been criticized for trying to do too much in his first year rather than focusing on a few important issues. But the size of Obama's agenda is less of a problem than the likelihood that much of it will be enacted, given the large Democratic majorities in the Senate and House.
The difficulty is that some of his policies are likely to hinder others. Tax hikes, increased energy costs, and new regulations work against the economic recovery that soaring spending and peacetime deficits at historic highs are supposed (by Obama at least) to spur. A more likely result: stagflation, a simultaneous surge in inflation and interest rates.
Obama is now trying to deleverage. The purpose of his speech last week was to take the risk--or at least the appearance of risk--out of his policy on Guantánamo and terrorists. He insisted the safety of Americans would never be put in jeopardy by the release of prisoners from Guantánamo or their transfer to prisons in this country.
In his appearance with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama toughened his policy toward Iran. His position, a risky one, had been that friendly diplomacy is the best policy for persuading the Iranians to abandon their effort to build nuclear weapons. But Obama indicated he'd turn to stronger measures if the Iranians haven't responded favorably by the end of 2009.
Obama has set "energy independence" as a goal. But his policies make that goal harder to achieve. His administration has refused to open new areas in the United States and offshore for oil exploration and production. It favors lavish subsidies for renewable energy (wind, solar) that will do little in the foreseeble future to make up for the shortfall in domestic production of gasoline. As the demand for gasoline increases, as it almost certainly will, there will be only one place to turn: foreign oil.
His takeover of the Big 2 in Detroit, General Motors and Chrysler, poses another risk: downright failure. The auto companies are a money pit, requiring tens of billions in federal subsidies just to stay alive. The public opposes the continued bailout of the auto companies, but Obama is stuck with it. And the chance that either company will soon return to profitability is slim.
Taken together, Obama's policies on energy, health care, and financial institutions are risky for still another reason. They require more government control of the economy, which leads inevitably to a less dynamic and innovative economy and to less growth.
The raft of new regulations should have the same effect. Obama's crackdown on the credit card industry may be justified on ethical grounds. But there's a simple economic fact that applies here: The more you regulate something, the less you get of it. Though more credit is critical to reviving the economy, the new regulations mean we'll get less of it.
Obama is also a fan of labor unions. Through card check or whatever else it takes, Obama wants unionization of the workforce to grow. This, too, is risky. Unionization leads to higher wages for union workers but fewer jobs for everyone else. For Obama, the best outcome in 2009 is counterintuitive. The fewer of his risky initiatives that pass--in effect deleveraging his agenda--the better for the economy, and the better for him politically.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
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I'd like to see some others crunch this data, and some of the updates towards the end bode a court fight, which ought to be interesting, but in the interim I offer this as an interesting bon mot:
Monday, May 25, 2009
RED ALERT: Did anti-Obama campaign contributions dictate which Chrysler dealers were shuttered?
A tipster alerted me to an interesting assertion. A cursory review by that person showed that many of the Chrysler dealers on the closing list were heavy Republican donors.
To quickly review the situation, I took all dealer owners whose names appeared more than once in the list. And, of those who contributed to political campaigns, every single one had donated almost exclusively to GOP candidates. While this isn't an exhaustive review, it does have some ominous implications if it can be verified.
However, I also found additional research online at Scribd (author unknown), which also appears to point to a highly partisan decision-making process.
Consider the partial list of Chrysler dealership owners, listed below. You'll notice that all were opponents of Barack Obama, most through sponsorship of GOP candidates and organizations, but a handful through Barack's Democrat rivals (Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in 2008, for example).
• Vernon G. Buchanan: $147,450 to GOP candidates and organizations
• Wallace D. Alley and Family: $4,500 to GOP.
• Robert Archer: $4,600 to GOP and conservative causes.
• Homer S. Higginbotham and Family: $2950 to GOP.
• James Auffenberg and Family: $28,000 to GOP; $6,000 to one Democrat candidate.
• Michael Maroone and Family: $60,000 to GOP; $8,500 to two Democrat candidates.
• Jerome Fader: $6,500 to Democrats; $2,500 to Independent Joe Lieberman.
• Stephen Fay and Family: $13,500 to GOP.
• William Numrich: $20,000 to GOP.
• Robert Carver: $10,000 to Democrats including $1,950 to Hillary Clinton, nothing to Barack Obama.
• Robert and Linda Rohrman: $24,000 to GOP.
• Frank Boucher, Jr. and Family: $18,000 to GOP, $1,000 to one Democrat candidate.
• Scott Bossier: $4,300 to GOP.
• Todd Reardon: $17,000 to GOP; $2,000 to one Democrat candidate.
• Russ Darrow and Family: $78,000 to GOP.
• Bradford Deery and Family: $24,700 to GOP.
• Charles Gabus and Family: $30,000 to GOP.
• Brian Smith: $15,500 to GOP.
• Michael Schlossman: $14,000 to GOP; $14,000 to three Democrats ($12,500 to Sen. Russ Feingold).
• Don Hill: $11,000 to GOP; $12,800 to conservative incumbent Rep. Heath Shuler.
• Don Miller: $2,000 to GOP; $1,000 to Feingold.
• Eddie Cordes: $2,150 to GOP.
• Robert Edwards: $1,100 to GOP.
• James Crowley: $19,100 to GOP.
• Stanley Graff: $2,200 to John Edwards (2008 Presidential Run); $500 to GOP.
• John Stewart: $10,500 to GOP.
• John Fitzgerald and Family: $4,600 to John McCain (2008); $2,000 to Hillary Clinton (2008); nothing to Barack Obama.
• William Churchill and Family: $3,500 to GOP.
• Thomas Ganley: $9.450 to GOP.
• Gary Miller: $20,000 to GOP.
• Kevin and Gene Beltz: $18,500 to GOP.
• Arthur Grayson: $14,000 to GOP.
• Eric Grubbs and Family: $26,000 to GOP.
• Michael Leep and Family: $19,500 to GOP; $4,800 to three Democrats including Sen. Evan Bayh.
• Harry Green, Jr.: $10,000 to GOP.
• Ronald Hoover: $5,250 to GOP.
• Ray Huffines and Family: $18,500 to GOP.
• John O. Stevenson: $1,500 to GOP.
• James Marsh: $8,200 to GOP.
• Max Pearson and Family: $112,000 to GOP.
I have thus far found only a single Obama donor (and a minor one at that: $200 from Jeffrey Hunter of Waco, Texas) on the closing list.
Chrysler claimed that its formula for determining whether a dealership should close or not included "sales volume, customer service scores, local market share and average household income in the immediate area."
In fact, there may have been other criteria involved: politics may have played a part. If this data can be validated, it would appear to be further proof that the Obama administration is willing to step over any line to advance its agenda.
It bodes poorly for America and the rule of law.
Update: Noteworthy comments from Cars.com's blogs:
As an employee of one of the affected dealerships... First, this isn't just Chrysler's decision. They were forced into bankruptcy by President Obama. When Chrysler emerges from bankruptcy the Federal Government will be a junior partner in the new Chrysler. This is SOCIALISM! Wake up people! This isn't about business it's about politics and control. My dealership is in the top 125 out of the 3500 plus dealerships nationwide...yet we are on the list. We are not small nor are we rural. We are in a large major metropolitan area. Our new vehicle inventory alone is well over $4.0 million. Is that small? Secondly, Chrysler is already "shopping" for dealers to take over the open "points" (another name for franchise) left by the closed dealerships. Again, you think this is just business. Lastly, and more importantly, every state has franchise law in affect that protect companies from this very thing - being forced out of business under the cloak of bankruptcy with out the benefit of due process. This is illegal!
This is so much more than "just business". This is about control and power by our present administration in Washington. An administration that will stop at nothing to bring complete Socialism to this once great country. Wake up people or get in line now to "drink the Kool-Aid".
I just saw on the list that my local dealership, Wilson Dodge is closing. This is very shocking to me since they are the oldest and most recognized Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep dealer in the metro. This is really sad because these are great people with excellent service...
...There was an interview on the news this evening with the owner of the dealership that is going to be closed in my area where I learned that the DCJ dealership they competed with in my area is factory owned. So, instead of closing their own, they choose to close a successful franchisee. That's #$@?ed up IMO! ...
Update II: Deseret News, 14 May 2009, "Chrysler dealership closures may hurt small-town economies":
"I've been around this forever, and there's no rhyme or reason," Fred Barber, owner of Barber Brothers Motors in Spanish Fork, said Thursday.
...Why were Barber's Chrysler dealership and nine others from Utah among the 789 dealerships nationwide singled out by Chrysler LLC, in bankruptcy-court filings, to be eliminated by June 9? Was there any rhyme or reason to why certain dealerships were selected and others not? What's next for the targeted dealerships, and what will be the ripple effects?
"This is as close to socialism as I've seen — we've got the government running the automotive industry," he added.
Jim Lunt, vice president of Lunt Motor Co. in Cedar City, said employees at his Main Street dealership are anxious, while the owners feel "abandoned."
"It's like they chopped out your legs," Lunt said. "We haven't looked at other manufacturers. We've stuck with Chrysler through thick and thin. You kind of feel like you've been thrown overboard."
Update III: APP, 18 May 2009, "Ousted Chrysler dealers prepare legal fight":
Michael Bernstein, an attorney with Arnold & Porter who represents the Chrysler National Dealer Council, said the dealers may offer a number of objections to the plan in U.S. bankruptcy court, and that the case will enter some uncharted legal territory.
...Bernstein said under bankruptcy law Chrysler would have to show how its "reasonable exercise of business judgment" led to the closing list. While the company cited a bevy of standards by which it chose dealerships, Bernstein said it was noteworthy that Chrysler didn't cite costs.
"There's no cost to Chrysler associated with dealers. Dealers are a source of revenue," Bernstein said. "A lot of people were surprised by the number of dealers Chrysler is proposing to reject..."
Update IV: For those who want to do a deeper dive, here are the lists of both sets of dealers: those who are being shuttered and those who remain open. I have not had time to investigate the latter list, but welcome any help!
AllPar: Chrysler Dealers to be cut and kept
Please email me with with any conclusions, even preliminary ones, which you can draw from this data.
Hat tip: Bob. Linked by: American Digest, Atlas, Pat Dollard, Prairie Pundit, The Real Revo and Nice Deb
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/05/red-alert-did-campaign-contributions.html
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Let's see, it looks like Barry-O has decided to vote present on North Korean nukes and missile launches. Who's surprised?
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124329265169452457.html
Korea's Obama Test
Pyongyang's blast and White House 'engagement.'
North Korea's test of a second nuclear device Monday didn't surprise readers who saw John Bolton's recent prediction on these pages. But it does once again put in sharp relief the world's failure to counter dictator Kim Jong Il's challenge to global security. If history is any guide, Kim's strategy is to keep escalating until he extorts more money, aid and global recognition. This time in particular he's testing President Obama and his vow to "engage" the world's rogues.
AP
South Koreans react to news that Pyongyang tested another nuclear device.
By early accounts, yesterday's underground test outside the northeastern city of Kilju was successful. If the initial reports of a 10 to 20 kiloton blast are true, then North Korea's scientists have come a long way since their first test in October 2006. That blast registered less than a kiloton and was widely considered a failure abroad, if not in the North, where Kim used it to bolster his prestige.
In response to that test, the Bush Administration and China at first increased sanctions and diplomatic pressure. But they quickly turned to strike a deal offering Pyongyang aid and recognition in return for the North's promise to dismantle its nuclear programs. The North and the U.S. later made a public-relations show of blowing up the cooling towers at the Yongbyon reactor, but the deal foundered over the North's refusal to allow adequate inspections, turn over its plutonium or acknowledge its clandestine uranium program. President Bush nonetheless removed North Korea from the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring nations.
Kim is returning to this playbook now that Mr. Obama is in the White House, and Kim can't be displeased with the reaction so far. After the North launched a long-range ballistic missile in April, Mr. Obama declared that "Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response." But the U.S. couldn't even get a Security Council resolution at the U.N. and had to settle for a nonbinding "presidential statement" of rebuke.
After Pyongyang said it would put two American journalists on trial in June, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there was an "open door" to talks. And when the North refused to return to the six-party nuclear talks, Presidential envoy Stephen Bosworth said the U.S. is "committed to dialogue." Monday's test brought more global tut-tutting, with the White House saying that "such provocations will only serve to deepen North Korea's isolation." But Kim Jong Il can be forgiven for concluding that his multiple violations will sooner be rewarded than punished.
We can already hear the response in world capitals that there is "no alternative" to this kind of policy accommodation. That's what senior Bush State Department officials like Philip Zelikow, Christopher Hill and Condoleezza Rice asserted to win over Mr. Bush. But a concerted effort to squeeze North Korea economically was making a difference before Mr. Bush pulled the plug in 2007.
In 2005, the U.S. Treasury took action against a bank in Macau that did business with North Korea, and Japan cracked down on illegal businesses sending cash to the North. Those financial sanctions could be resumed, and if backed by energy sanctions from China would get the North's attention in a way that U.N. resolutions never will. The U.S. also has a reliable South Korean ally in President Lee Myung-bak, who has cut off aid to the North amid its recent provocations.
The stakes here go beyond the ambitions of one nasty regime. North Korea has shown in the past it is willing to sell its missile and other technology around the world, not least to Iran and Syria. The mullahs in Tehran and other rogues are carefully watching the response of the new American President as they contemplate the costs of their own WMD ambitions.
Mr. Obama won the White House while promising that his brand of kinder, gentler diplomacy would better rally the world against bad actors. Now would be a good time, and North Korea the right place, to prove it.
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May 27, 2009
More evidence emerges that Chrysler Dealer closings was politically motivated
Rick Moran
I wrote yesterday of the possibility that Chrysler dealers who had been given the ax were disproportionately Republican - many of them large contributors to GOP candidates and the RNC.
Now comes more evidence that these dealer closings were politically motivated. Through Reliapundit at Astute Bloggers, we learn that the lawyer for the dealers being torpedoed believes that the closings were ordered not by Chrysler, but by the White House: (via Reuters )
A lawyer for Chrysler dealers facing closure as part of the automaker's bankruptcy reorganization said on Tuesday he believes Chrysler executives do not support a plan to eliminate a quarter of its retail outlets.
Lawyer Leonard Bellavia, of Bellavia Gentile & Associates, who represents some of the terminated dealers, said he deposed Chrysler President Jim Press on Tuesday and came away with the impression that Press did not support the plan.
"It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers," Bellavia said. "It really wasn't Chrysler's decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President's automotive task force."
The dealer closings were not ordered by the bankruptcy judge but by the White House. This puts a whole new light on how the dealers to be closed were chosen and, more importantly, who did it.
And Jim Hoft has found an incredible piece of information. Apparently, a politically connected group of Democrats who own six Chrysler dealerships not only were allowed to keep them, but their competition was deep sixed. Hoft has a link to a blog on the Chrysler dealer shutdowns run by Joey Smith who reports:
The company is called RLJ-McLarty-Landers, and it operates six Chrysler dealerships throughout the South. All six dealerships are safe from closing. The dealer locations are:
Bentonville, AR (northwest Arkansas)
Lee's Summit, MO (south of Kansas City, MO)
Branson, MO
Olathe, KS (near Kansas City)
Bossier City, LA (near Shreveport)
Huntsville, AL
The interesting part is who the three main owners of the company are. The owners are Steve Landers (long-time car dealer, 4th-generation dealer), Thomas "Mack" McLarty (former Chief of Staff for President Clinton), and Robert Johnson (founder of Black Entertainment Television and co-owner of the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats). Landers has given money to Republicans in the past, but McLarty campaigned for Obama in 2008, and Johnson has given countless amounts of money to Democrats over the years.
This thing is getting stinkier by the hour. And it's starting to smell like rotten bananas - as in the tactic the White House is using is something you'd find in a central American banana republic and not the greatest nation on earth.
I wrote a piece on my own blog a while back when Chrysler dealer George Joseph wrote a letter published on AT about his own troubles with being shut down. In that piece, I made the argument that what we were seeing was not socialism, but gangsterism. And how did it happen?
It can happen because we are barking up the wrong tree when we accuse the Democrats of practicing socialism. Any Chicagoan recognizes what's going on as pure gangsterism - the application of power through the use blackmail, threats, and pure muscle and the devil take the Constitution, the rule of law, and simple fairness.
It can happen because we've elected a president who aggrandizes power unto himself while running roughshod over individual rights.
This story is about ready to explode. All the ingredients are there for a gigantic political scandal that would shake the Obama administration to its foundation and perhaps take down several high ranking officials. All that's needed is one connecting piece of evidence that would tie the White House Automotive Task Force to some political arm of the Democratic party.
Stay tuned...
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/05/more_evidence_emerges_that_chr.html at May 27, 2009 - 12:47:54 PM EDT
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This story is about ready to explode. All the ingredients are there for a gigantic political scandal that would shake the Obama administration to its foundation and perhaps take down several high ranking officials. All that's needed is one connecting piece of evidence that would tie the White House Automotive Task Force to some political arm of the Democratic party.
Stay tuned...
:? :roll: :roll: :roll:
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Pretend this story involves Republicans, JDN. That ought to get your juices flowing.
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Actually, I've voted Republican (I know - hard to believe) most of my life. Just got
tired of Bush for one reason after another.
But Republican or Democrat, I'm afraid I thought the quote a bit of hyperbole.
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Hyperbole aside--I don't edit the source material I post--Bush's Justice Department was excoriated in the press for having introduced ideological assessments into its hiring processes. If BHO and his cronies are now telling automotive bondholders what percentage on the dollar they will be allowed to reclaim, and then closes dealerships with Republican ties while leaving those with Democratic ties relatively unscathed, it's a story that ought to have legs if the MSM was doing its job.
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it's a story that ought to have legs if the MSM was doing its job.
I agree; it should be investigated to determine if Republicans dealerships are being targeted and closed and Democratic ownership
ones being left relatively unscathed.
And I understand you didn't edit the source material; I was only commenting (making fun of) on the source material.
Marc says "humor is good" :-)
And there is a bit of hyperbole involved in your posted source; I think even you would agree.
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And the dems said Bush was cocky????
He's no Ronald Reagan. Remember how Reagan got a lot done with *opposition* parties in both houses.
This guy is cruising through with essentially super majorities from the same party and an adoring news media who are of the same party persuasion:
Obama in L.A.: 'You ain't seen nothing yet'
By Sam Youngman
Posted: 05/27/09 11:51 PM [ET]
LOS ANGELES — Even as he conceded there is still much hard work to do, President Obama was in a boastful mood Wednesday night, telling a star-studded crowd at a fundraising dinner that he "would put these first four months up against any prior administration since FDR."
The president, speaking to a dinner that included Hollywood A-listers like Kiefer Sutherland, Marisa Tomei, Jamie Foxx, Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg, lauded the legislation he has signed since taking office but added that he is "not satisfied."
"I'm confident in the future, but I'm not yet content," Obama said.
The celebrity dinner, which cost couples $30,400 to attend, was followed by a larger, lower-dollar concert that all told raised between $3 million and $4 million for the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Joining the celebrities feting Obama were Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), "the newest member of our caucus."
Obama was introduced by Dreamworks CEO and longtime Democratic donor Jeffrey Katzenberg. The president thanked Katzenberg, saying: "If it weren't for you, we would not be in the White House."
The trip here came on the heels of a fundraising jaunt to Las Vegas to raise about $2 million for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), according to aides.
The president, while seeking to bolster his record as president so far, warned both audiences that significant challenges lie ahead.
At the concert, headlined by Jennifer Hudson and Earth, Wind and Fire, Obama responded to an audience member yelling, "Yes we can" by saying, "Yes we have. But we've got more work to do. We can't rest on our laurels.
"We didn't ask for the challenges that we face, but we don't shrink from them either," he said. "It won't be easy. There will be setbacks. It will take time."
The president conceded that his administration "had our fits and starts."
"I've made some mistakes, and I guarantee you I'll make some more," he said.
But Obama said in promising to continue to work hard, "Los Angeles, you ain't seen nothing yet."
Obama also lauded Judge Sonia Sotomayor, his pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, repeating his line that she has more experience than anyone currently sitting on the bench when they were nominated.
He joked at the second fundraiser that she graduated summa cum laude, "not just magna or laude laude, but summa cum laude."
Obama is scheduled to leave for Washington early Thursday morning.
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Moving this to the Acorn/electoral process thread:
Marc
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moved to US Foreign Policy thread
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Who is/are the biggest donors to the democratic party?
Anyone care to guess?
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Who is/are the biggest donors to the democratic party?" "Anyone care to guess"
Rich Limosine Liberals? White Guilt? Second and third generation wealth? Buffet, Soros, rich movie directors like Al Gore and Spielberg?
Recently appointed interim Senators and their families?
Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae? Lehmann Brothers? LOL
The PRC, DPRK, PSUV, KGB, and the PLO??
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Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, et al from Wall Street?
The UAW?
The Teacher's Union?
The Trial Lawyers Ass'n?
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Thanks for your opinion.
The answer is staring us straight in the face.
The biggest donors to the Democratic party is
Every American tax payer.
Without us they have nothing.
Without them we would have taxes, but nothing like what we do have.
The thought of wrking for several months out of the year so they can take my money to redistribute......
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WSJ:
By DANIEL SCHWAMMENTHAL
On his way to the 65th D-Day commemorations in France, President Obama plans a curious stop-over in Germany, my home country. He will travel to Buchenwald, the concentration camp his great uncle helped liberate, a visit that makes personal and historical sense. It is his other German destination, Dresden, that seems out of place. Will the president, who likes to apologize for America's alleged sins, now also apologize for World War II?
For many Germans, the destruction of Dresden in February 1945 has become a symbol of Allied "bombing terror." Many still believe the true number of deaths is closer to the Nazi propaganda of 200,000 than the 20,000 to 35,000 historians believe is correct.
Google "Dresden" and "Kriegsverbrechen," the German word for "war crimes," and you'll get almost 26,000 results. Neo-Nazis marched through the streets of Dresden this February commemorating the "Bombing Holocaust." A flood of recent books, articles and documentaries has shifted Germany's historical debate from its war crimes to its own war victims. As part of this trend, in 2006 public TV station ZDF broadcast "Dresden: The Inferno," the most expensive German television production at the time. Its graphic display of carnage and burning people is at odds with German movie tradition. Films about the Holocaust tend to be more subtle and less emotional.
Mr. Obama's visit to Dresden is an unfortunate gesture. Even if the president were not to make an outright apology for the allied bombings, he could hardly not mention them in this city so preoccupied with its wartime history. And even if he were not to give any speech at all and just toured the city, he'd inevitably be led to the many landmarks that were once reduced to rubble.
His mere presence in Dresden -- on the heels of a visit to Buchenwald and just before attending the Normandy commemorations -- would boost the revisionist cause. It would suggest a sort of moral equivalence between industrialized genocide and the bombings of German cities -- bombings, remember, that were designed to bring an end to the genocidal regime.
Mr. Obama's encounter with the reality of governing does not seem to have tempered his appetite for second-guessing past U.S. presidents. Having already come close to a mea culpa for America's use of atomic bombs against Japan, he may now add Dresden to the revisionist charges against the U.S. Even if the president doesn't say that America lost its moral bearings by bombing Dresden, people will read between the lines of his visit.
Mr. Schwammenthal is an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.
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Is this some sort of joke?
Is this routine for presidents to have someone test the food for poison?
Do we have a king or a President?
"President Obama's French food tested by 'taster'
Jun 7 10:12 AM US/Eastern
A US "taster" tested the food being dished up to President Barack Obama at a dinner in a French restaurant, a waiter said on Sunday.
"They have someone who tastes the dishes," said waiter Gabriel de Carvalho from the "La Fontaine de Mars" restaurant where Obama and his family turned up for dinner on Saturday night.
"It wasn't very pleasant for the cooks at first, but the person was very nice and was relaxed, so it all went well," he said on the Itele news channel.
Asked by AFP to comment, the restaurant confirmed the report.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium"
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I figure he'd be stupid if he didn't-- and the Secret Service derelict in its duty.
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As a practical matter it would seem that no one - Republican or Democrat, enemy of the U.S or ally, marksman or biochemist - would prefer Joe Biden be President.
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ROTFLMAO.
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Very funny Doug.
CCP,
Whatever it takes to protect the President. No matter who is in the office.
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Obama's "Gift" May Have a Downside
By Tom Bevan, Real Clear Politics
Barack Obama is good at giving speeches. So good, in fact, he once referred to it as his "gift." More than any other factor, Obama's rhetorical skills are responsible for his rapid rise to the presidency, beginning with his blockbuster speech at the 2004 convention and continuing through a nearly two year primary and general election campaign. Obama's penchant for soaring oratory remains a political asset, but signs are emerging there may be a political downside to all of the President's speechifying.
The first warning sign is that Obama is already pushing the limits of exposure. It seems Obama is everywhere and always speaking. It became apparent early on that the president's combination of charisma, eloquence, and popularity made it a political imperative that he become the Salesman in Chief. No other figure inside the administration had the star power and the persuasiveness to sell the transformational policy changes sought by this White House.
That said, in the first five months of his presidency Obama has held three prime time news conferences, twelve formal Q&A sessions and has delivered a number of high profile policy addresses (in addition to other exposure like interviews and appearances), each one amplified by extensive coverage by the media. The President's willingness to step inside America's living room at every possible opportunity may help cause the early onset of Obama fatigue.
Not only does Obama speak often, but his speeches also appear to be growing longer. And here we thought Joe Biden was the loquacious one. But Obama is proving the one to be incapable of brevity. The president's answers to questions at press conferences and in interviews can sometimes run upwards of five minutes of more. His remarks at daily public events can routinely run over 1,000 words. In the past month Obama has delivered 8 speeches running at least two thousand words each, including a nearly hour long address in Cairo last week and a mammoth 6,500 word discourse on national security on May 21.
Another issue is that Obama's oratory is starting to sound very formulaic. During the campaign, Obama excelled by repeating a well-honed stump speech about hope and change at hundreds of rallies across the country. Obama has adopted a similar approach as President, and the sheer volume of speeches he's given makes the pattern quite noticeable. In almost every speech, Obama bemoans the extremes on both the left and the right, predictably employing straw man arguments to discredit his opposition and position himself in the "reasonable" middle.
Lastly, Obama's speeches are often strikingly self referential. Clearly, Obama sees unique background and his life experiences as an asset and a rhetorical tool, which helps explain why his recent speech in Cairo was peppered with 68 first person references (I, me, my, or mine). But the habit carries over to other speeches as well, leaving the impression that Obama is often interested in talking about Obama.
In his speech honoring the 65th Anniversary of D-Day, for example, Obama made 10 first person references. While not a huge number in itself, it was eight more than Gordon Brown made and nine more than Stephen Harper made in their respective speeches that day. In his aforementioned national security speech on May 21, President Obama made an astounding 147 first person references.
Most important, however, Obama's high profile speechmaking on a range of big issues from restructuring GM to solving Middle East peace has dramatically increased the pressure on him to deliver results. As the Wall Street Journal put it on Monday, Obama is finding that "his own oratory laying out an ever-more-ambitious agenda, both in foreign and domestic policy, is ratcheting up demands for concrete achievements."
Obama's "gift" propelled him to the White House. He's now relying on it heavily to sell the American people on his vision of change. But at some point the public is going to get tired of hearing speeches from Obama, no matter how eloquent or well delivered. They will expect results. If Obama can't deliver those results, his "gift" will become a handicap in the form of a reputation as the president who talked the talk but couldn't walk the walk.
Tom Bevan is the co-founder and Executive Editor of RealClearPolitics.
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Thanks for compliments but I was dead serious with my Biden comment. In my quest for more positive things to say about our President, Barack Hussein Obama, here are the top 5 reasons I toast his good health, safety and security, hoping for a full Obama term:
Order of Presidential Succession
The Vice President: Joseph Biden
Speaker of the House: Nancy Pelosi
President pro tempore of the Senate: Robert Byrd
Secretary of State: Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of the Treasury: Timothy Geithner
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Thanks for compliments but I was dead serious with my Biden comment. In my quest for more positive things to say about our President, Barack Hussein Obama, here are the top 5 reasons I toast his good health, safety and security, hoping for a full Obama term:
Order of Presidential Succession
The Vice President: Joseph Biden
Speaker of the House: Nancy Pelosi
President pro tempore of the Senate: Robert Byrd
Secretary of State: Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of the Treasury: Timothy Geithner
Do they all ride to work in the same clown car?
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Is this some sort of joke?
Is this routine for presidents to have someone test the food for poison?
Do we have a king or a President?
"President Obama's French food tested by 'taster'
Jun 7 10:12 AM US/Eastern
A US "taster" tested the food being dished up to President Barack Obama at a dinner in a French restaurant, a waiter said on Sunday.
"They have someone who tastes the dishes," said waiter Gabriel de Carvalho from the "La Fontaine de Mars" restaurant where Obama and his family turned up for dinner on Saturday night.
"It wasn't very pleasant for the cooks at first, but the person was very nice and was relaxed, so it all went well," he said on the Itele news channel.
Asked by AFP to comment, the restaurant confirmed the report.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium"
Folks are surprised Papa Doc Barack thinks he's a king?
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Obama launches ocean protection plan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama launched a plan on Friday to protect the oceans, U.S. coasts and Great Lakes from the threats of climate change, pollution and overfishing.
"The oceans are critical to supporting life," Obama said in statement designating June as National Oceans Month. "The base of the oceanic ecosystem provides most of the oxygen we breathe, so oceans are critical to our survival."
Obama set up a task force led by chief White House environmental adviser Nancy Sutley to recommend a national policy to protect and restore "the health of ocean, coastal and Great Lakes ecosystems and resources" within 90 days.
The initiative comes as Obama is pressing Congress to pass sweeping new legislation to reduce the use of fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global climate change.
Oceans cover 70 percent of the Earth's surface and are a major source of jobs, food and energy resources. They are also critical to the transportation of people and goods and the mobility of U.S. armed forces.
Oceans "not only affect climate processes, but they are also under stress from the impacts of climate change," the White House said in a statement.
Other challenges are pollution, degraded coastal water quality, habitat loss, fishing impacts, invasive species, disease, rising sea levels and acidification, it said.
The environmental group Oceana praised Obama's action, hoping it would bring a "unifying vision" to the 140 U.S. laws and 20 federal agencies involved in oceans management.
"With the oceans facing the triple threats of overfishing, pollution and climate change, they need attention at the highest levels of government," Oceana chief executive Andy Sharpless said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE55B6CJ20090612
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Hmm, Newsweek is noticing, too:
Obama Closes Doors on Openness
Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jun 29, 2009
As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications." The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure. Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a "new era" of openness, "nothing has changed," says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. "For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies."
The hard line appears to be no accident. After Obama's much-publicized Jan. 21 "transparency" memo, administration lawyers crafted a key directive implementing the new policy that contained a major loophole, according to FOIA experts. The directive, signed by Attorney General Eric Holder, instructed federal agencies to adopt a "presumption" of disclosure for FOIA requests. This reversal of Bush policy was intended to restore a standard set by President Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno. But in a little-noticed passage, the Holder memo also said the new standard applies "if practicable" for cases involving "pending litigation." Dan Metcalfe, the former longtime chief of FOIA policy at Justice, says the passage and other "lawyerly hedges" means the Holder memo is now "astonishingly weaker" than the Reno policy. (The visitor-log request falls in this category because of a pending Bush-era lawsuit for such records.)
Administration officials say the Holder memo was drafted by senior Justice lawyers in consultation with Craig's office. The separate standard for "pending" lawsuits was inserted because of the "burden" it would impose on officials to go "backward" and reprocess hundreds of old cases, says Melanie Ann Pustay, who now heads the FOIA office. White House spokesman Ben LaBolt says Obama "has backed up his promise" with actions including the broadcast of White House meetings on the Web. (Others cite the release of the so-called torture memos.) As for the visitor logs, LaBolt says the policy is now "under review."
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/202875
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Gee, the great one who was going bring us all together and change poiitcs as we know it. So what's his plan? steal and conficscate everything he and hsi party can get away with from the producers to buy votes from those that are not producing and rely on the former group. Expand entitlements, government ownership, control, ranks, taxes (as soon as thye think they can get away with it), demoralize the nation domesticaly at home and abroad to the delight of his minority supporters and our enemies and competitors and then claim he is going to bring us together. He will crash and burn sooner or later in the polls. His core 40% of die hards will defend him to the death. As will the new 9.7 million illegals he will grant amnesty to leading to another 10 mill Democrat voters.
The inceasingly smaller group of producers that for now, still make up a majority will catch on and he will plummet in the polls.
Hopefully it will be before it is too late. And it will not happen easily if we have not viable alternative from the Republicans.
LOL:
***Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 Email to a Friend ShareThisAdvertisementThe Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 33% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of 0 (see trends).
Seven percent (7%) rate the economy as good or excellent while 59% say it’s poor. A Rasmussen video report notes that 55% believe business leaders will do more than government officials to get the economy moving again.
Sixty-nine percent (69%) say that volunteer activity is more important that political action. But, people are evenly divided as to whether or not volunteerism or government policies are the best way to bring about the change that America needs.
The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter.
Overall, 55% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance so far. Forty-four percent (44%) disapprove. For more Presidential barometers, see Obama By the Numbers and recent demographic highlights.
Most oppose the “Cash for Clunkers” plan that’s been approved by Congress and 50% believe that hate is on the rise in America.
(More Below)
Most voters still place the blame for our nation’s economic woes on the Bush Administration, but a growing number say it’s Obama’s economy now. The number blaming Bush has fallen to 54%. That’s down eight points from a month ago.
Americans remain evenly divided as to whether or not health care reform should wait until the economy is better.
Check out our weekly review of key polls from last week to see “What They Told Us.” You might also try our Daily Prediction Challenge to predict the results of upcoming polls.
When comparing Job Approval data from different firms, it’s important to keep in mind that polls of likely voters and polls of all adults will typically and consistently yield different results. In the case of President Obama, polls by all firms measuring all adults typically show significantly higher approval ratings than polls of likely voters. Polls of registered voters typically fall in the middle. Other factors are also important to consider when comparing Job Approval ratings from different polling firms.
If you’d like Scott Rasmussen to speak at your meeting, retreat, or conference, contact Premiere Speakers Bureau. You can also learn about Scott’s favorite place on earth or his time working with hockey legend Gordie Howe.
A Fordham University professor has rated the national pollsters on their record in Election 2008. We also have provided a summary of our results for your review.
Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. The margin of sampling error—for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters--is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Results are also compiled on a full-week basis and crosstabs for full-week results are available for Premium Members.
Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large (see methodology). Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process. While partisan affiliation is generally quite stable over time, there are a fair number of people who waver between allegiance to a particular party or independent status. Over the past four years, the number of Democrats in the country has increased while the number of Republicans has decreased.
Our baseline targets are established based upon separate survey interviews with a sample of adults nationwide completed during the preceding three months (a total of 45,000 interviews) and targets are updated monthly. Currently, the baseline targets for the adult population are 40.1% Democrats, 33.1% Republicans, and 26.7% unaffiliated. Likely voter samples typically show a slightly smaller advantage for the Democrats.
A review of last week’s key polls is posted each Saturday morning. Other stats on Obama are updated daily on the Rasmussen Reports Obama By the Numbers page. We also invite you to review other recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls.***
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/23/ramirez-on-obama-iran/
Perfectly captures our President on Iran.
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I'm not literary analyst enough to assess the conclusions of this piece and think that, rather than smoking guns, this article depends on frequency analysis; a measurement of commonalities that defy coincidence. With that said, if these allegations are true, then the implications are profound.
June 28, 2009
Breakthrough on the Authorship of Obama's 'Dreams'
By Jack Cashill
Within days of my going public last September with the speculation that terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers helped Barack Obama write his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, I learned that I was not alone in that intuition.
Since then, I have received helpful contributions from serious people in at least five countries and any number of states and have integrated many of their observations into my ongoing narrative, summarized here. If you are unfamiliar with this research, please read this before going forward.
About a week ago, however, I heard from a new contributor. I will refer to him as "Mr. West." Like most contributors, he prefers to remain anonymous. The media punishment that Joe the Plumber received has much to do with this nearly universal reticence.
A week before that, I heard from another excellent contributor, Mr. Midwest. Their collective contribution should dispel the doubts of all but the willfully blind that Ayers played a substantial role, likely the primary role, in the writing of Dreams.
As a reminder, there is no reliable computer science for determining authorship. In assessing the value of the existing science, think polygraph, not DNA. Polygraph-level scholarship may suffice for harmless speculation about the authorship of Midsummer's Night Dream, but not for Dreams From My Father. Too much is at stake for the latter.
The experts in the field have told me to stick with old-fashioned literary detective work, and I have done just that. Mr, Midwest has helped. His most recent contribution is a good example of keen-eyed detection.
Going forward, I will be referring to five books. These include Ayers' 1993 To Teach, his 1997 A Kind and Just Parent (shorthand: Parent), his 2001 memoir Fugitive Days, and Obama's 1995 Dreams From My Father (Dreams). Casual critics of this research have repeated the canard that I attributed both Obama books, Dreams and the 2006 Audacity of Hope (Audacity), to Ayers. I never have. From the beginning, I have asserted that the two books appear to have two different authors, and so I will leave Audacity out of the equation until the end.
What Mr. Midwest noticed recently is that both Ayers in Parent and Obama in Dreams make reference to the poet Carl Sandburg. In itself, this is not a grand revelation. Let us call it a C-level match. Obama and Ayers seem to have shared the same library in any case. Both talk of reading the books of Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois and Frantz Fanon among others. In fact, each misspells "Frantz" as "Franz."
Ayers and Obama, however, go beyond citing Sandburg. Each quotes the opening line of his poem "Chicago." From Dreams:
He poured himself more hot water. "What do you know about Chicago anyway?"
I thought a moment. "Hog butcher to the world," I said finally.
From Parent:
"At the turn of the century, Chicago had a population of a million people and was a young and muscular city - hub of commerce and industry, the first skyscraper city, home of the famous world exposition, "hog butcher to the world" - bursting with energy."
This I would call a B-level match. What raises it up a notch to an A-level match is the fact that both misquote "Chicago," and they do so in exactly the same way. The poem actually opens, "Hog butcher for the world."
Last week, the first email I received from Mr. West had in the message box "759 striking similarities between Dreams and Ayers' works." This claim seemed so outsized I did not take it seriously. When I was unable to open the documents, I emailed Mr. West back, asked him to reformat, and then forgot about the email. He resent his documents a few days later.
This time I was able to open them and was promptly blown away. Mr. West's analysis was systematic, comprehensive, and utterly, totally, damning. Of the 759 matches, none were frivolous. All were C-level or above, and I had no doubt of their authenticity. I had been gathering many of them in my own reserve waiting for a book-length opportunity to make my case. Mr. West had done the heavy lifting. He even indexed his matches. This represented months of works. As I learned, he had been patiently gathering material since November when he first began building on my own research.
I read through all 759 matches and culled out those that I would consider B-Level or above. There were 180 of these. As a control, I tested them against my own 2006 book Sucker Punch, like Dreams and Fugitive Days a memoir that deals extensively with race. In that I am closer to Ayers in age, race, education, family and cultural background than Obama is, our styles should have had more chance of matching. They don't. Of the 180 examples, I matched, strictly speaking, on six. Even by the most generous standard, we matched on only sixteen.
Let me just cite a few matches between Ayers' work and Dreams that I found intriguing. Rather astonishingly, as Mr. West points out, at least six of the characters in Dreams have the same names as characters in Ayers' books: Malik, Freddy, Tim, Coretta, Marcus, and "the old man." Many of the stories involving these characters in Dreams seem as contrived as their names.
In one instance, Obama reflects on his own first days as a ten year-old at his Hawaiian prep school, a transition complicated by the presence of "Coretta," the only other black student in the class.
When the other students accuse Obama of having a girlfriend, Obama shoves Coretta and insists that she leave him alone. Although "his act of betrayal" buys him a reprieve from the other students, Obama understands that he "had been tested and found wanting."
Ayers relates a parallel story in Parent. He tells of a useful reading assignment from the 1992 book, The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas, by black author Reginald McKnight. The passage in question deals with the travails of Clint, the first black student in a newly integrated school, who repudiates Marvin, the only other black boy in the school. Upon reflection, Clint thinks, "I was ashamed. Ashamed for not defending Marvin and ashamed that Marvin even existed."
As Mr. Midwest pointed out in a recent missive, Ayers' interest in education bleeds into Dreams. The tip-off once again is the contrived name, in this case "Asante Moran," likely an homage to the Afro-centric educator, Molefi Kete Asante. Moran lectures Obama and his pal "Johnny" on the nature of public education.
"The first thing you have to realize," he said, looking at Johnnie and me in turn, "is that the public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period."
"Social control" is an Ayers' bugaboo. "The message to Black people was that at any moment and for any reason whatsoever your life or the lives of your loved ones could be randomly snuffed out," he writes in Fugitive Days. "The intention was social control through random intimidation and unpredictable violence."
In Dreams, "Moran" elaborates on the fate of the black student, "From day one, what's he learning about? Someone else's history. Someone else's culture. Not only that, this culture he's supposed to learn is the same culture that's systematically rejected him, denied his humanity."
If this character were real, and Obama had actually met him, there would be no reason to phony up his name. In fact, however, Moran is spouting exactly the same educational philosophy that Ayers does in To Teach.
"Underneath it all," Ayers says of standard school textbooks, "the social studies and literature texts reflected and promoted white supremacy. There were no pictures or photographs of African Americans . . . there was throughout an assumed superiority and smug celebration of the status quo."
Both authors, by the way, use the phrase "beneath the surface" repeatedly. And what they find beneath the surface, of course, is the disturbing truth about power disparities in the real America, which each refers to as an "imperial culture." Speaking of which, both insist that "knowledge" is "power" and seem consumed by the uses or misuses of power. Ayers, in fact, evokes the word "power" and its derivatives 75 times in Fugitive Days, Obama 83 times in Dreams.
More exotically, both authors evoke images of a "boy" riding on the backs of a "water buffalo" and prodding the beast not just with sticks, but with "bamboo sticks." Ayers places his boy in Vietnam. Obama puts his in Indonesia.
Both authors link Indonesia with Vietnam. In each case, clueless officials - plural -- with the "State Department" try to explain how the march of communism through "Indochina" will specifically imperil "Indonesia." The Ayers account, however, at least sounds vaguely real. The Obama account sounds like an Ayers' memory imposed on Obama's mother. She allegedly discussed these geo-political strategy sessions in Indonesia with her pre-teen son.
Ayers and his radical friends were obsessed with Vietnam. It defined them and still does. To reflect their superior insight into that country, they have shown a tendency to use "Mekong Delta" as synecdoche, the part that indicates the whole.
In Fugitive Days, for instance, Ayers envisions "a patrol in the Mekong Delta" when he conjures up an image of Vietnam. Ayers' wife, Bernadine Dohrn, pontificated about "a hamlet called My Lai" in a 1998 interview, but to flash her radical chops, she located it "in the middle of the Mekong Delta," which is in reality several hundred miles from My Lai.
Given Obama's age, "Mekong Delta" was not likely a part of his vocabulary, but that does not stop him from writing about "the angry young men in Soweto or Detroit or the Mekong Delta." Ayers, of course, would also have had a much deeper connection than Obama to "Detroit," whose historic riot took place shortly before Obama's sixth birthday. Ayers worked in Detroit the year after those same riots.
Returning to the exotic, in his Indonesian backyard Obama discovered two "birds of paradise" running wild as well as chickens, ducks, and a "yellow dog with a baleful howl."
In Fugitive Days, there is even more "howling" than there is in Dreams. Ayers places his "birds of paradise" in Guatemala. He places his ducks and dogs together in a Vietnamese village being swept by merciless Americans. In Parent, he talks specifically about a "yellow dog." And he uses the word "baleful" to describe an "eye" in Fugitive Days. For the record, "baleful" means "threatening harm." I had to look it up.
Ayers is fixated with faces, especially eyes. He writes of "sparkling" eyes, "shining" eyes, "laughing" eyes, "twinkling" eyes, eyes "like ice," and people who are "wide-eyed" and "dark-eyed."
As it happens, Obama is also fixated with faces, especially eyes. He also writes of "sparkling" eyes, "shining" eyes, "laughing" eyes, "twinkling" eyes, and uses the phrases "wide-eyed" and "dark-eyed." Obama adds "smoldering eyes," "smoldering" being a word that he and Ayers inject repeatedly. Obama also uses the highly distinctive phrase "like ice," in his case to describe the glinting of the stars.
If Ayers is fixated on eyes, about eyebrows he is positively fetishistic. There are six references to "eyebrows" in Fugitive Days -- bushy ones, flaring ones, arched ones, black ones and, stunningly, seven references in Dreams -- heavy ones, bushy ones, wispy ones. It is the rare memoirist who talks about eyebrows at all.
On three occasions in Dreams, Obama speaks of people with "round" faces. On four occasions in Fugitive Days, Ayers does the same. Both speak of "grim-faced" people, people with "soft" faces, and, most unusually, people with "tight" faces.
Both Ayers and Obama describe acquaintances who smile like a "Cheshire cat." Some of their characters have a countenance -- grin, squint, or scowl -- that is "perpetual." Others are "suppressing" their smiles or their grins.
To this point, I have just skimmed the 759 items in the bill of particulars in my case against Obama's literary genius. Not familiar with the term "bill of particulars?" Uncertain myself, I looked that one up too. It means a list of written statements made by a party to a court proceeding. Ayers and Obama each refer knowingly to a "bill of particulars." Doesn't everyone?
The answer, of course, is no. In Audacity of Hope, Obama does not use this phrase or most of the distinctive words or combinations of words in Dreams. In Audacity, for instance, there are virtually no descriptions of faces or eyes, and the few that the author does use are flat and clichéd -- like "brave face" or "sharp-eyed." In Dreams, seven different people "frown," twelve "grin," and six "squint." In Audacity, no more than one person makes any of these gestures.
Mr. West independently came to the same conclusion that I did, namely that Ayers was not meaningfully involved in Audacity. These two Obama books almost assuredly had different primary authors. What should be transparent to any literary critic is that the author of Audacity lacked the style and skill of the author of Dreams. There are a few pockets in Audacity that evoke the spirit of Dreams but without the same grace.
A likely suspect for these imitative passages, perhaps the whole of Audacity, is Obama's young speechwriter, Jon Favreau. Favreau joined the Obama team in 2005, time enough to play that role. The London Guardian reports that Favreau carries Dreams wherever he goes and can "conjure up his master's voice as if an accomplished impersonator." If so, in Audacity he played the classic role of the ghostwriter -- one who absorbs his client's thoughts and relates them in a refined version of his client's voice.
Bill Ayers was no one's ghostwriter. The now overwhelming evidence strongly suggests that he used the frame of Obama's life and finished it off with his own ideas, his own biases, his own experiences, his own passions, his own friends, even his own romances, all of this toned down just enough to keep Obama viable as a potential candidate.
I would argue that Ayers played Cyrano to Obama's Christian. His personal history was too ugly for him to woo Roxane/America himself. But Obama -- "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," as Joe Biden reminded us -- could and did make America's heart melt.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/breakthrough_on_the_authorship_1.html
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fascinating.
I never heard the theory that Ayers may have written the
Bama books.
Certainly there is No doubt they think alike.
Certainly there is No doubt that BO governs from the premise that he has to get even for his perceived injustices done on the world by the white man.
He does this not only with regard to domestic policy but his foriegn policy also reflects this.
It is really obvious and thus
I don't understand how so many people feint surprise by his lefist leanings.
Indeed he would take us much farther left immediately if he could keep power.
Thus he cons us while he makes the changes.
Unfortunately media is on his side. That coupled with a lack of reasonable alternative keeps his plans alive. (I guess)
What BO is better at is not only pushing his arguments but discussing both sides of the arguments (including the right's) and then dispelling his opponent's position with ridicule, lies, distortions, "we can dispense with that" [it is wrong], "that it is obivous the rights policies of the last eight years do not work" [we need change] and even saying he agrees with the opposition, while he does the opposite. For example stating ouright lie, like "big government is over" etc [while he expands it at a faster and greater rate then anyone in history].
What I still don't hear from the rights' politicians is this laying out of the arguments from BOTH sides and convincing the listeners that their's is the best way vs simply throwing out "less government", "lower taxes" etc.
The only one forceful is Gingrich. But the MSM has done a good job of blunting him since he went after Sottomyer for her racist comments. Her repeated comments were racist as he said of course but our politically correct media apparantly were successful in making him look bad for saying so.
Hannity and Limbaugh still don't quite get it.
Marc Levin is closer IMO but not quite there either.
Anyway Crafty is right, we are all screwed unless as Dick Morris points out BO's policies can be held at bay till he falls in the polls coming August or the fall on his calculations. I agree. It is only a matter of time before the independents finally see how much they are going to suffer from this guys policies. He is giving it all away to his favorite constuents which include the rest of the non European world.
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Obama Could Work for The New York Times
Townhall.com | June 29, 2009 | Burt Prelutsky
Back in 2008, New York Times correspondent David S. Rohde, along with Afghan reporter Taki Luden, were abducted in Pakistan by the Taliban. Because they felt it might adversely affect hostage rescue efforts, the Times requested a news black-out. The Associated Press and other news agencies respected the request and only broke the story recently, after Rohde and Luden had scaled a wall and made their escape. It would be nothing other than a story with a happy ending, except that the Times has time and again ignored the government’s requests that it not report the specific ways in which we were combating Islamic terrorists.
It’s enlightening to know that so far as the New York Times is concerned, censorship is not only moral, but mandatory, when the life of one of its employees might be at risk, but is not to be condoned when the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians might hang in the balance.
However, when it comes to hypocrisy, the Times isn’t alone. For instance, when George W. Bush fired eight U.S. attorneys, the outrage voiced by the media would have had you believe that he’d personally ripped the Constitution into a thousand tiny pieces. Compare that to the silence that greeted Obama’s dismissal of Inspector General Gerald Walpin. It had been Walpin’s responsibility to oversee government-subsidized volunteer programs, such as AmeriCorps. Walpin’s team of investigators discovered serious irregularities at St. Hope, a California non-profit run by former NBA star Kevin Johnson. It seems that an $850,000 grant, which was supposed to go towards tutoring Sacramento students and supporting theater and art programs, instead was used to pad staff salaries, meddle in a local school board election and pay AmeriCorps members to perform personal services for Mr. Johnson, including washing his car.
When Walpin recommended that Johnson, an assistant and St. Hope, itself, be cut off from federal funds, he was fired by the president. Did I mention that Mr. Johnson is a friend and was an early supporter of Barack Obama? I guess you can take the man out of Chicago, but you can’t take Chicago out of the man. Not even when he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
Some of us have been puzzled by the personal animosity that Obama has shown towards those, like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who oppose his radical left-wing agenda. Clearly, the man is so narcissistic and thin-skinned that he can’t conceal his contempt for anyone who doesn’t openly adore him. I don’t entirely blame him, though. Like a little brat who is never disciplined by his parents when he misbehaves, Obama is the inevitable result of a media that has mollycoddled him ever since he came on the scene.
Frankly, I can’t figure out what it is that people find admirable about the president. I, myself, was profoundly upset that he couldn’t even muster up a few inspirational words for those brave souls in Tehran who were standing up to the murderous mullahs and their hand puppet, Ahmadinejad. But, on further reflection, it occurred to me that maybe he just didn’t want Americans to get any funny ideas about freedom and liberty.
In fact, I found myself wondering if the spark that ignited the demonstrations in Iran wasn’t supplied by the example of democracy taking hold in nearby Iraq, in much the same way that the French revolution was inspired by our own.
Some people have suggested that the reason Obama kept silent during the popular uprising is because he is a Muslim. The truth is, I have no idea how much he was influenced by his early years in Indonesia or by the wish to please his absentee Islamic father. I figure it’s bad enough that he calls himself a Christian, but attended a racist church for his entire adult life, spending a thousand Sundays listening to a creepy minister heap curses on Jews, white Christians and America. While I don’t know what the man believes in his heart, I do know that he would have heard the exact same message if he’d been kneeling on a prayer mat for all those years in a Baghdad mosque.
It appears to me that Obama is bent on destroying our economy, our military and our missile defense system; while, at the same time, he promotes socialized medicine, hires a racist attorney general and nominates a Supreme Court nominee who parrots the party line of La Raza. This is a man who brags about nonexistent Muslim accomplishments, while taking every opportunity to denigrate America’s character, her sacrifices and her awe-inspiring achievements.
Ronald Reagan saw America as a shining city upon a hill. President Obama sees it as a slum that needs to be torn down as part of a massive reconstruction project.
If there were ever a site like Mt. Rushmore, dedicated not to heroic leaders, but rather to those who were unfaithful to their nation’s highest ideals, Barack Hussein Obama could take his rightful place alongside the likes of Vidkun Quisling, Henri Petain and Benedict Arnold.
http://townhall.com/columnists/BurtPrelutsky/2009/06/29/obama_could_work_for_the_new_york_times
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KARL ROVE
In February, President Barack Obama signed a $787 billion stimulus bill while making lavish promises about the results. He pledged that "a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed all across America." He also said the stimulus would "save or create up to four million jobs." Vice President Joe Biden said the massive federal spending plan would "drop-kick" the economy out of the recession.
But the unemployment rate today is 9.5% -- nearly 20% higher than the Obama White House said it would be with the stimulus in place. Keith Hennessey, who worked at the Bush White House on economic policy, has noted that unemployment is now higher than the administration said it would be if nothing was done to revive the economy. There are 2.6 million fewer Americans working than Mr. Obama promised.
The economy takes unexpected turns on every president. But what is striking about this president is how quickly he turns away from his promises. He rushed the stimulus through Congress saying we couldn't afford to wait. Now his administration is waiting to spend the money. Of the $279 billion allocated to federal agencies, only $56 billion has been paid out.
Mr. Biden has admitted that the administration "misread" the economy. But he explained that away on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday by saying the administration had used "the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there" to draw up its stimulus plan. That's not true.
The Blue Chip consensus is an average of some four dozen economic forecasts. In January, the consensus estimated that GDP for 2009 would shrink by 1.6% and that unemployment would top out at 8.3%. Team Obama assumed both higher GDP growth (it counted on a contraction of 1.2%) and lower peak unemployment (8.1%) than the consensus.
Instead of relying on the Blue Chip consensus, Mr. Obama outsourced writing the stimulus to House appropriators who stuffed it with every bad spending idea they weren't previously able to push through Congress. Little of it aimed to quickly revive the economy. More stimulus money will be spent in fiscal years 2011 through 2019 than will be spent this fiscal year, which ends in September.
On Sunday, Mr. Biden, backpedaling from his drop-kick comments, said that "no one anticipated, no one expected that the recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of the money."
This fits a pattern. The administration consistently pledges unrealistic results that it later distances itself from. It has gotten away with it because the media haven't asked many pointed questions. That may not last as the debate shifts to health care.
The Obama administration wants a government takeover of health care. To get it, it is promising to wring massive savings out of the health-care industry. And it has already started to make cost-savings promises.
For example, the administration strong-armed health-care providers into promising $2 trillion in health savings. It got pharmaceutical companies to promise to lower drug prices for seniors by $80 billion over 10 years. The administration also trotted out hospital executives to say that they would voluntarily save the government $150 billion over 10 years.
None of this comes near to being true. On the promised $2 trillion, everyone admits that the number isn't built on anything specific -- it's an aspirational goal. On drug prices, a White House spokesman admitted that "These savings have not been identified at the moment." It is speculative that these cuts will actually be made, when they would begin, or whether they would reduce government health-care spending.
None of this will stop the administration from arguing that its "savings" will pay for Mr. Obama's $1.5 trillion health-care plans. By the time the real price tag emerges, it will be too late to do much more than raise taxes and curtail spending on urgent priorities, such as the military.
The stimulus package is a clear example of how Mr. Obama operates. He is attempting to employ the same tactics of bait-and-switch when it comes to health care, only on a much larger scale.
Mr. Obama has already created a river of red ink. His health-care plans will only force that river over its banks. We are at the cusp of a crucial political debate, and Mr. Obama's words on fiscal matters are untrustworthy. His promised savings are a mirage. His proposals to reshape the economy are alarming. And his unwillingness to be forthright with his numbers reveals that he knows his plans would terrify many Americans.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
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Billions in aid go to areas that backed Obama in '08
By Brad Heath, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Billions of dollars in federal aid delivered directly to the local level to help revive the economy have gone overwhelmingly to places that supported President Obama in last year's presidential election.
That aid — about $17 billion — is the first piece of the administration's massive stimulus package that can be tracked locally. Much of it has followed a well-worn path to places that regularly collect a bigger share of federal grants and contracts, guided by formulas that have been in place for decades and leave little room for manipulation.
"There's no politics at work when it comes to spending for the recovery," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says.
Counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration's $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, a USA TODAY analysis of government disclosure and accounting records shows. That money includes aid to repair military bases, improve public housing and help students pay for college.
The reports show the 872 counties that supported Obama received about $69 per person, on average. The 2,234 that supported McCain received about $34.
Investigators who track the stimulus are skeptical that political considerations could be at work. The imbalance is so pronounced — and the aid so far from complete — that it would be almost inconceivable for it to be the result of political tinkering, says Adam Hughes, the director of federal fiscal policy for the non-profit OMB Watch. "Even if they wanted to, I don't think the administration has enough people in place yet to actually do that," he says.
"Most of what they're doing at this point is just stamping the checks and sending them out," Hughes says.
The stimulus package Obama signed in February includes about $499 billion in new spending, and to date, the Obama administration has allocated about $158 billion to specific projects and programs. Most of that money has gone directly to state governments, which then disperse the money to prevent school layoffs, repair roads and fund social services. That contrasts with the $17 billion that Washington distributes directly to local communities.
Including the larger chunk of money given to state governments, the aid favors states that voted for Obama, which have received about 20% more per person
Not all of the money favors places that supported Obama. About a third of the $17 billion, or $5.5 billion, in contracts that the federal government has signed for projects ranging from repaving runways to cleaning up nuclear waste has gone overwhelmingly to counties that supported McCain.
Jake Wiens, an investigator with the non-profit Project on Government Oversight, says it's too soon to draw meaningful conclusions about whether the type of aid in the stimulus favors Obama's constituents.
But, he says, "it will be important to pay close attention as the data come in to ensure that political favoritism plays no role."
The imbalance didn't start with the stimulus. From 2005 through 2007, the counties that later voted for Obama collected about 50% more government aid than those that supported McCain, according to spending reports from the U.S. Census Bureau. USA TODAY's review did not include Alaska, which does not report its election results by county.
Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-07-08-redblue_N.htm
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this is all well and good but I don't believe for one second Pelosi did not know about the waterboarding and did not lie and cover up her knowedge so crats could gain political advantage.
****Lawmaker says CIA director ended secret program
PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer Pamela Hess, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 32 mins ago
WASHINGTON – CIA Director Leon Panetta has terminated a "very serious" covert program the spy agency kept secret from Congress for eight years, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a House Intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, said Friday.
Schakowsky is pressing for an immediate committee investigation of the classified program, which has not been described publicly. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has said he is considering an investigation.
"The program is a very, very serious program and certainly deserved a serious debate at the time and through the years," Schakowsky told The Associated Press in an interview. "But now it's over."
Democrats revealed late Tuesday that CIA Director Leon Panetta had informed members of the House Intelligence Committee on June 24 that the spy agency had been withholding important information about a secret intelligence program begun after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Schakowsky described Panetta as "stunned" that he had not been informed of the program until nearly five months into his tenure as director.
Panetta had learned of the program only the day before informing the lawmakers, according to a U.S. intelligence official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity Friday because he was not authorized to discuss the program publicly.
Panetta has launched an internal probe at the CIA to determine why Congress was not told about the program. Exactly what the classified program entailed is still unclear.
The intelligence official said the program was "on-again/off-again" and that it was never fully operational, but he would not provide details.
Schakowsky, D-Ill., said Friday that the CIA and Bush administration consciously decided not to tell Congress.
"It's not as if this was an oversight and over the years it just got buried. There was a decision under several directors of the CIA and administration not to tell the Congress," she said.
Schakowsky, who chairs the Intelligence subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said in a Thursday letter to Reyes that the CIA's lying was systematic and inexcusable. The letter was obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.
She said Reyes indicated to her the committee would conduct a probe into whether the CIA violated the National Security Act, which requires, with rare exceptions, that Congress be informed of covert activities. She told AP she hopes to conduct at least part of the investigation for the committee.
She said this is the fourth time that she knows of that the CIA has misled Congress or not informed it in a timely manner since she began serving on the Intelligence Committee two and half years ago.
In 2008, the CIA inspector general revealed that the CIA had lied to Congress about the accidental shoot down of American missionaries over Peru in 2001. In 2007, news reports disclosed that the CIA had secretly destroyed videotapes of interrogations of a terrorist suspect.
She would not describe the other incident.
Schakowsky said she thinks Panetta is changing the CIA for the better, adding that the failure to inform Congress was indicative of "contempt" the Bush administration and intelligence agencies under him held for Congress.
"Many times I felt it was an annoyance to them to have to come to us and answer our questions," she said. "There was an impatience and a contempt for the Congress."
The House is expected to take up the 2010 intelligence authorization bill next week. It includes a provision that would require the White House to inform the entire committee about upcoming covert operations rather than just the "Gang of Eight"_ the senior members from both parties on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and the Democratic and Republican leaders in both houses.
The White House this week threatened to veto the final version of the bill if it includes that provision.
Democratic aides said the language may be softened in negotiations with the Senate to address the White House's concern.
But Schakowsky said the wider briefings are the best remedy to avoiding future notification abuses.
Republicans charge that Democratic outrage about the Panetta revelation is just an attempt to provide political cover to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who in May accused the CIA of lying to her in 2002 about its use of waterboarding.
What Pelosi knew about the CIA's interrogation program and when she knew it — and why she did not object to it sooner — is expected to be emphasized by Republicans during debate over the intelligence bill.****
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Obama Rewrites the Cold War
The President has a duty to stand up to the lies of our enemies.Article Comments (44) more in Opinion »Email Printer
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By LIZ CHENEY
There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth. President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week.
Speaking to a group of students, our president explained it this way: "The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose. And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful."
The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not "competition in astrophysics and athletics." It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet "sphere of influence" was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.
It is irresponsible for an American president to go to Moscow and tell a room full of young Russians less than the truth about how the Cold War ended. One wonders whether this was just an attempt to push "reset" -- or maybe to curry favor. Perhaps, most concerning of all, Mr. Obama believes what he said.
Mr. Obama's method for pushing reset around the world is becoming clearer with each foreign trip. He proclaims moral equivalence between the U.S. and our adversaries, he readily accepts a false historical narrative, and he refuses to stand up against anti-American lies.
The approach was evident in his speech in Moscow and in his speech in Cairo last month. In Cairo, he asserted there was some sort of equivalence between American support for the 1953 coup in Iran and the evil that the Iranian mullahs have done in the world since 1979. On an earlier trip to Mexico City, the president listened to an extended anti-American screed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and then let the lies stand by responding only with, "I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for the things that occurred when I was 3 months old."
Asked at a NATO meeting in France in April whether he believed in American exceptionalism, the president said, "I believe in American Exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, not so much.
The Obama administration does seem to believe in another kind of exceptionalism -- Obama exceptionalism. "We have the best brand on Earth: the Obama brand," one Obama handler has said. What they don't seem to realize is that once you're president, your brand is America, and the American people expect you to defend us against lies, not embrace or ignore them. We also expect you to know your history.
Mr. Obama has become fond of saying, as he did in Russia again last week, that American nuclear disarmament will encourage the North Koreans and the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions. Does he really believe that the North Koreans and the Iranians are simply waiting for America to cut funds for missile defense and reduce our strategic nuclear stockpile before they halt their weapons programs?
The White House ought to take a lesson from President Harry Truman. In April, 1950, Truman signed National Security Council report 68 (NSC-68). One of the foundational documents of America's Cold War strategy, NSC-68 explains the danger of disarming America in the hope of appeasing our enemies. "No people in history," it reads, "have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies."
Perhaps Mr. Obama thinks he is making America inoffensive to our enemies. In reality, he is emboldening them and weakening us. America can be disarmed literally -- by cutting our weapons systems and our defensive capabilities -- as Mr. Obama has agreed to do. We can also be disarmed morally by a president who spreads false narratives about our history or who accepts, even if by his silence, our enemies' lies about us.
Ms. Cheney served as deputy assistant secretary of state and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs from 2002-2004 and 2005-2006.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j4PYGKun8FwQE1yOv3xp0SYIgM9AD99GNCF00
Obama losing some support among nervous Dems
By BETH FOUHY (AP) – 1 day ago
NEW YORK — Could it be that President Barack Obama's Midas touch is starting to dull a bit, even among members of his own party?
Conservative House Democrats are balking at the cost and direction of Obama's top priority, an overhaul of the nation's health care system. A key Senate Democrat, Max Baucus of Montana, complains that Obama's opposition to paying for it with a tax on health benefits "is not helping us."
Another Democrat, Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma, tells his local newspaper that Obama is too liberal and is "very unpopular" in his district.
From his first days in office, Obama's popularity helped him pass the landmark $787 billion stimulus package and fueled his ambitious plans to overhaul the nation's health care system and tackle global warming.
Obama continues to be comparatively popular. But now recent national surveys have shown a measurable drop in his job approval rating, even among Democrats. A CBS news survey out this week had his national approval rating at 57 percent, and his standing among Democrats down 10 percentage points since last month, from 92 percent to 82 percent.
With the economy continuing to sputter and joblessness on the rise, many of Obama's staunchest Democratic supporters are anxious for his agenda to start bearing fruit.
"We are eager and impatient, so you're seeing a little bit of that," said Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. "Elections have results, and those in the base are the most anxious to achieve what's promised in the election. That's why Democrats are showing some impatience in reaching our goal."
Obama won Ohio, a key swing state, by 4 percentage points in 2008 over Republican John McCain. But the one-time industrial powerhouse has been hit hard by the weak economy, and a Quinnipiac University poll released this month showed Obama with a lackluster approval rating of 49 percent.
Redfern argued that the stimulus program has begun to show tangible results in his state and people shouldn't expect the economy to turn around instantly. A similar argument came from Nevada, another swing state Obama carried. Las Vegas City Councilman Steve Ross counseled patience, saying that voters in his state want Obama to succeed and that their support would be solidified once they saw stimulus-driven building projects under way.
"Generally, folks in Nevada are waiting to see the effects of the stimulus package," Ross said. "I think the president is probably just as impatient to get this money out in the country to employ people as anyone."
In Missouri, which Obama narrowly lost to McCain, Democratic strategist Steve Glorioso said hardcore base voters were as enthusiastic as ever for Obama but that there was a sense of disappointment about him among less committed Democrats and independents.
"People are scared," Glorioso said. "This is the worst economic time anyone under the age of 80 has ever experienced, and you can't discount people being afraid. Now that we are in July, the fear is turning to disappointment that the president hasn't fixed everything yet. I don't know why they thought he could change everything by now, but some did."
Glorioso said an open Senate race next year in Missouri, where Democrat Robin Carnahan is likely to face former Republican Rep. Roy Blunt, will be a crucial test of Obama's appeal.
"If the economy gets better and they pass a reasonable health care bill, his popularity will be way back up and Carnahan will win," Glorioso said. "If none of that happens, it's a moot point."
In Michigan, where the near-collapse of the auto industry has driven the unemployment rate to 14.1 percent, the nation's worst, the state's Democratic chairman, Mark Brewer, said support for Obama among Democrats has remained strong.
"People are very worried and concerned, I don't want to dispute that," Brewer said. "But they voted for the president in overwhelming numbers and want to support the things he's trying to do."
Obama traveled to Michigan this week to unveil a $12 billion program to help community colleges prepare people for jobs. There, he made an audacious declaration.
"I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, 'Well, this is Obama's economy,'" the president said. "That's fine. Give it to me!"
Redfern, the Ohio Democratic Party chairman, said he welcomed that statement but cautioned it came with a price.
"When it's the president's economy, it's the president's trouble," Redfern said. "Americans are eager for the change that they voted into office. They support him, they just want to see results sooner rather than later."
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In depth breakdown of a recent ABC/WaPo poll regarding BHO's performance:
http://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1092a1ObamaatSixMonths.pdf
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It is only natural that the high numbers decline somewhat. While I certainly hope that the trend continues and accelerates, IMHO it remains to be seen.
Also worth noting is that the cowardice and incoherence of the Republican response is there for all to see.
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RASMUSSEN 2012 poll released at 10:30AM ET
Obama 45% Romney 45%
Obama 48% Palin 42%
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090720/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_midsummer_s_budget_nightmare/print
White House putting off budget update
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer Tom Raum, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 1 min ago
WASHINGTON – The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today's bleak landscape.
The administration's annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama's budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.
The release of the update — usually scheduled for mid-July — has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town Aug. 7 on its summer recess.
The administration is pressing for votes before then on its $1 trillion health care initiative, which lawmakers are arguing over how to finance.
The White House budget director, Peter Orszag, said on Sunday that the administration believes the "chances are high" of getting a health care bill by then. But new analyses showing runaway costs are jeopardizing Senate passage.
"Instead of a dream, this routine report could be a nightmare," Tony Fratto, a former Treasury Department official and White House spokesman under President George W. Bush, said of the delayed budget update. "There are some things that can't be escaped."
The administration earlier this year predicted that unemployment would peak at about 9 percent without a big stimulus package and 8 percent with one. Congress did pass a $787 billion two-year stimulus measure, yet unemployment soared to 9.5 percent in June and appears headed for double digits.
Obama's current forecast anticipates 3.2 percent growth next year, then 4 percent or higher growth from 2011 to 2013. Private forecasts are less optimistic, especially for next year.
Any downward revision in growth or revenue projections would mean that budget deficits would be far higher than the administration is now suggesting.
Setting the stage for bleaker projections, Vice President Joe Biden recently conceded, "We misread how bad the economy was" in January. Obama modified that by suggesting the White House had "incomplete" information.
The new budget update comes as the public and members of Congress are becoming increasingly anxious over Obama's economic policies.
A Washington Post-ABC News survey released Monday shows approval of Obama's handling of health-care reform slipping below 50 percent for the first time. The poll also found support eroding on how Obama is dealing with other issues that are important to Americans right now — the economy, unemployment and the swelling budget deficit.
The Democratic-controlled Congress is reeling from last week's testimony by the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, that the main health care proposals Congress is considering would not reduce costs — as Obama has insisted — but "significantly expand" the federal financial responsibility for health care.
That gave ammunition to Republican critics of the bill.
Citing the CBO testimony, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, on Monday accused Democrats of "burying this budget update until after Congress leaves town next month." He called the budget-update postponment "an attempt to hide a record-breaking deficit as Democratic leaders break arms to rush through a government takeover of health care."
White House budget office spokesman Tom Gavin disagreed, noting the delay was "really not something out of the norm" and is typical for a president's first year. Gavin noted that President George W. Bush's budget office did not release the mid-session review in his first year until August 22; in President Bill Clinton's first year, it did not come out until Sept. 1.
Obama also didn't release his full budget until early May — instead of the first week in February, when he put out just an outline
Late last week, Obama vowed anew that "health insurance reform cannot add to our deficit over the next decade and I mean it."
The nation's debt — the total of accumulated annual budget deficits — now stands at $11.6 trillion. In the scheme of things, that's more important than talking about the "deficit," which only looks at a one-year slice of bookkeeping and totally ignores previous indebtedness that is still outstanding.
Even so, the administration has projected that the annual deficit for the current budget year will hit $1.84 trillion, four times the size of last year's deficit of $455 billion. Private forecasters suggest that shortfall may actually top $2 trillion.
Budget updates in previous administrations have given rise to charges that the White House was manipulating its figures to offer too rosy an outlook. Critics will be watching closely when the White House's Office of Management and Budget releases the new numbers.
Still, the update mainly involves plugging in changes in economic indicators, not revising program-by-program details. And indicators such as unemployment and gross domestic product changes have been public knowledge for some time.
Standard & Poor's chief economist David Wyss said part of the problem with the administration's earlier numbers is that "they were just stale," essentially put together by budget number-crunchers at the end of last year, before the sharp drop in the economy.
Wyss, like many other economists, says he expects the recession to last at least until September or October. "We're looking for basically a zero second half (of 2009). And then sluggish recovery," he said.
Even as it prepares to put larger deficit and smaller growth figures into its official forecast, the administration is looking for signs of improvement.
"If we were at the brink of catastrophe at the beginning of the year, we have walked some substantial distance back from the abyss," said Lawrence Summers, Obama's chief economic adviser.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/20/wapo-poll-has-obama-under-water-on-health-care/
WaPo poll has Obama under water on health care
posted at 9:26 am on July 20, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Pollster Scott Rasmussen first reported that support for Barack Obama and the Democrats in general had begun to seriously slip over a month ago, especially on the economy. At first, other pollsters didn’t catch the trend, but now almost all surveys show Americans losing confidence in the administration’s efforts on fiscal matters. Now the bleeding also has begun on health care, as the new Washington Post poll shows:
Heading into a critical period in the debate over health-care reform, public approval of President Obama’s stewardship on the issue has dropped below the 50 percent threshold for the first time, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Obama’s approval ratings on other front-burner issues, such as the economy and the federal budget deficit, have also slipped over the summer, as rising concern about spending and continuing worries about the economy combine to challenge his administration. Barely more than half approve of the way he is handling unemployment, which now tops 10 percent in 15 states and the District.
The president’s overall approval rating remains higher than his marks on particular domestic issues, with 59 percent giving him positive reviews and 37 percent disapproving. But this is the first time in his presidency that Obama has fallen under 60 percent in Post-ABC polling, and the rating is six percentage points lower than it was a month ago. …
Since April, approval of Obama’s handling of health care has dropped from 57 percent to 49 percent, with disapproval rising from 29 percent to 44 percent. Obama still maintains a large advantage over congressional Republicans in terms of public trust on the issue, even as the GOP has closed the gap.
The erosion in Obama’s overall rating on health care is particularly notable among political independents: While positive in their assessments of his handling of health-care reform at the 100-day mark of his presidency (53 percent approved and 30 percent disapproved), independents now are divided at 44 percent positive and 49 percent negative.
Bear in mind that this poll has a rather odd partisan split. Unlike the CBS poll, which got deliberately tweaked to emphasize Democrats, this poll appears to have a natural sample that overemphasizes independents. According to the raw data, the poll only has 22% Republicans, 33% Democrats, and 41% independents. In that case, Republicans are significantly undersampled, and Democrats slightly undersampled. The independents lean slightly Democratic, which was certainly true in the last election, but the double-digit gap between Democrats and Republicans didn’t exist in the presidential election and certainly doesn’t reflect the electorate — and this sampling bias still can’t mask the decline Obama has seen in his polling.
One of the most interesting questions in which this can be seen is in question 15: Is Obama a new-style Democrat who will be careful with the public’s money, or an old-style tax-and-spend Democrat? Obama still gets a majority saying new-style Democrat, 52%-43%, but that metric shows a lot of erosion. Four weeks ago, that was 58%-36%, and four months ago 62%-32%. Trending on Obamanomics is also heading south. Confidence in its ability to improve the economy has fallen to 56%-43%, down from 64%-35% in March.
However, as the Post reports, the most remarkable numbers come from the trendline on health care. In April, Obama had a 57%-29% approval-to-disapproval rating on this issue. By June, it was 53%-39%, at about the time the CBO began scoring ObamaCare. Now it’s at 49%-44%, almost within the margin of error, and that was before the CBO rated the House version of ObamaCare as a deficit buster.
Obama will hold another prime-time press conference on Wednesday to try to sell ObamaCare to the nation. These numbers show why he’s going back to the well, but they also show that he’s rapidly losing credibility. More jawing at the cameras may not help much.
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Wow, the parallels here between the CPUSA view and BHO's policies are downright scary:
Change is Here, Change is Coming
Archive Front Page
Author: Sam Webb, National Chair
First published 07/01/2009 00:54 by {article_topic_desc}
(Remarks to National Committee Meeting June 20, 2009)
Download the PDF version.
I make no attempt to be comprehensive in these remarks. My aim is much more modest, as you will see.
Let me begin with a simple observation: If the last 30 years were an era of reaction, then the coming decade could turn into an era of reform, even radical reform. Six months into the Obama presidency, I would say without hesitation that the landscape, atmosphere, conversation, and agenda have strikingly changed compared to the previous eight years.
In this legislative session, we can envision winning a Medicare-like public option and then going further in the years ahead.
We can visualize passing tough regulatory reforms on the financial industry, which brought the economy to ruin.
We can imagine the troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan while U.S. representatives participate in a regional process that brings peace and stability to the entire region.
In the current political climate, the expansion of union rights becomes a real possibility.
Much the same can be said about winning a second stimulus bill, and we sure need one, given the still-rising rate, and likely long term persistence, of unemployment.
Isn’t it possible in the Obama era to create millions of green jobs in manufacturing and other sectors of the economy in tandem with an attack on global warming?
Can’t we envision taking new strides in the long journey for racial and gender equality in this new era, marked at its beginning by the election of the first African American to the presidency?
And isn’t the overhaul of the criminal justice and prison system – a system steeped in racism – no longer pie-in-the sky, but something that can be done in the foreseeable future?
All these things are within reach now!
I make this observation because in the ebb and flow of the first six months of the Obama presidency, it is easy to lose sight of the overall dynamics and promise of this new era.
Obama’s role
The new conditions of struggle are possible only – and I want to emphasize only – because we elected President Obama and a Congress with pronounced progressive and center currents.
So far Obama’s presidency has both broken from the right-wing extremist policies of the Bush administration and taken steps domestically and internationally that go in a progressive direction.
At the same time, the administration hasn’t gone as far as we would have liked on a number of issues. On economic matters as well as matters of war and occupation we, along with others, advocated bolder actions.
All and all, however, the new President in deeds and words – and words do matter – has created new democratic space for peace, equality, and economic justice struggles. Whether this continues and takes on a consistently progressive, pro-people, radical reform direction depends in large measure on whether the movement that elected him fills and expands this space.
The struggle going forward, much like the New Deal, will be the outcome of a contested and fluid process involving broad class and social constituencies, taking multiple forms, and working out over time.
It will pivot on the expansion of social and economic rights, the reconfiguring of the functions of government to the advantage of working people, and the embedding of a new economic architecture and developmental path into the nation’s political economy.
No less importantly, it will also entail the recasting of the role of the U.S. in the global community along egalitarian and non-imperial lines.
“What’s all this talk about reform?” you may be asking. “Aren’t we radicals? Isn’t socialism our objective?”
Yes, socialism is our objective and, according to recent public opinion polls, it is increasingly attractive to the American people. But clearly it is not on the immediate political agenda. Neither the current balance of forces nor the thinking of millions of Americans – the starting point in any serious discussion of strategy and tactics – has reached that point.
That socialism isn’t on the people’s action agenda, however, doesn’t mean that we should zip our lips. Quite the contrary! We should talk it up and bring our modern, deeply democratic Twenty-First-Century vision of U.S. socialism into coalitions and mass movements. And with the use of the Internet we can reach an exponentially bigger audience than we could in the past.
As for our radicalism, we should be as radical as reality itself. And reality strongly suggests that our main task is to bring the weight of the working class and other democratic forces to bear on the reform process with the aim of deepening its anti-corporate content and direction.
Current phase of struggle
How do we understand the current phase of struggle? On the one hand, our strategic policy of defeating right wing extremism doesn’t quite fit the new correlation of class forces. On the other hand, neither have we arrived at the anti-monopoly stage of struggle – a stage in which corporate class power is confronted on every level of struggle.
In short, we are in transitional phase that contains elements of both.
In the course of this struggle, political conditions – consciousness, organization, unity, and alliances, including temporary and conditional alliances – will hopefully mature to the point where corporate power emerges as the main hindrance to radical democracy and socialism in the minds of tens of millions.
We can conjure up pure forms of struggle and direct and unencumbered paths to socialism in our impatient minds, but they don’t exist in real life. The struggle for a socialist future is complex, contradictory, roundabout, and goes through different phases/stages of struggle.
Propaganda and agitation by themselves won’t bring people to the threshold of socialism. They need their own experience in struggle for their essential (what is essential is variable and expands over time) needs.
The question
People aren’t sitting on their hands. Anger is out there, hardship is widespread, and the fight back is taking shape.
And yet, it is fair to ask: does the level of mobilization of the diverse coalition that elected President Obama match what is necessary to win his administration’s immediate legislative and political agenda – let alone far-reaching reforms, such as military conversion to peacetime and green production, a shorter work week, a “war” on poverty and inequality, democratic ownership of critical economic sectors, and a retreat from empire?
I think the answer is no – not yet. A favorable alignment of forces exists and mass sentiments favor change. But political majorities and popular sentiments are consequential only to the degree that they are an active and organized element in the political process.
And herein lays the role of the Left. Its main task, as it has been throughout our country’s history, is to persistently and patiently assist in reassembling, activating, uniting, educating, and giving a voice to common demands that unite this broad majority.
The Left's political analysis, its solutions to today's pressing crises, and its vision of radical democracy and socialism, rooted in national realities, will receive a fair and favorable hearing from millions of Americans to the degree that Left activists are active participants in the main labor and people’s organizations struggling for vital reforms today — jobs, health care, retirement security, quality public education, equality and fairness, immigration reform, a foreign policy of peace and cooperation, and a livable environment and sustainable economy.
Those who narrow down the role of the Left to simply being a critic of every move of the Obama administration or insist on Left demands as the only ground for broad unity cut down the Left’s capacity to be a growing part of a much larger coalition that could remake America.
Some on the Left dismiss the new President as simply another centrist or a right social democrat, or an unabashed spokesperson of Wall Street. Still others call him the new face of imperialism.
I find it unwise for many reasons to put President Obama into a tightly sealed political category. We should see the President and his administration as a work in progress in an exceptionally fluid situation.
Let’s remember that he is the leader of a diverse multi-class coalition and a party with different currents. Let’s not forget about the balance of forces in Congress that has to enter his – and hopefully our – political calculus.
Let’s not turn any one issue into a litmus test determining our attitude toward the administration and Congress. Let’s be aware that he has to keep a coalition together for his long-term as well as immediate legislative agenda. Let’s give President Obama some space to change and to respond to pressures from below.
Finally, we should resist pressures from some sections of the Left, and a few in our Party, to define the current struggle as one that arrays the people against President Obama. That’s not Marxism; it’s plain stupid.
The American people and their main mass organizations have good reason to be angry and frustrated, but few embrace an approach that turns the Obama administration into the main roadblock to social progress.
That we have spurned such an approach too is to our credit. (Read the outstanding speech of AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka to the national convention of CBTU, in which he speaks of labor’s positive view of the new administration and the new openings for class and democratic struggles that now exist.)
We can help re-bend the arc of history in the direction of justice, equality, and peace. But only if we, and millions like us, pursue a sound strategy that unifies broad sections of the American people and looks for alliances no matter how temporary and conditional. Majorities make history, not militant minorities.
President Obama and progressive Congresspeople can’t be the only change agents and will be change agents only up to a point.
Our responsibility is to support them, prod them, and constructively take issue with them when we have differing views.
But more importantly – and this is the heart of the matter – we have to reach, activate, unite, educate, and turn millions of Americans into “change agents” who can make the political difference in upcoming struggles.
Our parents and grandparents were such bottom-up change agents in the Depression years. Unhappy with the pace and substance of change, they sat down in plants and in the fields, marched for veteran benefits, petitioned local relief agencies, lobbied for a social safety net, established unemployed groups, organized industrial workers into the CIO, opposed discrimination and racism, turned multi-racial unity into an organizing principle, and, we should note, re-elected Roosevelt and a New Deal Congress in a landslide in the 1936 elections.
The American people today would do well to follow their example.
Likewise, communists of our generation should draw from the example of our Depression-era comrades. Because they were guided by a sound strategy that accented struggles for economic and social reforms and because they employed flexible tactics, and because they didn’t conflate their mood with the mass mood, they were a vital part of this process too.
Struggle for health care reform
The mobilization that the labor movement and others carried out tirelessly last year in the elections is exactly what is needed now. How else can health care for all, the Employee Free Choice Act, economic relief, comprehensive immigration reform, a transfer of funds from military spending to massive green job creation, and a tax policy that weighs heavily the wealthiest families and corporations be won?
The Right Wing, the American Medical Association, the pharmaceutical and insurance companies have drawn a line in the sand on health care. They hope to defeat any legislation in the near term and in doing so to fatally weaken the administration’s legislative program in the longer term, much like they did in the Clinton years.
The core of this struggle, whether we like it or not, turns on the inclusion of a public option in a health care bill. President Obama reaffirmed his support for such an option and the Congressional Progressive Caucus recently expressed its full support for a public option that is government run, covers everyone, and goes into effect right away.
Meanwhile, Republicans, with help from some Democrats, are ganging up against any public option, while at the same time introducing measures to weaken health care reform and confuse the American people.
True to form, the right-wing media is the megaphone of this effort.
Mass mobilization is needed
Over the summer this fight will be waged like an election campaign by the labor movement and progressive forces. Across the country activists will be asked to knock on doors and make phone calls to build a massive groundswell for health care reform.
This campaign provides a great opening to strengthen our clubs and build the broader movement. Some of our clubs are in the thick of the fight; some are looking for ways to become engaged.
Each district and club should discuss how to carry this fight forward in a way that results in new friends, new readers of the People’s World, and new members of the Party and Young Communist League. A few ideas:
• speak to neighbors and friends about their health care stories and suggest what they can do.
• share coverage of the Peoples World in either its print or electronic form and ask if they would like the paper every week in one or another form.
• prepare a special agenda for your club meeting with invited guests.
• help build participation in rallies and events of unions and other organizations.
• organize speak-outs and town hall meetings with others.
• collect signatures on petitions, make phone calls, employ the internet, and organize visits to your elected officials.
While we support HR 676 as the most advanced demand in the current debate, it should not be counterpoised to a Medicare-like public option. In the single payer movement and the campaign for a public option, our role isn’t to sharpen differences, but rather to build maximum unity against the health care industrial complex and its supporters (Democratic as well as Republican) in Congress and for meaningful health care reform.
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Economic crisis over
Another observation that I want to make is to beware of talk of better economic times around the corner. We may be over the worst of it; we may have avoided a 1930s-type depression; but it’s quite another thing to suggest that we are on the road to recovery.
Yes, there have been some indicators that show improvement in the economy; but we shouldn’t read too much into them (as the business press does).
After all, there are more signs that suggest that we haven’t reached bottom yet, that the recovery is still not in sight; and that more government intervention is necessary.
Unemployment hasn’t peaked, even though the official rate is nearly ten per cent. Poverty is growing, and among the long-term poor, the crisis is dire. Manufacturing is hemorrhaging jobs – none more so than the auto industry. Banks, as quiet as it is kept, hold mountains of toxic assets. Debt is nearly off the charts. Credit markets are far from fluid. Business investment is off. And housing prices fall and foreclosures rise.
On a global level, signs of renewed economic activity are few. Maybe the best we can say is that the decline of the economy is slowing down, thanks to massive government intervention, but hasn’t bottomed out.
If this is so then three questions follow: first, when will the economy hit bottom? Second, when will the economy begin a vigorous and sustained renewal? Third, is the economic crisis reconfiguring the geography of economic power on a global level?
On these questions there is no consensus.
Some say that the economy will bottom out soon to be followed by a recovery early next year. Other economists are more pessimistic. Citing the enormous piling up of debt over the past 20 years, overcrowded world commodity markets, technological displacement, capital flight, downward pressures on profitability, and so forth, they predict little economic bounce for some time to come.
Months ago it was said that the downturn could be “L-shaped” rather than “V-shaped.” In other words, the crisis begins with a steep decline in economic activity followed by long period of economic stagnation.
I suspect that this is what will happen, thus making sustained government and people’s intervention an imperative. In my view this should take at least three forms:
First, more economic stimulus: the economy is underperforming and nearly 30 million workers are unemployed or underemployed and that number hasn’t peaked yet.
Second, restructuring is imperative. The old economic model that rested on bubble economics, cheap labor, financial manipulation and speculation, deregulation, capital outsourcing, environmental degradation, and so forth, has to be replaced by a new model that expands and restructures the productive base and is “people and nature” friendly.
Finally, the economy has to be democratized. The wizards of Wall Street and inside the Beltway failed miserably, in fact, so miserably those economic decisions that affect the welfare of millions shouldn’t rest in their hands.
The resistance to such measures will be massive. It will take a labor-led coalition far bigger than what exists now to drive the process.
Furthermore, even in the event that such a coalition materializes and pushes through such measures, the organically embedded economic contradictions and crisis tendencies of capitalism will erupt in one form or another. There is no such thing as a crisis-free capitalist developmental model. Sooner or later, it exhausts its potential and gives way to sharp and ultimately irresolvable contradictions located at every level of the capitalist economy.
In the meantime, the struggle for immediate public sector jobs and relief should command our attention. We, along with the labor movement, the nationally and racially oppressed, women, youth and others, have to help the unemployed find their voice and forms to express their demands and organize their struggle.
In addition to articulating class wide demands, we have to argue for special measures that address the catastrophic situation in the African American, Latino, Asian American, American Indian, immigrant, and other minority communities. The lack of jobs is at the heart of this dire situation, but it also includes malnutrition and hunger, poor health care, shabby housing, high dropout rates, homelessness, racial profiling, police brutality, criminalization, and so on.
The job crisis requires special discussion and initiatives with our allies. They should be concrete and realistic.
As for the impact of the current crisis of capitalism on the geographical distribution of economic power on a global level, it is enormous and consequential. While the U.S. and European market economies report negative growth rates, the economies of the emerging giants – China, India, and Brazil – are expanding this year and this trend will continue at a faster rate next year. If this trend continues – and there is no reason to think that it won’t – the implications and consequences will be profound and long lasting.
An end to violence
Still another observation that I would like to make is this: against the background of the bloodiest century in human history and this decade of war, genocide, boycotts, and threats and counter threats, thanks in large measure to the Bush administration and our own imperialism, humanity is seeking a new world order in which peace and justice are its organizing principles.
The vast majority of people desire the easing of tensions, an end to violence, and the normalization of relations between states. They want dialogue and negotiation, not war and threats. And they hope that the U.S. government will choose a constructive role in world affairs.
President Obama has captured this sentiment well in several speeches before vast audiences. His emphasis on human solidarity, diplomacy, cooperation, and peaceful settlement of outstanding issues is striking an emotional chord worldwide. In nearly every region of the world, the President has expressed a readiness to engage with countries that during the Bush years were considered mortal enemies – Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and others. In Latin America, he indicated that the administration would like to put relations between our government and others in the region on a different footing. In a historic speech in Prague, he voiced his desire to reduce and ultimately abolish nuclear weapons. Earlier this month, in an unprecedented address in Cairo he indicated his eagerness to reset relations with the Muslim world, sit down with the Iranian government, and press for a two state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
And only this week, he has been circumspect with regard to the massive social explosion in Iran over the rigged election and right-wing theocratic rule. He has quietly made his allegiances clear, but not in a way that would play in to the hands of the ruling reactionary regime.
While the administration has yet to fully match its words with practical deeds, what it has said and done so far constitutes a qualitative turn compared to the previous administration.
Nevertheless, more needs doing before we are on a distinctly new course.
In Afghanistan and North Korea, a negotiated solution to both conflicts that includes increased economic and humanitarian aid is urgently needed. Military occupation and troop buildup in Afghanistan and the imposition of sanctions against North Korea are extremely dangerous and will postpone any resolution of those crises.
To go further, if one or the other (or both) metastasizes into a bigger conflict, it could be the undoing of this administration. Don’t get me wrong: terrorist activities and nuclear proliferation are both enormous dangers, but the solutions to these have to be sought along other lines and involve regional and international players.
In Iraq, the U.S. withdrawal plan is proceeding, with the first stage being withdrawal from Iraqi cities by July. President Obama has reiterated his intention to stick with the pullout deadlines. Even with the caveats about what U.S. forces might remain, this is a major victory for the peace movement. The struggle over what forces remain will depend in large part on the Iraqi people's democratic and progressive forces, as well as our own peace movement.
In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Netanyahu, in an about-face, said he could live with a two-state solution. And even with all the caveats and demagogy surrounding the “concession,” I believe that it signifies recognition, albeit forced, on Likud’s part that public opinion is shifting against them in Israel, Europe, and the U.S.
In this country the peace movement has to note particularly the changing dynamics in U.S. opinion, including in the White House and Congress, including Jewish members of Congress. Netanyahu got a different reaction than he expected when he met with Congressional leaders when he was in Washington recently. While he wanted to focus on Iran, they pressed him on the settlements. And, that pressure will only grow if the new Israeli government continues in its actions to pursue its present policy.
As far as Cuba is concerned, we are at a crucial moment in U.S.-Cuba relations. The Obama administration has indicated its readiness to reset relations with Cuba and has taken some very modest steps in words and deeds in that direction. But obviously much more needs to be done to end all travel restrictions, lift the blockade, resume trade, and free the Cuban 5, who languish in maximum security prisons. That said, the good news is that diverse groups have an interest in normalizing the relations between our two countries, including in the Congress.
Finally, we are in a moment when our ability to change our foreign policy will bear directly on our capacity to address economic and social problems at home. Currently, 53 percent of the discretionary spending of the federal budget goes to the military.
Thus, ending wars, closing military bases, and cutting military spending coupled with diplomacy, cooperation, and respect for international law and national sovereignty is good economic as well as good foreign policy.
But there is a hitch. Both Republicans and Democrats are upset at the minimal steps the administration is proposing to cut specific “unnecessary” or useless weapons systems.
So we have a struggle on our hands. And it will be fought out in “the court of public opinion,” at the ballot box, and in the economic trenches.
So far the peace movement has an array of plans to challenge the military appropriations process, including town hall Congressional meetings on foreign policy during the August recess. We should participate and support them.
Bottom line: the country and the Obama administration need a more vocal peace movement in order to reconfigure our role in world affairs and address the economic crisis.
Mentality of marginalization
Another observation that I want to make is that because of McCarthyism, the Cold War, and the long economic expansion following WW II, the Left has been on the edges of politics for more than a half century. During this time, our ability to impact on broader political processes in the country has been narrowly circumscribed – nothing like the 1930s, nothing like the Left in many other countries.
While we stubbornly fought the good fight and made undeniable contributions over the past half-century, we were not a major player; we didn’t set the agenda or frame the debate; we didn’t determine the political direction of the country; we were not a decider.
But this could change. Because of the new political, economic and ideological landscape, the Left has an opportunity to step from the political periphery into the mainstream of U.S. politics. It has a chance to become a player of consequence; a player whose voice is seriously considered in the debates bearing on the future of the country; a player that is able to mobilize and influence the thinking and actions of millions.
Whether we do depends on many factors, one of which is our ability to shake off a “mentality of marginalization” that has become embedded in the Left’s political culture over the last half of the Twentieth Century.
How does this mentality express itself? In a number of ways – in spending too much time agitating the choir; in dismissing new political openings that if taken advantage of could create the conditions for mass struggle; in thinking that partial reforms are at loggerheads with radical reforms; in seeing the glass as always half empty; in conflating our outlook with the outlook of millions; in turning the danger of cooptation into a rationale to keep a distance from reform struggles; in enclosing ourselves in narrow Left forms; and in damning victories with faint praise.
In this peculiar mindset, politics has few complexities. Change is driven only from the ground up. Winning broad majorities is not essential. There are no stages of struggle, no social forces that possess strategic social power, and no divisions worth noting. Finally, alliances with unstable allies and distinctions between the Democratic and Republican parties are either of little consequence or disdainfully dismissed.
Unless the Left – and I include communists – sheds this mentality, it will miss a unique opportunity to grow and leave a distinct imprint on our country’s direction.
A final observation before closing is that I wholeheartedly welcome the proposals to reconfigure our work that you received and that we are going to discuss later today.
I don’t have any of the reservations about this that some have. The upside of this new means of communication, education, organization, and fund raising is that it is nearly limitless.
I think it is going to make a huge difference in our ability to reach, influence, and interact with a mass audience – something that we haven’t ever been able to do in a systematic way so far.
Every aspect of our work will experience new potentials, including grassroots organizing and club building.
I hope we enthusiastically adopt these proposals. Assuming for the moment that we do, it is fair to say that we will have our work cut out for us. But as is often said, we have a world to win! Thank you.
http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/1054/1/27/
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I can't wait till he crashes in the polls.
I can't wait to see that strut and pompous grin wane.
I can't wait to see the crats go after Cheney, the CIA.
I do hope we get a huge repudiation of their socialistic idealogy.
I can only hope.
That said the repubs still need better and clearer application of conservative values to todays problems in my view.
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July 21, 2009
Surprise! Gitmo report delayed
There will be no report from either of the two task forces set up by the Administration to figure out what to do about the detention center at Guantanamo as well as how to proceed with the detainees there.
The deadline, according to Newsweek's Michael Isikoff's source has slipped "a few months."
The postponement of the two reports is sure to raise fresh questions about whether Obama will be able to shut down Guantánamo by next January as he pledged immediately after taking office. While publicly saying they remain committed to next January's deadline, officials privately acknowledge that a host of political and diplomatic problems-including the reluctance of foreign countries to accept detainees and fierce opposition from members of Congress to moving them to the United States-has made closing the facility far more daunting than they had anticipated.
Three administration officials familiar with the process said the detention task force, which is jointly run by aides to Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, did agree that the Obama administration should continue to claim the right to hold some Guantánamo inmates indefinitely as "combatants" under the "laws of war," without charging them either in criminal courts or in military commissions. That proposal is sure to prove controversial among human-rights groups, which say any such "indefinite detention" violates civil liberties and is virtually indistinguishable from legal claims made by President Bush.
But the officials say that, as much as the concept of indefinite detention is distasteful to the president and his legal advisers, there is simply no alternative for dealing with potentially dozens of detainees whom the administration doesn't want to release because they are thought to be too dangerous, but can't bring to trial for lack of evidence.
This is what happens when you play politics with national security. Obama wanted to score brownie points with the far left by announcing on his second day in office that Gitmo would be closed and detainees get trials. Non-partisan security people told him he couldn't do it, that letting some of those terrorists go would be tantamount to inviting an attack.
Now the president is stuck in a morass of his own making. The danger now is that he'll think more of honoring his promise to his liberal friends rather than thinking of the security of the United States and her people.
And Obama, always with one eye on the polls, may conclude the political fallout just isn't worth it and do something really stupid in order to please his base.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/07/surprise_gitmo_report_delayed.html at July 21, 2009 - 09:54:57 AM EDT
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By the way, speaking of Cheney CCP, remember how the Dems and the Pravdas went after him for "secret meetings with Big Oil"?
Where are they now that Big Pharma and His Glibness are meeting in private to discuss the health care plan?
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Where are they now that Big Pharma and His Glibness are meeting in private to discuss the health care plan?
& Chrysler & GM & who knows what else?
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If Bush did this the press and the left--often one in the same--would be excoriating him.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/07/22/report_obama_ordered_cbo_chief_to_wh.html
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Isn't there a separation of powers issue here too?
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Big time, though I expect the White House would say they were merely consulting or somesuch.
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Open Letter to President Obama on Healthcare and the Economy
Dear Mr. President,
Wednesday evening we heard you address the nation on health care and the economy. I was hoping to hear some tough answers to tough questions. Instead we were treated to one hour of tap dancing on eggshells where it seemed your primary intent was not to break any eggs.
You spoke of the need for sacrifices but failed to mention any. You said Medicare benefits would not be reduced and everyone would be covered.
Mr. President where are the sacrifices? By who? (sic)
The press seemed concerned with a fear of rationed health care. Some republicans have raised the issue as well.
Mr. President I am concerned there will be no rationing of health care. It is axiomatic that there is unlimited demand for free services.
Here are some tougher questions I am sure everyone would like to know.
Will the plan cover a transplant procedure with a $50,000 cost for someone who is 80 years old with a life expectancy of two years? One year? Who decides? Or is everything free for everyone regardless of the odds of success?
Will the plan cover fertility treatments? Abortion?
Will the plan address issues that arose in the Terri Schiavo case?
To what extent must doctors provide generics instead of prescription drugs?
Mr. President, is health care free or subsidized for illegal aliens? Aren't free services one of the primary reasons we have such a problem in the first place?
Mr. President, unless something is done to rein in costs taxpayers will be footing the bill for a lot of things they shouldn't. In every country that has a single payer system, there is some degree of rationing.
Somehow you have us believe benefits will not be reduced, everything will be covered for everyone, there will be no rationing and somehow health care will cost less because of reduced paperwork. Mr. President, no one believes that, not even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Mr. President, to prevent costs from spiraling out of control rationing is mandatory. Unfortunately, you do not have the courage to admit it. Yet until you do, it can't happen.
Mr. President, a heart operation in the US might cost $100,000 whereas the same operation in India, in a world class hospital might cost $20,000. Will we fly people to India for non-emergency medical operations if they save taxpayer money? If not, why not? Shouldn't the primary concern be getting the most benefits for the least cost?
Mr. President, you noted that the AARP and doctor's groups were in favor of your plan. You failed to mention the $245 billion "sweetener" it took to get them to do so. Moreover, you did not even count that $245 billion while calling your plan "budget neutral".
Mr. President, with numerous states blowing up over the issue, it should be clear the US cannot afford the defined benefit programs promised government workers. Starting with Congress, what is your proposal pension reform?
Similarly, when does Congress share the pain of this recession?
Mr. President, you called the cancellation of additional F-22 planes a victory. This strikes me as odd given the Pentagon does not even want more of them. Why is canceling a military program that the military does not want such a big victory?
Mr. President, the savings on the F-22 program is $2 billion. The 2010 Pentagon budget is $534 billion, a $21 billion, four percent increase over 2009. Total defense spending is $780 billion. Mr. President, is this sustainable?
Mr. President, history is replete with examples of great nations spending themselves into oblivion attempting to maintain their empires. It should be crystal clear the US can no longer afford to be the world's policeman. So, Mr. President, when will you start bringing the troops home from Europe, Japan, and the Mid-East?
Mr. President, I did not vote for you nor did I vote for Senator McCain. I voted for Ron Paul. However, I did expect and frequently said that I expected you to get some things correct.
Instead, I see you carrying out the same failed stimulus and bailout plans of President Bush. You promised transparency on spending and did not deliver.
The proposal to Audit The Fed is languishing in Congress even though it has overwhelming support of both Congress and the public. You broke a promise to release details of military torture. Where are significant charges against anyone? I was positive you would handle the torture issue correctly, but I was wrong.
Mr. President, you placed your faith in the same set of folks at the Fed and Treasury as President Bush, in spite of the fact they all failed to see this coming.
Mr. President it frequently appears as if Goldman Sachs is running your administration just as it ran the last.
Mr. President, other than a sketchy health care plane with no details and no cost constraints, exactly what change have you delivered?
Thank you Mr. President, now can we have some answers please?
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
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http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
SS Obamatanic meets the icy edge of reality.
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Kind of interesting isn't it that BO's comments over the Gates Crowley flap stirred up the emotions of so many.
It was OK for him to circumvent the globe insulting the United States and the previous President without hardly a peep except from rightest radio and Fox.
But offend a policeman and suddenly we have a whole new ballgame.
Here we go again with the races taking sides like they did with OJ.
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Obama's mask slipped, and America caught a glimpse of what was underneath.
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Who'da thunk that someone that was a disciple of Rev. Wright and Weatherman Ayers would be a cop bashing, race baiter? Gee, I never saw this coming. :roll:
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Also part the mix I think is that inside he feels the insecurity of the oreo.
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July 25, 2009
Did Obama have a personal vendetta against Cambridge cops?
Newsmax may have stumbled upon the real reason President Barack Hussein Obama (D) was so critical of the performance of the Cambridge police.
One reason Barack Obama may have been so critical of the Cambridge Police Department is that he might have a grudge against the law enforcement agency.
Obama, who attended Harvard Law School from 1988 to 1991, lived in Cambridge and apparently didn't like the fact he was frequently hit with parking tickets.
In all, Obama received 17 tickets for parking violations, and he did not pay 15 of them until a local newspaper exposed him as a scofflaw.
(snip)
Obama received 17 parking tickets in Cambridge between 1988 and 1991, mostly for parking in a bus stop, parking without a resident permit and failing to pay the meter, records from the Cambridge Traffic, Parking and Transportation office show.
Racial profiling by ticketing cars parked in the wrong place and failure to pay a meter. Ask Professor Gates about this.
But never fear. Our president is scofflaw no longer. More than 17 years after receiving his tickets, and being dunned for them
The Illinois senator shelled out $375 in January - two weeks before he officially launched his presidential campaign - to finally pay for 15 outstanding parking tickets and their associated late fees.
Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign, dismissed the tickets as not relevant. (snip)"He didn't owe that much and what he did owe, he paid," Psaki said on Wednesday. "Many people have parking tickets and late fees. All the parking tickets and late fees were paid in full."
Oh, Obama didn't owe that much so he could at his convenience and only when he ran for public office.
Definitely a case of racial profiling. Not!
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/07/did_obama_have_a_personal_vend_1.html at July 25, 2009 - 10:16:19 AM EDT
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July 24, 2009, 0:30 p.m.
Promoting Racial Paranoia
In his comments Wednesday, Obama recycled long-discredited anti-cop fictions.
By Heather Mac Donald
Henry Louis Gates Jr. has threatened to make a documentary on “racial profiling” in the wake of his highly publicized arrest for disorderly conduct on July 16. It’s going to be a very long film, given the Harvard professor’s exceedingly expansive definition of what counts as biased policing. Unfortunately, Pres. Barack Obama’s take on police work is no more reality-based than Gates’s. Obama’s ill-considered lecture on the Gates arrest controversy during his Wednesday prime-time press conference was replete with ACLU misinformation about policing, misinformation that has been repeatedly refuted by the federal government itself.
But whereas Gates’s rantings about police bias might ultimately be dismissed as standard ivory-tower posturing, Obama has now put the presidential imprimatur on a set of untruths that will only fuel disrespect for the law and impede the police in their efforts to protect inner-city residents from crime. His belated recognition Thursday night that the arresting officer in the Cambridge incident was performing his duty hardly undoes the damage from his previous distortions.
Let’s acknowledge up front that Gates endured a bizarre and humiliating experience. Being escorted out of your home in handcuffs for what you perceive as no offense at all would feel like a grotesque invasion of privacy, due process, and property rights. Gates’s anger is therefore understandable. But just because an incident is — from one’s subjective perspective — unjustified does not make it racial. Gates was almost certainly not arrested because he was black, but quite possibly because he committed “contempt of cop,” an extralegal offense that can greatly affect the outcome of officer-civilian interactions.
Gates, however, sees race and racism in every aspect of this unfortunate episode, thus exemplifying the racial paranoia that can make police work so difficult. He accuses the witness who called in a possible burglary incident of “racial profiling” for merely describing what she saw. Here, in Gates’s own words, is what the caller observed: Gates and his “regular driver” from his “regular car service” were both on his front porch, “fiddl[ing] with the door.” (The New York Times recasts this delicious nugget from Gates’s limousine-liberal lifestyle as an interaction with a mere “taxi driver.”) Next, says Gates, “[m]y driver hit the door [which was jammed] with his shoulder and the door popped open.”
The caller’s 911 report, according to Gates, “said that that two big black men were trying to break in with backpacks on.” Such a description, provided undoubtedly under stress, is accurate enough under the circumstances. “My driver,” acknowledges Gates, “is a large black man.” But Gates calls it “the worst racial profiling I’ve ever heard of in my life.” Why? Simply because Gates himself is not “big.” But a rough description of individuals engaged in what to most observers would appear to be suspicious behavior, no matter the race of the individuals, is not “racial profiling,” it is simply ordinary crime reporting. Gates undoubtedly means to imply that the 911 caller, in her timorous white racism, sees every black man as “big,” but it is he who is engaged in racial stereotyping, not her.
Gates’s interpretation of the actions of the officer who answered the 911 call is just as narcissistic and deluded. As soon as the officer asked Gates to step onto the porch to speak with him, Gates started a long tirade against the officer’s racism, according to the police report. Nothing provides stronger corroboration of this allegation in the report than Gates’s own racially fevered account of the episode. There was nothing inappropriate, much less racist, in the officer’s request.
Confronting unknown suspects in dwellings and cars, where the officer cannot see the suspect’s full environment or hands, is the most dangerous activity that cops undertake. Six officers have been seriously wounded, two fatally, by suspects holed up in houses in Oakland and Jersey City this year; in 2007, an NYPD officer was shot dead by three thugs during a car stop. In the Cambridge burglary investigation, the officer was working by himself, without back-up. He had no idea whether he was confronting two armed suspects.
But Gates sees himself as the victim of police bias from the beginning of the interaction through its end. He shoehorns the incident into the standard racial-profiling narrative that the ACLU has honed to dishonest perfection over the years, in which the police allegedly grab any black man they can get their hands on just to make an arrest: “You can’t just presume I’m guilty and arrest me. . . . He just presumed that I was guilty and he presumed that I was guilty because I was black. There was no doubt about that. . . . I would hope that the police wouldn’t arrest the first black man that they saw.”
Gates seems not to understand that he was arrested for disorderly conduct, not for burglary. He was not “the first black man that [the officers] saw” committing what they viewed as disorderly conduct; he was the only man they saw committing disorderly conduct. If arresting a man for an offense committed in the officer’s presence constitutes “racial profiling,” then the most legally unimpeachable aspect of police work has been discredited.
It is certainly possible to debate whether Gates’s escalating verbal abuse of the investigating officer and refusal to cooperate with his requests rose to the level of criminal conduct. Most certainly, it lay within Sgt. James Crowley’s discretion not to make the arrest — and in retrospect, it would have been preferable if he had thanked Gates for his cooperation and walked away from the provocation. I would guess that Sergeant Crowley simply snapped under Gates’s taunts and chose to teach him a lesson for the informal offense of contempt of cop — an understandable, if less than ideal, reaction, but not a racist one. Crowley, even by Gates’s account, acted politely throughout the interaction.
Gates’s post-incident rantings were bad enough before President Obama made this otherwise trivial incident a matter of presidential attention. Obama does not seem to understand the power of his office. If he is going to weigh in on something as crucial to the health of cities as policing, he had better get his facts straight. But everything that he said about the Cambridge confrontation was untrue. He presents a highly telescoped version of the events that echoes Gates’s implication that he was arrested on the burglary charge: “The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home,” Obama intoned. But Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct; his being in his own home is irrelevant.
Obama then decided he was going to give us a history lesson: “What I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”
This statement has many possible meanings, all of them untrue.
The ACLU and other anti-police activists have alleged for years that blacks are the victims of disproportionate and unjustified traffic stops, a charge that has become received wisdom among large swathes of the population. It happens to be contradicted by drivers themselves. The Bureau of Justice Statistics regularly polls tens of thousands of civilians about their contacts with the police. Virtually identical proportions of white, black, and Hispanic drivers — 9 percent — report being stopped by the police, though in 2005, the self-reported black stop rate — 8.1 percent — was nearly a percentage point lower than the self-reported white stop rate (8.9 percent). The stop rate for blacks is lower during the day, when officers can more readily see a driver’s race.
As for urban policing — where the police have victim identifications and contextual and behavioral cues to work with — blacks are stopped more, but only in comparison with their proportion of the entire population. Measured against their crime rate, they are understopped. New York City is perfectly typical of the black police-stop and crime rates. In the first three months of 2009, 52 percent of all people stopped for questioning by the police in New York City were black, though blacks are just 24 percent of the population. But according to the victims of and witnesses to crime, blacks commit about 68 percent of all violent crime in the city. Blacks commit 82 percent of all shootings and 72 percent of all robberies, whereas whites, who make up 35 percent of the city's population, commit about 5 percent of all violent crimes, 1 percent of shootings, and about 4 percent of robberies.
These figures are not police-generated; they come from the overwhelmingly minority victims of crime in their reports to the police. Such crime reports mean that when the police respond to community demands for protection against crime, information-based police deployment will send officers to minority neighborhoods where crime is highest. When the police respond to a call about a shooting, they will almost never be told that the shooter was white, and thus will not be searching for a white suspect.
National crime patterns are the same. Black males between the ages of 18 and 24 commit homicide at ten times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined. Such vastly disproportionate crime rates must lead, if the police are going after crime in a color-blind fashion, to disproportionate stop and arrest rates. To criticize the police for crime-determined enforcement activity is to blame the messenger.
Obama has no one around him who could disabuse him of his ignorance about the police. Attorney General Eric Holder enthusiastically participated in the reign of unjustified federal consent decrees that the Justice Department slapped on police departments during the Clinton administration. Worrisomely, Obama gestures towards those days when he says that “we’re working with local law enforcement to improve policing techniques so that we’re eliminating potential bias,” as if Justice Department lawyers know a thing about “policing techniques.”
Obama’s prime-time recycling of advocate-generated myths about policing will only make inner-city neighborhoods more dangerous for their many law-abiding residents. No one benefits more from proactive policing than the poor, who have as much of a right to public safety as Cambridge residents. Officer Crowley was only doing his job, without any manifestation of racial bias. Now, if an officer investigates a 911 call in good faith, who knows if the president will say he acted “stupidly?” Why bother putting your reputation on the line? The blow to police morale from Obama’s gratuitous remarks is enormous.
Worse, Obama has only increased the racial paranoia that Gates put so vividly on display. Officers of all races say that the first thing out of a black driver’s mouth during a traffic stop for speeding or running a red light is often: “You only stopped me because I’m black,” a reaction ginned up by decades of anti-cop agitating and now bolstered by Obama’s recycled fictions. The advocate-fueled resentment of the police in inner-city neighborhoods makes crime fighting more difficult and more dangerous. Obama’s hope for reviving urban economies rests on a crucial precondition: that cities stay safe. He has just put that precondition in jeopardy.
— Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor at City Journal and the author of Are Cops Racist?
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTU4MGE4MDkwYzhiYjY4OTk2OWRlZjcyMWY0MjFkNmE=
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When I was in my early 20s, I was the only white guy in a 9 man band. We had three percussion players and did originals, Santana, Jimi Hendrix, and the Funkadelics and played gigs where I was the only white person in the room. Also during this era I shared an apartment with a friend who was black. All this was in Philadelphia.
In this context, even though white, I experienced racially tinged stops on several occasions. For example, calm driving, calm behavior when stopped, yet dragged out of the car and searched. It REALLY does happen and it is a bummer.
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Without being too much of a smartass, how long ago was your 20's?
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Interesting you say Phila.
I remember going to a wedding with a friend and driving through Phila sometime around 1979 or so.
I didn't even notice but I guess I drove through a light that was turning red and didn't get to the other side of the intersection in time.
We were stopped by a Black policeman.
My friend warned me to be polite and not to mess with the Phila police. He was very clear about this.
They had a reputation of being tough.
The officer was polite and did the usual ID check.
My white friend and I were dressed up and had gift boxes in the back seat on the way to the wedding and we explained that, and I apologized.
And that was it. Happy ending and otherwise boring story.
The officer was actually OK. He accepted my apology, could plainly see the gifts in the back seat and we were in suits and ties and let us off with a warning.
I never thought much of it and still don't, but could this have been reverse profiling?
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GM:
I am 56.
:-D
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Crafty,
You do understand that American law enforcement has changed a great deal in the last 30 years?
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Smartass :lol:
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- Pajamas Media - http://pajamasmedia.com -
The Gates Arrest: Sgt. Crowley’s Nightmare Is All Too Real
Posted By Jack Dunphy On July 25, 2009 @ 12:34 am In . Feature 01, Crime, Politics, Race Issues, US News | 106 Comments
I had a terrible nightmare last night: I dreamed I was driving along in my patrol car when I responded to a fairly routine radio call. Someone had reported a possible burglary, and when I went to the home to investigate I encountered not the burglar I was led to believe I would find but rather the home’s resident, an Ivy League professor who, while indignantly challenging my authority to inquire into the reported crime, couldn’t resist doing so without calling my intelligence into question, accusing me of racial bias, and even going so far as to insult my sainted mother. When the verbal provocations escalated further and crossed the line into illegal conduct, I slapped the handcuffs on the man and hauled him down to the station house. A frothing media maelstrom then ensued, with reporters clogging the streets outside my home and traipsing across the lawn and through the shrubbery with their cameras and their boom microphones and their incessant, impertinent questions. Finally, the president of the United States was on television telling the entire world how stupid I am.
Then I woke up.
I am in a sense fortunate in that I work in an area where I’m as likely to encounter an extraterrestrial as an Ivy League professor, but like most police officers I can nonetheless sympathize with Cambridge Police Department sergeant James Crowley, for whom there will be no waking from the nightmare for some time to come. But, except for the notoriety and lofty position of the reported “burglar” (one of America’s preeminent black scholars, and all that), the scenario presented to Sgt. Crowley is fairly typical, one that every cop has experienced many times. A well-meaning neighbor has seen something she perceives as out of the ordinary and has asked the police to investigate. If more people were disposed to act this way, America’s crime rate would plummet overnight.
The first question to be asked about Sgt. Crowley’s initial response is, was it lawful and reasonable? Clearly it was both. A cornerstone U.S. Supreme Court decision, [1] Terry v. Ohio, held that an officer may stop and detain a person he reasonably believes to be involved in criminal activity. Here, Sgt. Crowley answered a citizen’s report of a possible burglary. Such reports are granted a presumption of reliability under the law, so Sgt. Crowley was on solid ground in approaching the home and, upon seeing a man inside who matched the description provided by the witness, asking him for his identification. A police officer responding to such a report must, for his own safety, assume the report to be accurate until he can satisfy himself that it isn’t. The cop who blithely handles every call assuming it to be a false alarm will likely not survive to handle many of them. In fact, many police officers faced with the identical facts would likely have ordered Henry Gates out of the home at gunpoint.
Sgt. Crowley did not go so far as that (imagine the furor if he had), but he exercised a measure of caution by following Gates into the home as Gates retrieved his identification. Gates insists Crowley needed a warrant to enter the home but he is mistaken, as even the most liberal judge would find that Crowley was faced with sufficiently exigent circumstances, viz. a possible burglar who may have attempted to arm himself or flee, to justify a warrantless entry.
Mr. Gates, who [2] admits he asked his limo driver to force open a stuck door, is surely accustomed to a certain amount of bowing and scraping in the circles in which he travels, and it must have come as a shock when he was surprised by a cop who neither knew nor cared that he occupied such an exalted position. He apparently never stopped to consider that he and his driver may have been seen by someone who would misinterpret their actions and report them to the police. No, to Mr. Gates the first and only explanation for the sudden appearance of a white police officer at his doorstep was that the cops had come to hassle him because he’s black.
The next question is whether Mr. Gates’s language and behavior that Sgt. Crowley described in his police report fell within the proscribed conduct of the Massachusetts statute against disorderly conduct. This is where the two accounts diverge most dramatically. Mr. Gates [3] addressed the issue with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, who, reading from the [4] police report, said, “[Sgt. Crowley] described you as behaving in a tumultuous manner.”
“Yeah,” Gates responded with a chuckle, “look at how tumultuous I am. I’m five foot seven, I weigh a hundred-fifty pounds.” He said this as though it’s inconceivable that someone of those proportions might behave in manner that could be characterized as “tumultuous,” an assertion that any police officer, and for that matter just about anyone not affiliated with an Ivy League university, knows is preposterous. That Gates’s behavior at the scene of his arrest might differ from that which he exhibited on a nationally televised interview was an issue that went unexplored.
But there is a way we might learn, as best we may, of what really occurred that day on Harvard Square. Mr. Gates says he’s considering a lawsuit against Sgt. Crowley and the Cambridge Police Department, during which, one presumes, we would hear testimony from all the various parties and witnesses. If Mr. Gates is to prevail in such an action he would have to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Sgt. Crowley fabricated the case against him, and did so in the knowledge that the incident had been witnessed by several other police officers, including a black sergeant from his own department and some officers from the Harvard campus police with whom he is presumably unacquainted. Also called to testify would be the woman who made the initial call to the police and some or all of the “at least seven other passers-by” referred to in the police report. And the arrest, which was undoubtedly vetted all the way up the police department’s chain of command, was nonetheless allowed to proceed despite the certain knowledge that Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree and a phalanx of briefcase-bearing shiny suits would soon descend on the police station and start tossing about their habeas corpus this and their mens rea that, and that they would spare no effort or expense in ferreting out any weaknesses the case may have.
Sure, professor, Sgt. Crowley made it all up. Arresting Mr. Gates may have been arguably imprudent, but it wasn’t illegal.
If I may presume to offer Sgt. Crowley a bit of advice, I would encourage him to invest in a small digital tape recorder such as the one I carry while on duty. I have done so for many years and it has often proved invaluable, as in the case when some of my colleagues and I were accused of all manner of heinous conduct by a young man we had arrested for carrying a gun. Among the allegations was that we had used the notorious “N-word,” which, though one can’t walk a block in some parts of Los Angeles without hearing the denizens use it a dozen times, is nonetheless held as a near-capital offense when spoken by a police officer.
The time came for my interview with the internal affairs investigators, for whom I played the tape. It revealed, among other inconsistencies in my accuser’s tale, that it was he and not we who had so liberally used the accursed word, and that he used it, in the span of about 45 seconds, as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, and as something of an all-purpose interjection, a linguistic feat I suspect I may never see equaled. I was cleared of the charge, but I still listen to that tape every now and then just for its entertainment value.
Sgt. Crowley, you can pick up one of those recorders for less than a hundred dollars. Don’t you wish you had bought one earlier?
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/sgt-james-crowleys-nightmare-is-all-too-real/
URLs in this post:
[1] Terry v. Ohio: http://supreme.justia.com/us/392/1/case.html
[2] admits: http://www.theroot.com/views/skip-gates-speaks
[3] addressed the issue: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2009/07/23/bia.henry.gates.cnn?iref=videosearch
[4] police report: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates1.html
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Oh cripes, I've tried to stay away from all this birther stuff, mostly because there are so many cranks and fools involved with it. Started running my eyes across this piece as the preface had an authoritative ring, but then learned it was published by a center affiliated with World Daily Net, a source too breathless and tabloid like for my tastes. Be that as it may, the piece at the link contains info I had not encountered before about the law in the state of Hawaii at the time BHO's birth was registered. I think it is worth considering, though the underlying WDN source has proven so dubious in the past I hesitate to post the link and am not going to post the piece. FWIW I'd be interested in what others think of the arguments found here:
http://www.westernjournalism.com/?page_id=2697
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If Obama's mother was outside the US at the time of his birth, then her passport would show it. If an infant Obama were born outside the US, when and with what documents did he enter the US? Obama traveled and lived outside the US as a child and young man. To obtain a US passport, an applicant would have to submit to the US State Dept proof of citizenship. Most commonly for children, it's a birth cert.and sworn statement from the parents.
There should be a substantial paper trail in the federal archives. Birthers should be filing FOIAs for these documents.
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http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/07/24/mccain_lawyers_investigated_obama_citizenship.html?referrer=js
July 24, 2009
McCain Lawyers Investigated Obama Citizenship
As we asked earlier this week, if questions over President Obama's citizenship were valid, wouldn't they have come out during the presidential campaign?
David Weigel talked with Trevor Potter and other lawyers for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign who said that they did look into the Obama citizenship rumors and found them without merit.
Said Potter: "To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations. We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state's Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance."
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So why is the original BC kept from pulbic viewing?
And as for the birth announcement does anyone know how they get into the paper in 1947. From hospital records or does simply the mother send a note to the paper annoucing birth in which case this is not there fore proof but circumstantial evidence?
Say he was born before his mother returned to the US. Would it not be reasonable for her to call the paper after they get here and make an annoucement?
I am not yet convinced.
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Knowing that Barack Obama Jr. would run for president one day she calls to get his birth announcement published in the local paper?
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"So, why is the original BC kept from public viewing?"
This seems to me a VERY fair question given what is involved.
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- Pajamas Media - http://pajamasmedia.com -
The Gates Arrest: Sgt. Crowley’s Nightmare Is All Too Real
Posted By Jack Dunphy On July 25, 2009 @ 12:34 am In . Feature 01, Crime, Politics, Race Issues, US News | 106 Comments
I had a terrible nightmare last night: I dreamed I was driving along in my patrol car when I responded to a fairly routine radio call. Someone had reported a possible burglary, and when I went to the home to investigate I encountered not the burglar I was led to believe I would find but rather the home’s resident, an Ivy League professor who, while indignantly challenging my authority to inquire into the reported crime, couldn’t resist doing so without calling my intelligence into question, accusing me of racial bias, and even going so far as to insult my sainted mother. When the verbal provocations escalated further and crossed the line into illegal conduct, I slapped the handcuffs on the man and hauled him down to the station house. A frothing media maelstrom then ensued, with reporters clogging the streets outside my home and traipsing across the lawn and through the shrubbery with their cameras and their boom microphones and their incessant, impertinent questions. Finally, the president of the United States was on television telling the entire world how stupid I am.
Then I woke up.
I am in a sense fortunate in that I work in an area where I’m as likely to encounter an extraterrestrial as an Ivy League professor, but like most police officers I can nonetheless sympathize with Cambridge Police Department sergeant James Crowley, for whom there will be no waking from the nightmare for some time to come. But, except for the notoriety and lofty position of the reported “burglar” (one of America’s preeminent black scholars, and all that), the scenario presented to Sgt. Crowley is fairly typical, one that every cop has experienced many times. A well-meaning neighbor has seen something she perceives as out of the ordinary and has asked the police to investigate. If more people were disposed to act this way, America’s crime rate would plummet overnight.
The first question to be asked about Sgt. Crowley’s initial response is, was it lawful and reasonable? Clearly it was both. A cornerstone U.S. Supreme Court decision, [1] Terry v. Ohio, held that an officer may stop and detain a person he reasonably believes to be involved in criminal activity. Here, Sgt. Crowley answered a citizen’s report of a possible burglary. Such reports are granted a presumption of reliability under the law, so Sgt. Crowley was on solid ground in approaching the home and, upon seeing a man inside who matched the description provided by the witness, asking him for his identification. A police officer responding to such a report must, for his own safety, assume the report to be accurate until he can satisfy himself that it isn’t. The cop who blithely handles every call assuming it to be a false alarm will likely not survive to handle many of them. In fact, many police officers faced with the identical facts would likely have ordered Henry Gates out of the home at gunpoint.
Sgt. Crowley did not go so far as that (imagine the furor if he had), but he exercised a measure of caution by following Gates into the home as Gates retrieved his identification. Gates insists Crowley needed a warrant to enter the home but he is mistaken, as even the most liberal judge would find that Crowley was faced with sufficiently exigent circumstances, viz. a possible burglar who may have attempted to arm himself or flee, to justify a warrantless entry.
Mr. Gates, who [2] admits he asked his limo driver to force open a stuck door, is surely accustomed to a certain amount of bowing and scraping in the circles in which he travels, and it must have come as a shock when he was surprised by a cop who neither knew nor cared that he occupied such an exalted position. He apparently never stopped to consider that he and his driver may have been seen by someone who would misinterpret their actions and report them to the police. No, to Mr. Gates the first and only explanation for the sudden appearance of a white police officer at his doorstep was that the cops had come to hassle him because he’s black.
The next question is whether Mr. Gates’s language and behavior that Sgt. Crowley described in his police report fell within the proscribed conduct of the Massachusetts statute against disorderly conduct. This is where the two accounts diverge most dramatically. Mr. Gates [3] addressed the issue with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, who, reading from the [4] police report, said, “[Sgt. Crowley] described you as behaving in a tumultuous manner.”
“Yeah,” Gates responded with a chuckle, “look at how tumultuous I am. I’m five foot seven, I weigh a hundred-fifty pounds.” He said this as though it’s inconceivable that someone of those proportions might behave in manner that could be characterized as “tumultuous,” an assertion that any police officer, and for that matter just about anyone not affiliated with an Ivy League university, knows is preposterous. That Gates’s behavior at the scene of his arrest might differ from that which he exhibited on a nationally televised interview was an issue that went unexplored.
But there is a way we might learn, as best we may, of what really occurred that day on Harvard Square. Mr. Gates says he’s considering a lawsuit against Sgt. Crowley and the Cambridge Police Department, during which, one presumes, we would hear testimony from all the various parties and witnesses. If Mr. Gates is to prevail in such an action he would have to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Sgt. Crowley fabricated the case against him, and did so in the knowledge that the incident had been witnessed by several other police officers, including a black sergeant from his own department and some officers from the Harvard campus police with whom he is presumably unacquainted. Also called to testify would be the woman who made the initial call to the police and some or all of the “at least seven other passers-by” referred to in the police report. And the arrest, which was undoubtedly vetted all the way up the police department’s chain of command, was nonetheless allowed to proceed despite the certain knowledge that Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree and a phalanx of briefcase-bearing shiny suits would soon descend on the police station and start tossing about their habeas corpus this and their mens rea that, and that they would spare no effort or expense in ferreting out any weaknesses the case may have.
Sure, professor, Sgt. Crowley made it all up. Arresting Mr. Gates may have been arguably imprudent, but it wasn’t illegal.
If I may presume to offer Sgt. Crowley a bit of advice, I would encourage him to invest in a small digital tape recorder such as the one I carry while on duty. I have done so for many years and it has often proved invaluable, as in the case when some of my colleagues and I were accused of all manner of heinous conduct by a young man we had arrested for carrying a gun. Among the allegations was that we had used the notorious “N-word,” which, though one can’t walk a block in some parts of Los Angeles without hearing the denizens use it a dozen times, is nonetheless held as a near-capital offense when spoken by a police officer.
The time came for my interview with the internal affairs investigators, for whom I played the tape. It revealed, among other inconsistencies in my accuser’s tale, that it was he and not we who had so liberally used the accursed word, and that he used it, in the span of about 45 seconds, as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, and as something of an all-purpose interjection, a linguistic feat I suspect I may never see equaled. I was cleared of the charge, but I still listen to that tape every now and then just for its entertainment value.
Sgt. Crowley, you can pick up one of those recorders for less than a hundred dollars. Don’t you wish you had bought one earlier?
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/sgt-james-crowleys-nightmare-is-all-too-real/
URLs in this post:
[1] Terry v. Ohio: http://supreme.justia.com/us/392/1/case.html
[2] admits: http://www.theroot.com/views/skip-gates-speaks
[3] addressed the issue: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2009/07/23/bia.henry.gates.cnn?iref=videosearch
[4] police report: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates1.html
Indeed!
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/27/gibbs-on-birthers-nothing-will-convince-them/
More on the "birther" movement.
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July 30, 2009, 0:00 a.m.
Suborned in the U.S.A.
The birth-certificate controversy is about Obama’s honesty, not where he was born.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Throughout the 2008 campaign, Barack Hussein Obama claimed it was a “smear” to refer to him as “Barack Hussein Obama.” The candidate had initially rhapsodized over how his middle name, the name of the prophet Mohammed’s grandson, would signal a new beginning in American relations with the Muslim world. But when the nomination fight intensified, Obama decided that Islamic heritage was a net negative. So, with a media reliably uncurious about political biographies outside metropolitan Wasilla, Obama did what Obama always does: He airbrushed his personal history on the fly.
Suddenly, it was “just making stuff up,” as Obama put it, for questioners “to say that, you know, maybe he’s got Muslim connections.” “The only connection I’ve had to Islam,” the candidate insisted, “is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from [Kenya]. But I’ve never practiced Islam.” Forget about “Hussein”; the mere mention of Obama’s middle initial — “H” — riled the famously thin-skinned senator. Supporters charged that “shadowy attackers” were “lying about Barack’s religion, claiming he is a Muslim.” The Obamedia division at USA Today, in a report subtly titled “Obama’s grandma slams ‘untruths,’” went so far as to claim that Obama’s Kenyan grandmother is a Christian — even though a year earlier, when Obama’s “flaunt Muslim ties” script was still operative, the New York Times had described the same woman, 85-year-old Sara Hussein Obama, as a “lifelong Muslim” who proclaimed, “I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith.”
Such was the ardor of Obama’s denials that jaws dropped when, once safely elected, he reversed course (again) and embraced his Islamic heritage. “The president himself experienced Islam on three continents,” an administration spokesman announced. “You know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father . . .” The “Muslim father” theme was an interesting touch: During the campaign, when the question of Barack Hussein Obama Sr.’s Islamic faith reared its head, the candidate curtly denied it with an air of what’s-that-got-to-do-with-me? finality: “My father was basically agnostic, as far as I can tell, and I didn’t know him.” And, it turns out, the spokesman’s fleeting bit about “growing up in Indonesia” wasn’t the half of it: Obama had actually been raised as a Muslim in Indonesia — or, at least that’s what his parents told his schools (more on that in due course).
These twists and turns in the Obama narrative rush to mind when we consider National Review’s leap into the Obama-birth-certificate fray with Tuesday’s editorial, “Born in the U.S.A.”
The editorial desire to put to rest the “Obama was born in Kenya” canard is justifiable. The overwhelming evidence is that Obama was born an American citizen on Aug. 4, 1961, which almost certainly makes him constitutionally eligible to hold his office. I say “almost certainly” because Obama, as we shall see, presents complex dual-citizenship issues. For now, let’s just stick with what’s indisputable: He was also born a Kenyan citizen. In theory, that could raise a question about whether he qualifies as a “natural born” American — an uncharted constitutional concept.
The mission of National Review has always included keeping the Right honest, which includes debunking crackpot conspiracy theories. The theory that Obama was born in Kenya, that he was smuggled into the U.S., and that his parents somehow hoodwinked Hawaiian authorities into falsely certifying his birth in Oahu, is crazy stuff. Even Obama’s dual Kenyan citizenship is of dubious materiality: It is a function of foreign law, involving no action on his part (to think otherwise, you’d have to conclude that if Yemen passed a law tomorrow saying, “All Americans — except, of course, Jews — are hereby awarded Yemeni citizenship,” only Jewish Americans could henceforth run for president). In any event, even if you were of a mind to indulge the Kenyan-birth fantasy, stop, count to ten, and think: Hillary Clinton. Is there any chance on God’s green earth that, if Obama were not qualified to be president, the Clinton machine would have failed to get that information out?
CERTIFICATE AND CERTIFICATION
So, end of story, right? Well, no. The relevance of information related to the birth of our 44th president is not limited to his eligibility to be our 44th president. On this issue, NRO’s editorial has come in for some blistering criticism. The editorial argues:
The fundamental fiction is that Obama has refused to release his “real” birth certificate. This is untrue. The document that Obama has made available is the document that Hawaiian authorities issue when they are asked for a birth certificate. There is no secondary document cloaked in darkness, only the state records that are used to generate birth certificates when they are requested.
On reflection, I think this was an ill-considered assertion. (I should add that I saw a draft of the editorial before its publication, was invited to comment, and lodged no objection to this part.) The folly is made starkly clear in the photos that accompany this angry (at NRO) post from Dave Jeffers, who runs a blog called “Salt and Light.”
To summarize: What Obama has made available is a Hawaiian “certification of live birth” (emphasis added), not a birth certificate (or what the state calls a “certificate of live birth”). The certification form provides a short, very general attestation of a few facts about the person’s birth: name and sex of the newborn; date and time of birth; city or town of birth, along with the name of the Hawaiian island and the county; the mother’s maiden name and race; the father’s name and race; and the date the certification was filed. This certification is not the same thing as the certificate, which is what I believe we were referring to in the editorial as “the state records that are used to generate birth certificates [sic] when they are requested.”
To the contrary, “the state records” are the certificate. They are used to generate the more limited birth certifications on request. As the Jeffers post shows, these state records are far more detailed. They include, for example, the name of the hospital, institution, or street address where the birth occurred; the full name, age, birthplace, race, and occupation of each parent; the mother’s residential address (and whether that address is within the city or town of birth); the signature of at least one parent (or “informant”) attesting to the accuracy of the information provided; the identity and signature of an attending physician (or other “attendant”) who certifies the occurrence of a live birth at the time and place specified; and the identity and signature of the local registrar who filed the birth record.
Plainly, this is different (additional) information from what is included in the certification. Yet, our editorial says that “several state officials have confirmed that the information in permanent state records is identical to that on the president’s birth certificate [by which we clearly meant ‘certification’],” and that the “director of Hawaii’s health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obama’s birth certificate [i.e., certification] is identical to that in the state’s records, the so-called vault copy.” (Italics mine.)
That misses the point. The information in the certification may be identical as far as it goes to what’s in the complete state records, but there are evidently many more details in the state records than are set forth in the certification. Contrary to the editors’ description, those who want to see the full state record — the certificate or the so-called “vault copy” — are not on a wild-goose chase for a “secondary document cloaked in darkness.” That confuses their motives (which vary) with what they’ve actually requested (which is entirely reasonable). Regardless of why people may want to see the vault copy, what’s been requested is a primary document that is materially more detailed than what Obama has thus far provided.
Now, let’s address motives for a moment. Are some of those demanding the full state records engaged in a futile quest to prove Obama is not a U.S. citizen? Are they on what the editors call “the hunt for a magic bullet that will make all the unpleasant complications of [Obama’s] election and presidency disappear”? Sure they are. But not everyone who wants to see the full state records falls into that category. I, for one, have very different reasons for being curious.
WHO IS THIS GUY?
Before January 20 of this year, Barack Obama had a negligible public record. He burst onto the national scene what seemed like five minutes before his election to the presidency: a first-term U.S. senator who actually served less than four years in that post — after a short time as a state legislator, some shadowy years as a “community organizer,” and scholastic terms at Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard that remain shrouded in mystery. The primary qualification supporters offered for Obama’s candidacy was his compelling life story, as packaged in 850 pages’ worth of the not one but two autobiographies this seemingly unaccomplished candidate had written by the age of 45.
Yet we now know that this life story is chock full of fiction. Typical and disturbing, to take just one example, is the entirely fabricated account in Dreams from My Father of Obama’s first job after college:
Eventually a consulting house to multinational corporations agreed to hire me as a research assistant. Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe. As far as I could tell I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me but a source of considerable pride for the company’s secretarial pool. They treated me like a son, those black ladies; they told me how they expected me to run the company one day. . . . The company promoted me to the position of financial writer. I had my own office, my own secretary, money in the bank. Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors — see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand — and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve. . . .
As the website Sweetness & Light details, this is bunk. Obama did not work at “a consulting house to multinational corporations”; it was, a then-colleague of his has related, “a small company that published newsletters on international business.” He wasn’t the only black man in the company, and he didn’t have an office, have a secretary, wear a suit and tie on the job, or conduct “interviews” with “Japanese financiers or German bond traders” — he was a junior copyeditor.
What’s unnerving about this is that it is so gratuitous. It would have made no difference to anyone curious about Obama’s life that he, like most of us, took a ho-hum entry-level job to establish himself. But Obama lies about the small things, the inconsequential things, just as he does about the important ones — depending on what he is trying to accomplish at any given time.
In the above fairy tale, he sought to frame his life as a morality play: the hero giving up the cushy life of the capitalist “enemy” for the virtues of community organizing. But we’ve seen this dance a hundred times. If Obama wants to strike a connection with graduating students in Moscow, he makes up a story about meeting his “future wife . . . in class” (Barack and Michelle Obama met at work). If he wants to posture about his poverty and struggle in America, he waxes eloquent about his single mother’s surviving on “food stamps” so she could use every cent to send him “to the best schools in the country” (Obama was raised by his maternal grandparents, who had good jobs and were able to pull strings to get him into an elite Hawaiian prep school). If he wants to tie himself to the civil-rights struggle of African Americans, he tells an audience in Selma, “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma . . . so [my parents] got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born” (Obama was born in 1961, four years before the civil-rights march in Selma — by which time his parents had divorced and his mother was planning a move to Indonesia with the second of her two non-African-American husbands). If he wants to buy a home he can’t afford, he “unwittingly” collaborates with a key fundraiser (who had been publicly reported to be under federal investigation for fraud and political corruption). If he wants to sell a phony stimulus as a job-creator, he tells the country that Caterpillar has told him the stimulus will enable the company “to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off” (Caterpillar’s CEO actually said no, “we’re going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again”).
The fact is that Obama’s account of his background is increasingly revealed as a fabrication, not his life as lived; his utterances reflect the expediencies of the moment, not the truth. What is supposed to save the country from fraudulence of this sort is the media. Here, though, the establishment press is deep in Obama’s tank — so much so that they can’t even accurately report his flub of a ceremonial opening pitch lest he come off as something less than Sandy Koufax. Astonishingly, reporters see their job not as reporting Obama news but as debunking Obama news, or flat-out suppressing it. How many Americans know, for example, that as a sitting U.S. senator in 2006, Obama interfered in a Kenyan election, publicly ripping the incumbent government (a U.S. ally) for corruption while he was its guest and barnstorming with his preferred candidate: a Marxist now known to have made a secret agreement with Islamists to convert Kenya to sharia law, and whose supporters, upon losing the election, committed murder and mayhem, displacing thousands of Kenyans and plunging their country into utter chaos?
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A MUSLIM CITIZEN OF INDONESIA
The aforementioned Indonesian interval in Obama’s childhood is instructive. Obama and the media worked in tireless harmony to refute any indication that he had ever been a Muslim. It’s now apparent, however, not only that he was raised as a Muslim while living for four years in the world’s most populous Islamic country, but that he very likely became a naturalized citizen of Indonesia.
Shortly after divorcing Barack Obama Sr., Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, married an Indonesian Muslim, Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo, whom she met — just as she had met Barack Sr. — when both were students at the University of Hawaii. At some point, Soetoro almost certainly adopted the youngster, who became known as “Barry Soetoro.” Obama’s lengthy, deeply introspective autobiographies do not address whether he was adopted by the stepfather whose surname he shared for many years, but in all likelihood that did happen in Hawaii, before the family moved to Jakarta.
Under Indonesian law, adoption before the age of six by an Indonesian male qualified a child for citizenship. According to Dreams from My Father, Obama was four when he met Lolo Soetoro; his mother married Soetoro shortly thereafter; and Obama was already registered for school when he and his mother relocated to Jakarta, where Soetoro was an oil-company executive and liaison to the Suharto government. That was in 1966, when Obama was five. Obama attended Indonesian elementary schools, which, in Suharto’s police state, were generally reserved for citizens (and students were required to carry identity cards that matched student registration information). The records of the Catholic school Obama/Soetoro attended for three years identify him as a citizen of Indonesia. Thus Obama probably obtained Indonesian citizenship through his adoption by Soetoro in Hawaii. That inference is bolstered by the 1980 divorce submission of Ann Dunham and Lolo Soetoro, filed in Hawaii state court. It said “the parties” (Ann and Lolo) had a child (name not given) who was no longer a minor (Obama was 19 at the time). If Soetoro had not adopted Obama, there would have been no basis for the couple to refer to Obama as their child — he’d have been only Ann Dunham’s child.
In any event, the records of the Catholic school and the public school Obama attended during his last year in Indonesia identify him as a Muslim. As Obama relates in Dreams from My Father, he took Koran classes. As Obama doesn’t relate in Dreams from My Father, children in Indonesia attended religious instruction in accordance with their family’s chosen faith. Moreover, acquaintances recall that young Barry occasionally attended Friday prayers at the local mosque, and Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s half-sister (born after Lolo and Ann moved the family to Jakarta), told the New York Times in a 2008 interview, “My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.” In fact, back in March 2007 — i.e., during the early “Islamic ties are good” phase of Obama’s campaign — the candidate wistfully shared with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof his memories of the muezzin’s Arabic call to prayer: “one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset.” Kristof marveled at the “first-rate accent” with which Obama was able to repeat its opening lines.
The point here is not to join another crackpot conspiracy, the “Obama as Muslim Manchurian Candidate” canard. Obama was only ten years old when he left Indonesia; there is no known evidence of his having made an adult choice to practice Islam, and he is a professed Christian. The point is that he lies elaborately about himself and plainly doesn’t believe it’s important to be straight with the American people — to whom he is constantly making bold promises. And it makes a difference whether he was ever a Muslim. He knows that — it’s exactly why, as a candidate, he originally suggested his name and heritage would be a selling point. Obama’s religious background matters in terms of how he is perceived by Muslims (Islam rejects the notion of renouncing the faith; some Muslims, like Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi, make no bones about regarding Obama as a Muslim; and — as the mainstream media took pains not to report during the campaign — it is suspected that significant illegal donations poured into the Obama campaign from Islamic countries and territories). Obama’s religious background also matters in terms of how he views American policies bearing on the Muslim world.
WHEN DID INFORMATION SUDDENLY BECOME A BAD THING?
While it is all well and good to belittle the birth-certificate controversy, without it we’d know only what the media and Obama himself would tell us about his multiple citizenships, which is nothing. As noted above, we now know Obama, by operation of British and Kenyan law, was a citizen of Kenya (a status that lapsed in 1982, when he turned 21). That’s something voters would find relevant, especially when Obama’s shocking 2006 conduct in Kenya is considered. But we don’t know about his Kenyan citizenship because the media thought it was newsworthy. We know it only because of the birth-certificate controversy: Pressed to debunk the allegation that Obama was born in Kenya, his embarrassed supporters felt compelled to clarify his Kenyan citizenship.
By contrast, the question whether Obama ever was an Indonesian citizen is still unresolved, as are such related matters as whether the foreign citizenship (if he had it) ever lapsed, and whether he ever held or used an Indonesian passport — for example, during a mysterious trip to Pakistan he took in 1981, after Zia’s coup, when advisories warned Americans against traveling there. By the way, many details about that journey, too, remain unknown. Obama strangely neglected to mention it in his 850 pages of autobiography, even though the 20-year-old’s adventure included a stay at the home of prominent Pakistani politicians.
There may be perfectly benign answers to all of this. But the real question is: Why don’t the media — the watchdog legions who trekked to Sarah Palin’s Alaska hometown to scour for every kernel of gossip, and who were so desperate for Bush dirt that they ran with palpably forged military records — want to dig into Obama’s background?
Who cares that Hawaii’s full state records would doubtless confirm what we already know about Obama’s birthplace? They would also reveal interesting facts about Obama’s life: the delivering doctor, how his parents described themselves, which of them provided the pertinent information, etc. Wasn’t the press once in the business of interesting — and even not-so-interesting — news?
And why would Obama not welcome Hawaii’s release of any record in its possession about the facts and circumstances of his birth? Isn’t that kind of weird? It would, after all, make the whole issue go away and, if there’s nothing there, make those who’ve obsessed over it look like fools. Why should I need any better reason to be curious than Obama’s odd resistance to so obvious a resolution?
There’s speculation out there from the former CIA officer Larry Johnson — who is no right-winger and is convinced the president was born in Hawaii — that the full state records would probably show Obama was adopted by the Indonesian Muslim Lolo Soetoro and became formally known as “Barry Soetoro.” Obama may have wanted that suppressed for a host of reasons: issues about his citizenship, questions about his name (it’s been claimed that Obama represented in his application to the Illinois bar that he had never been known by any name other than Barack Obama), and the undermining of his (false) claim of remoteness from Islam. Is that true? I don’t know and neither do you.
But we should know. The point has little to do with whether Obama was born in Hawaii. I’m quite confident that he was. The issue is: What is the true personal history of the man who has been sold to us based on nothing but his personal history? On that issue, Obama has demonstrated himself to be an unreliable source and, sadly, we can’t trust the media to get to the bottom of it. What’s wrong with saying, to a president who promised unprecedented “transparency”: Give us all the raw data and we’ll figure it out for ourselves?
— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmJhMzlmZWFhOTQ3YjUxMDE2YWY4ZDMzZjZlYTVmZmU=
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/30/wow-black-cop-in-gates-arrest-sends-letter-to-obama-about-being-called-an-uncle-tom/comment-page-1/
Good cop smeared.
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BBG:
Good to have a thorough piece on that subject. Thanks.
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A quiblle, no doubt, but had BHO drank a Guinness, my estimation of him would have risen. Reminds me of a joke:
Q: What does American beer and making love in a canoe have in common?
A: They are both f*ck'in' near water.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/135157.html
You Call That Beer?
Jacob Sullum | July 31, 2009, 11:31am
The biggest disappointment from President Obama's "beer summit" with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley yesterday was the beer selection:
The four drank out of beer mugs. Mr. Obama had a Bud Lite, Sergeant Crowley had Blue Moon, Professor Gates drank Sam Adams Light and Mr. Biden, who does not drink, had a Buckler nonalcoholic beer. (Mr. Biden put a lime slice in his beer. Sergeant Crowley, for his part, kept with Blue Moon tradition and had a slice of orange in his drink.)
Without getting into the merits of citrus fruit in wheat beer (I happen to like it), Crowley seems to have the best taste. While there are many better Belgian-style ales made in the U.S. (in particular, those produced by Ommegang Brewery in Cooperstown, New York, and New Belgium in Fort Collins, Colorado), the Coors-produced Blue Moon is a decent choice (though New York Times food critic Eric Asimov jokingly chides Crowley for not thinking through the implications of drinking a "white" ale). But look at the other selections: two lights and a nonalcoholic "beer." A regular Sam Adams lager (or one of the company's ales) would have been a good hometown choice for Gates, but I've never understood the urge to water down beer. Instead of having two crappy ones, why not just one good one? It sounds like there was only one round at this little get-together anyway.
As for Obama's selection of Bud Light, this has to rank as one of his worst decisions since taking office, somewhere between the stimulus package and the auto industry bailout. Regular Budweiser is bad enough. When you have a beer that already tastes like water, why would you add more water to it? And the less said about Biden and his Buckler, the better. In yet another example of the blatant misrepresentations for which the Times is notorious, Asimov erroneously reports that "Joe Biden, who joined the other three, enjoyed a nonalcoholic brew called Buckler."
The sad thing is that three out of four men, given their pick of the world's beers, chose three of the same bland style. Gates reportedly was considering Jamaica's Red Stripe, which sounds a little more exotic but tastes pretty much the same as the major American lagers. Given the wide variety of excellent beers in myriad styles produced in the United States today, even jingoism is no excuse for the pitiful selection displayed at the White House.
This is a good time to revisit Jay R. Brooks' 2006 Reason article on the "long tail" phenomenon in the American beer industry.
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A site that collects Joe Biden's utterances:
http://joebidensaidthat.com/
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This one could grow some legs:
(http://newsbusters.org/static/2009/08/Obama%20Joker%20Poster%20Popping%20Up%20In%20Los%20Angeles.jpg)
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/08/01/obama-joker-poster-popping-los-angeles
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Eric Holder's Justice Department
It's all politics, all the time.
by Jennifer Rubin
08/10/2009, Volume 014, Issue 44
In the litany of criticisms leveled at President George W. Bush none was repeated more often than the accusation that he had "politicized the administration of justice." In endless television show appearances and congressional hearings, Democratic lawmakers like Senator Chuck Schumer railed against the politicization of the Justice Department, lecturing all who would listen about how Justice "is different than any other department. In every other department, the chief cabinet officer is supposed to follow the president's orders, requests, without exception. But the Justice Department has a higher responsibility: rule of law and the Constitution."
Democrats loved to berate the often hapless Alberto Gonzales, who they claimed failed to uphold this standard as attorney general. Although the alleged offenses occurred primarily on the watch of Gonzales (who served only two and a half of Bush's eight years), the criticism stuck and lingered long after Gonzales departed. Inspector general investigations and oversight hearings maintained the drumbeat of accusations. And when the distinguished federal judge Michael Mukasey was nominated to replace Gonzales, he was peppered by Senators Joe Biden, Russ Feingold and Patrick Leahy, among others, with questions about just how badly the department had been "politicized." The average American couldn't help but conclude that something had gone terribly awry.
It is therefore surprising that in the first seven months of the Obama administration, a series of hyper-partisan decisions, questionable appointments, and the inexplicable dismissal of a high-profile voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther party have once again fanned suspicions that the Justice Department is a pawn in partisan political battles.
Both in Congress and among a number of current and former Justice Department employees is a growing concern that the Obama administration is politicizing the department in ways the Bush team never imagined. A former Justice employee cautions that every administration has the right and the obligation to set policy. "Elections have consequences," he affirms. But he thinks that the Obama administration has gone beyond policy reversals and is interfering with prosecutorial decisions, staffing the department with unqualified personnel, and invoking privilege to thwart proper congressional oversight and public scrutiny.
Sitting in his Capitol Hill office, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, speaks in careful, clipped sentences, rephrasing at times to convey precisely what he means. His irritation is apparent. "The whole concern here is an administration that would not politicize the Department of Justice. That was a major campaign rallying cry," he says. "If it was isolated you'd think it was an exception to the rule. But where you see three or four examples then you really worry whether they themselves are verging on violating the law or the oath of office."
This is not what the Obama administration had promised. In his confirmation hearing Eric Holder declared,
The attempts to politicize the department will not be tolerated should I become attorney general of the United States. It will be my intention to return [the civil rights] division and the Department of Justice as a whole to its great traditions and the great traditions that it had under Democratic and Republican attorneys general and presidents.
He further pronounced,
I will work to restore the credibility of a department badly shaken by allegations of improper political interference. Law enforcement decisions and personnel actions must be untainted by partisanship. Under my stewardship, the Department of Justice will serve justice, not the fleeting interests of any political party.
While some conservatives doubted that the man who helped facilitate the Marc Rich pardon and overrode the recommendation of career attorneys to give Bill Clinton a favorable recommendation on the pardon of 16 Puerto Rican terrorists in 1999 could live up to those pretty sentiments, he was confirmed by a vote of 75-21 with the support of many Republican senators.
Holder soon cast aside his confirmation rhetoric in favor of partisan politics. The first battle occurred over the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), the elite group within the Justice Department that wrestles with difficult constitutional analysis and acts as the constitutional arbitrator for the entire administration. During his confirmation hearing Holder specifically pledged,
We don't change OLC opinions simply because a new administration takes over. The review that we would conduct would be a substantive one and reflect the best opinions of probably the best lawyers in the department as to where the law would be, what their opinions should be. It will not be a political process, it will be one based solely on our interpretation of the law.
Within weeks, however, Holder violated that pledge when the issue of voting rights for the District of Columbia emerged. It had been a longstanding position of OLC, dating back to the Kennedy administration, that federal voting rights for the District could not constitutionally be granted by statute. This position did not sit well with the new Obama administration, or with Holder personally. After all, Holder has been a prominent figure in D.C. politics and was introduced at his confirmation hearing by a longtime friend and ally Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's nonvoting representative and a key proponent of D.C. voting rights.
Presented with OLC's settled position, Holder opted to shop around for another opinion. He went to the solicitor general, asking a lower threshold question, namely whether the solicitor general could "defend" the Obama administration if it signed a statute granting D.C. voting rights. Clint Bolick, a veteran of the Reagan Justice Department, observes, "I don't recall [another instance] when the Department of Justice went back to get a second answer, when you have a 'do over,' when the best lawyers come up with the 'wrong answer' from a policy perspective."
Another former Justice Department attorney finds the opinion shopping "extremely out of the ordinary." "[OLC] is the last word on constitutional issues," he explains. "Holder asked the wrong question to the wrong office and got an obvious, easy answer to satisfy his political agenda."
Lamar Smith describes as "worrisome" not only the initial decision but also Holder's subsequent behavior. The attorney general rejected requests from Republican members of Congress for the documents pertaining to the decision. When Holder objected to revealing the Department's internal deliberations, Smith modified his request to ask only for the final opinion, rather than the complete legal analysis. Again, Holder refused. Smith observes, "This is an administration perfectly willing to make public the interrogation techniques [used by the CIA to extract information from terrorists] but something like legal advice they might make available--we can't get these."
Many current and former Justice Department employees are angry about the decision. One explained, "Holder in his own words called the OLC the crème de la crème of Justice. The longstanding opinion of both parties' administrations shouldn't be jettisoned to serve political ends." Another longtime Justice employee says that he "never heard of such a thing." He remarks, "That's why we have institutions--to contain the authority of any one individual."
But Holder's effort to run roughshod over OLC and rebuff of subsequent scrutiny was just the beginning of his efforts to conceal controversial decisionmaking.
To Representative Frank Wolf, a moderate Republican from Northern Virginia, the "most egregious" action by Holder and the Obama administration concerns the disposition of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and Justice's interference with the flow of information from the FBI. His annoyance obvious, Wolf explains that he sent multiple letters to Holder asking a list of questions concerning the potential release of detainees, and in particular about the Uighurs, who news reports suggested at one point were about to be released in Northern Virginia. He was rebuffed: "I'm the ranking member, and I can't get them to answer a question." Wolf says that the Justice Department even went so far as to forbid FBI briefings with his office unless a Justice Department representative was present, which he terms "outrageous." He received one briefing from the FBI, but "then the political guy came in and chilled the entire meeting."
Efforts by Representative Lamar Smith and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama to obtain information on the administration's Guantánamo plans, including a response to their query as to how the possible release of the Uighurs squared with federal law preventing entry into the United States by those who had received terror training, were similarly thwarted. Smith says that on the topic of detainees, "We haven't gotten a single response to a letter of inquiry."
But these instances are tame compared with the Justice Department's controversial and still unexplained decision to dismiss a default judgment obtained in a case of egregious voter intimidation. On Election Day 2008, members of the New Black Panther organization, dubbed by the Justice Department a "black-super-racist organization" were captured on videotape at a Philadelphia polling place. One wielded a nightstick. All wore the uniform and insignia of the organization. They made racial threats and hurled insults at voters. After the video made its way around the Internet, the voting rights section of the Justice Department's civil rights division investigated. Additional evidence showed that the New Black Panthers had in Internet postings called for "300 members to be deployed" at the polls on Election Day. Bartle Bull, a veteran activist and civil rights attorney, filed an affidavit in support of the Justice Department, terming it "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my life in political campaigns in many states, going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960s."
A Justice Department complaint was filed on January 7, 2009, against the New Black Panthers national organization and the individuals present at the polls. Although the Justice lawyers urged the defendants (one of whom was a lawyer himself) to respond, they did not. The court then ordered the Justice lawyers to file a default judgment against the Panthers. Nevertheless, in an unprecedented move, the Justice Department in May dismissed the case against all defendants, save the single nightstick-wielding individual.
Multiple sources within and outside of the Justice Department confirm the curious sequence of events. In April, a preliminary filing of default was filed by Justice lawyers with the court clerk. No concern or objection was raised within Justice. This decision was approved by both the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights, Loretta King, and Steve Rosenbaum, previously acting deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights and recently returned to his post as section chief for housing.
Shortly thereafter, the career lawyers who actually filed the case and obtained the judgment were peppered with questions, according to sources with knowledge of the events. New legal theories were raised disputing how the non-baton-wielding defendants and the New Black Panther party itself could be charged. There wasn't enough evidence, it was suggested, or the case had to be dropped entirely because there was only conclusive evidence against the single baton-wielding defendant. The New Black Panthers had First Amendment rights the career attorneys were told. On it went, as each theory was researched and shot down by the beleaguered lawyers.
As the internal battle raged, the career lawyers presented ample facts and legal theories based on basic principles of liability and citations to other voting rights cases to substantiate the case. In late April, they were instructed by King to seek a delay of the default judgment for two weeks and to make no mention of the change in administrations in the filings seeking the delay. In mid-May, the appellate section weighed in recommending the case go forward. Case discussion, briefings, and mock arguments continued. All of this came to an end when King ordered the default judgment withdrawn on May 15. The decision mystified lawyers in the civil rights division as well as outside observers including the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which sent a letter of inquiry.
Following the default judgment and its coverage in the press, Lamar Smith and Frank Wolf sent rounds of letters demanding to know who made the decision and why. Justice spokesmen insisted in writing and in congressional briefings that "career lawyers" had made the call. But King holds a political position. Those with direct knowledge of the events and veterans of the department both doubt that a decision as controversial as this could ever be made without at least consulting King's boss, associate attorney general Thomas J. Perrelli, and likely then the deputy attorney general and the attorney general himself. And indeed this week the Washington Times reported that Perrelli had made the final call. Certainly once the decision was made, Holder and his political appointees soon became deeply immersed in the effort to respond to congressional leaders' attempts to ferret out the reason for the dismissal.
The Justice Department initially claimed the "facts and law" did not support going forward in the case, although just weeks earlier a default filing had been supported. More letters followed from Smith and Wolf addressed to Holder and his underlings. In mid July, the Justice Department offered a series of thinly supported reasons for the dismissal. The case was dismissed because the Panthers' Internet posts about deploying at polls did not mention bringing weapons, Justice claimed. Yet voter intimidation laws require no such specificity or the use of weapons. Then Justice claimed the New Black Panther organization did not control the individual defendants. But again, the facts--specifically an interview where the New Black Panther chairman boasts of such control--suggest otherwise. Next Justice suggested there was no case because the Black Panthers disavowed the defendants' actions after the fact. Voluminous case law suggests that this defense is preposterous. The Justice Department, moreover, never explained why more discovery was not conducted in the case if the facts were in doubt, rather than an outright dismissal.
The Justice Department had invoked claims of "privilege" to resist providing further information to Wolf, although ample case law suggests that excuse cannot be deployed against members of Congress.
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One cannot read through the correspondence without concluding that Holder's Justice Department is grasping at straws to defend a decision made for a purpose it wants to conceal. Positions never before used by the civil rights division have been tossed about, in contradiction of previous case law and department policy. While the Justice Department has cited the First Amendment rights of the Panthers, it had never before accepted such a defense in a case of voter intimidation. (Steve Rosenbaum himself once filed a voter intimidation claim against Jesse Helms and the North Carolina state Republican party for merely sending a postcard memo, normally quintessential protected political speech, which the department found misleading.) And while the Justice Department seems bent on coming up with excuses for the New Black Panther party, the department took an entirely different approach in Pima County, Arizona, where the presence of Minutemen legally carrying firearms on Election Day set off more than a half dozen visits by the Justice Department and multiple inquiries.
Observers remain baffled as to the reason for the dismissal. Some wonder if a Philadelphia politician weighed in. Others speculate that the Obama administration fears offending allies in the African-American community or simply recoiled against the notion that civil rights laws originally designed to prosecute white segregationists might be applied to a militant African-American organization.
But, as one former Justice official notes, although charges of "political meddling" were constantly raised in the Bush administration, "to date the inspector general has never found a single case dropped or instituted due to political interference. Already [during the Obama administration] we have a case--the New Black Panther case--in which actual politicization occurred."
Wolf becomes irate when discussing the New Black Panther case. Asked if he believes the Justice Department has been honest, he says tersely, "I don't." Although he was briefed by King and Rosenbaum (who had not worked on investigating or filing the case), they seemed unaware of some of the case's basic facts. They claimed that one defendant lived at the facility and therefore had a right to be at the polling place. Wolf pointed out the polling place was a retirement home and that the defendant lived blocks away. The Justice Department attorneys told Wolf they "didn't know anything about him living there." He says, "We can't get an answer. I have lost confidence in Eric Holder. I don't know if I believe them."
Smith and Wolf are pursuing multiple avenues to get to the bottom of the matter--requesting an inspector general investigation, seeking a hearing or a possible congressional resolution. The inspector general has referred the matter to Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). House Judiciary chairman John Conyers is considering a hearing, but only on the general topic of voting rights (although Republicans on the committee would have the opportunity to raise the issue). Following release of the Washington Times story identifying the associate attorney general's involvement in the case, Smith issued a written statement blasting the Justice Department's lack of candor:
It is clear that political appointees at the Justice Department allowed career employees to be pressured to drop a case against the President's political allies. That is politicizing justice and it undermines democracy. The Attorney General must come clean to Congress about the role his political appointees played in the dismissal and disciplinary action must be taken against anyone who applied political pressure to sway a law enforcement matter.
But it is not just such decisions at Justice that are raising eyebrows. The hiring and appointment decisions by the Obama administration have been equally surprising. There was no greater criticism of the Bush Justice Department than "cronyism" and politicization of hiring decisions. The firing of nine U.S. attorneys set off a firestorm that ultimately resulted in the resignation of Gonzales, who was himself regularly criticized as being insufficiently independent of President Bush.
As Clint Bolick explains, "The president is entitled to have whatever policy advisers he wants. But when you have someone whose job it is to enforce the law you must have someone who is not only qualified but someone determined to enforce the law." That standard seems not to be operative in the Holder Justice Department.
Take the case of Mary Smith, a Native-American Chicago lawyer and Obama supporter. She has been nominated as assistant attorney general in the tax division. While she did serve in the Clinton administration, she has no expertise in tax matters and has not spoken on the topic or taken professional education courses in tax law. She did, however, work on three successive Democratic campaigns (including Obama's). A former Justice Department official asks of Smith, "This was the best they could do?"
At her confirmation hearing, Senator Sessions voiced his grave displeasure. "Tax law is very specialized and it's certainly not an area where you learn on the job." He continued, "You should not put people in a job they're not prepared to handle." While the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to confirm her not a single Democrat spoke in her defense. Lamar Smith says, "It is obviously being done for political reasons. It is not supposed to be a reward for politics back home. It is a violation of trust and a disservice to the American people." One current Justice Department attorney remarks that placing a political supporter in charge of the tax division "sounds like Nixon."
Attention has also focused on Jennifer Daskal, a former Human Rights Watch lawyer with no prosecutorial background but rather a record of aggressive advocacy on behalf of Guantánamo detainees (e.g., questioning the guilt of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, objecting to the incarceration of a 15-year-old who killed Marines). Her new job, remarkably enough, is on the Guantánamo task force that will make recommendations on detainee policy. She is now free to pursue her agenda from inside the Justice Department.
Dawn Johnsen's nomination to head OLC quickly became controversial given her record of rabid criticism of the Bush administration, her extreme views on national security and abortion (she once wrote that limits on abortion would be tantamount to "slavery" under the Thirteenth Amendment), and her insistence that the Justice Department should pursue novel legal theories based on "economic justice." Threatening a "make-over" of OLC, she appeared to be precisely the sort of extreme partisan whom Holder had suggested would be unwelcome in his department. Her nomination has now stalled, with a number of Democratic senators unwilling to support her nomination.
Then there is Les Jin, who was chief of staff to the controversial former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Mary Frances Berry, who engaged in such regular political stunts as attempting to prevent the seating of George W. Bush's lawful nominee to the commission. Jin is now in a senior counselor spot at Justice. Another opening has been staffed by Julie Fernandes, an attorney who, prior to joining the department, worked for a left-wing civil rights organization and routinely weighed in on pending cases. Mark Kappelhoff who was chief of the criminal section of the civil rights division at Justice (and who took the position, while serving in the criminal section, that a campaign mailer reminding voters they must be citizens to cast a ballot was illegal "voter intimidation") maxed out as an Obama donor and has been boosted to principal deputy attorney general for civil rights.
While the Bush administration was investigated for seeking out conservative lawyers and staff, the Obama administration has been given a pass for going to the other extreme and stocking Justice with ultra-left leaning partisans. Overt signs of political activity and support now are on full display throughout the department. While it was unheard of to display campaign literature or paraphernalia during the Bush years, in the Holder Justice Department "Yes we did!" signs are fully evident, as are copies of reverential Obama campaign posters.
There also remain the ongoing investigations of OLC attorneys in the Bush administration, concerning the advice they provided about the legality of interrogation techniques. Although Obama has urged the country "to look forward and not back," Holder is pressing full steam ahead with the investigation of John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Steven Bradbury, who rendered lengthy legal opinions at OLC on the subject of enhanced interrogation techniques.
The prospect of OPR attorneys, with no particular expertise in national security matters, providing grounds for either criminal or professional ethics charges based on the detailed legal work of their colleagues has brought a torrent of complaints. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey explained in a reporters' roundtable in December 2008,
What I have said is that there is absolutely no evidence that anybody who rendered a legal opinion, either with respect to surveillance or with respect to interrogation policies, did so for any reason other than to protect the security of the country and in the belief that he or she was doing something lawful. In those circumstances, there is no occasion to consider prosecution and there is no occasion to consider pardon. If the word goes out to the contrary, then people are going to get the message, which is that if you come up with an answer that is not considered desirable in the future you might face prosecution, and that creates an incentive not to give an honest answer but to give an answer that may be acceptable in the future. It also creates some incentive in people not to ask in the first place.
Ronald Rotunda, a professor of law at Chapman Law School and a specialist in ethics, was consulted by the Justice Department on the OPR's investigation and cannot comment on its specifics. He does, however, express bewilderment that dozens of pages of legal analysis in which direction is carefully given as to what "may" or "might" constitute torture has now been converted into the basis for prosecution. "I can't imagine you would discipline someone who goes through everything methodically." He explains, "If you don't like the particular policies, then change the policies." He draws an analogy with the attacks on free speech during the Vietnam war and McCarthy eras in which lawyers with particular views were demonized and threatened with loss of their professional licenses.
Yet Holder pushes on with a highly charged political inquiry, to the delight and with the encouragement of liberal Democrats in Congress. News reports have revealed that a draft report based on OPR's investigation was reviewed and sharply criticized by Mukasey and his deputy, Mark Filip, in late 2008. One former Justice official with knowledge of the matter says, "It is safe to say they had a number of concerns about the draft report both as to the timing and the substance" of the work by OPR. There is, this official reports, "institutional unease by senior career people" at Justice that good faith legal work may place attorneys in peril. "The department won't be able to attract the best and the brightest. You really want lawyers who will give candid legal advice."
In looking at the totality of Holder's performance, the degree to which he has departed from his confirmation hearing rhetoric is glaring. Any demarcation between the Obama administration's political agenda and the impartial administration of justice is being eradicated. "Holder is the most political, partisan attorney general I can remember," says Frank Wolf. A former Justice Department official says that "the entire equilibrium of the department is out of whack." Lamar Smith, too, is dismayed. He says he has met with Holder several times. "You hear the words but there is a disconnect with the actions. We keep hoping for better."
Certainly that was the promise of the Obama administration. "Hope" and "change" got millions to the polls. But within half a year, the Justice Department is once again beset by allegations of impropriety and politicization. The difference of course is that the current congressional leadership no longer has any incentive to investigate and illuminate the department's misdeeds. "Ending the politicization of the Justice Department," we have learned, was nothing more than a campaign slogan.
Jennifer Rubin, a lawyer and regular contributor to Commentary magazine's Contentions blog, is Pajamas Media's D.C. editor.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/799hlime.asp
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"The wild success" raves we are hearing all over the air waves about the cash for clunkers situation just goes to show how tax payers have no say in anything.
One guy is on cable this am saying he bought his car some years ago for $4K and traded it in with 220K miles for $4500.
I don't get it. This is not monopoly money. This is tax money going to give this guy a huge discount - more than the value of his car.
Why is there not outrage?
Why is there this glee in the media that this plan is great?
Am I missing something?
Of course people willl rush for these deals if they can qualify for free funny money.
The greatness of the US is over folks.
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Remember how I point out the multitude of left articles published in the New England Journal. This one is only surprising because it is written by a guy from S. Carolina.
This guy who I presume got his history lessons while residing in Russia states he has no clue what is being talked about when we speak of "American Values".
Folks, the America I knew growing up is gone.
******HEALTH CARE 2009
Previous Volume 361:440-441 July 30, 2009 Number 5
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"American Values" — A Smoke Screen in the Debate on Health Care Reform
Allan S. Brett, M.D.
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Amid all the rhetoric about health care reform, one claim has emerged as a trump card designed to preserve the current patchwork of private and public insurance and to stop discussion of a government-sponsored single-payer system in its tracks: the claim that single-payer health care — a Canadian-style Medicare-for-all system — is antithetical to "American values." The idea that American values dictate a particular approach to health care reform is often stated explicitly, and it is implicit in the generalization that "Americans want" a particular system. The underlying premise is that an identifiable set of American values point incontrovertibly to a health care system anchored by the private insurance industry. Remarkably, this premise has received very little scrutiny.
Two related assumptions are buried in the language of "American values." The first is that there are archetypical Americans — that if we know someone fits the category "American," it should be possible to predict his or her general worldview accurately. However, we have good reason to doubt that assumption. In nearly all respects — ethnically, culturally, religiously, politically, and socioeconomically — Americans are increasingly diverse. The recent presidential campaign provides evidence that a monolithic conception of what it means to be "American" is problematic and outdated: those who championed the idea of "real" Americans (as distinct from Americans who are somehow less representative of American ideals) were precisely those whose candidate lost the election.
The second assumption is that Americans' personal values predictably translate into certain organizational structures for the financing and provision of health care — and that a single-payer system is not among them. Exactly what might those values be? Are they self-regarding values directed toward maximizing individual well-being and potential? Or other-regarding values such as altruism or concern for community? Clearly, most people — regardless of political, ethnic, or cultural identity — regard both sets of values as important in varying proportions; nothing precludes a single-payer system as one possible means of realizing a blend of these values.
The notion that American values militate against a single-payer system is advanced not only by advocates of preserving the status quo or making incremental changes but also by some who propose major reforms that nibble around the edges of a single-payer system. For example, Ezekiel Emanuel — now a special adviser on the Obama administration's health care team — has proposed universal health insurance funded by a value-added tax on sold goods and services; all citizens would receive government-issued vouchers to purchase health insurance from private insurance companies. According to Emanuel, such a plan "coheres with core American values: individualism and equality of opportunity." He argues that equality of opportunity dictates universal coverage and government funding, but individualism dictates preservation of the private insurance system: "Americans clamor . . . for the chance to choose. . . . We want to choose our insurance plans, our hospitals, our doctors."1
The theme of "choice" also surfaces in the writing of Tom Daschle, President Barack Obama's initial pick for secretary of health and human services. In his book Critical, Daschle proposes universal coverage delivered through a private–public hybrid plan. He all but admits that a single-payer system is the best solution but abandons the idea because it is "politically problematic" and because "compared to residents of [European countries], Americans are more supportive of choice and suspicious of government."2
Suppose that "freedom to choose" is indeed the paramount American value relevant to health care. For many people, it would surely imply choice of physician, hospital, or clinic. For such choice, a single-payer system beats the competition hands down. Incremental reforms preserving the private insurance industry and employer-based insurance would probably perpetuate the restricted choice of health care providers that many Americans already encounter: private plans typically limit access to certain physicians or hospitals, and physicians often refuse to accept certain plans. In contrast, single-payer proposals eliminate those restrictions.
Another possible meaning of "choice" is the freedom to choose from an array of private insurance companies. Here it is important to acknowledge that insurance is only a means for collecting and disbursing health care funds — not an end in itself. The key question is therefore whether private insurance is superior to single-payer insurance in achieving the desired end of efficient, cost-effective health care. Here, too, the single-payer system would probably prevail. Because administrative costs are consistently lower in single-payer systems than in private-based systems, more of the health care budget goes directly to patient care (and less to administration) in single-payer systems. Thus, Americans have been misled by the rhetoric about choice. In contrast with the single-payer option, a system with multiple private insurers would continue to restrict one dimension of choice (selection of physicians) and perpetuate a choice most people would consider irrational (wasteful spending on administrative overhead).
A third dimension of choice is the freedom to choose whatever test or treatment a patient wants. This choice is system-neutral, pointing to neither single-payer nor alternative systems. Any reform initiative must control spending; unproven or unnecessary medical interventions should not be available in any system.
A closely related rhetorical device — the idea that Americans or American values are "unique" — also deserves attention. For example, Emanuel describes individualism and equality of opportunity as "uniquely American."1 Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asserts that a public–private hybrid is essential because it is a "uniquely American solution."3 Others describe rugged individualism as a "uniquely American" value that makes us "reluctant to provide our tax dollars to support someone else's health care."4 Such defiant-sounding assertions imply that "uniqueness" is a matter of pride and an end in itself. But these generalizations are impossible to prove, a distraction in the debate, and ultimately irrelevant. What is relevant is whether a solution works, not whether it is unique. Indeed, the aspect of the current U.S. system that is truly unique among developed countries is its failure to cover everyone — hardly something to brag about.
In their book Benchmarks of Fairness for Health Care Reform, Norman Daniels and colleagues reject these "ungenerous" views of our values, arguing that past failures to reform health care are better explained by the influence of interest groups whose wealth and power are threatened by reform.5 The authors propose that fair equality of opportunity is a more promising and relevant American value. Opinion polls support this proposal: in multiple surveys of randomly selected Americans during the past decade, more than 60% of respondents have favored government-guaranteed health care for all. Although these responses don't necessarily specify a single-payer system as the only model for government-guaranteed insurance, they surely do not exclude it.
Policymakers debating health care reform should stop hiding behind the smoke screen of "American values." Discussions dominated by references to uniquely American individualism, uniquely American solutions, or narrowly defined conceptions of choice tell us more about the political and economic interests of the discussants than about the interests of the Americans they claim to represent. In an increasingly diverse country that has a widening gap between rich and poor, a more promising approach is to start with the questions that matter to everyone: Will the system care for us when we're sick and help prevent illness when we're well? Will we have access to medical care throughout our lives without risking financial ruin? Will we be able to navigate the system easily, without jumping through unnecessary hoops or encountering excessive red tape? Will health care spending be managed wisely? Health care reformers owe Americans a system that best addresses these questions — not one that merely pays lip service to ill-defined "American values."
No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
Source Information
From the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Columbia.
References
Emanuel EJ. Healthcare, guaranteed: a simple, secure solution for America. New York: PublicAffairs, 2008:12-6.
Daschle T. Critical: what we can do about the health-care crisis. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2008:144, 204.
Medical News Today. Sen. Baucus hopes to introduce comprehensive health reform legislation this summer. March 5, 2009. (Accessed July 10, 2009, at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/141193.php.)
Garson A Jr, Engelhard CL. Health care half-truths: too many myths, not enough reality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007:131-2.
DanielsComments and questions? Please contact us.
The New England Journal of Medicine is owned, published, and copyrighted © 2009 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.
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This insight came from Forbes, Biden who doesn't drink beer (really none of them did) was needed by the beer-summit planners for racial balance. This was only a photo opp and it was looking like it would be a white cop surrounded by two black psuedo-intellectuals with a chip on their shoulder about race. With Biden they achieved balance - like a double date. Any other white and it would have just looked like they brought in a token, but Joe Biden is the VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES which was helpful when Obama needed to show he has white 'friends' too. So much for post-racialism. These men with fruit in their near-beers should become the Dukasis in a tank photo moment for future campaigns.
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August 05, 2009
Democratic Voters Flee the Obama-Pelosi Bandwagon
By Brad O'Leary
As President Obama's approval rating continues to nosedive toward that of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one has to wonder: Who are these naysayers abandoning the dynamic duo of government-run everything? While it's true that a majority of the discontented comes from the ranks of Republican and Independent voters, it is also true that many Democratic voters are parting ways with the Obama-Pelosi agenda on several fronts.
Healthcare
According to a recent Zogby International/O'Leary Report poll (which surveyed 4,470 voters July 21-24 and has a margin-of-error of plus-or-minus 1.5 percentage points - internal data here), only 36 percent of Democratic voters support the Obama-Pelosi government administered health insurance plan that would put government in charge of determining what medical procedures Americans can have and when they can have them. Fifty-nine percent of Democratic voters prefer to either keep the current system in place, or want something different altogether.
When Obama and Pelosi ask their more moderate colleagues to come onboard with Obamacare, what they're really asking them to do is ignore the will of their constituents, voters within their own Party, and the broader American electorate. That's a tough sell.
First Amendment Rights
On September 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could turn a key provision of the "McCain-Feingold" campaign finance law on its head. At issue is a documentary about Hillary Clinton that was produced by the conservative group Citizens United and released in January 2008 when Clinton was running for president. Citing "McCain-Feingold" restrictions, a district court barred the group from advertising the documentary on television and distributing it through video-on-demand. Now the Supreme Court will decide if such a ban infringes on Americans' First Amendment rights.
Both Obama and Pelosi support McCain-Feingold, however, the same can't be said for a majority of voters in their Party. The same Zogby/O'Leary poll found that 54 percent of Democratic voters believe that the First Amendment protects the right of organizations to buy political advertising that either supports or opposes a candidate for political office. Only 27 percent of Democratic voters believe otherwise.
Second Amendment
Recently, an amendment that would have permitted law-abiding gun owners with concealed-carry permits to carry their firearms across state lines fell short in the Senate. Although the amendment received a majority of votes (58-39), a filibuster-proof 60 votes were required for passage. Thirty-seven of the "no" votes came from Democratic Senators.
The Zogby/O'Leary Report poll found that an overwhelming 79 percent of Democratic voters support laws that allow law-abiding Americans to carry guns. Yet over 60 percent of Democratic Senators voted to disallow Americans this right. A majority of Senate Democrats voted against the wishes of a majority of Democratic voters.
President Obama and Nancy Pelosi have never met a gun-ban they didn't like - both of their records are abundantly clear on this. But is this a reflection of the Democratic electorate at large? Or is it just a reflection of their native enclaves - Southside Chicago (where Obama cut his political teeth) and San Francisco? Signs point to the latter.
Fifty-six percent of Democratic voters believe the Second Amendment "‘right to keep and bear arms' is a right that should apply to every law-abiding citizen living in this country." A slight majority of Democratic voters (52 percent) disagree with any law that would ban the possession of handguns, and the same percentage agree that "self-defense with a firearm is a fundamental right." And finally, 73 percent of Democratic voters believe in the individual right to own and use firearms.
Conclusion
President Obama and Speaker Pelosi may find it convenient, not to mention politically expedient, to blame Republicans every time they fail to get one of their Big Government agenda items through the Democrat-led House and the Democrat-led Senate. However, the inconvenient truth is that majorities of Democratic voters are opposed to the Obama-Pelosi agenda on many issues. According to a recent Gallup poll, 40 percent of all Americans consider themselves "conservative," and only 21 percent call themselves "liberal" (35 percent say "moderate"). The same poll found that 62 percent of self-identified Democrats consider themselves either conservative or moderate.
Try as they might, Obama and Pelosi should eventually find these numbers hard to ignore. In the meantime, they seem content to not only buck mainstream America, but also buck the mainstream within their own Party.
Brad O'Leary is publisher of "The O'Leary Report," a bestselling author, and is a former NBC Westwood One talk show host. His new book, "Shut Up, America! The End of Free Speech," (endoffreespeech.com) is now in bookstores. To see more, go to olearyreport.com.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/democratic_voters_flee_the_oba.html at August 05, 2009 - 01:12:42 PM EDT
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And yet BO remains popular - his ratings still over 55%.
He appears divorced from the health care issue in the polls.
How can the right convince so many people that socialism is not better for them?
Obviously there are people who are fine with this notion.
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To quote my mocking description of the demogogues philosophy during my most recent run for Congress (in 1992)
"We had a vote. You're paying."
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http://www.reason.com/news/show/135237.html
Little Bitty Bang Bang
The trouble with "cash for clunkers"
David Harsanyi | August 5, 2009
Here's an idea: Let's give $50,000 to anyone looking to upgrade to a brand-spanking-new, environmentally friendly home. All we ask in return is that you burn your previous residence into a heap of smoldering cinder.
That's the concept behind the bizarre "cash for clunkers" program so many people are deeming a success. It's so successful, in fact, that Congress will increase funding for it by 200 percent.
Then again, in Washington, a place where elected officials are astonished—astonished!—when a program doling out free cash is popular, success often translates into higher costs and fewer results.
Now, some of you radicals may have an ideological dilemma with a government handing out thousands of dollars to citizens making an average of $57,000 a year so they can upgrade their perfectly serviceable vehicles. Turns out, though, that by nearly any criterion, including the ones offered up by President Barack Obama, this populist experiment is an unmitigated fiasco.
To begin with, building a new car consumes energy. It is estimated that 6.7 tons of carbon are emitted in the process. So a driver who participates in the "cash for clunkers" program would need to make up for that wickedness. There are about 250 million registered vehicles in the United States. Only a micro-slither of those cars will be traded in—and a slither of that number could be deemed "clunkers" outside the Beltway.
A survey of car dealerships found a relatively small differential in fuel efficiency between cars traded in and those replacing them. A Reuters analysis concluded—even with the extended program in place—"cash for clunkers" would trim U.S. oil consumption by only a quarter of 1 percent.
As an economic stimulus, the plan is equally impotent. As James Pethokoukis, a columnist at Reuters, succinctly explained, "The program gets much of its juice via stealing car sales from the near future rather than generating additional demand."
The point of a stimulus should be to create new demand, not to move existing demand around to score political points. Then again, for this administration, economic recovery always takes a back seat to moral recovery.
If the nation weren't in the midst of a six-month agenda of national redistribution, this kind of blatantly inefficient program—even if it were ostensibly about the environment—would be allotted a measure of substantive debate in Congress. No such luck. We need to pass something quickly—quickly, always quickly. And that kind of pressure typically manifests in some creative accounting.
This week, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood claimed that "cash for clunkers" had benefited domestic car companies, particularly Ford. When The Associated Press requested data to verify this contention, the most transparent administration ever to grace God's soon-to-be-unblemished Earth refused to release the data.
The AP reported that "the limited information released so far shows most buyers are not picking Ford, Chrysler or General Motors vehicles, and six of the top 10 vehicles purchased are Honda, Toyota and Hyundai."
If those numbers are correct, take it as a positive sign that companies that avoided the orgy of corporate welfare are exceeding expectations.
But unless your idea of success is transferring wealth from one citizen to another for no tangible economic or environmental benefit, "cash for clunkers," like much of what passes as stimulus these days, is a major dud.
David Harsanyi is a columnist at The Denver Post and the author of Nanny State. Visit his Web site at www.DavidHarsanyi.com.
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I don't know where other than under glibness to put this... As we celebrate the diplomatic success of paying ransom to hostage takers it was noted that it is unusual for hostages to be rescued from forced hard labor camps carrying shopping bags and intact luggage. (http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/Gorejournalists.jpg)
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/08/something_odd_about_those_two.html
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Doug,
The other night there was some discussion by the talking heads about this "rescue".
One asked the other who would you believe as to the true nature of what went on behind the scenes, the N. Korean government or the US government. The intent was to suggest that only a crazy person would believe N Korea's story over the talking crats.
Sadly all I could think was that I wouldn't trust a Democrat any more than I would a N. Korean official.
Also I remember all too vividly that I could never know when Clinton was (if ever) telling the truth. He would lie so much even if or when he was being truthful one could not know. Clearly the same is true of BO. Clearly the same is true of most if not all of the outspoken Democrats.
As for the picture you posted I wonder where the one is of Clinton carrying his bags full of cash on his way over to N. Korea.
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- Works and Days - http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson -
Prairie-Fire Anger
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On August 5, 2009 @ 8:15 am In Uncategorized | 176 Comments
Why Are People in Revolt?
The approval ratings on nearly every one of the President’s key policy initiatives—cap-and-trade, health care overhaul, government take over of industry and finance, deficit spending, stimulus—are already less than half of polled voters. Obama’s own popularity has fallen dramatically and hovers near fifty percent. A number of well-publicized town meetings have erupted in shouting, as administration and congressional representatives try, often in condescending fashion, to explain the Obama agenda. The Republicans—written off just a few weeks ago as an obsolete party headed for oblivion—are now often polling higher in generic surveys than are Democrats.
Why the sudden uproar?
Bait-and-Switch
There is a growing sense of a “we’ve been had”, bait-and-switch. Millions of moderate Republicans, independents, and conservative Democrats—apparently angry at Bush for Iraq and big deficits, unimpressed by the McCain campaign, intrigued by the revolutionary idea of electing an African-American president—voted for Obama on the assumption that he was sincere about ending red state/blue state animosity. They took him at his word that he was going to end out of control federal spending. They trusted that he had real plans to get us out of the economic doldrums, and that he was not a radical tax-and-spend liberal of the old sort.
Instead, within days Obama set out plans that would triple the annual deficit, and intends to borrow at a record pace that will double the aggregate debt in just eight years.
He not only took over much of the auto- and financial industries, but also did so in a way that privileged unions, politically-correct creditors, and those insider cronies who favor administration initiatives. On matters racial, his administration is shrill and retrograde, not forward-looking. It insists on emphasizing the tired old identify politics that favor a particular sort of racial elite that claims advantage by citing past collective victimization or piggy-backs for advantage on the plight of the minority underclass.
In other words, the Obama swing voter thought he was getting a 21st-century version of pragmatic, triangulating Bill Clinton—and instead got something to the left of 1970s Jimmy Carter.
Those Who Receive and Those Who Dole Out
There is, of course, a growing fear of government—but a new sort of anxiety that transcends the traditional skepticism of statism. Few Americans younger than 60 can recall the magnitude of the current government take-over of the economy that may reach 40-45% of GDP. Evocation of “socialism” is still considered inflammatory by the Left, but it is now simply an empirical term, not a slur, given that America’s tax codes and entitlement spending may look like the social landscape in France or Scandinavia in short order.
Apprehensive voters dread turning their hard-won and paid-for private health care plans into something like the emergency room on Saturday night, where the care reflects the chaos. The new anti-Obamians do not want industry run like the Department of Motor Vehicles, where most time and money are invested mostly in those who do not follow the rules like registering their cars or getting a driver’s license. And it is not just the waste, inefficiency, and lack of accountability inherent in government-run enterprises that bother the growing cadre of angry voters.
There is, again, a mounting anxiety that the current federal expansion is politically-driven in rather radical ways—an effort to create a permanent new constituency of millions who either receive expanded federal largess or are gleefully employed in doling it out. The zealotry of expansive bureaucracy and dependency instills fears, rational or not, of a radicalized huge federal work force, a sort of national version of Acorn to the nth degree that in pack-like fashion is mobilized to target potential naysayers.
Bastille Day—All the Days
Voters are beginning to sense a certain edge to the Obama revolution, a meanness in its class-driven rhetoric aimed at the more successful. Even the middling classes do not necessary like this constant bashing of their bosses and lawyers, doctors, dentists, contractors, brokers, and real estate agents. The constant harangue about taxing only those who make over $250,000 (or is it now $200,000?, or $150,000) accentuates the notion that those who run successful businesses, who create profitable medical practices, and who are accomplished professionals are somehow culpable—greedy, conniving, or worse.
If well over 40% of the population pays no federal income tax, and the demonized 1% pay more federal income tax than does the bottom 95%, and still we are to hear whining about Bush-era greed, what is next? What does the Left ultimately want—confiscation of 90% of all income? Tax exemptions for 99% of the electorate? Continual Barney Frank show-trial congressional hearings to grandstand the bullying of the now satanic CEOs and investors?
In just six months has arisen a Storming the Bastille anger of “pay-back.” Class envy and anger are unleashed through careless presidential rhetoric about Las Vegas junkets, Wall Street vampires, Super Bowl trips, and all the other slurs and slanders that have nothing to do with the building contractor who makes $250,000 a year by working weekends and twelve hour days—only to plow back his profits immediately into his business.
Existential questions are now being raised—isn’t compensation fickle (why should the brain surgeon make more than the auto worker?) and in need of federal readjustment on April 15? Is your income really your own, but not more to be envisioned as something on loan from society at large, to be morally recalled as needed?
Yet how strange that the highly-compensated, privileged DC technocrat deprecates the manifestation of success of the small businessman while bailing out the Wall Street buccaneers who have so lavishly donated in the past to the Obama cause. In the world of Obama, make $300,000 in household income and you deserve to be in the crosshairs; make $30,000,000 and you are a sensitive fat cat donor, who rises above class and personal interests, and so becomes deserving of a bail-out, insider exemption, honorific federal post or ambassadorship, or dinner at the White House. The grandee talks of Harvard-educated children and Martha’s Vineyard, and so in his noblisse oblige is one of ‘us’, the grasping plumbing contractor goes to NASCAR and deserves what he gets.
One senses that a number of the successful are already detaching themselves psychologically from the American scene—and figuring out how to reduce, shield, and avoid income. They often see themselves, if not in melodramatic fashion, as modern-day Kulaks, targeted for extinction by equality-of-result state, FICA, and federal tax hikes that may result in nearly 70% of their income going for the Obama New Deal. They sense the more they pay, the more they will pay more to come. In Obama world, the fact that you will pay 40% federal tax, a health care surcharge, higher state taxes, and FICA on most of your income, is proof that you should have paid those tax rates all along, and will pay even more in the future.
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
There is a cascading anger at a new sort of left-wing elitism and hypocrisy as well, one that feeds the rhetoric of class warfare. The rules of the game simply do not apply to this bunch of wannabe Platonic Guardians. Stopping Bush’s private Social Security accounts was patriotic; using the same tactics to stop Obama care is nearly disloyal; a gross Joker-like image of Obama surfaces on the Internet and is deemed horribly unfair; that Vanity Fair published something identical about Bush was hilariously legitimate criticism. Radio talk show is now deemed radically insurrectionist; Moveon.org’s and Michael Moore’s open hostility to the U.S. military and American society at time of war (remember “General Betray-Us” ads, and Moore’s lament that bin Laden hit a blue-state city?) did not earn them ostracism from the Democratic leadership.
A well educated technocracy—we see such figures in the emblematic Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder, or Barack Obama himself —have most of their lives served in government, largely regulating, overseeing, organizing, auditing, and sermonizing far more productive and capable others. One of the worst flaws of this species of utopian technocrat is the notion that he wishes to curtail in others the very things he wishes to enjoy without constraint himself.
Thus we sense that a Geithner does not wish to pay the taxes he hikes on others. A Holder wants to destroy through subpoena and litigation the Bush lawyers, but pleaded once for mercy for his own shenanigans involving the crooked Clinton pardons. And Obama lectures about the inequality of wealth and the burdens of racism while his wife’s salary climbed as his political influence grew. Meanwhile his own rarified tastes translated into a shady transaction with Tony Rezco to help to score a stately home and expansive yard—while attending a Trinity Church that radiated racial venom from a charlatan preacher who ended up in a mansion on a golf course.
In other words, a great number of people are scared of these new versions of Al Gores and John Edwardses who live one way, and quite shamelessly preach another. I don’t think anyone in this green administration is going to be chauffeured to work in a Civic. Few will put their kids in the DC school system as they oppose vouchers. None would be happy in an environmentally-correct 1200 square foot home, with an ideal carbon-footprint, as they preach cap-and-trade taxes on energy for apartment dwellers.
Al Gore, for example, preached the evils of DC insiderism and the need for a new independent TV network. But when his company foolishly sent two of its employees into modern-day Mordor, he uses his status to convince the spouse of the Secretary of State and former President to grant concessions (by the mere fact of his presence with such a monster) to North Korea, free his workers, and set the precedent that hostage-taking does indeed earn high profile exposure. Some egalitarians.
Epilogue
I confess that when I first read Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope, first learned in depth about Trinity Church and its tirades about “black middle classness”, first studied the modus operandi of Obama’s state legislative campaigns and the mysterious implosions of both his primary and general election senatorial foes—all this belatedly in late 2006 and early 2007—I had little hope that he would prove to be anything other than the fossilized angry liberal that he is sadly proving to be.
But I erred in one key regard: I assumed his prepped oratory, youth and “cool”, transracial profile, media sycophants, and “Bush did it” excuses would ensure that his ratings stayed well above 60% at least through the midterm elections.
In other words, I underestimated the righteous anger of those who are daily deprecated by a utopian class—one that has neither the ability nor the fortitude to achieve what it now wishes to undo in others.
Post script: I will finish Mediterranean reflections, ancient and modern, next posting–on thoughts about Rhodes, Bodrum, the Cyclades and Istanbul as well as the Greek mainland.
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/prairie-fire-anger/
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From Bama
"I expect to be held responsible," Obama said. "But I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking."
One never really knows about a person until he is under pressure.
The real Bama is coming out.
This kind of language will only anger people even more and lead to more divisiveness.
This guy appears to be cracking.
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Good points CCP. By ransom I was only referring to the part we know about - giving him high level attention and positive publicity while the rest of the prisoners continue to slave for him. Who knows about the bag of cash. By making it a private mission there could have been real payoffs and still have Obama insulated with plausible deniability.
Instead of angering me, the dishonest people in my world bore me. They tell me what happened and I still don't know what happened so they waste my time by speaking. I don't know when, if not already, the overexposed Obama will start to have that affect. I suspect that the millions of mostly non-political, fair-weather first time one time voters that saw something different tuned out already. They might tell a pollster they approve or choose him over another in reelection but not with the excitement or numbers we saw the first time.
On the other point, that he doesn't mind cleaning up after them but doesn't want to hear criticism? Cleaning up after whom?? Barney Frank and the Democrats who pushed for lending based on needy neighborhoods instead of based on solid credit and substantial down payments like it used to be to buy a house. He always implies it was conservative policies and free markets running wild that made the mess when it was the opposite even if it was R's partially that supported the wrong headedness.
What part of this means people should lose the right to speak and oppose new, wrongheaded initiatives that will worsen our problems? Opponents shouldn't attend Democrat townhall meetings and if they do they should sit quietly?? The gameplan of going to all the meetings and filibustering with dissent was written at ACORN! Obama is notoriously thin-skinned for a person in his position. I don't know how that will pay off as things turn worse politically for him.
I still think the main things we will remember the Obama administration for haven't even been contemplated yet, like 911 for Bush and Clinton adopting the Gingrich agenda and sparking the economy. Maybe we'll see what this chameleon is capable of if he loses the house next year.
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"Instead of angering me, the dishonest people in my world bore me. They tell me what happened and I still don't know what happened so they waste my time by speaking. I don't know when, if not already, the overexposed Obama will start to have that affect."
Yes I agree but the larger issue is this what we should expect or should get from our leaders?
It is now common place to assume all politicians are liars.
Why even bother to complain about this one or that one doing it, "they all do it".
Is spin, bull, and lies effective leadership?
Don't people want someone they can trust leading them?
Is this where we are in today's world?
When the occasional lie from our leaders becomes an art form of spin and deceit we have lost our way.
Some would say that W lied about the weapons of mass destruction.
At the very worst he believed they were there and believed what he was doing was best for America.
I can't think of anything else that he lied about just to make himself look good.
I can say the same about Reagan.
Why can't we have honest leaders who say what they mean and mean what they say other?
I understand why BO won't say what he means because,
he clearly has a socialist agenda. Clearly he wants single payer government controlled health care and to redistribute wealth and put the historically white male led America in "its place".
But all of our leaders this way??
Perhaps I am expecting too much.
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Hard to say without loading in my own bias but it always seems that liberalism can't be sold straight up. Look at the Sotomayor hearings for example. What everyone says is adherence to founding principles etc. when everyone knows that there are two competing philosophies with the liberal one perfectly described by everything this Judge said and did BEFORE the confirmation process. Watch and listen to the liberals laugh at themselves about lying to themselves. Amazing video, very telling:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfC99LrrM2Q&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
"Don't people want someone they can trust leading them?" - In the case of Obama on so many things such as not going for single payer, not raising taxes, not spending out of control and in the case of Sotomayor claiming to not favor liberal, judicial activism, their supporters actually trust them to NOT do what they say!
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Remember the Homeland Security report about the threat those nasty right wing extremists pose? Well a group ran a FOIA request and discovered the assessment was based on--shudder--internet searches! Can reports of alien abductions be far behind?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Ne3po4ceQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fnetrightnation%2Ecom%2Findex%2Ephp%3Foption%3Dcom%5Fcontent%26view%3Darticle%26id%3D1251795%3Aalg%2Dfinds%2Ddetails%2Don%2Dqright%2Dwingq%2Dthreat%2Dassessme&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
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August 16, 2009, 8:04 p.m.
What Went Wrong
Piling up debt, gaffes, and hypocrisy, Obama & Co. are sinking.
By Victor Davis Hanson
We are witnessing one of the more rapid turnabouts in recent American political history. President Obama’s popularity has plummeted to 50 percent and lower in some polls, while the public expresses even less confidence in the Democratic-led Congress and the direction of the country at large. Yet, just eight months ago, liberals were talking in Rovian style about a new generation to come of progressive politics — and the end of both the Republican party and the legacy of Reaganism itself. Barack Obama was to be the new FDR and his radical agenda an even better New Deal.
What happened, other than the usual hubris of the party in power?
First, voters had legitimate worries about health care, global warming, immigration, energy, and inefficient government. But it turns out that they are more anxious about the new radical remedies than the old nagging problems. They wanted federal support for wind and solar, but not at the expense of neglecting new sources of gas, oil, coal, and nuclear power. They were worried about high-cost health care, the uninsured, redundant procedures, and tort reform, but not ready for socialized medicine. They wanted better government, not bigger, DMV-style government. There is a growing realization that Obama enticed voters last summer with the flashy lure of discontent. But now that they are hooked, he is reeling them in to an entirely different — and, for many a frightening — agenda. Nothing is worse for a president than a growing belief among the public that it has been had.
Second, Americans were at first merely scared about the growing collective debt. But by June they became outraged that Obama has quadrupled the annual deficit in proposing all sorts of new federal programs at a time when most finally had acknowledged that the U.S. has lived beyond its means for years. They elected Obama, in part, out of anger at George W. Bush for multi-billion dollar shortfalls — and yet as a remedy for that red ink got Obama’s novel multi-trillion-dollar deficits.
Third, many voters really believed in the “no more red/blue state America” healing rhetoric. Instead, polls show they got the most polarizing president in recent history — both in his radical programs and in the manner in which he has demonized the opposition to ram them through without bipartisan support. “Punch back harder” has replaced “Yes, we can.”
Fourth, Americans wanted a new brand — youthful, postracial, mesmerizing abroad. At first they got that, too. But after eight months, their president has proven not so postracial, but instead hyper-racially conscious. Compare the Holder “cowards” outburst, the Sotomayor riff on innate racial and gender judicial superiority, and the president’s Cambridge police comments. All that sounds more like Jesse Jackson than Martin Luther King Jr. Demagogues, not healers, trash their predecessors at the beginning of every speech. When a once-eloquent president now goes off teleprompter, the question is not whether he will say something that is either untruthful or silly, but simply how many times he might do so at one outing. Some once worried that George W. Bush could not articulate our goals in Iraq; far more now sense that Obama is even less able to outline his own health-care reform.
Fifth, even skeptics are surprised at the partisan cynicism. A year ago, Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama praised organizing, dissidents, and protest. Today they have become near-Nixonian in demonizing popular resistance to their collectivized health-care plans as mob-like, inauthentic, scripted, Nazi-like, and un-American. There are still ex-lobbyists in the government. High officials still cheat on their taxes. Hacks in the Congress still profit from their office. The public is sensing not only that Obama has failed to run the most ethically clean government, as promised, but indeed that he is not running as ethically clean a government as the predecessor who he so assiduously ridiculed.
Sixth, there is a growing fear that Obamism is becoming cult-like and Orwellian. Almost on script, Hollywood ceased all its Rendition/Redacted–style films. Iraq — once the new Vietnam — is out of the news. Afghanistan is “problematic,” not a “blunder.” Tribunals, renditions, the Patriot Act, and Predators are no longer proof of a Seven Days in May coup, but legitimate tools to keep us safe. Words change meanings as acts of terror become “man-caused disasters.” Hunting down jihadists is really an “overseas contingency operation.” Media sycophants do not merely parrot Obama, but now proclaim him a “god.” New York Times columnists who once assured us that Bush’s dastardly behavior was proof of American pathology now sound like Pravda apologists in explaining the “real” Obama is not what he is beginning to seem like.
Seventh, the Obama cabinet is sounding downright uncouth and boorish. The tax-challenged Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, unleashed a profanity-laced diatribe against bank regulators. Hillary Clinton’s recent outburst in the Congo, captured on YouTube, was something out of Days of Our Lives. Joe Biden cannot speak extemporaneously without causing an incident with the Russians or misleading the public about swine flu. Attorney General Holder sounds like a tired scold, only to be overshadowed by the president’s off-the-cuff cuts about the Special Olympics, Las Vegas, and the Cambridge police. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs makes Scott McClellan sound like a Cicero by comparison.
Eighth, we were all appalled by Wall Street greed and the notion that an individual could take $100 million rather than one or two million as a bonus. But the Obama remedy for that obscenity was to conflate Goldman Sachs or AIG with the family orthodontist or local asphalt contractor whose 80-hour weeks might result in an annual $250,000 income. Worse still, the public impression is that while small entrepreneurs may pay up to 65 percent of their income in new state and federal income taxes, payroll taxes, and surcharges, those on Wall Street have been bailed out and have cut various deals with upscale liberals in government.
Ninth, Democratic populism turned out to be largely aristocratic elitism. Obama spends more money on himself than did Bush. The liberal Congress has a strange fondness for pricy private jets. Those environmentalists and racialists who lecture us about our ecological and ethical shortcomings prefer Martha’s Vineyard and country estates to Dayton and Bakersfield. Offering left-wing populist sermonizing for others while enjoying the high life oneself is never a winning combination.
Tenth, Americans no longer believe this is our moment when the seas stop rising and the planet ceases warming. Instead, there is a growing hopelessness that despite all the new proposed income taxes, payroll taxes, and surtaxes, the deficit will skyrocket, not shrink. There is foreboding that while apologies abroad are nice in the short term, they will soon earn a reckoning. And while the productive classes pay more of their income, and while government grows and entitlement expands, there is a sense that what follows will not be thanks for either taxes paid or benefits received, but even more anger that neither is enough and that much more is owed.
Obama’s popularity might rebound with a natural upturn in the economy, continued low energy prices, and good will for our first multiracial president. But then again, it could get even worse if the recovery turns into stagflation, gas prices soar, and the identity-politics lectures amplify. The next six months should be interesting.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWRmMjAxNmNhZDRhMjllYmFjYTZjYmRlYTZmYWNjYTA=
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I only post this because it is actually humerous if not maddening.
Here is the biggest spender in the history of government who now is advised to come out speaking in defense of the *taxpayer*.
Of course if it isn't only to decry the waste in miliatry spending - true to form from a gigantic liberal.
We don't need any more tanks. We need cultural compentancy and language experts to defend America:
Obama criticizes a Cold War approach to defense
PHOENIX – President Barack Obama chastised the defense industry and a freespending Congress on Monday for wasting tax dollars "with doctrine and weapons better suited to fight the Soviets on the plains of Europe than insurgents in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan."
"Twenty years after the Cold War ended, this is simply not acceptable. It's irresponsible. Our troops and our taxpayers deserve better," he told a national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "If Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with a bunch of pork, I will veto it."
Turning to the two foreign wars engaging the United States, Obama spoke of fierce fighting against Taliban and other insurgents leading up to Thursday's national elections in Afghanistan. He said U.S. troops are working to secure polling places so the elections can go forward and Afghans can choose their own future.
Attaining that peaceful future "will not be quick, nor easy," Obama said.
He said the new U.S. strategy recognizes that al-Qaida has moved its bases into remote areas of Pakistan and that military power alone will not win that war. At the same time, confronting insurgents in Afghanistan "is fundamental to the defense of our people."
As to Iraq, Obama reiterated his commitment to remove all combat brigades by the end of next August and to remove remaining troops from the country by the end of 2011. U.S. troops withdrew from cities and other urban areas in June.
Obama, in his third appearance before the VFW but his first as president, got hearty applause and standing ovations as he spoke at the Phoenix Convention Center to several thousand veterans, though only about two-thirds of the seats were filled.
That may have been partly because he started his speech nearly an hour before it was scheduled. Aides say he was anxious to get back to Washington after a four-day trip out West that was part family vacation and part business, including the VFW speech and town hall meetings in Montana and Colorado to push his health care agenda.
Obama told the veterans that overhaul would not change how they get their medical services — and that nobody in Washington is talking about taking away or trimming their benefits.
Instead, he said he's instructed senior aides to work with the secretary of veterans affairs to come up with better ways to serve veterans.
Obama said he wants each of the 57 regional VA offices "to come up with the best ways of doing business, harnessing the best information technologies, breaking through the bureaucracy."
He said the government would then pay to put the best ideas into action "all with a simple mission — cut these backlogs, slash those wait times and deliver your benefits sooner."
Even at a time when Obama needs as much congressional support as he can summon for his health care priorities, he spared no party from his harsh critique of business-as-usual by some in the military establishment, some defense contractors and some lawmakers who write defense budgets.
He assailed "indefensible no-bid contracts that cost taxpayers billions and make contractors rich" and lashed out at "the special interests and their exotic projects that are years behind schedule and billions over budget."
He took on "the entrenched lobbyists pushing weapons that even our military says it doesn't want" and blistered lawmakers in Washington whose impulse he said was "to protect jobs back home building things we don't need (with) a cost that we can't afford."
He said such waste was unacceptable as the country fights two wars while mired in a deep recession.
"It's inexcusable. It's an affront to the American people and to our troops. And it's time for it to stop," Obama said.
As a candidate and as president, Obama has held up the weapons-buying process as the perfect example of what's wrong with Washington and why the public doesn't trust its leaders. He essentially picked a political fight with a large part of the congressional-military-industrial alliance.
He sounded much like his campaign rival of a year ago, Arizona Sen. John McCain. And, while in Arizona, Obama praised McCain for seeking to rein in costs and reform the weapons-buying process.
In seeking to overhaul the weapons-buying process, Obama hopes to make good on a campaign promise to change the way Washington does business. But it certainly won't be easy to do; lawmakers protecting jobs at home are certain to put up enormous fights over Obama's efforts to stop production on weapons like the F-22 fighter jet.
Despite objections and veto threats from the White House, a $636 billion Pentagon spending bill was approved by a 400-30 vote in the House late last month. It contains money for a much-criticized new presidential helicopter fleet, cargo jets that the Pentagon says aren't needed and an alternative engine for the next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that military leaders say is a waste of money.
The Senate will deal with the spending measure in September.
The president laid out a vision of a nimble, well-armed and multilingual fighting force of the future, not one that was built to fight land battles against the Soviets in Europe.
"Because in the 21st century, military strength will be measured not only by the weapons our troops carry, but by the languages they speak and the cultures they understand," he said.
He praised McCain for joining him and Defense Secretary Robert Gates in opposing unneeded defense spending.
Shortly after Obama won the White House, McCain had pointedly suggested there was no need for the Marine Corps to bring on newer helicopters to ferry the president at a cost of billions of dollars.
On the subject of the helicopters, Obama told the veterans: "Now, maybe you've heard about this. Among its other capabilities, it would let me cook a meal while under nuclear attack. Now, let me tell you something. If the United States of America is under nuclear attack, the last thing on my mind will be whipping up a snack."
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CCP, I don't believe him but I agree with the premise that we could have a scary strong and effective military for a little less money if the process did not involve lobbyists and bureaucrats ranking ahead of clear thinking, modern military strategists.
B.O: "If Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with a bunch of pork, I will veto it."
Yeah, sure he will, just like he did with the 'defense of banking' bills and shovel ready stimulus bullsh*t. :-(
He sounds like he is campaigning for the office instead of leading and he sounds like he competing not against Pelosi-Barney Frank-Durban-Schumer but against a Republican congress, which maybe he already sees coming...
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"He sounds like he is campaigning for the office instead of leading and he sounds like he competing not against Pelosi-Barney Frank-Durban-Schumer but against a Republican congress, which maybe he already sees coming..."
Yes, and, I feel he always been this way.
*The pretend you are one of them, then you can change them strategy.*
Though at times he dons the sheep skin costume more then others depending on who he is conning.
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http://www.reason.com/news/show/135529.html
Among the Cynics
When it comes to health care reform, Obama doesn't believe reasonable people can disagree
Katherine Mangu-Ward | August 19, 2009
It's funny—I don't feel like a fearmongering naysayer. And I haven't gotten a check from a health insurance lobbyist in ages. Actually, come to think of it, I've never gotten a check from the insurance lobby.
But Obama says that I am, along with (pick your poll) 30 to 60 percent of Americans who are not on board with massive government intervention in one of the biggest and fastest growing sectors of our economy. So it must be true.
I do have all the hallmarks of the cynic. "In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain," President Barack Obama wrote in The New York Times on Sunday, after gazing into the near future of the health care debate and seeing a dystopia full of "scare tactics." And it's true. I am "exploiting" "concerns." By expressing them. In print. In conversation. My 30 to 60 percent fearmongering brethren and I, cynics that we are, just keep having concerns.
We fearmongers and our "concerns" wield an unholy power over the political process. How else to explain what happened? A plan—noble in reason, infinite in faculties, in form admirable—was presented to the American people. The obvious genius of the plan failed to carry it through intact. As more details were revealed, more and more people got antsy about the whole endeavor. They mentioned their concerns to their congressmen, sometimes loudly. Congress got cold feet, and now everyone is sitting in time out, thinking about what they did wrong.
When Obama, the man of hope, tells this story, it sounds like a failure of the democratic process, corrupted by special interests who somehow forced all those people to holler at town meetings and forced me to write this article. Again, though, without the actual writing of checks. But someone of a non-cynical nature might equally see this story as a great success of participatory democracy, with representatives accountable to the people.
Obama saw the health care cynics coming a mile away. Back in the misty days of January 2007, he warned the Democratic National Committee about us. The "cynics," he predicted, would fight health care reform. "With such cynicism, government doesn't become a force of good, a means of giving people the opportunity to lead better lives; it just becomes an obstacle for people to get rid of. Too often, this cynicism makes us afraid to say what we believe. It makes us fearful. We don't trust the truth." He blended together his own health care plan, government as a force for good, and truth into a delicious rhetorical smoothie, and they ate it up.
But times have changed and on Saturday, in Grand Junction, Colorado, Obama indulged in a little psychologizing of the now-ascendant Other. He said he understood "why people are nervous" but then he clarified: "Whenever America has set about solving our toughest problems, there have been those who have sought to preserve the status quo. And these struggles have always boiled down to a contest between hope and fear." The people who are nervous are just timid, more susceptible than average to the "special interests" do things like "use their influence" to get their "political allies to scare the American people." And they are contagious, passing on the fear themselves.
Sometimes it seems that Obama ascribes opposition to his agenda to a simple failure of intelligence, or perhaps perception. "What the cynics fail to understand," said the brand spanking new president on inauguration day, "is that the ground has shifted beneath them—that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply."
Or perhaps people just have the facts wrong. If they weren't blinded by falsehood, surely they would hop right on board. On Thursday, this exchange between White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and ABC's Jake Tapper entertained the White House press corps for a couple of minutes. After squabbling over polls, (which might or might not show that more Americans disapprove of the president's handling of health care reform than approve, but that either way an awful lot of people didn't dig the plan) it finally got down to this:
TAPPER: ...why are they not with the president?
GIBBS: Look, I think part of it is some of these misconceptions.
Everyone needs someone to mischaracterize while engaging in political battle—remember all those Islamists who "hate our freedoms"? But the strangest thing about Obama's cynics-and-naysayers gambit is that it's no gambit at all. Every single time Obama implies (or says outright) that the people who disagree with him are confused, that they aren't listening properly to what he is saying, they they are in the thrall of liars, or that they are fearful or mean-spirited—he's doing it in good faith.
Obama's path is so clearly illuminated by the light of his own reason, he simply can't entertain another possible way of being, a different set of beliefs, held by an intelligent person who is well-informed and well-intentioned—or so his language about cynicism, fear, and lies strongly implies. His assumption of bad faith or idiocy on the part of his opponents is done, it seems, with a pure heart.
Katherine Mangu-Ward is a senior editor at Reason magazine.
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Obama and ‘Redistributive Change’
Forget the recession and the “uninsured.” Obama has bigger fish to fry.
By Victor Davis Hanson
The first seven months of the Obama administration seemingly make no sense. Why squander public approval by running up astronomical deficits in a time of pre-existing staggering national debt?
Why polarize opponents after promising bipartisan transcendence?
Why create vast new programs when the efficacy of big government is already seen as dubious?
But that is exactly the wrong way to look at these first seven months of Obamist policy-making.
Take increased federal spending and the growing government absorption of GDP. Given the resiliency of the U.S. economy, it would have been easy to ride out the recession. In that case we would still have had to deal with a burgeoning and unsustainable annual federal deficit that would have approached $1 trillion.
Instead, Obama may nearly double that amount of annual indebtedness with more federal stimuli and bailouts, newly envisioned cap-and-trade legislation, and a variety of fresh entitlements. Was that fiscally irresponsible? Yes, of course.
But I think the key was not so much the spending excess or new entitlements. The point instead was the consequence of the resulting deficits, which will require radically new taxation for generations. If on April 15 the federal and state governments, local entities, the Social Security system, and the new health-care programs can claim 70 percent of the income of the top 5 percent of taxpayers, then that is considered a public good — every bit as valuable as funding new programs, and one worth risking insolvency.
Individual compensation is now seen as arbitrary and, by extension, inherently unfair. A high income is now rationalized as having less to do with market-driven needs, acquired skills, a higher level of education, innate intelligence, inheritance, hard work, or accepting risk. Rather income is seen more as luck-driven, cruelly capricious, unfair — even immoral, in that some are rewarded arbitrarily on the basis of race, class, and gender advantages, others for their overweening greed and ambition, and still more for their quasi-criminality.
“Patriotic” federal healers must then step in to “spread the wealth.” Through redistributive tax rates, they can “treat” the illness that the private sector has caused. After all, there is no intrinsic reason why an auto fabricator makes $60 in hourly wages and benefits, while a young investment banker finagles $500.
Or, in the president’s own language, the government must equalize the circumstances of the “waitress” with those of the “lucky.” It is thus a fitting and proper role of the new federal government to rectify imbalances of compensation — at least for those outside the anointed Guardian class. In a 2001 interview Obama in fact outlined the desirable political circumstances that would lead government to enforce equality of results when he elaborated on what he called an “actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”
Still, why would intelligent politicians try to ram through, in mere weeks, a thousand pages of health-care gibberish — its details outsourced to far-left elements in the Congress (and their staffers) — that few in the cabinet had ever read or even knew much about?
Once again, I don’t think health care per se was ever really the issue. When pressed, no one in the administration seemed to know whether illegal aliens were covered. Few cared why young people do not divert some of their entertainment expenditures to a modest investment in private catastrophic coverage.
Warnings that Canadians already have their health care rationed, wait in long lines, and are denied timely and critical procedures also did not seem to matter. And no attention was paid to statistics suggesting that, if we exclude homicides and auto accidents, Americans live as long on average as anyone in the industrial world, and have better chances of surviving longer with heart disease and cancer. That the average American did not wish to radically alter his existing plan, and that he understood that the uninsured really did have access to health care, albeit in a wasteful manner at the emergency room, was likewise of no concern.
#page#The issue again was larger, and involved a vast reinterpretation of how America receives health care. Whether more or fewer Americans would get better or worse access and cheaper or more expensive care, or whether the government can or cannot afford such new entitlements, oddly seemed largely secondary to the crux of the debate.
Instead, the notion that the state will assume control, in Canada-like fashion, and level the health-care playing field was the real concern. “They” (the few) will now have the same care as “we” (the many). Whether the result is worse or better for everyone involved is extraneous, since sameness is the overarching principle.
We can discern this same mandated egalitarianism beneath many of the administration’s recent policy initiatives. Obama is not a pragmatist, as he insisted, nor even a liberal, as charged.
Rather, he is a statist. The president believes that a select group of affluent, highly educated technocrats — cosmopolitan, noble-minded, and properly progressive — supported by a phalanx of whiz-kids fresh out of blue-chip universities with little or no experience in the marketplace, can direct our lives far better than we can ourselves. By “better” I do not mean in a fashion that, measured by disinterested criteria, makes us necessarily wealthier, happier, more productive, or freer.
Instead, “better” means “fairer,” or more “equal.” We may “make” different amounts of money, but we will end up with more or less similar net incomes. We may know friendly doctors, be aware of the latest procedures, and have the capital to buy blue-chip health insurance, but no matter. Now we will all alike queue up with our government-issued insurance cards to wait our turn at the ubiquitous corner clinic.
None of this equality-of-results thinking is new.
When radical leaders over the last 2,500 years have sought to enforce equality of results, their prescriptions were usually predictable: redistribution of property; cancellation of debts; incentives to bring out the vote and increase political participation among the poor; stigmatizing of the wealthy, whether through the extreme measure of ostracism or the more mundane forced liturgies; use of the court system to even the playing field by targeting the more prominent citizens; radical growth in government and government employment; the use of state employees as defenders of the egalitarian faith; bread-and-circus entitlements; inflation of the currency and greater national debt to lessen the power of accumulated capital; and radical sloganeering about reactionary enemies of the new state.
The modern versions of much of the above already seem to be guiding the Obama administration — evident each time we hear of another proposal to make it easier to renounce personal debt; federal action to curtail property or water rights; efforts to make voter registration and vote casting easier; radically higher taxes on the top 5 percent; takeover of private business; expansion of the federal government and an increase in government employees; or massive inflationary borrowing. The current class-warfare “them/us” rhetoric was predictable.
Usually such ideologies do not take hold in America, given its tradition of liberty, frontier self-reliance, and emphasis on personal freedom rather than mandated fraternity and egalitarianism. At times, however, the stars line up, when a national catastrophe, like war or depression, coincides with the appearance of an unusually gifted, highly polished, and eloquent populist. But the anointed one must be savvy enough to run first as a centrist in order later to govern as a statist.
Given the September 2008 financial meltdown, the unhappiness over the war, the ongoing recession, and Barack Obama’s postracial claims and singular hope-and-change rhetoric, we found ourselves in just such a situation. For one of the rare times in American history, statism could take hold, and the country could be pushed far to the left.
That goal is the touchstone that explains the seemingly inexplicable — and explains also why, when Obama is losing independents, conservative Democrats, and moderate Republicans, his anxious base nevertheless keeps pushing him to become even more partisan, more left-wing, angrier, and more in a hurry to rush things through. They understand the unpopularity of the agenda and the brief shelf life of the president’s charm. One term may be enough to establish lasting institutional change.
Obama and his supporters at times are quite candid about such a radical spread-the-wealth agenda, voiced best by Rahm Emanuel — “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid” — or more casually by Obama himself — “My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
So we move at breakneck speed in order not to miss this rare opportunity when the radical leadership of the Congress and the White House for a brief moment clinch the reins of power. By the time a shell-shocked public wakes up and realizes that the prescribed chemotherapy is far worse than the existing illness, it should be too late to revive the old-style American patient.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWQ2NWJkN2M3ZmJjYWQwMDZlMWQyM2FjNWI4ZWJkNGI=
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First part is about the Lockerbie release but the topic is still governing glibly instead of wisely.
Suicide of the West?
By Thomas Sowell
Britain's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi-- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people-- is galling enough in itself. But it is even more profoundly troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in the Western democracies in our time.
In ways large and small, domestically and internationally, the West is surrendering on the installment plan to Islamic extremists.
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The late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put his finger on the problem when he said: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles."
He wrote this long before Barack Obama became President of the United States. But this administration epitomizes the "concessions and smiles" approach to countries that are our implacable enemies.
Western Europe has gone down that path before us but we now seem to be trying to catch up.
Still, the release of a mass-murdering terrorist, who went home to a hero's welcome in Libya, shows that President Obama is not the only one who wants to move away from the idea of a "war on terror"-- as if that will stop the terrorists' war on us.
The ostensible reason for releasing al-Megrahi was compassion for a man terminally ill. It is ironic that this was said in Scotland, for exactly 250 years ago another Scotsman-- Adam Smith-- said, "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
That lesson seems to have been forgotten in America as well, where so many people seem to have been far more concerned about whether we have been nice enough to the mass-murdering terrorists in our custody than those critics have ever been about the innocent people beheaded or blown up by the terrorists themselves.
Tragically, those with this strange inversion of values include the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder. Although President Obama has said that he does not want to revisit the past, this is only the latest example of how his administration's actions are the direct opposite of his lofty words.
It is not just a question of looking backward. The decision to second-guess CIA agents who extracted information to save American lives is even worse when you look forward.
Years from now, long after Barack Obama is gone, CIA agents dealing with hardened terrorists will have to worry about whether what they do to get information out of them to save American lives will make these agents themselves liable to prosecution that can destroy their careers and ruin their lives.
This is not simply an injustice to those who have tried to keep this country safe, it is a danger recklessly imposed on future Americans whose safety cannot always be guaranteed by sweet and gentle measures against hardened murderers.
Those who are pushing for legal action against CIA agents may talk about "upholding the law" but they are doing no such thing. Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the Geneva Convention gives rights to terrorists who operate outside the law.
There was a time when everybody understood this. German soldiers who put on American military uniforms, in order to infiltrate American lines during the Battle of the Bulge were simply lined up against a wall and
shot-- and nobody wrung their hands over it. Nor did the U.S. Army try to conceal what they had done. The executions were filmed and the film has been shown on the History Channel.
So many "rights" have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don't meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn't protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you.
That should be especially obvious if you are part of an international network bent on killing Americans. But bending over backward to be nice to our enemies is one of the many self-indulgences of those who engage in moral preening.
But getting other people killed so that you can feel puffed up about yourself is profoundly immoral. So is betraying the country you took an oath to protect.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/09/01/suicide_of_the_west_98112.html
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Obama's labor secretary lets union officials off transparency hook
By: KEVIN MOONEY
Commentary Staff Writer
08/28/09 2:49 PM EDT
Never mind about those revised union financial disclosure requirements President Obama inherited from his predecessor. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis now says she won’t make union officials comply.
Unions officials complained for eight years that regulations issued by Elaine Chao, President George W. Bush’s Labor Secretary, were more rigorous than required by the Labor Management and Reporting Disclosure Act (LMRDA), which calls for modestly detailed annual financial reports by unions with receipts of $250,000 or more.
The Bush-Chao regulations require union officials to disclose financial information that could aid union members’ seeking information on how their union leaders are spending dues money, and to help expose “no show jobs” that put paychecks for ghost employees into union coffers.
Before Bush took office, the reports were mostly ignored by the Labor Department. Now, it’s back to business-as-usual. A notice appeared this week on the department’s web site saying the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS), whose main job is enforcing LMRDA requirements, won’t be doing its job under Solis:
“Accordingly, OLMS will refrain from initiating enforcement actions against union officers and union employees based solely on the failure to file the report required by section 202 of the Labor-Management and Reporting Disclosure Act (LMRDA), 29 U.S.C. § 432, using the 2007 form, as long as individuals meet their statutorily-required filing obligation in some manner. OLMS will accept either the old Form LM-30 or the new one for purposes of this non-enforcement policy.”
Now that Obama-Solis are giving union officials a choice between the old and new forms, can you guess which one they will choose?
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obamas-labor-secretary-lets-union-officials-off-transparency-hook-55818342.html
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I would file that one on the Corruption thread. Nice find.
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Too late for Obama to turn it around?
Plus: The left's visionaries lost their bearings on drugs -- but the GOP is led by losers
By Camille Paglia
Sep. 09, 2009 |
What a difference a month makes! When my last controversial column posted on Salon in the second week of August, most Democrats seemed frozen in suspended animation, not daring to criticize the Obama administration's bungling of healthcare reform lest it give aid and comfort to the GOP. Well, that ice dam sure broke with a roar. Dissident Democrats found their voices, and by late August even the liberal lemmings of the mainstream media, from CBS to CNN, had drastically altered their tone of reportage, from priggish disdain of the town hall insurgency to frank admission of serious problems in the healthcare bills as well as of Obama's declining national support.
But this tonic dose of truth-telling may be too little too late. As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration's strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have -- from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama's plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)
By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done. At this point, Democrats' main hope for the 2012 presidential election is that Republicans nominate another hopelessly feeble candidate. Given the GOP's facility for shooting itself in the foot, that may well happen.
This column has been calling for heads to roll at the White House from the get-go. Thankfully, they do seem to be falling faster -- as witness the middle-of-the-night bum's rush given to "green jobs" czar Van Jones last week -- but there's a long way to go. An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president's innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to "help" the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?
Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web -- both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy -- I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.
Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.
How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin's book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me."
But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/
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Anatomy of the "Racist" Charge—or, How to Turn a Setback into a Disaster [Victor Davis Hanson]
It is strange to see Democrats and their supporters persist in their efforts — indeed, even intensify them — to equate Obama's failing legislative initiatives, his dive in the polls, and the rise of protests against him with racism. Polls reveal that it is not just a losing tactic, but an enormously self-destructive one for Democrats.
To make the argument, they would have to prove three points. And so far they have not even come close:
1) Uniquely vicious?
Is the anger against Obama different from what we have seen leveled against presidents in the past? Americans not only know that this is not true, but that some who now charge unfair play were themselves well beyond the bounds of decorum in their own attacks. In the Bush years, "hate" was a favorite word of liberal critics, from both officials (cf. Howard Dean) and mainstream publications (cf. The New Republic). "Assassination" was the rage among liberal culture (cf. Alfred Knopf, the Toronto film festival, the Guardian). "Liar," "Nazi," and "brownshirt" were casual slurs from high-profile Democrats (cf. Gore, John Glenn, Robert Byrd, Harry Reid, Pete Stark, etc.). True, shouting "you lie" is more serious than booing the President (cf. 2005), but whereas Rep. Joe Wilson has apologized, none of the booers at Bush's State of the Union address, I think, felt that "I'm sorry" was ever necessary. (Questioning Barack Obama's birth certificate is infantile, even unhinged, but not de facto racially motivated — perhaps analogous to something like Andrew Sullivan persisting in spreading rumors [complete with purported photographs] that Sarah Palin did not deliver her last child and engaged in an elaborate cover-up of a faked pregnancy and delivery to hide her daughter's own stealth unwed pregnancy.)
2) Is Obama the only minority high-profile figure to have earned real anger?
No. Clarence Thomas had his character destroyed for partisan purposes, and liberals were enraged when he attributed it to a "high-tech lynching." Alberto Gonzalez was reduced to a caricature of an affirmative-action beneficiary. Former HHS Secretary Louis Wade Sullivan's race was explicitly cited by Representative Stark in a particularly nasty attack. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was caricatured in state-run Palestinian newspaper cartoons as a pregnant monkey, few on the left rushed to denounce such virulent racism. The sad truth is that if a Pres. Condi Rice or Pres. Colin Powell were now in the midst of pushing a controversial conservative agenda (e.g., a federal ban on abortions, cuts in federal spending, keeping open Guantanamo, etc.), the liberal press would be as aggressively hostile as conservatives are today against the Obama plans. The only difference would be that all in the liberal camp would be furious over suggestions of racial motivations to their own anger over conservative African-Americans pushing controversial policy. This is self-evident.
3) Do more prominent politicians on the Right engage in racially charged invective, or rather on the Left?
There have been some lunatic local and minor right-wing state officials who have engaged in racist charges. But so far the most prominent violators of our common norms of decency have been on the left, and indeed those in high positions of executive or elected authority.
Van Jones was a White House adviser — one long ago sought out and watched, according to Obama insider Valerie Jarrett. So someone must have known that in racist fashion he had suggested that whites pollute minority neighborhoods and are more prone to commit mass murders in the schools. Top-ranking officials like Rep. Charles Rangel and Gov. David Paterson of New York have accused whites of racism in lieu of honest self-examination of their own failing careers.
There was no need for Eric Holder to accuse the country of cowardice for failing to talk about race on his terms, nor for the president himself to weigh in on a local police matter as judge and jury — to condemn police in general as profilers and those in Cambridge in particular as acting "stupidly." This was especially unfortunate given the president's own racialist gaffes in the campaign, whether his persistent confusion over the morality of the racist Rev. Wright, his incendiary dismissal of Pennsylvania voters in thinly disguised, culturally biased, if not racist terms, and his flippant reference to the grandmother who raised him as a "typical white person."
The fact is that both health care and cap-and-trade simply are not going to make it into law in anything like their proposed forms, due largely to real fright on the part of moderate Democrats who fear losses in 2010, given the abandonment of these issues by moderates and independents.
The false charge of racism won't change that reality, but it may well, if pursued, turn legislative defeats into political catastrophes for a generation. How strange that with large majorities in the House and Senate, with a president who just months ago enjoyed 70 percent approval ratings, and with a compliant and influential press, the Democratic party cannot pass its own legislation and instead is detouring to label most middle-class voters of all beliefs "racists." It is as if a group of political advisers got together and brainstormed how in theory to ruin the best liberal landscape in generations.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzMwMDkzY2EwYTcwYjJmZGFmODhlZWNhOGE5YjVjNmY=
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No screw ball Pelosi, what is scary is a government that is spending trillions of dollars as fast as they can come up with ideas on how to spend steal, bribe constituents, payoff unions Acorn, legal lobby, give away our sovereignty to China, Russia, S Amerca, etc., try to control the media, tax everything from light bulbs to toilet flushes, control every movement of our lives including our health care and on and on and on. THAT IS SCARY. What a nut:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, choking up and with tears forming in her eyes. “This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made."
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Barack Obama, College Administrator
Our commander-in-chief seems to think he’s president of the University of America.
By Victor Davis Hanson
If you are confused by the first nine months of the Obama administration, take solace that there is at least a pattern. The president, you see, thinks America is a university and that he is our campus president. Keep that in mind, and almost everything else makes sense.
Obama went to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard without much of a break, taught at the University of Chicago, and then surrounded himself with academics, first in his stint at community organizing and then when he went into politics. It shows. In his limited experience, those who went to Yale or Harvard are special people, and the Ivy League environment has been replicated in the culture of the White House.
Note how baffled the administration is by sinking polls, tea parties, town halls, and, in general, “them” — the vast middle class, which, as we learned during the campaign, clings to guns and Bibles, and which has now been written off as blinkered, racist, and xenophobic. The earlier characterization of rural Pennsylvania has been expanded to include all of Middle America.
For many in the academic community who have not worked with their hands, run businesses, or ventured far off campus, Middle America is an exotic place inhabited by aborigines who bowl, don’t eat arugula, and need to be reminded to inflate their tires. They are an emotional lot, of some value on campus for their ability to “fix” broken things like pipes and windows, but otherwise wisely ignored. Professor Chu, Obama’s energy secretary, summed up the sense of academic disdain that permeates this administration with his recent sniffing about the childish polloi: “The American people . . . just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act.” Earlier, remember, Dr. Chu had scoffed from his perch that California farms were environmentally unsound and would soon disappear altogether, “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”
It is the role of the university, from a proper distance, to help them, by making sophisticated, selfless decisions on health care and the environment that the unwashed cannot grasp are really in their own interest — deluded as they are by Wal-Mart consumerism, Elmer Gantry evangelicalism, and Sarah Palin momism. The tragic burden of an academic is to help the oppressed, but blind, majority.
In the world of the university, a Van Jones — fake name, fake accent, fake underclass pedigree, fake almost everything — is a dime a dozen. Ward Churchill fabricated everything from his degree to his ancestry, and was given tenure, high pay, and awards for his beads, buckskin, and Native American–like locks. The “authentic” outbursts of Van Jones about white polluters and white mass-murderers are standard campus fare. In universities, such over-the-top rhetoric and pseudo-Marxist histrionics are simply career moves, used to scare timid academics and win release time, faculty-adjudicated grants, or exemption from normal tenure scrutiny. Skip Gates’s fussy little theatrical fit at a Middle American was not his first and will not be his last.
Obama did not vet Jones before hiring him because he saw nothing unusual (much less offensive) about him, in the way that Bill Ayers likewise was typical, not an aberration, on a campus. Just as there are few conservatives, so too there are felt to be few who should be considered radicals in universities. Instead everyone is considered properly left, and even fringe expressions are considered normal calibrations within a shared spectrum. The proper question is not “Why are there so many extremists in the administration?” but rather “What’s so extreme?”
Some people are surprised that the administration is hardly transparent and, in fact, downright intolerant of dissent. Critics are slurred as racists and Nazis — usually without the fingerprints of those who orchestrated the smear campaign from higher up. The NEA seems to want to dish out federal money to “artists” on the basis of liberal obsequiousness. The president tells the nation that his wonderful programs are met with distortion and right-wing lies, and that the time for talking is over — no more partisan, divisive bickering in endless debate.
That reluctance to engage in truly diverse argumentation again reveals the influence of the academic world on Team Obama. We can have an Eric Holder–type “conversation” (a good campusese word), but only if held on the basis of the attorney general’s one-way notion of racial redress.
On most campuses, referenda in the academic senate (“votes of conscience”) on gay marriage or the war in Iraq are as lopsided as Saddam’s old plebiscites. Speech codes curb free expression. Groupthink is the norm. Dissent on tenure decisions, questioning of diversity, or skepticism about the devolution in the definition of sexual harassment — all that can be met with defamation. The wolf cry of “racist” is a standard careerist gambit. Given the exalted liberal ends, why quibble over the means?
Some wonder where Obama got the idea that constant exposure results in persuasion. But that too comes from the talk-is-everything mindset of a university president. Faculties are swamped with memos from deans, provosts, and presidents, reiterating their own “commitment to diversity,” reminding how they would not “tolerate hate speech,” and in general blathering about the “campus community.” University administrators instruct faculty on everything from getting a flu shot, to covering up when coughing, to how to make a syllabus and avoid incorrect words.
Usually the frequency of such communiqués spikes when administrators are looking for a job elsewhere and want to establish a fresh paper trail so that their potential new employers can be reminded of their ongoing progressive credentials.
Obama has simply emulated the worldview and style of a college administrator. So he thinks that reframing the same old empty banalities with new rhetorical flourishes and signs of fresh commitment and empathy will automatically result in new faculty converts. There is no there there in health-care reform, but opponents can be either bullied, shamed, or mesmerized into thinking there is.
Czars are a university favorite. Among the frequent topics of the daily university executive communiqués are the formulaic “My team now includes . . . ,” “I have just appointed . . . ,” “Under my direction . . . ” (that first-person overload is, of course, another Obama characteristic), followed by announcement of a new “special” appointment: “special assistant to the president for diversity,” “acting assistant provost for community affairs and external relations,” “associate dean for curriculum enhancement and development.”
Most of these tasks are either unnecessary or amply covered by existing faculty, department chairs, and deans. Czars, however, proliferated on campuses for fairly obvious reasons. First, they are spotlights illuminating the university administration’s commitment to a particular fashionable cause by the showy creation of a high-profile, highly remunerative new job. When loud protests meet the university’s inability to create a new department or fund a trendy but costly special program, administrators often take their loudest critics and make them czars — satisfying the “base” without substantial policy changes.
Second, czars are a way to circumvent the usual workings of the university, especially faculty committees in which there is an outside chance of some marginalized conservative voting against putting “Race, Class, and Gender in the Latina Cinema” into the general-education curriculum.
Special assistants for and associates of something or other are not vetted. Czars create an alternative university administration that can create special billets, hire adjuncts (with de facto security), and obtain budgeting without faculty oversight. The special assistant or associate rarely is hired through a normal search process open to the campus community, but rather is simply selected and promoted by administrative fiat.
One of the most disturbing characteristics of the new administration is a particular sort of whining or petulance. Dissatisfaction arises over even favorable press coverage — as we saw last weekend, when Obama serially trashed the obsequious media that he had hogged all day.
Feelings of being underappreciated by the public for all one’s self-sacrificial efforts are common university traits. We’ve seen in the past a certain love/hate relationship of Professor Obama with wealthy people — at first a Tony Rezko, but now refined and evolved much higher to those on Wall Street that the administration in schizophrenic fashion both damns and worships.
Michelle Obama during the campaign summed up best her husband’s wounded-fawn sense of sacrifice when she said, “Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics.”
Academic culture also promotes this idea that highly educated professionals deigned to give up their best years for arduous academic work and chose to be above the messy rat race. Although supposedly far better educated, smarter (or rather the “smartest”), and more morally sound than lawyers, CEOs, and doctors, academics gripe that they, unfairly, are far worse paid. And they lack the status that should accrue to those who teach the nation’s youth, correct their papers, and labor over lesson plans. Obama reminded us ad nauseam of all the lucre he passed up on Wall Street in order to return to the noble pursuit of organizing and teaching in Chicago.
In short, campus people have had the bar raised on themselves at every avenue. Suggest to an academic that university pay is not bad for ninth months’ work, often consisting of an actual six to nine hours a week in class, and you will be considered guilty of heresy if not defamation.
University administrators worship private money, and then among themselves scoff at the capitalism that created it. Campus elites, looking at a benefactor, are fascinated how someone — no brighter than they are — made so much money, even as they are repelled by a system that allows those other than themselves to have pulled it off. No wonder that Obama seems enchanted by a Warren Buffett, even as he trashes the very landscape that created Berkshire Hathaway’s riches. No president has raised more money from Wall Street or has given it more protection from accountability — while at the same time demagoguing it as selfish and greedy.
Many of the former Professor Obama’s problems so far hinge on his administration’s inability to judge public opinion, its own self-righteous sense of self, its non-stop sermonizing, and its suspicion of sincere dissent. In other words, the United States is now a campus, we are the students, and Obama is our university president.
-- NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. © 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTA4OWRmZTM3MmQwNzJlZWMyMDc4MTY1ZGE5NWMzODM=
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Very perceptive.
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UN speech today could easily have come from Kofi Anan not a President of the US.
Or could it?
This must be a bad dream. Tell me I am going to wake up. I would be glad to have Bill Clinton back.
Notice the reference to "tyranny" on a couple of occasions on the ONe's megalomaniac speech to the world. The One takes Mark Levin's use of the word to describe him and tries to turn it around. No accident.
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I'm afraid to see what His Kittiness came up with today.
Anyway, here's this:
Does He Lie?
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 18, 2009
You lie? No. Barack Obama doesn't lie. He's too subtle for that. He . . . well, you judge.
Herewith three examples within a single speech -- the now-famous Obama-Wilson "you lie" address to Congress on health care -- of Obama's relationship with truth.
(1) "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future," he solemnly pledged. "I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future. Period."
Wonderful. The president seems serious, veto-ready, determined to hold the line. Until, notes Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, you get to Obama's very next sentence: "And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."
This apparent strengthening of the pledge brilliantly and deceptively undermines it. What Obama suggests is that his plan will require mandatory spending cuts if the current rosy projections prove false. But there's absolutely nothing automatic about such cuts. Every Congress is sovereign. Nothing enacted today will force a future Congress or a future president to make any cuts in any spending, mandatory or not.
Just look at the supposedly automatic Medicare cuts contained in the Sustainable Growth Rate formula enacted to constrain out-of-control Medicare spending. Every year since 2003, Congress has waived the cuts.
Mankiw puts the Obama bait-and-switch in plain language. "Translation: I promise to fix the problem. And if I do not fix the problem now, I will fix it later, or some future president will, after I am long gone. I promise he will. Absolutely, positively, I am committed to that future president fixing the problem. You can count on it. Would I lie to you?"
(2) And then there's the famous contretemps about health insurance for illegal immigrants. Obama said they would not be insured. Well, all four committee-passed bills in Congress allow illegal immigrants to take part in the proposed Health Insurance Exchange.
But more important, the problem is that laws are not self-enforcing. If they were, we'd have no illegal immigrants because, as I understand it, it's illegal to enter the United States illegally. We have laws against burglary, too. But we also provide for cops and jails on the assumption that most burglars don't voluntarily turn themselves in.
When Republicans proposed requiring proof of citizenship, the Democrats twice voted that down in committee. Indeed, after Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" shout-out, the Senate Finance Committee revisited the language of its bill to prevent illegal immigrants from getting any federal benefits. Why would the Finance Committee fix a nonexistent problem?
(3) Obama said he would largely solve the insoluble cost problem of Obamacare by eliminating "hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud" from Medicare.
That's not a lie. That's not even deception. That's just an insult to our intelligence. Waste, fraud and abuse -- Meg Greenfield once called this phrase "the dread big three" -- as the all-purpose piggy bank for budget savings has been a joke since Jimmy Carter first used it in 1977.
Moreover, if half a trillion is waiting to be squeezed painlessly out of Medicare, why wait for health-care reform? If, as Obama repeatedly insists, Medicare overspending is breaking the budget, why hasn't he gotten started on the painless billions in "waste and fraud" savings?
Obama doesn't lie. He merely elides, gliding from one dubious assertion to another. This has been the story throughout his whole health-care crusade. Its original premise was that our current financial crisis was rooted in neglect of three things -- energy, education and health care. That transparent attempt to exploit Emanuel's Law -- a crisis is a terrible thing to waste -- failed for health care because no one is stupid enough to believe that the 2008 financial collapse was caused by a lack of universal health care.
So on to the next gambit: selling health-care reform as a cure for the deficit. When that was exploded by the Congressional Budget Office's demonstration of staggering Obamacare deficits, Obama tried a new tack: selling his plan as revenue-neutral insurance reform -- until the revenue neutrality is exposed as phony future cuts and chimerical waste and fraud.
Obama doesn't lie. He implies, he misdirects, he misleads -- so fluidly and incessantly that he risks transmuting eloquence into mere slickness.
Slickness wasn't fatal to "Slick Willie" Clinton because he possessed a winning, nearly irresistible charm. Obama's persona is more cool, distant, imperial. The charming scoundrel can get away with endless deception; the righteous redeemer cannot.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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By KARL ROVE
So our top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has told CBS's "60 Minutes" that he has spoken with President Barack Obama only once since June.
This is a troubling revelation. Right now, our commander in chief is preparing to make one of the most important decisions of his presidency—whether to commit additional troops to win the war in Afghanistan. Being detached or incurious about what our commanders are experiencing makes it hard to craft a winning strategy.
Mr. Obama's predecessor faced a similar situation: a war that was grinding on, pressure to withdraw troops, and conflicting advice—including from some who saw the war as unwinnable. But George W. Bush talked to generals on the ground every week or two, which gave him a window into what was happening and insights into how his commanders thought. That helped him judge their recommendations on strategy.
Mr. Obama's hands-off approach to the war seems to fit his governing style. Over the past year, he outsourced writing the stimulus package to House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, washed his hands of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to reinvestigate CIA interrogators, and hasn't offered a detailed health-care plan.
Mr. Obama's aloofness on the war will be a problem if the recent airing of Joe Biden's views on Afghanistan is a tipoff that Mr. Obama will rely on his vice president's guidance. According to reports in the New York Times and other publications, Mr. Biden supports reducing troop levels in favor of surgical attacks—mostly launched from offshore—and missile strikes against al Qaeda, especially in Pakistan.
Such an approach would almost certainly lose the war. Actionable intelligence—key to defeating an insurgency—would dry up. Tribal chieftains would cut deals with the Taliban and al Qaeda. The Afghan government would probably collapse, and the Afghan people would have little choice but to swing their support to the Taliban. Pakistan would likely come to see us as a fair-weather friend and increasingly resist U.S. attacks against al Qaeda on its soil. American credibility would be shattered. And militant Islamists would gain a victory.
Mr. Biden has a record rare in its consistency and duration of being wrong about big national security questions.
In his first U.S. Senate campaign in 1972, he called for cutting and running from Vietnam. He later voted to cut off funding for South Vietnam and spoke out against the war. After we did withdraw, communist forces conquered South Vietnam as well as Cambodia, where Pol Pot carried out a campaign of genocide.
In the 1980s, Mr. Biden opposed President Ronald Reagan's national security approach on almost every front, including funding for the Contras in Nicaragua, building missile defenses, and increasing military spending. In the 1990s, apparently willing to cede Kuwait to Saddam Hussein, he voted against the first Gulf War. Over the past decade, Mr. Biden opposed the surge that put us on the path to victory in Iraq. Instead called for a "soft partition" that would have divided Iraq into three countries.
Mr. Biden has been right about Afghanistan at least once. In 2002, he said, "Security is the basic issue in Afghanistan. Whatever it takes, we should do it. History will judge us harshly if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we failed to stay the course."
The responsibility for the outcome of the war in Afghanistan rests squarely with Mr. Obama. Until now, he seems to have treated the conflict as a distraction from his efforts to nationalize our health-care system. But the war is now front and center. He has been told by Gen. McChrystal that America needs more boots on the ground to win.
About Karl Rove
Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy making process.
Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.
Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon Schuster. Email the author at Karl@Rove.com or visit him on the web at Rove.com.
Or, you can send him a Tweet@karlrove.
.In the past, when Mr. Obama has moved left, he moved fast and far to the left—witness his willingness to push health-care legislation even if it only has Democratic support. But when he has played to the center—as on Afghanistan, when he decided in last year's campaign that he needed to be tough on at least one of the wars America was engaged in—he has looked for appealing half-measures that ultimately prove unworkable.
It was easy in 2008 to criticize Mr. Bush's war leadership. But winning a shooting war requires a commander in chief's constant, direct and deep involvement. Mr. Obama could show he understands this if he uses his trip to Denmark this week (where he will serve as pitchman for Chicago to get the 2016 Olympics) to make a surprise visit to Afghanistan.
Refusing to provide all the troops and strategic support that his commanders are requesting will be to concede defeat. We'll soon know whether Mr. Obama has the judgment and the courage to win this war.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
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"our top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has told CBS's "60 Minutes" that he has spoken with President Barack Obama only once"
Obama economic advisers get the same treatment according to CNBC Editor in the NY Post:
"Obama economic counselor Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman, is barely consulted at all on just about anything -- not even issues involving the banking system, of which he is among the world's leading authorities."
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/burned_by_obama_CRw506e4NQv1C9IkTVM7tO
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Doug,
Don't you just love this stuff from liberal academia.
Like the one that came out recently from Boston (of course) that 44K people die every year because they don't have insurance.
LIke this one that holds our standing in the World has had a sharp increase since Obama is President. Though it may be too late to turn the downward trend.
Of course we are popular - he wants to give all away.
"The findings are based on analyses of public opinion surveys, votes in the U.N. General Assembly and the expert judgment of specialists in the field of comparative geopolitics, said Peter J. Katzenstein of Cornell University, a former president of the association."
Why does this above statement not make me feel fuzzy all over like apparently it does the author?
***Political scientists report drop in US standing
By BARRY SCHWEID (AP) – 6 hours ago
WASHINGTON — The United States' standing in the world declined in the past decade to below Cold War levels, according to a leading group of political scientists.
Favorable attitudes have risen sharply under President Barack Obama with his commitment to "restore American standing," but confidence in him appears to be in conflict with unfavorable attitudes about U.S. foreign policy, the American Political Science Association said in a report released Thursday.
"Many American leaders and citizens worry that this decline, despite a recent upturn, may be part of a long-term trend, one that will be hard to reverse," the report said.
While Obama has raised American esteem, he has not produced more European troops for Afghanistan, secured concessions from North Korea nor made any headway with Iran, the academics said.
Twenty political scientists worked on the report for more than a year. Two of them dissented from the conclusions, saying that "political bias affects perceptions" and that "the academic community, unbalanced as it is between self-identified Republicans and Democrats, is not immune to such bias."
The dissenters, Stephen D. Krasner of Stanford University and Henry R. Nau of The George Washington University, said U.S. standing is heavily influenced by political bias in the United States and political attitudes in foreign countries. Krasner was director of policy planning at the State Department under President George W. Bush.
The findings are based on analyses of public opinion surveys, votes in the U.N. General Assembly and the expert judgment of specialists in the field of comparative geopolitics, said Peter J. Katzenstein of Cornell University, a former president of the association.
American standing plunged most sharply in the Middle East and Europe, although authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are more supportive of U.S. policy than they can say publicly, the report said.
In Europe, there is a growing European identity and "a conscious political attempt to delink Europe from American policies," according to the report.
At the United Nations, support for U.S. positions has declined since the 1960s, and the decline was especially pronounced during the George W. Bush administration, the academics said. After some initial success, such as toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the United States grew mired in Iraq and Osama bin Laden remained at large. The success of the troop surge in Iraq may have helped improve attitudes toward the United States, the report said.
Helping raise U.S. esteem now are Obama's rhetorical skills and "what his election signifies about the openness of America," the report said.
"In policy terms, however, most (foreigners) believe that there has been little change in the U.S. disregard for the interests of their country, and that U.S. influence in the world is still mostly bad," the report said.
The American Political Science Association has more than 15,000 members.***
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9.8% unemployment in September
(http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/files/2009/10/dd.gif)
Unemployment in the United States hit 9.8% in September, despite the $787 billion stimulus that a Democratic Congress passed without a single Republican vote in the House and only 2 in the Senate.
That is roughly 2 points higher than the 7.8% that the White House had promised for September if the stimulus package became law.
There has been a net loss of 3 million jobs since the stimulus was passed.
Glenn Reynolds: “Not living up to the promises they made, is it? But don’t worry, health care will be totally different.“
Ah yes.
(http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/files/2009/10/Picture-7.png)
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/673
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The Obsolescence of a Slur
Criticisms of Obama are increasingly met by cries of “Racist!” Are his critics racists?
By Victor Davis Hanson
The charge of racism has been leveled against critics of President Obama’s health-care reform by everyone from New York Times columnists, racial activists, and Democratic legislators to senior statesmen like Jimmy Carter (“It’s a racist attitude”), Bill Clinton (“some . . . are racially prejudiced”), and Walter Mondale (“I don’t want to pick a person [and] say, ‘He’s a racist,’ but I do think the way they’re piling on Obama . . . I think I see an edge in them that’s a little bit different”).
But are Obama’s critics really racists?
It is a serious charge. If true, it means the hope of a color-blind society is essentially over after a half-century of civil-rights progress. If false, it means that we have institutionalized vicious smears as legitimate political tactics — and, in the process, discredited the entire dialogue that surrounds racial prejudice.
How do we determine the accuracy of the “racism” charges?
1) Is the criticism of Barack Obama unusual by recent presidential standards?
No. Bush hatred was even more intense. Furthermore, it very soon went from fierce partisanship into a deviant desire for the president’s injury or death. Such derangement was tolerated or indeed enhanced by mainstream liberal establishment figures.
Alfred A. Knopf published a novel speculating about killing the president. The Toronto Film Festival gave a prize to a docudrama about an envisioned assassination of George W. Bush. His death became the stuff of a New York play, the dream of a Guardian columnist, and a common theme in the left-wing blogosphere.
A certain amount of this kind of venom was evident in the opposition to Bill Clinton, who was accused of everything from covering up murders to being a serial rapist. By any fair standard, nothing so far in the health-care pushback has approached the smears and dirt directed at Presidents Bush and Clinton.
2) Is there a systematic racialist attack on other black politicians and leaders?
No. Gov. David Paterson of New York, for example, alleges a new racism as the chief cause of his own decline. But it is President Obama himself, not white racists, who is pressuring Paterson not to run for reelection.
Charles Rangel cited racism for much of the public outrage over his behavior. But clearly his problems were caused by his own tax fraud, inability to tell the truth, and violations of ethical standards — which would have destroyed most other politicians long ago. There may well be some racially motivated criticism of prominent at-risk black politicians, but so far there is no evidence that anything other than their own actions accounts for their political troubles.
3) Is President Obama’s agenda, or Obama himself, the problem?
Barack Obama could not have been elected without millions of white voters, coupled with a near-monolithic black base. To believe that innate racism has caused many of the millions who voted for him spontaneously to withdraw their support makes no sense.
Take moderates and independents who were once strong Obama supporters. Why would someone vote for a black man, then eight months later decide that he could not support a black man? Clearly, Obama’s problems derive not from his race, but from his radical agenda for out-of-sight government spending, high taxes, mega-deficits, nationalized health care, cap-and-trade, and an apologetic foreign policy.
In this regard, imagine two counterfactuals:
a) Had Obama delayed his liberal initiatives and first devoted his attention to controlling federal spending, winning in Afghanistan, and balancing the budget, would his polls have dropped to near 50 percent? (President Clinton’s own up-and-down experience between 1993 and 1996 is instructive here.)
b) Should Obama now escalate in Afghanistan, delay his liberal agenda, and balance the federal budget, would not more of his criticism come from the Left — and if so, would it then be considered racist? If a protester at an anti-war march carried a sign that read, “I love Afghanistan — Bomb Chicago!” would that be racist?
Indeed, Obama’s adherence to the Patriot Act, renditions, wiretaps, intercepts, tribunals, Predator attacks, and the Petraeus plan in Iraq — and his inability to close Guantanamo on his promised one-year date — have already incurred furor from the hard Left. But again, will that growing anger be termed racially motivated?
4) Has the Right recently been more racially conscious in its attacks than has the Left?
Not really. We forget that the left-wing blogosphere savaged Michael Steele in racialist terms when he was running for the Senate from Maryland. Harry Belafonte — to the silence of the Left — called Secretary of State Colin Powell a house slave. No one on the Left objected to the racist cartoons, both here in the United States and abroad in the Arab world, caricaturing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Much of the liberal hostility against Clarence Thomas suggested in thinly disguised terms that he was an unqualified beneficiary of affirmative action. The assumption is that the heartless Right is guilty of racism unless proven innocent, while the utopian, humanitarian Left could not possibly resort to racist attacks for partisan advantage. So far Barack Obama has seen less virulent opposition than what Alberto Gonzales, Condoleezza Rice, or Michael Steele faced.
5) Is racial polarization more pronounced among whites or among blacks?
Here there seems no general trend of racial animosity by any particular group. The occasional over-the-top sign at a tea party, or right-wing minor official who crosses the line, seems balanced by prominent blacks who talk in racially oriented terms. Obama himself has stereotyped whites in Pennsylvania in quasi-racist terms, and has employed banalities like “typical white person.” The most prominent racist in the United States currently may well be the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the president’s own former pastor, who has insulted in racist fashion whites in general, Jews, Italians, and just about everyone other than African-Americans.
When Eric Holder called his fellow citizens “cowards,” his comments were understood to have been directed at white America’s unwillingness to discuss race on his terms. Green-jobs czar Van Jones promiscuously threw around the terms “whites” and “white people,” associating them with polluters and high-school mass murderers. Again, there seems no greater white propensity for using stereotypes. Bill Clinton, husband of the current Secretary of State, now points to a white propensity to play a racial card against President Obama; last year, Bill Clinton, husband of Obama rival Hillary Clinton, charged that candidate Obama himself had “played the race card” on him.
6) Are there trends in the general society that suggest a new racial polarization?
Again, not really. Recently a number of high-profile controversies may have had racial overtones, but they did not suggest a pre-existing climate of white racism. Had a white counterpart of Professor Gates insulted a black arresting police officer, made a pejorative reference to “your mama,” and then counted on his friendship with a white president for support, there might have followed charges of racism. Had a white country-and-western singer grabbed the microphone from a diminutive 18-old-year black gospel singer to announce to a national television audience that another white country-and-western singer was more deserving of the award, there could well have been charges of racism leveled. And had a marquee white tennis player lost her cool, charged a small Asian line judge, and threatened her person, there might well have been charges of racism. In all these and other lurid news stories splashed about on YouTube (cf. the bus attack by several black youths against a white passenger), there has not been much of a larger reaction along racial lines that suggests either that whites or blacks in general are racist, or that either group thinks the other is.
In short, there is little, if any, evidence that the millions of voters who are losing confidence in the president are doing so for racist reasons. But there is a great deal of evidence that his own extremist positions on spending, government, taxes, foreign policy, and health care, along with a few high-profile, out-of-the-mainstream appointments, have convinced many Americans that Obama, like the Bill Clinton of 1993, is not the moderate voice he appeared to be during the campaign, but a partisan ideologue racing to expand the government before his popular support collapses.
So why is the faux charge of “racist” so freely bandied about — given that polls suggest it is a losing tactic for liberals?
The most obvious reason is that a popular president believed he could enact an unpopular agenda on the basis of his own magnetic personality. When he discovered that he could not — and in the process revealed a pattern of partisanship and intolerance — some of his diehard supporters were flabbergasted by the turn of events and resorted in desperation to the “racist” charge to regain sympathy for both their cause and their president.
Second, liberals never envisioned that they would so quickly regain the House and Senate, as well as the presidency — partly through tough invective and a demonization of both George W. Bush and a Republican “culture of corruption.” Their noble ends were felt to justify their often over-the-top rhetoric. Now they most surely do not wish the same level of street invective legitimized and used against themselves. “Racist!” then serves as a preemptive firewall against possible conflagrations to come.
Third, there is an almost hysterical fear that “Racist!” has lost all currency as an effective political tool. Indeed, the charge has been rendered almost meaningless by the frequency of its use and the rarity of its accuracy. Counterintuitively, some believe the more the discredited charge is repeated, the more likely it might be to regain its prior effectiveness.
Thousands on the left, both black and white, have for decades invested in the notion of ubiquitous racism that must be addressed by either material or psychic reparations. At risk now with the discrediting of the charge are government-mandated quotas and affirmative action, and indeed the postmodern gospel that oppressed people of color could not, de facto, ever be racist themselves. If charges of racism no longer end the discussion, by sidetracking the accused into first proving his long record of racial tolerance, then the political atmospherics may well be altered.
Polls show that the public does not believe criticism of Obama to be racially motivated, and further that the majority has become exasperated at the tired charge. What we are seeing, then, in the latest hysterical resort to “Racist!” is a growing realization not only that this once-effective scapegoating has become obsolete, but that it has become a boomeranging liability for all who employ it.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. © 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDJmODI5MjdhNDQ4ZjdiZDYxMWFkZTdmMzM3OTk1MjU=
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Obama's speech.
"Nearly one year ago, on a clear November night, people from every corner of the world gathered in the city of Chicago or in front of their televisions to watch the results of the U.S. Presidential election. Their interest wasn’t about me as an individual."
No?
****10.3.2009
Transcript: President Obama’s October 2nd Speech to the Olympic Committee in Copenhagen
President & 1st Lady Obama
In what some critics are calling a rookie mistake on the world’s political stage and others an over extension of personal arrogance, President Obama traveled to Copenhagen in a failed attempt to help win Chicago’s bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The following is a complete transcript of his speech to the Olympic Committee:
President Obama: President Rogge, ladies and gentlemen of the International Olympic Committee. I come here today as a passionate supporter of the Olympic and Paralympic Games; as a strong believer in the movement they represent; and as a proud Chicagoan. But above all, I come as a faithful representative of the American people, and we look forward to welcoming the world to the shores of Lake Michigan and the heartland of our nation in 2016.
To host athletes and visitors from every corner of the globe is a high honor and a great responsibility. And America is ready and eager to assume that sacred trust. We’re a nation that has always opened its arms to the citizens of the world including my own father from the African continent people who have sought something better; who have dreamed of something bigger.
I know you face a difficult choice among several great cities and nations with impressive bids of their own. So I’ve come here today to urge you to choose Chicago for the same reason I chose Chicago nearly 25 years ago the reason I fell in love with the city I still call home. And it’s not just because it’s where I met the woman you just heard from although after getting to know her this week, I know you’ll all agree that she’s a pretty big selling point for the city.
You see, growing up, my family moved around a lot. I was born in Hawaii. I lived in Indonesia for a time. I never really had roots in any one place or culture or ethnic group. And then I came to Chicago. And on those Chicago streets, I worked alongside men and women who were black and white; Latino and Asian; people of every class and nationality and religion. I came to discover that Chicago is that most American of American cities, but one where citizens from more than 130 nations inhabit a rich tapestry of distinctive neighborhoods.
Each one of those neighborhoods from Greektown to the Ukrainian Village; from Devon to Pilsen to Washington Park…has its own unique character, its own unique history, its songs, its language. But each is also part of our city, one city, a city where I finally found a home.
Chicago is a place where we strive to celebrate what makes us different just as we celebrate what we have in common. It’s a place where our unity is on colorful display at so many festivals and parades, and especially sporting events, where perfect strangers become fast friends just because they’re wearing the same jersey. It’s a city that works…from its first World’s Fair more than a century ago to the World Cup we hosted in the nineties, we know how to put on big events. And scores of visitors and spectators will tell you that we do it well.
Chicago is a city where the practical and the inspirational exist in harmony; where visionaries who made no small plans rebuilt after a great fire and taught the world to reach new heights. It’s a bustling metropolis with the warmth of a small town; where the world already comes together every day to live and work and reach for a dream…a dream that no matter who we are, where we come from; no matter what we look like or what hand life has dealt us; with hard work, and discipline, and dedication, we can make it if we try.
That’s not just the American Dream. That is the Olympic spirit. It’s the essence of the Olympic spirit. That’s why we see so much of ourselves in these Games. That’s why we want them in Chicago. That’s why we want them in America.
We stand at a moment in history when the fate of each nation is inextricably linked to the fate of all nations a time of common challenges that require common effort. And I ran for President because I believed deeply that at this defining moment, the United States of America has a responsibility to help in that effort, to forge new partnerships with the nations and the peoples of the world.
No one expects the Games to solve all our collective challenges. But what we do believe what each and every one of you believe and what all of the Chicago delegation believes is that in a world where we’ve all too often witnessed the darker aspects of our humanity, peaceful competition between nations represents what’s best about our humanity. It brings us together, if only for a few weeks, face to face. It helps us understand one another just a little bit better. It reminds us that no matter how or where we differ, we all seek our own measure of happiness, and fulfillment, and pride in what we do. That’s a very powerful starting point for progress.
Nearly one year ago, on a clear November night, people from every corner of the world gathered in the city of Chicago or in front of their televisions to watch the results of the U.S. Presidential election. Their interest wasn’t about me as an individual. Rather, it was rooted in the belief that America’s experiment in democracy still speaks to a set of universal aspirations and ideals. Their interest sprung from the hope that in this ever-shrinking world, our diversity could be a source of strength, a cause for celebration; and that with sustained work and determination, we could learn to live and prosper together during the fleeting moment we share on this Earth.
Now, that work is far from over, but it has begun in earnest. And while we do not know what the next few years will bring, there is nothing I would like more than to step just a few blocks from my family’s home, with Michelle and our two girls, and welcome the world back into our neighborhood.
At the beginning of this new century, the nation that has been shaped by people from around the world wants a chance to inspire it once more; to ignite the spirit of possibility at the heart of the Olympic and Paralympic movement in a new generation; to offer a stage worthy of the extraordinary talent and dynamism offered by nations joined together to host games that unite us in noble competition and shared celebration of our limitless potential as a people.
And so I urge you to choose Chicago. I urge you to choose America. And if you do, if we walk this path together, then I promise you this: The city of Chicago and the United States of America will make the world proud. Thank you so much. (Applause)****
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The Ego has landed , , ,
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Narcissistic IMO for Obama to make America's bid about him. If we won and especially if Obama was in a second term it would be all become a tribute to him. Meanwhile Chicagoans were apathetic about it. Recall that Colorado won the 1976 Winter Olympics and then the voters of Colorado voted it down. They already had enough tourists and didn't want access to the ski resorts interrupted.
Also strange was to see Obama take a sudden stab at proclaiming American exceptionalism, in direct contradiction to all his other overseas speeches and to exactly the wrong audience for that message - that we are the greatest nation on the planet and that Chicago is the second or now third greatest city in the greatest nation. The reality is that core areas of Chicago more closely resemble a third world country, lacking what makes the rest of America great. And the governance of Chicago has no semblance to consent of the governed, limited government or any other principle espoused by the founders.
Maybe the humiliated, "Harry, I have a gift" Glibness can go back to Chicago between world tours, take a page out of the Bill Cosby responsibility book and be the real leader these people so desperately need.
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Getting back to you CCP: "Doug, Don't you just love this stuff from liberal academia.
Like the one that came out recently from Boston (of course) that 44K people die every year because they don't have insurance.
Like this one that holds our standing in the World has had a sharp increase since Obama is President. Though it may be too late to turn the downward trend.
Of course we are popular - he wants to give all away."
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I would like to see 44k signed death certificates saying that the cause of death was 12 years of neglect by frugal Republican congresses, lol.
US popularity when we were a great nation would be like asking other cities about the popularity of the Yankees when they were winning all the World Series. How high were their approval numbers among Cubs and Cardinals fans? Not so good I would suspect. I would measure it differently - by actions, not polls. Where do they send their kids for higher ed. Who do they call when Saddam invades their country, for missile defense, life saving meds, information technology, etc?
These questions may be moot as we unilaterally give up all of our advantages in pursuit of fairness and mediocrity.
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Going back a week or so I agree with how perceptive the BBG/VDH post is about this President thinking he is running a University. Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics has a slightly different take on Obama's problem with the presidency:
RealClearPolitics HorseRaceBlog
By Jay Cost
Does Obama Have a republican Problem?
We all know that President Obama has a Republican problem, namely the 200 or so Republican members of Congress who refuse to go along with his health care reform plans. However, I think he might also be developing a republican problem. Namely, I think he is having trouble keeping his ego within the boundaries of an office that fundamentally reflects the republican quality of this country.
It is difficult to nail down precisely what "republicanism" means. It has had different meanings in different places at different times. In the United States, it conjures up the notion of self-government: the people are capable of ruling themselves, and the authority of the leaders derives from the consent of the governed, rather than some aristocratic pedigree or superior position in life.
The evidence of American republicanism is all around us. Consider, for instance, the title of address for the President of the United States. Originally, Federalists like John Adams desired a grand title, something like "His Highness." However, the simple phrase "Mr. President" was ultimately adopted.
Anybody who walks down the 1600 Block of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. will notice that the house of the most powerful person on the planet lacks the grandiosity that one might otherwise expect.
(http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/WhiteHouse.jpg)
Compare this residence to the head of the House of Windsor.
(http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/buckinghampalace.jpg)
Or how about the old home of the French House of Bourbon.
Versailles.jpg
The first home is the residence of a republican leader. It is formal and respectable, but not grandiose. In square footage terms, your place might be larger than the President's. You might also make more money than the President. Lots of people do, seeing as how we do not pay him that much. George Washington wanted to turn down the princely sum that the First Congress was prepared to pay him for his tenure. Generally, Washington's modesty and self-restraint helped establish the republican quality the office retains to this day.
Ironically, the sense that the President is no better than any of us is a major reason why the office is so powerful, or at least why it can be. A President who appears to be of the people, rather than above them, can more easily rally them to his cause, thereby forcing the Congress to do as he likes. It is not coincidental that the first stirrings of the modern, powerful presidency can be seen in the administration of Andrew Jackson, who was thought by his opponents to be the leader of a mob.
Since he emerged on the national stage, Barack Obama has not been the model of American republicanism. This was the case during the campaign, and it continues today. Juxtapose the simple respectability of the White House with these images taken from the Obama-Biden campaign website.
(http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/ObamaImagery.jpg)
This is why I was not surprised to see that video [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO3NBqT3LBc[/youtube]of schoolchildren being taught to praise President Obama like he is a deity. Ultimately, the campaign that President Obama waged hinted at such ideas. Is it a shock that a few, overly enthusiastic supporters thought it appropriate to proselytize in such a fashion?
That "Progress" picture is easily the most non-republican of the bunch. The image suggests that Obama's campaign is somehow a source of goodness for the people. From a republican standpoint, the imagery in the picture should be reversed, with the people being the source of goodness from which the candidate benefits.
I had hoped that the President would find his inner republican upon ascension to the office. I have been disappointed. His speeches are too full of references to himself. His omnipresence suggests a disregard for the people's tolerance levels, as well as for the idea that ours is a limited government and we are entitled to enjoy our lives without these constant executive impositions. Additionally, I share Michael Gerson's sentiments regarding his address to the U.N., which was typical of other speeches he has given to the international community:
Obama's rhetorical method in international contexts -- given supreme expression at the United Nations this week -- is a moral dialectic. The thesis: pre-Obama America is a nation of many flaws and failures. The antithesis: The world responds with understandable but misguided prejudice. The synthesis: Me. Me, at all costs; me, in spite of all terrors; me, however long and hard the road may be. How great a world we all should see, if only all were more like...me.
On several occasions, Obama attacked American conduct in simplistic caricatures a European diplomat might employ or applaud. He accused America of acing "unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others" -- a slander against every American ally who has made sacrifices in Iraq and Afghanistan. He argued that, "America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy" -- which is hardly a challenge for the Obama administration, which has yet to make a priority of promoting democracy or human rights anywhere in the world.
There are two problems with the attitude that Gerson has correctly identified. First, it's fair to criticize the actions of the previous administration to a point, but speeches like his U.N. address often move beyond that to suggest a broader failure, one that implicates the mass public. For instance, the best rejoinder he has to those who question the "character" of his country is: "look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months," which he suggests are "just a beginning." This rhetoric does not befit the leader of a democratic republic, especially one as great as the United States of America. The President should be willing and able to defend the "character" of his country beyond his own, inconsequential-to-date actions.
Second, the implication here is that his administration has sanctified our character. No administration can do that in a republic because no administration possesses the moral standing to offer such a blessing. He is the equal of the people in every measure. He temporarily holds an office whose magnificence is dependent upon the goodness of the people he represents. Yet this President implies a claim to such moral superiority - in the above quoted sentence, then later on when he says: "The test of our leadership will not be the degree to which we feed the fears and old hatreds of our people." No President should suggest that his people would fall prey to fear and hatred were it not for his leadership - even if he thought this were true. And he surely should not air such "dirty laundry" to an international audience that does not understand how this country actually functions. Instead, he should claim that he leads a great people who have the wisdom and equanimity not to fall prey to such fears, and it is his hope that he can emulate them.
Ultimately, this President stands a better chance of success if he embraces the republican character of the people who imbue his temporary position with its power and majesty. The fact is that we are a republican people who tend not to think that anybody is better than we. If we begin to intuit that the President thinks he is better, it could impede his efforts to rally us to his side.
It is also a fact that staunch republicans created the presidency, and the office reflects their preferences even after 220 years of intervening history. By explicit design, the President is not a leader-for-life. Instead, he must face the judgment of his peers just 48 months after he wins the office. The Constitution endorses the view of the supremacy of the people because it delineates a timeline for when the executive power leaves the President and returns to the people (originally, as represented by the state governments). As if that were not enough, the 22nd Amendment forbids a President from seeking a third term, meaning that the people of this democratic republic will be around long after the Obama Administration has come to an end.
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International Media Reactions to Obama Prize
Editorials and news stories from around the world on President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
FOXNews.com
Friday, October 09, 2009
UK:
Financial Times: What Did Obama Do to Win the Nobel Peace Prize?
I am a genuine admirer of Obama. And I am very pleased that George W Bush is no longer president. But I doubt that I am alone in wondering whether this award is slightly premature. It is hard to point to a single place where Obama's efforts have actually brought about peace - Gaza, Iran, Sri Lanka? The peace prize committee say that he is being rewarded for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy." But while it is OK to give school children prizes for "effort" - my kids get them all the time - I think international statesmen should probably be held to a higher standard.
London Times: Absurd Decision on Obama Makes a Mockery of the Nobel Peace Prize
Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America's first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.
Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.
The Guardian: Barack Obama's Nobel Prize: Why Now?
Indeed, the reasoning behind the awarding of the prize to previous American presidents has been easier to discern. Teddy Roosevelt opened the court of arbitration in the Hague and helped mediate a peace treaty between Russia and Japan; Woodrow Wilson was the founder of the League of Nations. Jimmy Carter won his prize for his "untiring efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts".
Which is what makes the awarding of this year's prize to a president who has been in office for a mere nine months an odd departure. It is as if the prize committee had been persuaded to give the award on the future delivery of promises.
The Guardian: Should Obama Accept the Nobel Peace Prize
If I were in the boiler room over there, I would begin by suggesting to the president that he demur altogether. That he tell the committee that while he's deeply touched, he does not in fact feel that he has yet done the work to earn this award. He should then recommend to the committee that it give the prize to Hu Jia, the Chinese dissident who was considered a frontrunner, or someone else whose life's cause could actually benefit from winning the prize (and the hefty cash award that comes with it, which Obama also doesn't need).
Telegraph: Obama's Won the Nobel Peace Prize -- WTF?!
Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace prize and I'm still reeling at the shock. Most of us are, I should think. Here are my theories as to how it might have come about:
1. Unlike in most of the rest of the world Obama Kool Aid (TM) remains Oslo's most popular beverage.
2. The Norwegian prize committee's sense of irony is growing ever more sophisticated, as it hinted when it gave the prize in 2002 to comedy ex-president Jimmy Carter, and hinted more strongly when it gave the prize in 2007 to climate-fear-promoting comedy failed-president Al Gore.
3. The other candidates on the shortlist were Robert Mugabe; Osama Bin Laden; Ahmed Jibril; and the late Pol Pot.
Australia:
Sydney Morning Herald: They Think He Can: Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
YES, surprisingly, he could. Barack Obama, is the shock choice for the Nobel Peace Prize, less than a year after his election as U.S. President.
Italy:
Il Giornale: A Preposterous Choice
Let me be clear: the discourse on Islam in Cairo was beautiful, tall, and it opens up new horizons, but did not lead to anything. And on the other matter, as pointed out repeatedly in this blog, Obama has been evasive or inconclusive, starting with Iran and Afghanistan. Nor can he boast the merits of rapprochement with North Korea, which was brought about by Bill Clinton. He kept only one real promise: the gradual withdrawal from Iraq. Enough to deserve the Nobel Prize?
Germany:
Der Spiegel: Obama's Nobel Prize Is More of a Burden Than an Honor
The Nobel Peace Prize has come too early for Barack Obama. The US president cannot point to any real diplomatic successes to date and there are few prospects of any to come.
Bild: "Wow!" Barack Obama Receives Nobel Peace Prize
It is the most important award in the world. And she goes to U.S. President Barack Obama (48) - he gets this year's Nobel Peace Prize. What a sensation!
Poland:
Krakow Post: "Too Fast" for Obama Nobel, Says Walesa
The former president, himself a Peace Prize winner in 1983, told the press in Warsaw "Who, Obama? So fast? Too fast - he hasn't had the time to do anything yet." This sentiment was reflected by current Prime Minister Donald Tusk: "Shock - absolutely. It's interesting, but shocking."
Canada:
The Globe and Mail: Obama's Premature Prize
The simple explanation for the Committee's decision to cite Mr. Obama at this stage of his presidency is that he is not George W. Bush.
The more generous interpretation is that the decision is hortatory; that is, it is designed to encourage the President to follow a path in U.S. foreign policy that is preferred by Committee members.
Toronto Star: Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Once you catch your breath - Obama has been on the world stage for less than a year “ the decision makes perfect sense. More than other Nobel categories, the Nobel for peace goes to a cause, and only ostensibly to an individual or group.
With Lester Pearson, the award was for diplomatic resolutions of conflict. With Martin Luther King, it was for non-violent pursuit of justice. Two relatively obscure Irish women were honoured for spearheading a non-violent resolution to the Troubles. Jimmy Carter, in 1992, was honoured for diplomatic outside interventions in regions of escalating or potential violence.
National Post: Shiny Prize Went to the Nice Man Who Gave the Best Speech
Obama is being given his award for mere words -- for striking fashionable poses in favour of multilateralism, for making a nice speech in Cairo, for offering "hope." Months after Americans learned to dismiss Obama's 2008 presidential campaign slogans as the meaningless bromides they were, Scandinavians are still drinking his Kool-aid.
China:
China Daily: Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize to Mixed Reviews
US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for giving the world "hope for a better future" and striving for nuclear disarmament, in a surprise award that drew criticism as well as praise.
Middle East:
Al-Jazeera: Doubts Voiced Over Obama Peace Win
A surprised world has greeted the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama, the US president, with a mixture of praise and skepticism.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban mocked the award, saying it was absurd to give it to Obama when he had ordered 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan this year.
"The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won the 'Nobel prize for escalating violence and killing civilians'," Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, told the Reuters news agency.
Israel:
Jerusalem Post: Peres, Barak Congratulate Barack Obama
President Shimon Peres on Friday sent a letter of congratulations to US President Barack Obama for winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for Peace, telling the American leader that under his leadership, peace became a "real and original agenda."
"Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided the entire humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a Lord in heaven and believers on earth," Peres, himself a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wrote to Obama.
Haaretz: Obama Administration Official: President "Humbled" by Award
While the decision won praise from statesmen like Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev, both former Nobel laureates, it was also attacked in some quarters as hasty and undeserved.
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and opposes a peace treaty with Israel, said the award was premature at best.
"Obama has a long way to go still and lots of work to do before he can deserve a reward," said Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri. "Obama only made promises and did not contribute any substance to world peace. And he has not done anything to ensure justice for the sake of Arab and Muslim causes."
Pakistan:
The International News: Iranians Call Obama Nobel Award a Mistake
Iranians joined criticism of the surprise award of the Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday.
One Tehran resident regarded the award as inappropriate, given U.S. policy in the Middle East.
"In my opinion, when a person cooperates with and supports the Israeli regime, he does not deserve to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. It is a mistake," said Massoud Savoji.
Another resident of the Iranian capital, Maryam Afrouz, praised the U.S. president as a man "who loves to have peace and calm prevail all over the whole world.
Dawn: Wartime President Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.
The committee said it attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
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http://spectator.org/blog/2009/10/09/just-how-surprised-and-deeply
Just How "Surprised and Deeply Humbled" Is Mr. Obama?
By Robert P. Kirchhoefer on 10.9.09 @ 1:30PM
According to the rules of the Nobel Prize nomination, a candidate receives an invitation for submission as a Nobel Peace candidate in September of the previous year, and must respond by the 1st of the subsequent February. That's right, in September of 2008, when nobody had even voted for the current President, Mr. Obama was under the illusion that he was qualified for a Nobel Peace Prize based on a few years as a community organizer, a little time in the Illinois legislature, an incomplete term in the United States' Senate, and a couple of books about his favorite topic -- himself.
By the February 1, 2009 deadline for submissions, before Mr. Obama had even stepped into office, he was no more surprised or humbled then than he is on this ignoble day.
This display is truly the antithesis of humility.
Now we know why he's been waiting so long to determine how to protect our troops in Afghanistan. Or is it too audacious to suggest such a thought?
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Who actually fills in the application? Must if be made with the knowledge of the nominee?
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Meet the People Who Were Passed Over for Obama
Sima Samar, women's rights activist in Afghanistan: "With dogged persistence and at great personal risk, she kept her schools and clinics open in Afghanistan even during the most repressive days of the Taliban regime, whose laws prohibited the education of girls past the age of eight. When the Taliban fell, Samar returned to Kabul and accepted the post of Minister for Women's Affairs."
Ingrid Betancourt: French-Colombian ex-hostage held for six years.
"Dr. Denis Mukwege: Doctor, founder and head of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo. He has dedicated his life to helping Congolese women and girls who are victims of gang rape and brutal sexual violence."
Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition: "These organizations are recognized for their consistently serious efforts to clean up cluster bombs, also known as land mines. Innocent civilians are regularly killed worldwide because the unseen bombs explode when stepped upon."
"Hu Jia, a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, who was sentenced last year to a three-and-a-half-year prison term for 'inciting subversion of state power.'"
"Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China's communist system. He now lives in the United States."
Posted by Mary Katharine Ham on October 9, 2009 10:05 AM | Permalink
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/10/meet_the_people_who_were_passe.asp
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Fox reported this evening that the name of whomever made the application is held secret for 50 years :roll:
Here's a few more worthy candidates:
General Petraeus
Greg Mortenson (opening schools, especially for girls, in Afg and Pak)
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Well the conservative radio shows have it right.
We have a President who travelled around the world apologizing for evilness of the US and wants to give away first class status
and so for that he wins a peace prize.
H who liberated Kuwait and stopped a butcher, W who liberated Iraqis from a butcher, Clinton who got rid of a killer Milosevitch,
Reagan who helped free hundreds of millions of Eastern Europeans of course are snubbed.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/10/10/the-peace-of-the-grave/
The Peace Of The Grave
posted at 11:50 am on October 10, 2009 by Doctor Zero
I’m not really surprised by the Nobel committee’s decision to grant the Peace Price to Barack Obama. I assumed they would give it to him at the earliest opportunity. I forgot the award had not been given for this year. It would have been slightly better for their credibility if the Nobel committee had waited until next year, but perhaps they didn’t want to take the chance that current events would make that impossible by the end of 2010. The kind of “peacemaking” favored by the Nobel committee is the kind that usually gets innocent people killed, and frequently ends in the kind of war that comes as an even bigger surprise than Obama’s award.
Obama had been in office for less than two weeks before the Nobel nominations were finalized, so his nomination was not based on anything he had done as President. The Nobel Price long ago became a joke, and an insult to the people who suffer under terror and tyranny around the world, but I don’t think the committee just threw Obama the award because he’s so wonderfully special, and not even because he won the election to succeed the only man who has truly deserved the award since 2001. Maybe Obama won the Nobel because of his courageous youthful defiance of murderous evil, when he was brutally tortured for months but refused to submit to totalitarian brutes? Oh, no, wait, that was the guy he defeated in the election.
The Associated Press says the Nobel committee “praised Obama’s creation of a new climate in international politics, and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage.” Of course, he hasn’t actually changed any of the hated Bush’s foreign policies, until this week, when he began talking about embracing the Taliban savages as partners in peace, who might just deserve to control a big chunk of Afghanistan after all. A while ago, I suggested you could ask the women of Afghanistan for a testimonial to Bush’s achievements in the realm of women’s rights, now that the upholstery has been removed from their faces. You’d better ask quickly. The new Nobel Peace Prize winner doesn’t seem all that disturbed by the thought of seeing them muffled again.
Obama was given the Nobel Prize, not because of anything he has done as President, but because of what the committee thinks he will do. His achievements are as non-existent now as they were on the day he was nominated. His agenda, however, is clear. He spelled it out in that insipid speech he gave to the United Nations a few weeks ago. Speaking as the leader of the indentured world, he made it clear that he plans to dim the lights on an America in decline, and humbly step aside as the post-American century begins. That’s why he won the Peace Prize. The Nobel committee has long seen the United States as the greatest threat to world peace, and the man who plans to bankrupt and disarm it has earned their admiration.
There are only two responses to tyranny: submission and resistance. Submission is easy. It can be negotiated. It is filled with nuance, and requires a large staff of diplomats and state functionaries to administer in style. Organizations like the United Nations make the first concessions to dictatorship by their very nature, as they allow thug states like Iran and Libya to take seats next to peaceful democracies. Obama’s dismal eulogy for America at the U.N. was followed by lunatic rants from the blood-splattered clowns who will be the new masters of the global future. Entertaining such creatures is easy, if you can just ignore the piles of faceless victims buried behind them. You may rest assured that the name Neda Agha-Soltan was not spoken during Obama’s Peace Prize deliberations, and it will not be spoken when the prize is placed into his hands.
Resistance is hard. It requires the courage to call evil by its name, and sacrifice universal adoration in the process. The Left likes to rail against intolerance. The defense of peace and freedom requires the absolute intolerance of evil. It requires leaders who don’t need a few days to decide whether to cancel the Fourth of July picnic invitations of a dictatorship that guns down peacefully protesting citizens. It relies upon a nation with the strength and resolve to project both humanitarian assistance and military power around the world.
Barack Obama’s America, mortgaged to the hilt and several trillion dollars beyond broke, with a stagnant economy trapped in government amber, will no longer be such a nation. The Nobel committee is pleased to reward him for that, because a muscular United States rocks a lot of boats. The “international community” has never forgiven George W. Bush for backing it into a corner over Iraq, and forcing the United Nations to enforce its own resolutions. “Resolution” is harmless and exciting when it’s a word spoken by important diplomats, and scribbled into strongly-worded letters. It’s scary when backed up by forceful leaders who take it seriously.
The cultural and political elite of Europe is delighted to give Obama an award for his bold work in turning America into the same kind of dilettante basket case they are. The people who sat helplessly and watched the slaughter in Bosnia may come to regret sacrificing their last shred of credibility to shore up a weak President, so he can finish the task of hobbling the only nation on Earth that can do a damned thing to prevent a slaughter. Europe thinks it can do business with the Islamic fascism creeping through its streets, but it will find any deals it makes with them have expiration dates, as surely as all of Barack Obama’s promises do. When they once again turn to America to save them, they had better hope we’ve had the wisdom to replace the confused and helpless man clutching his shiny Nobel Peace Prize with someone who can saddle up and ride to the rescue. Negotiation without principle is submission, and the only peace brought by submission is the peace of the grave.
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Saturday, October 10, 2009
More Stonewalling from the Most Transparent Administration in History [Andy McCarthy]
So much for the "unprecedented level of openness in Government" promised by our Nobel Laureate in Chief. While Attorney General Eric Holder continues stonewalling the Civil Rights Commission on the Justice Department's stunning dismissal of the civil rights case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, we now learn the State Department is stonewalling Congress on the legal reasoning behind the administration's support for Chavez-wannabe, Manuel Zelaya.
Senator Jim Demint writes in the Wall Street Journal about his factfinding visit to Honduras, where Zelaya — a thuggish would-be dictator who was trying to destroy the rule of law in his country — was ousted as president in a manner consistent with the Honduran constitution. The Obama administration — which couldn't roll over fast enough when Ahmadinejad had to steal the already-rigged Iranian "election" and the regime brutally jailed, tortured and killed dissenters — is playing hardball with Honduras (at least when it's not slapping Israel and the Dalai Lama around), demanding that the thug be restored to power. But, as Sen. Demint notes, "the only thorough examination of the facts to date—conducted by a senior analyst at the Law Library of Congress—confirms the legality and constitutionality of Mr. Zelaya's ouster. (It's on the Internet here .)"
So why is the administration bullying a poor, tiny, Western democracy? Demint continues:
In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya's ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens. When I asked Ambassador Llorens why the U.S. government insists on labeling what appears to the entire country to be the constitutional removal of Mr. Zelaya a "coup," he urged me to read the legal opinion drafted by the State Department's top lawyer, Harold Koh. As it happens, I have asked to see Mr. Koh's report before and since my trip, but all requests to publicly disclose it have been denied. [Emphasis added.]
As Ed Whelan and I pointed out when Koh was up for confirmation, the former Yale Law School dean is the nation's leading transnationalist. He has zero respect for national constitutions (including ours), preferring a post-sovereign order in which international law profs, transnational organizations, and free-lancing judges will be our overlords. What is happening with Honduras is exactly what anyone who familiarized himself with Koh's record would have predicted. Yet, he was confirmed by a 62-35 margin, with support from the usual GOP suspects: Lugar, Voinovich, Snowe, Collins, and Martinez.
Will these Republicans who helped foist Koh on us now join others demanding that President Transparency release Koh's legal opinion on Honduras? (I won't ask about the 19 Republican Senators who thought Holder would be a fabulous, non-political Attorney General ...)
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWNhMWYwZTZkNTc5MmU3MTFlODY1MjI3OTk2NGQwMzM=
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6310255/Barack-Obamas-Top-10-unfulfilled-pledges.html
Here is the top 10 list of most glaring examples of Mr Obama falling short in key areas he trumpeted during his campaign.
1.PROMISE BROKEN. Mr Obama said he would "not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days". But the "sunlight before signing" promise has already fallen by the wayside with Mr Obama signing three major bills without public scrutiny.
2.PROMISE BROKEN. Mr Obama repeatedly said he would negotiate health care reform in televised sessions broadcast on C-SPAN, the public service network. Instead, he his approach has been no different from his predecessors, holding talks behind closed doors at the White House and Congress.
3.PROMISE BROKEN. Mr Obama solemnly pledged that "no political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years". In practice, Mr Obama has granted several waivers to this rule, allowing lobbyists to serve in the top reaches of his administration.
4.PROMISE BROKEN. Mr Obama said he would end income tax for the elderly making less than $50,000 per year, thereby eliminating taxes for seven million of them. This has not been part of his economic stimulus bill, his first budget outline or any legislation proposed by the White House.
5.PROMISE STALLED. On taking office, Mr Obama announced with great fanfare that the Guantanamo Bay prison camp would be closed within a year of his inauguration on January 20th. Defence officials now concede that this self-imposed deadline will not be met.
6.PROMISE SIDELINED. Mr Obama promised to end the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that prohibits openly gay personnel from serving in the United States armed forces. Despite reiterating the pledge this weekend, Mr Obama shows no signs of taking concrete action on the issue.
7.PROMISE BROKEN. Mr Obama said that in 2009 and 2010 "existing businesses will receive a $3,000 refundable tax credit for each additional full-time employee hired". Democrats on Capitol Hill opposed this and Mr Obama has quietly abandoned the proposal, omitting it from his list of requirements for draft legislation.
8.PROMISE BROKEN. During the campaign, Mr Obama promised that "as President I will recognise the Armenian genocide" carried out by the Ottoman Empire after 1915. Once in office, he traveled to Turkey and made no mention of genocide. In a statement in April on the memorial day for the genocide he spoke of the "heavy weight" of history and the "terrible events " of the period but failed the use the g-word.
9.PROMISE SIDELINED. As a candidate, Mr Obama highlighted his support for abortion rights, stating he would back this up "by passing the Freedom of Choice Act as president". At a press conference marking his first 100 days, Mr Obama said this was "not my highest legislative priority" and that it was important to "focus on those areas that we can agree on".
10. PROMISE SIDELINED. Mr Obama promised to end warrantless wiretaps on the domestic communications of Americans and to "update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide greater oversight and accountability". So far, he has taken no action.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/top_twenty_things_obama_doesnt_1.html
Despite countless speeches and news conferences, did you ever hear President Obama express the following ideas?
1. Not everything is a federal issue; some things are for the states to decide.
2. I hear what you're saying and you have a good point.
3. One of the beautiful things about our constitution is the liberty given to individuals to pursue their dreams. There is great opportunity in our country to succeed.
4. In an effort to stimulate job growth and despite the objections from my party, I am working with Congress to reduce taxes for small businesses.
5. I am saddened by the cycle of poverty that exists in our major cities, and here is a way we can empower the next generation to break the cycle and fulfill their God-given potential....
6. The folks at the town hall meetings and those who came to Washington on 9/12 were exercising one of the greatest rights we have as Americans, freedom of speech.
7. Stop already with all forms of ‘cult of personality' behavior. I am a public servant, just like all those who have served before and all who will come after my term is complete. It's not about me, it's about the country.
8. I heard a great message Sunday morning at church.
9. History teaches us that evil exists in the world; for this reason the United States must remain strong, ready to defend itself and its allies.
10. I didn't realize a communist was part of my administration. It won't happen again.
11. The billions siphoned out of health care into lawyers' pockets never healed a single person.
12. No other country on earth offers its citizens the opportunity to pursue life, liberty, and happiness as does the United States of America.
13. The experts have looked at the proposed (fill-in-the-blank) program, and when it is extrapolated out beyond just the initial offering there is clear evidence it will cost too much money and will eventually fail.
14. I disagree 100% with the Cloward-Piven strategy of increasing the welfare rolls and overwhelming the financial system, and I am not affiliated in any way with the implementation of such an idea.
15. I don't know the answer to your question but I will give it some thought.
16. The goal of my presidency is not to implement a political ideology, but to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
17. Every person has value regardless of age, gender, color, physical characteristics, or any other factor.
18. Any healthcare bill I sign must include a provision to exclude the rationing of care, keep the door open for competition among insurers, and promote the opportunity for our young people to pursue an education in the medical fields to ensure future supply meets future demand.
19. It is important for legislators to remember that what helps someone in the short-term may actually hurt them in the long-term, and we must avoid this kind of scenario.
20. It has become clear to me after meeting with military experts that their recommendations should be implemented in our current situation; this is not an area in which politics can be allowed to interfere.
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The Obama Fiasco
Failure all around.
By Conrad Black
The whole Obama era to date has been wasted in a historic, amateurish botch of the health-care issue. This began as a crusade for social justice — to cover the uninsured, whose numbers were suitably exaggerated, as most of them are people changing jobs from one health-insuring employer to another, or foreigners resident in this country, legally or otherwise, or the indigent, who are eligible for Medicaid.
It wasn’t clear from this rationale, however, why Obama was also trying to take over the insurance of those already covered. He therefore pressed on to the need to take over health care to save money (by nationalizing it). The Congressional Budget Office blew that up, so the president moved crisply on to revenue-neutral health-care reform for its own sake. The corresponding promises of cost reductions proved to be shortchanging elderly Medicare recipients of hundreds of billions of dollars and chasing Washington’s oldest and most elusive will-o’-the-wisp, the last refuge of 220 years of desperate public officials, the ever-popular “waste and fraud.” And the “reforms” themselves are just aggravations of long-established mistaken practices.
The president’s reform plan has been seen by almost everyone to be bunk, and hackneyed bunk at that. His political capital is evaporating and, while it was disgraceful for a congressman to scream at him “You lie!” (which he was, about health care for illegal immigrants), this is more understandable and likely to be more habit-forming than an Iraqi journalist’s throwing shoes at his predecessor.
Instead of following the Roosevelt 1933 formula of squarely acknowledging a crisis and pledging an immediate plan of action with inspiriting calls for solidarity and national effort, he magnified the problems in order to try to create an appetite for a more radical turn to higher taxes and social benefits than the country wanted. Instead of sending precise bills to Congress and generating public support for them as Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan did, Obama left it to the Democratic congressional leadership, which festooned every bill with pendulous payoffs to key votes and interests.
The $787 billion stimulus plan was a monstrosity of patronage and logrolling. The money that was borrowed (to stimulate, in reality, Democratic reelection prospects) has been taken from purposes that would have stimulated the economy just as efficiently. Larry Summers could not have believed his promises of instant results that would confine unemployment to 8 percent. Two-thirds of the stimulus is for dispersal closer to elections, and meanwhile unemployment is knocking at the door of 10 percent. The whole misconceived idea should be scrapped and replaced with tax cuts, but it won’t be.
The cap-and-trade bill is so loaded with rebates and exemptions that the administration’s own spokesmen acknowledge that while it would sharply raise heating and air-conditioning costs in tens of millions of American homes, it would neither raise federal-government revenues nor reduce carbon emissions. It was based on the unproved Al Gore science-fiction vision of the environment, and it won’t pass.
It looks like a patchy health-care measure almost certainly adding substantially to the deficit may limp through via the politically hazardous reconciliation process. The president’s proposed tax increases, which have been the subject of an indecent amount of dissembling for over a year, will not pass either (and would be insane anyway).
And the forecast trillion-dollar annual deficits for a decade are allowed to fester in the thoughts of the financial world, unaddressed, pushing gold over $1,000 per ounce and dragging the dollar inexorably downward. This administration shows no will to pay down the debt accumulated by 15 years of borrowing trillions of dollars from China and Japan to buy trillions of dollars of non-essential goods from China and Japan, while outsourcing millions of jobs to China and Japan to produce these imports and admitting millions of unauthorized entrants who could have filled the vacated American mills and factories whose production was outsourced. Instead, it will just devalue the currency in which the debt is denominated and end America’s long reign as the world’s wealthiest per capita large country, an honor it already shares with six other advanced nations.
The political class of both parties legislated and ordered the issuance of trillions of dollars of worthless real-estate debt, eliminated savings, penalized those in rented accommodation, and promoted wild residential-real-estate speculation. It has now locked arms to over-empower the failed regulators who sat, mute as suet puddings, while this crisis developed, to save the Franks, Waxmans, Dodds, Rubins, and Greenspans from their just deserts. They have agreed to blame everything on private-sector greed: Attorney General Eric Holder will prosecute avaricious businessmen, as he will Republican-appointed intelligence officials. The criminalization of policy differences, a corrosive and self-destructive process that began with the Watergate crucifixion of one of the country’s most effective presidents, and continued through the Iran-Contra nonsense and the absurd effort to remove President Clinton for undignified but hardly unprecedented peccadilloes, has resumed. It will beget nothing good or just, and will be revisited on its perpetrators.
The administration that was elected on the promise of change has been neutered by the trial lawyers, who donated $47 million to the Democrats last year and have prevented the measures necessary to cut health-care costs. It has been suborned by the dead hand of organized labor, which has been rewarded for decades of overpayment and shoddy work habits in automobile-making with entrenchment of the UAW’s unfeasible health-care benefits, continued protectionism, and outright ownership of most of what is left of the U.S. auto industry.
Nothing is being done to defuse the Social Security or other benefit time bombs, or to reform a corrupt political system in which most of the legislators are bound hand and foot to different special interests, and are locked almost permanently into gerrymandered districts. Nothing is forecast to turn America back from a consumption to a production economy, apart from the president’s own fable about huge numbers of people building windmills: a new, enhanced version of quixotry.
Nothing is being done to fix a failed education system in which teachers’ unions fight tooth and nail against any connection between pay and performance and the dropout rate is 42 percent, or to reform a prosecution service that wins over 90 percent of its cases, enjoys a procedural stacked deck, terrorizes everyone it looks at, and has gutted the individual-liberties and due-process sections of the Bill of Rights with the plea-bargain system’s wholesale exchange of perjury for immunity or reduced charges. Nothing has been suggested for improving the conduct of the failed drug war, which has reduced parts of Mexico to civil war without reducing access to unprescribed drugs in the U.S.; nor has the administration moved to reduce sentences for the more than 40 percent of Americans who at some point experiment with marijuana (the greatest cash crop in the Golden, bankrupt State of California).
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama unfortunately confirms the world’s love for weak or at least misguidedly diffident American leaders, in the mould of previous Nobel laureates Jimmy Carter and Al Gore. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Sr. all made immense contributions to peace and probably earned that prize but did not receive it. This president has engaged in wholesale, equal-opportunity apologies for much past U.S. foreign- and military-policy success. He has appeased almost all of the world’s most odious and hostile regimes, including those of Putin, Ahmadinejad, Chávez, and the Myanmar colonels. It’s possible that the emoting about nuclear disarmament will assist the efforts to discourage Iran and North Korea from developing a nuclear-arms capability, and that preemptive concessions to Russia will promote sanctions that, when they don’t succeed (as they never do), will help create a consensus for decisive action against Iran — but it is unlikely. The “War of Necessity” in Afghanistan has become a waffle. Joe Biden, who wanted to divide Iraq into three countries and should be constitutionally barred from publicly discussing foreign policy, wants to fight the cave-dwelling terrorists of Waziristan from off-shore. The president has mercilessly bullied Honduras to violate its own constitution and subvert its own fragile democracy, and has reneged on European missile defense and on the Bush-Sharon agreement on West Bank settlements (the implementation of which caused Sharon to buck fierce opposition and found a new political party). His foreign policy is a high-risk pursuit of appeasement that has few successful precedents, at a time when the U.S. is not strong in the world and has its economic and strategic credibility to rebuild. The first U.S. president to win a Nobel Peace Prize in office, Theodore Roosevelt, knew to carry a big stick while speaking softly.
The Obama Kool-Aid drinkers — led, by right and tradition, by the political scientists of Hollywood — have, like Demi Moore, pledged to “fight for the president” to the bitter end (which is nigh). The less energetic, such as the inevitable Jimmy Carter, have charged the president’s critics with racism, a tawdry and almost always false claim. Worthy commentators like Tom Friedman have decried the coarsening of the American public debate, doubtless sincerely. More to the point, Peggy Noonan, whose kindly, sentimental Irish nature was briefly pixilated by Obamamania, now sees the president as “cool” (i.e., cold), “faux eloquent,” and even a Narcissus.
Barack Obama is obviously a very intelligent man, and should be a popular and successful president. But his mandate for profound reform and a steam-cleaning of the Augean Stable of Washington is being squandered. So far the change is more of the same, only worse. This president has achieved less in his first nine months than any incoming president since Warren Harding. It is not too late, but it looks now like the people will vote again for change, with increasing desperation, next year and in 2012. If the country does not get leadership equal to the scale of its problems, as it did in 1860 and 1932, the decline of America will move from a slope to a fall. This emperor still has no clothes, and it is not racism to notice it.
— Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full. He can be reached at cbletters@gmail.com.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWI2NDc0OGI4ZmE0ODk1ZGRlNmI3ODczMzIwMWY2MjY=
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By JAMES TARANTO
"The United States cannot wait for problems surrounding the legitimacy of the Afghan government to be resolved before making a decision on troops, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said," Reuters reports from aboard a U.S. military aircraft:
Gates did not say when he expected U.S. President Barack Obama to decide on whether to increase troops, a decision complicated by rising casualties and fading public support for the stalled, eight-year-old war.
But he pointed out that further high-level deliberations would need to wait for the return of cabinet members from foreign travels through part of next week.
"It's just a matter now of getting the time with the president when we can sort through these options and then tee them up for him to make a decision," Gates said.
But Agence France-Presse reports the president hasn't yet chosen whether to choose not to decide:
President Barack Obama has not yet determined whether he will make a decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan before the November 7 election runoff, a US official said Tuesday.
"The UN, NATO, the US stand ready to assist the Afghans in conducting the second round," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
"Whether or not the president makes a decision before that I don't think has been determined.
"I have continued to say a decision will be made in the coming weeks as the president goes through an examination of our policy," he added.
It really bolsters your confidence in the president's ability to achieve victory in what he used to call a war of necessity, doesn't it?
Podcast
James Taranto on Obama's Afghan dither.
.But we suppose it's easy to sit on the sidelines and snark. Barack Obama is president of the United States, and he is juggling all kinds of urgent responsibilities. Such as this one, reported by the New York Times:
Mr. Obama will fly to New York on Tuesday for a lavish Democratic Party fund-raising dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel for about 200 big donors. Each donor is paying the legal maximum of $30,400 and is allowed to take a date.
And hey, if you don't like it, grab a damn mop! As Obama said just last week at . . . uh, another lavish Democratic Party fund-raiser.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports from Washington that "frustrations and anxiety are on the rise within the military" as the president dithers over Afghanistan:
A retired general who served in Iraq said that the military had listened, "perhaps naïvely," to Mr. Obama's campaign promises that the Afghan war was critical. "What's changed, and are we having the rug pulled out from under us?" he asked. Like many of those interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals from the military's civilian leadership and the White House.
Shouldn't it be the enemy that fears reprisals?
During the presidential campaign, Obama's opponents mocked him for frequently voting "present" on difficult questions that came before the Illinois Senate. This is even worse. The commander in chief is absent without leave.
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Afghanistan - Obama did not use the word 'victory' to describe the criteria for his delayed and awaited decision on troop levels.
His brief background in the Illinois legislature and even more brief background as one of 100 senators did not put him in a position to face small executive decisions before being faced with serious Commander in Chief choices. Nor did his experience as community organizer or ACORN defense council help.
Obama logged 143 days of experience in the Senate before announcing his run for President. That's how many days the Senate was actually in session and working.
Chief executive of his campaign was his executive experience before being sworn into office.
Gibbs:"... a decision will be made in the coming weeks as the president goes through an examination of our policy"
Perhaps that is the amount of time the focus groups require to do their work. We know Obama isn't pulling all-nighters with Gen. McChrystal. Maybe he will also soon come to a decision on the vote he missed to condemn the General Betray Us ad:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/09/clinton-dodd-vo.html
"In the latest round of maneuvers over last week's MoveOn.org ad attacking Gen. David Petraeus, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today voted against a Senate resolution that condemned the ad and supported Petraeus. Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden did not vote on the measure."
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"There is also the heavy whiff of politics in the (Obama) administration's war deliberations. The president's senior political adviser, David Axelrod, apparently attends war cabinet meetings—something I did not do as President Bush's senior political adviser." - Karl Rove
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704597704574487241866434378.html
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One problem with these wars is we engage half assed. We don't annihilate the enemy because we are too afraid of harming "innocents". And of course we don't know who are the innocents, who are our enemy, it sounds like these can change from day to day depending on who pays who off, politics, who we piss off or please.
So there is no end in sight.
So because we are a gentle nation and hold back we keep getting screwed. Ironically no one around the owrld loves us any more for the efforts and the sacrifice of our own troops and money to avoid hurting innocents.
There seems to me no good answer to this especially if we really don't engage our enemy with full force.
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Pres. George W. Bush had Katrina. It really had very little to do with him, but he had been weakened enough before it happened to be vulnerable for the blame - in all the confusion.
Bush senior had the breaking of his 'no new taxes' pledge moment. His opponents pressured and pressured and pressured him to raise taxes. He did, and they turned on him and ripped his credibility away forever. They actually wanted far more new taxes but this was his very famous promise he was discarding. For Carter it was telling the American people our best days were behind us. Reagan was well into his second term but I think Iran-Contra took quite a toll on the end of his Presidency.
Cheney shot the attorney and never made it back to center stage. Of course it had more to do with the Iraq war going badly.
Dukakis - it was the driving the tank photo. Gary Hart - it was called 'monkey business'. Hillary didn't really have the moment - there was just a general feeling that people wanted anyone but Hillary. For Edwards, he fizzled politically before his own bombshell hit. Some have that specific moment, some don't.
Back to Obama. Does anyone else sense the weakening of his mystique, the armor falling, that the perfect campaign in a perfect storm has not turned into perfect leadership or perfect governance? That people are starting to see that and he is becoming more and more vulnerable to being defined and boxed in by his next big screw up? And it may not even have to be a big one.
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The latest curve ball coming by is the "Opt Out" clause. Liberals want 'the public option' in the bill, moderates want it out, conservatives - well, don't really matter. So they take the public option out to get it through committee, lose some support and put it back in, lose some other key votes and take it back out, and then suddenly they think of something almost too clever to be true: Put it in and give states the ability to "opt out".
What could be better? Harry Reid can tell Nevada there is no public option but tell his leftmost colleagues there still is. Nancy Pelosi can tell the San Francisco electorate their sex change operations are covered. Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad from North Dakota can tell their ranchers no mandate. Opt Out might even muddy the constitutional question because the individual mandate would then come from the state - well sort of.
It all seems a little too slick. Do we also get to opt out of paying for it? Or just opt out of receiving our share of each new trillion spent? The federal tax rate would then be lower in Nebraska than Massachusetts? If so, what else is negotiable? What else involves federal taxing and spending not authorized by the constitution can states opt out of and not pay for? I could learn to like this approach. Slick and clever but not fully thought out by the coercive government people. Maybe this is one of President Obama's deep thoughts (even if it came from congressional staffers) that could backfire on him quite badly. If this played out to its logical conclusion, wouldn't the two systems and red and blue state program mixes look a lot like the split we had in the country coming into the civil war? Just curious.
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Here in SoCal, a major Dem bastion, I am getting more and more thumbs up to my "Nobama: Keep the change" t-shirt. I had two cops high five me.
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If the average cost to the taxpayer for the credit was 24k and the average cost of the car was 24k, one would think they could have just given away the cars they want us to drive.
Of course they couldn't. It would have cost the government over 96k to give away 24k. It isn't as easy as it looks. These are professionals; don't even think of trying it at home.
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http://reason.com/archives/2009/11/04/obamas-hidden-fees
Reason Magazine
Obama’s Hidden Fees
When the president does it, it’s not a tax.
Jacob Sullum | November 4, 2009
President Obama’s promise to raise taxes only on the wealthy was easy to make and easy to break. He broke it barely two weeks after taking office, and he will break it again if Congress passes the health care legislation he wants. But Obama has come up with a strategy to avoid the fate of George H.W. Bush: Although he will raise your taxes, he will never admit he is raising your taxes.
Campaigning in Dover, New Hampshire, in September 2008, Obama declared: “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
Five months later, Obama signed a bill that more than doubled the federal cigarette tax, which falls especially heavily on the poor. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs argued that it didn’t really count, because “people make a decision to smoke.” Similarly, White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass says financial penalties for failing to obtain medical coverage are not taxes because “a fee would only be imposed on those few who could afford to purchase insurance but refuse to do so.”
Yet the fact that you can avoid a tax by changing your behavior does not mean it isn’t a tax. You don’t pay gasoline taxes if you don’t drive, you don’t pay property taxes if you don’t own real estate, and you don’t pay income taxes if you don’t earn income. In this case, people are subject to the “fee” simply by virtue of living in the United States and choosing not to buy something the government thinks they should.
Douglass likens the individual health insurance mandate to state requirements that drivers have liability insurance and that parents educate their children. But people who violate such laws are subject to criminal penalties. Neither the House nor the Senate health care bill would establish criminal penalties for refusing to buy health insurance, presumably because due process requirements would make it hard to impose them.
Instead the bills would establish a “tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage” and an “individual responsibility excise tax,” respectively. “If you put something in the Internal Revenue Code and you tell the IRS to collect it,” a tax expert told the Associated Press in September, “I think that’s a tax.”
The president disagrees. “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” he insisted during a squirm-inducing September 20 exchange with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “You can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase.” Stephanopoulos responded by literally getting out the dictionary to demonstrate that “a charge…imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes” is commonly considered a tax.
If Obama can deny that a charge is a tax even when it’s collected by the IRS and identified as a “tax” in the legislation creating it, he surely sees nothing tax-like in the money people are required to spend if they want to avoid that charge. Yet forcing people to buy insurance they do not want so their premiums can subsidize other people’s health care looks a lot like a tax-funded welfare program, even if the money does not flow through the public treasury.
Furthermore, when businesses buy government-required health insurance or pay a penalty for failing to do so, that money comes at the expense of employee compensation. “An employer mandate should therefore be labeled an employee mandate,” says the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon.
“What we are saying,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) explained last week, “is everybody will contribute…to making sure that health care options are available to all of our citizens.” So we're talking about a legally required contribution that will be used to provide a government-arranged benefit. If only there were a shorter way of expressing that concept.
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and a nationally syndicated columnist.
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Too soon to say for sure but I hope Charles is right in this call:
***By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 6, 2009
Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.
This Story
The myth of '08, demolished
Lessons from Virginia for the GOP
Trouble ahead for Democrats
In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics -- most prominently, rising minorities and the young -- would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed "The Death of Conservatism," while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.
This was all ridiculous from the beginning. The '08 election was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.
Exactly a year later comes the empirical validation of that skepticism. Virginia -- presumed harbinger of the new realignment, having gone Democratic in '08 for the first time in 44 years -- went red again. With a vengeance. Barack Obama had carried it by six points. The Republican gubernatorial candidate won by 17 -- a 23-point swing. New Jersey went from plus-15 Democratic in 2008 to minus-four in 2009. A 19-point swing.
What happened? The vaunted Obama realignment vanished. In 2009 in Virginia, the black vote was down by 20 percent; the under-30 vote by 50 percent. And as for independents, the ultimate prize of any realignment, they bolted. In both Virginia and New Jersey they'd gone narrowly for Obama in '08. This year they went Republican by a staggering 33 points in Virginia and by an equally shocking 30 points in New Jersey.
White House apologists will say the Virginia Democrat was weak. If the difference between Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds was so great, how come when the same two men ran against each other statewide for attorney general four years ago the race was a virtual dead heat? Which made the '09 McDonnell-Deeds rematch the closest you get in politics to a laboratory experiment for measuring the change in external conditions. Run them against each other again when it's Obamaism in action and see what happens. What happened was a Republican landslide.
The Obama coattails of 2008 are gone. The expansion of the electorate, the excitement of the young, came in uniquely propitious Democratic circumstances and amid unparalleled enthusiasm for electing the first African American president.
November '08 was one shot, one time, never to be replicated. Nor was November '09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm -- and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.
The irony of 2009 is that the anti-Democratic tide overshot the norm -- deeply blue New Jersey, for example, elected a Republican governor for the first time in 12 years -- because Democrats so thoroughly misread 2008 and the mandate they assumed it bestowed. Obama saw himself as anointed by a watershed victory to remake American life. Not letting the cup pass from his lips, he declared to Congress only five weeks after his swearing-in his "New Foundation" for America -- from remaking the one-sixth of the American economy that is health care to massive government regulation of the economic lifeblood that is energy.
Moreover, the same conventional wisdom that proclaimed the dawning of a new age last November dismissed the inevitable popular reaction to Obama's hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt -- the tea party demonstrators, the town hall protesters -- as a raging rabble of resentful reactionaries, AstroTurf-phony and Fox News-deranged.
Some rump. Just last month Gallup found that conservatives outnumber liberals by 2 to 1 (40 percent to 20 percent) and even outnumber moderates (at 36 percent). So on Tuesday, the "rump" rebelled. It's the natural reaction of a center-right country to a governing party seeking to rush through a left-wing agenda using temporary majorities created by the one-shot election of 2008. The misreading of that election -- and of the mandate it allegedly bestowed -- is the fundamental cause of the Democratic debacle of 2009.****
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"black vote was down by 20 percent; the under-30 vote by 50 percent"
Converting the vote of independents is impressive, but the no-show on an off-year of the don't-know/don't-care crowd only presents an opportunity, not a victory or even a reliable indicator IMO.
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Lets continue this in the Politics thread.
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Tina Brown at The Daily Beast, Dec. 3:
It's a strange paradox for a great wordsmith, but whenever Obama makes an important policy speech these days he leaves everyone totally confused. His first health-care press conference back in July triggered a season of raucous political Rorschach and left his hopeful followers utterly baffled about what they were being asked to support.
Now White House envoys are being dispatched all over the globe to explain what the president really meant about the date when troops will or won't be pulled out of Afghanistan. . . .
Does Obama create confusion on purpose? Is this his "process" based on his confession that he's a screen onto which people project things? Is it a strategy so that whatever bill trickles out of Congress or however many soldiers linger in Afghanistan, he can claim that the outcome is what he meant it all along? . . .
Or is it that there is so much subtext to every part of this message that the simple heads of the electorate are just not pointy enough to comprehend it?
I have come to the conclusion that the real reason this gifted communicator has become so bad at communicating is that he doesn't really believe a word that he is saying. He couldn't convey that health-care reform would be somehow cost-free because he knows it won't be. And he can't adequately convey either the imperatives or the military strategy of the war in Afghanistan because he doesn't really believe in it either.
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I'm sure it's just me but watching a few promos for the Oprah at the White House Sunday special - it looks a little creepy to me. I know this is a payback for Oprah's campaign endorsement along with Obama's understanding of the endless campaign and his need to be in the spotlight, but this level of lightness seems a little weird in the context of ... 2 wars, a surge starting, a surge ending, OBL still frolicking at Tora Bora, Copenhagen, Oslo, the EPA ruling, health care takeover, proposed new record energy taxation, record deficits and piling debt, income and estate tax cut expirations, collapsing auto makers, foreclosure increases, a jobless double-dip recession, 'the earth has a fever' and if we don't act within 10 days it will be unreversible, not to mention a religious holiday and still no new reverend. In context, the Oprah special looks to be reminiscent of when MTV asked Clinton about boxers or briefs.
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Gitmo by the Lake
By the Editors
The Obama administration’s plan to move terrorist detainees from the security of Guantanamo Bay to a little-used state prison in Illinois is being hailed by supportive Democrats as a boon for local economic development. Even if the development were truly a boon — and it’s more a boondoggle — that would not come close to justifying it. National security is not a shovel-ready jobs program. It is the first duty of government, and it would be senselessly imperiled by transferring trained jihadists into the United States.
Like much unpopular or embarrassing news, the transfer plan leaked late on a Friday. It appeared in the form of presidential memorandum drafted by Eric Holder’s Justice Department. Once approved by the president, the memo would direct Holder to “acquire” (as in purchase) the Thomson Correctional Center, about 150 miles west of Chicago. Defense Secretary Robert Gates would then, “as expeditiously as possible,” relocate the remaining 200-plus Gitmo detainees to the TCC.
The prison is a $145 million white elephant. When Illinois was comparatively flush with capital, it built the 1,600-bed penitentiary to stimulate the depressed Mississippi Valley town. But the state is now a basket case. Budgetary woes have squeezed law-enforcement funding, and local politicians — including former state senator Barack Obama — have insisted that alternatives to incarceration be found, even for violent offenders; as a consequence less than 10 percent of the TCC’s space is currently being used. Naturally, Obama’s home-state Democrats are thrilled by the prospect of having Uncle Sam take the TCC off the state’s hands. Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Pat Quinn issued a statement rapt at the prospect of “generating up to 3,800 jobs” and “injecting more than $1 billion into the regional economy.”
This exorbitant “injection” of funds would be necessary because TCC is not ready to accommodate international jihadists, who are prone to riot, savagely attack their custodians, attempt escape, and plot terror attacks while in U.S. prisons. The jail would have to be hardened before it could become the new Gitmo. So even if financial considerations were the first-order priority here — and they should not be — the administration’s plan would be inexcusably wasteful. Gitmo has already been hardened, at a cost of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars. It is now a state-of-the-art, Geneva Conventions-compliant detention center. It makes no sense to sink those expenditures down a black hole, spending another fortune on a project that won’t generate sustainable growth. Illinois found that out when it built TCC in the first place.
But the money isn’t the worst of it. Moving the detainees into the United States would greatly increase the likelihood that federal judges will order some of them released here.
Though the nation’s attention has been focused on the administration’s absurd decision to grant the 9/11 plotters a trial in the civilian justice system, the fact is that many, if not most, of the remaining Gitmo detainees will not face a trial of any kind. They are being held under the laws of war, which permit the detention of enemy operatives until the conclusion of hostilities. The threat they pose is terrible, but it is known to us mostly through foreign intelligence that may not be used in trial proceedings.
This was not a problem in America’s prior wars. Handling enemy prisoners was properly considered a military matter. In this war, activist judges urged on by left-wing lawyers have taken on an oversight role: the power, codified by Congress in the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, to review the legitimacy of military detention. Many civilian judges are fundamentally hostile to the concept of indefinite detention under wartime protocols that do not require proof of a crime. With no political accountability to the voters whose lives are at stake, and no guidance from Congress regarding the rules for these detention proceedings, judges have made abominable rulings, vacating the combatant designations of detainees who were trained in terror camps and clearly connected to the jihadist network.
So far, these rulings have not resulted in detainees’ being released in the United States. But that is only because, at present, the detainees are physically kept outside of the country. In the 2005 Real ID Act, Congress barred aliens who either have been members of terrorist organizations or have received paramilitary training in terrorist camps from entering our nation. Though one judge has tried to order detainees released here regardless, his order was reversed on appeal. Other judges have been hesitant to hold that their power to review detention rulings implies a power to order detainees released, much less released in the United States, in defiance of statutory proscription.
Once the terrorists are already in the country, though, that hesitancy will vanish. Anyone who doubts that has not been watching the courts’ pro-terrorist decisions over the last eight years, to say nothing of such rulings as the 9th Circuit’s recent directive that California release over 40,000 convicted inmates in order to relieve the supposed overcrowding in the state’s prisons. Indeed, the Obama administration has already floated the idea of releasing Gitmo detainees in the U.S. — and providing public welfare payments to support them — as an example for other countries to follow. And Jennifer Daskal, now advising Holder on detainee issues, spent years as a Human Rights Watch activist campaigning for Gitmo to be shuttered, and detainees released in the United States, if other countries are unwilling to take them. Human Rights Watch also maintains that U.S. “supermax” prisons, where terrorists convicted in civilian courts are incarcerated, are inhumane.
Even if they are not released, the presence of terrorists in American prisons creates enormous security problems. In 2000, while purportedly preparing for his trial on charges of bombing U.S. embassies in Africa, an al-Qaeda inmate maimed a prison guard in an attempt to break himself and his confederates out of jail. Sayyid Nosair helped plot the 1993 World Trade Center bombing from Attica prison in New York, even as he recruited new terrorists and conspired to escape. Despite maximum-security confinement conditions, other WTC bombers were permitted to communicate by mail with overseas terror cells. And from the federal prison where he is serving a life sentence for terrorism, the notorious “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, issued the fatwa approving the 9/11 attacks. With the help of his now-convicted lawyer, he continued guiding his Egyptian terrorist organization.
Despite this record, the Obama administration says it can securely detain additional hundreds of terrorists. This claim would be hard to swallow even if Holder’s Justice Department were not now caving in to jihadists’ complaints that confinement conditions in civilian prisons are too onerous. DOJ has just moved the “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, into the general prison population after he contended that heightened security measures designed to hinder terrorists violated the First Amendment by denying his alleged right to communal prayer with other jihadists.
The detainees should be kept at Gitmo. Situated on a U.S. naval base outside the country, it optimizes security and minimizes the threat imprisoned terrorists pose to the public. It is a fastidiously humane facility. With the trumped-up critiques of Gitmo muted by the embarrassing reluctance of its severest European critics to accept custody of the prisoners, none but the most inflexible leftists are bothering about its continued operation. Gitmo is money well spent. The TCC would be money poorly spent — and a dangerous blunder.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjhlYjVhZjBjOTU5NTMzN2ZlZTc2ZTMxOGQyYzRmNmE=
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I am not quite clear what Newt thought was so wonderful about this speech. Except that some of the thoughts are less delusionary than usual for the ONE. Any idealistic college history major could easily have written this.
It does in fact, IMO, signal that the ONE is painfully aware of his falling poll numbers and is thus shifting his projection of America as a dirty no good nation out for itself to one that is the leader of peace in the world.
Fortunately for Republicans this guy is far more of an idealogue than Clinton and appears not willing to completely change his tune to whatever the polls tell him to do and thus stay popular despite being one of the world's biggest con artists. Clinton was able to with completely straight face say one day the complete opposite of what he said one day earlier and the media seemed to think that was so adorable. Obama is just as capable as Clinton at saying total fabrications and falsehoods with a straight face but he appears not willing to cave to polls as Clinton did. Unfortunately, Clinton proved that following the messages in the polls will keep a President popular even if not necessarily good for the nation.
-Text of Obama's speech after winning Nobel Prize
Assotiated Press, Friday October 9, 2009, Washington
Text of President Barack Obama's remarks at the White House Friday on winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, as provided by the White House:
"Good morning.
Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning. After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, "Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday!" And then Sasha added, "Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up." So it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective.
I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee. Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.
To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.
But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build -- a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.
These challenges can't be met by any one leader or any one nation. And that's why my administration has worked to establish a new era of engagement in which all nations must take responsibility for the world we seek. We cannot tolerate a world in which nuclear weapons spread to more nations and in which the terror of a nuclear holocaust endangers more people. And that's why we've begun to take concrete steps to pursue a world without nuclear weapons, because all nations have the right to pursue peaceful nuclear power, but all nations have the responsibility to demonstrate their peaceful intentions.
We cannot accept the growing threat posed by climate change, which could forever damage the world that we pass on to our children -- sowing conflict and famine; destroying coastlines and emptying cities. And that's why all nations must now accept their share of responsibility for transforming the way that we use energy.
We can't allow the differences between peoples to define the way that we see one another, and that's why we must pursue a new beginning among people of different faiths and races and religions; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.
And we must all do our part to resolve those conflicts that have caused so much pain and hardship over so many years, and that effort must include an unwavering commitment that finally realizes that the rights of all Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security in nations of their own.
We can't accept a world in which more people are denied opportunity and dignity that all people yearn for -- the ability to get an education and make a decent living; the security that you won't have to live in fear of disease or violence without hope for the future.
And even as we strive to seek a world in which conflicts are resolved peacefully and prosperity is widely shared, we have to confront the world as we know it today. I am the commander in chief of a country that's responsible for ending a war and working in another theater to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people and our allies.
I'm also aware that we are dealing with the impact of a global economic crisis that has left millions of Americans looking for work. These are concerns that I confront every day on behalf of the American people.
Some of the work confronting us will not be completed during my presidency. Some, like the elimination of nuclear weapons, may not be completed in my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone. This award is not simply about the efforts of my administration -- it's about the courageous efforts of people around the world.
And that's why this award must be shared with everyone who strives for justice and dignity -- for the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard even in the face of beatings and bullets; for the leader imprisoned in her own home because she refuses to abandon her commitment to democracy; for the soldier who sacrificed through tour after tour of duty on behalf of someone half a world away; and for all those men and women across the world who sacrifice their safety and their freedom and sometimes their lives for the cause of peace.
That has always been the cause of America. That's why the world has always looked to America. And that's why I believe America will continue to lead.
Thank you very much."
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By KARL ROVE
Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year: 49% approve and 46% disapprove of his job performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll.
There are many factors that explain it, including weakness abroad, an unprecedented spending binge at home, and making a perfectly awful health-care plan his signature domestic initiative. But something else is happening.
Mr. Obama has not governed as the centrist, deficit-fighting, bipartisan consensus builder he promised to be. And his promise to embody a new kind of politics—free of finger-pointing, pettiness and spin—was a mirage. He has cheapened his office with needless attacks on his predecessor.
Consider Mr. Obama's comment in his interview this past Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes" that the Bush administration made a mistake in speaking in "a triumphant sense about war."
This was a slap at every president who rallied the nation in dark moments, including Franklin D. Roosevelt ("With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph"); Woodrow Wilson ("Right is more precious than peace and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts"); and John F. Kennedy ("Any hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committed . . . will be met by whatever action is needed").
This kind of attack gives Mr. Obama's words a slippery quality. For example, he voted for the bank rescue plan in September 2008 and praised it during the campaign. Yet on Dec. 8 at the Brookings Institution, Mr. Obama called it "flawed" and blamed "the last administration" for launching it "hastily."
Really? Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner designed it. If it was "flawed," why did Mr. Obama later nominate Mr. Bernanke to a second term as Fed chairman and make Mr. Geithner his Treasury secretary?
Mr. Obama also claimed at Brookings that he prevented "a second Great Depression" by confronting the financial crisis "largely without the help" of Republicans. Yet his own Treasury secretary suggests otherwise. In a Dec. 9 letter, Mr. Geithner admitted that since taking office, the Obama administration had "committed about $7 billion to banks, much of which went to small institutions." That compares to $240 billion the Bush administration lent banks. Does Mr. Obama really believe his additional $7 billion forestalled "the potential collapse of our financial system"?
About Karl Rove
Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy-making process.
Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.
Karl writes a weekly op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions).
Email the author atKarl@Rove.comor visit him on the web atRove.com. Or, you can send a Tweet to @karlrove.
Mr. Obama continued distorting the record in his "60 Minutes" interview Sunday when he blamed bankers for the financial crisis. They "caused the problem," he insisted before complaining, "I haven't seen a lot of shame on their part" and pledging to put "a regulatory system in place that prevents them from putting us in this kind of pickle again."
But as a freshman senator, Mr. Obama supported a threatened 2005 filibuster of a bill regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He doesn't show "a lot of shame" that he and other Fannie and Freddie defenders blocked "a regulatory system" that might have kept America from getting in such a bad pickle in the first place.
The president's rhetorical tricks don't end there. Mr. Obama also claimed his $787 billion stimulus package "helped us [stem] the panic and get the economy growing again." But 1.5 million more people are unemployed than he said there would be if nothing were done.
And as of yesterday, only $244 billion of the stimulus had been spent. Why was $787 billion needed when less than a third of that figure supposedly got the job done?
Mr. Obama also alleged on "60 Minutes" that health-care reform "will actually bring down the deficit" (which people clearly know it will not). He said his reform reduces "costs and premiums for American families and businesses" (though they will be higher than they would otherwise be). And he claimed 30 million more people will get coverage through "an exchange that allows individuals and small businesses" to purchase insurance (though 15 million of them are covered by being dumped into Medicaid and don't get private insurance).
Mr. Obama may actually believe it when he says, "I think that's a pretty darned good outcome" and congratulates himself that he could succeed where "seven presidents have tried . . . [and] seven presidents have failed."
But voters seem to have a different definition of success. And they are tiring of the president's blame shifting and distortions.
Mr. Obama may believe, as he told Oprah Winfrey in a recent interview, that he deserves a "solid B+" for his first year in office, but the American people beg to differ. A presidency that started with so much promise is receiving unprecedentedly low grades from the country that elected him. He's earned them.
Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions).
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Noonan seems to be thinking the same as me about BO's apparent attempt at sounding more mainstream.
I suppose many voters could fall for it. I don't know, but I hope not.
OPINION: DECLARATIONS DECEMBER 12, 2009 Obama Moves Toward Center Stage By PEGGY NOONAN
The political headline this week is that President Obama appears to be attempting to move toward the center, or what he believes is the center. We saw the big pivot in two major speeches, one on the economy and the other, in Oslo, on peace.
If it is real—if the pivot signals a true, partial or coming shift, if it is not limited to rhetorical flurries—it is welcome news in terms of public policy. It also tells us some things. It tells us White House internal polling is probably worse than the public polls telling us the president has been losing support among independents. It tells us the mounting criticism from Republicans, conservatives and others has had a real effect. It tells us White House officials have concluded they were out on a cliff. It tells us they are calculating that after a first year of governing from the left, and winning whatever they win on health care, they believe they can persuasively shift to the center, that it will work.
Which is the great political question: Will it work? With congressional elections a year away, will it help make Democrats safe and keep Congress?
The disadvantage of a pivot is that it will further agitate the president's base, which feels he's already been too moderate. (This actually carries some benefits: When the left rails at Mr. Obama, he looks more moderate.) The upside is clear. In a time of extended crisis, voters are inclined to reject the radical. And a shift will represent a challenge to the president's competitors. It is one thing to meet a president's policies with effective wholesale denunciations when they are wholesale liberal. It's harder when those policies are more of a mix; it's harder to rally and rouse, harder to make criticism stick. Bill Clinton knew this. Maybe the White House is learning it, and the same way he learned it: after a bruising.
The economic speech took place Tuesday at the Brookings Institute, the generally left-leaning think tank in Washington. The president put unusual emphasis on—and showed unusual sympathy for—Americans in business, specifically small businesses. "Over the past 15 years, small businesses have created roughly 65% of all new jobs in America," he said. "These are companies formed around kitchen tables in family meetings, formed when an entrepreneur takes a chance on a dream, formed when a worker decides it's time she became her own boss." This is how Republicans, moderates and centrists think, and talk.
The president claimed success in reducing taxes—"This fall, I signed into law more than $30 billion in tax cuts for struggling businesses"—and announced a new cut: "We're proposing a complete elimination of capital gains taxes on small business investment along with an extension of write-offs to encourage small businesses to expand in the coming year." He called it "worthwhile" to create a new "tax incentive to encourage small businesses to add and keep employees."
All this was striking, and seemed an implicit concession that tax levels affect economic activity. It was as if he were waving his arms and saying, "Hey taxpayer, I'm not your enemy!" The only reason a president would find it necessary to deliver such a message is if he just found out taxpayers do think he's the enemy. The emphasis on what it takes to start and build a business, seemed if nothing else, a bowing to reality. And if you're going to bow to something, it might as well be reality.
Thursday, at his Nobel laureate speech in Oslo, the president used an audience of European leftists to place himself smack-dab in the American center. He said, essentially: War is bad but sometimes justified, America is good, and I am an American. He spoke of Afghanistan as "a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 43 other countries—including Norway—in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks." Adroit, that "including Norway." He said he had "an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict" and suggested America's efforts in Afghanistan fit the criterion of the concept of a "just war." It continues to be of great value that a modern, left-leaning American president speaks in this way to the world. "The world" didn't seem to enjoy it, and burst into applause a resounding once.
He quoted Martin Luther King, when he received the Peace Prize: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: It merely creates new and more complicated ones." But Mr. Obama added that "as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation," he could not be guided only by Dr. King's example. "I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people." Evil exists: "A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms."
He acknowledged Europe's "ambivalence" about military action, and "a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower." But the world should remember what America did during and after World War II. "It is hard to conceive of a cause more just than the defeat of the Third Reich and the Axis powers," he said—and he pointedly noted America's creation of the Marshall Plan and contribution to the United Nations, "a legacy for which my own country is rightfully proud. . . . Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms."
All of this, as William Safire used to say, was good stuff. There were wiggy moments—his references to John Paul II in Poland and Richard Nixon in China were historically unknowing to the point of being utterly inapt—but they did no particular harm.
***
There continues to be a particular challenge for the president, and it is an affection gap. It is not hard to respect this president, not hard to want to listen to his views and weigh his arguments. It is a challenge, however, to feel warmly toward him. This matters politically because Americans like to feel affection for their presidents, and are more likely to forgive them for policy differences when they do. There's the stony, cool temperament, and also something new. The White House lately seems very fancy. When you think of them now, it's all tuxedoes, gowns and Hollywood. There's a certain metallic glamour. But metal is cold.
White House image masters will think the answer is to show pictures of the president smiling at children and walking newly plowed fields. Actually this is part of the mystery of politics—what to do with the clay of your candidate, how to make your guy likable.
I remember when everyone was turning against Bill Clinton after the financial scandals and the smallness of his first term. I thought for a while that Bob Dole would beat him. What I didn't take into account was a small thing that wasn't small. When people slammed Clinton in interviews they were often smiling as they spoke. "The rogue." "Ol' Bubba." Those smiles said something. They liked him. When they like you they forgive you a lot. Mr. Obama needs to make them smile. He doesn't. He leaves them cool as he is.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A19
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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War? What War?
The Obama administration refuses to admit that we are at war.
By Charles Krauthammer
Janet Napolitano — former Arizona governor, now overmatched secretary of homeland security — will forever be remembered for having said of the attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit: “The system worked.” The attacker’s concerned father had warned U.S. authorities about his son’s jihadist tendencies. The would-be bomber paid cash and checked no luggage on a transoceanic flight. He was nonetheless allowed to fly, and would have killed 288 people in the air alone, save for a faulty detonator and quick actions by a few passengers.
Heck of a job, Brownie.
The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration’s response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism “man-caused disasters.” Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management.
And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term “war on terror.” It’s over — that is, if it ever existed.
Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term “asymmetric warfare.”
And produces linguistic — and logical — oddities that littered Obama’s public pronouncements following the Christmas Day attack. In his first statement, Obama referred to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as “an isolated extremist.” This is the same president who, after the Ford Hood shooting, warned us “against jumping to conclusions” — code for daring to associate Nidal Hasan’s mass murder with his Islamist ideology. Yet, with Abdulmutallab, Obama jumped immediately to the conclusion, against all existing evidence, that the bomber acted alone.
More jarring still were Obama’s references to the terrorist as a “suspect” who “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device.” You can hear the echo of FDR: “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor.”
Obama reassured the nation that this “suspect” had been charged. Reassurance? The president should be saying: We have captured an enemy combatant — an illegal combatant under the laws of war: no uniform, direct attack on civilians — and now to prevent future attacks, he is being interrogated regarding information he may have about al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and immediately lawyered up. At which point — surprise! — he stops talking.
This absurdity renders hollow Obama’s declaration that “we will not rest until we find all who were involved.” Once we’ve given Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, we have gratuitously forfeited our right to find out from him precisely who else was involved, namely those who trained, instructed, armed, and sent him.
This is all quite mad even in Obama’s terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.
The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.
The president said that this incident highlights “the nature of those who threaten our homeland.” But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as “extremist(s).”
A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali, and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and they are openly pledged to wage war on America.
Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war, indeed, refuses even to name the enemy — jihadist is a word banished from the Obama lexicon — turns laxity into a governing philosophy.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWI2MGE2YTE4MzM4M2QyMTE5ZWE0OWI0Y2E3OTZiMGU=
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Something seems amiss if you are trying to get at all the information necessary to protect our country in a time of war but when you capture a foreign terrorist suicide mass murderer in the act, the first things you say are that you have the right to remain silent and make a phone call - while thousands of other airliners are still in the air. That is what you might say to a shoplifter or a pickpocket in an airport. Waterboarding and being told you don't have the right to remain silent or comfortable would seem a little more appropriate for trying to recreate the terror of 9/11/01.
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Excerpts from a VDH piece 12/23/09:
...Obama administrationincapable of effective governance. Here is a random selection, no chronology or theme. Nor do I judge the relative importance of any one incident. The point is only that each was a fissure, some small, some major...
Constant apologies abroad for everything from slavery to Hiroshima
Bows to Saudi royalty, the Japanese emperor, and Chinese autocrats
The on-again/off-again Guantanamo shut-down mess
The fight with the former CIA directors
The public show trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed
The reach out to Ahmadinejad Castro, Chavez, and assorted thugs
The Honduras fiasco
Czars everywhere
The serial “Bush did it”/reset whine abroad
The Queen of England/I-pod fiasco
Gordon Brown gets snookered in his gift-giving
Unceremoniously shipping back the Churchill bust
The end of the special relationship with the UK
The New York on-the-town presidential splurge
Anita Dunn and her Mao worship
Timothy Geithner/Tom Daschle/Hilda Solis and their taxes
What ever happened to Gov. Richardson?
“No lobbyists” = gads of them
The Podestas’ insider influence-peddling empire
Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” chauvinism
The Special Olympics silly quip
Trashing Nancy Reagan
The Skip Gates/police acting “stupidly” mess
The get-Chicago-the-Olympics jaunt to Copenhagen
Cap-and-trade boondoggle
“Millions of green jobs”
Ignore gas, oil, coal, and nuclear power production
Cash-for-clunkers
The Joe Biden gaffe machine
Jobs “saved” or “created” rather than references to the actual unemployment rates
Van Jones, the racist and truther
Desiree Rogers won’t testify
The blowback from, and silence about, the Rangel/Dodd corruption
The White House party crashers plan to take the 5th Amendment
The ‘bipartisanship’ con
The pork-barrel stimulus spoils
The demonization of the Town-Hallers
The Acorn Mess
The Kevin Jennings/Safe School Czar embarrassment
The SEIU direct access to the White House
The Asian Tour comedown
The politicization of the take-over of GM and Chrysler
The Obama readjustment in the order of paying back car creditors
Car dealerships closed on shaky criteria
Obama as “Caesar”
The Emanuel “never let a serious crisis go to waste” boast
The Black Caucus/Rangel/Waters bid to bail out the inner-city radio stations
Yosi Sergant and the NEA
$1.7 trillion deficit
The planned $9 trillion added to the national debt
New income tax rates; health care surcharge talk; and payroll tax caps to be lifted
Rahm Emanuel’s promised payback to those states that trash the stimulus
The supposed C-span aired health care debate
The promised website posts of pending legislation
Czechs and Poles sold out on missile defense
Sermons to and finger pointing at the Israelis
The failed ‘Putin helps to stop a nuclear Iran’ gambit
Voting present on the Iranian reformers in the street
Serial but empty deadlines to Ahmadinejad
The good war/bad war twisting and turning on Iraq/Afghanistan
The months-long dithering over Afghanistan
Renditions, tribunals, Patriot Act, etc. once trashed, now OK
Healthcare take-over
The 2,000 page proposed new health code
The embarrassing Nobel Peace Prize nomination
The attacks on surgeons, Chamber of Commerce, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.
The Islam mythologies in the Cairo Speech
The al Arabiya “Bush did it” interview
Obama’s TV “my Muslim faith” gaffe
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Healthcare take-over
A doctor today told me heard that NJ has a new law that doctors must do some free charity care.
I don't know if it is true.
If I didn't have my problems with Katherine I would definitely leave the state if that were true.
Can anyone imagine a government edict to a single group of citizens telling them they either work for free or what?
Go to jail? Lose your license to work in your profession?
Yet bankers are being given billions and obviously pilliging God knows how much of it.
And I have to now pay for the cadillac care of union auto workers while I may be forced to work for free.
No one will feel sorry for doctors so I am not kidding myself thinking I would get any sympathy.
My point is let this be a warning for the rest of this country as to what Obama and Pelosi and the liberals have in store for them as well as us physicians.
I guess the only ones safe are lawyers, union members and Federal government employees.
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The recovery is not 100% within his control. The economic policies of his administration are what is within his control.
The path to pro-growth economic policies, policies that would encourage employers to invest, take on risk, hire, earn and keep more - policies that would lead us toward recovery and away from a double-dip or a jobless recovery - that path could easily be described as a straight line..... and we aren't on it. They aren't even looking for it. He's working on something else and stagnation, debt and high unemployment are some of the costs of economic dithering.
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I'm very excited about my first time quoting and agreeing with the Huffington Post. Even liberals find this government behavior over the line. I would add to list of complaints a video of his answers posted previously when asked where in the constitution he found the right to bail out non-financial institutions. With 3 tries he just honestly could not comprehend the question.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-blodget/tim-geithner-must-go_b_416203.html#comments
Tim Geithner Must Go
The latest revelations about the New York Fed's actions in the AIG bailout make one thing clear: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner must go.
Geithner must go not just because of the emails showing that his New York Fed ordered AIG to keep details of the bailout secret, but because of many other decisions and policies he has championed in the past two years.
These decisions and policies have consistently put the interests of Wall Street ahead of the interests of the taxpayer, and they have undermined the public's confidence in the government at a time when the country needs it the most.
Tim Geithner's defense of his actions continues to be, in effect, "We had to do it or the world would have ended." This isn't good enough. It is also, at the very least, debatable.
It is true that Tim Geithner made many of his decisions in the midst of a crisis, and I do not doubt that his intentions were good and that he was doing the best he could. But this does not rinse his hands of responsibility for his decisions or their ongoing ramifications.
For five reasons, Geithner must go:
* Geithner was directly responsible for the most appalling corporate bailout in U.S. history, in which tens of billions of taxpayer dollars were secretly funneled to some of the richest corporations in the world. The terms of this bailout, and the associated cloak of secrecy under which it was conducted (the details of which continue to leak out) have hurt the public's confidence in the government.
* Geithner's ongoing decision to save banks at any cost was predicated on the theory that this would keep the banks lending. This policy has failed: The banks have not continued to lend. What the banks HAVE done is coin billions of dollars of profits risk-free at taxpayer expense, fueling even more public outrage.
* Geithner's policy of "too big to fail" has created a banking system whose bets are guaranteed by the US taxpayer, and it has distorted lending and market forces across the entire economy. This policy, which has now been all but written into the Constitution, is grossly unfair. Big banks can do whatever they want with no concern about the consequences; small banks have to hunker down or they'll get taken over and shut down.
* Geithner's role in the AIG bailout, which the current administration bears no responsibility for, continues to destroy confidence in his current boss, President Barack Obama. If AIG stays in the headlines, and Geithner does not accept responsibility for what happened. Obama's agenda and influence will continue to suffer.
* Geithner's consistent decision to put Wall Street first has helped fuel a populist rage that will make it very difficult for the government to do anything more to help the financial system. If the recovery continues, such help might never become necessary. If it falters, however, Geithner's policies will have severely curtailed the government's ability to do anything about it.
Those who know him say that Tim Geithner is a very good guy. He made the decisions above in the midst of a panic, and I have no doubt that he was trying to do the right thing.
But contrary to the revisionist history now being promulgated, these actions were not the only way out. They were grossly unfair to taxpayers, and they have undermined public confidence in the government -- and our current President -- at a time when the country needs it most.
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This could just as easily be posted in the Liberal Fascism thread, the Government Programs thread, the Corruption thread, etc. :lol:
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Dylan Ratigan from MSNBC has been railing against Geitner like crazy. Calling for his head on a platter.
I heard him on the radio yesterday.
Go to this site and click on AIG spot and listen:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#34523160
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“Let Me Be Perfectly Not Clear” and “Make Lots of Mistakes About It”
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On January 17, 2010 @ 3:03 pm In Uncategorized | 70 Comments
It’s the lying, Stupid?
“Lie” is a rather harsh word; the noun and its verb form leave little to context or extenuating circumstances. So I use it sparingly.
But I know no other word for President Obama’s long string of “misstatements,” especially the blatant ones about closing Guantanamo within a year of his inauguration or serially declaring that he would insist on health care debate airing live on C-SPAN.
How odd that the liberal block is quiet that once coined “Bush lied, thousands died” (even when the CIA and Defense intelligence was accepted by both parties and in sync with what the Arab world and Europe were insisting upon [recall the charge of a supposed naïve Bush taking us to war against a nut who would gas our troops marshalling in Kuwait.]). In any case, not telling the truth has a lot to do with sinking polls
So I don’t quite buy the liberal lament that the people will support Obama when the economy improves.
It was roaring in 2005-6, and still Bush was unpopular — given the violence in Iraq and the administration’s inability to articulate our objectives there. And even when Iraq was winding down in 2008, polls still showed persistent American anger at the media narrative of a botched Katrina, the insurgency in Iraq, and a “jobless recovery.”
No, the American people are losing confidence in Team Obama because quite simply they are tiring of being lied to, and treated like children in need of Ivy-League Platonic guardians.
Yes, they intrinsically liked Obama and put away for a time their suspicions that he had not come clean on his real ideological intentions, his radical leftist past, his intimate association with the creepy Rev. Wright, and his partisanship that had made him the most liberal senator in the Congress.
Let us count the ways
But almost immediately, Obama, again, in Platonic fashion, began to say things that could not be possibly true. Remember the categories.
1) The bait and switch lies. Here, we, the eager voters, were told that there are no more bad blue/red state dichotomies. We are a purple America. Instead, we immediately witnessed the demonization of the supposed “rich” (I say supposed, because the Buffet/Gates/Turner plutocrat is exempt), who are not “patriotic,” do not wish to “spread the wealth,” and must “pay their fair share.” Almost immediately Obama’s Bush became America’s Emanuel Goldstein — an Orwellian figure constructed to unify the people around an evil predecessor incapable of a single positive act — whether keeping us safe for over seven years from another 9/11-like attack, freeing 50 million from the Taliban and Saddam, or generating enormous national wealth from 2002-08.
Some deluded voters in November, 2011, went for Obama on promises of a new kinder, gentler politics. They got instead the most partisan, nasty Chicago politicking in memory.
2) The “noble” lies. These are untruths aimed at the common good. In Cairo, we were told Muslims did all sorts of wonderful things in the past like invented printing and sparked the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Why not fabricate and exaggerate when the intentions are global ecumenicalism?
Remember the new tactic of assessing job losses by “jobs saved”? And why not, since we wish to bolster our spirits and believe that our borrowing was not wasted on pork-barrel insanities, rather than “investments” that created “millions of green jobs” that otherwise would not have existed?
And we must believe that health care reform as envisioned by the Obama massive state assumption of private insured care will save “trillions in waste and fraud.” Believe that, and at last the dream of “universal health care” is obtainable.
Remember the phrase “using all our resources” during the high energy prices of the 2008 campaign? Obama then was a centrist who would drill, develop nuclear, look for more gas, burn coal — all to tide us over as we waited for the dream of Van Jones. That too was a noble lie, necessary for we fools to cling to, while the anointed fashioned a “green” cap and trade future for us, whose efficacy we could not quite yet fathom.
3) Tactical lies. Then there are the tactical lies to achieve the desired ends in “that was then/this is now” fashion. Turn to Orwell’s Animal Farm for the right landscape. Health-care debate on C-SPAN/health care debate behind congressional doors. Taxes on Cadillac health plans were an inane McCain idea/taxes on Cadillac health plans are a way to eliminate waste and fraud; stupid, clueless Bush was pushing unpopular social security reform that 65% of the people didn’t want/wise, hip Obama is pushing noble health care reform that 65% of the people don’t want. The list is endless and started in 2007 with public campaign financing as good for dark horse candidates/public campaign financing as bad for front-runner cash cows.
Apparently two or three “let me be perfectly clear”s and 3-4 “make no mistake about it”s — when prefaced to something like “no more lobbyists in government” or “posting legislation well in advance on the internet” — make it all so.
4) The Deadline Lies. Remember those? You’ve seen that sort of “if you don’t, then you….” in the supermarket when the poor harried mom has the three-year-old kid screaming and kicking on the aisle floor, and screams back as she blocks shoppers, “If you yell one more time, I’m going to spank you!” — as he screams and kicks all the louder.
Guantanamo shut by January 21, 2010? Iran in non-proliferation compliance by the UN summit or the G-20 meetings or the October face-to-face negotiations or the first of the new year? Remember health care done by the summer break? By Thanksgiving? By Christmas or else? By the first of the year?
I used to have a relative of sorts who came around the ranch and wanted $500. I gave it to him once and he’d return sheepishly every three months, and promise, “This spring I am going to pay you back.” “This summer I’ll paint your barn.” “Before the first rain, I’ll fix that tin roof on the shed.” Finally, I forgot I ever gave him the money, and now only vaguely recall how silly I was. So too, we forget the promises, so frequent and impossible they now seem.
The list could be expanded exponentially and already, reader, you are screaming even as you read this, “But Victor, you didn’t list the worst of all, the lie about (fill in the blanks)…”
What are the catalysts for such prevarications?
1) Habit. Obama could more or less say anything in mellifluous tones, and the media would become enraptured. This ability to charm by sounding honey-tongued while saying nothing started perhaps in the Ivy-League and has never ceased. Some habitual liars persist since they are never caught or even admonished. Obama is never called to account (cf. Robert Gibbs’s angry reaction to the blasphemy when asked about the C-SPAN fantasies). The most transparent administration in history hasn’t had a news conference since mid-summer, even amid the toadies (Note to media: photo-ops and interviews are not press conferences). The media and Obama have an unspoken pact that goes something like the following: “We both are educated elites who know best for the Neanderthals. So from time to time I will have to lie to you to get our shared aspirations realized; and I accept from time to time, you will have to play act as critics to cling to some sort of legitimacy that is likewise necessary for our joint aspirations.” (And then we’ll both have a beer together afterwords.)
2) Morality. All philosopher-kings believe that the ends justify the means. To make us loving, caring equals — with no rich, no poor — we must sometimes adopt the Chicago politics that we insist we abhor. A Tony Rezko is bad, but a Tony Rezko is temporarily necessary to get the sort of hope and change we’ve been waiting for.
3) Squaring circles. You can reconcile thinking that he U.S. is culpable for its race/class/gender felonious past, and globe-trotting the world on a presidential luxury jet with the red, white , and blue plastered all over it — the logical manifestation of a uniquely meritocratic, capitalist, and free-enterprise economy. One cannot damn insider, influence-peddling, private-jet flying Wall Street bankers, corrupt insurers, and “the rich,” and then hire the same, frequent the same, and aspire to be the same. Class warfare is hard when your own profile is the logical target. And so one is bound to change the story as hypocrisy begins to cramp.
4) Personal confusion. Read both Obama memoirs (is that the right word for these auto-hagiographies?), and it becomes clear that he is still confused who he is. Barry Soetoro? Barry Dunham? Barack Dunham? Barack Obama? Barry Obama? Prep school upper-middle class in Hawaii or impoverished minority in need of affirmative action? African or African-American or plain old American suburbanite? Harvard Law Review and Chicago Law lecturer or unpublished wannabe legal professor? Harry Reid’s unaccented “Negro” dialect or Harry Reid’s ability to turn it on only as needed? Racial healer who wows the suburbanite and NY-DC insider clique, or angry racialist who throws out “stupidly,” the clingers speech, “typical white person” and brags about not missing a Rev. Wright sermon to the Chicago Sun-Times? When one is confused about who one is, one creates alternate narratives and personas — and, yes, often they will clash.
The economy might just be in what we heard once (wrongly, in fact, in 2004) categorized as a “jobless recovery.” And, yes, the people have roared that they don’t want the remedies of statist health care, mega-deficits, higher taxes, more government, green boondoggles, apologetics abroad, blanket amnesty, and more lunatic appointments like Van Jones and Anita Dunn.
But what is taking Obama down below 50% approval is mostly a public awareness that they elected a deeply cynical man, who either cannot or will not speak the truth or keep his promises (note the Nixonian resonance in “perfectly clear about…”). In fact, it is worse than that — in the postmodern world of Barack Obama there is no truth per se, just competing narratives privileged by the relative degree of power behind them and the relative perceived moral intent involved.
So when the advocates of hope and change, of non-traditional America, of the poor and the needy and the more noble, say something, it must be true because, you see, it should be true.
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/let-me-be-perfectly-not-clear-and-make-lots-of-mistakes-about-it/
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Why the Great and Growing Backlash?
What Scott Brown’s election portends for the Obama agenda.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Dream up a gargantuan backlash against Barack Obama’s left-wing gospel, and you still could not invent the notion of a relatively unknown, conservative Scott Brown knocking off an Obama-endorsed, liberal, female attorney in liberal Massachusetts — in a race to fill the seat once held by Ted Kennedy.
If a liberal senatorial candidate can be defeated in Massachusetts, eleven months after the Obama hope-and-change blitzkrieg, it is hard to believe that any liberal seat is necessarily safe anywhere.
So the real story is not a populist backlash, but a growing populist backlash, whose ultimate nature and magnitude are as yet unknown. What’s going on?
BUYING JOBS?
Voters are sick and tired of a terrible year of big spending and big deficits — especially the sight of Obama and his congressional allies almost daily talking breezily about spending what we do not have.
Voters went for the hope-and-change Obama in part because he promised fiscal sobriety after the Bush $500 billion deficit. Instead, in utterly cynical fashion, Obama trumped that red ink four times over. In the process, he developed a terrible habit of promising favored constituencies a hundred billion here, a hundred billion there as if it were all paper money — rather than real borrowed currency that will have to be confiscated in the future from the beleaguered taxpayer. It only makes it worse that the more the administration borrowed, printed, and spent, the higher unemployment rose and the lower economic activity plummeted.
Most have had enough of pie-in-the-sky talk of massive new health-care entitlements, cap-and-trade taxes and regulation, more stimulus, and more takeovers of private enterprise. The country is broke and the people want to pay off, not incur more, crushing debt. What got us into the mess was too much borrowing, skyrocketing debt, and reckless spending — not too many balanced budgets and too much lean government.
PROPHETS CAN’T MISLEAD?
No politician quite gets a pass for deception and prevarication. Obama in his narcissism thought his sonorous rhetoric made him exempt from a “read my lips” or “I didn’t have sex with that woman” moment. It didn’t.
People heard his serial promises about airing the health-care debate on C-SPAN, his new-transparency/no-lobbyist vows, and his monotonous boasts to close down Guantanamo within a year. All that is now “inoperative.” The problem was not just that Obama made promises that he broke, but that he made them so frequently and so vehemently — and so cavalierly broke them. That brazen campaign deception is problematic for a politician, but proves fatal for a self-appointed messiah.
A CESSATION OF CORRUPTION
We went from a Republican “culture of corruption” to a liberal cesspool of corruption. Sen. Chris Dodd lectures Wall Street while he gets sweetheart loans and vacation-home deals. Few could make up a story that the nation’s top tax lawmaker, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, is a tax dodger, and the nation’s top tax enforcer, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, is an even more egregious tax dodger. When the Democratic Senate leadership started buying health-care votes at $300 million a clip, our Congress became little more than the praetorian guard, auctioning off its support to any wannabe late Roman emperor. The idea of a muckraking Obama nominating Tom Daschle as his Health Secretary — the liberal populist who skips out of thousands of dollars in taxes on his free corporate limousine service — was the stuff of satire.
BUSH REALLY, REALLY, REALLY DID DO IT
No one likes a serial whiner. It has been a year now — and Obama still blames George W. Bush ad nauseam. He did it in Massachusetts again — and on the eve of the election, no less. Blaming the past for the mistakes of the present gets old quickly. And when one adds in the constant What’s the Matter With Kansas? brand of condescension about naïve yokels not knowing what’s good for them, it gets even worse.
Yet Obama still pontificates that angry deluded voters will “suddenly” come to appreciate how he rammed health care down their otherwise ignorant throats: “The American people will suddenly learn that this bill does things they like and doesn’t do things that people have been trying to say it does. . . . The worst fears will prove groundless. And the American people’s hope for a fair shake from their insurance companies — for quality, affordable health care they need — will finally be realized.”
Good luck with that, O philosopher king!
WALL STREET POPULISTS
Elite liberals are not good class warriors. Factor in multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi’s government mega-jet or Barack Obama’s various overseas junkets or the big Wall Street money that went into Obama’s near billion-dollar campaign coffers, and it is hard to take seriously Obama’s constant war against “them.” The voters have figured out that their president likes the elite plutocracy and the lower middle classes, but not so much the wannabe rich who aspire to cross his hated $250,000 income threshold — at which point suddenly they become unpatriotic, unwilling to pay their fair shares, and reluctant to spread the wealth around.
It is not particularly smart to constantly demonize the entrepreneurial classes, promise to raise income, payroll, health-care, and inheritance taxes on them, and expand government regulations — and then wonder why they are not creating more jobs.
ELMER GANTRY
Devotees turn on false prophets with a special vengeance. Obama is beginning to grate. His flip-the-switch-on, evangelical cadences at rallies sound more like a Harvard nerd doing blues imitations than Martin Luther King Jr. Purple-state presidents don’t appoint Van Joneses and Anita Dunns, or turn the NEA into a quid pro quo Ministry of Approved Culture. A healer doesn’t start in on the “rich,” “Wall Street,” the “big” oil companies, drug companies, insurance companies, or “fat-cat bankers” — especially when he has done his best to shake them all down for campaign money, hire as many of them as he can in his own administration, and arrange cut-rate loans, insider deals, bailouts, and guarantees for all of them.
Obama’s populism is beginning to sound more like a bought boxer who belatedly has second thoughts about throwing the fight he previously contracted. In short, Obama’s ideological presidency hinged on his post-racial, post-national mesmerizing presence that reassured reluctant Democrats to vote against their local constituencies.
If cap-and-trade or health care reform polled below 50 percent, a worried congressional supporter could always call in Him to charm bolting voters. But now? We have in a blink gone from Obama as the bankable 10 percent edge, to Obama as a non-factor, to Obama as a real liability. In short, why vote for an agenda as unpopular as its albatross author?
LIKED BY ALL, RESPECTED BY NONE
Obama thought the antidote to “smoke ’em out,” “dead or alive,” and “bring ’em on” braggadocio was bowing to the Saudis, promulgating new and undiscovered great moments in Islamic history, and reaching out to Ahmadinejad as he rounded up and beat down reformers in the streets of Tehran.
It’s one thing to accuse Bush of shredding the Constitution, quite another to adopt his anti-terrorism protocols like tribunals, renditions, Predators, intercepts, and wiretaps. Somehow Obama offended his base by such duplicity, and then his opposition by his tokenism of trashing Bush, promising the architect of 9/11 a show trial a few blocks from the former World Trade Center, and using touchy-feely euphemisms to suggest we are not in a war against terrorism emanating from the radical Islamic world.
Ahmadinejad, Assad, Chávez, the Castro Brothers, Putin, and others for the first six months liked us as much as they had little respect for our sycophancy; now they openly show contempt. We accept that obsequiousness cannot earn respect, but it apparently cannot earn affection either.
The best thing that could happen to Barack Obama is more Democratic losses in hodgepodge elections that might yank away our young transfixed Narcissus from his mesmerizing reflecting pool.
Almost immediately after Obama showed his ideological cards last spring, I suggested in the first weeks of his presidency that the bait-and-switch president would soon face a Carter/Clinton moment in which he could either press on with his polarizing ideology, damage his party for a generation, and eventually end up churlish and sneering at the electorate, who did not appreciate his exalted morality and genius — or triangulate and follow the Dick Morris/Bill Clinton model of talking and acting sort of centrist.
Who knows after Obama’s Scott Brown moment? We now may hear once again the old “no more Red State/Blue State” tropes, the stale campaign promises of presidential vetoes, claims of financial sobriety, the return of a “war on terror,” and smaller government
We’re either down to all that — or Obama’s more principled road to perdition.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjBjY2Y3NGM3Y2UzYTA0MGJmZGQ3OGY2ZmE3NGZhMDA=
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The Meaning of Brown
Hey, Dems: If the people really don’t want it, could they possibly have a point?
By Charles Krauthammer
On January 14, five days before the Massachusetts special election, President Obama was in full bring-it-on mode as he rallied House Democrats behind his health-care reform. “If Republicans want to campaign against what we’ve done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have.”
The bravado lasted three days. When Obama campaigned in Boston on January 17 for Obamacare supporter Martha Coakley, not once did he mention the health-care bill. When your candidate is sinking, you don’t throw her a millstone.
After Coakley’s defeat, Obama pretended that the real cause was a generalized anger and frustration “not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
Let’s get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that . . . it just elected a Republican senator in Massachusetts? Why, the man is omnipotent.
And the Democrats are delusional: Scott Brown won by running against Obama, not against Bush. He won by brilliantly nationalizing the race, running hard against the Obama agenda, most notably Obamacare. Killing it was his No. 1 campaign promise.
Bull’s-eye. An astonishing 56 percent of Massachusetts voters, according to Rasmussen, called health care their top issue. In a Fabrizio, McLaughlin, & Associates poll, 78 percent of Brown voters said their vote was intended to stop Obamacare. Only a quarter of all voters in the Rasmussen poll cited the economy as their top issue, nicely refuting the Democratic view that Massachusetts was just the usual anti-incumbent resentment you expect in bad economic times.
Brown ran on a very specific, very clear agenda. Stop health care. Don’t Mirandize terrorists. Don’t raise taxes; cut them. And no more secret backroom deals with special interests.
These deals — the Louisiana purchase, the Cornhusker kickback — had engendered a national disgust with the corruption and arrogance of one-party rule. The final straw was the union payoff — in which labor bosses smugly walked out of the White House with a five-year exemption from a (“Cadillac”) health-insurance tax Democrats were imposing on the 92 percent of private-sector workers who are not unionized.
The reason both wings of American liberalism — congressional and mainstream media — were so surprised at the force of anti-Democratic sentiment is that they’d spent Obama’s first year either ignoring or disdaining the clear early signs of resistance: the tea-party movement of the spring and the town-hall meetings of the summer. With characteristic condescension, they contemptuously dismissed the protests as the mere excrescences of a redneck, retrograde, probably racist rabble.
You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one. Yet they kept denying the reality of the rising opposition to Obama’s social-democratic agenda when summer turned to fall and Virginia and New Jersey turned Republican in the year’s two gubernatorial elections.
The evidence was unmistakable: Independents, who in 2008 had elected Obama, swung massively against the Democrats: dropping 16 points in Virginia, 21 in New Jersey. On Tuesday, it was even worse: Independents, who had gone 2-to-1 Republican in Virginia and New Jersey, now went 3-to-1 Republican in hyper-blue Massachusetts. Nor was this an expression of the more agitated elements who vote in obscure low-turnout elections. The turnout on Tuesday was the highest for any nonpresidential Massachusetts election in 20 years.
Democratic cocooners will tell themselves that Coakley was a terrible candidate who even managed to dis Curt Schilling. True, Brown had Schilling. But Coakley had Obama. When the bloody sock beats the presidential seal — of a man who had them swooning only a year ago — something is going on beyond personality.
That something is substance — political ideas and legislative agendas. Democrats, if they wish, can write off their Massachusetts humiliation to high unemployment, to Coakley, or, the current favorite among sophisticates, to generalized anger. That implies an inchoate, unthinking lashing-out at whoever happens to be in power — even at your liberal betters who are forcing on you an agenda that you can’t even see is in your own interest.
Democrats must so rationalize, otherwise they must take democracy seriously, and ask themselves: If the people really don’t want it, could they possibly have a point?
“If you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call,” said moderate — and sentient — Democratic senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, “there’s no hope of waking up.”
I say: Let them sleep.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzA1ZWRmYjgxOGVjM2YyZWYxYWIwNDY1MmJlYzEzMTY=
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Did anyone else see clips of Obama literally ranting and raving against the banks and the phrase for the ages, "we want our money back"?
I am no defender of banks who certainly do rip us off. That said all I could think of during this ridiculous rant was, why YOU (Obama) were the idiot who gave them the money! You were the one who gave the money with apparently little oversight!
If the fact that our future, our economy was not hanging on a cliff I would say his rant had me laughing out loud. Here is the guy using banks to score political favor with voters - and he is the same clown who was the one who couldn't give them enough money. It is still possible for him to turn things around like Clinton. I remember agreeing with the incredulity of Rush who was amazed that Clinton could make a SINGLE state of the union address and literally overnight improve his poll ratings by double digits.
So it is certaily possible. But this guy will obviously throw anyone under the bus to save his own hide has no record of being Clinton.
Time will tell. I am not optomistic about the future of this country. I won't post it here but I do agree with a guy with the initials PB who wrote one recent article that the collapse or bankruptcy of the US *may* be inevitable.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9558439
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The good news is drudgereport already highlights OBama/Dem proposal to have "deficit reducing task force".
And Bama may put caps on spending.
The bad news is the same. History has already proven a sudden reversal in course could completly let Bama off the hook ala Clinton.
It appears moderates are happy to forgive and forget baseed on what the politician says THAT day.
We will know on Jan 27th.
One SOTU speech was all it took to bring Clinton right back into the game.
Apparently enough of the voters can be fooled enough of the time for the rest of us to be duped again.
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Well reading drudge this am leads me to believe Bama will not "triangulate" ala Clinton.
As noted the populist bent: its the banks stupid.
its the corporations stupid
middle class tax "cuts" for child care and elderly care - if one believes this.
A "bipartisan commission to study the deficit - this certainly reminds me of Jimmy the Carter who was overwhelmed with the job and would ceaselessly study details without being able to move in the right direction. Of course this could just be a smoke screen for inaction. Like we'll "study" legal reform in the health industry when in reality he really has NO intention of doing any of it.
This guy is not as wise as Clinton. Clinton thus remains the best manipulator of his generation - some call this the best politician though I still feel honesty is necessary.
The drudgereprots could be just trial balloons but if they are correct and this guy takes this course the Dems are really screwed.
What was the name of the captain of the Titanic? Captain Bama?
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Obama On Brink Of Crackup: His presidency is teetering and only Obama can pull it to safety
The Weekly Standard | January 25, 2010 | Fred Barnes
In the new movie The Young Victoria, the mother of Victoria and her chief overseer meet with the prime minister, Lord Melbourne, to discuss what role they’ll play now that Victoria has become queen of England. They’ve waged a fierce struggle to retain control over Victoria. Suddenly Melbourne cuts off the chatter and bluntly explains the situation. “You lost,” he says.
That’s the situation that faces President Obama and his White House advisers. Months of polls on the president and his policies, the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s elections, then last week’s momentous Massachusetts Senate race – all have sent the blunt message to Obama that, for now, he’s lost. But Obama and his team insist on pretending it’s not true.
This is a bad sign. One of the important tests of a president, especially a relatively new one like Obama, is how he deals with a serious setback. Does he respond rationally and realistically? In Obama’s case, the answer is no.
The president’s first response was to claim voters who elected Republican Scott Brown to fill the Senate seat held for decades by Teddy Kennedy were in some mysterious way actually backing Obama. “The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
“People are angry and they’re frustrated,” Obama said. “Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.” He didn’t explain why, if the Brown voters were his people, why he’d campaigned for Democrat Martha Coakley, Brown’s opponent.
The next day, Obama lost his cool bearing. He resorted to crude populism, which he’d carefully avoided in his campaign and first year in office. In response to the Supreme Court ruling, on First Amendment grounds, in favor of the use of corporate funds in election contests, he didn’t offer a substantive critique, but called the decision “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”
The populism continued the next day in a speech in Ohio. “We want our money back,” he said, regarding banks that received bailout funds. “We want our money back! And we’re going to get your money back – every dime, each and every dime.”
This was the language of a rattled president in search of enemies to scapegoat. Obama didn’t mention that all but one of the major banks have paid back the bailout money with interest. There’s a word for this kind of rhetoric: Unpresidential.
Obama’s aides have been no help. They claimed it’s full speed ahead on the Obama agenda. And they stuck with the president’s insistence that Massachusetts voters were on his side.
On “Fox News Sunday,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said a Washington Post poll showed “more people voted to express support for Obama than to oppose him.” The poll found voters like the idea of health care reform and a bipartisan approach to it.
But supporting health care reform in general and ObamaCare in particular are two different things. Republicans and independents favor reform, just not Obama’s version.
And oppposing ObamaCare was Brown’s chief issue, and in every poll that asked specifically about it, voters were overwhelmingly against it. Arguing otherwise, as Gibbs did, was specious and disingenuous.
At least Obama’s aides had their stories straight, though not credible, on Brown’s victory. They didn’t in citing the discredited White House claims of jobs created and saved in 2009. Valerie Jarrett said Obama has “saved thousands and thousands,” Gibbs said the president has “saved or created 1.5 million jobs,” and political counselor David Axelrod said Obama has “created more than – or saved more than 2 million jobs.”
Meanwhile, the story broke on Sunday that Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe would return to the president’s inner circle to help plot strategy against Republicans in the midterm election and to help push the Obama agenda. The same day he offered his political advice in a Washington Post op-ed. His first recommendation was pass ObamaCare, the same measure that a solid (and still growing) majority of Americans oppose.
If he relies on advice like that, Obama will never recover. But maybe cooler heads will prevail at the White House and the president will deal more rationally in his State of the Union address on Wednesday with what Charles Krauthammer calls “empirical reality.” He’d better. His presidency is teetering on the edge of a crackup and only Obama can pull it to safety.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-bets-populism
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http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjRlMjNmYjYyODBmMjFjNGNmMjk1N2MwYzA5NGNjYTk=
Sotu Drinking Game? [Jonah Goldberg]
Lots of readers keep asking when we'll come up with our version. I'm not sure there's room to be too original here. His usual phrases are familiar enough: "Let me be clear," "make no mistake," "this will not be easy" etc. There's nothing wrong with that sort of thing. One different way to go is conceptual or thematic. Every time Obama suggests there's a consensus among experts about a proposal when there isn't, drink. Every time he claims to be aligned with the populist backlash he created, drink. Every time he suggests that History with a capital H demands that we do whatever it is he's talking about, drink. Every time he says that he's being "pragmatic" or "bipartisan" when he's actually being wildly ideological or partisan, drink. And so on.
My own preference is to drink every time he says something that will obviously cost me money. If that seems like an invitation to alcohol poisoning, you could narrow it down slightly by drinking only when something will cost you money and make the economy worse at the same time.
Anyway, I'm open to suggestions.
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Bama stands there and talks about time to end partisanship during the same speech he stands atop the mountain looking down at Supreme Court Justices and literally insults/embarrasses them with Dems applauding in front of the entire nation.
Yeah right - he is bipartisan.
Even Toobin who is no conservative has to grimmace at the shameful moment:
Jeffrey Toobin
Alito's reaction to Obama was fairBy Jeffrey Toobin, CNN Senior Legal Analyst
January 28, 2010 2:38 p.m. EST
Jeffrey Toobin says a comment by President Obama led to an awkward moment
He says Justice Samuel Alito seemed to disagree on Obama's take on campaign finance ruling
Toobin says Obama was mostly right on the result of recent court decision
He says Alito also was right to express his view; justices are human beings
Editor's note: Jeffrey Toobin is a CNN senior legal analyst and a staff writer at The New Yorker. A former assistant U.S. attorney, Toobin is the author of several critically acclaimed best-sellers, including "The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court" and "Too Close to Call: The 36-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election."
New York (CNN) -- It was the most vivid, and unexpected, confrontation of Wednesday's State of the Union address.
It happened when President Obama said this: "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections."
In the audience, Justice Samuel Alito, President Bush's second appointee to the Supreme Court, could be seen shaking his head and saying, it appeared, "Not true, not true."
Who's right? As for what the court decided in Citizens United v. FEC, Obama seems to be right -- mostly. In a 5-4 decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Alito, the court held that corporations, labor unions and other organizations had the right under the First Amendment to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the outcomes of elections.
Video: Dissenting justice?
RELATED TOPICS
Barack Obama
Samuel Alito
U.S. Supreme Court
If a corporation now wants to saturate the airwaves for or against any candidate for office, including on the eve of the election, it now has the Supreme Court's say-so to do it.
Obama was on shakier ground when he said foreign companies now had the same unlimited rights to participate in our elections. The court's opinion very carefully said it was not deciding the issue with regard to foreign entities. So the court may yet give the green light to these foreign companies -- but it hasn't done so yet.
On the larger question of whether Alito should have expressed himself in this restrained but unmistakable way, I'm with the justice. Attending the State of the Union has always been an awkward duty for the justices -- sitting through these political addresses and wondering when it's appropriate to applaud or react.
Gloves come off after Obama rips ruling
When the president is paying tribute to the armed forces, or making an otherwise uncontroversial point, the justices usually join in the clapping; when the point is more political -- like the one Obama made about Citizens United on Wednesday -- the tradition is for the justices not to react.
But it's wise to remember that the justices are human beings, with strong views on many subjects, including their own decisions. When Obama was criticizing the court's work (as was his right), Alito had the right to react the way anyone would who had taken a shot in a high-profile setting.
In my book, even a Supreme Court justice -- even at the State of the Union -- is entitled to grimace and mutter. (It is worth noting that Alito does seem to have an ax to grind with Obama. As a senator, Obama voted against Alito's confirmation, which the justice does not seem to have forgotten. When the President-elect Obama made a courtesy call on the justices shortly before his inauguration last year, Alito was the only member of the court not to attend.)
Still, it's worth remembering who is likely to have the last word in this confrontation. In his speech, Obama went on to say about the court's opinion, "Well, I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'm urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."
The president and the Congress can try -- but it is the court that will have the last word on evaluating whether any new law is constitutional. And Alito, who is 59 years old with life tenure, will likely be passing on the validity of laws long after Obama has left office.
As Justice Robert Jackson said of the court many years ago, "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final."
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jeffrey Toobin.
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Carteresque
Obama thinks we’ve lost confidence in America when we’ve just lost confidence in him.
In 1960, Fidel Castro addressed the U.N. General Assembly for four and a half hours. President Obama didn’t hit that target last night — it only felt like it. The president had some things to get off this chest — and if it took 70-plus minutes, well, lucky us, we got to listen.
The speech answered the question that began to form when Republicans took the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey and came into sharp focus after Scott Brown delivered his haymaker on January 21: Would Obama pivot like Clinton in 1994 or not?
He will not.
This isn’t surprising. Obama is a conviction politician. Raised in a left-wing cocoon, he has never given evidence of being anything other than a true-believing left-liberal. Describing his college experience in The Audacity of Hope, he writes: “I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.” Sounds like a list of his czars.
So no, President Obama is not going to reassure voters that he has gotten their message. He is not going to tack to the political center. He is not going to acknowledge overreaching on the matter of nationalizing health care. These are moral issues for him. Promoting his health-care reform to religious leaders last August, he said, “It is a core ethical and moral obligation that we look after each other. In the wealthiest nation on earth, we are neglecting to live up to that call.” We embarrass him.
Though he shot to political stardom as a supposed “post-partisan,” he has presided over the most ideologically dogged administration in memory. Bill Clinton might triangulate to please the electorate. Barack Obama is more inclined to search for villains.
In this, he begins to resemble Jimmy Carter. When the country was reeling from his catastrophic mismanagement, President Carter diagnosed “a crisis of confidence . . . a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.” Um, no. The nation’s soul and spirit and will were just fine. Carter was the problem.
Last night, endeavoring to explain (to himself?) the peculiar failure of the people to adopt his social-democrat agenda, President Obama too found fault with them:
Unfortunately, too many of our citizens have lost faith that our biggest institutions — our corporations, our media, and, yes, our government — still reflect these same values. Each of these institutions are [sic] full of honorable men and women doing important work that helps our country prosper. But each time a CEO rewards himself for failure, or a banker puts the rest of us at risk for his own selfish gain, people’s doubts grow. Each time lobbyists game the system or politicians tear each other down instead of lifting this country up, we lose faith. The more that TV pundits reduce serious debates into silly arguments, and big issues into sound bites, our citizens turn away. No wonder there’s so much cynicism out there. No wonder there’s so much disappointment.
That could be it. Alternatively, people may be dismayed to find that they elected a left-wing ideologue who wasted most of his first year pushing health-care reform when something like 17 percent of the nation is unemployed or underemployed; who reads terrorists their Miranda rights and gives them lawyers; who apologizes to the world for America’s manifold sins; who increases the national debt by $1.6 trillion in his first year; who elects to try Khalid Sheik Mohammad in Manhattan; who promises transparency and then presides over shameless backroom deals; who clings to cap-and-trade even in the midst of economic misery; who extends more conciliation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than to Republicans; who has nearly the entire press in his back pocket but nonetheless attempts to punish Fox News; who disdains all Republican proposals as “the failed ideas of the past”; and whose vanity (a presidential podium and teleprompter in a sixth-grade classroom?) is verging on the pathetic.
President Obama has signaled that he will not change course. It’s an affront that it took him 70-plus platitudinous and self-indulgent minutes to say so.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.
http://article.nationalreview.com/423259/carteresque/mona-charen
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Agreed with the previous article. And again I add, takes a very cheap shot at Supreme Court Justices in front of the world, and while they have no opportunity to defend themselves.
CNN can debate whether he is JC or not but one thing is for sure - he isn't Abe Lincoln.
Never did Lincoln stoop so low.
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About (Saving) Face
Eight reasons why KSM will be tried by military commission.
The end is near for the Obama administration’s plan to try KSM and four other 9/11 conspirators in federal court in downtown Manhattan. The handwriting was on the wall for weeks as the extraordinary costs of the trial — as much as $1 billion in security expenses alone over four or five years — became apparent and the Underwear Bomber reintroduced the American public to domestic terrorism. Then, Mayor Bloomberg told the administration that it should find someplace else to hold the trial. Now, me-toos have come from New York senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, both of whom had previously supported the NYC trial.
It is a remarkable turn of events for Attorney General Eric Holder, who, the White House has said for months, made the decision alone and was running the show. The White House tired, far more quickly than many expected, of the AG’s bungled plan and realized that public opinion had turned decisively against the trial. Maybe the White House grew frustrated with the AG’s mistakes on national-security matters, from releasing the CIA interrogation memoranda last spring over the vociferous protests of former CIA directors who served under Presidents Bush and Clinton, to commencing a criminal investigation of CIA interrogators who had previously been informed by career prosecutors that they would not be subject to prosecution, to deciding to Mirandize the Underwear Bomber without consulting the intelligence services and charge him as a criminal defendant with all the rights of an American citizen.
The attorney general assured the White House that releasing the CIA memoranda would result in popular condemnation of Bush-era interrogation practices; instead, the American public met the memos with a collective shrug. Polls show that a majority of Americans support even the most aggressive enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA uses. Investigating the interrogators thoroughly undermined the intelligence services’ trust in the administration, being as it was a betrayal of the president’s promise to our intelligence professionals to look forward, not backward. The decision exposed the new Justice Department leadership as nakedly partisan and more than willing to overrule the prosecutorial decisions of career prosecutors as a sop to the Far Left.
The White House realized it was staring another self-created disaster in the face and decided to pull the plug on the KSM trial before it was too late. The Justice Department is now scrambling to find an “alternative” venue; the administration continues to say that the president supports a civilian, not military, trial.
But the “alternative” venue won’t be in the United States. It will be Guantanamo Bay. And the trial will be by military commission, not civilian trial. After the jump are the top eight reasons for this, in no particular order:
1. Attorney General Holder, not President Obama, will take the fall. The White House hid behind the attorney general when the KSM trial was announced last November. The president said the decision was the attorney general’s alone, and the attorney general asserted he didn’t even consult the president before making it. It was hard to imagine the White House playing virtually no role in such an important policy (and political) decision, but it’s more plausible in light of the Justice Department’s unilateral decision to Mirandize the Underwear Bomber and charge him as a criminal defendant.
Now, President Obama can simply overrule the Attorney General and leave it to the media to chatter about the president’s displeasure with Holder. Remember that, according to press accounts, Greg Craig was pressured to resign as White House counsel in large part because he took the blame for misjudging the difficulty of closing Guatanamo. Is it worse to misjudge the bipartisan opposition to trying KSM by civilian trial?
2. The Martha Stewart Factor. Many observers noted that a civilian trial would provide KSM a platform on which to spout his views and justify his acts. Shortly after the decision was announced, the media reported that KSM and his co-conspirators were planning to plead not guilty and use the trial as a forum in which to attack U.S. foreign policy. The decision’s defenders pooh-poohed these concerns, mentioning among other things that there are no cameras in federal courtrooms. Any lawyer who has tried a case in a New York federal court, and anyone who has read a New York tabloid, knows that the absence of cameras in the courtroom will not do much to tamp down intense media coverage of the trial.
Look no farther than the trial of Martha Stewart, in which one of us participated as a prosecutor. Remember the spectacle of reporters running out of the courtroom waving red scarves to TV cameras as signals that Ms. Stewart had been convicted. The media scrutinized every aspect of that trial, which dominated the news for its entire six weeks. The KSM trial would dwarf all prior trials held in New York, in terms of not just the seriousness of the charges but also the size of the media circus that would accompany it. And the KSM trial would last months and maybe even years — it would almost certainly run right into the 2012 presidential campaign.
By contrast, at Guantanamo, it is not even clear there would be a trial, as KSM and his cohorts were previously willing to plead guilty and receive the death penalty rather than go through such a proceeding. In the event of a trial, the press would have access, but we doubt that Anderson Cooper would take up residence outside the base’s front gates.
3. KSM is more likely to be convicted and sentenced to death in a military commission. The attorney general and the president have confidently stated that KSM will be convicted. They are probably right, but civilian juries are notoriously unpredictable — Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, escaped the death penalty because one juror out of 12 voted against it. Add to this that Holder himself has testified to Congress that, in his view, KSM was tortured by the CIA, an admission that defense lawyers will put front and center — both before the jury and in efforts to get the judge to exclude evidence. Evidence obtained by torture is not admissible in a military commission, either, but the government has greater flexibility in that forum as compared to a civilian trial.
This greater flexibility has ramifications beyond torture. Certain types of hearsay evidence would be admissible in a military commission but not in a civilian trial. The Obama administration very much appreciates the benefits to the prosecution of using a military commission — after all, they are using military commissions, not civilian trials, to try the terrorists against whom they believe they have weaker evidence, such as the men who plotted the attack on the USS Cole.
4. Guantanamo Bay is not closing any time soon. KSM’s civilian trial was always meant to be paired with the closure of Guantanamo Bay. The administration’s self-imposed one-year deadline was abandoned as unrealistic, but the wisdom of setting any time frame at all has been thrown into doubt by revelations that Abdulmutallab was trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen. Yemeni nationals make up the largest group of detainees still held at Guantanamo, and the Obama administration, at least for the time being, has ruled out repatriating them given the high risk that many of them would return to the fight. Bringing the most notorious terrorists to the U.S. for trial while the facility remains open is a lose-lose proposition for the administration. The American public will wonder why we are incurring the enormous costs and risks to public safety of trying KSM and the other 9/11 plotters in the U.S., when Guantanamo remains open for business and is indisputably a less expensive and far more secure location.
5. “Not In My Backyard.” The country is in full NIMBY mode. New York was the most logical place to hold a civilian trial because it is where most of the victims were murdered. With every major politician in the state now opposed to the idea, however, the administration is faced with the prospect of convincing political leaders in another state to host the trial. The options are further limited because the law requires that the crimes have some direct connection to the venue in which the trial would occur. Of course, there are isolated opportunists who would volunteer, but good luck getting a consensus from the entire political leadership of another state.
6. Congress will give the administration cover. Republicans in Congress have introduced bills that would bar the use of federal funds to try KSM and other terrorist detainees in federal civilian courts. These bills are getting significant bipartisan traction from Sens. Jim Webb and Joe Lieberman, among others. The administration will publicly oppose these bills, but will privately welcome them because their passage, or even the prospect of their passage, provides a ready excuse for them to throw up their hands and blame Congress for forcing it to backtrack on trying KSM in civilian court.
We’ve already seen this strategy in action with Guantanamo. The administration has conveniently pinned the blame for the abandonment of its goal to close Guantanamo by the end of January on Congress’s threats to block funds for the alternative holding facility in rural Illinois. Very little mention is made of the real causes of this failure — the administration’s miscalculations about the willingness or ability of other countries to take the detainees, and the opposition by most Americans to bringing terrorists to the United States for indefinite detention and possible release.
7. Trying some terrorists detained at Guantanamo in military commissions and others in civilian trials never made any sense. The attorney general sowed the seeds of the civilian trial’s demise by creating a two-track system in which terrorists who targeted civilians in the United States would receive more constitutional protections and rights than terrorists who targeted our troops overseas in active battle zones. This was the principal reason Holder gave for sending KSM to civilian court while the men who plotted the USS Cole attack went to a military commission. This distinction made no sense, created incentives for terrorists to attack civilians rather than troops, and now has proved too clever by half.
It is impossible for the Obama administration to provide a coherent explanation as to why KSM needs to be tried in civilian court. They can’t say they believe civilian courts are more legitimate than military commissions, because that would undermine military commissions. They can hint, through unnamed sources, that they are sending the “slam dunk” cases to civilian court and the weaker ones to military commissions with their more flexible evidentiary standards, but they can’t say that in the open without appearing to acknowledge what many critics have charged — the civilian trials will serve little purpose other than as show trials of the obviously guilty, while the real work of determining guilt or innocence will happen in the military commissions. If they had the courage of their purported convictions that terrorists who wage war on the United States are entitled to the same protections as common criminals, the administration would abandon military commissions altogether, rather than channel the more difficult cases to them. Unwilling to take this step, and in the face of bipartisan opposition to civilian trials, the administration will be left with no choice but to fully embrace military commissions for all Guantanamo detainees whom they wish to put on trial, including KSM.
8. Trying KSM in a military commission will kill the story before the midterm elections. The election of Scott Brown, who made his advocacy of enhanced interrogation techniques and opposition to trying KSM in civilian court central parts of his campaign, was a wake-up call that national security remains an important issue, particularly after Abdulmutallab’s failed attack, and one that does not favor the Democrats. The administration has begun to backtrack by signaling that the trial will not be held in New York City. Their next step will be to kill the controversy entirely by announcing that charges against KSM and his co-conspirators will be reinstated before a military commission. These charges were recently dismissed, but without prejudice, meaning the charges can be reinstated by the military more or less whenever it wants to.
Voila! Face saved.
— Dana M. Perino is former press secretary to Pres. George W. Bush. Bill Burck is a former federal prosecutor and deputy counsel to President Bush.
http://article.nationalreview.com/423438/about-saving-face/bill-burck--dana-perino
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FEBRUARY 3, 2010 4:00 A.M.
Mr. President, Words Matter
Obama, the rhetorician, forgot that people might actually take seriously what he said.
What is Barack Obama’s real problem? Too many people here and abroad took him at his word, and he now seems quite angry at that.
For two years Obama serially damned the entrepreneurial classes. They should “spread the wealth,” be “patriotic,” and pay “their fair share.” They should be paying more income, payroll, and inheritance taxes. They could not be trusted with health care, student loans, high finance, or auto manufacturing. Their lifestyles of private jets and Super Bowl junkets came at the expense of the downtrodden. The would-be rich who made just over $200,000 were indiscriminately lumped together with the elite rich on Wall Street — who ironically contributed inordinately to Barack Obama’s non–publicly financed campaign coffers.
Apparently, the small-business classes took Obama’s writs seriously, and for the foreseeable future they have shut down — they have quit hiring and buying, and are riding out the “recovery.” In response, a frantic Obama suddenly began talking about balanced budgets, tax cuts, and tax credits, and praising the private sector. Too late: Too many entrepreneurs took him at his original word.
Then there was the constant partisanship, the “never let a crisis go to waste” Chicago hardball. Never has a president talked so much about reaching across the aisle and done so little of it. During the campaign, the Senate’s most partisan member claimed he was its least. That same deception characterized most of his first year in the White House. He promised C-SPAN coverage of bipartisan give-and-take, while actually holding the health-care debate behind Democratic congressional doors to offer bribes and insider deals in exchange for votes. “Let’s end the bickering” was usually the preface to “Bush did it, not me.” Absolute Democratic control of Washington — both Congress and the White House — meant that Republicans had “played Washington politics” to stop grass-roots governance.
Then Scott Brown won the Senate seat long occupied by the late liberal lion Ted Kennedy, and Obama’s polls dived below 50 percent. Soon even New York Times columnists began listing all sorts of reservations about Obama that they had long entertained but mysteriously only now voiced. In response, a frantic Obama is suddenly talking about reaching out, meeting with Republicans, and drafting bipartisan legislation. Too late: Too many Republicans took him at his original word.
In his dealings abroad, remember “hope and change,” the “reset button,” and all the grandiose promises of a year ago? Barack Obama assured our critics that he would have the dreadful Bush Guantanamo Bay detention center closed by now. But then the reality that most of the detainees were cold-blooded killers who would revert to terrorism upon release — and many were Yemenis eager to join up with al-Qaeda at home — made those repeated boasts inoperative. I will be surprised if Obama ever closes Guantanamo.
The architect of 9/11 and self-confessed beheader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was supposed to be accorded a big public civilian trial a couple of thousand yards away from the scene of his mass-murdering. There, his attorneys could plead that the Bush-Cheney nexus had waterboarded him, as he voiced to the world all his grievances against a purported neo-imperialist, colonialist, and racist Bush America — hoping that at least one sympathetic juror might fall for his “America made me do it” defense.
That too seems now to be history. Sometime around Christmas, Obama discovered that al-Qaeda both still wishes to kill us and does not appreciate that we give Miranda rights to our would-be killers. I would be surprised if KSM is ever tried in a civilian court in the United States.
Iran was to be wowed and charmed by Barack Hussein Obama, who would distance himself from America’s past sins, dating all the way back to the coup against Mossadegh in 1953. Ahmadinejad would faint in ecstasy like the 2008 campaign crowds, as he gave up his nuclear-weapon plans and fell in love with the new postnational America. And now? Iran does the same old, same old — “Israel must be destroyed,” and no one dare tell us to stop our nuclear program. The latest theocratic communiqué promised the “end of American civilization” — as we rush anti-missile batteries to the Gulf. I would not be surprised to see Iran set off a bomb this year or next.
This scenario has been replayed all over the globe. Thousands of Japanese hit the streets, echoing Obama’s signature “Change!” — but as in “Change U.S.-Japanese Relations.” And why not, if we are to take on another $9 trillion in debt during this administration, much of it from Japan and China? And how dare we base our troops on Japanese soil — especially in a postnational age, when alliances, and a world divided into good guys and bad guys, are, well, so passé?
Russia still bullies its neighbors and tries to embarrass the United States. China still threatens to take over Taiwan. North Korea still tries to shake us down for cash by stirring up trouble with Seoul. Chávez is as buffoonish as ever, and has only been empowered by our recent “outreach.”
In short, throughout the campaign and during the first months of his presidency, Obama globally made the argument that George Bush’s America had done wrong and was part of the world’s problem rather than its solution. But the world garbled Obama’s message, and instead came away with the distinct impression that America itself — whether Bush’s or Obama’s — was the problem. One cannot spend two years blaming America under Bush, and then suddenly claim, “That was then, this is now,” and expect the world to rally to the godhead of Barack Obama and his new, improved America.
How odd that Obama, the rhetorician, forgot that words matter — and that the truth is not a trifle, a mere construct predicated on the particular situation at the moment it is voiced.
Too many people, here and abroad, took Barack Obama at his word. And right now — drifting amid high unemployment, mounting domestic opposition, and energized enemies abroad — he sorely wishes that they had not.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.
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Well the cans have time to get it on with the Chosen serial liar.
But if their idiotic perfornance with the One last week is any indication they still are too stupid to call him on his deception.
They need to study every word, every response and instead of LETTING him turn everything around on them just turn it right back on him.
Don't let him get away with "you are the party of no" and "I am reaching out to you" and "you need to stop the paritisanship" when in fact he comes with a total radical agenda and then states anyone who disagrees with him is keeping the country from moving forward.
The cans still do not have a trained studied mouthpiece that can go up against him except on the radio waves.
They must learn to highlight his lies and deception. Not let him get away with BS.
So far they can't do it. Till the RNC studies BOs MO and finds way to verbally dance around, through and over this guy we look like children being lectured by the prof.
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Newt Gingrich.
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Possibly Newt could call him on his lies like:
"I am not an idealogue".
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Obama Commands the Impossible
Posted by Patrick J. Michaels
Today’s New York Times reports that President Obama has “ordered the rapid development of technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal,” as well as mandating the production of more corn-based ethanol and financing farmers to produce “cellulosic” ethanol from waste fiber.
You’ve got to like the president’s moxie. Faced with his inability to pass health care reform and cap-and-trade, he now chooses to command the impossible and the inefficient.
Most power plants are simply not designed for carbon capture. There isn’t any infrastructure to transport large amounts of carbon dioxide, and no one has agreed on where to put all of it. Corn-based ethanol produces more carbon dioxide in its life cycle than it eliminates, and cellulosic ethanol has been “just around the corner” since I’ve been just around the corner.
However, doing what doesn’t make any economic sense makes a lot of political sense in Washington, because inefficient technologies require subsidies–in this case to farmers, ethanol processors, utilities, engineering and construction conglomerates, and a whole host of others. Has the president forgotten that his unpopular predecessor started the ethanol boondogle (his response to global warming) and drove up the price of corn to the point of worldwide food riots? Hasn’t he read that cellulosic ethanol is outrageously expensive? Has he ever heard of the “not-in-my-backyard” phenomenon when it comes to storing something people don’t especially like?
Yeah, he probably has. But the political gains certainly are worth the economic costs. Think about it. In the case of carbon capture, it’s so wildly inefficient that it can easily double the amount of fuel necessary to produce carbon-based energy. What’s not to like if you’re a coal company, now required to load twice as many hopper cars? What’s not to like if you’re a utility, guaranteed a profit and an incentive to build a snazzy, expensive new plant? And what’s not to like if you’re a farmer, gaining yet another subsidy?
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/02/04/obama-commands-the-impossible/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cato-at-liberty+%28Cato+at+Liberty%29
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What I find truly remarkeble is the notion that it is always someone else's fault other then the ONE.
No fingers pointed at the ONE. Only Emanuel.
The wagons are circling tighter and tighter to protect the ONE from all party loyal starting from the ONE himself down to the loyal academics, the msm, other crats, unions, womens groups, and the rest.
That is amazing to me.
*****Congressional Democrats point finger of blame at Rahm Emanuel
By Alexander Bolton - 02/09/10 06:00 AM ET
Democrats in Congress are holding White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel accountable for his part in the collapse of healthcare reform.
The emerging consensus among critics in both chambers is that Emanuel’s lack of Senate experience slowed President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.
The share of the blame comes as cracks are beginning to show in Emanuel’s once-impregnable political armor. Last week he had to apologize after a report surfaced that he called liberal groups “retarded” in a private meeting.
While Emanuel has quelled that controversy by meeting with advocates for people with disabilities, on Capitol Hill he’s under fire for poor execution of the president’s healthcare agenda in the Senate.
"I think Rahm ran the play his boss called; once Obama called the play, Rahm did everything he could to pass it, scorched-earth and all that,” said a senior lawmaker, who added that Emanuel didn’t seek a broader base of Senate Republicans. “I think he did miscalculate the Senate. He did what he thought he had to do to win."
Senate Democrats grilled White House advisers last week during a special Senate Democratic retreat, expressing frustration over the lack of a clear plan.
While Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) ripped chief political strategist David Axelrod, Senate Democrats say Emanuel, who was more closely involved in managing negotiations in Congress, also deserves scrutiny.
No Democrat is calling for Emanuel’s resignation, even privately, and they acknowledge his hard work and straightforward approach in a very tough job.
They also say there’s plenty of blame on healthcare to go around.
But centrists and liberal Democrats both take issue — albeit in different ways — with how he approached the Senate.
“I like Rahm; he's always been a straight shooter with me," said a Democratic centrist senator who was closely involved in the healthcare debate.
The lawmaker said Emanuel misjudged the Senate by focusing on only a few Republicans, citing Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins as too narrow a pool.
“In the Senate, you have to anchor in the middle and build out," said the lawmaker.
“They just wanted to win," the source said of Emanuel and other White House strategists. "Their plan was to keep all the Democrats together and work like hell to get Snowe and Collins. The Senate doesn't work that way. You need a radius of 10 to 12 from the other side if you're going to have a shot."
But liberals take a different view. They argue Emanuel made a mistake by allowing Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to spend months negotiating with Republicans on his committee, such as Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa).
“I’m most critical of the fact that the Senate [Democratic] leadership and, I assume, the White House tried to get a deal with people like Grassley, which was impossible and wasted a huge amount of time,” said Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal advocacy group.
One senior Democratic senator said Emanuel was initially reluctant to push healthcare reform so early in Obama’s first term, counseling instead for the president to focus on jobs and the economy
But the president decided healthcare had to pass when he had a strong political mandate and the party controlled large majorities in both chambers.
Obama was convinced overhauling the nation’s healthcare system would boost the struggling economy by curbing costs and reducing the long-term federal deficit, say Democratic sources.
An administration official, however, disputed the notion that Emanuel disagreed with the president’s timeline on healthcare.
Emanuel declined to be interviewed for this article.
Once Obama decided to make healthcare the top priority, Emanuel approached it with his signature hard-charging style. That did not sit well in the Senate, according to Democratic senators and House members.
A liberal House Democrat who served with Emanuel during his entire career in Congress said: "I don't think the skills that are attributed to him — muscling things through — are well-suited to the Senate.
"The House is like an Australian-rules rugby match,” the lawmaker added. “The Senate is like a march at a men’s club in imperial Britain. They're a bunch of barons over there."
Emanuel constantly pressed Senate negotiators to stay on a timeline for passing healthcare reform. Centrist Democrats and Republicans alike complained about “arbitrary” deadlines.
Snowe complained about a rushed process when she announced she would vote against the Senate healthcare bill, even after she supported the Democratic healthcare bill in the Finance Committee.
One liberal Democratic senator said Emanuel has a much better relationship with House Democrats.
The senator said that Emanuel allowed White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, who had worked 15 years for Baucus, to take more of a lead in the upper chamber. The lawmaker said that was a mistake that allowed Baucus more time than necessary to negotiate with Republicans.
Baucus scoffed at the notion that Messina could pressure him.
“He’s not going to put pressure on me,” Baucus told The Washington Post last year during an interview for a profile of Messina.
A liberal healthcare advocate said this management strategy wasted months of time.
It’s true that Messina was the person the White House relied on to quarterback the Senate strategy. He agreed with the Baucus strategy of going ahead to make this deal [with Republicans] and it did go on too long,” said the advocate.
Some Democrats in Congress also question whether Emanuel scheduled enough time for the president to travel the country to stump for healthcare reform.
“For a guy who talked a lot about not liking the culture of Washington, he spent a lot of time in Washington,” said a Democratic leadership aide.
The aide noted that former President George W. Bush traveled to states and congressional districts he carried on Election Day to pressure Democratic lawmakers to support his agenda. The aide said Obama did not put similar pressure on centrist Republicans.
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said Obama’s advisers lost touch with the county’s populist sentiment as he became consumed by the challenges of his agenda.
"As a group, overall, I would give them a good grade, but there's something missing there and that's an overall strategy of ‘What are the things we're going to get done and how are we going to work with Congress?’ ” Harkin said of Obama’s circle of advisers.
Harkin said they lacked “a feeling for what’s going on around the country, the populist sentiment.”
Obama’s advisers have since realized this mistake. The president has sounded more populist tones in recent weeks, such as proposing a hefty tax on the bonuses of Wall Street bankers.
Source:
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/80315-congressional-dems-point-finger-at-rahm
The contents of this site are © 2010 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsisiary of News Communications, Inc.
Comments (117)PAGE |1|2| ... |6|7|>That time was wasted negotiating with Senate republicans and conservative democrats should underscore how weak this administration is and how dysfunctional the senate is. The senate is more concerned with it's clubby atmosphere and good ol' boy network than it is in doing the people's business. Just once democrats need to find a pair and battle it out. Even if they lose it would be a good thing to show that they are at least fighting for their constituents. As it is, they roll over for republicans at the first sign of opposition. Dems will lose big in November ad not have a clue as to why.
BY AJ on 02/09/2010 at 06:19
It is arrogant to believe that the bill failed because of Emanuel's failures to 'work' the system. Both bills were/are bad and the sooner the libs admit that the sooner work can proceed on a pragmatic bill that most will be able to swallow. All the talk about Obama's inability to cram legislation through focuses on procedure and deal making, not on sincere statesmanlike objectives. If he truly believed his healthcare bill would bring costs down then he is delusional. I think he is intentionally lying. It is all about power. Witness the growth of government jobs at the rate of 10,000 per month since he came into office and the increase in their salaries. Public Unions are drooling at the thought of the money pooled by thousands of paying union members (Hence Andy Stern's regular visits to the WH.) Obama relied on public unions to get the presidency. He will do anything to keep them including this sham bill that will raise taxes and keep his union buddies happy with well padded healthcare and retirement benefits from the time they retire in their fifties until they die in their eighties. If he succeeds in pushing this garbage through you can bet the healthcare system will be top heavy with unionized medical workers. Just wait until you need oxygen at home and your in home health provider decides to go on strike. Nurses? Doctors? Med Techs? Think it can't happen? Think again.
BY cooper52 on 02/09/2010 at 06:41
AJ you are correct. The Dems will loose big in November, but not for your reasoning. They will loose because this Bill is bad and the strong arm Obama admin. is trying to ram it down our throats with special back room deals and without things like TORT reform. They need to start over with a clean sheet of paper in a bipartisan manner. By the way, We needs JOBS a lot more than we need free healthcare for Illegals.
BY Larry on 02/09/2010 at 06:58
"One senior Democratic senator said Emanuel was initially reluctant to push healthcare reform so early in Obama’s first term, counseling instead for the president to focus on jobs and the economy" I think if this had been the strategy, we'd see a far different landscape right now. Of, course, the line I've taken from the text here is contradicted in another part of the story, "One senior Democratic senator said Emanuel was initially reluctant to push health care reform so early in Obama’s first term, counseling instead for the president to focus on jobs and the economy." So, we really don't get any concrete answers in this article, since Rahm declined the interview. We're left to wonder which side of this story is correct? Did he agree that the time was now (don't let a crisis go to waste) or did he think the economy should be addressed (don't let a crisis spiral into an uncontrollable situation).
BY Chip on 02/09/2010 at 07:04
Members of Congress are experts at deflecting blame away from where it belongs— on themselves. If it weren't so tragic, I thought their blaming Wall Street for the collapse was hilarious, given that it was Congress that fostered the collapse by its polices. The failure of HC follows the same pattern. Congress denies any responsibility. What a joke. Hopefully, it will be held accountable in November.
BY Steve851 on 02/09/2010 at 07:36
I don't believe that any 1 individual is 'to blame' for health insurance/care reform not being passed.I do believe that far too many elected officials forget WHO they are in Washington to serve - the people of the United States and not just their own State's concerns.Also because it costs so much for elected officials to 'keep' their jobs, which is why campaign finance reform is such an important issue and being hyper-partisan is a cheap way of insuring re-election.However, none of the above gets the 'work of the country' done.Like AJ, what this story most clearly demonstrates is how the Senate as a legislative branch is no longer serving this country.The archaic rules, such as 'holds' to extort pork for your state (witness Sens. Bond Shelby) and the filibuster/cloture super majority are assuring that the vitally needed solutions for our country are NOT being legislated or enacted.
BY Dari on 02/09/2010 at 07:43
Businesses cannot make future plans because government interference is out of control. Washington only looks out for its friends, and takes from the little guys.My husband and I each owned a small business. I closed mine as of Dec. 31. We will close the other after this year. The new American dream is to retire early and live simply. I'm looking forward to less stress.You can't blame this on Bush.
BY CONUNDRUM on 02/09/2010 at 07:45
I, too, have chosen to opt out of this mess and live more simply. And I hope the government sorely misses my annual "contribution" in taxes of more than $100K. I hope my state misses my annual "contribution" in real estate taxes on two properties of more than $25K. All of my life, I've worked hard, struggled to raise my kids and put them through college, paid taxes, etc. I never once took a handout from anyone. There is no more reward for those who are responsible and work hard, as we're taxed to death at every turn, but watch our government take more and more of what we earn and give it to others, or it just goes down some black hole. The "rewards" all go elsewhere and, pardon me, not to those who necessarily desere it…so, why bother?
BY MamaD on 02/09/2010 at 08:08
What the Democrats fail repeatedly to realize is that, had they crafted a good bill, the American people would have been behind them. Then Rahm wouldn't have had to try "scorched earth" tactics. Also, the people wouldn't be getting ready to vote them out of office. It's not any strategist's fault, it is the fault of the party as a whole for producing a confusing, overreaching, overly instrusive and, lastly, hugely expensive boondoggle of a bill. The American people want something simple, cost effective and understandable. 2044 pages? Give me a break.
BY Tom on 02/09/2010 at 08:09
ObamaCare failed because it was bad legislation and the American people didn't want it. They could see the disaster for what it was and rejected it. Its failure can't be blamed on Rahm as far as his behavior, except that he promoted this disastrous bill.
BY Wise Cherokee on 02/09/2010 at 08:16PAGE |1|2| ... |6|7|>Add Comment
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Of course the Dems are going nuts trying to capitalize on the Toyota thing and make it a political issue - which it certainly is not.
The Bama is looking out for us. What a joke.
"Toyota vows quality shake-up, faces criminal probe
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, begins the hearing on the "Response By Toyota and NUTS (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) to incidents of "sudden unintended acceleration" on Capitol Hill in Washington February 23, 2010. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
On Tuesday February 23, 2010, 11:53 am
By Nobuhiro Kubo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Toyota Motor Corp U.S. executive promised a quality shake-up on Tuesday as the Obama administration said it would hold the carmaker's chief to a pledge to address safety issues after massive recalls.
Congressional hearings over the next two days are critical for the world's largest automaker as it seeks to repair damage over unintended acceleration problems and braking issues that have led to the recall of more than 8.5 million vehicles around the world.
Criminal investigations are now being hinted at by subpoenas from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a federal grand jury in New York.
Toyota's top-ranking American executive, Jim Lentz, will testify on Tuesday before a panel of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce committee in proceedings scheduled to start at 1100 EST.
Company President Akio Toyoda, grandson of Toyota's founder, will testify on Wednesday before a panel of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee.
In a statement prepared ahead of the hearings, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he would hold Toyoda to his assurance that the carmaker is working to address all safety issues.
In addition to Toyota executives, U.S. safety regulators will also be grilled on the question of why red flags were missed.
"The mood of the investigative committees going into these hearings is looking increasingly hostile toward Toyota," said Aaron Bragman, analyst at IHS Global Insight.
Adding to the Japanese automaker's deepening crisis on Monday, new documents surfaced which detailed how Toyota beat back U.S. safety regulators' efforts for a wider probe in 2007.
"From a public relations standpoint, this has been an unmitigated disaster from the start for Toyota, handled poorly by a team unfamiliar with major public relations catastrophes," Bragman said.
"The situation looks likely to get worse this week for Toyota, as now the company's advertising and public relations teams' attempts to win over the public and media seem disingenuous at best."
In testimony prepared for his appearance on Capitol Hill, Toyota's Lentz said: "We now understand that we must think differently when investigating complaints and communicate faster, better and more effectively with our customers and our regulators."
Mike Jackson, chief executive of AutoNation Inc, was one of several hundred Toyota dealers and workers who came to Washington on Tuesday as part of a campaign organized by the automaker to help win back popular and political support.
"I'm certain that once the vehicles have been repaired and production has resumed that going into March and April, that (Toyota's) sales will recover," Jackson told Reuters Insider.
In the wake of Toyota's massive recall, Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, issued a call on Tuesday for urgent changes to strengthen U.S. auto safety regulation.
It said that the U.S. safety regulatory system should be reformed to become more transparent and that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration should have more funding and the ability to impose tougher sanctions.
PRELUDE TO TESTIMONY
In a preview of the line Toyota's president could take in his testimony, Toyoda said in a statement published in The Wall Street Journal he was committed to making sure Toyota learns from the crisis and changes its ways.
"It is clear to me that in recent years we didn't listen as carefully as we should -- or respond as quickly as we must -- to our customers' concerns," Toyoda said.
The extended apology from Toyoda came hours after Toyota said it had received a federal grand jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan on February 8.
The automaker also said the SEC had asked for documents related to unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles and the company's disclosure policies. Toyota said it would cooperate with the investigations.
Toyota's U.S. shares were down 0.8 percent at $72.35 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning, down more than 21 percent from their 12-month high reached last month.
(Additional reporting by Chang-Ran Kim and Kevin Krolicki; writing by Matthew Lewis, editing by Hugh Lawson, David Holmes and Dave Zimmerman)"
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I saw part of this on Fareed Zakaria another leftist from the MSM. I think it sums up the denial of the left over the peopel's rejection of their agenda. It is never the policy per se that is criticized. It is always that they didn't do well delivering the message.
It isn't their Rx for the US is not wrong it is just that Obama or people around him, or Congress etc just didn't educate the people about the truth. Their followers in the MSM keep pounding the same message across their media outlets such as Jonathan Alter, Howard Fineman and the NYT crew and the rest of the liberals.
I can only hope the Dems get reamed good in the next two elections once and for all.
****George Soros tells CNN: I’m not satisfied with Barack Obama, but he saved country from recession
CNN — posted by halboedeker on February, 28 2010 11:04 AM Discuss This: Comments(343) | Add to del.icio.us | Digg it
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria introduced George Soros as “the billionaire investor, financier, speculator, philanthropist and thinker.”
[A note: A lot of people have weighed in on this blog post about Soros and his life. If you want to know more, you can read his biography here.]
Zakaria on his “Fareed Zakaria GPS” this morning also noted that Soros was one of Barack Obama’s biggest supporters. Zakaria asked, “Are you satisfied with the job Barack Obama has done?”
Soros said he wasn’t. Soros wanted the banks nationalized, but added that Obama “made the political decision that that is un-American, will not be accepted.”
Yet Soros had praise for Obama’s overall leadership.
“He is paying a very heavy price for actually saving the country from going into a very deep recession or a depression, because people don’t — haven’t experienced it,” Soros said.
“He wanted to be the great uniter and he wanted to carry the country, sort of bring it together. But the other side has absolutely no incentive to do it. So it takes two to tango. So that approach has failed.”
But Obama “got the message” when Massachusetts elected Scott Brown, a Republican, as Ted Kennedy’s successor, Soros said.
“I hope that, actually, now, he’s [Obama's] taking the health care back to Congress and overcoming the filibuster — the 60 percent vote requirement,” Soros said. “I think that’s the right reaction. So he’s sort of taking a tough stance. And that may be the turning point. It depends on how he follows it up.”
So what do you say to that?
Add a comment
File under: Barack Obama,CNN,Fareed Zakaria,George Soros
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Comments
Mr. Soros is the epitomy of the huge financiers of the world who cannot step away from their own elite ego and will stop at nothing to dominate the world via economic and financial manipulation. For the largest donr to be critical of his minion means something major is in tthe works and his comments are just a rue to further cloud thebigger picture of world financial control. Let Americans use common sense and American values to steer us away from the reef of disater that is upon us. Shame on you Progressives for selling your souls.
Reply Posted by: Mark Thatcher | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:13 PM
A most excellent comment!
Reply Posted by: Ed R | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:15 PM
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security are broke, broken, unfair, unstable, full of fraud as is congress and the presidency. They are all train wrecks, they have all come off the tracks, it’s up to us to vote them all out of office. I would not let these people wash my car. It’s been said that random picks from any phone book would make better representative’s, throw the bums out – all of them!!!
Reply Posted by: LawFinder | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:16 PM
Is this the same George Soros who is placing hedge bets on Greece ?
Why isn’t he considered an evil rich guy by the left ?
Reply Posted by: tankfixer | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:18 PM
Michigan out of work…..while I am sorry for your unfortunate circumstance, and wish you all the best in getting back to work, I don’t see how the government taking over 17% of the economy (health care) is going to do anything except give them another stick to beat us with.
Obama and all of his cronies, Reid, Pelosi, et al, and especially Soros are very dangerous people. Soros wants to destroy the United States as a constitutional republic. By buying dishonest politicians like obama, and with the influence of his massive financial empire, he hopes to continue duping the public into thinking that this is good for them.
We,as a nation, are at a turning point. I will tell you this, though. There are many who will not accept the socialist views of Soros and his puppets. They (the leftists) tell you, and you believe, that the health care mess is the fault of the eeeeeeevil insurance companies! Just like the same bs you have heard about big oil, big auto, big banks….
Ingenuity and the free market can bring us out of this mess. It will take hard work and good ideas.
The obama/soros syncophants believe that the government can “give” it to them, it’s free, we’re all equal, utopia is here, bla, bla, ad nauseum!
They’re going to “give” it to us all right!
The old cliche “There ain’t no free lunch” seems appropriate here. Trust me, YOU WILL PAY FOR IT, one way or another, you will pay for it.
It’s a giant lobster kettle. Before you know it, the water will be boiling and it’s too late. You cannot jump out. They own you.
Again, good luck with your situation. Please look long and hard at what the leftists propose. Read your history. Don’t fall into the trap.
Reply Posted by: tucasfacious | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:22 PM
Sure, nationalizing the banks might be “un-American,” but most likely Obama didn’t let it happen because he “knows those guys.”
How about bailing out the banks at taxpayer expense? Un-American? Nooo…
The only banks that need to be “nationalized” are the Federal Reserve banks. To NOT do so is “un-American.”
Reply Posted by: Sophia | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:22 PM
Soros is an evil man.
Reply Posted by: Lee Grikschat | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:23 PM
Mark, ya I am jealous of him to!
Reply Posted by: Scott | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:32 PM
Soros thinks of himself as a Robin Hood. He steals from the rich and spends the money the way he thinks it ought to be spent. He ignores the reality that people are lazy, selfish, and greedy. They take without giving. They are poor because they are stupid, not because they don’t have money.
Reply Posted by: JimmyDaGeek | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:35 PM
The Federal Reserve has been a problem since its inception. The Federal Reserve needs to ba abolished. It has nothing to do with the government and has been hijacking the economic system of the US since its beginning in 1910.
Reply Posted by: tucasfacious | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:36 PM
Oh I guess Obama took Soros the greedy creep’s money and didn’t do as Soros told him. Soros needs to be brought down to earth; the man is the picture of arrogance, greed and total megalomania. The man is as dangerous as they come.
Reply Posted by: Beli | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:43 PM
“Is this the same George Soros who is placing hedge bets on Greece ?
Why isn’t he considered an evil rich guy by the left ?”
Because the left have different standards for their own – especially the rich&famous ones. How do Hollywood’s elite liberals get away with the crap they do and still be held up as role models?
Fame and fortune seem to erase all blots if you’re on the left.
Reply Posted by: Dave in Dallas | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:44 PM
Soros is an absolutely DISGUSTING, marxist piece of garbage! He only wants to nationalize the banks because he ALREADY pulls the strings. He would have never pushed for it BEFORE he was ready to do so. When you hold the strings to the very institution that would run the banks, then you don’t have to worry about the institution getting in the way of your further gains in the federally hijacked banking system. He should be put on trial for attempted treason.
Reply Posted by: Susan Harkins | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:45 PM
George Soros, you are such a hypocrite. Obama is doing exactly what you paid him to do and that is to create chaos for the United States. That’s why your puppet smiles so much. He doesn’t care if any of his proposed changes come to fruition. He’s just here to cause problems.
Reply Posted by: Gerri Larsen | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:45 PM
I used to be the economic developer in a small town in Texas when a women from California asked to meet me and the mayor of our town. She lectured us for 20 minutes telling us what a wonderful town we had and why. Then, she spoke for 30 minutes about all the things we should change. At the end I told her, “If we made all the changes you just suggested all the good things you first talked about would no longer be here”. That is Soro’s, he made billions in a system he now despises and I guess his philosophy now is “I got mine, screw You!
Reply Posted by: Larry | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:49 PM
I ONLY HOPE THE MEDICAL DEATH PANEL WILL MAKE A QUICKER DECISION ON THAT GUY — GEORGE SOROS….PLSE PULL HIS PLUG ASAP !!!
Reply Posted by: TheLonePatriot | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:59 PM
hELLO?
SOROS OWNS OBAMA
\Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.\
Edwin Chen
Bloomberg
November 18, 2008
Reply Posted by: DANTE | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:00 PM
Soros is the epitome of a dangerous, evil man. He hates our country and is out to destroy it.
Reply Posted by: GodBlessAmerica | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:02 PM
I have no doubt he will be betting against the dollar soon and making a ton of money. Obama will have done what he paid him to do… without even knowing…
Reply Posted by: Thomass | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:14 PM
My question is this. Why can’t these rich liberals come out of the closet and “shell out” their money for free health care. I am more than happy with my health care insurance the company gave us…
Reply Posted by: Jon | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:19 PM
Soros is the master behind the stooge that now occupies “our” White House. The American people are waking up to the agenda of the “progressives”…who by the way, dominate the strings in the so-called “mainstream” media. Can’t wait until next November! Revenge of the American people and the death of the Democratic Party!
Reply Posted by: RJ | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:19 PM
I’ve read and listen to Mr. Soros for years and years now, I have concluded he uses interviews as an opportunity to spin the future to confuse the people and set up the investment public to be flat footed for his future trades. He always knows the topics to be discussed, he always goes to a trusted interviewer, ie CFR global citizen Zakaria. Hes a trader- hes like the rest of us, he really just wants to make a hugh pile of money, like the rest of the sociopath investment banks, who think they operate in a vacum, George just sees the weakness and corruption in the left is where he sees the real easy money. Working in politics and when he makes foolish statements, amounts to playing his hand. Entities, Big G’s, and traders like Soros are all the same.
Reply Posted by: jake D. | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:22 PM
tucasfacious:
I am assuming you are a student of “Secrets of the Temple”….. Quite a fascinating book!!!!!
Reply Posted by: HOTHEAD | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:22 PM
Ahhhhh, poor old Georgie. Little Rahmbo and Obama didn’t deliver for him….well, other than the billions plus drilling venture off of Brazil. Soros is extraordinarily dangerous as is Warren Buffet. Both of these men are doing their very best to manipulate the US and break the nation into three segmented populations for personal control and influence. Presidents need to be vetted for past and present contacts. The last look at the White House roster for visitors, had Soros listed with four visits. The guy is throwing up a facade for something else he wants.
Reply Posted by: tom adams | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:23 PM
Obama must be doing something right if Robert Soros doesn’t like him.
Soros is pushing for a one-world-governemnt
Reply Posted by: bonniwheeler | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:24 PM
Soros has funded Obama and his ilk for quite some time. This man is one pathetic human being.
http://nymag.com/news/politics/30634/
The picture is telling.
Reply Posted by: Neal N. Lichmee | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:25 PM
B.O. Stinks … from the get go, I spotted him as an empty suit … a smiling bull$hitter. NO EXPERIENCE … NO BACKGROUND … NO GRADES TO JUDGE HIM BY (To say nothing about saying nothing about his birth certificate) … LIE AFTER LIE documented on video … total disregard for our troops (Bush met EVERY family who lost a loved one). And since I mentioned Dubya, the peace & love people did everything they could to vilify the man, but conveniently forget B.O.’s ADMITTED drug use. Yes, folks America needs a secret society of socialists in the White House. BTW, ever notice how B.O. cocks his head … look up Mussolini for a comparison. God Bless America … we need it ASAP!
Reply Posted by: Rod | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:25 PM
George Soros should pack his bags and move back to Europe and take his socialist ideas with him. Who needs a billionaire who makes his money on sleazy deals that steal money from the middle class.
Reply Posted by: Richard | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:26 PM
Tom Adams, You’re half right. B.O. is pushing for a one world government as well. These remarks by Soros are just for public consumption, i.e. they are NOT to be trusted.
Reply Posted by: John Smith | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:45 PM
Wouldn’t it be good if there was a way to measure the intelligence and education of the posters on comment sections like these?
80 years of gradually lowered educational standards and the dumbing down the working class have led us to the position we are in…. a population who is easily manipulated by emotional buzzwords and trigger phrases.
Reply Posted by: davidius | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:50 PM
I”m sick of hearing about soros and buffet and what thier “opinions”are.Neither one gives a damn what happens to america,just as long as they get to manipulate behind the scenes and make thier precious dollars.I’m all for free markets,have none of the lefts disdain for business,however there’s always been something rotten in denmark with soros and buffet.We need to bounce these fools or take em out.
Reply Posted by: solgreatman | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:55 PM
There is a no more despicable, evil human being slithering upon this earth than George Sorros (not his real name). The great “money changer” who almost bankrupted the British pound and threw the Malaysian economy and currency system into chaos to staisfy his own greed and maniacal lust for wealth.
To call this narcistic progressive elite or his Marxist socio-political orthadoxy, which cares absolutely nothing about the human condition “philanthropic” is the equivalent of calling Dracula a saint.
Reply Posted by: Lightning Jack | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:56 PM
“a student of “Secrets of the Temple”….. ” HOTHEAD
HOTHEAD…..Yes, has been a while since I read it. Probably 10 years.
Greider lays it out quite succinctly. Now, I must re-read it. Not a political book, very centered. No bull$h1t Just tells it like it is. Another is “The Creature from Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin.
The whole Fed is smoke and mirrors. It’s a scam, a parlor trick, and most people fall for it as they do not see the rabbit is already in the hat. It always has been. Once people study it and really see the way the Federal Reserve works and who is working it, it’s true. You will never trust a politician again. The Fed needs to go, but how? It would probably take more than most are willing to do to get rid of it. I believe some have tried. Many of those are not with us anymore.
Remember-In a hyper-inflated environment, the last one holding Federal Reserve notes loses.
Remember
Reply Posted by: tucasfacious | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:57 PM
All of the programs cited as broke have been pillaged by politicians similar to benefit bank accounts belonging to employees when the company is purchased. This is not the only area of durress as the same symptoms appear throughout all departments of the government.
Every time a decent program is started, no management, and no one to hold accountable seems to be SOP and the downfall of the program starts the day the program goes into effect.
Realizing the problem is a good start towards solving the problem, but then ongoing duedilligence MUST be adhered to in order to prevent backsliders re-emerging.
Reply Posted by: Bob | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 2:00 PM
Is George want his money back? Like from the off shore credit card transactions that flooded Obama’s campaign to avoid reporting limits?
Poor George, talks down gold then doubles down on his investment as the news hits the market? Ya, I am really concerned about the Leftist promoter, Mr. Soros. Oh, that we could trust this man in any legal endevor that was not anti-Capitalist. But, most of us judge on past performance not promises.
Reply Posted by: BlueSpringsMo | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 2:01 PM
George Soros is getting what he paid for. He wanted the left wing to run the country. He just did not bank on the fact that Obama would forget who was telling him what do everyday. It’s Soros and the Unions.Soros has one wish and that is to have total control of the world and its money. If Cap Trade come about, he will reap trillions in the markets and you can bet your bottom dollar that he is going to start pushing for it. Money runs the world not good intentions. Obama has left us Hopless and with very little Change in our pocket.
Reply Posted by: gabbie | Monday, March 1, 2010 at 2:08 PM
George Soros is a Marxist loving creep that takes advantage of our capitalist system by betting against it by supporting fellow Marxists like Obama. Soros is betting against the dollar doing all he can to make sure the dollar falls as well as the Euro so he can make another trillion $$. If America fails I wonder where Soros will find another safe haven that he can destroy to make more $$?***
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BBG:
Moving this to the US Foreign Policy thread.
Marc
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Moved as requested below:
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1338.msg35542#new
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I'm not entirely clear here-- is VDH being sarcastic when he uses the term "assasination" here? Why would targetting and killing an enemy in a war be an "assassination"?
Anyway, I'd like to suggest that this interesting post would better belong in the "Legal Issues created by the War on Islamic Fascism".
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I didn't get to hear the whole interview but Marc Levin had a professor from the Univ of Chicago on last PM.
He knew "Barack".
This professor is of gun ownership. He pointed out that Bama was clearly *to the left* of a "left" academic culture.
He said he had no illusions that other professors were against his stand on guns but Bama was clearly the ONLY one who would come out clear as day and state he was against anyone owning guns.
Indeed he said his impression was that Bama shunned him as he shunned anyone he did not agree with.
He was NOT a conciliator like he was falsely portrayed in his campaign and as the lefist supporters make him out to be now.
He was/is a strict ideologue. This professor made it clear that his experience with Bama was that he was very rigid, uncompromising, set in his beliefs, and would surround himself only with those he agreed with.
He saw no evidence that the Bama would like to surround himself with those he disagreed with like has been stated and advertised.
Additionally he only came to Univ. of Chicago as a stepping stone for politics. He was not an academic, he was not interested in research and he only was hired as a selling point for running for the Senate.
To me this just corraborates the obvious - this guy, because of his gift of the gab, is chosen to lead the far left radical agenda.
There is NO doubt in my mind the people have somehow been hoodwinked into thinking this guy is a conciliator, compromiser, just left of center, patriot. All the circumstantial evidence all but proves that this guy is exactly what Beck, and others warn.
He is some sort of socialist, communist or whatever. He is radical to everything this country was founded on, was built on, was meant to be and it is a total CON game to say otherwise.
Very interesting radio program on Levin's show last night. I am sorry I missed some of it. Usually he gets the usual average call in but this one was quite interesting.
I don't know if it is possible to somehow get this into the msm which continues to protect and cover the true nature of their ideologue. WE always hear from the MSM that anyone who says anything akin to this is some sort of way out there loon when the only way out loon is Bama.
Also one defense is "well his policies are not radical", or some mirror Bush etc.
My response is that is only a cover. His real agenda, his real dream is clearly some sort of communism or some iteration or manifastation of a socialist country and eventually the entire world.
I don't know how we can get the mainstream America to wake up. It appears some independents have but the polls are incredibly stable. I guess even worse is that apparantly many people in America (not real Americans) seem to be happy to have socialism of some sort.
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Q: What’s the difference between Obama and Hitler?
A: Hitler wrote his own book.
Q: What’s another difference between Obama and Hitler?
A: Hitler got the Olympics to come to his country.
Q: What’s the main problem with Barack Obama jokes?
A: His followers don’t think they’re funny and everyone else doesn’t think they’re jokes.
Q: Why does Barack Obama oppose the Second Amendment?
A: It stands between him and the First.
Q: What’s the difference between Rahm Emanuel and a carp?
A: One is a scum sucking bottom feeder and the other is a fish.
Q: What does Barack Obama call lunch with a convicted felon?
A: A fund raiser.
Q: What’s the difference between Obama’s cabinet and a penitentiary?
A: One’s full of tax evaders, blackmailers and threats to society. The other is for prisoners.
Q: What do you call the US after four years of Obama and the Liberal congress?
A: An Obama-nation.
Q: Why doesn’t Obama pray?
A: It’s impossible to read the teleprompter with your eyes closed.
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http://www.philstockworld.com/2010/03/10/how-to-stay-awake-during-obama-speeches-play-bullshit-bingo/
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Psalms 109 verse 8 New King James version.
8 Let his days be few,
And let another take his office.
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http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//100412/480/urn_publicid_ap_org52d493edeb0243ef84cbfc87f58f4b6a/
OFV (Oy Fg Vey)
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Guess who - taxpayers
This is a great summary of drudge today of the mess the Phoney One has planned for us - already understood by posters here but is a nice summary one can send to non believers:
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
America Becomes a Two-Class Society
by Phyllis Schlafly
Income tax day, April 15, 2010, now divides Americans into two almost equal classes: those who pay for the services provided by government and the freeloaders. The percentage of Americans who will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009 has risen to 47 percent.
That isn't the worst of it. The bottom 40 percent not only pay no income tax, but the government sends them cash or benefits financed by the taxes dutifully paid by those who do pay income tax.
The outright cash handouts include the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which can amount to as much as $5,657 a year to low-income families. Other financial benefits can include child tax credits, welfare, food stamps, WIC (Women, Infants, Children), housing subsidies, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, S-CHIP and other programs.
This is both a massive transfer of wealth and a soak-the-rich racket. The top 10 percent pay 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has become the congressional leader in explaining details of the recently passed Health Control Law. He says that, based on Congressional Budget Office figures, taxes to pay for Obamacare will have to skyrocket to an 88 percent income tax rate within 30 years.
Although all wage-earners help fund their own Social Security and Medicare benefits, only federal income taxpayers pay the costs of running the federal government, and are responsible for paying off our $12.8 trillion national debt and for bailing out Social Security, Medicare, and Fannie and Freddie when they collapse.
Even the recently passed Health Control Law contains financial subsidies to unmarried couples that are denied to married couples. This rewards the unmarried women who were the second largest demographic constituency that voted for Barack Obama for president in 2008.
When Obama told Joe the Plumber he wanted to "spread the wealth around," Obama wasn't kidding. That's exactly what he is now doing: taking money from taxpayers and spreading it around to non-taxpayers.
Nor was Obama kidding when, on the eve of his election, he threatened, "We are going to fundamentally transform the United States of America." Converting the earnings of American workers into handouts for those who voted for Obama in 2008 is certainly a fundamental transformation.
Obama's promise not to raise taxes on middle-Americans is already down the drain. Obama brought former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker out of obscurity to serve as chairman of an Economic Recovery Advisory Board and announce that we need to raise taxes.
Volcker was blunt in predicting that the new tax increase will be a Value-Added Tax (VAT). That's the tax European socialists love because its rates can be hidden and frequently raised, while producing rivers of revenue for the bureaucrats.
Volcker claimed that a VAT is "not a toxic idea." It really is -- Charles Krauthammer called it "the ultimate cash cow" because it transfers so much money from individuals to the government.
Having already co-opted the executive and legislative branches of government for his fundamental transformation, Obama now wants to use the judiciary, too. The retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens gives him this opportunity.
On Jan. 18, 2001m on Public Radio WBEZ-FM, Chicago, Obama complained that the Earl Warren Court "wasn't that radical" because "it didn't break free from the essential constraints placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. ... The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and serve more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society."
Calling for the Supreme Court to participate in the "redistribution of wealth" is shockingly revolutionary. Any judicial nominee who agrees with Obama's theory should be rejected.
Obama's game plan to "fundamentally transform" America is based on both Saul Alinsky's modus operandi for community organizing and on the Cloward-Piven spending strategy. Saul Alinsky was a famous Chicago radical, and Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were less-well-known Columbia University sociologists.
The goal of all three of these agitators was the overthrow of the private enterprise system. The Alinsky strategy is to use community organizing and mass demonstrations by those he labeled the "Have Nots," and the Cloward-Piven strategy is to overload the bureaucracy with enormous demands for entitlements, thereby causing a financial crisis.
Obama used Alinsky methods by taxpayer financing of ACORN and subprime mortgages. Obama used Cloward-Piven methods by massive deficit spending for entitlements for more and more millions of people.
Fortunately, hardworking, taxpaying Americans are beginning to understand how they are being ripped off and rushed into bankruptcy. The one way to save ourselves and our country is to elect a Congress in November pledged to stop the spending.
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And why wouldn't they want to celebrate and offer a toast to the one who wants to give it all away to our competitors and enemies?
We are so screwed (at least half the country is).
****Party animal? Obama nightclub opens next week in China
By: Nikki Schwab and Tara Palmeri
Washington Examiner
04/21/10 6:00 PM EDT
Screen shot of the Obama club's logo. Don't they know the administration is known for its bare arms and not legs?
While his poll numbers in the states aren't what they used to be, some Chinese entrepreneurs must be hoping the "Obama brand" holds strong internationally.
A nightclub named after the American president, the Obama Entertainment Club, opens Monday in Shanghai, China. Details about how exactly the club is Obama-themed still are scarce, though promotional materials found by the blog Shanghaiist tout that the club "will bring international glamour, excitement and refined luxury to the Shanghai entertainment scene."****
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Hopefully she saved the dress (or night gown or panties):
OBAMA CHEATING SCANDAL: SHOCKING NEW REPORTS
Photo by: splash news online Reports out of Washington, DC: PRESIDENT OBAMA has been caught in a shocking cheating scandal after being caught in a Washington, DC Hotel with a former campaign aide.
And now, a hush-hush security video that shows everything could topple both Obama's presidency and marriage to Michelle!
A confidential investigation has learned that Obama first became close to gorgeous 35 year-old VERA BAKER in 2004 when she worked tirelessly to get him elected to the US Senate, raising millions in campaign contributions.
While Baker has insisted in the past that "nothing happened" between them, reports reveal that top anti-Obama operatives are offering more than $1 million to witnesses to reveal what they know about the alleged hush-hush affair.
Among those being offered money is a limo driver who says that he took Vera to a secret hotel rendezvous where the President was staying.
On the condition of anonymity, the limo driver said he took Baker "from a friend's home in the DC area to the Hotel George where I learned later that Obama would be spending the night."
The driver recalled that he "waited in the lobby while she went to change her outfit.
"But to the best of my knowledge she did not have a room at the hotel and she was not staying there so I thought that it was a bit odd."
The driver said he then picked up Obama at the airport and drove both he and Baker to various locations while he was campaigning for funds. Vera accompanied him to each meeting.
"About 10:30 PM, I drove them to the hotel and they went in together!"
"My services for the evening were done - and there was no indication she was going to leave the hotel that night."
Analyzing the reports, a top DC insider said the driver's account had been independently corroborated by investigators who believe the couple spent the night together at the hotel.
On-site hotel surveillance video camera footage may provide indisputable evidence.
"Investigators are attempting to obtain a tape from the hotel (that) shows Vera and Barack together," the DC insider confided.
"If the tape surfaces, it will explode the scandal."
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URL? Source?
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Peter Wehner - 05.04.2010 - Commentary Magazine
This weekend President Obama delivered the University of Michigan commencement address and returned to a favorite theme of his: the need for civility and respect in public discourse. In the president’s words:
The… way to keep our democracy healthy is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate…. we cannot expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it. You can question someone’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism. Throwing around phrases like “socialist” and “Soviet-style takeover;” “fascist” and “right-wing nut” may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, or our political opponents, to authoritarian, and even murderous regimes.
… The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning — since after all, why should we listen to a “fascist” or “socialist” or “right-wing nut?” It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out. It robs us of a rational and serious debate that we need to have about the very real and very big challenges facing this nation. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.
So what can we do about this?
As I’ve found out after a year in the White House, changing this type of slash and burn politics isn’t easy. And part of what civility requires is that we recall the simple lesson most of us learned from our parents: treat others as you would like to be treated, with courtesy and respect.
These are wise words that should be taken seriously. Especially by the president himself.
I say that because President Obama’s party and his chief defenders — including the DNC, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Reid — have routinely engaged in the kind of vilification the president condemns. Think of the assault on the Tea Party Movement and those who attended town-hall meetings last summer; they were accused of being racists and bigots, “an angry mob,” practitioners of “un-American tactics,” “astroturfers” and Nazi-like, and potential Timothy McVeighs. Harry Reid referred to people who showed up at town-hall meetings as “evil-mongers.” Representative Alay Grayson, in characterizing the GOP health-care plans, said that “the Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick…. This is what the Republicans want you to do.”
On and on it goes, issue after issue, slander after slander. Yet President Obama has done nothing to call off the attack dogs in his own party, despite his enormous influence with them.
In fact, Obama himself has engaged in ad hominem attacks to a degree that is unusual for a president. He constantly impugns the motives of those who have policy disagreements with him. His critics are greedy, venal, irresponsible, demagogic, cynical, bought and paid for, spreaders of misinformation, distorters of truth. “More than any President in memory,” the Wall Street Journal recently editorialized, “Mr. Obama has a tendency to vilify his opponents in personal terms and assail their arguments as dishonest, illegitimate or motivated by bad faith.”
So President Obama lacerates his critics for engaging in the very activity he denounces. And he does so in the haughtiest way imaginable, always attempting to portray himself as hovering above us mere mortals, exasperated at the childish and petty quality of the political debate, weary of the name-calling. How hard it must be to be the embodiment of Socratic discourse, Solomonic wisdom, and Niebuhrian nuance in this fallen and broken world.
Here is the rather unpleasant reality, though: our president fancies himself a public intellectual of the highest order — think Walter Lippmann as chief executive — even as he and his team are accomplished practitioners of the Chicago Way. They relish targeting those on their enemies list. The president himself pretends to engage his critics’ arguments even as his words are used like a flamethrower in a field of straw men. It’s hard to tell if we’re watching a man engaged in an elaborate political shell game or a victim of an extraordinary, and nearly clinical, case of self-delusion. Perhaps there is some of both at play. Regardless, President Obama’s act became tiresome long ago.
I am reminded of the line from Emerson: “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
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He continues to hasten our decline.
By Michael D. Shear
Saturday, May 22, 2010; 11:45 AM
WEST POINT, N.Y. -- President Obama on Saturday pledged to shape a new "international order" as part of a national security strategy that emphasizes his belief in global institutions and America's role in promoting Democratic values around the world.
Speaking to the graduating class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point -- the ninth wartime commencement in a row, he said -- the commander in chief who is leading two foreign wars expressed his faith in cooperation and partnerships to confront the economic, military and environmental challenges of the future.
"The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges of our times,'" he said in prepared remarks. "Countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves and care for their sick; preventing conflict and healing its wounds."
The administration is set to officially release the president's first national security strategy next week, and Obama's preview on Saturday suggests it will be far different than the first one offered by his predecessor in 2002. In that prior document, President George W. Bush formally called for a policy of preemptive war and a "distinctly American internationalism."
Obama has spoken frequently about shaping new alliances with the world, and of attempts to repair the U.S. image abroad after nearly a decade in which Bush's approach was viewed with suspicion in many quarters. In his commencement speech to the graduates, the president emphasized his beliefs in those alliances.
"Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system. But America has not succeeded by stepping outside the currents of international cooperation," he said. "We have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice -- so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities, and face consequences when they don't."
Obama said the United States will pursue a strategy of "national renewal and global leadership."
And yet, even as he calls for global cooperation, Obama has intensified America's own war in Afghanistan. And his administration has repeatedly confronted the dangers of Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil, including unsuccessful attempts to down a Detroit-bound airliner and to explode a car bomb in New York's Times Square.
To the men and women in the hall, many of whom are headed to Afghanistan because of the expansion of the war he announced here six months ago, Obama pledged "the full support of a proud and grateful nation."
The president expressed confidence in the military's ability to succeed in Afghanistan, but warned of a "tough fight" ahead as the United States helps the Afghan people to rebuild its civil institutions and its security system so they can battle the Taliban and other extremists on their own.
"We have brought hope to the Afghan people; now we must see that their country does not fall prey to our common enemies," he said. "There will be difficult days ahead. But we will adapt, we will persist, and I have no doubt that together with our Afghan and international partners, we will succeed in Afghanistan."
In Iraq, he said, the United States is "poised" to end its combat operations this summer, leaving behind "an Iraq that provides no safe haven to terrorists; a democratic Iraq that is sovereign, stable and self-reliant."
"You, and all who wear America's uniform, remain the cornerstone of our national defense and the anchor of global security," he said. "And through a period when too many of our institutions have acted irresponsibly, the American military has set a standard of service and sacrifice that is as great as any in this nation's history."
But he said civilians must answer the call of service as well, by securing America's economic future, educating its children and confronting the challenges of poverty and climate change. He said the country must always pursue what he called the "universal rights" rooted in the Constitution.
"We will promote these values above all by living them -- through our fidelity to the rule of law and our Constitution, even when it's hard; and through our commitment to forever pursue a more perfect union," he said.
To the cadets themselves, he praised their pursuit of being "soldier-scholars" and lauded the records of academic excellence the Class of 2010 has set. He also took note of the fact that the class's top two graduates this year are both women, reflecting, he said, the "indispensable role" that women play in the modern military.
As they become commissioned officers in the Army, Obama told the graduates of West Point that the country owes them a debt of gratitude.
"Here in the quiet of these hills, you have come together to prepare for the most difficult tests of our time'" Obama said. "You signed up knowing your service would send you into harm's way, and did so long after the first drums of war were sounded. In you we see the commitment of our country, and timeless virtues that have served our nation well."
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Mark Steyn (May 22, 2010) has the outrage that President Obama lacks.
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One of Those Moments
The president has become the latest Western liberal to try to hammer Daniel Pearl’s box into a round hole.
Barack Obama’s remarkable powers of oratory are well known: In support of Chicago’s Olympic bid, he flew into Copenhagen to give a heartwarming speech about himself, and they gave the games to Rio. He flew into Boston to support Martha Coakley’s bid for the U.S. Senate, and Massachusetts voters gave Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican. In the first year of his presidency, he gave a gazillion speeches on health-care “reform” and drove support for his proposals to basement level, leaving Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to ram it down the throats of the American people through sheer parliamentary muscle.
Like a lot of guys who’ve been told they’re brilliant one time too often, President Obama gets a little lazy, and doesn’t always choose his words with care. And so it was that he came to say a few words about Daniel Pearl, upon signing the “Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act.”
Pearl was decapitated on video by jihadist Muslims in Karachi on Feb. 1, 2002. That’s how I’d put it.
This is what the president of the United States said: “Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.”
Now Obama’s off the prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he’s talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to see. Furthermore, the deceased’s family is standing all around him. And, even for a busy president, it’s the work of moments to come up with a sentence that would be respectful, moving, and true. Indeed, for Obama, it’s the work of seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.
Instead, he delivered the one above. Which, in its clumsiness and insipidness, is most revealing. First of all, note the passivity: “The loss of Daniel Pearl.” He wasn’t “lost.” He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the circumstances of his “loss” merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster none.
Even if Americans don’t get the message, the rest of the world does. This week’s pictures of the leaders of Brazil and Turkey clasping hands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also monuments to American passivity.
But what did the “loss” of Daniel Pearl mean? Well, says the president, it was “one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination.” Really? Evidently it never captured Obama’s imagination, because, if it had, he could never have uttered anything so fatuous. He seems literally unable to imagine Pearl’s fate, and so, cruising on autopilot, he reaches for the all-purpose bromides of therapeutic sedation: “one of those moments” — you know, like Princess Di’s wedding, Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, whatever — “that captured the world’s imagination.”
Notice how reflexively Obama lapses into sentimental one-worldism: Despite our many zip codes, we are one people, with a single imagination. In fact, the murder of Daniel Pearl teaches just the opposite — that we are many worlds, and worlds within worlds. Some of them don’t even need an “imagination.” Across the planet, the video of an American getting his head sawed off did brisk business in the bazaars and madrassas and Internet downloads. Excited young men e-mailed it to friends, from cell phone to cell phone, from Karachi to Jakarta to Khartoum to London to Toronto to Falls Church, Va. In the old days, you needed an “imagination” to conjure the juicy bits of a distant victory over the Great Satan. But in an age of high-tech barbarism, the sight of Pearl’s severed head is a mere click away.
And the rest of “the world”? Most gave a shrug of indifference. And far too many found the reality of Pearl’s death too uncomfortable and chose to take refuge in the same kind of delusional pap as Obama. The president is only the latest Western liberal to try to hammer Daniel Pearl’s box into a round hole. Before him, it was Michael Winterbottom in his film A Mighty Heart: As Pearl’s longtime colleague Asra Nomani wrote, “Danny himself had been cut from his own story.” Or, as Paramount’s promotional department put it, “Nominate the most inspiring ordinary hero. Win a trip to the Bahamas!” Where you’re highly unlikely to be kidnapped and beheaded! (Although, in the event that you are, please check the liability-waiver box at the foot of the entry form.)
The latest appropriation is that his “loss” “reminded us of how valuable a free press is.” It was nothing to do with “freedom of the press.” By the standards of the Muslim world, Pakistan has a free-ish and very lively press. The problem is that some 80 percent of its people wish to live under the most extreme form of Sharia, and many of its youth are exported around the world in advance of that aim. The man convicted of Pearl’s murder was Omar Sheikh, a British subject, a London School of Economics student, and, like many jihadists from Osama to the Pantybomber, a monument to the peculiar burdens of a non-deprived childhood in the Muslim world. The man who actually did the deed was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed in March 2007: “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi.” But Obama’s not the kind to take “guilty” for an answer, so he’s arranging a hugely expensive trial for KSM amid the bright lights of Broadway.
Listen to his killer’s words: “The American Jew Daniel Pearl.” We hit the jackpot! And then we cut his head off. Before the body was found, The Independent’s Robert Fisk offered a familiar argument to Pearl’s kidnappers: Killing him would be “a major blunder . . . the best way of ensuring that the suffering” — of Kashmiris, Afghans, Palestinians — “goes unrecorded.” Other journalists peddled a similar line: If you release Danny, he’ll be able to tell your story, get your message out, “bridge the misconceptions.” But the story did get out; the severed head is the message; the only misconception is that that’s a misconception.
Daniel Pearl was the prototype for a new kind of terror. In his wake came other victims from Kenneth Bigley, whose last words were that “Tony Blair has not done enough for me,” to Fabrizzio Quattrocchi, who yanked off his hood, yelled “I will show you how an Italian dies!” and ruined the movie for his jihadist videographers. By that time, both men understood what it meant to be in a windowless room with a camera and a man holding a scimitar. But Daniel Pearl was the first, and in his calm, coherent final words understood why he was there:
“My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California, U.S.A.”
He didn’t have a prompter. But he spoke the truth. That’s all President Obama owed him — to do the same.
I mentioned last week the attorney general’s peculiar insistence that “radical Islam” was nothing to do with the Times Square bomber, the Pantybomber, the Fort Hood killer. Just a lot of moments “capturing the world’s imagination.” For now, the jihadists seem to have ceased cutting our heads off. Listening to Obama and Eric Holder, perhaps they’ve figured out there’s nothing much up there anyway.
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Wonder if Letterman will replay this one:
March 31, 2010 President Obama:
"today we’re announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration... Under the leadership of Secretary Salazar, we’ll employ new technologies that reduce the impact of oil exploration. We’ll protect areas that are vital to tourism... consider potential areas for development in the...Gulf of Mexico"
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-energy-security-andrews-air-force-base-3312010
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"anonymous sources"
or better yet, trial balloon?
Here we go again. "It is only over a job" (not a blow job this time). "Everyone does it". "It depends what the word "job" means". It depends what the word "offer" means.
***By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann 05.28.2010 The New York Times revealed this afternoon that anonymous sources have informed it that Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel asked former President Bill Clinton to offer Congressman Joe Sestak a high but unpaid advisory post in the Administration if he would drop out of the Senate race against Senator Arlen Specter. One post mentioned was service on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
The idea was to immunize Obama and Rahm from possible criminal prosecution by using Clinton, not a government employee, as a cut out and to keep the offer to an unpaid job in hopes of not running afoul of the federal bribery statute.
But these evasions will not blunt the force of the law. If Clinton acted at Emanuel’s request, he was Rahm’s agent and the Chief of Staff is still on the hook. And, an unpaid position is still “something of value” within the meaning of the bribery statute which prohibits the offering of something of value in return for a vote.
And, remember why they wanted Sestak out of the race. The White House needed Specter’s vote to kill filibusters and could only get it if he would switch parties, a move he conditioned on getting Sestak to drop out and assure him a clear field for the nomination of his new party. So the bribe offer to Sestak was made by an agent of a government employee, it involved something of value, and it was to procure a vote in the Senate — all the elements needed for a felony to have taken place.
In a previous column (read it at DickMorris.com) Dick and Fox News Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano suggest that Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett, now the Republican nominee for Governor, should empanel a grand jury to get to the bottom of this affair. Today’s revelation makes this ever more urgent.***
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I think it happens all the time; on both sides of the aisle.
Stanley Brand, former general counsel to the U.S. House, said in an interview: "It's horse trading. It's what happens in politics. Presidents appoint people sometimes to get them out of the way, sometimes in reward for good service."
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Well yes, but that isn't a defense.
Of course our politicians like everyone else are for sale.
Perhaps it is about time to put a (try at least) stop to this.
I dont' need Stanley Brand to state the obvious.
But this,"sometimes in reward for good service" is not a crime (I don't think). Trying to offer a job (maybe Clinton did offer a blow job) to get a person out of a Senate race is a crime.
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Obama will miss out on the ceremonies at Arlington this year, but will be on hand for the wreath laying at the tomb of the unknown bagman in Chicago.
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I think it happens all the time; on both sides of the aisle.
Stanley Brand, former general counsel to the U.S. House, said in an interview: "It's horse trading. It's what happens in politics. Presidents appoint people sometimes to get them out of the way, sometimes in reward for good service."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704596504575272702149862906.html
There are multiple federal laws potentially violated here.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2010/05/29/sestak-not-eligible-for-unpaid-position-offered/
Paniced lying.
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Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's ranking member:
“After more than ten weeks of outstanding questions, the White House has offered a version of events that has important differences from what Congressman Sestak has been saying for months – that he was offered a ‘job’ by ‘someone in the White House’ in exchange for leaving the Pennsylvania Senate race.
“I’m very concerned that in the rush to put together this report, the White House has done everything but explain its own actions and has instead worked to craft a story behind closed doors and coordinate with those involved. The White House has admitted today to coordinating an arrangement that would represent an illegal quid-pro-quo as federal law prohibits directly or indirectly offering any position or appointment, paid or unpaid, in exchange for favors connected with an election.
“President Clinton and Congressman Sestak now need to answer questions about what the White House has released today – that at the behest of the White House Chief of staff, they dispatched a former President to get Joe Sestak out of the Pennsylvania Senate Primary. Regardless of what President Clinton or Congressman Sestak now say, it is abundantly clear that this kind of conduct is contrary to President Obama’s pledge to change ‘business as usual’ and that his Administration has engaged in the kind of political shenanigans he once campaigned to end.”
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:roll: You've got to know absolutely NOTHING is going to come out of this.... Just a lot of hot air.......
Republican or Democrat; horse trading has been going on since Washington was President....
As for CCP; I do agree it's unfortunate that it is business as usual. Further, CCP,
if either Clinton "offered a blow job", well.... Now THAT would be serious crime! :-D
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I'd say something has come of it already as to this point the generally obsequious press actually appears to be giving this one a hard look. The hard left of the Democratic party--you know the ones that show up at the primaries and often drive the party's agenda--are all bearing witness to presidential efforts to derail a candidate they favor for a Republican turncoat moderate, and if you don't think that's been noticed you need to take a trip over to the Daily Kos or Democratic Underground.
Though still not being held to the same standard as Bush, where I imagine a similar effort would be taken as a sign of the apocalypse or something, what has occurred doesn't portend well for Obama. Where he is not impotent he is hamfisted; his fellow travelers are taking note.
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**You think the "everyone does it" defense will fly?**§ 201. Bribery of public officials and witnesses
(a) For the purpose of this section—
(1) the term “public official” means Member of Congress, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner, either before or after such official has qualified, or an officer or employee or person acting for or on behalf of the United States, or any department, agency or branch of Government thereof, including the District of Columbia, in any official function, under or by authority of any such department, agency, or branch of Government, or a juror;
(2) the term “person who has been selected to be a public official” means any person who has been nominated or appointed to be a public official, or has been officially informed that such person will be so nominated or appointed; and
(3) the term “official act” means any decision or action on any question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy, which may at any time be pending, or which may by law be brought before any public official, in such official’s official capacity, or in such official’s place of trust or profit.
(b) Whoever—
(1) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent—
(A) to influence any official act; or
(B) to influence such public official or person who has been selected to be a public official to commit or aid in committing, or collude in, or allow, any fraud, or make opportunity for the commission of any fraud, on the United States; or
(C) to induce such public official or such person who has been selected to be a public official to do or omit to do any act in violation of the lawful duty of such official or person;
(2) being a public official or person selected to be a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for:
(A) being influenced in the performance of any official act;
(B) being influenced to commit or aid in committing, or to collude in, or allow, any fraud, or make opportunity for the commission of any fraud, on the United States; or
(C) being induced to do or omit to do any act in violation of the official duty of such official or person;
(3) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any person, or offers or promises such person to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent to influence the testimony under oath or affirmation of such first-mentioned person as a witness upon a trial, hearing, or other proceeding, before any court, any committee of either House or both Houses of Congress, or any agency, commission, or officer authorized by the laws of the United States to hear evidence or take testimony, or with intent to influence such person to absent himself therefrom;
(4) directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity in return for being influenced in testimony under oath or affirmation as a witness upon any such trial, hearing, or other proceeding, or in return for absenting himself therefrom;
shall be fined under this title or not more than three times the monetary equivalent of the thing of value, whichever is greater, or imprisoned for not more than fifteen years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.
(c) Whoever—
(1) otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge of official duty—
(A) directly or indirectly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official, for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official; or
(B) being a public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official, otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge of official duty, directly or indirectly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such official or person;
(2) directly or indirectly, gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any person, for or because of the testimony under oath or affirmation given or to be given by such person as a witness upon a trial, hearing, or other proceeding, before any court, any committee of either House or both Houses of Congress, or any agency, commission, or officer authorized by the laws of the United States to hear evidence or take testimony, or for or because of such person’s absence therefrom;
(3) directly or indirectly, demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally for or because of the testimony under oath or affirmation given or to be given by such person as a witness upon any such trial, hearing, or other proceeding, or for or because of such person’s absence therefrom;
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both.
(d) Paragraphs (3) and (4) of subsection (b) and paragraphs (2) and (3) of subsection (c) shall not be construed to prohibit the payment or receipt of witness fees provided by law, or the payment, by the party upon whose behalf a witness is called and receipt by a witness, of the reasonable cost of travel and subsistence incurred and the reasonable value of time lost in attendance at any such trial, hearing, or proceeding, or in the case of expert witnesses, a reasonable fee for time spent in the preparation of such opinion, and in appearing and testifying.
(e) The offenses and penalties prescribed in this section are separate from and in addition to those prescribed in sections 1503, 1504, and 1505 of this title.
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I'll repeat what Stanley Brand, former general counsel to the U.S. House, said in an interview: "It's horse trading. It's what happens in politics. Presidents appoint people sometimes to get them out of the way, sometimes in reward for good service."
But let's see how it all plays out. I still bet "nothing will come out of this" of any substance; just the opposite aisle (it happens on both sides) bellyaching.
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It needs to be investigated.
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JDN recapitulates:
I'll repeat what Stanley Brand, former general counsel to the U.S. House, said in an interview: "It's horse trading. It's what happens in politics. Presidents appoint people sometimes to get them out of the way, sometimes in reward for good service."
Wow, reiterate your point and ignore mine. What was I calling that before . . . oh yes, the Inanity Hammer. My how times have changed. Guess it's time to email Crafty about what a big meany I am.
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Note: the original piece is heavily illustrated.
Obama, ACORN and Stealth Socialism
POSTED AT 5:00 PM ON MAY 29, 2010 BY ANITA MONCRIEF
As an ex-ACORN insider and ex-radical who used Democrat donor lists to raise money for ACORN alter-ego Project Vote and designed the ACORN 2005, 2006 and 2007 Political Operations Year End PowerPoint presentations, I know that President Obama (for whom I now regretfully admit I proudly voted) was an ACORN guy for many years and realize that he became the instrument for the implementation of its stealth socialism agenda.
National Journal rated Obama the most “liberal” United States Senator, even more “liberal” than avowed socialist Bernard Sanders of Vermont (for whom then Senator Obama campaigned), because he earned it.
In her sensational New York Times no. 1 bestseller, “Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies,” published in 2009, intrepid Michelle Malkin generously gave me “special thanks” for daring to expose ACORN corruption and wrote about it and the New York Times cover up of the Obama/ACORN relationship in detail at pages 244-49. (Since that material was added after the manuscript had been sent to the printer, I did not make the index.)
Stealth socialism in vogue
It’s not surprising that on May 3, 2010 Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliot released “The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists” and on May 15, 2010 former Speaker Newt Gingrich released a book titled “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine.” Of course they are right about Obama’s radical ties and “secular socialist machine.” (I’m looking forward to Laura Ingraham’s “The Obama Diaries,” out on or about July 13, 2010, but I bet President Obama isn’t.)
Even though on October 21, 2008 The New York Times killed the Obama/ACORN expose on which I been reporter Stephanie Strom’s source and I decided to blow the whistle myself and appeared on Laura Ingraham’s radio show before the end of the month, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News apparently did not learn about it until March of 2009 (the month in which attorney Heather Heidelbaugh, for whom I voluntarily became a witness in the Pennsylvania ACORN, testified before a Congressional committee about ACORN voter registration fraud and the New York Times cover up), it was inevitable that the truth about Obama, ACORN and “stealth socialism” finally would become generally known as the socialist agenda was implemented. After all, the idea was for Obama to deliver as President on that “fundamental change” that he promised as a presidential hopeful.
After an appealing generality becomes an examinable specific and the cost calculations are done, putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t fool nearly as many people. For example, Obamacare is a massive wealth redistribution program and–no surprise–not long after it was enacted, an Obama Administration official acknowledged it and we learned that Obamacare would be much more expensive than it had been officially estimated before it was passed.
Defining stealth socialism
Graham L. Strachan explained the “stealth socialism” path this way:
“Why did the Western media persist in calling the social system in the Communist bloc ‘Communism’ instead of Socialism? They did it to manufacture a false reality: to protect the reputation of another form of Socialism which existed in the West….so-called ‘Democratic Socialism’, socialism by stealth, socialism achieved through the ‘permeation’ of existing political institutions by members of organisation such as the Fabian Society, in order to influence the policies adopted by those institutions towards socialism.
“Democratic Socialism itself was based on a lie: that Socialism could be implemented peacefully through the ballot box. The implication was that if the voters didn’t like it they could vote it out again. That was a hoax. Since Socialism does not permit private ownership of property, it cannot be ‘democratic’ in the sense of allowing a choice of political Parties. This is not a matter of ideology, but of logistics. It would be impossible to have a two Party system of genuine democracy, for example, under which the state nationalised all property including business when the Socialists were voted into power, then sold it all back to the people again when they were voted out. The intention of Democratic Socialism was (and still is) to be democratic just long enough to gain power. Then it will declare the ‘end of history’ and entrench itself forever, enforcing its politically correct speech and thought on everybody, and being just as tyrannical as its Marxist revolutionary counterparts.”
How to make a socialist the ACORN way
As an ACORN insider my indoctrination as a socialist was a slow but steady progression from radical liberalism to embracing the stealth socialist methods that had made ACORN a powerful force in American electoral politics. Two years ago, in the mist of a heated presidential election year, I noticed a Facebook page of Socialism 2008. The graffiti-like picture beckoned young Socialists to Chicago, Illinois on June 19th, 2008. I RSVPed for the event on Facebook without fully understanding what had just taken place. The line between radical, liberal Democrat and socialist was almost invisible at this point.
Working for ACORN/Project Vote facilitated my crossing the “socialist”threshold and I had become what insiders termed “one of the true believers.” True believers were instrumental in the survival of ACORN and the process of making an employee a true believer began on the very first day.
Inside ACORN offices across the country, young, idealistic liberals were being ingrained with the Saul Alinsky style of Organizing. Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals was never mentioned by name, but Alinsky’s tactics were used on employees and ACORN members.
ACORN’s strategy of stealth socialism was aimed at gaining power through duplicity and somewhat assimilating into society. Alinsky, the “father of community organizing,” taught that the path to power necessitated the use of people who would serve as pawns.
“Organizing for power was Alinsky’s political end, not political party influence. When he asked his new students why they wanted to organize, they would invariably respond with ’selfless bromides about wanting to help others,’ according to Ryan Lizza writing in The New Republic. Alinsky would then “scream back at them that there was a one-word answer: “You want to organize for power!’”
Saul Alinsky almost single-handedly invented the modern art of community organizing…
He was a master teacher of others, and left a legion of trained disciples and organizations, including Obama and Clinton.”
Every ACORN employee was given a copy of the ACORN Organizing Model, bylaws and various information on running campaigns, but the real education was in how ACORN operated behind the scenes. Like Alinsky, ACORN openly organized to build power, but ACORN’s ace in the hole was the black community.
Community organizers became the “information police” for minorities in dozens of cities. As the official representative for its members, ACORN was able to frame the debate in ways that aligned with its People’s Platform. The platform is based on the socialist idea of sharing the wealth. Members were asked, even coerced, to attend rallies and protests for issues ACORN had decided would lead to power.
As students exited schools with a “liberal arts” education and a desire to help, ACORN stood ready with the social justice flag in one hand and a cigarette lighter and American flag in the other. Attending such events like Socialism 2008 was the culmination of two years of looking the other way and accepting a little bad in order to save the “movement.” Some leave ACORN at this point but the ones who stay are trusted just a little more.
The Road from radical terrorists to professors and community organizers
With greater access comes greater understanding of the true subversive nature of ACORN. As stated last summer in my article “Liberal Fallout Zones“:
“Poverty is big business and a predicate for class warfare intended to perpetuate political power in the masters of that big business. In the current climate special interest groups are writing bills and influencing votes amid a huge liberal spending binge.”
That spending binge is more like a bender now because ACORN, recognizing the past mistakes of other radical groups like Weather Underground and Students for a Democratic Society decided the best way to gain power as was to pass unnoticed in mainstream America. Radicals like Frances Fox Piven and her husband Richard A. Cloward retreated into the world of Academia where they penned papers on Socialism peppered with Alinsky tactics and a new name:
The Cloward-Piven strategy
On May 2, 1966, Columbia’s Professor of Social Work Richard A. Cloward, and his then research associate Frances Fox Piven, wrote a pivotal article in The Nation, articulating “a strategy to end poverty.”
In what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy, the article argued a revolutionary approach to mobilizing the poor in the form of class warfare against capitalist forces viewed as exploiting labor and oppressing the poor.
David Horowitz, a long-time student of leftist political movements in the United States, characterized the Cloward-Piven strategy as seeking “to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.”
Cloward and Piven argued a “guaranteed annual income” should be established as an entitlement for the poor, a right the poor could assert and demand to be paid.”
Other radicals like ACORN founder Wade Rathke and former Project Vote executive director, Zach Polett formed organizations and began implementing their socialist agenda while using the poor and minority communities as a defense if anyone dared question their actions. According to its website, ACORN planted its seed in American politics long ago and continues to play an “insider’s game” to maintain it.
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“Finally, ACORN® began playing the insiders’ game in American politics. Congressional lobbying is practiced by ACORN® staff. Leaders and members became a central part of the insiders’ games, too. Members elected to office or serving on APACs acquired experience and skill applying power from the inside of the political process. Instead of confronting opponents in actions (something ACORN® will never stop doing), members could trade and negotiate from inside positions of power. ACORN®’s work on the savings and loan bailout provided effective means of developing and applying power for low- and moderate- income people. ACORN® members won appointment to the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to help determine the management of the billions of dollars of assets the government seized. The payoff to these activities came, and still comes, when substantial numbers of ACORN® members developed the ability to move inside the political sphere that has for so long been closed to low- and moderate-income people.”
Wade Rathke and Zach Polett learned the path to power quickly and utilized their influence to pass the 1996 National Voter Registration Act (the “Motor Voter” bill). Polett, seated below to the far left in a dark suit and tie, had officially brought the Arkansas based ACORN to Washington.
Interestingly, on the same page with their tales of insider dealing, ACORN discusses how the network of unions, non-profits and corporations were created for the express purpose of pushing ACORN’s socialist agenda.
“The national lobbying arm of ACORN® is only one example of the diversification within ACORN® that was basic to its success. The ACORN® Housing Corporation worked to create affordable housing in conjunction with banks and state and local government. The United Labor Unions, now Locals 100 and 880 of the Service Employees International Union, became labor organizing arms of ACORN® which organize people where they work. ACORN® Services, Inc. and the canvassing operations enhanced ACORN®’s ability to create the financial resources needed to grow. The Arkansas Institute for Social Justice became the means for developing leadership skills and political talents among the ACORN® members. What was once a relatively simple organization of community groups has became a diversified system of institutions capable of applying specialized skills to solving the kinds of problems ACORN® encounters in its work.”
Along came a socialist
In late 2006 the atmosphere in the office changed and it appeared that the senior staff were energized. Efforts to function as a real office were implemented. Project Vote began using a donor database instead of a box and attempts were made to reconcile the accounting records. In anticipation of what ACORN began calling a “once in a generation opportunity.” John Podesta from the Center for American Progress gave a speech called “Preparing for Power: The Next Cycle?” in December of that year.
After two years with ACORN I understood how they operated and took the close relationship with the Democrat party for granted. The relationship between Democrats and ACORN was that the party needed ACORN to retain their seats and ACORN needed them to pass their agenda items. ACORN’s belief that indeed, all politics is local, allowed them to place people strategically in positions that would allow a run for higher office.
In 2007 when Zach Polett bragged about supervising Barack Obama and that “ACORN produces leaders,” his purpose was to energize the employees so that we would go out there and deliver. ACORN’s voter registration goals and budget were unmatched and the stakes were high.
When Obama’s campaign called the Project Vote offices in late 2007, I could barely contain my excitement as I relayed the information to my supervisors. After receiving the Obama 2007 2nd quarter donor list from Karyn Gillette, I had another look away moment. Were we violating FEC rules by targeting Obama’s maxed out donors? Did I really want Obama to win this way? Believing that the bigger goal was helping people by implementing the ACORN agenda, I put my doubts aside and worked on pulling donors from the list (which included ALL Obama donors, not just the bigger donors required to be reported to the Federal Elections Commission).
From October 2005 until 2008, I did fundraising work with ACORN and used political donor lists. All Democrat: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Democratic National Committee. When I appeared as a guest on “The O’Reilly Factor” last year, I said that ACORN had served for years as an unofficial arm of the Democratic Party, but Bill O’Reilly didn’t discuss that with me. Ignoring it is exactly what the stealth socialists want.
I once asked Marcel Reid, former ACORN national board member and President of DC ACORN, how it was possible for ACORN to push its agenda and she replied “We never use the word Socialism.” ACORN’s appeal was to simply implement a Socialist agenda without ever saying the word. When Wade Rathke was interviewed by Megyn Kelly of Fox News, Kelly asked Rathke whether he would describe himself as a socialist, and Wade answered no. Kelly proceeded to point out that the ACORN People’s Platform sounded socialism. Rathke weakly tried to defend ACORN against the Socialist label by pretending the “share the wealth” philosophy was not in the ACORN Platform. You can watch the video here.
Eventually Rathke conceded that the share the wealth language was indeed present, but cited some language about the right to be rich and free.
The People’s Platform (or ACORN’s socialist wish list)
ACORN People’s Platform can be found here and it defines what rich and free meant, and it certainly is not capitalism!
“Our riches shall be the blooming of our communities, the bounty of a sure livelihood, the beauty of homes for our families with sickness driven from the door, the benefit of our taxes rather than their burden, and the best of our energy, land, and natural resources for all people.
“Our freedom is the force of democracy, not the farce of federal fat and personal profit. In our freedom, only the people shall rule. Corporations shall have their role; producing jobs, providing products, paying taxes. No more, no less. They shall obey our wishes, respond to our needs, serve our communities. Our country shall be the citizens’ wealth and our wealth shall build our country.
“Government shall have its role: public servant to our good, fast follower to our sure steps. No more, no less. Our government shall shout with the public voice and no longer to a private whisper. In our government, the common concerns shall be the collective cause.”
Marcel Reid’s explanation described “stealth socialism.” Aggressive tactics like ACORN’s protests and rallies were to gain the credibility that would allow the acceptance of a radical socialist agenda. While Reid was president of DC ACORN they proposed a plan to redistribute wealth in the Washington, DC metro area. This plan was proudly presented to the organization at the 2006 ACORN Year End, Year Beginning meeting in New Orleans. The excerpt below is from page 191 of the 2006 ACORN YEYB Annual Report (click to enlarge).
DC ACORN readily admits that “this proposal would essentially be a redistribution of wealth across the board,” but stealth socialism is so effective that even conservative watchdogs have been fooled by the ever changing names of the ACORN empire.
Obama’s agenda mirrors the ACORN People’s Platform as evidenced by a review of the healthcare and energy sections of the platform. On healthcare, the ACORN’s socialist people’s platform wants to “require the federal government to provide for the health care needs of recent immigrants. ACORN’s position on Energy shows shades of Cap and Trade with goals like:
Prevent any single corporation or conglomerate from owning major interest in more than one of the following resources: oil, natural gas, nuclear energy, solar energy, and coal; or more than one of the following categories: source, refinery, shipping, or outlet.”
Pay no attention to the white liberal behind the curtain
The “Liberals” who elected Obama President may have a “tower of Babel” moment as gay rights, civil rights, immigration rights, environmental extremists, pro-choicers and all the other special interests that supported the Obama presidential campaign strive to push America further to the left and shed all inhibitions. As with ACORN itself, it seems impossible that the coalition that put Obama in the White House and gave Democrats huge majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives will continue to work smoothly together now that Obama and the Congressional Democrats are in control and America is learning what Obama really meant by the seductive-sounding “hope and change.” ACORN needed the cloak of stealth socialism to maintain its hold on the poor. ACORN’s image is synonymous with blacks and other minorities and the race card has become the last bastion of its “hope.”
During its greatest crisis, ACORN replaced its white leader with a black woman in order to hide behind Bertha Lewis’s skin color. What they didn’t want the public to see were the white liberal leaders behind the scenes who have been staying in Executive suites and partying in the mountains.
ACORN Political Operations Retreat November 2007 (among the pictured are senior staff Patrick Winogrond, Jessica Angus, Nathan Henderson-James, Kimberly Olson, Amy Busefink and Johanna Sharrard)
Restoring the balance
Stealth socialism allowed ACORN to set the stage for Obama’s “regime” as they called it internally. Wade Rathke was willing to fall on his sword in 2008 to protect Obama, and to attain what nearly 40 years organizing the country towards socialism promised. After the embezzlement scandal, ACORN board members and staff assembled at meetings across the country and as insiders revealed, and I testified about, “fighting Capitalism” was listed as one of the things “great about ACORN.”
Obama has shown himself to be unrelenting in his quest to pass healthcare, take over American industries and weaken our national security. America can’t afford to be fooled by increasingly obvious tactics of the Far Left. It’s time for the great majority of Americans to turn the tables back on the Far Left by getting involved and organized and voting out incumbents who vote against the traditional American way. We need a morning in America, but it’s always darkest before the dawn.
You can follow Anita on her blog or on Twitter.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/05/29/obama-acorn-and-stealth-socialism-dire-domestic-threat/
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White House-Clinton-Sestak deal: now everyone is lying
May 30, 2:53 PM · Anthony G. Martin - Conservative Examiner
The latest revelations on the White House-Bill Clinton-Joe Sestak bribery case make it clear that the official explanation fails to pass 'the smell test' of authenticity.
Upon a close examination of the 'official version' of the story--on which all of the parties involved suddenly agree after months of stonewalling--the scenario is rife with the rank stench of dirty backroom deals.
Apparently now that the main players in the scandal have gotten their heads and stories together, everyone is now lying.
Everyone is now on the same page. The White House, Bill Clinton, and Joe Sestak all now state that at the bidding of Rahm Emanuel, Bill Clinton approached Congressman Joe Sestak and offered him an unpaid position as an adviser in the Obama Administration, if he would agree to drop out of the U.S. Senate race against Arlen Specter.
This would allow Sestak to keep his seat as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
And it is at precisely this point that something smells fishy.
Exactly how does an 'offer' of an unpaid position in the Obama Administration entice a politician to drop a bid for the U.S. Senate in a year in which the incumbent, Arlen Specter, had all of the appeal of a mangy, flea-infested dog?
Yet the White House, Bill Clinton, and Joe Sestak would have the public believe that this is all that was offered to entice the Congressman away from challenging Specter.
Even the hardened Chicago mobster himself, Rahm 'Dead Fish' Emanuel, knows that in this game 'you gotta come up with somethin' bettah than dat.' Politics is a game of hardball. And when you play with the big guys you don't deal with measly 'unpaid positions.'
Such a suggestion is laughable, and the mere fact that these buffoons expect the public to buy it is hilarious. Everyone knows that these seasoned hardball goons offered substantially more than they are saying.
And, at the very least, Joe Sestak is lying and the voters in Pennsylvania should hold him accountable.
At the very worst, a felony was committed although the offer was for an 'unpaid position.'
The following is the exact wording of the U.S. Code concerning these matters:
Crimes and Criminal Procedure - 18 USC Section 600
Sec. 600. Promise of employment or other benefit for political
activity
Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment,
position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit,
provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of
Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such
benefit, to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any
political activity or for the support of or opposition to any
candidate or any political party in connection with any general or
special election to any political office, or in connection with any
primary election or political convention or caucus held to select
candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this
title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
AMENDMENTS
1994 - Pub. L. 103-322 substituted "fined under this title" for
"fined not more than $10,000".
1976 - Pub. L. 94-453 substituted $10,000 for $1,000 maximum
allowable fine.
1972 - Pub. L. 92-225 struck out "work," after "position,",
inserted "contract, appointment," after "compensation," and "or any
special consideration in obtaining any such benefit," after "Act of
Congress,", and substituted "in connection with any general or
special election to any political office, or in connection with any
primary election or political convention or caucus held to select
candidates for any political office" for "in any election".
EFFECTIVE DATE OF 1972 AMENDMENT
Amendment by Pub. L. 92-225 effective Dec. 31, 1971, or sixty
days after date of enactment [Feb. 7, 1972], whichever is later,
see section 408 of Pub. L. 92-225, set out as an Effective Date
note under section 431 of Title 2, The Congress.
************************************************** ********************************
18 U.S.C. § 210 : US Code - Section 210: Offer to procure appointive public office
Whoever pays or offers or promises any money or thing of value,
to any person, firm, or corporation in consideration of the use or
promise to use any influence to procure any appointive office or
place under the United States for any person, shall be fined under
this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
************************************************** ********************************
18 USC 211 - Sec. 211. Acceptance or solicitation to obtain appointive public office
18 USC - U.S. Code - Title 18: Crimes and Criminal Procedure (January 2004)
Whoever solicits or receives, either as a political contribution, or for personal emolument, any money or thing of value, in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. Whoever solicits or receives any thing of value in consideration of aiding a person to obtain employment under the United States either by referring his name to an executive department or agency of the United States or by requiring the payment of a fee because such person has secured such employment shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. This section shall not apply to such services rendered by an employment agency pursuant to the written request of an executive department or agency of the United States.
It is to be noted in the actual law that the position offered does not have to be a paying job in order to qualify as a bribe. The mere offer of 'anything of value' in an attempt to influence either a primary election or a general election is a felony under this section of the law. (H/t to Lotus Talk).
The Code does NOT state that the candidate has to be 'officially declared,' as some 'legal experts' have suggested. Whether Sestak had actually filed to run at the time the offer was made is a non-issue. He had made it known that he was interested in Specter's Senate seat. And the White House knew it.
Thus, the White House attempted to tamper with a primary election by enticing a sitting Congressman to drop his plans to make a bid for a Senate seat--the very act that the law specifically refers to as a felony.
Although it is fairly obvious everyone involved in this scandal is now lying about a 'unpaid advisory post' being enough to entice a candidate to drop out of the Democratic primary, the very thing to which they have admitted is in direct violation of the U.S. Code as cited above.
Felonies have been committed, and a full investigation is absolutely imperative.
For commentary on the issues of the day, visit my blog at The Liberty Sphere.
http://www.examiner.com/x-37620-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m5d30-White-HouseClintonSestak-deal--now-everyone-is-lying
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"Everyone is now on the same page. The White House, Bill Clinton, and Joe Sestak all now state that at the bidding of Rahm Emanuel, Bill Clinton approached Congressman Joe Sestak and offered him an unpaid position as an adviser"
The author leaves out the most crucial entity also now on board the "same page".
And that is the MSM. It is obnoxious to high heaven watching the Democrat media saying how there is NO scandal, this is business as usual and on and on and on.
If I see that punk Jonathan Alder one more time.....
Everything is so dumbed down. Everything is poltical. Nothing is sacred anymore (or even the prestense of being so).
We can't even rely on media to be reasonable. What is left?
After watching all this slime, the MMS in bed with the oil industry they are supposed to regulate. It is just like Copyright Office in bed with the monied people in entertainment they deal with. Some there take bribes, look the other way, say nothing, don't want scandals, don't want to risk their jobs, get their friends in trouble, or want to get jobs with the those in the biz with money.
It is all the same.
Even our highest government people commit felonies and lie and cover it up. What was such a huge deal over Watergate? A minor burglary of some political documents. That was so much worse than this? Oh it was the cover up. I get it. Yet Jonathan Alter doesn't see a cover up here. Just takes the characters in the middle at their word.
I just wish I had enough money and could retire and go get a cabin in a quiet place somewhere and leave the garbage to the world. Our government, our media, they all make me sick.
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eom
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Speaking of that special relationship between the US and Israel (over on the Israel thread), I never heard anything about that state dinner the Obamas held for Prime Minister Netanyahu. Did anyone here attend or know what they served? Did the President bow or is that reserved for unelected leaders?
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I'm confused; I thought Prime Minister Netanyahu had to canceled his meeting (dinner?) with Obama this week to run home and try to resolve the flotilla debacle.
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Sorry JDN for my lame attempt at humor. There isn't/wasn't ever going to be an Obama White House State Dinner for this Israeli leader. Those are saved for great world leaders like Calderon (sarcasm). Netanyahu would be lucky to get in and out the White House side door without being publicly berated by Obama.
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"sociopaths are quite charismatic and glib" - GM on Martial Arts thread today.
A better indicator than appearance on sociopaths is the trait that they have difficulty differentiating between friends and enemies.
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I disagree, Obama knows exactly who his friends are, unfortunately the UK, Israel and the United States aren't on the list.
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The silver lining is that Bamster will set the liberal/progressive agenda back to Woodrow Wilson. The bad news this country is going to be hurt bad till we can climb our way out of this mess. The people going around saying he is doing a good job are deniers. Sorry assholes. You are not going to get your reparations. Maybe you as well as the rest of us will have to work our butts off to get out of this mess.
And yes. He does call to mind Jimmy Carter - but like I said - on steroids. It can't be just coincidence the world's hot spots are exploding into turmoil while the ONE sits at the helm. Remember big mouth Biden said Bamster would be tested? Well what is the One going to do now that Israel may go to war with Turkey, we are closer to war in Korea in my lifetime, Iran is almost with nuclear weapons? I guess he can continue to blame the F* Jews which he all but come out and done (its their faults because of a few housing projects). Or he can blame Bush again which he has continued (to this day) to do. Or of course he blame corporate American or BP. Or he can continue to travel around the world as our fearless leader apologizing to the world for all its problems all the while saying the US is at cause of them. When willl the MSM come out of their delusional state? They will have to. Kicking and screaming yes. But they will eventually have to. But when?
***By Dick Morris 06.2.2010 Published on TheHill.com on June 1, 2010
Conservatives are so enraged at Obama’s socialism and radicalism that they are increasingly surprised to learn that he is incompetent as well. The sight of his blithering and blustering while the most massive oil spill in history moves closer to America’s beaches not only reminds one of Bush’s terrible performance during Katrina, but calls to mind Jimmy Carter’s incompetence in the face of the hostage crisis.
America is watching the president alternate between wringing his hands in helplessness and pointing his finger in blame when he should be solving the most pressing environmental problem America has faced in the past 50 years. We are watching generations of environmental protection swept away as marshes, fisheries, vacation spots, recreational beaches, wetlands, hatcheries and sanctuaries fall prey to the oil spill invasion. And, all the while, the president acts like a spectator, interrupting his basketball games only to excoriate BP for its failure to contain the spill.
The political fallout from the oil spill will, indeed, spill across party and ideological lines. The environmentalists of America cannot take heart from a president so obviously ignorant about how to protect our shores and so obstinately arrogant that he refuses to inform himself and take any responsibility.
All of this explains why the oil spill is seeping into his ratings among Democrats, dragging him down to levels we have not seen since Bush during the pit of the Iraq war. Conservatives may dislike Obama because he is a leftist. But liberals are coming to dislike him because he is not a competent progressive.
Meanwhile, the nation watches nervously as the same policies Obama has brought to our nation are failing badly and publicly in Europe. When Moody’s announces that it is considering downgrading bonds issued by the government of the United States of America, we find ourselves, suddenly, in deep trouble. We have had deficits before. But never have they so freaked investors that a ratings agency considered lowering its opinion of our solvency. Not since Alexander Hamilton assumed the states’ Revolutionary War debt has America’s willingness and ability to meet its financial obligations been as seriously questioned.
And the truth begins to dawn on all of us: Obama has no more idea how to work his way out of the economic mess into which his policies have plunged us than he does about how to clean up the oil spill that is destroying our southern coastline.
Both the financial crisis and the oil come ever closer to our shores — one from the east and the other from the south — and, between them, they loom as a testament to the incompetence of our government and of its president.
And, oddly, to his passivity as well. After pursuing a remarkably activist, if misguided and foolhardy, agenda, Obama seems not to know what to do and finds himself consigned to the roles of observer and critic.
America is getting the point that its president doesn’t have a clue.
He doesn’t know how to stop the oil from spilling. He is bereft of ideas about how to create jobs in the aftermath of the recession. He has no idea how to keep the European financial crisis contained. He has no program for repaying the massive debt hole into which he has dug our nation without tax increases he must know will only deepen the pit.
Some presidents have failed because of their stubbornness (Johnson and Bush-43). Others because of their character flaws (Clinton and Nixon). Still others because of their insensitivity to domestic problems (Bush-41). But now we have a president who is failing because he is incompetent. It is Jimmy Carter all over again.
Who would have thought that this president, so anxious to lead us and so focused on his specific agenda and ideas, would turn out not to know what he is doing?***
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Maybe we can hear that Stanley Brand quote again:
Andrew Romanoff details contacts with White House over potential jobs
Updated, 9:39 pm
Former Colorado state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff released a detailed statement tonight detailing his contacts with the White House last fall in which a top aide to President Barack Obama sought to convince him to leave the state's Senate race.
Romanoff said that he received a call in September 2009 from White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina making clear that the White House would be supporting appointed Sen. Michael Bennet in the Colorado Senate Democratic primary.
Added Romanoff:
"Mr. Messina also suggested three positions that might be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race. He added that he could not guarantee my appointment to any of these positions. At no time was I promised a job, nor did I request Mr. Messina's assistance in obtaining one."
(Romanoff'sstatement is available after the jump.)
The three jobs floated to him by Messina via email, according to Romanoff, were: Deputy Assistant Administrator for Latin America and Caribbean for USAID, Director of Office of Democracy and Governance at USAID and director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.
Romanoff said he followed up with a phone message in which he declined the potential job offers.
The Romanoff statement comes less than two weeks after questions about what job (if any) was offered to Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak in hopes of driving him from the race against Sen. Arlen Specter.
The White House ultimately released a report from Counsel Bob Bauer in which it was revealed that former President Bill Clinton had approached Sestak about leaving the race but that no formal contact between the Obama Administration and the candidate had ever occurred.
The simple fact that the White House -- via Messina -- made clear that they would be supporting Bennet in the August Democratic primary is not, in and of itself, particularly shocking. White Houses -- no matter which party is in control -- play favorites in primaries and do their level best to clear fields for the candidate they believe is best positioned to hold the seat for their side in a general election.
At issue is whether the White House's statement on the matter accurately portrayed the entirety of the situation.
In a September 27, 2009 Denver Post piece a White House spokesman is quoted saying that "Mr. Romanoff was never offered a position within the administration."
Romanoff, in his own statement tonight, reiterates that point; "At no time was I promised a job, nor did I request Mr. Messina's assistance in obtaining one," he said.
California Rep. Darrell Issa (R), who has led the charge against the White House on the Sestak and Romanoff matters, issued a sweeping condemnation of the Administration in the wake of the Romanoff statement asking "how deep does the Obama White House's effort to invoke Chicago-style politics for the purpose of manipulating elections really go?,".
Republicans will almost certainly attempt to make an issue of the White House's carefully worded statement about its conversations with Romanoff--questioning whether dangling three specific positions is tantamount to a job offer.
Andrew Romanoff statement
I have received a large number of press inquiries concerning the role the White House is reported to have played in my decision to run for the U.S. Senate. I have declined comment because I did not want - and do not want - to politicize this matter.
A great deal of misinformation has filled the void in the meantime. That does not serve the public interest or any useful purpose.
Here are the facts:
In September 2009, shortly after the news media first reported my plans to run for the Senate, I received a call from Jim Messina, the President's deputy chief of staff. Mr. Messina informed me that the White House would support Sen. Bennet. I informed Mr. Messina that I had made my decision to run.
Mr. Messina also suggested three positions that might be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race. He added that he could not guarantee my appointment to any of these positions. At no time was I promised a job, nor did I request Mr. Messina's assistance in obtaining one.
Later that day, I received an email from Mr. Messina containing descriptions of three positions (email attached). I left him a voicemail informing him that I would not change course.
I have not spoken with Mr. Messina, nor have I discussed this matter with anyone else in the White House, since then.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/andrew-romanoff-details-contac.html
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Though I'm waiting for more authoritative data, I've read a couple blog posts stating that the census worker hiring data is skewed because a lot of the workers were hired, trained, laid off, and then rehired, which left them counted twice in the recent jobs report. Also read a couple places that 285,000 Americans have stopped seeking work in the current, abysmal, job climate. If this is so, it appears to me the administrations current sleight of hand efforts speak of a desperation that is an indicator in and of itself.
95% of new jobs from Census hiring
Ed Lasky
The Labor Department released sobering news this morning. Payrolls rose by 431,000 last month. That may sound good on the surface, but is far less than the median forecast of 536,000 jobs. But it gets worse: of the 431,000 jobs, 411,000 of them were census workers. Those are government jobs, not private sector jobs -- and are temporary. That means the private sector hired a mere 41,000 more workers in the past month. The unemployment rate fell a bit -- but only because of the way that figure is calculated. The unemployment rate only measures those people seeking work. If people give up hope (and remember Obama's campaign was all about "Hope" and "Yes We can") they drop out of the labor force and are not included in the unemployment rate.
Two days ago, Barack Obama said that he thought there would be good news on Friday when then employment were released. I suppose if, like Obama, a person only looks at government payrolls as a measure of an economy's health, that would be good news (since there are so many census workers).
Of course, this figure again illustrates (as all unemployment figures have over the last 16 months) that the drop in unemployment we were promised by Barack Obama and the Democrats (to 8%) when TARP was rushed into being has been a broken promise. One of many that can be chalked up to Barack Obama and his Democratic minions.
Now we have the worst of all worlds -- a massive deficit and debt because of TARP that will be a drag on our nation's growth for many years to come, a despairing work force, and massive unemployment among teens that will affect their future employability.
Maybe if Barack Obama and the Democrats would enact pro-growth measures and stop demonizing private enterprise, stop erecting a regulatory regime that strangles business, abolish their healthcare reform bill that will add hundreds of billions of dollars to our deficit, stop taxing us to penury, stop rewarding union allies at the expense of entrepreneurs, maybe... maybe we might get the engines of our economy moving again.
The cap-and-tax bill won't help matters as businesses contemplate the steep rise in energy costs facing them if that monstrosity comes to pass. These sorts of schemes have helped sink the European economies, the California economy -- and economies around the world who are now engaged in crash programs to tend them (see Spain's about-face).
Meanwhile, blind to reality but beholden to an ideology (and political allies in the green energy movement who are earning billions from government programs) Obama goes full steam ahead into disaster.
This number will not help Democrats come Election Day.
No wonder Mr. Yes We Can delivered his own malaise speech a couple days ago where he spoke of the "feeling of not being in control of your own economic future -- that sense that the American dream might be slowly slipping away"
That is his own political epitaph. And that of his fellow Democrats come November.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/06/95_of_new_jobs_from_census_hir.html at June 04, 2010 - 09:50:45 AM CDT
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Another example of the dissonance of immigration debate. We have huge unempolyment yet we also have at the same time 20 million people here illegally because they need the work.
Using the phrase I am hearing from more and more people (friends, patients, talk shows, blogs etc.)
"this country is upside down".
At least Newt on Greta a night or two ago admitted the Right seems to like the cheap labor and thus has also not been going after the other half of the immigration problem - the employers.
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http://reason.com/blog/2010/06/08/national-deficit-reduction-com
Reason Magazine
National Deficit-Reduction Commissioner: "The market-worshipping, privatizing, de-regulating, dehumanizing American financial plan has failed and should never be revived"
Matt Welch | June 8, 2010
It's hardly surprising that President Obama's deficit commission has become a font of unintented (if wince-inducing) hoo-larity. Nor is it a shocker that diabolically effective labor organizer Andy Stern would be brazen about re-molding government to benefit public sector workers at the direct expense of the rest of us. Still, there's something irritating about seeing a presidentially appointed deficit commissioner and inner circle FoB uncork statements like these:
"America needs a 21st century economic plan because we now know the market-worshipping, privatizing, de-regulating, dehumanizing American financial plan has failed and should never be revived, worshipping the market again," Stern said in remarks at the annual conference of the liberal activist group Campaign for America's Future in Washington on Monday.
"It has failed America and everyone that works here," Stern said.
Stern said the changes that Obama and Democrats in Congress have made are nothing short of a "revolution" that will move the American economy from national to international.
"This not our father's or our grandfather's economy," Stern said. "We’re as far today from the New Deal as the New Deal was from the Civil War. And we cannot drive into the future looking in the rear view mirror."
He said the progressive movement must build on the past and look to the future as the economy is transformed "from a manufacturing base, to a service, finance, knowledge, green, Internet, and bio-science economy."
"This revolution's going to only take 30 years," Stern said. "No single generation of people have ever witnessed this much change in a single lifetime. [...] And as we've witnessed now in the absence of a simple and realistic way forward, people – even us – sometimes resist the future or try to turn back the clock to days that are now long gone."
You can watch the video at C-SPAN.
Once more, with feeling: 1) George W. Bush was not remotely a deregulator. 2) He was, in fact, a "big government disaster" (well, the "big government" is fact, and the "disaster" is well-considered opinion). 3) If the federal government has been busy "privatizing," this past decade, I for one haven't heard much about it, and I work for a foundation that publishes something called Privatization Watch. And I will let our friendly neighborhood commenters chew on what does and does not make a particular economic policy "dehumanizing."
An idle closing thought: Long after the public mood has soured on Obamanomics and Democrat interest-group policy, the structures and personages that keep cranking the stuff out will still be standing. Having an Andy Stern anywhere near the levers of government economic power should be a wake-up call to anyone who prefers markets to mandates, choice to control, capitalism to corporatism.
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By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, were the charges from some of the president's earliest enthusiasts about his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill.
There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama's pronouncements. For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voice—and for good reason.
Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.
A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.
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Getty Images
.One of his first reforms was to rid the White House of the bust of Winston Churchill—a gift from Tony Blair—by packing it back off to 10 Downing Street. A cloudlet of mystery has surrounded the subject ever since, but the central fact stands clear. The new administration had apparently found no place in our national house of many rooms for the British leader who lives on so vividly in the American mind. Churchill, face of our shared wartime struggle, dauntless rallier of his nation who continues, so remarkably, to speak to ours. For a president to whom such associations are alien, ridding the White House of Churchill would, of course, have raised no second thoughts.
Far greater strangeness has since flowed steadily from Washington. The president's appointees, transmitters of policy, go forth with singular passion week after week, delivering the latest inversion of reality. Their work is not easy, focused as it is on a current prime preoccupation of this White House—that is, finding ways to avoid any public mention of the indisputable Islamist identity of the enemy at war with us. No small trick that, but their efforts go forward in public spectacles matchless in their absurdity—unnerving in what they confirm about our current guardians of law and national security.
Consider the hapless Eric Holder, America's attorney general, confronting the question put to him by Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas) of the House Judicary Committee on May 13.
Did Mr. Holder think that in the last three terrorist attempts on this soil, one of them successful (Maj. Nidal Hasan's murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, preceded by his shout of "Allahu Akbar!"), that radical Islam might have played any role at all? Mr. Holder seemed puzzled by the question. "People have different reasons" he finally answered—a response he repeated three times. He didn't want "to say anything negative about any religion."
And who can forget the exhortations on jihad by John Brennan, Mr. Obama's chief adviser on counterterrorism? Mr. Brennan has in the past charged that Americans lack sensitivity to the Muslim world, and that we have particularly failed to credit its peace-loving disposition. In a May 26 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mr. Brennan held forth fervently, if not quite comprehensibly, on who our enemy was not: "Our enemy is not terrorism because terrorism is just a tactic. Our enemy is not terror because terror is a state of mind, and as Americans we refuse to live in fear."
He went on to announce, sternly, that we do not refer to our enemies as Islamists or jihadists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam. How then might we be permitted to describe our enemies? One hint comes from another of Mr. Brennan's pronouncements in that speech: That "violent extremists are victims of political, economic and social forces."
Yes, that would work. Consider the news bulletins we could have read: "Police have arrested Faisal Shahzad, victim of political, economic and social forces living in Connecticut, for efforts to set off a car bomb explosion in Times Square." Plotters in Afghanistan and Yemen, preparing for their next attempt at mass murder in America, could only have listened in wonderment. They must have marvelled in particular on learning that this was the chief counterterrorism adviser to the president of the United States.
More
Obama Resells Health Law to Seniors
Lincoln Bucks Wave Against Incumbents
The Blagojevich Drama Debuts
Showdown on Fund Taxes
.Long after Mr. Obama leaves office, it will be this parade of explicators, laboring mightily to sell each new piece of official reality revisionism—Janet Napolitano and her immortal "man-caused disasters'' among them—that will stand most memorably as the face of this administration.
It is a White House that has focused consistently on the sensitivities of the world community—as it is euphemistically known—a body of which the president of the United States frequently appears to view himself as a representative at large.
It is what has caused this president and his counterterrorist brain trust to deem it acceptable to insult Americans with nonsensical evasions concerning the enemy we face. It is this focus that caused Mr. Holder to insist on holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan, despite the rage this decision induced in New Yorkers, and later to insist if not there, then elsewhere in New York. This was all to be a dazzling exhibition for that world community—proof of Mr. Obama's moral reclamation program and that America had been delivered from the darkness of the Bush years.
It was why this administration tapped officials like Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Among his better known contributions to political discourse was a 2005 address in which he compared the treatment of Muslim-Americans in the United States after 9/11 with the plight of the Japanese-Americans interned in camps after Pearl Harbor. During a human-rights conference held in China this May, Mr. Posner cited the new Arizona immigration law by way of assuring the Chinese, those exemplary guardians of freedom, that the United States too had its problems with discrimination.
So there we were: America and China, in the same boat on human rights, two buddies struggling for reform. For this view of reality, which brought withering criticism in Congress and calls for his resignation, Mr. Posner has been roundly embraced in the State Department as a superbly effective representative.
It is no surprise that Mr. Posner—like numerous of his kind—has found a natural home in this administration. His is a sensibility and political disposition with which Mr. Obama is at home. The beliefs and attitudes that this president has internalized are to be found everywhere—in the salons of the left the world over—and, above all, in the academic establishment, stuffed with tenured radicals and their political progeny. The places where it is held as revealed truth that the United States is now, and has been throughout its history, the chief engine of injustice and oppression in the world.
They are attitudes to be found everywhere, but never before in a president of the United States. Mr. Obama may not hold all, or the more extreme, of these views. But there can be no doubt by now of the influences that have shaped him. They account for his grand apology tour through the capitals of Europe and to the Muslim world, during which he decried America's moral failures—her arrogance, insensitivity. They were the words of a man to whom reasons for American guilt came naturally. Americans were shocked by this behavior in their newly elected president. But he was telling them something from those lecterns in foreign lands—something about his distant relation to the country he was about to lead.
The truth about that distance is now sinking in, which is all to the good. A country governed by leaders too principled to speak the name of its mortal enemy needs every infusion of reality it can get.
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
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Wow. Great find Crafty.
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36 minutes of whining and special pleading. Like FEMA had an emergency plan the wasn't deployed, oil booms that weren't deployed, but he needed more money that congress didn't give him so he could have more unused plans and equipment? This guy gives sniveling a bad name, and is too self-absorbed to realize how this is gonna play.
Obama to POLITICO: Congress shares the blame for BP
By: Roger Simon
June 11, 2010 08:12 PM EDT
President Barack Obama said Friday that some members of Congress should share the blame for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
In an exclusive one-on-one interview with POLITICO, the president said: “I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending.”
The president also implied that anti-big government types such as Tea Party activists were being hypocritical on the issue.
“Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much,” Obama said. “Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms.”
Obama’s comments, during a 36-minute Oval Office interview, come as the public is giving the federal government low marks for its response to the BP oil spill, according to recent polls. Obama travels to the Gulf Monday and Tuesday and has invited top BP executives to the White House for a meeting Wednesday.
As to accusations that he is not showing enough passion in fighting the oil spill, the president blamed the media.
“You know, what I think I get frustrated with sometimes, as do, I suspect, other members of my team, is that the media specifically is demanding things that the public aren’t demanding,” the president said. “What the public wants to see is us solving this problem. And that may not make for good TV.”
The president also declined to say whether the United States was winning the war in Afghanistan. “I think it’s too early to tell whether the strategy that we put forward in September is meeting all the benchmarks that we set,” he said.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38447.html
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026520.php
Another Stumble in the Gulf
June 11, 2010 Posted by John Hinderacker
The administration has decreed a six-month moratorium on exploratory drilling in the Gulf, based on a report that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wrote for President Obama. Salazar claimed that a panel of seven experts selected by the National Academy of Engineering had peer reviewed his report. It turns out, though, that the seven experts never saw the recommendation for a moratorium, and in fact oppose it:
The seven experts who advised President Obama on how to deal with offshore drilling safety after the Deepwater Horizon explosion are accusing his administration of misrepresenting their views to make it appear that they supported a six-month drilling moratorium -- something they actually oppose.
The experts, recommended by the National Academy of Engineering, say Interior Secretary Ken Salazar modified their report last month, after they signed it, to include two paragraphs calling for the moratorium on existing drilling and new permits.
Salazar's report to Obama said a panel of seven experts "peer reviewed" his recommendations, which included a six-month moratorium on permits for new wells being drilled using floating rigs and an immediate halt to drilling operations.
"None of us actually reviewed the memorandum as it is in the report," oil expert Ken Arnold told Fox News. "What was in the report at the time it was reviewed was quite a bit different in its impact to what there is now. So we wanted to distance ourselves from that recommendation."
Salazar apologized to those experts Thursday.
Carol Browner tried to claim that the administration did nothing wrong, but it is hard to follow her logic:
"No one's been deceived or misrepresented," Browner told Fox News, defending the moratorium as a safety measure. "These experts gave their expert advice, and then a determination was made looking at all of the information, including what these experts provided -- that there should be a pause, and that's exactly what there is. There's a pause."
That, of course, is very different from attributing the recommendation of a moratorium to the experts, or claiming that they had "peer reviewed" it. In fact, the expert panel made cogent arguments against the administration's moratorium:
In a letter the experts sent to Salazar, they said his primary recommendation "misrepresents" their position and that halting the drilling is actually a bad idea.
The oil rig explosion occurred while the well was being shut down - a move that is much more dangerous than continuing ongoing drilling, they said.
They also said that because the floating rigs are scarce and in high demand worldwide, they will not simply sit in the Gulf idle for six months. The rigs will go to the North Sea and West Africa, possibly preventing the U.S. from being able to resume drilling for years.
They also said the best and most advanced rigs will be the first to go, leaving the U.S. with the older and potentially less safe rights operating in the nation's coastal waters.
So this looks like one more instance where the Obama administration is neither honest nor competent, and where its first instinct seems to be to pursue the course that will most damage our economy.
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Mark this as my first link to Rolling Stone. This is quite a piece ripping Obama harshly from a leftist point of view and especially Salazar. Too long to post. Note that they rip Bush even worse but to them he was a known evil. One pattern I pick up ties the oil spill to healthcare and to Arizona SB1070 in that no one in this group of elitists reads. The application to drill including risk assessment from BP is so loaded with nonsense that certainly no one in this $4 trillion dollar federal government took the time to read it.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/111965?RS_show_page=0
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I saw that piece, too, Doug, and think the sea change it indicates is remarkable, though the reflexive Bush bashing, post-modern arrogance throughout suggested the left hasn't examined its role in the current bit of presidential performance art. Mark Levin speaks further to this:
The Very Model of a Modern Major Generalist -- By: Mark Steyn
from National Review Online by webmaster@nationalreview.com (Mark Steyn)
9 people liked this
So a man swept into office on an unprecedented tide of delirious fawning is now watching his presidency sink in an unstoppable gush. That’s almost too apt.
Unfortunately, in the real world, a disastrous president has consequences. So let me begin by citing the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in Canada. Whoa, whoa, don’t stampede for the exits! The Canadian thing’s just a starting point, I promise. If I’m still droning on about inside-Ottawa stuff five paragraphs down, feel free to turn the page to our exclusive twelve-page pictorial preview of Sex and the City 3, starring Estelle Getty as Kim Cattrall.
Anyway, a couple of years back, Michael Ignatieff, a professor at Harvard and previously a BBC late-night intellectual telly host, returned to his native land of Canada in order to become prime minister, and to that end got himself elected as leader of the Liberal party. And, as is the fashion nowadays, he cranked out a quickie tome laying out his political “vision.” Having spent his entire adult life abroad, he was aware that some of the natives were uncertain about his commitment to the land of his birth. So he was careful to issue a sort of pledge of a kind of allegiance, explaining that writing a book about Canada had “deepened my attachment to the place on earth that, if I needed one, I would call home.”
Gee, that’s awfully big of you. As John Robson commented in the Ottawa Citizen: “I’m worried that a man so postmodern he doesn’t need a home wants to lead my country. Why? Is it quaint? An interesting sociological experiment?”
Indeed. But there’s a lot of it about. Many Americans are beginning to pick up the strange vibe that, for Barack Obama, governing America is “an interesting sociological experiment,” too. He would doubtless agree that the United States is “the place on earth that, if I needed one, I would call home.” But he doesn’t, not really: It is hard to imagine Obama wandering along to watch a Memorial Day or Fourth of July parade until the job required him to. That’s not to say he’s un-American or anti-American, but merely that he’s beyond all that. Way beyond. He’s the first president to give off the pronounced whiff that he’s condescending to the job -- that it’s really too small for him and he’s just killing time until something more commensurate with his stature comes along.
And so the Gulf spill was an irritation, but he dutifully went through the motions of flying in to be photographed looking presidentially concerned. As he wearily explained to Matt Lauer, “I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain, talking#...#” Good grief, what more do you people want? Alas, he’s not a good enough actor to fake it. So the more desperately he butches up the rhetoric -- “Plug the damn hole!”; “I know whose ass to kick” -- the more pathetically unconvincing it all sounds.
No doubt my observations about Obama’s remoteness from the rhythms of American life will be seen by his dwindling band of beleaguered cheerleaders as just another racist, right-wing attempt to whip up the backwoods knuckle-dragging swamp-dwellers of America by playing on their fears of “the other” -- the sophisticated, worldly cosmopolitan for whom France is more than a reliable punchline. But in fact my complaint is exactly the opposite: Obama’s postmodern detachment is feeble and parochial. It’s true that he hadn’t seen much of America until he ran for president, but he hadn’t seen much of anywhere else, either. Like most multiculturalists, he’s passed his entire adulthood in a very narrow unicultural environment where your ideological worldview doesn’t depend on anything so tedious as actually viewing the world. The aforementioned Michael Ignatieff, who actually has viewed the world, gets close to the psychology in his response to criticisms of him for spending so much time abroad. Deploring such “provincialism,” he replied: “They say it makes me less of a Canadian. It makes me more of a Canadian.”
Well, yes, you can see what he’s getting at. Today, to be an educated citizen of a mature Western democracy -- Canada or Germany, England or Sweden -- is not to feel Canadian or German, English or Swedish, heaven forbid, but rather to regard oneself as a citoyen du monde. Obviously, if being “more Canadian” requires one literally to be a Harvard professor or a BBC TV host or an essayist for the Guardian, then very few actual Canadians would pass the test. What he really means is that in a post-national, post-modern Western world, the definition of “Canadian” (and Dutch and Belgian and Irish) is how multicultural and globalized you feel. The U.N., Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Bono: these are the colors a progressive, worldly Westerner nails to his mast. You don’t need to go anywhere, or do anything: You just need to pick up the general groove, which you can do very easily at almost any college campus.
This Barack Obama did brilliantly. A man who speaks fewer languages than the famously moronic George W. Bush, he has nevertheless grasped the essential lingo of the European transnationalist: Continental leaders strike attitudes rather than effect action -- which is frankly beneath them. One thinks of the insistence a few years ago by Louis Michel, then Belgian foreign minister, that the so-called European Rapid Reaction Force “must declare itself operational without such a declaration being based on any true capability.” As even the Washington Post drily remarked, “Apparently in Europe this works.”
Apparently. Thus, Barack Obama: He declared himself operational without such a declaration being based on any true capability. But, if it works for the EU, why not America? Like many of his background here and there, Obama is engaged mostly by abstractions and generalities. Indeed, he is the very model of a modern major generalist. He has grand plans for “the environment” -- all of it, wherever it may be. Why should the great eco-Gulliver be ensnared by some Lilliputian oil spill lapping round his boots? He flew in to Cairo to give one of the most historically historic speeches in history to the Muslim world. Why should such a colossus lower his visionary gaze to contemplate some no-account nickel-’n’-dime racket like the Iranian nuclear program? With one stroke of his pen, he has transformed the health care of 300 million people. But I suppose if there’s some killer flu epidemic or a cholera outbreak in New Mexico, you losers will be whining at Obama to do something about that, too.
In recent months, a lot of Americans have said to me that they had no idea the new president would feel so “weird.” But, in fact, he’s not weird. True, he’s not, even in Democratic terms, a political figure -- as, say, Clinton or Biden are. Instead, he’s the product of the broader culture: There are millions of people like Barack Obama, the eternal students of a vast lethargic transnational campus for whom global compassion and the multicultural pose are merely the modish gloss on a cult of radical grandiose narcissism. As someone once said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” When you’ve spent that long waiting in line for yourself, it’s bound to be a disappointment.
http://article.nationalreview.com/436145/the-very-model-of-a-modern-major-generalist/mark-steyn
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"Why should the great eco-Gulliver be ensnared by some Lilliputian oil spill lapping round his boots? He flew in to Cairo to give one of the most historically historic speeches in history to the Muslim world. Why should such a colossus lower his visionary gaze to contemplate some no-account nickel-’n’-dime racket like the Iranian nuclear program?"
LOL.
If the trend continues and republicans take back at least one house I predict the colossus of the world (not Rhodes-in his own megalomanic mind) will fold like one of those basement fold up bridge table chairs.
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Friends in High Places
The Obama Justice Department went to bat for the New Black Panther party—and then covered it up.
BY Jennifer Rubin
June 21, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 38
The case is straightforward. On Election Day 2008, two members of the New Black Panther party (NBPP) dressed in military garb were captured on videotape at a Philadelphia polling place spouting racial epithets and menacing voters. One, Minister King Samir Shabazz, wielded a nightstick. It was a textbook case of voter intimidation and clearly covered under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
A Department of Justice trial team was assigned to investigate. They gathered affidavits from witnesses—one of the poll watchers was called a “white devil” and a “cracker.” A Panther told him he would be “ruled by the black man.” The trial team, all career Justice attorneys and headed by voting section chief Chris Coates, filed a case against the two Panthers caught on tape. Malik Zulu Shabazz, head of the national NBPP, and the party itself were also named based on evidence the party had planned the deployment of 300 members on Election Day and on statements after the incident in which the NBPP endorsed the intimidation at the Philadelphia polling station.
The trial team quickly obtained a default judgment—meaning it had won the case because the New Black Panther party failed to defend itself. Yet in May 2009, Obama Justice Department lawyers, appointed temporarily to fill top positions in the civil rights division, ordered the case against the NBPP dismissed. An administration that has pledged itself to stepping-up civil rights enforcement dropped the case and, for over a year, has prevented the trial team lawyers from telling their story.
The Panthers like to tout their “victory” and parrot the Obama Justice Department’s line that the case was unmeritorious. The party held a national convention in Atlanta over Memorial Day weekend (sponsored and attended by the once mainstream Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a grab bag of socialist and anti-Semitic figures). Its website boasts: “The New Black Panther Party has been embroiled in a battle between Republican Congressmen and the U.S. Department of Justice over a ‘voter intimidation’ scandal for the last 18 months. During these 18 months right wing and Republican Newspaper and Electronic media have gone to exhaustive lengths to discredit and slander the New Black Panther Party and its Chairman and Attorney Malik Zulu Shabazz.”
But on June 4, J. Christian Adams, a veteran lawyer in Justice’s voting section and a key member of the trial team, resigned. His reasons were spelled out in a letter that also noted that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which was investigating the dismissal, had subpoenaed him and Coates, but their superiors, in violation of federal law, had ordered them not to testify. He noted that “the defendants in the New Black Panther lawsuit have become increasingly belligerent in their rhetoric toward the attorneys who brought the case. . . . Their grievances toward us generally echo the assertions [by Justice Department officials] that the facts and law did not support the lawsuit against them.” Coates, too, has left the Voting Section, moving to South Carolina to work in the U.S. attorney’s office. Last Friday, the civil rights commission’s general counsel, David Blackwood, announced that he had received an email from Christian Adams’s attorney stating that Adams is now available to provide information to the commission. Commissioner Todd Graziano said they would schedule Adams’s appearance at a public hearing as soon as possible as the commission had been seeking his testimony for many months.
With Adams’s resignation and letter, a clearer picture is finally emerging of what led to the dismissal of the case, the actions of DoJ political appointees, the department’s misrepresentations about the case, and the Obama administration’s approach to civil rights enforcement.
Based on documents obtained by The Weekly Standard and interviews with Justice personnel, we now know far more about the sequence of events surrounding the dismissal. The then-acting assistant attorney general for civil rights, Grace Chung Becker, signed off on the case as the Bush administration was leaving office in January 2009. She confirms that the decision to file the case was an easy one. In response to my questions, she was emphatic that this was a serious case of voter intimidation. The trial team, which also included attorneys Robert Popper and Spencer Fisher, conducted its investigation and on January 8, 2009, filed suit against the NBPP. As the Panthers did not respond to the lawsuit, the department had a slam-dunk victory.
The trial team was poised to enter a default judgment in late April 2009. An order for a default of judgment was drafted and sent to the voting section management. On the morning of April 29, the acting deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, Steven Rosenbaum, sent an email to Coates about the case. It was the first indication by any department official that something was amiss. “I have serious doubts about the merits of the motion for entry of a default judgment and the request for injunctive relief,” Rosenbaum, an Obama appointee, wrote. “Most significantly, this case raises serious First Amendment issues, but the papers make no mention of the First Amendment.” Rosenbaum asked Coates a series of questions—whether “the defendants make any statements threatening physical harm to voters or persons aiding voters,” for example, and what was the “factual predicate for enjoining the Party, as opposed to individual defendants”—which indicated that he was not familiar with the case and had not read the detailed memorandum accompanying the draft order.
The trial team was surprised by the email and answered Rosenbaum point by point in a response sent that same evening. They corrected his misstatements and explained in answer to his First Amendment concerns, “We are not seeking to enjoin the making of those (or any) statements. We plan to introduce them as evidence to show that what happened in Philadelphia on Election Day was planned and announced in advance by the central authority of the NBPP, and was a NBPP initiative.” They pointed out that dressing in military garb did not raise First Amendment concerns when “used with the brandishing of a weapon to intimidate people going to the polling station.” They concluded: “We strongly believe that this is one of the clearest violations of Section 11(b) [of the Voting Rights Act] the Department has come across. There is never a good reason to bring a billy club to a polling station. If the conduct of these men, which was video recorded and broadcast nationally, does not violate Section 11(b), the statute will have little meaning going forward.”
The trial team assumed that Rosenbaum was simply confused about the applicable law. The notion that this was a problematic case would have been outlandish. With video evidence, multiple witnesses, and clear case law, it was one the easiest cases on which any of the trial team attorneys—who had more than 75 years of collective experience—had worked.
After sending the response, Coates and Robert Popper met with Rosenbaum and the then acting assistant attorney general for civil rights, Loretta King. People familiar with the discussions describe “two days of shouting.” The trial team now knew that DoJ political appointees were serious about undermining the case by using whatever arguments they could dream up, including First Amendment concerns. The team prepared a detailed memo dated May 6 explaining the factual and legal basis for the case. In 13 pages, the attorneys meticulously analyzed the law and the facts and rebutted any notion that the First Amendment could insulate the Panthers. The memo made clear that Rosenbaum’s and King’s arguments for dismissing the case were spurious. Rosenbaum and King, for example, argued that legal precedent involving protestors at abortion clinics would undermine the case. The trial team pointed out, however, that these cases were either inapplicable or actually supported the issuance of an injunction when there was a significant government interest (such as the protection of voting rights) at stake.
The arguments continued after the May 6 memo was submitted. During one meeting in a conference room on the 5th floor of the Main Justice building, Coates became so exasperated he threw the memo at Rosenbaum who had admitted not reading the trial team’s detailed briefing on the issues.
Rosenbaum and King sent a request to the appellate section asking their opinion of the case. The appellate attorneys sided with the trial team on May 13. Coates announced this to his team with the words “Good news.” They all agreed it would be unthinkable for their superiors to nix the case. They were wrong. On May 15, Coates received an order to dismiss the case against everyone but the baton-menacing Shabazz. And they were ordered to scale back the injunction against him to cover only the display of a weapon within 100 feet of a Philadelphia polling place until 2012. (No other behavior was enjoined.)
The actions of King and Rosenbaum were unprecedented in the collective experience of the trial team. They were not alone in that assessment. A former associate attorney general for the civil division Greg Katsas testified before the civil rights commission on April 23, 2010, and termed the Panthers’ actions a blatant case of voter intimidation. He said it was a “straightforward and overwhelmingly strong case” and that the Panthers’ conduct was “egregious and intentional.” As for the party itself and its leadership, Katsas said that under “general principles of agency law” they were liable.
From the onset, Justice has denied that any political appointees were involved in the decision to dismiss the case. This line was repeated in multiple letters to and face-to-face meetings with Republican representatives Frank Wolf and Lamar Smith and in statements to the media. We now know that this is incorrect. In interrogatory answers supplied to the civil rights commission, the department acknowledged that Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed on the decision to dismiss the case and that the number three man in Justice, Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, was consulted as well. Katsas testified, “Certainly DoJ’s decision to abandon all claims against the party, Malik Shabazz, and Mr. Jackson [the second polling place intimidator], despite their refusal to even defend the case, would have qualified as important enough for the leadership of the Civil Rights Division to raise with [Perrelli].” The same is true of the decision to seek only a narrow injunction against the billy club-wielding defendant. He notes that the filing of the case may have been routine, but the decision to dismiss it was so extraordinary that someone of Perrelli’s rank must certainly have played an “active role.”
The department is, moreover, trying to characterize King and Rosenbaum, who instructed the trial team to dismiss the case, as “career attorneys with over 60 years of experience.” It is true that they both served in career positions at Justice in the past. But under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, as soon as someone is appointed to fill a political position—as Rosenbaum and King were early in the Obama administration—they are political appointees.
Neither King nor Rosenbaum has directly worked on a voting rights case since the mid-1990s and both have received sanctions of hundreds of thousands of dollars by federal court judges for bringing unmeritorious cases and for failing to respond to court orders. In January 2010, a federal court judge in Kansas fined King and Rosenbaum for failing to respond to interrogatories in a housing discrimination case. Former civil rights division attorney Hans von Spakovsky has written: “That particular sanction is also very unusual—I have never seen a sanction order directed at individual lawyers that specifically says their employer is not responsible for paying the costs. . . . During the Bush administration, when liberals claim there was politicization going on in the division, I am not aware of a single such sanction.” King and the Justice Department were also ordered to pay $587,000 in attorneys’ fees and fines for bringing an unmeritorious claim during the Clinton administration in Johnson v. Miller. (In that case the court also took DoJ and King to task for allowing the ACLU to unduly affect the litigation decisions of the department.)
The administration’s internal investigation also appears to have been fraudulent. Under ongoing pressure from Representatives Smith and Wolf, an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) was finally ordered to commence in July 2009. Until a few days before Adams’s resignation, however, none of the trial team had been interviewed by OPR investigators.
Furthermore the department has been less than candid in congressional testimony. In December 2009, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez testified before the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, and he either did not understand the case fully or chose to disregard the documentation the trial team had put together. Perez said, for example, that Shabazz had received the “maximum penalty.” An experienced voting rights lawyer scoffs at the statement. “The maximum penalty is Leavenworth.” Perez then suggested that the attorneys on the trial team might have violated Federal Rule 11, which prohibits lawyers from bringing frivolous actions. The trial team was angered at the public insinuation that they had been derelict in their professional responsibilities.
In written responses to the civil rights commission, the Justice Department has claimed there was no evidence of involvement by outside groups—specifically the NAACP. Yet there is substantial reason to doubt this assertion. An attorney for the NAACP, Kristen Clarke, has admitted that she spoke to department attorneys about the case and shared the complaint with others. (In a deposition she also said that a department lawyer sent her news clippings of the case.) She spoke to a voting section attorney Laura Coates (no relation to Chris Coates) about the case at a Justice Department function. Clarke asked Coates, who she assumed was sympathetic, when the Panther case was going to be dismissed. The comment suggested that the NAACP had been pushing for such an outcome, and Coates reported the conversation to her superiors. Under oath in a deposition with the civil rights commission, however, Clarke denied six times that she had any conversations with Justice Department attorneys. When shown an email from a department attorney to her calling a Washington Times report on the NBPP case nothing but “lies” and declaring “This is CC’s doing” she incredibly denied (despite her long association with him) that she understood the reference was to Chris Coates.
While the interference by political appointees in the NBPP case has been egregious, there is a critical issue with implications far beyond this single case: Whether the attorneys who populate the civil rights division of the Justice Department believe that civil rights laws exist only to protect minorities from discrimination and intimidation by whites. In a farewell address to his colleagues before his reassignment to a U.S. attorney’s office, Coates spoke about this widespread sentiment and why it was antithetical to the department’s mission to seek equal enforcement of federal laws.
Former voting rights attorneys confirm that the belief is omnipresent in the Justice Department. DoJ attorneys openly criticized the Panther case, objecting not to any lack of evidence or to the legal arguments but to the notion that any discrimination case should be filed against black defendants. There are instances of attorneys refusing to work on cases against minority defendants. In 2005, for example, Coates pursued, filed, and won a case (upheld on appeal to the Fifth Circuit in 2009) of egregious voter discrimination by black officials in Noxubee County, Mississippi. Colleagues criticized Coates for filing the case and refused to work on it.
Liberal civil rights lawyers argue that because “a history of official discrimination” can be one subsidiary factor in voting cases it “wipes out every other factor” and prohibits cases from being brought against blacks. And further, that since “socio-economic” factors can be considered in determining whether voting discrimination has occurred, these cases cannot be brought against black defendants until there is economic parity between blacks and whites. Such attorneys use phrases like “traditional civil rights cases” and “traditional civil rights victims” to signal that only minority victims and white perpetrators concern them. Justice sources tell me that career attorneys have been “assured” that cases against minority defendants won’t be brought. In testimony before the civil rights commission, Thomas Perez denied he was aware of any such conversations or sentiments.
To date the Democratic Congress has exercised virtually no oversight over either the Panther case or the department’s civil rights enforcement approach generally. The OPR investigation shows no sign of completion. Neither Holder nor Perrelli has been questioned in depth about his participation in the case or about the allegations that Justice attorneys don’t intend to enforce civil rights laws against anyone other than white defendants.
Smith and Wolf, who just this week fired off two-dozen questions to Attorney General Eric Holder, continue to pursue the case, but without Democratic support they cannot subpoena either witnesses or documents. That may change after the November election. If the House of Representatives or Senate flips to Republican control and new committee chairmen decide to engage in actual oversight, Perrelli and Holder may find themselves forced by subpoenas to tell the complete NBPP story and explain why Obama’s Justice Department believes the civil rights laws exist only to protect citizens of certain races.
Jennifer Rubin is a contributing editor to Commentary magazine.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/friends-high-places
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The shamelessness of BO, Holder, et al in this case is extraordinary, as is the silence of the MSM. Change the races and the politics of those involved and we surely would be seeing different results.
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He is too "professorial". He is too cool, calm, and not "emotional" enough. He needs to show "anger". These are examples of the left's 'criticism' of their guy. It is never the message. Just how it is delivered. When the tax increases hit next year the economy will be crushed. Hopefully the lame duck Congress will not be able to pass a host of more expensive legislation that will make the economy even more stressed as Marc Levin thinks. Though I fear he is probably right that they will try to do this.
****Language guru: Obama speech too 'professorial' for his target audienceBy the CNN Wire Staff
June 17, 2010 10:23 a.m. EDT
Obama lays out Gulf strategySTORY HIGHLIGHTS
Speech may have gone over heads of audience
Plaudits for "oil began spewing"
"Not Obama at his best"
(CNN) -- President Obama's speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.
Tuesday night's speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. The Austin, Texas-based company analyzes and catalogues trends in word usage and word choice and their impact on culture.
Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence "added some difficulty for his target audience," Payack said.
He singled out this sentence from Obama as unfortunate: "That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge -- a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation's secretary of energy."
Video: Stupak: Apology 'not good enough' for BP
Video: BP's $20 billion cleanup fund
Video: Obama faces moratorium backlash
Video: Cleaning the Gulf's oil-soaked birds
RELATED TOPICS
English Language
The White House
Barack Obama
"A little less professorial, less academic and more ordinary," Payack recommended. "That's the type of phraseology that makes you (appear) aloof and out of touch."
The monitor's chief word analyst found these three sentences insensitive: "Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced. And unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it is not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days. The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years."
"You shouldn't be saying that in Katrina land," said Payack, referring to the 2005 hurricane that devastated the Gulf Coast. "New Orleans lost a third of its population; it's still recovering."
But he praised Obama's phrase "oil began spewing" as active and graphic.
iReporter:Obama's speech too fuzzy on details
At a micro level, the average word in the speech contained 4.5 letters, a bit longer than is typical for the former constitutional law professor, Payack said.
Obama's nearly 10th-grade-level rating was the highest of any of his major speeches and well above the Grade 7.4 of his 2008 "Yes, we can" victory speech, which many consider his best effort, Payack said.
"The scores indicate that this was not Obama at his best, especially when attempting to make an emotional connection to the American people," he added.****
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The central question here could have gone under constitutional issues, if and when we find someone who thinks his governance is constitutional.
Degeneration of Democracy (excerpted) http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/06/22/degeneration_of_democracy_106046.html
By Thomas Sowell June 22, 2010
... a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive. In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.
The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.
Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.
And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated. But our government is supposed to be "a government of laws and not of men." If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion-- or $50 billion or $100 billion-- then so be it.
But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without "due process of law." Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.
With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.
If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in Constitutional government. And, without Constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will always be a "crisis"-- which, as the president's chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to "go to waste" as an opportunity to expand the government's power.
That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.
...
If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.
The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP's money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed "czars" controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are.
...
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Drudge ran a series of strong headlines from the trial this week that seem to have faded off. One was the Chicago Sun Times story the Blago Chief of Staff Harris testified that Obama knew of the plot: http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/blagojevich/2427402,CST-NWS-BLAGO24.article
I'm ready to pin all this on Obama if deserving but there are a couple of problems: a) Harris didn't follow that with any info showing how he knows that, b) Obama never got his choice picked, and c) Obama never appointed Blago to the cabinet or anything else.
As I wrote from the beginning, Obama comes out of this smelling like a rose when it comes out that he was the one who blew the whistle on all that Chicago-Springfield corruption.
The funniest part is to see how surprised the governor of Illinois was to find out that ordinary corruption and backroom dealing is a crime. Who knew?
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<http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/a_shrink_asks_whats_wrong_with.html>
June 11, 2010 A Shrink Asks: What's Wrong with Obama? *By* *Robin of
Berkeley* <http://www.americanthinker.com/robin_of_berkeley/>
So what is the matter with Obama? Conservatives have been asking this
question for some time. I've written a number of articles
trying<http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/obama_is_a_stranger_in_a_stran.html>to
solve the mystery.
Even some liberals are starting to wonder. James Carville
railed<http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20006016-503544.html>about
Obama's blasé attitude after the catastrophic oil spill. The New York
Times' Maureen Dowd revamped Obama's "Yes We Can" motto into "Will We Ever?"
The liberal women of the TV show "The View" have expressed sympathy for
Michelle Obama's living with a man so out of
touch<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7805775/Obama-loses-the-Left-suddenly-its-cool-to-bash-Barack.html>.
Peggy Noonan, hardly a vehement Obama foe, recently pronounced him
disconnected<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575003433828439728.html>.
Obama's odd mannerisms intrigue a psychotherapist like me. He also presents
a serious diagnostic challenge.
For one, Obama's teleprompter and the men behind the Blackberry keep him
well-scripted. We know so little about the facts of his life.
But it's more than just a lack of information. Obama himself is a strange
bird. He doesn't fit easily into any diagnostic category.
Many people attribute Obama's oddness to his narcissism. True, Obama has a
gargantuan ego, and he is notoriously thin-skinned.
Yet a personality disorder like narcissism does not explain Obama's
strangeness: his giggling while being asked about the economy; his
continuing a shout-out rather than announcing the Ft. Hood shootings; or his
vacations, golfing, partying and fundraising during the calamitous oil
spill.
Take also Obama's declaring on the "Today Show" that he wants to know whose
ass to kick <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXBSotezfc4>. Consummate
narcissists would never stoop to this vulgar display of adolescent machismo.
Obama is flat when passion is needed; he's aggressive when savvy is
required. What's most worrisome is that Obama doesn't even realize that his
behavior is inappropriate.
So if it's not just simple narcissism, what is wrong with Obama? Since I've
never evaluated him, I can't say for sure. But I can hazard some educated
guesses.
If I saw a client as disconnected as him, the first thing I would wonder: Is
something wrong with his brain? And I'd consider the following theoretical
diagnostic possibilities.
--*Physical problems*: There are a multitude of physiological conditions
that can cause people to act strangely. For instance: head injuries,
endocrine disturbances, epilepsy, and toxic chemical exposure.
It makes me wonder: Did Obama ever have a head injury? His stepfather in
Indonesia was purportedly an alcoholic abuser. Was Obama subject to any
physical abuse?
-- *Drugs and alcohol*: Damage to the brain from drugs and alcohol can also
cause significant cognitive impairments. Obama once said that there were 57
states -- and didn't correct himself. Memory problems can be caused by both
illicit and prescription drug use.
Obama admits to a history of drug use in his youth. Did his usage cause some
damage? Does Obama still use?
--*Asperger's Syndrome*: Also known as high-functioning autism,
Asperger's<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome> causes
deficits in social skills. A person with Asperger's can't read social cues.
Consequently, he can be insensitive and hurtful without even knowing it.
Could Obama have Asperger's? He might have some mild traits, but certainly
not the full-blown disorder. In contrast to Obama, those with Asperger's get
fixated on some behavior, like programming computers. Obama lacks this kind
of passion and zeal.
*--Mental Illnes*s: Obama's family tree is replete with the unbalanced. His
maternal great-grandmother committed suicide. His grandfather, Stanley
Dunham, was particularly unhinged: He was expelled from high school for
punching his principal; named his daughter Stanley because he wanted a boy;
and exposed young Barry to not just drunken trash talk, but unrestricted
visits with alleged pedophile Frank Marshall Davis (who might or might
not<http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/what_i_learned_from_obamas_pop.html>be
Obama's biological father). Barack Sr. was an abusive, alcoholic
bigamist.
Since mental illness runs in the family, does Obama have any signs? Yes and
no. No, he is not a schizophrenic babbling about Martians. But there are red
flags for some other conditions.
While Obama doesn't appear to hallucinate, he seems to have delusions. His
believing he has a Messiah-like special gift smacks of grandiose delusions.
His externalizing all blame to conservatives, George W. Bush, or the
"racist" bogeyman hints at persecutory delusions.
Along with a delusional disorder, Obama may fit for a mild psychotic
disorder called schizotypal
disorder<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypal_personality_disorder>.
It may explain some of Obama's oddness.
People with schizotypal disorder hold bizarre beliefs, are suspicious and
paranoid, and have inappropriate and constricted affect. They have few close
friends and are socially awkward. A schizotypal is someone like your strange
cousin Becky who is addicted to astrology, believes she is psychic, and is
the oddball at social gatherings.
Schizotypal Disorder does ring some bells vis-à-vis Obama. One way the
diagnosis doesn't fit, however, is that schizotypals are generally harmless,
odd ducks. Not so with Obama.
--*Trauma:* My gut tells me that Obama was seriously traumatized in
childhood. His mother disregarded his basic needs, dragged him all over the
place, and ultimately abandoned him.
But I think there may be something even more insidious in his family
background. While I can't prove it, the degree of Obama's disconnect reminds
me of my sexually abused clients.
With serious sexual abuse, the brain chemistry may change. The child
dissociates -- that is, disconnects from his being -- in order to cope. Many
adult survivors still dissociate, from occasional trances to the most
extreme cases of multiple personality disorder.
Apparently, young Barry was left in the care of Communist Frank Marshall
Davis, who admitted to molesting a 13-year-old girl. As a teenager, Obama
wrote a disturbing
poem<http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/is_obama_a_narcissist.html>,
"Pop," that evoked images of sexual abuse -- for instance, describing dual
amber stains on both his and "Pop's" shorts.
Would trauma explain Obama's disconnect? In many ways, yes. A damaged and
unattached child may develop a "false self." To compensate for the enormous
deficits in identity and attachment, the child invents his own personality.
For Obama, it may have been as a special, gifted person.
Let's return now to my original question: What is wrong with Obama? My guess
is a great deal. The answer is complex and likely includes some combination
of the above.
Along with the brain issues are personality disorders: narcissism, paranoia,
passive-aggressiveness. There's even the possibility of the most destructive
character defect of all, an antisocial
personality<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder>.
Untreated abuse can foster antisocial traits, especially among boys.
If my assessment is accurate, what does this mean?
It means that liberals need to wake up and spit out the Kool-Aid...and that
conservatives should put aside differences, band together, and elect as many
Republicans as possible.
Because Obama will not change. He will not learn from his mistakes. He will
not grow and mature from on-the-job experience. In fact, over time, Obama
will likely become a more ferocious version of who he is today.
Why? Because this is a damaged person. Obama's fate was sealed years ago
growing up in his strange and poisonous family. Later on, his empty vessel
was filled with the hateful bile of men like Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers.
Obama will not evolve; he will not rise to the occasion; he will not become
the man he was meant to be. This is for one reason and one reason alone:
He is not capable of it.
This article is not intended to offer any definitive diagnoses, but for
educational purposes only.
*A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a psychotherapist in Berkeley and a
recovering liberal. You can e-mail Robin at robinofberkeley@hotmail.com. She
regrets that she may not be able to acknowledge your e-mail. *
*Page Printed from:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/a_shrink_asks_whats_wrong_with.html*at
June 22, 2010 - 08:17:35 AM CDT
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I like the psychanalytic thoughts. I don't like psychobable for purposes of excusing behavior. Like, "well the guy was abused as a child" so child abusing as an adult is therefore forgivable.
But I do think this kind of analysis is necessary to help understand what we are dealing with in this case. Particularly for those of us who are convinced this guy is hell bent on destroying the country.
The ONE is certainly some sort of megalomaniac. I am convinced he has some sort of personality disorder as well.
I think most personality disorders typically include lack of insight to oneself and thus a real inability to see when one is wrong. It is always "someone elses" fault.
Schizotypal is interesting. I guess I could read up on this one but I doubt this fits him as much as something more like narcisstic,, or psycopathic personality disorder. Bamster doesn't strike me so much as weird, eccentric or odd, as widely overconfident that he can fix the world, that he always knows what is best, true lack of guilt, true lack of real compassion, grandiosity, he is smarter than the entire world,
deceit, pathological lying, overt charm, and ability to lull people into like some sort of web, manipulative, using of other people's for one's own purpose until no longer convenient.
These are all characteristics of personality disorders. I think the author is thinking that his delusions of grandeur are so fantastic he almost has to be somewhere along the scale of psychotically delusional. Perhaps. But shcizotypals are not I don't think likely to manipulate and charm others so easily. And true of psychopaths they are often very charming and such good liars that one does not know how much damage they have inflicted on those around them until - it is too late. Sound familiar???
Clinton certainly had some of the narcistic personality disorder traits with regard to self love, pathologic lying, deceit, phoney emotion or empathy except when such displays suited his goals. I don't think he ever had any guilt for any of his behavior. It was all the fault of his political enemies. His only remorse was clearly only insomuch as it annoyed or irritated him personally or affected his image. I could never completely say he was totally a narcisstic personality disorder though.
At least my take anyway.
As for this:
"Because Obama will not change. He will not learn from his mistakes. He will
not grow and mature from on-the-job experience. In fact, over time, Obama
will likely become a more ferocious version of who he is today."
So far this is proven correct. He has only gotten away with it because of large majorities in both houses. The MSM loves to shout about his acheivements at getting through health care and now financial reform. We all know this happened not because of him but rather *despite* him.
And this is precisely why, if the Republicans can even win one house and stop his agenda I believe and have posted that IMO he will fold like an injured pelican stuck in oil. I think he is incapable of anything other than pursuing his delusions. And that makes him even more dangerous and ever more the reason he must be stopped.
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http://article.nationalreview.com/437185/the-unengaged-president/mark-steyn
June 26, 2010 7:01 A.M.
The Unengaged President
Obama’s lack of interest in the world is evident in his handling of the oil spill and the Afghan War.
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Anohter zinger from Steyn.
The damage being done by Baraq Hussein Obama is incalculable. :cry:
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http://hotair.com/archives/2010/07/06/video-the-nice-young-man-eric-holder-left-off-the-hook/
Aren't you Obama voters proud of him and his appointees?
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I am beginning to think of Obama as a modern Nero- He is fiddling with his own agenda while everything else burns............
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http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/immigration/babeu-death-threats-7-5-2010
CASA GRANDE, Ariz. - Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, a strong supporter of Arizona's new immigration law, is receiving threats against his life.
He's been very outspoken about the need to secure the borders, and the topic is a controversial one.
Outside law enforcements have been brought in to investigate the threats and have found them credible.
Chief Deputy Steve Henry said some of the threats come from the Mexican mafia and drug cartel members.
Sheriff Babeu declined personal security detail. He decided not to request funding for security detail at this time, because the county resources are already stretched.
**Nice to have Obama's Justice Department acting on behalf of the Black Panthers and Mexican drug cartels, isn't it.**
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http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/breaking-former-doj-officials-stepping-forward-to-support-j-christian-adams/?singlepage=true
Corroborated.
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Like I said the justice of the king- not of America...........
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Berwick is a recess appointee not because Republicans won't allow a vote. Just the opposite, Republicans were dying to hold hearings with this ideologue.
America does NOT have the best health care system. He favors central planning, opposes free markets... "in the darkness of private enterprise". In his own words: "Britain, you chose well"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2Kevz_9lsw&feature=related[/youtube]
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This guy is exactly case in point from my multiple posts on the academic liberal elite who behind the scenes has been plotting government take over of health care for decades. These guys have been publishing their liberal and essentially marxist views for many years in NEJM and other liberal med journals.
He and his cohorts have explained to bamster the ideal of great cheap health care to everyone and anyone.
The details are not for bamster. He has no clue. Bamster's job was to go out and lie about it and get passed the first step towards the ultimate 100% government control. He pretends to be an expert in the details yet the reality is Bamster couldn't explain anything in the bill. He is the "front" man.
Berwick and other academic ivory league elites are the masterminds of the the health care bill - notwithstanding the political and lawyerly aspects of it.
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Some would say blaming everything on something, or someone else is "politics" as usual. It is also a red flag for some sort of personality disorder or even a psychopathic personality. This guy is such an incredible liar that he can get up and say things that he knows are NOT true, that he knows listeners know are NOT true and yet he says them anyway without a wince, a pause, a blush, and with the convincingness of a cold blooded con artist. He has to be some sort of personality disorder.
I think he is a psychopath with narcissistic, delusional megalomanic like features. He is also a very angry man.
****Obama: Israelis suspicious of me because my middle name is Hussein
U.S. president tells Channel 2 Israel is unlikely to attack Iran without coordinating with the U.S.
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Barack Obama Benjamin Netanyahu Middle East peace Israel news U.S. President Barack Obama told Channel 2 News on Wednesday that he believed Israel would not try to surprise the U.S. with a unilateral attack on Iran.
In an interview aired Thursday evening, Obama was asked whether he was concerned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would try to attack Iran without clearing the move with the U.S., to which the president replied "I think the relationship between Israel and the U.S. is sufficiently strong that neither of us try to surprise each other, but we try to coordinate on issues of mutual concern."
U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walking at the White House, on July 6, 2010.
Photo by: Reuters
Obama spoke to Channel 2's Yonit Levy one day after what he described as an "excellent" meeting with Netanyahu at the White House. The two leaders met alone for about 90 minutes Tuesday evening, during which time they discussed the peace process with the Palestinians, the contested Iranian nuclear program, and the strategic understandings between their two countries on Tehran's efforts to achieve nuclear capabilities.
Netanyahu promised Obama during their meeting that Israel would undertake confidence-building measures toward the Palestinian Authority in the coming days and weeks. These steps are likely to include the transfer of responsibility over more parts of the West Bank over to PA security forces.
During the interview Wednesday, when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that "some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion."
"Ironically, I've got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the U.S. Senate," Obama said.
"I think that sometimes, particularly in the Middle East, there's the feeling of the friend of my enemy must be my enemy, and the truth of the matter is that my outreach to the Muslim community is designed precisely to reduce the antagonism and the dangers posed by a hostile Muslim world to Israel and to the West," Obama went on to say.
Obama added that he believed a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians could be achieved within his current term. "I think [Netanyahu] understands we've got a fairly narrow window of opportunity… We probably won’t have a better opportunity than we have right now. And that has to be seized. It’s going to be difficult."
The American President entirely sidestepped the question of whether the U.S. would pressure Israel to extend a current 10-month moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements, failing to give a clear answer. The moratorium is set to expire in September, and Netanyahu has announced that he would not extend the timeframe. The U.S., however, views continued Israeli settlement construction as a serious obstacle to peace efforts.
When asked whether he thought Netanyahu was the right man to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians, the U.S. President said that "I think Prime Minister Netanyahu may be very well positioned to bring this about," adding that Israel will have to overcome many hurdles in order to affect the change required to "secure Israel for another 60 years"
In a separate interview with another Israeli media outlet, Obama proclaimed that he was not "blindly optimistic" regarding the chances of a Middle East peace agreement.
Israel is right to be skeptical about the peace process, he said in another yet-to-be-aired interview that was taped on Wednesday. He noted during the interview that many people thought the founding of Israel was impossible, so its very existence should be "a great source of hope."
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Netanyahu told U.S. Jewish leaders that direct Palestinian-Israeli talks would begin "very soon", but warned that they would be "very, very tough."
Netanyahu told his cabinet earlier this week before flying to Washington that the time had come for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to prepare to meet directly with the Israelis, as it was the only way to advance peace.
Israelis and Palestinians have been holding indirect talks mediated by Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. Aides to Obama sounded a hopeful tone regarding the negotiations last week, telling reporters that the shuttle diplomacy between the two sides had paid off and the gaps have narrowed.
At a meeting with representatives of Jewish organizations at the Plaza Hotel late Wednesday, Netanyahu discussed the efforts to promote Middle East peace. "This is going to be a very, very tough negotiation," he said, adding "the sooner the better."
"Direct negotiations must begin right away, and we think that they will," he said.****
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I didn't want to let the occasion of the G20 go by without pointing out this glaring, unreported irony:
It was not just that Obama was wrong with his economic advice that all nations should print borrow or steal to 'stimulate' their economies... it is that he ran against that kind of arrogance - presuming that we always know what is best for other nations.
I wonder how many perfectly good Muslim teenagers around the world will now become terrorists due to that kind of American arrogance...
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Doug,
Good point. An irony I didn't think of.
He has historically criticized the US as being "arrogant" yet who is more arrogant than the ONE who goes around the world lecturing everyone as the professor King who is teaching a world of children on right and wrong?
Another sign of psychopathic lack of self insight. This guy is far from normal.
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***The selective modesty of Barack Obama
By Charles Krauthammer
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Remember NASA? It once represented to the world the apogee of American scientific and technological achievement. Here is President Obama's vision of NASA's mission, as explained by administrator Charles Bolden:
"One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering."
Apart from the psychobabble -- farcically turning a space-faring enterprise into a self-esteem enhancer -- what's the sentiment behind this charge? Sure America has put a man on the moon, led the information revolution, won more Nobel Prizes than any other nation by far -- but, on the other hand, a thousand years ago al-Khwarizmi gave us algebra.
Bolden seems quite intent on driving home this message of achievement equivalence -- lauding, for example, Russia's contribution to the space station. Russia? In the 1990s, the Russian space program fell apart, leaving the United States to pick up the slack and the tab for the missing Russian contributions to get the space station built.
For good measure, Bolden added that the United States cannot get to Mars without international assistance. Beside the fact that this is not true, contrast this with the elan and self-confidence of President John Kennedy's 1961 pledge that America would land on the moon within the decade.
There was no finer expression of belief in American exceptionalism than Kennedy's. Obama has a different take. As he said last year in France, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Which of course means: If we're all exceptional, no one is.
Take human rights. After Obama's April meeting with the president of Kazakhstan, Mike McFaul of the National Security Council reported that Obama actually explained to the leader of that thuggish kleptocracy that we, too, are working on perfecting our own democracy.
Nor is this the only example of an implied moral equivalence that diminishes and devalues America. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reported that in discussions with China about human rights, the U.S. side brought up Arizona's immigration law -- "early and often." As if there is the remotest connection between that and the persecution of dissidents, jailing of opponents and suppression of religion routinely practiced by the Chinese dictatorship.
Nothing new here. In his major addresses, Obama's modesty about his own country has been repeatedly on display as, in one venue after another, he has gratuitously confessed America's alleged failing -- from disrespecting foreigners to having lost its way morally after 9/11.
It's fine to recognize the achievements of others and be non-chauvinistic about one's country. But Obama's modesty is curiously selective. When it comes to himself, modesty is in short supply.
It began with the almost comical self-inflation of his presidential campaign, from the still inexplicable mass rally in Berlin in front of a Prussian victory column to the Greek columns framing him at the Democratic convention. And it carried into his presidency, from his posture of philosopher-king adjudicating between America's sins and the world's to his speeches marked by a spectacularly promiscuous use of the word "I."
Notice, too, how Obama habitually refers to Cabinet members and other high government officials as "my" -- "my secretary of homeland security," "my national security team," "my ambassador." The more normal -- and respectful -- usage is to say "the," as in "the secretary of state." These are, after all, public officials sworn to serve the nation and the Constitution -- not just the man who appointed them.
It's a stylistic detail, but quite revealing of Obama's exalted view of himself. Not surprising, perhaps, in a man whose major achievement before acceding to the presidency was writing two biographies -- both about himself.
Obama is not the first president with a large streak of narcissism. But the others had equally expansive feelings about their country. Obama's modesty about America would be more understandable if he treated himself with the same reserve. What is odd is to have a president so convinced of his own magnificence -- yet not of his own country's.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on Charles Krauthammer's column by clicking by clicking here.****
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The only thing worse than the damage Obama is doing to this nation would be if he were to suddenly triangulate and become popular again ala Clinton. I hope his enlisting Clinton is not a signal he is doing just that. Clinton proved that swing voters have short memories and will vote for the popular message of the day and forgive everything else. IF bamster does this he could regain his popularity which is not good for the US. I hope he keeps up the lefitst agenda till he gets booted out. Just my take anyway. From the man whose strategy kept the best con in chief in office a second term:
****By Dick Morris 07.14.2010 Published on TheHill.com on July 13, 2010
Any president facing a recession has a basic conundrum to resolve: If he doesn’t try to make people believe that a recovery is in progress, nobody will. But if he tries to make them believe that all is getting better, he risks being seen as out of touch at best or insensitive at worst.
It was just such a predicament that landed George H.W. Bush in trouble in 1991 when he preached that the economy was emerging from the recession, only to be seen as rich and elitist for his efforts. Things got so bad that this verbally challenged president once blurted out his staff’s strategy memo by saying, “Message: I care.” That was about as well-received as Nixon’s statement that “I am not a crook.”
Now Obama is trying to sell the unsellable — that the economy is getting better. In Nevada, he said: “But the question is, No. 1: Are we on the right track? And the answer is, yes.” Presumably those who are gullible enough to think they can beat the casino odds in Vegas are ripe for this form of self-delusion, but it leaves the rest of us cold. The fact is that, when asked directly in polls whether the U.S. is on the right or the wrong track, by more than two to one, Americans feel the nation is on the wrong track.
Fifteen million are unemployed and, adding in underemployed, part-time workers and those who have given up looking, the total is 26 million. So Obama’s statements of confidence are a bit like Herbert Hoover’s ritual incantation that “Prosperity is just around the corner.”
Polls show that 70 percent of Americans do not believe that the stimulus program has worked and a similar percentage feel the best thing we could do to create jobs is to cut taxes.
But Obama’s conundrum is that if he is not the font of optimism, who will be? Economists are increasingly coming to see that the so-called recovery was, in fact, a false dawn and that we are entering a double-dip recession (if, indeed, we ever left the initial downturn). In our book 2010: Take Back America — A Battle Plan, we predict a false dawn followed by a double dip — and now it is upon us.
It is now time for the Republicans to counterattack against Obama by calling him out of touch with the realities of the economy and to take advantage of the commonly held idea that the president doesn’t know what is going on in the streets. In Obama’s case, the GOP cannot then turn “out of touch” into an accusation of insensitivity (as the Democrats did to Bush-41). But they can push the idea that Obama is so wrapped up in his liberal ideology that he cannot see the reality in front of him — that big spending stimulus hasn’t worked and won’t work.
The Fox News poll now shows that 55 percent of all likely voters feel that it is appropriate to call Obama a socialist. This epithet, which most Americans did not see fit to use even a few months ago, fits him well. Republicans should make the point that he is willing to sacrifice all for his ideology and that he is blind to the reality of the damage his spending and borrowing are causing.
When a president runs around the country saying things that two-thirds of America does not believe, it is time to counterattack vigorously and show how out of touch he really is.
Then, with every invocation of optimism, Obama will be digging himself deeper and deeper into the hole.****
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"I hope he keeps up the lefitst agenda till he gets booted out."
Nothing in his character tells me 2012 will be a contest between a Republican and an honest liberal named Obama. I'm sure they have the confusion all planned just like the announcement 20 days before the explosion to expand offshore drilling:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-energy-security-andrews-air-force-base-3312010
There are damaging policies (IMO) in place right now such as automatic tax increases and healthcare legislation that can not be undone for a very long time, if ever, unless we see the Democrat party turn quickly away from far-leftism. Even if Republicans take the House this year and the Presidency and the Senate in 2012, they will not have 60 votes in the senate (ever?) necessary to enact or repeal much of anything without Dem. support. OTOH, I would think a Republican House could fail to fund any program, any year, and at least cause negotiation.
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Yes he is as dishonest as they come.
Probably your right. He will continue to demogague and deceive the public to the bitter end rather than moving to the middle in actions as well as phoney rhetoric to garner more "independents" or otherwise voters who change their minds from one day to the next.
I don't think Repubs could ever get 60 votes on ideology alone, ie. Reaganism and that is why I am calling on a leader who can give more of a roadmap and be able to convince Americans that the bama way is the wrong way, not just for America as a whole but all of us - if anything is to be left.
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Obamanomics and my Seven Steamy Nights with the Gals from Victoria’s Secret
Posted by Daniel J. Mitchell
The White House is claiming that the so-called stimulus created between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs even though total employment has dropped by more than 2.3 million since Obama took office. The Administration justifies this legerdemain by asserting that the economy actually would have lost about 5 million jobs without the new government spending.
I’ve decided to adopt this clever strategy to spice up my social life. Next time I see my buddies, I’m going to claim that I enjoyed a week of debauchery with the Victoria’s Secret models. And if any of them are rude enough to point out that I’m lying, I’ll simply explain that I started with an assumption of spending -7 nights with the supermodels. And since I actually spent zero nights with them, that means a net of +7. Some of you may be wondering whether it makes sense to begin with an assumption of “-7 nights,” but I figure that’s okay since Keynesians begin with the assumption that you can increase your prosperity by transferring money from your left pocket to your right pocket.
Since I’m a gentleman, I’m not going to share any of the intimate details of my escapades, but I will include an excerpt from an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal about the Obama Administration’s make-believe jobs.
President Obama’s chief economist announced that the plan had “created or saved” between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs and raised GDP by 2.7% to 3.2% through June 30. …We almost feel sorry for Ms. Romer having to make this argument given that since February 2009 the U.S. economy has lost a net 2.35 million jobs. Using the White House “created or saved” measure means that even if there were only three million Americans left with jobs today, the White House could claim that every one was saved by the stimulus. …White House economists…said the unemployment rate would peak at 9% without the stimulus (there’s your counterfactual) and that with the stimulus the rate would stay at 8% or below. In other words, today there are 700,000 fewer jobs than Ms. Romer predicted we would have if we had done nothing at all. If this is a job creation success, what does failure look like? …All of these White House jobs estimates are based on the increasingly discredited Keynesian spending “multiplier,” which according to White House economist Larry Summers means that every $1 of government spending will yield roughly $1.50 in higher GDP. Ms. Romer thus plugs her spending data into the Keynesian computer models and, presto, out come 2.5 million to 3.6 million jobs, even if the real economy has lost jobs. To adapt Groucho Marx: Who are you going to believe, the White House computer models, or your own eyes?
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/07/15/obamanomics-and-my-seven-steamy-nights-with-the-gals-from-victorias-secret/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cato-at-liberty+%28Cato+at+Liberty%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
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"President Obama’s chief economist announced that the plan had “created or saved” between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs … the U.S. economy has lost a net 2.35 million jobs."
"I started with an assumption of spending -7 nights with the supermodels. And since I actually spent zero nights with them, that means a net of +7"
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Excellent! It's unbelievable what they keep trying to pull over us with a straight face. I wonder what the conversation is before the spokesman goes to the podium: Are we really going to keep running with this worthless drivel?
Red is gray and
Yellow white
But we decide
Which is right
And
Which is an Illusion
- From the Moody Blues
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I don't agree with Charles on this one. He gives Bamster way too much credit comparing him to Reagan with regards to accomplishments in putting into law their ideologies. Reagan never had majorities in either houses (I don't think). Bamster started out with super majorities in both. They barely could squeek out legislation despite having big majorities. It is overrated to state Bamster got the legislation through. No one was listening to him later in the discourse. No one is listening to him now. Additionally, Bamster has an adoring media, and of course the liberal academia. Reagan never had this. Reagan got his policies through despite these oppositions. With Bamster the policies got through despite his failures. Once Bamster has one or both houses against him he will fold. I do agree though that great damage is already done and will be hard if at all possible to reverse once we trun back Bamsterism. It doesn't help that Bamster was lucky to have the opportunity to pick two Justices already in his first term.
So in short the problem is not over-estimating Bamster. He is way overrated. The point is not to over-estimating the Republicans to straighten out this mess.
In that regard I agree with Charles - Republicans be careful!
****Obama's next act
By Charles Krauthammer
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In the political marketplace, there's now a run on Obama shares. The left is disappointed with the president. Independents are abandoning him in droves. And the right is already dancing on his political grave, salivating about November when, his own press secretary admitted Sunday, Democrats might lose the House.
I have a warning for Republicans: Don't underestimate Barack Obama.
Consider what he has already achieved. Obamacare alone makes his presidency historic. It has irrevocably changed one-sixth of the economy, put the country inexorably on the road to national health care and, as acknowledged by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus but few others, begun one of the most massive wealth redistributions in U.S. history.
Second, there is major financial reform, which passed Congress on Thursday. Economists argue whether it will prevent meltdowns and bailouts as promised. But there is no argument that it will give the government unprecedented power in the financial marketplace. Its 2,300 pages will create at least 243 new regulations that will affect not only, as many assume, the big banks but just about everyone, including, as noted in one summary (the Wall Street Journal), "storefront check cashiers, city governments, small manufacturers, home buyers and credit bureaus."
Third is the near $1 trillion stimulus, the largest spending bill in U.S. history. And that's not even counting nationalizing the student loan program, regulating carbon emissions by Environmental Protection Agency fiat, and still-fitful attempts to pass cap-and-trade through Congress.
But Obama's most far-reaching accomplishment is his structural alteration of the U.S. budget. The stimulus, the vast expansion of domestic spending, the creation of ruinous deficits as far as the eye can see are not easily reversed.
These are not mere temporary countercyclical measures. They are structural deficits because, as everyone from Obama on down admits, the real money is in entitlements, most specifically Medicare and Medicaid. But Obamacare freezes these out as a source of debt reduction. Obamacare's $500 billion in Medicare cuts and $600 billion in tax increases are siphoned away for a new entitlement -- and no longer available for deficit reduction.
The result? There just isn't enough to cut elsewhere to prevent national insolvency. That will require massive tax increases -- most likely a European-style value-added tax. Just as President Ronald Reagan cut taxes to starve the federal government and prevent massive growth in spending, Obama's wild spending -- and quarantining health-care costs from providing possible relief -- will necessitate huge tax increases.
The net effect of 18 months of Obamaism will be to undo much of Reaganism. Both presidencies were highly ideological, grandly ambitious and often underappreciated by their own side. In his early years, Reagan was bitterly attacked from his right. (Typical Washington Post headline: "For Reagan and the New Right, the Honeymoon Is Over" -- and that was six months into his presidency!) Obama is attacked from his left for insufficient zeal on gay rights, immigration reform, closing Guantanamo -- the list is long. The critics don't understand the big picture. Obama's transformational agenda is a play in two acts.
Act One is over. The stimulus, Obamacare, financial reform have exhausted his first-term mandate. It will bear no more heavy lifting. And the Democrats will pay the price for ideological overreaching by losing one or both houses, whether de facto or de jure. The rest of the first term will be spent consolidating these gains (writing the regulations, for example) and preparing for Act Two.
The next burst of ideological energy -- massive regulation of the energy economy, federalizing higher education and "comprehensive" immigration reform (i.e., amnesty) -- will require a second mandate, meaning reelection in 2012.
That's why there's so much tension between Obama and congressional Democrats. For Obama, 2010 matters little. If Democrats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will probably have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as the foil for his 1996 reelection campaign.
Obama is down, but it's very early in the play. Like Reagan, he came here to do things. And he's done much in his first 500 days. What he has left to do he knows must await his next 500 days -- those that come after reelection.
The real prize is 2012. Obama sees far, farther than even his own partisans. Republicans underestimate him at their peril.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.****
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Wow, as the attached graph shows, BHO's stimulus efforts have been far more successful than I thought. Perhaps one of you economics luminaries can show me where I went wrong.
(http://thepeoplescube.com/images/Stimulus_Worked.gif)
Full size image here:
http://thepeoplescube.com/images/images_working/PDF_Illustrator/Stimulus.pdf
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I believe strongly in the right of the Commander in Chief to have a little R&R, but something in this story is weird. There were a couple of posts in the last month speculating about what is wrong with this guy. In this case, there is nothing wrong with being lousy at golf, what is weird is 41 rounds so far! During your Presidency. On Father's day with the wife and kids at home. While the gulf blackens, etc. In light of all they know and all they do just for appearances sake, out he goes for another round. Each is typically a 5-hour outing. And never a score reported, which is very strange since he is obsessed with playing the full 18, every time, not just hitting balls or sneaking out over a lunch hour for 4 or 5 holes. Games like golf can reveal character such as by whether you count all of your mistakes and penalties and report an accurate score - or take Billigans as they were called under the last Democratic President. Here are the leaders of the free world on the White House putting green: (http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/putting-green-2009-potus.jpg)
Here is a video of his swing, called Potus Shankapotomus, with some unflattering amateur commentary:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9m3GyDh6M8[/youtube]
Unfair comparison (Tiger Woods' swing), but the link below shows what a good swing looks like . The arms and the club rotate through the ball together on a smooth plane while the head stays still.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzZy2AQUP6w
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http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2010/07/16/obama-played-41-rounds-golf-president/
Obama Has Shot 41 Rounds of Golf as President
by Keith Koffler on July 16, 2010, 3:30 pm
President Barack Obama has played a remarkable 41 rounds of golf since becoming president, easily outpacing his predecessor and possibly damaging his ability to portray himself in 2012 as a populist advocate of average folks.
With the excursions lasting on average at least five hours, the president has devoted a total of more than 200 hours to golf, not counting time spent on the White House putting green. That’s the equivalent of twenty five eight-hour work days, or five work weeks spent smacking golf balls.
The former community organizer’s 41 trips around the links – a standard of recreational activity well beyond the budgets of most Americans – compares to only 24 total outings for former President George W. Bush, according to statistics compiled by White House chronicler Mark Knoller of CBS News. Bush, whose golf outings were used to help deride him as a callow, lazy, rich boy, played his 24th and last round on Oct. 13, 2003, saying he was ending the practice out of respect for the families of Americans killed in Iraq.
Since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 rig workers and started the Gulf oil spill, Obama has teed up seven times, according to White House Dossier’s count. This includes back to back sessions April 23 and 24 while on vacation at the Grove Park Resort & Spa in Asheville, NC, just days after the crisis began.
Obama’s focus on golf borders on obsession. Startled reporters follow him out to the course in the motorcade in the broiling Washington heat and then wait in the air conditioning while he puts in 18 holes. Rarely does he play any less.
On June 19, he dragged the 67 year old Vice President Biden onto the course for a sweltering 18 holes, calling into question whether he was trying to commit murder-by-golf in order to free the 2012 VP slot up for Hillary.
From a period stretching from April 3 to May 22 of this year, the president went golfing eight of nine weekends. WOULD YOUR WIFE LET YOU DO THAT?? WOULD YOU LET YOUR HUSBAND? Michelle, what gives?
He went out only once in June when, with the Gulf of Mexico slowly becoming the new U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and accusations of presidential inattention at their height, White House image counselors appeared to think the golf needed scaling back. But he’s back with a vengeance, having made his way out on the course both weekends so far this month.
Since he’s officially on vacation this weekend in Bar Harbor Maine, there appears to be little holding him back from heading out to the greens at least once.
Obama golf While on the course, Obama for the most part likes to keep it nice and light, often playing with a youngish crowd. No deep discussions of policy on the links.
One of his companions on nearly every outing is Marvin Nicholson, the affable, White House trip director. Nicholson, a former “body man” to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), is the perfect guy for getting away from it all, having worked as a golf caddy, a bartender, and in a windsurfing shop – where he met Kerry.
Also generally on hand is David Katz, a former Obama campaign photographer.
Emphatically not invited for the most part are members of Congress or senior White House aides.
The White House is of course sensitive to the awkward look of the whole thing. A search of of the word “golf” on the White House page or the photo sharing site Flickr brings back only nine official White House photo results, three of which are neither of Obama nor golf. A search for “basketball,” the everyman’s game, brings back 39 photos.
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He certainly pursues an active social life.
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"He certainly pursues an active social life." - True but the golf thing seems the opposite. He doesn't entertain equals or dignitaries; it is all about him. Nice golf courses are usually lined with private homes. Imagine the planning of the secret service during the week, 41 times, even if he only golfs on the weekend. The video was obviously unknowingly shot from the deck of someone's home along a course. The scope of an assassin's rifle would easily find the same range. Are the homes all searched and are the guests of all the homes screened and monitored along all 18 holes, every round, as they would be for a campaign event or Presidential address?
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Dealergate: Destroying Jobs in the Name of “Shared Sacrifice”
Dealergate exposes the nightmare of government-controlled businesses.
Everything you need to know about the nightmare of government-controlled businesses can be found in a damning new inspector general’s report on Dealergate. The independent review of how and why the Obama administration forced Chrysler and General Motors to oversee mass closures of car dealerships across the country reveals grisly incompetence, fatal bureaucratic hubris, and Big Labor cronyism. No wonder you won’t hear much about the report’s in-depth details in the so-called mainstream media.
Under the guise of “saving” the American auto industry through a bipartisan, taxpayer-funded bailout now topping $80 billion, President Obama’s know-nothing bureaucrats pushed the car companies to eliminate thousands of jobs — with unjustified haste using dubious economic models.
Obama ordered the bailout recipients to “prove” their long-term viability by submitting restructuring plans. But White House and Treasury Department “experts” rejected the auto manufacturers’ proposals, citing the too-slow pace of their plans to reduce their dealership networks over a period of five years. Once the auto companies modified those plans to meet government-backed timelines, the money flowed.
But Neil Barofsky, the federal watchdog overseeing the bank-auto-insurance-all-purpose bailout fund, found that the White House auto-industry task force and the Treasury Department “Auto Team” had no basis for ordering the expedited car-dealership closure schedules. They relied on a single consulting firm’s internal report recommending that the U.S. companies adopt foreign auto-industry models to increase profits — a recommendation hotly disputed by auto experts, who questioned whether foreign practices could be applied to domestic dealership networks.
Team Obama’s government auto mechanics also ignored the economic impact of rushing those closures. According to Barofsky, they discounted counter-testimony from industry officials that “closing dealerships in an environment already disrupted by the recession could result in an even greater crisis in sales.”
The inspector general also noted that “it is clear that tens of thousands of dealership jobs were immediately put in jeopardy as a result of the terminations by GM and Chrysler.” After extensive investigation, the watchdog concluded that “the acceleration of dealership closings was not done with any explicit cost savings to the manufacturers in mind.” Only after Capitol Hill critics — both Republicans and Democrats — started questioning the Dealergate decisions did Obama’s auto “experts” come up with market studies and estimated job-loss data to assess the impact of their reckless, arbitrary orders.
In sum, the inspector general found:
At a time when the country was experiencing the worst economic downturn in generations and the government was asking its taxpayers to support a $787 billion stimulus package designed primarily to preserve jobs, Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses and thereby potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls — all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions' broader economic impact.
This is no surprise, of course, considering the amount of actual business expertise among Obama’s auto czars and key staff. That is: zero. Obama’s first auto czar, Steve Rattner, ran a private-equity firm in New York before resigning his position amid a financial ethics cloud.
Rattner’s chief auto-expert adviser, Brian Deese, is a 30-something former Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama campaign aide and law-school graduate with no business experience, who openly boasted that he “never set foot in an automotive assembly plant.”
And Rattner’s auto-czar successor, Ron Bloom, is a far-left union lawyer who cut his teeth under Big Labor boss John Sweeney, has ideological ties to the corporate-hating Labor Zionist movement, and opined that “the blather about free trade, free-markets and the joys of competition is nothing but pabulum for the suckers.”
In search of the rationale for Team Obama’s bizarre, job-killing exercise of power over thousands of small car dealerships, the TARP inspector general may have stumbled onto the truth from Bloom. On page 33 of its report, Barofsky writes:
No one from Treasury, the manufacturers or from anywhere else indicated that implementing a smaller or more gradual dealership termination plan would have resulted in the cataclysmic scenario spelled out in Treasury's response; indeed, when asked explicitly whether the Auto Team could have left the dealerships out of the restructurings, Mr. Bloom, the current head of the Auto Team, confirmed that the Auto Team "could have left any one component (of the restructuring plan) alone," but that doing so would have been inconsistent with the President's mandate for "shared sacrifice."
“Social justice” chickens coming home to roost.
— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies
http://article.nationalreview.com/438426/dealergate-destroying-jobs-in-the-name-of-shared-sacrifice/michelle-malkin
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They even make lousy lawyers. (opposing views welcome!)
Good lawyers know the best course in most cases is not all-out war; there is finesse involved. Clients have weaknesses, vulnerabilities and public relations interests as well, not just the need to win. All this crowd could come up with was sue-the-bastards, stop consent of the governed, even if it is a popular policy, addressing real harm, in a swing state.
The least they could do before choosing the most adversarial course was ask themselves, are we sure we will win, before suing your own family, screw the consequences.
Besides bad PR and unnecessary conflict, the plan is logically brain-dead. How is Arizona "interfering"? Where is the over-reach? What damage is Arizona doing to the Republic if they hand over people guilty of federal crime to the Federal government? It makes no sense.
Any sober look at this shows case is exactly upside down and backwards; the truth is exactly the opposite of what they allege. Arizona is not interfering with the Feds doing their job. The Feds were not doing their job, intentionally, and Arizona was being harmed, along with the other states. Arizona should be suing the Feds, for malfeasance, neglect and damages.
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This post would be better in the Immigration thread.
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"This post would be better in the Immigration thread."
Okay, I moved the immigration case news portion over to that thread. My main point, poorly expressed, was how it relates to the other areas of governance - this crowd can't shoot straight. The example was immigration but the observation was intended to build on the questions posed by CCP regarding personality disorder, arrogance or competence.
They have no experience starting a business, running a business, selling a business, expanding a business, hiring a private sector employee, or meeting a private sector payroll.
They have no experience governing, balancing a budget, pulling two sides together to get something done or accomplishing something real even in the public sector.
They have no military experience and barely know anyone who served. They don't even admit knowing why we are in Iraq or Afghanistan even thought they are now presiding over it and haven't brought anyone home.
They have never run a border patrol, designed a security system, or built a fence.
They have no training or expertise in economics. The President, to anyone's knowledge, has never read a book about our economic system that didn't oppose it.
The only area of expertise they have, presumably, is law. Obama is credentialed from one of the finest law schools in the land. He was the law review editor. He was a lecturer at another top institution. Wouldn't we expect at least competence in this one area??
Eric Holder, same thing. Background is law, law, law and usually on the wrong side of it, see Heller. His law degree is from Columbia University, among the very best. No experience I know of with FBI, ATF, DEA, or prisons, etc. yet he now oversees all of these.
Would not the Attorney General need to check with his boss, the Commander in Chief, before he sues one of the several states - over a federal function that the feds voted not-present on? And wouldn't they at least want to be perfectly correct on the law before taking such a risky and divisive action?
No. The pattern emerging from the incidents with cop Crowley of beer summit fame and the USDA official with the racial chip on her shoulder to the haphazard stimulus spending in the trillions is to shoot first, ask questions later.
Hope this makes it more clear I was intending a hit piece on an inept administration, justified and specific, not a single issue follow up. :-)
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It turns out the administration was not as surprised as they said, as the British leak documents. Previously posted by CCP on WTF, my question: Why are we not dispatching our Minister of Health Czar and advisers to Libya to find out how this terminal patient was cured? No one is even curious.
Revealed: US double-talk on Lockerbie, The Sunday Times of London, Monday July 26, 2010
The Obama administration told Scottish officials last August that, although it opposed any release of the Lockerbie bomber, it would rather see him released in Scotland than transferred to a Libyan prison, according to a secret memo obtained by The Sunday Times in London.
The publication of the memo's contents comes just days after President Obama, at a press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, said "all of us ... were surprised, disappointed and angry" by the Scottish government's decision to free Abdel Baset al-Megrahi last year.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article353568.ece
http://www.timesplus.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article353568.ece
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/25/obama-administration-reportedly-backed-lockerbie-release-transfer-libyan-prison/
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Nice piece with a long table in it showing how well BHO is doing living up to his commitment to post bills for 5 days before signing them. Currently he's at about 25%, up from the 1% that was the norm before people started pointing the failure out.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/08/03/sunlight-before-signing-simplified/
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Putting a Partisan Legal Advocate in Charge of White House Transparency
Matt Welch | August 13, 2010
Do click on the link that Jesse Walker highlighted below about President Obama re-assigning his ethics czar to Shirley Temple Black's old job as U.S. ambassador to Prague. It's a Timothy P. Carney column, and as such it will make you want to throw a brick through an opaque window:
President Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated to transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a partisan ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of disclosure by government and politicians.
Obama transferred "ethics czar" Norm Eisen to the Czech Republic to serve as U.S. ambassador. Some of Eisen's duties will be handed to Domestic Policy Council member Steven Croley, but most of them, it appears, will shift over to the already-full docket of White House Counsel Bob Bauer.
Bauer is renowned as a "lawyer's lawyer" and a legal expert. His resume, however, reads more "partisan advocate" than "good-government crusader." Bauer came to the White House from the law firm Perkins Coie, where he represented John Kerry in 2004 and Obama during his campaign.
Bauer has served as the top lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, which is the most prolific fundraising entity in the country. Then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., the caricature of a cutthroat Chicago political fixer, hired Bauer to represent the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. [...]
Bauer's own words -- gathered by the diligent folks at the Sunlight Foundation -- show disdain for openness and far greater belief in the good intentions of those in power than of those trying to check the powerful.
And so on and so forth.
Obama, who came into office promising the bestest ever transparency (including signing the Reason Foundation's Oath of Presidential Transparency [PDF]) has been a disappointment on that front. A partial sampling of Reason linkage detailing how:
* "Obama Punts His First State Secrets Case," Radley Balko, February 2009
* "What Is a Day in Obama's Eyes?" Jacob Sullum, March 2009
* "Obama Whiffs on Transparency," Radley Balko, April 2009
* "Seeing Is Believing," Veronique de Rugy and Eileen Norcross, May 2009
* "Putting the 'Spare' in Transparency," Matt Welch, May 2009
* "Transparency 0, Terrible Burdens of Wielding Enormous Power 1," Matt Welch, May 2009
* "Obama Keeping Promises That Grow Government; Abandoning Promises That Hold It Accountable," Radley Balko, June 2009
* "Obama Blocks Access to White House Logs," Radley Balko, June 2009
* "Transparency Failure," Katherine Mangu-Ward, July 2009
* "Transparency Not Needed for TARP Funds After All," Amanda Carey, July 2009
* "Government Openness Meeting: Closed to the Media and Public," Brian Doherty, December 2009
* "Supreme Court Extends Obama Administration's Prisoner-Abuse Secrecy," Matt Welch, December 2009
* "Live C-SPAN Coverage vs. Pass Now, Explain Later," Jacob Sullum, January 2010
* "The New Transparency," Jacob Sullum, January 2010
* "Government Backslides on Agriculture-Subsidies Transparency," Matt Welch, May 2010
http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/13/putting-a-partisan-legal-advoc
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The dictionary defines "top" as a singular entity: "the part of anything that is first or foremost."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20013622-503544.html
August 13, 2010 3:34 PM
How Many "Top Priority" Issues Does Obama Have?
Posted by Mark Knoller
After the Senate passed that $600 million Border Security Bill yesterday, President Obama issued a statement asserting that securing the southwest border has been "a top priority" since he took office.
But if you think Mr. Obama can have but a single "top priority," you'd be wrong. He's got a load of them.
In an Address to the Nation two months ago, Mr. Obama declared "our top priority is to recover and rebuild from a recession that has touched the lives of nearly every American."
More than any other issue, he has used the phrase "top priority" about digging the economy out of the recession and creating jobs. And on this issue, he drew a distinction between "a" top priority and "the" top priority.
"Creating jobs in the United States and ensuring a return to sustainable economic growth is the top priority for my Administration," he said in an Executive Order last March on his National Export Initiative.
Early in his administration, Mr. Obama also assigned the "top priority" label to his campaign promise to overhaul America's health care system. But a check of his speeches since taking office, reflect a bevy of other "top priorities:"
FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS: "...that's something that's going to be a top priority." (4/27/10)
ENERGY SECURITY: "And that's why my energy security plan has been one of the top priorities of my Administration since the day I took office." (4/28/10)
EDUCATION REFORM: "To train our workers for the jobs of tomorrow, we've made education reform a top priority in this Administration." (2/24/10)
STUDENT LOAN REFORM: "This is something that I've made a top priority." (2/1/10)
EXPORTS BY SMALL BUSINESSES: "This is going to be a top priority." (12/3/09)
HEALTH ASSISTANCE TO 9/11 FIRST RESPONDERS: "I'm not just talking the talk, we've been budgeting this as a top priority for this Administration." (2/3/10)
END HOMELESSNESS AMONG VETERANS: "I've also directed (Veterans Affairs) Secretary Shinseki to focus on a top priority: reducing homeless among veterans." (8/17/09)
HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS: "Our top priority is ensuring the public safety. That means appropriate sheltering in place or if necessary, getting as many people as possible out of harm's way prior to landfall." (5/29/09)
H1N1 FLU VACCINATIONS: "And throughout this process, my top priority has been the health and the safety of the American people." (5/1/09)
SUPPORT FOR MILITARY FAMILIES: "These military families are heroes too. And they are a top priority of Michelle and me. And they will always have our support." (5/30/09)
STRENTHENING TIES WITH CANADA AND MEXICO: "We're going to make this a top priority..." (10/16/09)
CONSUMER PROTECTION: "During these challenging times, the needs of American consumers are a top priority of my Administration." (2/11/09)
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: "So this is going to be a top priority generally improving our environmental quality." (11/5/09)
The dictionary defines "top" as a singular entity: "the part of anything that is first or foremost."
By designating a multitude of "top priorities," Mr. Obama can be seen trying to score political points with the constituencies for all of these issues.
Mark Knoller is a CBS News White House correspondent.
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Perhaps all these priorities can thus be summarized as:
to redistribute wealth around the world and in his mind settle old scores.
International Marxism, one world government etc.
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2010/07/18/
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BO ws certainly born a Muslim. I guess his middle name is Hussain because he is a closet Jew.
In any case I have never heard him as passionate about any issue as he was when he gave the speech to Muslims at the Ramadan dinner a week ago defending the rights of Muslims to build their mosque at ground zero.
I have never heard him as passionate about Israel's right to exist - ever. I have never heard him so passionate about Christianity. Indeed Beck was reading excerpts from his diary on radio this AM wherein he professes to be less of a Christain and more of something else though the explanation as to what that is was unclear; obviously in a political attempt to try to appeal to everyone and not to be honest about what he believes or who he is.
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Back from the 2008 presidential campaign:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PAfFm0om-M&feature=player_embedded
Hat tip to David Gordon for his witty phrase which I use for the subject line.
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http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/overwhelm.asp
WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: Obama's classmate at ColumbiaUniversity
Overwhelm the system
Barrack Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S.economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos -- thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.
Barack Obama is my college classmate ( ColumbiaUniversity, class of '83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at ColumbiaUniversity. They outlined a plan to socialize Americaby overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival ... and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.
-- Universal health care. The health care bill had very little to do with health care. Â It had everything to do with unionizing millions of hospital and health care workers, as well as adding 15,000 to 20,000 new IRS agents (who will join government employee unions). Obama doesn't care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?
-- Cap and trade. Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama's biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kickback hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama "spread the wealth around."
-- Make Puerto Ricoa state. Why? Who's asking for a 51st state? Who's asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers. But this has been Obama's plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressman and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.
-- Legalize 12 million illegal immigrants. Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free health care alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America. But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security.
-- Stimulus and bailouts. Where did all that money go? It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions -- including billions of dollars to save or create jobs of government employees across the country. It went to save GM and Chrysler so that their employees could keep paying union dues. It went to AIG so that Goldman Sachs could be bailed out (after giving Obama almost $1 million in contributions). A staggering $125 billion went to teachers (thereby protecting their union dues). All those public employees will vote loyally Democrat to protect their bloated salaries and pensions that are bankrupting America. The country goes broke, future generations face a bleak future, but Obama, the Democrat Party, government, and the unions grow more powerful. The ends justify the means.
-- Raise taxes on small business owners, high-income earners, and job creators. Put the entire burden on only the top 20 percent of taxpayers, redistribute the income, punish success, and reward those who did nothing to deserve it (except vote for Obama). Reagan wanted to dramatically cut taxes in order to starve the government. Obama wants to dramatically raise taxes to starve his political opposition.
With the acts outlined above, Obama and his regime have created a vast and rapidly expanding constituency of voters dependent on big government; a vast privileged class of public employees who work for big government; and a government dedicated to destroying capitalism and installing themselves as socialist rulers by overwhelming the system.
Add it up and you've got the perfect Marxist scheme --
all devised by my Columbia University college classmate Barack Obama using the Cloward and Piven Plan.
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The ever uneven Ann Colter in rather good form:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38812
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I expected the Iraq speech to contain the big gaffe. but it was more of a 'one the one hand - on the other hand' type of hypocrisy (http://www.slate.com/id/2265656/) where he really just did a clumsy job of trying to be a little bit diplomatic in an impossible situation.
The big gaffe of the moment is our self reporting of the U.S to the U.N. Human Rights commission where it is presumed they are the good guys and we are the perps. Fellow members of the commission include Castro and Mau - or Hu-ever has his job right now. Nice part of that gaffe is that Hillary's fingerprints are all over it, so opponents can point back at both of them as they start to split.
Continuing dissonance, Christina Romer in her administration exit offers the economic wisdom that we need to spend more and tax less. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100901/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_economist_1 Unbleeping believable. Is that not precisely the Bush economic plan?? Ed Morrissey at Hotair called it before she said it: "How can Dems extend Bush tax cuts while running against Bush?" http://hotair.com/archives/2010/08/30/how-can-dems-extend-bush-tax-cuts-while-running-against-bush/
So if they don't extend tax cuts the economy will tank or at least continue stagnation with permanent equilibrium at European levels of unemployment *. They need to make tax cuts permanent - all the way up the income chart.
* That is of course partly unfair to Europe where German unemployment has dropped below ours to 7.6%: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/09/02/stories/2010090254110400.htm
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I have not had a chance to snopes these yet, so caveat lector.
Both the Saudis and George Soros are supporting Barack Obama, it is 'payback-time'.
Barack Obama and George Soros Connection information.
http://www.earstohear.net/soros.html
Barack Obama and Saudi Connection information.
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/pages/obama/obama-saudi-muslim-undercover-operative.htm
As early as 1988, BEFORE he entered Harvard, Barack Obama was beholding the Saudi Royal Family and
has had his WAY made easy for him. Here is a Faustian Deal that is now being paid back. The Saudis have
long wanted a Muslim in the White House and now they have it. Please share this widely.
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/percy-sutton-reveals-association-between-khalid-al-mansour-and-obama/
Barack Obama and Bill Ayers Connection (SDS Weatherman Underground domestic terrorists)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxoiZdBSi-g
caption from video:
*Update: Newest and most concerning connection: Hatem El-hady. Had his phony charity organization closed and assets
frozen by the US government for raising money for Hamas in 2006. Under investigation by the FBI for connections to Al-Qaeda
and terrorist attacks in London. He's been funding Obama's campaign lately and just recently had his page removed from my.barackobama.com
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article...
Barack Obama/Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi Connection
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/172641/obama-ayers-khalidi-connection/andy-mccarthy
Through the Woods Fund, Obama funds the Islamist Terrorist Organization, the PLO
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3602
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This just came over the transom. I can not speak to its veracity nor have I ever heard of Wayne Madsen. At the same time the concept is quite believable.
WAYNE MADSEN REPORT
August 27-29, 2010 -- Obama put on notice by Democratic money moguls
Informed sources in Washington, DC have told WMR that President Obama has been personally told by a delegation of top Democratic Party financiers that unless he radically changes his economic policies they will bolt from him for another Democratic candidate in 2012. The Democratic money moguls conveyed the warning to Obama in Martha's Vineyard, where the president and his family are spending their vacation.
There are various factions within the Democratic Party that see different scenarios to bail out what many Democrats see as an administration in deep trouble with the electorate. One would have Secretary of State Hillary Clinton move up to replace Vice President Joe Biden on the 2012 ticket with Senator John Kerry becoming Secretary of State. However, WMR has been told that Clinton personally loathes Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and may not want to be part of the 2012 president ticket playing second fiddle to Obama.
WMR has also learned that Obama's reported "severe narcissism" has a number of his cabinet officials and top Democratic fundraisers perplexed. Obama's refusal to change course because of his ego was discussed at the recent annual Bohemian Grove conclave in northern California, which brings together influential businessmen and politicians from both parties. Top U.S. business leaders openly complained about Obama's economic policies, with some stating that Obama is, for the business community, the worst president in anyone's lifetime.
They also complained about White House gatekeepers like Emanuel and policy advisers Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod who are preventing access to the Oval Office.
Although such complaints could be expected from Republican businessmen, we have learned that top Democratic businessmen at the Bohemian Grove have told Jarrett, Obama's chief liaison to them, that all she does is shake them down" for campaign contributions and that the uncertainty on the costs for Obama programs on health care and taxes has prevented the hiring of workers.
WMR has also learned that rather than change course, the White House staff, who are keenly reading anything that is critical of the president, are more interested in exacting revenge for criticism than in changing course. "The White House staff are voracious readers who are obsessed with favorable coverage," one source said.
The Obama administration's interest in a favorable public image over all other interests has a number of Democrats running for re-election privately miffed. One change many Democratic politicians and fundraisers would like to see is the replacement of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner with someone with more gravitas and a better handle on fixes for the plummeting economy.
Some senior Democrats are also livid about Emanuel's constant selling out of Democratic Party interests for narrow political objectives. WMR has been told by a reliable source that Emanuel has privately conveyed to Florida independent Senate candidate Governor Charlie Crist that the White House will quietly support him if he caucuses with Senate Democrats. Crist has apparently cut a deal with the White House that would see lukewarm White House support for Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek, who recently won the Democratic nomination.
There are dark clouds on the horizon for Obama regardless of a sudden course correction, which some Democrats do not see coming. Certain Democrats see Obama as a liability and there has been a reported understanding reached with the U.S. Attorney for northern Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, that in the second trial of ex-Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, Obama and his aides, particularly Emanuel, Jarrett, and Axelrod, will no longer enjoy protection from being called as witnesses.
The sudden dropping of federal corruption charges against Rob Blagojevich, the brother of the former governor, may be part of a deal worked out that would focus the trial more keenly on Blagojevich's dealings with Obama and his top aides, including the appointment of Obama's successor in the Senate and financial deals involving Tony Rezko, Stuart Levine, dubious property development in the north Chicago Fifth Congressional District formerly represented by Emanuel, real estate ventures involving the proposed 2016 Summer Olympics in Chicago, and Obama's mortgage with the failed Broadway Bank and his relationship with Rezko and U.S. Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias, who was the vice president for loans at the bank at the time the mortgage loan was made.
If the scope of the investigation of corruption in Chicago expands beyond Blagojevich to the White House, we are told the word "impeachment" would begin to be on the lips of a number of Washington politicos.
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It does sound plausible, but a quick glance at his site seems to show he's a truther and anti-semite conspiracy loon.
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This Forbes piece today by Dinesh D'Souza that was helpful to me in understand the guy. My own leftist/Marxist view of him doesn't explain all of his bizarre thoughts and decisions. This piece does that the best I have read. 5 internet pages, too long to post so just a link and an excerpt here. 2 strikes against piece when I started, I remember not liking this author on something else and I hate pieces about how conservatives think written by non-conservatives. Usually no insight is gained.
Key points, his father was tribesman, a polygamist, a drunk and a socialist, but he was also a Harvard educated economist. Barack Jr. spent his formative years off of the mainland of the US in Hawaii but also Indonesia, Pakistan with roots from Kenya. The main theme is anti-colonialism. (This gets diluted in policy and speech I think because Obama's advisers are mostly run-of-the-mill-leftists.) We see anti-Americanism, but he sees the world a better place if America had less exceptionalism. US funding of off-shore drilling for Brazil to keep oil in Brazil while banning it here makes sense for example with this view.
He named his book 'Dreams from my Father', not dreams of my father. Excerpt quoting D'Souza:
"Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the East Africa Journal called "Problems Facing Our Socialism." Obama Sr. wasn't a doctrinaire socialist; rather, he saw state appropriation of wealth as a necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa. For Obama Sr. this was an issue of national autonomy. "Is it the African who owns this country? If he does, then why should he not control the economic means of growth in this country?"
As he put it, "We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now." The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that "theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."
Remarkably, President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama is doing in the White House."
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem.html
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Good find!
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Just wanted to re-visit a Forbes piece by Dinesh D'Souzaa I posted recently with a contrary opinion. These authors have competing books coming out. I think both are partly right but this author seems to have his facts better documented.
Jack Cashill (link below from American Thinker) thinks D'Souza takes too much from Obama's book without acknowledging that it was largely written by Bill Ayers with Obama's notes and memoirs. So Obama Sr. was an anti-colonialist and our Obama picked up some of that but really never knew his abandoning father from Kenya, likely didn't meet him the first 10 years, never grew up with him and skipped his funeral. More likely Obama took his foundations of American leftism from his abandoning mother from Kansas and the characters like Ayers he would meet along the way.
Cashill takes several examples of overlap between Obama's book 'Dreams' and Ayers other writings to conclude that the storyline of the father he never knew growing up wasn't the writing of young Barack's in the first place. Barack the future President set out to write a book about race relations, it stalled out as his bills mounted and then he asked Ayers for help (handed the project over to him).
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/what_dsouza_doesnt_get_quite_r.html
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/blaze-mix-video-top-20-pro-socialism-sound-bites-of-obama-advisors-allies/
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I keep seeing Bama's "call to arms" on the cabel news but cannot tell if this was an official phrase or the media's label.
Doe anyone know if he or his keepers are using this phrase?
If yes this has got to be the dictionary example of what Levin means when he says a "soft tyranny".
BO calling for his followers to rise up and fight to keep his power intact.
He has been a fabulous uniter of Americans? No?
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I am in West Virginia at the moment on a hotel business center connection i.e. I do not have my usual time and resources available. I just watched today's Brett Baier Report and I gather that Woodward has a new book out called "Obama's Wars" and in it the President is quoted directly as demanding a two year exit strategy from the generals lest he "lose the Democratic Party". In other words the Dems yowls against Bush in 2004, and BO's martial cries that Iraq was the wrong war and Afg the right and good war were an utter crock of excrement.
Of course this comes as no surprise to readers and players in this forum, but BO has now been caught in his own words that all his declarations that Afg is an essential war of national defense are either a lie to get him elected or that he is willing to lose this essential war of national defense in order to keep the support of the Democratic Party.
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I watched the beginning of Bama's *lecture* to the UN. After a few minutes I just couldn't stand it. His line that he saved the American economy from catastrophy told me it was time to turn him off. This was more or less the lead headline on drudge today as well.
His new nick name should be "Dah?Bama".
He is clueless.
The only question is will Hillary run in 12 or 16?
I notice in Woodward's book Alexrod supposedly question bamster about the wisdom of hiring Hill for Sec of St.
Rod man was right. Instead of her fading into the distance she appears (I don't know why) to have enamored the public with the appearance that she is doing such a great job. She is a threat to bamster in 12 imho. As he fades watch for the lame stream media and her polical war machine to rev the engines. The motor is already turned off idol and she has shifted from neutral to drive.
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http://www.examiner.com/manhattan-conservative-in-new-york/new-book-by-bob-woodward-likely-to-damage-obama-presidency
Mindful that cutting and running could embolden the Taliban and other terrorist entities, Obama confided to Woodward in a one-on-one interview that the United States "can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever ... we absorbed it and we are stronger."
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Agreed. Keith Oberman of MSLSD of course had a guest on last night who spins it thus:
Obama et. al. should pay Woodward for writing the book because it shows him to be such a strong commander in chief who is able to stand up to the generals.
This brings to mind paintings of Custer's last stand. Obama is Custer with a few remaining bluecoats trying to fend off the inevitable.
Was it on Savage or Levin (I listen to both) who stated we have debt obligations that are equivalent to 2.5 the entire net worth of the planet.
And Barack thinks spending more is the answer?
In France they are demonstrating because they will have to retire at 62 rather than 60. Just wait till people here start to wake up to that same realization.
The country is in denial.
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http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2010/09/24/which-malik-shabazz-visited-white-house-in-july-2009-mr-president/
Which Malik Shabazz Visited White House in July 2009, Mr. President?
by Andrew Breitbart
In May 2009, the Obama/Holder Justice Department dropped charges in a voter intimidation case against Malik Shabazz, a leader of the New Black Panther Party, despite having already won a summary judgment against him, and his New Black Panther Party colleagues King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson who were video-taped outside polling place in Philadelphia intimidating voters as they arrived on election day, 2008. In July 2009, when Congress began looking into the matter, someone named Malik Shabazz visited the private residence at the White House.
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http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2010/09/dysfunctional.html
Dysfunctional
Thanks to Bob Woodward's forthcoming book, we know the Obama Administration was seriously divided (some would say dysfunctional) in developing their strategy for the Afghan War. According to Mr. Woodward, the President avoided mention of "victory" in crafting a plan for prosecuting the conflict, focusing instead on getting out of the conflict and handing it over to the Afghans.
To be fair, there are always sharp disagreements in policy formulation at the highest levels of American government. Put a collection of massive egos in the White House Situation Room, and sparks are bound to fly. And that can be a good thing, giving the Commander-in-Chief access to alternate points of view and policy options that may not immediately come to mind. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was Attorney General Robert Kennedy who first suggested a naval quarantine, while members of the Joint Chiefs urged military action. Ultimately, the quarantine convinced Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev to back down, and the showdown ended without a nuclear conflict.
But the environment described by Mr. Woodward goes well beyond a healthy debate. President Obama dismissed the military's request for 40,000 additional troops in Afghanistan, telling Defense Secretary Bob Gates (and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) "I'm not doing 10 years"..."I'm not doing long-term nation-building"..."I am not spending a trillion dollars."
Worse yet, Mr. Obama appears to view the conflict only in political terms. In a meeting that included Republican lawmakers, Obama told South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham "I can't let this be a war without end and I can't lose the whole Democratic Party."
Let that sink in for a moment, and consider it's impact on the War on Terror, or whatever the administration is calling it these days. No wonder that so many officials were glad to talk to Bob Woodward; while the White House claims that Mr. Obama appears decisive and analytical in the book, it's equally clear that members of his team can't stand one another, and are attempting to distance themselves from a likely policy failure, with enormous implications for our long-term national security.
But the bad news doesn't end there. Mr. Woodward's latest volume also raises serious questions about the administration's ability to deal with terrorism here at home. From the Washington Post preview of the book:
A classified exercise in May showed that the government was woefully unprepared to deal with a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States. The scenario involved the detonation of a small, crude nuclear weapon in Indianapolis and the simultaneous threat of a second blast in Los Angeles. Obama, in the interview with Woodward, called a nuclear attack here "a potential game changer." He said: "When I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that's one where you can't afford any mistakes."
Yet, in his same conversation with the journalist, President Obama bragged about our ability to "absorb" terrorist attacks here at home, claiming they make us stronger. We haven't read the Woodward book, but the comment does beg an interesting, two-part question: What does Mr. Obama view as the most important element of his strategy, and doesn't his rush to get out of Afghanistan increase our threat here at home?
With the departure of our troops from that region, Al Qaida will have greater opportunities to plot and train, dispatching more terrorists to carry out attacks on U.S. soil. President Bush understood the nexus between Afghanistan and potential strikes on our homeland, but Mr. Obama's position is stunning short-sighted. In the name of party unity, he's willing to make a short-term exit from Afghanistan, even if means a greater risk here at home.
There's also the matter of formulating (and executing) a coherent, domestic counter-terrorism strategy. It's hardly reassuring that many of the same officials battling over Afghanistan are also in charge of keeping the homeland safe.
And, their dysfunctionality couldn't come at a worse time; testifying before Congress today, FBI Director Robert Mueller, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Counter-terrorism Chief Michael Leiter said the recent spike in "home-grown" terrorist attacks is indicative of an evolving threat. In fact, Mr. Leiter described them as the "most significant developments in the terror threat to our homeland since 9-11." From the ABC News report on today's testimony:
"Groups affiliated with al Qaeda are now actively targeting the United States and looking to use Americans or Westerners who are able to remain undetected by heightened security measures," Mueller said. "It appears domestic extremism and radicalization appears to have become more pronounced based on the number of disruptions and incidents."
[snip]
Leiter told the committee. "The attack threats are now more complex, and the diverse array of threats tests our ability to respond, and makes it difficult to predict where the next attack may come.
For those brave enough to connect the dots, the narrative goes something like this: our national security "team" is badly dysfunctional, and pursuing a strategy in Afghanistan (at the direction of the Commander-in-Chief) that is likely to fail. Our rapid exit from that conflict will give Al Qaida more opportunities to plan new attacks, recruiting Americans--and other westerners--who are more difficult to identify and apprehend before they strike. Meanwhile, the menace from these terrorists is growing, and senior officials charged with keeping us safe are the same ones leading our policy in Afghanistan.
Sleep well, America.
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2010/08/26/
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Obama meeting hangs ally's flag upside down; No big deal though, it's only the Philippines
September 27, 2010 | 2:02 am
Yes, yes, the Philippines is a close American ally. A practicing democracy in Asia with nearly 100 million people. And a whole bunch more living -- and voting -- abroad in places like the United States.
And, yes, the island nation's president, Benigno Aquino III, was sitting at President Obama's left elbow at their ASEAN meeting in New York City last week. And directly behind Aquino the American staff placed the Philippines' flag, well, kind of upside down. (That's it second from the right in the photo above, the one with all the blue at the bottom, which should be at the top.)
In the Philippines displaying the flag like that means the nation is at war. Which, of course, it isn't. Not yet anyway. And the country's laws provide for a fine and up to one year in prison for disrespecting the flag.
President Aquino kindly didn't make a big deal out of such modern-day diplomatic ignorance by its World War II liberator.
When you think about such an international gaffe by American hosts, it's really pretty much the Filipinos' fault for choosing a national flag with no clear top or bottom to American eyes.
Look at the savvier Canadian allies next door, for Pierre's sake. They were smart enough to pick a lone leaf that has an obvious stem so even Americans would know which side goes down.
A couple of days after the embarrassment, a U.S. spokeswoman followed the Obama administration's Geithner Apology Protocol, admitting it was "unfortunate" but quickly adding that it was something called "an honest mistake." As opposed to a dishonest mistake like, say, not paying taxes.
With so many larger guns, a nuclear arsenal and a Harvard-educated president who knows they speak Austrian in Austria, the U.S. really shouldn't need to apologize anyway. Such a superpower can't be expected to keep track of the globe's gazillion funny-looking flags that don't have a big blue box of stars to show top vs. bottom.
Obama's meeting with the ASEAN nations was designed to bolster both economic and cultural ties with the region's increasingly powerful nations. Maybe starting with a staff class on flag recognition.
-- Andrew Malcolm
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/09/obama-philippine-flag-gaffe.html
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR61uTGTFoM
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed ?? with certain inalienable rights, Life and Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
FYI Mr. President, the original text went more like this:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Unfortunately the Declaration of Independence is inked and engrossed in parchment, not subject to amendment or line item rescission by a later executive.
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Obama is only comfortable with the invocation of god's name when his pastor attaches it to "damn America!".
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Reps. Bachmann, King allege fraud in black farmers settlement
By Kevin Bogardus - 09/29/10 02:16 PM ET
House Republicans on Wednesday charged that a multibillion-dollar settlement with black farmers supported by the Obama administration was rife with fraud.
At a press conference in the Capitol Visitor Center, Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Steve King (R-Iowa) alleged that a $1.25 billion Agriculture Department (USDA) settlement to resolve discrimination claims included individuals who were never farmers.
Bachmann said the discrimination claim process was subject to "massive and widespread fraud and abuse." King also said he believes the Obama administration has ignored the fraud allegations surrounding the settlement.
"I think they have turned a blind eye to the fraud and corruption here," King said.
The GOP lawmakers called on Attorney General Eric Holder to start an investigation into the settlement's claimants to ensure that they are genuine. In addition, they asked congressional leaders not to sign off on new appropriations for the settlement.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack "should put the brakes on this. He should not be asking the Congress to sweep money into this," Goodlatte said.
The lawmakers shared a list with reporters of three unnamed “whistleblowers” — one black farmer and two USDA employees — who would be willing to testify before a congressional hearing regarding the settlement process. They said their testimony would detail allegations of fraud and corruption in the settlement.
At the press conference, Bachmann read from a letter from Ed Schafer, the last Agriculture secretary of the George W. Bush administration.
“I urge that our government step back and institute a procedure to properly investigate each claim to see if it is appropriate or not. The allegations of fraud and abuse must be addressed if we are going to assure our citizens that their government is pursuing equal justice for all,” Schafer said in the letter.
King said he would push for a congressional investigation into the settlement if the House flips to Republican control after the midterm elections.
Congress has to appropriate the funds to pay the settlement claims. The House passed a measure to do so this past summer, but it has hit gridlock in the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has tried several times to secure a vote on the settlement funds — the last time being before the August recess — only to be blocked by Republicans who cited concerns over adding to the national deficit, as well as procedural complaints.
At issue is a longstanding lawsuit, known as Pigford I, brought by black farmers against USDA. The class-action suit said USDA discriminated against black farmers by not providing them with loans and grants that were given to white applicants.
USDA settled that case in 1999. The department reached a new settlement in 2010, known as Pigford II, to resolve claims by late filers to the original settlement.
John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association, has been driving his tractor to the Capitol this month to protest the delay in the settlement. He has called on the Senate to approve the funds.
“A lot of the things they are raising just don't stand up,” Boyd said about the GOP lawmakers’ charges. “I don't think Mr. King and the crew have their facts straight here.”
In calling for the probe, the GOP lawmakers said there were 94,000 claims filed under the settlement even though Census data shows there are only 33,000 black farmers in the United States.
Boyd said that was a misunderstanding of the settlement. The agreement is set up to resolve discrimination claims of those who farmed as well as those who attempted to farm between 1981 and 1997.
“The census has nothing to do with that,” Boyd said.
In addition, he said Pigford II is a “not a blanket settlement” and every claim has to go through a court-appointed arbitrator to determine if it is valid.
The black farmers’ advocate noted that the settlement has support from GOP lawmakers such as Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa). Boyd also cited legislation introduced on the issue by former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) and former Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio).
Vilsack on Wednesday urged Congress to pass the settlement funding before adjourning, saying the black farmers “should not need to wait a day longer” to be compensated.
“Black farmers throughout the country unfortunately faced discrimination in past decades when trying to obtain services from USDA. This discrimination is well-documented, the courts have affirmed this discrimination and Congress has twice acknowledged the need to settle with those who have suffered from this discrimination,” Vilsack said in a statement.
“While members of Congress have noted the bipartisan support for this legislation, it is time for Congress to turn their support into action and fund the settlement agreement once and for all,” Vilsack said.
President Obama has also called on Congress to take action on the funding request, and USDA has been working to have the money appropriated.
“It is a fair settlement. It is a just settlement. We think it’s important for Congress to fund that settlement. We’re going to continue to make it a priority,” Obama said on Sept. 10.
This article was updated at 4:51 p.m.
Source:
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/121637-reps-bachmann-king-allege-fraud-in-usdas-settlement-with-black-farmers
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***Obama says people are inpatient but "now's not the time to quit...it took time to free the slaves...ultimately we'll make progress."***
When we hear a President comparing his agenda of dismantling the USA as we know it with freeing slaves we have a problem.
I guess enslaving one half of the country to pay taxes to support the other half that doesn't is ok.
But as long as humans can be easily bribed we fight an uphill battle.
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If the Repubs. win Congress the One will not have vast majorities to make him look like HE is accomplishing anything other than reading speeches. I still feel he will fold like a lawn chair. This guy is so delusionally narcisstic it is scary. Forshadowing exactly what I mean is his talking of "hand to hand combat". And rallying people based on age or race.
I don't recall anything like it in my lifetime. A sitting President using phrases pitting one race against another, that calls for Americans to fight against one another in "hand to hand combat". Folks, this guy is really F..g crazy!!!! Is it any wonder he has 36% approval amongst whites and 91% with Blacks? I can only hope that more and more people see his colors before he destroys our country.
****Reporting from Washington — A Republican majority in Congress would mean "hand-to-hand combat" on Capitol Hill for the next two years, threatening policies Democrats have enacted to stabilize the economy, President Obama warned Wednesday.
Speaking on Michael Baisden's syndicated radio show, Obama also made a direct appeal to African Americans about the importance of the November vote, even though he's not on the ballot himself.
"The reason we won [in 2008] is because young people, African Americans, Latinos -- people who traditionally don't vote in high numbers -- voted in record numbers. We've got to have that same kind of turnout in this election," he said. "If we think that we can just vote one time, then we have a nice party at Obama's inauguration, and then we can kind of sit back and suddenly everything's going to change – that's just not how it works."
Obama called into Baisden's show, syndicated to 71 radio stations in 21 states, as part of his effort to rally core Democratic constituencies with less than four weeks before the election. Although his campaign itinerary is limited by sagging approval ratings in key states, Obama is making a more-targeted effort focused on supportive venues like Baisden's show.
"Everybody in the barbershops, the beauty shops, and at work -- everybody's got to understand: This is a huge election," he said. "If we turn out in strong numbers, then we will do fine. If we do not, if we are depressed and decide, well, you know, Barack's not running right now, so I'm just going to stay home, then I'm going to have my hands full up here on Capitol Hill."
Days before the release of a key jobs report, Obama said most of the job losses his administration gets blamed for occurred before "any of my economic plans were put into place," and that the country is still "experiencing the hangover from the misguided policies" of the last decade.
Obama said a big voter turnout was vital, both to counter millions of dollars being spent by outside groups and the enthusiasm Republicans have demonstrated.
"They are fired up. They are mobilized. They see an opportunity to take back the House, maybe take back the Senate," he said. "If they're successful in doing that, they've already said they're going to go back to the same policies that were in place during the Bush administration. That means that we are going to have just hand-to-hand combat up here on Capitol Hill."
Obama is returning to the campaign trail Thursday, with an appearance just outside Washington in support of Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's reelection campaign. Later, he'll travel to Chicago for events to raise money for Illinois Democrats, including Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias and Gov. Pat Quinn.
Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady said Thursday that Obama has "no coattails," even in his home state.
"In fact, both the appearance of the president and Rahm Emanuel popping his head up has done a lot to motivate our base," he said.****
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I am hoping for some major conservative movement in the House and Senate in November, and hopeful this will be the first step in making His Glibness a one-term POTUS.
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Dinesh was on radio and asked the obvious question:
How could anyone claim Bamster could possibly be a spinnoff of a man he never met?
His answer was that Obama learned all about his father from his mother who idolized and agreed with the father's agenda. Indeed she revered the father who abandoned them more than the second Muslim man she married. As Dinesh points out just look at the title of Bamster's book, "Dreams of my Father". Doesn't that say it all?? The left will of course laywerly pick apart some of the facts or theories but I agree with Dinesh his theory certianly does explain Bmaster's deep rroted antipathy to the West and not just the US.
Couple that with the lessons he learned from Alinsky - pretend you are one of them and then you can change them - it is really undeniable to an *objective* observer.
http://dineshdsouza.com/
"We are today living out the script for America and the world that was dreamt up not by Obama but by Obama's father. How do I know this? Because Obama says so himself. Reflect for a moment on the title of his book: it's not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. In other words, Obama is not writing a book about his father's dreams; he is writing a book about the dreams that he got from his father.
Think about what this means. The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s — a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash caused by his drunk driving). This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son is the one who is making it happen, but the son is, as he candidly admits, only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is being governed by a ghost."
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All the screams from the left indicate just how accurate D'souza really is in his analysis.
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Hmm, this is indicative of serious dissonance. A resignation announced and enacted on the same day?
Jones to step down as national security adviser
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2010; 11:06 AM
National Security Adviser James L. Jones will resign his post and be replaced by his deputy, Thomas E. Donilon, effective immediately, senior administration officials said Friday.
Although Jones's departure has been expected, it comes at a delicate time for President Obama as he prepares for an important review of his Afghanistan strategy in December. Obama is scheduled to announce the decision at 1 p.m. EDT in the White House Rose Garden.
A retired Marine general, Jones brought decades of national security experience to the post and military credibility to an administration whose senior civilian members had never served in uniform. He expanded the National Security Council to include agencies responsible for American energy, economic and environmental policy, believing that those issues would play a far larger role in shaping U.S. defense and diplomatic strategy in the decades to come.
But Jones, a towering if aloof figure, often had trouble fitting into a National Security Council culture dominated by several hard-charging veterans of Obama's campaign who have known the president for years. His condition for initially taking the job - that he would be the last one to see Obama on the most pressing national security issues of the day - was often unmet.
During the Afghanistan strategy review last fall, Jones challenged military leaders to justify their troop requests, drawing on his experience as the former supreme allied commander in Europe to do so. Jones often expressed the position that additional troops would not make much difference in Afghanistan until neighboring Pakistan closed down the sanctuaries used by al-Qaeda operatives and Taliban fighters.
Donilon, a longtime adviser to now Vice President Biden with long experience in Washington politics, has played a central role in designing and running the mechanics of Obama's national security policy team.
He manages the "deputies meetings" that gather the No. 2 ranking officials from across the national security bureaucracy, turning it into an even more important and influential venue for initial policy decisions and strategy.
During the Afghanistan strategy review last fall, Donilon was credited with overseeing the complicated process, which often pitted the uniformed military against White House civilian advisers over the value of sending additional troops to an increasingly unpopular war that just entered its 10th year.
He also questioned the need for additional forces in the region - a position Obama eventually rejected by sending 30,000 additional U.S. troops in a "surge" that will begin to draw down in July 2011.
Donilon is personally and professionally close to Biden, who argued most forcefully for a strategy in Afghanistan that would rely on fewer troops and more targeted counter-terrorist operations against al-Qaeda. Donilon's wife, Cathy Russell, serves as chief of staff to Biden's wife, Jill Biden.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/08/AR2010100802953.html?hpid=topnews
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Jones wants out before he's forever tainted by us handing a big win to the global jihad in Afghanistan.
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"Couple that with the lessons he learned from Alinsky..."
CCP, I came to the same conclusion you did, that both theories are partly true. He grew up largely off the mainland, maybe idolized his absent father, learned an anti-colonial view, opposite of so-called American exceptionalism. His absent mother was plenty leftist too. Then mixed with left- extremists like Alinsky..
My belief at this point is that Alinsky wrote that Obama book. It was with Obama's notes, but Alinsky tied his storyline through it. Same to differing extents with (nearly) all books by big shots, so that is not new; it just means take anything too literally.
Now BO is tied to his own policies so the key forward is to expose those, sell the alternative like individual economic liberties and defeat him with his policies.
The inner brain workings of another President from a dysfunctional family don't interest me that much except in how to understand him enough to defeat him.
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Ayers, not Alinsky. Right?
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Doug writes,
"The inner brain workings of another President from a dysfunctional family don't interest me that much except in how to understand him enough to defeat him."
I agree and would add it also explains what in tarnation he is *really* up to. He is decietful, disnonest in his real plans for us by design and strategy. He knows if he came out and said what he really felt what he really wants to accomplish he would never have been elected. IF we don't know where he came from, and where he gets his inspirations from then we don't even know his real intentions AND how dangerous to the survival of this country they are.
He is absolutely exposed. But... As the *real great one* said, "you can fool some of the people some of the time and fool some all the time...."
As a victim of probably hundreds of con jobs while Katherine got robbed for probably 20 years I can guarantee this guy is conning us.
AS always when suspecting a con:
Watch what he/she does and where they came from and how they lived their life for the best (but definitely no guarantee either) *chance* to know the truth.
*Never* go by what they say. It is totally meaningless particularly from a guy who has proved to be a world class liar.
And I correct what I posted above.. Dinesh I am sorry I meant Dreams **from** my Father - not **of** - excellent point of distinction on his part.
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Whoops. Thank you GM. Getting sloppy with my leftists.
Ayers wrote Obama's book. Alinsky wrote the book they govern by.
I'm reading Agassi's book, also by a ghost writer. At least he openly acknowledges it.
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It's easy to confuse one A-hole with another..... :wink:
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As Commander in Chief he has time and inkling to weigh in on the phony Chamber of Commerce doantion question of which he knows nothing. As candidate, he had no time to look after his own lack of controls against foreign donations. Flashback to October 2008:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/item_KkfGjfrru8G04iZCnsBr7K
"Della Ware" contacted The New York Times to report her experience contributing under a fictitious name and address ("12345 No Way") to the Obama campaign, while her contribution was rejected by the McCain campaign. Times reporter Michael Luo verified "Della Ware's" account and reported it online at the Times' campaign blog. But Luo missed the story's point... The Obama campaign is running a system that complicates the discovery of "something wrong." It has chosen to operate an online contribution system that facilitates illegal falsely sourced contributions, illegal foreign contributions and the evasion of contribution limits...
According to journalist Kenneth Timmerman, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently - in contrast not just with McCain but also with Hillary Clinton. Sen. Clinton's presidential campaign required US citizens living abroad to fax copies of their passports before it would accept donations. By contrast, foreign donors to Obama can just use credit cards and false addresses. - NY Post 10/27/2008
The author of that story just before the election wrote (on Powerline) he assumed it would be looked into after the election - but it wasn't.
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His "tribalism" comment is just so classic condescending "dah"bamster. Here is the guy that talks about "hand to hand" combat, pleading with Latinos and Blacks to come out and support him labelling the rest of us as just a bunch of tribilists.
Just another example of a person with a personality "disorder" who is quick to blame others without any ability to objectively assess himself. He is right and everyone else is beneath him:
President Obama addresses a town hall audience of young Americans, October 14, 2010.
(Credit: AP) Asked about what the questioner saw as an increase in racial tension Thursday, President Obama said a "tribal attitude" can come as a result of economic hardship.
"Historically, when you look at how America has evolved, typically we make progress on race relations in fits and starts," he said at a town hall event with young Americans.
He then suggested that the recession has played a part in driving racial antagonism while he has been in office.
"Often times misunderstandings and antagonisms surface most strongly when times are tough. And that's not surprising," Mr. Obama said, arguing that Americans are less worried when things are going well.
He added that anxiety over not being able to pay bills - or having lost a job or a home - sometimes "organizes itself around kind of a tribal attitude, and issues of race become more prominent."
He also said, however, that "I think the trend lines are actually good."
"This audience just didn't exist 20 years ago," Mr. Obama said, surveying the multiracial room of young people to whom he was speaking. He said the interaction between races among young people today is "unprecedented."
"We've got a little bit of everybody in this country," the president said, arguing that "our strength comes from unity, not division."
The president, referencing his own experience, added that "as you get older, your mind gets a little more set." He said that's why the tolerance of young people is so important. "You guys are going to be the messengers," said the president.
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That Strange Summer of 2008
How our first postracial, postnational, bipartisan president has revealed himself to be a condescending doctrinaire ideologue.
Historians will look back at the 2008 campaign in the light of the 2010 midterm elections. Almost everything the president has done in the last two years is simply a continuance of that now strangely distant summer.
The only disconnects are (1) that the media are now embarrassed by Obama’s rapid decline in the polls and so suddenly, in catch-up fashion, have chosen to highlight his inexperience and hypocrisy in a way they did not in 2008. And (2) that governance requires concrete action in a way campaign rhetoric does not, and thus the American public can evaluate the consequences of deeds rather than the implications of mellifluent hope-and-change rhetoric.
Remember the 2008 claims of bipartisanship and an end to the old style of politics? Yet there was nothing in Obama’s prior career to substantiate those idealistic claims. In his first race, for the Illinois state senate in 1996, he sued to remove opponents from the ballot, and in his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, the divorce records of both his primary- and general-election opponents were mysteriously leaked. Subsequently, Obama compiled the most partisan record in the entire Senate, proving that he was the least willing senator to veer from a doctrinaire ideology. So if we are surprised that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News, John Roberts, the tea parties, John Boehner, the Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove, and Ed Gillespie have later become bogeymen of the week, we must remember that this is merely the logical continuance of Obama’s earlier hardball modus operandi.
Remember Obama’s praise for public campaign financing, with its attendant restrictions? Yet Obama was the first candidate in the history of publicly financed presidential campaigns to renounce such funding (after promising that he would accept it). His renunciation of the Carter-era program has probably wrecked the idea that presidential candidates will ever again be bound by public-financing protocols. In fact, Obama raised the largest pile of campaign cash in history, much of it from Wall Street, some of it from unnamed donors. So if we are surprised that he is now ritually attacking Wall Street financiers and alleging that his opponents are raising funds from unnamed sources, it is simply because he knows such landscapes firsthand only too well.
Remember the serial attacks on the Bush anti-terrorism protocols — questioning intercepts, wiretaps, and the Patriot Act, and decrying predator attacks in Afghanistan/Pakistan — and the promises to exit Iraq, close down Guantanamo, and end renditions and tribunals? Other than introducing some creative euphemisms (e.g., “man-made disasters,” “overseas contingency operations”), Obama either kept or vastly expanded the Bush protocols, apparently on the assumptions that (a) they were always needed and his prior opposition was simply acceptable campaign demagoguery, and (b) the Left’s opposition to the anti-terrorism efforts was always disingenuous and aimed only at sullying Bush, and therefore it would dissipate once Obama took them over intact.
Remember the condescending Pennsylvania clingers speech, and the psychoanalysis of his own grandmother’s purported “typical white person” sort of racism? Such professorial tsk-tsking has simply now been channeled into deprecations of a new cast of yokels, whose denseness and emotionalism ensured that they also could not appreciate all that Obama had done for them.
Indeed, the supposedly limbic-brained voters of Pennsylvania would easily recognize some of Obama’s later analyses: “So I’ve been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you.” And, “At a time when the country is anxious generally and going through a tough time, then, you know, fears can surface — suspicions, divisions can surface in a society. And so I think that plays a role in it.” And, “Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does [sic] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.” And (of his own disenchanted supporters), “If people now want to take their ball and go home that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place. If you’re serious, now’s exactly the time that people have to step up.”
Remember all the right-wing furor over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfleger, Rashid Khalidi, and a host of other Obama associates that suggested in 2008 he was well out of the American mainstream? In that context, the appointment of a Van Jones or an Anita Dunn made perfect sense. Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina,” Eric Holder’s “cowards, ” and Van Jones’s white students engaging in mass murder and “white polluters . . . steering poison into the people of color’s communities”; the president’s own putdowns of the police, the Arizona law, and the opponents of the Ground Zero mosque; the apology tour, the bowing abroad, the snubbing of the British, and on and on were only elaborations of the same Chicago/Ivy League view of America as a largely racist, unfair, and deeply flawed society.
One could continue with numerous other examples from the summer of 2008 that have been reified during the first 21 months of Obama’s governance, but the picture is clear enough. Almost all the current style and substance of President Obama were clear enough in the 2008 campaign. But in that long-ago, dreamy summer of mass hypnosis, the excitement about our first African-American president, a biased media, Bush/Iraq, the September 15 meltdown, the lackluster McCain candidacy, and an orphaned election with no incumbent running all conspired to convince voters that what they heard and saw was not so disturbing — or at least that it would end once Obama became president.
So the 2008 campaign, as brilliantly as it was waged in Machiavellian fashion by Obama, will be reinterpreted in the context of the 2010 setback.
The voters are rebelling because they believe they have been had. They now think that they were deceived in 2008 into voting for someone who never had any intention of governing in the bipartisan manner on which he had campaigned.
Conservative and moderate pundits and elite commentators who went for Obama then are rebelling now because they foolishly assured the country that the assumed intellectualism of the charismatic Obama — so in contrast to the twangy, evangelical Bush — far outweighed any Neanderthal right-wing worries that Obama had a long record of hard-Left associations and dubious proclamations.
The media are rebelling because they have wakened up to the current polls and concluded that Obama in 2008 had charmed them into sacrificing their reputations for disinterested reportage. Then once elected, he cynically counted on their continued subservience to destroy any shred of credibility that they had left.
The Democratic establishment is rebelling because it fell for the hard-left agenda of a charming pied piper who promised them that he could disguise and package extremism to ensure years of Democratic majorities and an FDR-like omnipresence — only to destroy thousands of their careers at the local, state, and national levels.
The left wing is rebelling because a postracial, postnational Obama deceived them into thinking that his non-traditional heritage, his glibness, and his own godhead would carry through their ultra-liberal agenda that historically the American people did not want — only to discover that it was impossible, and that he would now sermonize to them that it was in fact impossible.
Yet they were all warned — in that strange summer of 2008.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/250357/strange-summer-2008-victor-davis-hanson?page=1
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I like VDH and agree with a lot.
However, I strongly disagree with this,
"The media are rebelling because they have wakened up to the current polls and concluded that Obama in 2008 had charmed them into sacrificing their reputations for disinterested reportage."
Frankly I haven't seen any great exodus or rebellion amongst MSM. Indeed to me they continue to cover for him. Indeed some feel he wasn't leftist enough and they continue to defend his policies tooth and nail from what I see.
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Good point.
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"Frankly I haven't seen any great exodus or rebellion amongst MSM."
Not a great rebellion, I think they moved slightly from worship and celebration to just traditional bias in coverage and questioning as he moved from Messiah to 50% disapproval. They are covering the fact that he is in deep trouble now even if the motive is just to get people motivated to come out and support him, and they are covering the dismal economy somewhat but not like they would if it was a Republican administration.
The irregularities in the negotiating and passing of health care were maybe covered and questioned by the MSM I think, were they not? Meet the Press guests etc. were questioned about the Cornhuisker Kickback, the closed door negotiations and 'deeming' a bill passed, Sunday night votes etc.
One indicator is the Letterman Leno type shows. Letterman actually said around election and inauguration time that he had no idea what to poke fun at now, and then went on with old Bush is dumb jokes and Palin mockery. It took maybe a year and a half before I saw him tell a derogatory joke about anything to do with Obama, but they mix some in now.
Didn't Colbert or Stewart start doing a few rips on Obama, his advisers and czars? I doubt if you will find one of those during the summer of 2008.
Washington Post carried a piece last week in defense of Sarah Palin by a Weekly Standard writer. You didn't see that during the campaign. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/14/AR2010101404794.html?hpid=topnews
Newspapers sometimes seem to not care that their product is aimed at only half the market. Now facing bankruptcy and with plenty of negative administration stories available, we at least see some opposition stories and columns IMO.
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Doug and Rarick,
No more blatant about media bias is the Juan Williams thing.
I could swear I heard him say on FOX way back he said he actually voted for McCain.
That alone puts a little red laser beam dot on his forhead from the leftist propaganda machine.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2010/10/22/doj-sources-tell-wapo-yes-racial-politics-are-being-played-in-the-civil-rights-division/
DOJ sources tell WaPo: Yes, racial politics are being played in the Civil Rights Division
posted at 8:57 pm on October 22, 2010 by Allahpundit
A blockbuster, Breitbart calls it. Remember J. Christian Adams and the New Black Panther Party voting rights case? Thanks to Adams, the DOJ pursued a civil action against two Panther members for intimidating voters outside a polling place in Philly in 2008. The Panthers didn’t contest it and the DOJ won a permanent injunction — only to then drop the charges, seemingly inexplicably. Adams and a colleague claimed that the Department backed off because they didn’t want to pursue voting rights actions against minority defendants. DOJ higher-ups denied it. The Civil Rights Commission started investigating, and they eventually started splitting over what happened too.
Finally, at long last, WaPo decided to try to figure out what happened. Who’s right? Adams in asserting that there’s institutional resistance to using voting rights laws — which were, after all, passed in response to white abuses against blacks — against minority defendants? Or the higher-ups in insisting that the Panther case had nothing to do with race but merely with weak evidence? WaPo’s verdict:
In recent months, Adams and a Justice Department colleague have said the case was dismissed because the department is reluctant to pursue cases against minorities accused of violating the voting rights of whites. Three other Justice Department lawyers, in recent interviews, gave the same description of the department’s culture, which department officials strongly deny…
Civil rights officials from the Bush administration have said that enforcement should be race-neutral. But some officials from the Obama administration, which took office vowing to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement, thought the agency should focus primarily on cases filed on behalf of minorities.
“The Voting Rights Act was passed because people like Bull Connor were hitting people like John Lewis, not the other way around,” said one Justice Department official not authorized to speak publicly, referring to the white Alabama police commissioner who cracked down on civil rights protesters such as Lewis, now a Democratic congressman from Georgia…
Three Justice Department lawyers, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from their supervisors, described the same tensions, among career lawyers as well as political appointees. Employees who worked on the [Ike] Brown case were harassed by colleagues, they said, and some department lawyers anonymously went on legal blogs “absolutely tearing apart anybody who was involved in that case,” said one lawyer.
“There are career people who feel strongly that it is not the voting section’s job to protect white voters,” the lawyer said. “The environment is that you better toe the line of traditional civil rights ideas or you better keep quiet about it, because you will not advance, you will not receive awards and you will be ostracized.”
Adams wrote about the Ike Brown case for Pajamas Media here and here. It was brought in 2005 and marked the first time a voting rights action had been pursued against a minority defendant; as WaPo says, “Adams later told the civil rights commission that the decision to bring the Brown case caused bitter divisions in the voting section and opposition from civil rights groups.” Which is to say, apparently the institutional hostility to these actions inside the Civil Rights Division pre-dates Obama and his appointments. That’s how entrenched it is. As for the Panther case, WaPo reaches no formal conclusion but between those brutal quotes and the fact that legal experts are at a loss to explain why charges would be dismissed in an action where a default judgment had already been granted, you can draw your own conclusion. (Other officials told them that Holder was aware of the case but that the decision to drop the charges didn’t come from him.)
Not only am I amazed that they published this, I’m doubly amazed that they did it 10 days before a giant midterm. This is a “week after the election” story if ever there was one. Exit question: Second look at WaPo?
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"He said Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and then stood by and criticized while Democrats pulled it out. Now that progress has been made, he said, "we can't have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don't mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back."
This is really a remarkable statement from our first Black President.
I am sure the MSM will ignore it.
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As things continue to fail, you'll see Barry-O really start to decompensate.
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"As things continue to fail, you'll see Barry-O really start to decompensate."
GM that's what I think too. My prediction:
The real disorder of his personality - lack of self insight - will manifest itself more and more.
The MSM can keep ignoring this for now. Sooner or later they will have to confront this. At that point watch for even more Hillary events, appearances etc. Can't drop the progressive agenda ball for long. Gotta keep the progressive programs going. She will be called on to save it. O please Bill/Hill - save us from disaster. :wink:
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Treasury hiring FOIA officers 'to withhold information from release to public'
By: J.P. Freire
Associate Commentary Editor
10/25/10 7:15 PM EDT
Officials at the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Stability contracted with a small consulting firm that has given nearly $25,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005 (and no money to Republicans) to hire “Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Analysts to support the Disclosure Services, Privacy and Treasury Records.” The firm is currently advertising a job opening for a FOIA analyst with experience in the “Use of FOIA/PA exemptions to withhold information from release to the public” (emphasis mine, and if that link goes down, The Examiner has kept a copy for its records).
UPDATE: Phacil has changed their job description on their website (without making a note), however here is a link to another job description for the same job that still uses the above as a qualification. They also have not yet returned calls to The Examiner. The side by side comparison of the old and modified versions are at the bottom of this post.
This means that the entire OFS, which is tasked with overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is trying to hire people who will withhold information from release to the public.
In fact, according to the website of the staffing company, Phacil (pronounced Fa-SEAL), co-founders Rafael Collado and Sascha Mornell were “thanked by President Obama,” and “commended at the White House during National Small Business Week for being selected the SBA New Jersey State Small Business Persons of the Year.” The contract is listed under service contracts of the Office of Financial Stability in a recent report from the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Collado and Mornell are among the top donors at the firm. Mornell has given $12,600 over the years, while Collado has given $6,700. Another donor, Robert Cottingham, listed Phacil as his employer, stating his position as vice president of government affairs.
That Treasury outsourced its mechanism for transparency to a firm with such partisan ties casts new light on a report from Bloomberg News in which Treasury officials have repeatedly obstructed reporters’ requests for information.
In one instance, Treasury waited to respond to a Freedom of Information request for 20 months despite saying at least five times that a response was imminent. Bloomberg had requested that officials identify $301 billion of securities owned by Citigroup Inc. that the government had agreed to guarantee. When a response finally came, it was in the form of 560 pages of printed-out and heavily redacted emails, none of which had been requested. It is not certain whether Phacil was involved in redacting the emails, but the incomplete response was considered sufficient by the department to fulfill the requirements of a “partial response.”
In another, Treasury cited a “trade-secrets exemption” when responding to another of Bloomberg’s FOIA requests about Citigroup’s segregated bad assets. According to Bloomberg:
In that response, 73 of 104 pages were completely blacked out except for headings.
Only six pages — the cover, contents, a boilerplate list of legal disclosures and a paragraph titled “FOIA Request for Confidential Treatment” — were free of redactions.
But it too is considered a “partial response:”
The department’s reply to Pittman’s request will count statistically as a “partial response,” in government reports, said Hugh Gilmore, Treasury’s FOIA public liaison. The response “adhered to the rules, regulations, U.S. attorney general guidance and relevant case law that govern FOIA,” Steven Adamske, a Treasury spokesman, said in an e-mail.
Such legal acrobatics may have been informed by Phacil’s consulting, even as it advertises the meaning of the company name on its website: “Phacil, pronounced ‘Fah-SEAL;’ achieved with little effort or difficulty; easy.” Except when it comes to transparency.
In fact, while Phacil’s website advertises among its services its ability to conduct Freedom of Information Act work, no contracts are listed in which it does so. No employee listed on the management page lists an expertise in FOIA either. It is unclear what experience the company had in FOIA prior to the contract from Treasury.
Phacil has also posted a job listing on its own website for a specialist in FOIA citing an “immediate need a FOIA Analyst [sic] to support a very high-profile government customer in Washington D.C.” Included in the scope of the work is “Redacting or withholding agency records citing appropriate exemptions and generating response letters; and Responding to requestors concerning the agency’s disclosure determination by generating response letters.”
Even more unbelievably, among the qualifications requested is: “Use of FOIA/PA exemptions to withhold information from release to the public.”
But Phacil’s top executives weren’t always for withholding information from release to the public. In 2005, Phacil’s president Sascha Mornell submitted two FOI requests to the U.S. General Services Administration to request information about Booz Allen Hamilton’s subcontracting plan “including goals and commitments.” The requests were made on letterhead in June 2005.
A year prior, Phacil boasted of a partnership with Booz Allen. According to their site: “During this partnership, Booz Allen will provide strategy, infrastructure and operations support to Phacil as the company develops into a larger business. Booz Allen will also provide subcontracting opportunities and assistance with new business development activities to Phacil.” Undoubtedly learning about Booz Allen’s subcontracting plan via FOI was helpful in developing its relationship with the large government contractor.
In other words, while company heads have used FOI requests to their benefit to learn more about competitors and partners in government contracts, they are seeking to hire candidates that would be able to withhold information from release to the public.
Mornell could not be reached for comment.
This is the original: "Use of FOIA/PA exemptions to withhold information from release to the public":
Phacil FOIA Analyst description (original)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/40163844/Phacil-FOIA-Analyst-description-original
This is the modified version that was changed without notice: "Use of FOIA/PA exemptions to withhold information from release to the public that is considered classified, sensitive or falls outside of FOIA/PA guidelines."
Phacil FOIA Analyst description (modified)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/40164170/Phacil-FOIA-Analyst-description-modified
The change, however, does not appear on different iterations of the job advertisement on other sites (which we have also saved). Neither the Department of Treasury or Phacil have returned The Examiner's call for comment.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/treasury-hires-democrat-donors-to-be-freedom-of-information-act-analysts-105727838.html
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Jon Stewart called him dude. "You don't want to use that phrase, dude." It took me quite a while to get the joke. He was trying to say that Lawrence Summers (economic adviser while unemployment ran up to nearly 10%) did "a heck of a job".
Apparently that was the exact same phrase Bush used when his Katrina chief left and the show (I don't watch) made quite a theme out of it.
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President Dude , , , well, at least he didn't bow to JS , , ,
OPINION
<http://online.wsj.com/public/search?article-doc-type=%7BCommentary+%28U
.S.%29%7D&HEADER_TEXT=commentary+%28u.s.>
OCTOBER 28, 2010
A Referendum on the Redeemer
Barack Obama put the Democrats in the position of forever redeeming a
fallen nation rather than leading a great one.
By SHELBY STEELE
<http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=SHELBY+STEELE&bylinesea
rch=true>
Whether or not the Republicans win big next week, it is already clear
that the "transformative" aspirations of the Obama presidency-the
special promise of this first black president to "change" us into a
better society-are much less likely to materialize. There will be enough
Republican gains to make the "no" in the "party of no" even more
formidable, if not definitive.
But apart from this politics of numbers, there is also now a deepening
disenchantment with Barack Obama himself. (He has a meager 37% approval
rating by the latest Harris poll.) His embarrassed supporters console
themselves that their intentions were good; their vote helped make
history. But for Mr. Obama himself there is no road back to the charisma
and political capital he enjoyed on his inauguration day.
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527023041737045755783632430190
00.html##>
How is it that Barack Obama could step into the presidency with an air
of inevitability and then, in less than two years, find himself
unwelcome at the campaign rallies of many of his fellow Democrats?
The first answer is well-known: His policymaking has been grandiose,
thoughtless and bullying. His health-care bill was ambitious to the
point of destructiveness and, finally, so chaotic that today no citizen
knows where they stand in relation to it. His financial-reform bill
seems little more than a short-sighted scapegoating of Wall Street. In
foreign policy he has failed to articulate a role for America in the
world. We don't know why we do what we do in foreign affairs. George W.
Bush at least made a valiant stab at an American
rationale-democratization-but with Mr. Obama there is nothing.
All this would be enough to explain the disillusionment with this
president-and with the Democratic Party that he leads. But there is also
a deeper disjunction. There is an "otherness" about Mr. Obama, the sense
that he is somehow not truly American. "Birthers" doubt that he was born
on American soil. Others believe that he is secretly a Muslim, or in
quiet simpatico with his old friends, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill
Ayers, now icons of American radicalism.
But Barack Obama is not an "other" so much as he is a child of the
1960s. His coming of age paralleled exactly the unfolding of a new
"counterculture" American identity. And this new American identity-and
the post-1960s liberalism it spawned-is grounded in a remarkable irony:
bad faith in America as virtue itself, bad faith in the classic American
identity of constitutional freedom and capitalism as the way to a better
America. So Mr. Obama is very definitely an American, and he has a broad
American constituency. He is simply the first president we have seen
grounded in this counterculture American identity. When he bows to
foreign leaders, he is not displaying "otherness" but the counterculture
Americanism of honorable self-effacement in which America acknowledges
its own capacity for evil as prelude to engagement.
Bad faith in America became virtuous in the '60s when America finally
acknowledged so many of its flagrant hypocrisies: the segregation of
blacks, the suppression of women, the exploitation of other minorities,
the "imperialism" of the Vietnam War, the indifference to the
environment, the hypocrisy of puritanical sexual mores and so on. The
compounding of all these hypocrisies added up to the crowning idea of
the '60s: that America was characterologically evil. Thus the only way
back to decency and moral authority was through bad faith in America and
its institutions, through the presumption that evil was America's
natural default position.
Among today's liberal elite, bad faith in America is a sophistication, a
kind of hipness. More importantly, it is the perfect formula for
political and governmental power. It rationalizes power in the name of
intervening against evil-I will use the government to intervene against
the evil tendencies of American life (economic inequality, structural
racism and sexism, corporate greed, neglect of the environment and so
on), so I need your vote.
"Hope and Change" positioned Mr. Obama as a conduit between an old
America worn down by its evil inclinations and a new America redeemed of
those inclinations. There was no vision of the future in
"Hope and Change." It is an expression of bad faith in America, but its
great ingenuity was to turn that bad faith into political motivation,
into votes.
But there is a limit to bad faith as power, and Mr. Obama and the
Democratic Party may have now reached that limit. The great weakness of
bad faith is that it disallows American exceptionalism as a rationale
for power. It puts Mr. Obama and the Democrats in the position of
forever redeeming a fallen nation, rather than leading a great nation.
They bet on America's characterological evil and not on her sense of
fairness, generosity or ingenuity.
When bad faith is your framework (Michelle Obama never being proud of
her country until it supported her husband), then you become more a
national scold than a real leader. You lead out of a feeling that your
opposition is really only the latest incarnation of that old
characterological evil that you always knew was there. Thus the tea
party-despite all the evidence to the contrary-is seen as racist and
bigoted.
But isn't the tea party, on some level, a reaction to a president who
seems not to fully trust the fundamental decency of the American people?
Doesn't the tea party fill a void left open by Mr. Obama's ethos of bad
faith? Aren't tea partiers, and their many fellow travelers, simply
saying that American exceptionalism isn't racism? And if the mainstream
media see tea partiers as bumpkins and racists, isn't this just more bad
faith-characterizing people as ignorant or evil so as to dismiss them?
Our great presidents have been stewards, men who broadly identified with
the whole of America. Stewardship meant responsibility even for those
segments of America where one might be reviled. Surely Mr. Obama would
claim such stewardship. But he has functioned more as a redeemer than a
steward, a leader who sees a badness in us from which we must be
redeemed. Many Americans are afraid of this because a mandate as
grandiose as redemption justifies a vast expansion of government. A
redeemer can't just tweak and guide a faltering economy; he will need a
trillion- dollar stimulus package. He can't take on health care a step
at a time; he must do it all at once, finally mandating that every
citizen buy in.
Next week's election is, among other things, a referendum on the idea of
president-as- redeemer. We have a president so determined to transform
and redeem us from what we are that, by his own words, he is willing to
risk being a one-term president. People now wonder if Barack Obama can
pivot back to the center like Bill Clinton did after his set-back in
'94. But Mr. Clinton was already a steward, a policy wonk, a man of the
center. Mr. Obama has to change archetypes.
Mr. Steele is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover
Institution.
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527023041737045755783632430190
00.html##>
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"at least he didn't bow to [Jon Stewart]" - Very Funny!!
"a deepening disenchantment with Barack Obama himself. (He has a meager 37% approvalrating by the latest Harris poll"
That poll is a bit of outlier but approvals stuck in the 30s could be the norm as even his own side loses confidence in him.
I remember candidate John Kerry headed into this conundrum. He needed to move to the center and be called a flip flopper or be too liberal to govern. Obama needs to abandon leftist principles or preside over country in decline, which means his Presidency in decline. There is no win there for him and it is something, unlike Clinton, that he has no skill or experience at doing. He won't resign but the country might be better off with Joe Biden... :-( :-o :? :x :oops: :| ... who could at least hire an economist and wouldn't bat an eyelash about changing his small mind.
I have long contended that Obama has never read a book about economics that did not oppose our economic system. Adviser Romer warned that looming tax increases would have a 'contractionary effect' on the economy already in the dumps. Result? She's gone. Lawrence Summers knows some economics - gone. Paul Volcker is highly respected in certain ways, especially in a fight against future spiraling inflation - never consulted. Volcker needs to go through Valerie Jarrett to get to the President.
The public is not going to like the fight they are about to get between the new, energized house and the old, stuck on redistributionism administration.
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Today the Obama administration attempted damage control over comments allegedly made by President Obama on Telemundo. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs complained, “President Obama urged Latino voters to punish the Yemenis – not their political enemies. Something got lost in translation.”
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Well this tells us what lies ahead. It isn't his policies. It was we were too stupid to know he is right. Which is what he is saying when he says he just didn't (swindle) sell us his vision. This is consistent with his personality defect. It isn't him - he is smarter then us. He knows what is best for us. We just didn't get it. He has to do better persauding us. I won't be rested till this guy is run out of office in 12.
True personality DISORDERS - they can NEVER under any circumstance "get it" when it is about themselves. This is true to form He is one screwed up guy. Unfortunately he is taking us all down with him.
****Obama Acknowledges Failures, Says ‘Leadership Isn’t Just Legislation’
November 5, 2010 9:56 AM
NEW YORK (CBS) — After a suffering a “shellacking” in the midterm elections, President Obama acknowledges what many have seen as his chief weakness – failing to sell the importance of several legislative milestones to the American people.
“I think that’s a fair argument. I think that, over the course of two years we were so busy and so focused on getting a bunch of stuff done that, we stopped paying attention to the fact that leadership isn’t just legislation. That it’s a matter of persuading people. And giving them confidence and bringing them together. And setting a tone,” Mr. Obama told 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft in an exclusive interview set to air Sunday.
“Making an argument that people can understand,” Mr. Obama continued, “I think that we haven’t always been successful at that. And I take personal responsibility for that. And it’s something that I’ve got to examine carefully … as I go forward.”****
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“Making an argument that people can understand,” Mr. Obama continued, “I think that we haven’t always been successful at that. And I take personal responsibility for that. And it’s something that I’ve got to examine carefully … as I go forward.”
"we were too stupid to know he is right." - Yes, he is saying he needs to work on his talk-down-to-us skills. We aren't all Ivy Leaguers.
--------------
Interest insight into Barack Obama from my radio, James Lilacs on the Hugh Hewitt show, goes something like this:
All the great men who rose to be President all faced great setbacks along the way... and he named a few. Obama however is the first President to ever have the first setback in his life be while he was President.
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Think about it, all that early family turmoil and he ends up in the best school in Hawaii living with loving grandparents. Looks a little different than others so he gets into Columbia. Ordinary grades and blows coke, gets into Harvard law School. Can't write a lick without a script, is chosen Editor of the Law Review. Runs for State Senate, gets his opponent removed. Runs for a US Senate in a hard blue state, gets Alan Keyes from elsewhere as an opponent. Speaks at the convention, brings down the house. "Harry, I have a gift", he said afterward to the majority leader. Enters the Presidential fray before authoring a bill or casting a vote, beats Hillary Clinton, Gov/Ambassador Bill Richardson and all the others. Starts to get close in the general election and the world financial system falls down on his opponents, beats the former media darling McCain. Needs a 60th vote in the senate to pass health care, ACORN compatriots come through raising Al Franken from second place to first in a recount. Loses his 60th vote with Scott Brown, but deems it passed after the fact. No problem. ... Then they promise and declare that the healthcare in spite of the steamroller tactics will be loved and its supporters will be loved. As far as we knew then, he was right, but he wasn't.
Lifting the veil. Now he had two wars lingering too long. Promised negotiations on CSPAN became cornhusker kickbacks hidden in private. Unemployment will be 8% if we don't pass the stimulus became 10% with it. All the political opportunism against Bush over Katrina started to become Obama's oil spill. His own daughter couldn't understand why he wouldn't command the resources of the greatest country on earth and plug the hole. Instead he sat powerless while private engineers at a big-oil firm eventually did it.
Alinsky-economics is false. Krugman and Keynes are wrong. No amount of gift of gab can change that but it didn't matter because his gift of gab was still aimed at destroying the pillars of our economy, not building them back up.
I honestly hope he does an about face, but there is nothing whatsoever in view to believe that.
I think it sounded bad but Obama was put on notice when Mitch McConnell said defeating this President is a top priority. A change of direction is going to come out of the House in the form of legislation, and then presumably die in the senate. Republicans will need just 3 or 4 Dem Senators from red states up for re-election to sign on to make legislation popular and bipartisan while it dies of the filibuster obstruction or the veto pen.
Obama has never been in this situation before. He can veto to stop a Republican agenda, but he cannot lead or win.
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Don’t need a Weatherman to know Obama’s not happy to see Bernardine Dohrn pop her head up again
By Jim Treacher | Published: 12:39 PM 11/05/2010 | Updated: 12:55 PM 11/05/2010
Here’s the “former” radical, explaining to Newsclick India why you’re the crazy one:
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/05/dont-need-a-weatherman-to-know-obamas-not-happy-to-see-bernardine-dohrn-pop-her-head-up-again/#ixzz14QpTmq7w
[youtube]http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/05/dont-need-a-weatherman-to-know-obamas-not-happy-to-see-bernardine-dohrn-pop-her-head-up-again/[/youtube]
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"I think it sounded bad but Obama was put on notice when Mitch McConnell said defeating this President is a top priority"
From a MSM perseprctive this if fodder for them to go after republicans. But we repubs know this IS EXACTLY right. We have to get rid of this guy once and for all.No compromise no prisoners.
"I honestly hope he does an about face, but there is nothing whatsoever in view to believe that."
Doug, I disagree with you. Like Rush I hope this guy fails. We don't want him to pull a Clinton and stay popular. We need him to stay like he is AND fail. He must be stopped. I posted that I am worried the Repubs will be called the party of "NO" like Clinton did to NEWT and Truman did to them in '48 thus almost dooming them.
But now I see a better way. Although he is not the only one saying it I like that THIS is coming from Clinton's own triangulation guy Dick Morris. The architect of the Clinton comback now nicely illuminates the path for Republicans. And that is not to be the party of do nothings but the party of better ideas and plans and policies. They can set their agenda and make Bamster say no.
But I admit they will be walking on hot coals. The stakes and the pitfalls are plenty. I and you are already seeing the MSM go after all the conservatives like viper snakes trying to get a rat. Have you noticed the MSM pundits going after their conservative guests about their deficit cutting talk. Asking them OK where are you going to "cut" . JUst say it! You want to cut Medicare Soc Sec!! The the crats can use this as a rallying cry to win back seniors etc. But the point is that SS and Medicare do need reforming. Do the Repubs have the courage to tell the people the truth? Do they dare?
The MSM seems to want them to. They seem to want them to in their mind commit political suicide. But Americans when faced with the truth I hope at least are smarter than that.
Anyway I digress:
****DickMorris.com
« HEARTFELT THANKS AND FINAL REPORTTHIS TIME, TRIANGULATION’S NOT AN OPTION
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann11.4.2010Share this article
Published in the New York Post on November 4, 2010
Now that President Obama has experienced the same baptism of fire as President Bill Clinton did in the 1994 midterm elections, the obvious question is: Will he move to the center in a bid to save his presidency and win re-election?
The move worked well for Clinton: He sought to combine the best aspects of each party’s program in a third approach that became known as triangulation.
But Obama won’t follow suit because he can’t, even if he wants to. Today’s issues are different from those that separated the parties in 1994 and don’t lend themselves to common ground.
Obama’s programs have been so far-reaching and fundamental that any compromise would leave the nation far to the left of where it’s always been and wants to be. When he took office, government (federal, state and local combined) controlled 35 percent of the US economy — 15th among the two-dozen advanced countries. Now, it controls 44.7 percent, ranking us 7th, ahead of Germany and Britain. So where’s the compromise — leave government in control of, say, 40 percent?
Add the overriding need for sharp deficit reduction, to bring down the debt before it strangles our economy.
Republicans are pushing to begin this by rolling back spending to pre-Obama levels. The alternative would be to raise taxes to pay the bills run up by the Democratic Congress that the voters just repudiated. Yet even partly covering that tab would lock in a government that big — hoarding capital, pouncing on all available credit and taking away such a major portion of national income — would be anathema to our free-enterprise system.
Yet a zero tax-hike policy will require budget cuts that Obama and the left will find unacceptable.
Even with some tax hikes, the slashes in social spending needed to start reducing the debt will also preclude a search for middle ground.
What triangulation is possible on health care? The fundamental building block of Obama’s program is the individual mandate to buy insurance. Absent that, all that’s left is a consumer-protection bill that limits insurance-company practices. Yet the mandate can’t be scaled back but still preserved: It’s either in place or it isn’t. There’s no middle ground.
On “cap and trade,” the other major pillar of Obama’s secular temple, either we tax carbon, or we don’t. The left will deride any program without coercion or tax increases (even though the evidence suggests that voluntary measures are bringing down our carbon emissions nicely). Again, faced with a choice between a tax and no tax, there’s no middle ground.
We can easily see how far Obama has moved off the center of gravity of the American people by measuring his losses in the House. If Republicans stick to their principles and pass their programs in the House, they’ll set forth an agenda that the nation can follow. If they compromise to suit Obama’s big-government objectives, they’ll muddy the waters, antagonize their energetic base and provide no clear alternative to his socialism.
It’s time for bold, clear contrasts. It’s not 1994.****
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Right now, it's best to not discuss entitlements until after 2012. We have hard choices to make and an economy to rescue, if possible. We start by making major cuts to the federal government. Dept. of Education, Energy, NEA gone. Anything not required for national security, borders. Gone. Defund NPR and not one penny for Obamacare or the states. We can salvage the dollar if we demonstrate that the US is serious about fixing these issues. Obama won't triangulate. He doesn't have it in him.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2010/11/05/obama-wh-finds-culprit-for-midterm-debacle/
Under the Obamabus.
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What I meant by hoping Obama does an about face is that the center of the Democrat party needs to move right. Obviously Obama won't but someone needs to. If he says or does one or two things right, it is a head fake - like expanded offshore drilling, deficit concern etc.
The blamed Rahm for leaving, not for giving bad advice while he was there. Amazing.
Thanks for the Bernardine Dohrn video, my first experience seeing and hearing her. Outrageous that someone would accuse him of 'palling around with terrorists', lol. Easy to see Obama enjoying a talk about strategy or economics with her, agreeing privately with everything she says. He should hide Valerie Jarrett too if he wants his inner political thoughts concealed.
You know they are left wing when they think the media is right wing controlled.
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"Right now, it's best to not discuss entitlements until after 2012"
I agree it is politically risky at this time.
GM,
Do you think a candidate running for the Presidency in 12 should be "candid" with Americans about the need for reform as part of their policy platform?
Doesn't someone eventually have to level with us?
I don't know what is the best strategy.
My thought about the Dept of Ed is I think some see even this as an "entitlement".
The MSM always speak of this as though it is sacred.
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Education is a local level issue. We need to explain to the public that the money that comes from the Dept. of Ed is actually the money taken from them, run through Washington and then a much smaller portion comes back to them. If you get DC out of the equation, you'll actually have more money for your local schools. There are roles for the federal gov't, education isn't one of them.
Anything said about social security will be used to panic seniors. So the other option is to keep Obama in office for a second term and really end social security when our economy is utterly destroyed.
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"not to be the party of do nothings but the party of better ideas and plans and policies. They can set their agenda and make Bamster say no."
EXACTLY SO!!!
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Rarick, You are probably right.
For a laugh the Indians are shocked to find Bamster uses a teleprompter. :-) Where is that little squirt Anderson Cooper keeping Bamster honest about his use of a script.
The MSM had no problem going after Sarah with cribb notes on her hand yet almost no poking fun at THIER hero in chief about his "cheating" when he speaks:
Obama to use teleprompter for Hindi speech
Indo-Asian News Service
New Delhi, November 06, 2010First Published: 13:27 IST(6/11/2010)
Last Updated: 13:36 IST(6/11/2010)Share more...93 Comments Email print
Namaste India! In all likelihood that will be silver-tongued Barack Obama's opening line when he addresses the Indian parliament next week. But to help him pronounce Hindi words correctly will be a teleprompter which the US president uses ever so often for his hypnotising speeches.
According to parliament sources, a technical team from the US has helped the Lok Sabha secretariat install textbook-sized panes of glass around the podium that will give cues to Obama on his prepared remarks to 780 Indian MPs on the evening of Nov 8.
It will be a 20-minute speech at Parliament House's Central Hall that has been witness to some historic events, including first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's "tryst with destiny" speech when India became independent.
Obama will make history for more than one reason during the Nov 6-9 visit. This will be the first time a teleprompter will be used in the nearly 100-feet high dome-shaped hall that has portraits of eminent national leaders adorning its walls.
Indian politicians are known for making impromptu long speeches and perhaps that is why some parliament officials, who did not wish to be named, sounded rather surprised with the idea of a teleprompter for Obama.
"We thought Obama is a trained orator and skilled in the art of mass address with his continuous eye contact," an official, who did not wish to be identified because of security restrictions, said.
Obama is known to captivate audiences with his one-liners that sound like extempore and his deep gaze. But few in India know that the US president always carries the teleprompter with him wherever he speaks.
Teleprompters, also called autocue or telescript, are mostly used by TV anchors to read out texts scrolling on a screen and attached to a camera in front of them.
Parliament officials have had a busy week preparing for a red carpet welcome for Obama and his wife Michelle. Parliament House these days looks fresh with a new coat of paint, new carpeting and new green plants in mud vases decorating the corridors.
Sources said the Obamas will pose for a photograph with Indian leaders at one of the three well laid-out courtyards that have lush green lawns and fountains.
On the dais in the Central Hall will be Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, Vice President Hamid Ansari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The sources said the event will be an hour-long affair and will start with Ansari's welcome address and end with a vote of thanks by Meira Kumar after the US president's address.
The Obamas would sign the Golden Book, the visitor's diary in parliament, before leaving the eight-decade old building.
"Thank god they won't eat anything or have tea or coffee from our canteen. We would have to go through a tough security drill otherwise," quipped an employee.
Security managers in parliament also had a tough job for the high profile visit even as the house is already highly protected following a terrorist attack in 2001.
A team of US security officials, including from the CIA, were in the Indian capital and visited the complex to review security measures to be taken during the parliament event.
Parliament security officials have decided that barring special invitees and former MPs, no visitor would be allowed inside when Obama addresses the MPs.
Only journalists who have permanent radio-frequency passes would be allowed inside the Central Hall to cover the event.
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Pasted here for its picture of our President bowing yet again, this time to the Chinese. The backdrop gives a clue as to when and where.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100008581/china-may-be-bigger-economy-than-us-within-two-years/
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(http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/files/2010/11/hu-pic.jpg)
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You'll never catch him bowing before a copy of the constitution or a picture of the founding fathers.
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The reason for this is not explained. Has anyone asked him why he does this?
The Chinese man in the picture is not doing it. It is not a reciprocal greeting/gesture.
Contrast this to a segment on cable one night some months back that showed Netanyahu and Arafat fighting between them trying to get the other one to go first through a door. It went on for a minute or two. Going through the door first is interpreted as a sign of weakness. The other person is controlling "you" by letting you go first. So they made a big thing out of it - or the appearance of it. Or Bush W standing in just the right spot in order to properly shake hands or touch or be photographed with heads of state so as to not show weakness. Now we have this. Our leader is going out of his way to cave in. Why wouldn't our youth not be ashamed of our country?
I am embarrased at him.
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Not that Obama doesn't appreciate the sacrifices of veterans. He absolutely does. Just ask the Indonesians.
He was in Jakarta for their Heroes Day this week to honor their veterans "who have sacrificed on behalf of this great country."
"This great country," of course, being Indonesia.
"When my stepfather was a boy, he watched his own father and older brother leave home to fight and die in the struggle for Indonesian independence," Obama told the audience.
And the White House wonders why so many people think there is something foreign about this guy.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/bam_awol_on_vets_day_IxEoyioHbtjAsNjGmbZoIP#ixzz150GLSO6H
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The reason for this is not explained. Has anyone asked him why he does this?
I am embarrased at him.
Could it be as simple as Barack Obama being 6'1" tall and Hu Jintao being less than 5'8" tall?
Shake hands with someone 5+ inches shorter than you. And keep your distance (it is a conference in Asia).
It's not easy to keep a level head.
I doubt if there is anything sinister, inappropriate or subservient going on here.
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"Could it be as simple as Barack Obama being 6'1" tall and Hu Jintao being less than 5'8" tall?"
Short answer - no.
But if you want to come up with a ridiculous explanation than I guess Bamster could be admiring the Chinese guy's shoes.
How do you say, "man, those are cool shoes" in Chinese?
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"Short answer" :-D
As for those shoes,
Let me check later; my wife just for fun is studying Chinese at the local community college.
Who knows, we may all need to know Chinese one day.
:-)
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"we may all need to know Chinese one day"
Yes. At least count in yen. :lol:
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Translator for Obama: "Tia na zhe shuang xie zhen ku".
Hu Jintao responds "Cao ni ma."
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/04/13/obama_bows_to_chinese_president_hu_jintao.html
President Obama bows to Chinese President Hu Jintao.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U6fL7Y4BZA&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Pathetic.
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Do you have the one of him bowing to the mayor of some town in Florida?
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKeE4dFqmiE[/youtube]
Buffoon.
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"we may all need to know Chinese one day"
Nihongo wakarimaska? (Nihongo ga wakarimasu ka) 日本語
JDN, It wasn't Chinese that everyone was going to need in international business just a moment ago.
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"we may all need to know Chinese one day"
Nihongo wakarimaska? (Nihongo ga wakarimasu ka) 日本語
JDN, It wasn't Chinese that everyone was going to need in international business just a moment ago.
Hai, Nihongo ga dekimasu. Demo Chuugokugo muzukashii!
Doug san wa?
I've been told I'm not a very good comedian. I was joking. I really don't know why Obama was bent over
at the waist; maybe CCP is right, maybe Hu Jintau's shoes are cool? :-)
But with all our myriad problems, i.e. the deficit, our economy, taxes, health, immigration, etc. whether Obama bows before
the Mayor of Tampa or the Pope himself, or just bends over a little to shake hands with some short Chinese guy with cool shoes,
or trips coming out of a plane, or fights and argues about going through a door first or second isn't too important to me.
I don't care if he begins to solve our monumental problems standing, bending, or sitting, but I do wish he would begin to solve them.
And I don't mean simply pouring more money on the problem.
I can't even afford to go visit Japan because our dollar is so deep in the toilet. :-(
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Who could have foreseen that his presidency would be such a disaster?
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JDN,
Obama's groveling and bowing are just a visible indicator of his incompetence as president. If you've bothered to watch http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/04/13/obama_bows_to_chinese_president_hu_jintao.html you've seen that he did indeed bow.
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Various rumors floating around Chicago that community organizer Obama was a switch hitter. Perhaps he's bowing to better check out the bowee's package.
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Korea: Too Green for Democrats
Obama discovers the downside of environmental regulation.
The Bush administration negotiated and signed a free-trade agreement with South Korea in 2007, but enough members of Congress found the deal unacceptable that it was never ratified. For years it gathered dust as Candidate and then President Obama paid lip service to the idea of renegotiating it, all the while claiming to share his colleagues’ concern that it did not do enough to open Korea’s markets to U.S. automobiles and U.S. beef. He announced the goal of having a new deal negotiated and signed by this month’s G-20 summit, now under way in Seoul.
You might have heard that he failed.
Do you want to know why? This one is actually funny.
Korea used to be one of the most protected automobile markets in the world. But it has gradually done away with most of the high tariffs and import restrictions that shut out foreign cars and trucks. An 8 percent tariff on cars and a 10 percent tariff on trucks remain, but the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement would remove them immediately with respect to U.S. cars and trucks. As for our own markets, the ratification of the agreement would require us to immediately remove a 2.5 percent tariff on Korean cars, but would give us ten years to phase out a 25 percent tariff on Korean trucks. So it seems like Detroit is getting the better of this deal. What’s not to like?
Here’s the punch line: U.S. automakers, their unions, and their allies in government — including most Democrats and Barack Obama — think Korea’s fuel-economy and environmental standards are too high. They are arguing that these standards act as a non-tariff barrier to cars and trucks made in U.S. factories, because, gosh darn it, we just don’t make cars and trucks that clean and green over here.
Americans who favor free trade abroad and less regulation at home are left to scratch our heads: Should we be angry because Obama is holding up a market-opening agreement over such an obvious red herring? It’s the only excuse he has for wanting an even more one-sided deal for the Detroit automakers, who want the car tariff to be phased out gradually, like the truck tariff. Or should we be popping champagne corks because Obama has finally found an environmental regulation he doesn’t like?
All this time, the Democrats have told us that one of the biggest reasons they object to trade liberalization is that it causes countries to engage in a “race to the bottom,” particularly when it comes to labor and environmental standards. In 2007, U.S. trade ambassador Susan Schwab cut a deal with Democrats in Congress in which she agreed to incorporate every single one of their demands for labor and environmental standards into four new trade agreements: deals with Peru, Panama, Colombia, and Korea. But only the Peru deal got a vote. Democrats reneged on the other three, inventing new concerns after Schwab addressed their old ones.
But seriously, reflect on the absurdity of their complaint about the Korea deal. Korean environmental standards are too high? Next thing you know they’ll be objecting to a trade deal because the country in question just doesn’t have enough sweatshops.
In the world of international trade, non-tariff barriers are a real concern. Korea’s restrictions on U.S. beef imports probably have a lot less to do with fears about mad cow disease than with mad farmer disease — a phenomenon I witnessed first-hand in the streets of Hong Kong in 2005. We do not allay such fears or improve our moral standing when those representing us at the negotiating table are engaged in such obvious hypocrisy. If the administration’s message is incoherent, it’s because the administration is not negotiating from a set of principles, but from an industry wish list.
The auto industry has already gotten enough help from this administration. How about some help for the rest of us now, in the form of a free-trade deal that would increase U.S. GDP by an estimated $10 billion to $12 billion per year? Obama talks a lot about all the bad things he inherited from his predecessor. But the U.S.-Korea deal was just fine the way he found it. If he can get Korea to loosen its emissions restrictions, then all to the good, say we free-marketeers. Maybe his next triumph could be to loosen them here.
If not, then he should drop his hypocritical objections to the deal and sign it. It would be nice to have a little economic stimulus that our kids won’t have to pay back, with interest, someday.
– Stephen Spruiell is an NR staff reporter.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/253161/korea-too-green-democrats-stephen-spruiell
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDX46Y2w9a8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Anyone surprised to hear this?
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/american-narcissus_516686.html?page=1
American Narcissus
The vanity of Barack Obama
Nov 13, 2010, Vol. 16, No. 10 • By JONATHAN V. LAST
Why has Barack Obama failed so spectacularly? Is he too dogmatically liberal or too pragmatic? Is he a socialist, or an anticolonialist, or a philosopher-president? Or is it possible that Obama’s failures stem from something simpler: vanity. Politicians as a class are particularly susceptible to mirror-gazing. But Obama’s vanity is overwhelming. It defines him, his politics, and his presidency.
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If I read this correctly, Obama was arguing on behalf of Big Auto which is partly US government owned that a foreign nation Korea should LOWER its emissions standards to accept American cars. But at home he wants to shut down those same companies from building those same cars BECAUSE of emissions with Cap Trade legislation, Kyoto targets, energy taxes, EPA rulings, etc. Unbelievable.
Maybe a little bipolar is mixed with the narcissism identified in the previous post?
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Obama Caves on Civilian Trial for KSM
It turns out indefinite detention isn’t so bad after all.
Let’s review the state of play, shall we?
Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama blasted the Bush administration’s decision to treat al-Qaeda terrorists as enemy combatants and detain them without trial at Guantanamo Bay. Now, two years into his presidency, Obama has decided to treat al-Qaeda terrorists as enemy combatants and detain them without trial at Guantanamo Bay.
The media is reporting that the administration will hold Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotter indefinitely, granting them neither a civilian nor a military trial. This determination, leaked over the weekend, appears to be a rebuff of Attorney General Eric Holder, who had intimated a few days earlier that a civilian prosecution was imminent.
Here’s the difference between Presidents Bush and Obama: The former’s strategy was driven by weighty national-security concerns and maintained despite ceaseless condemnation from the Obama Left. Obama’s strategy — or, more accurately, his drift — is driven by naked political concerns, and his base’s media megaphone has gone nearly silent.
After the most devastating attack ever carried out on American soil by a foreign enemy, President Bush determined that the Clinton administration’s preferred strategy of treating al-Qaeda as a mere law-enforcement problem had been unserious. The criminal-justice system is tailored to address ordinary crimes committed in peacetime America. It is designed to favor the defendants: Americans are presumed innocent and armed by the Constitution with protections that, quite intentionally, make it difficult for the government to investigate, prosecute, convict, and incarcerate. By itself, civilian justice is incapable of neutralizing wartime enemies. Unlike everyday crooks, foreign terrorists operate from overseas redoubts where American law does not apply, where foreign regimes like Iran and the Taliban are only too happy to abet them.
This is not hypothesis; it is our experience. The Clinton Justice Department indicted Osama bin Laden himself in June 1998. He responded by orchestrating, with impunity, the August 1998 embassy bombings in eastern Africa, the October 2000 Cole bombing, and the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda’s onslaught was a war, not a crime wave. President Bush was hardly alone in thinking so: Congress overwhelming authorized combat operations against al-Qaeda, and it has continued to authorize and fund them for nearly a decade. Combat operations necessarily imply not only the killing of enemy combatants but their capture and detention, with the corollary of military-commission trials for those who have committed provable war crimes.
The Bush strategy has worked. Its detractors among self-styled “human-rights activists” — who seem far more concerned about the humans doing the killing than the humans doing the dying — point to the spotty record of commission trials in contending otherwise. But commissions constitute only a small element of the Bush approach, and doubtless the least important one.
The Bush strategy’s key components are twofold. First: Kill, capture, and defund terrorists overseas, thereby denying them safe haven and taking them out before they can act. Second: Detain those who have been captured both to maximize the potential for acquiring fresh intelligence and to thin out the ranks of highly trained jihadists. The enemy may be able to replace terrorists who have been captured or killed, but the new recruits cannot replicate their level of competence.
It is a sad fact that the tireless, heroic work of our military continues without our paying it much mind. It is thus common for Americans to look at all our patent vulnerabilities — subway systems, power grids, sports stadiums, etc. — and wonder: “Why haven’t there been more 9/11s?” But this is no mystery. Dead and detained jihadists cannot execute attacks. A terror network worried about drone strikes on its training camps does not have the luxury of taking the months it takes to plan and execute significant plots. Fresh intelligence from high-level captives disrupts plots in addition to making it extraordinarily difficult for al-Qaeda to embed capable cells in our homeland.
While President Obama has gradually and grudgingly made the Bush strategy his own, he lacks the grace to say so, much less to give his predecessor credit. But it is remarkable to consider how far Obama has come. In June 2008, with the campaign in high gear, he ripped Bush, complaining that
in previous terrorist attacks [such as] the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world.
This critique was astonishing in its ignorance. In most previous terrorist attacks, we had not been able to arrest those responsible — they had been able to keep attacking. Even in the one example Obama cited, the 1993 WTC bombing, several of those responsible were able to flee because civilian due-process protections made it impossible to hold them. Some were never apprehended — and KSM, who was complicit in the WTC bombing and several subsequent plots, was finally captured thanks to wartime operations, not law-enforcement protocols.
Moreover, detaining enemy combatants without trial is entirely consistent with the “rule of law” that applies in wartime. Indeed, the Obama Justice Department has found itself making just this argument, albeit without fanfare. In short, indefinite detention at Gitmo “destroyed our credibility” only with Bush-deranged leftists — and isn’t it amazing how credulous they’ve suddenly become now that their guy is accountable?
In his conclusion, candidate Obama leveled the charge — oft-repeated but mindless — that Bush counterterrorism had “given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in [Islamic] countries that say, ‘Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.’” Let’s put aside the now-familiar Obama crotchet that gives Muslim sensibilities pride of place over American security concerns. The brute fact is: Obama is treating Muslim terrorists the same way Bush did. Given that, is it too much to ask the president finally to acknowledge that terrorist recruitment is driven by Islamist ideology? The legal theory by which a president justifies the indefinite detention of terrorists is beside the point.
For those who maintain that our president is a pragmatist and not an ideologue, worth pondering is Obama’s ideological intransigence, and how it has bred incompetence. If, back in January 2009, Obama had just let the then-pending military commission go forward, KSM and his cohorts would likely have been executed by now. They had announced their intention to plead guilty and proceed to sentencing. Allowing that, however, would effectively have meant endorsing military commissions and, by extension, Bush counterterrorism. So the new president interrupted the proceedings and dangled before KSM the stage the terrorist had always craved: a civilian trial just a few blocks from Broadway.
The public revolted, prompting bipartisan congressional opposition. Meantime, the president came to realize that, regardless of his purple campaign rhetoric, many committed jihadists could not be tried in civilian court and would kill Americans if released. His law-enforcement framework was impractical: He would have to detain al-Qaeda captives indefinitely or find another way to try them. Consequently, he kept Gitmo open despite having promised to close it; and, with an assist from congressional Democrats, he made a few cosmetic tweaks in the military-commission system in order to camouflage the inconvenient truth that it was substantially the same commission system proposed by Bush and endorsed by Congress in 2006.
But while Obama preserved military commissions, he didn’t actually want to use them. Had he used them, and had terrorists promptly started being convicted and severely sentenced, public opposition to the civilian prosecutions beloved by his base would have stiffened. So now there is one obvious right thing to do: Give KSM and the 9/11 plotters the military commission and execution they should have had almost two years ago. Yet, Obama can’t bring himself to do it.
Instead, the man who claimed that indefinite detention without trial “destroyed our credibility” will indefinitely detain the terrorists without trial — at least until after the 2012 election, when either they will be some other president’s headache or electoral politics will no longer weigh on Obama. That’s change you can believe in.
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/253356/obama-caves-civilian-trial-ksm-andrew-c-mccarthy#
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/obama_the_inattentive_student.html
Obama, the Inattentive Student of Gandhi
On his recent trip to India, President Obama was lavish in his praise for Mahatma Gandhi. Obama maintained that Gandhi's message of being "the change we seek in the world" was instrumental in inspiring his own journey from community organizer to President of the United States. "I might not be standing here today," said the president, had it not been for the Great Soul's influence.
Knowing, however, that Gandhi's political philosophy included highly persuasive polemics against big government, the welfare state, foreign aid, affirmative action, identity politics, divisive rhetoric, and malice toward one's opponents, it's hard to imagine the president devoting much time as a student in quiet and humble contemplation with the great guru's writings.
Gandhi, for example, would have lasted about twenty seconds in Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity "United" Church in Chicago. On the other hand, Barack Obama and his family dutifully attended Wright's church for twenty years. Wright's racially divisive theology of "liberation" would have constituted for Gandhi a direct assault on one of the main pillars of his own political philosophy: "liberation," or swaraj.
While swaraj literally means "independence," for Gandhi, the term was much more importantly associated with intense self-examination and self-mastery. True freedom, according to Gandhi, meant an inward journey of liberation from the kind of anger, fear, and hatred that served only to perpetuate cycles of domination and division in society.
Gandhi argued, for example, that national liberation from the British would actually create a more harmful situation in India if the new Hindu political class failed to cleanse themselves of longstanding resentments and ill will. Gandhi understood quite rightly that the internal "weaknesses and failures" that might continue to animate the new rulers "would then be buttressed up by the accession of power."
It's quite impossible, in other words, to conjure up a picture of Gandhi unleashing the kind of unbridled rhetoric ("I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking") that President Obama has often used to characterize his own conservative countrymen. In addition, when the president advised Hispanic voters to think of the recent election as an opportunity to "punish our enemies" and "reward our friends," he was giving painful evidence to the suspicion that someone other than Gandhi had in fact inspired his own run for the White House.
Swaraj is also the reason why Gandhi was deeply suspicious of big government. Gandhi saw an inverse relationship between disciplined self-mastery and the need for the welfare state. Indeed, the Bhagavad-Gita -- Hinduism's holiest scripture -- is a beautifully arranged set of eighteen sermons by the avatar Krishna to the warrior Arjuna on the philosophical intricacies of self-control, or yoga, which forms the basis of an individual's moral and spiritual progress. Said Gandhi:
I look upon an increase of the power of the state with the greatest fear, because although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress.
Gandhi observed that while individuals have souls, the state is "a soulless machine" that "represent violence in a concentrated and organized form." Rather than rely on the state, then, to redistribute wealth and reduce inequality, Gandhi proposed what he called "trusteeship." Trusteeship meant persuading the affluent to think of their wealth as something held in trust for the indigent poor. Again, Gandhi was trying to couple the freedom inherent in Hindu philosophy with the faith in a man's ability to master and overcome his often self-centered proclivities: "We know of so many cases where men have adopted trusteeship, but none where the State has really lived for the poor."
The great Gandhi scholar Dr. Dennis Dalton, who taught for years at Columbia University, has said that when Gandhi used the term "welfare for all," he meant "economic justice and equal opportunity, not dependency on the welfare system as we know it in America." [Emphasis added.] Professor Dalton adds:
Gandhi's idealism is usually associated with compassion and charity, but in his appeal to discipline and hard work there is an undeniable strain of what we might call ‘Yankee individualism.' He identified with the gospel of self-reliance in the philosophy of two of the Americans that he admired most, Thoreau and Emerson.
For Gandhi, the dangers of welfare-state dependency extended beyond individuals to nations as well. To those advocating global wealth redistribution, Gandhi made the quite startling observation that a nation that accepts economic aid succeeds only in crippling itself:
There is nothing more degrading for a country than to beg from others when it cannot meet its requirements. It is a practical principle that if you want to be friends with someone and you want the friendship to endure, you should not seek economic aid from them.
Like all of history's great moralists from Aristotle to Kant, Gandhi recognized that the source of benevolent moral relationships included both freedom and a healthy sense of personal responsibility. Gandhi's fear of welfare-state dependency was remarkably similar to the concern Adam Smith had about the bureaucratic state "pushing too far" and destroying the basis for human benevolence. "Beneficence is always free," said Smith. "t cannot be extorted by force."
In addition, swaraj was also the reason why Gandhi objected to the affirmative action and quota policies that many social reformers were advocating for India's untouchables back in the 1930s. Gandhi was strikingly clairvoyant in his belief that quota policies -- such as reserved legislative seats and separate electorates -- would serve only to inflame identity politics and perpetuate the bondage of the untouchables.
...
In sum, Gandhi argued that Western socialism is predicated upon a entirely dismal view of human potential compared with Hinduism, which holds that free individuals had the capacity to "respond to the spirit" within them and rise above the petty forces of bitterness and self-indulgence.
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"Gandhi, for example, would have lasted about twenty seconds in Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity "United" Church in Chicago"
Bamster, you may have been given the Nobel Peace Prize but you are no Ghandi. :wink:
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Noted from recent posts and news elsewhere that Obama to give our missile defense to Russia met with Medvedev, while China to change trade relations with Russia met with Putin. I'm sure that Obama is smarter (sarcasm disclosure) and that Medvedev will hold the power to keep an agreement after Putin is long gone.
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CCP from Israel post: "About the only time this President of ours is passionate is when he is pleading the Muslim cause, the minority cause, anything anti - white, pro - muslim, or anything anti American."
When he finally used the term "enemy" it was to describe his political opponents relationship to Hispanic voters for wanting our country defined with legal, enforced borders.
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'When he finally used the term "enemy"'
Remarkable isn't it? Who would have ever thought a radical like this could ever be President of our country?
I really fear that if the economy and unempolyment improves (of course all on monopoly money) that "duh"Bamster will be all over the place being given credit by mainstream media and he will have a shot at 2012. Another four years to give our country away and destroy it from inside out. The Fed just keeps making more and more funny money.
We have got to have a great mouthpiece and debater to take bamster on and put him in his place. So far I still only see Newt who can do that but he also can occasionally say the wrong thing. And it is always an uphill battle with the MSM complex against anyone from the right.
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This is why I want to see Bolton/West or West/Bolton in 2012.
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I wonder who gave him the elbow? Must either be an independent or someone losing patience defending him:
Let's see. Probably will receive "get well" cards from China, Iran, NKorea, Russia, Palestinians, Hamas, Hexballah, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, La Raza, Karzai (hehehe - keep the money flowing),
***12 stitches for Obama after errant elbow in hoops
AP – President Barack Obama, with an ice pack over his mouth, looks out the second floor window of the White …
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama needed 12 stitches in his lip after taking an errant elbow during a pickup basketball game Friday with a group of family and friends visiting for the Thanksgiving holiday, the White House said.
First word about the injury came in a statement from press secretary Robert Gibbs nearly three hours after the incident saying that Obama was inadvertently struck by someone's elbow. The individual was not identified.
Obama received the stitches under local anesthesia in the doctor's office on the ground floor White House after he returned home. The medical unit that treated Obama used a smaller filament than typically used, which increases the number of stitches but makes a tighter stitch and results in a smaller scar.
The president had gone to nearby Fort McNair to indulge in one of his favorite athletic pursuits, a game of basketball. It was a five-on-five contest involving family and friends and including Reggie Love, Obama's personal assistant who played at Duke University.
Obama emerged from the building after about 90 minutes of play, wearing a short-sleeve T-shirt and gym pants, and was seen dabbing at his mouth with what appeared to be a wad of gauze. A few hours later, reporters who had gathered on the White House driveway for the arrival of the Christmas tree, saw the president in an upstairs window, pressing an ice pack against his mouth before he stood and walked away.
"After being inadvertently hit with an opposing player's elbow in the lip while playing basketball with friends and family, the president received 12 stitches today administered by the White House Medical Unit," Gibbs said.
Obama's motorcade obeyed all traffic stops, the custom for nonofficial trips, during the return to the White House.
In February, Obama, 49, was deemed to be in excellent health and fit for duty after his first medical checkup as president. Doctors reported then that Obama had yet to kick a smoking habit, takes anti-inflammatory medication to relieve chronic tendinitis in his left knee and should make dietary changes to reduce his cholesterol levels.
Obama was told to return for another physical exam in August 2011, after he turns 50. In addition to regular pickup basketball games, Obama is also an avid golfer.
Obama had no public events scheduled during the long holiday weekend.
His stitched lip, however, could make for some interesting small talk on Tuesday, when Obama is to meet with the congressional leadership. The session originally was announced for Nov. 18, but was delayed after Republicans, who will control the House and increase their numbers in the Senate come January, said they couldn't accommodate the president.
Medical help is always nearby for U.S. presidents. A doctor or nurse is stationed at the White House around the clock and accompanies the president in his motorcade and aboard Air Force One.
Recent presidents have had a number of medical scares.
George W. Bush choked on a pretzel and briefly lost consciousness, falling and hurting his head. Bill Clinton had surgery and used crutches for months for a torn tendon in his knee when he stumbled on steps at the Florida home of golf pro Greg Norman.
The elder Bush, George H.W. Bush, was hospitalized for an erratic heartbeat while jogging at Camp David, a problem later diagnosed as a thyroid ailment. The senior Bush also collapsed at a state dinner in Tokyo, which the White House blamed on an intestinal flu.
Jimmy Carter fainted briefly while jogging near Camp David. Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest in a 1981 assassination attempt.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, 69, has had five heart attacks since age 37. He had surgery this year to install a pump to help his heart work. Cheney said he has congestive heart failure.****
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Obama's 7 'Creator' Omissions (Part 2)
Chuck Norris
Obama's 7 'Creator' Omissions (Part 2)
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Sign-Up Last week, I detailed seven occasions in the past few months at which President Barack Obama omitted the words "by their Creator" from direct quotes of the Declaration of Independence: "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Though you can read the actual quotes in detail in Part 1, let me briefly remind readers where and when they occurred:
--On Oct. 21 at a rally for Sen. Patty Murray in Seattle.
--On Oct. 18 at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee dinner in Rockville, Md.
--On Oct. 17 at a reception for Gov. Ted Strickland in Chagrin Fall, Ohio.
--On Sept. 22 at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee/DSCC dinner in New York.
--On Sept. 15 at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's 33rd Annual Awards Gala in Washington.
--On Sept. 11 at the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Va.
--On Sept. 10 at the president's news conference at the White House.
Those presidential omissions might seem justifiable to some, but it alarms me when omissions are exclusively divine and so easily exit and are excused by the United States' supreme leader.
Even at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were debated and drafted, divine omissions seem to be in vogue.
Recently, my pastor and the chaplain of my organizations, Todd DuBord, was on a tour of Independence Hall with David Barton, Jim Garlow and dozens of others. The National Park Service guide leading their group blurted out five unbelievable lies and distortions about our Founders' religious beliefs and history, with school-age children present, as well, in the room:
--"We have no record that George Washington ever attended church."
--While the NPS guide, physically hunched over, mimicked and mocked one carrying and swinging an oversize Bible in his hand, he said to the crowd: "Even if I said the Founders were Christians, how could we really know? Just because people carry a big ol' Bible in their hand, they can still be atheists!"
--"Most of these men owned slaves. How could good Christians do that?"
--"We know that Benjamin Franklin was a deist."
--"We don't really know for sure about their religion. It's open for interpretation. You'll have to do your own study on that."
To add insult to injury, this past week my chaplain received an unfortunate response letter about their grievous tour from Cynthia MacLeod, the superintendent of the Independence National Historical Park. She dodged culpability and refused to cast blame against the NPS guide, justifying that "each ranger leads a tour in his or her own way ... allowing visitors to draw their own conclusions." Really? Even if the ranger misleads and lies about our Founders? (You can read MacLeod's letter in its entirety at my chaplain's website, http://www.NationalTreasures.org.)
That's no way to teach more than 2 million annual guests who visit Independence Hall, including hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren being bused in from across the nation, ready and eager to learn about the accurate history of our republic and its Founders.
The truth is that if you want an accurate religious history of America, you no longer are going to get it from our president, our progressive society or secular schools, at least not without unbiased and trained teachers or the induction of a religious curriculum that hasn't tampered with and twisted history.
Remembering the role of religion in our republic is why I included an entire chapter on the subject (titled "From Here to Eternity") in my latest New York Times best-seller, "Black Belt Patriotism." It is also why my wife, Gena, and I are on the board of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which has a Bible-based curriculum that has been used in public schools -- on campus, during school hours, for credit -- for the past 15 years. The NCBCPS curriculum has been implemented in 2,075 public high schools. More than 370,000 students nationwide have taken this elective course to date.
We are proud to announce that the NCBCPS will have an electronic version of its curriculum available starting Dec. 15. It will include movies, videos and slides, in addition to its hardcover text, "The Bible in History and Literature," and also "The Teacher's Companion Guide."
The NCBCPS' curriculum is not the Bible curriculum in circulation that promotes UNESCO in its Bible textbook for students. Please make sure your district uses the Bible curriculum textbook titled "The Bible in History and Literature," by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools. Don't accept counterfeits, if even under candy-coated biblical titles!
If you would like more information on the NCBCPS' curriculum or want help getting it into your local school district, go to http://www.BibleInSchools.net or call 336-272-8838. To date, 94 percent of the school boards approached with this Bible curriculum have voted to implement it.
Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, was right: "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."
That is why, for the sake of our posterity and the preservation of truth in each of our own communities, we all need to accept this challenge by Ronald Reagan: "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done."
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I have no idea about the particular's of what Chuck is pushing concerning the bible here, but post this because of its specificity with BO's deliberate deletion of our rights coming from our Creator.
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Obama's 7 'Creator' Omissions (Part 2)
Chuck Norris
Obama's 7 'Creator' Omissions (Part 2)
Last week, I detailed seven occasions in the past few months at which President Barack Obama omitted the words "by their Creator" from direct quotes of the Declaration of Independence: "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Though you can read the actual quotes in detail in Part 1, let me briefly remind readers where and when they occurred:
--On Oct. 21 at a rally for Sen. Patty Murray in Seattle.
--On Oct. 18 at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee dinner in Rockville, Md.
--On Oct. 17 at a reception for Gov. Ted Strickland in Chagrin Fall, Ohio.
--On Sept. 22 at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee/DSCC dinner in New York.
--On Sept. 15 at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's 33rd Annual Awards Gala in Washington.
--On Sept. 11 at the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Va.
--On Sept. 10 at the president's news conference at the White House.
Those presidential omissions might seem justifiable to some, but it alarms me when omissions are exclusively divine and so easily exit and are excused by the United States' supreme leader.
Even at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were debated and drafted, divine omissions seem to be in vogue.
Recently, my pastor and the chaplain of my organizations, Todd DuBord, was on a tour of Independence Hall with David Barton, Jim Garlow and dozens of others. The National Park Service guide leading their group blurted out five unbelievable lies and distortions about our Founders' religious beliefs and history, with school-age children present, as well, in the room:
--"We have no record that George Washington ever attended church."
--While the NPS guide, physically hunched over, mimicked and mocked one carrying and swinging an oversize Bible in his hand, he said to the crowd: "Even if I said the Founders were Christians, how could we really know? Just because people carry a big ol' Bible in their hand, they can still be atheists!"
--"Most of these men owned slaves. How could good Christians do that?"
--"We know that Benjamin Franklin was a deist."
--"We don't really know for sure about their religion. It's open for interpretation. You'll have to do your own study on that."
To add insult to injury, this past week my chaplain received an unfortunate response letter about their grievous tour from Cynthia MacLeod, the superintendent of the Independence National Historical Park. She dodged culpability and refused to cast blame against the NPS guide, justifying that "each ranger leads a tour in his or her own way ... allowing visitors to draw their own conclusions." Really? Even if the ranger misleads and lies about our Founders? (You can read MacLeod's letter in its entirety at my chaplain's website, http://www.NationalTreasures.org.)
That's no way to teach more than 2 million annual guests who visit Independence Hall, including hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren being bused in from across the nation, ready and eager to learn about the accurate history of our republic and its Founders.
The truth is that if you want an accurate religious history of America, you no longer are going to get it from our president, our progressive society or secular schools, at least not without unbiased and trained teachers or the induction of a religious curriculum that hasn't tampered with and twisted history.
Remembering the role of religion in our republic is why I included an entire chapter on the subject (titled "From Here to Eternity") in my latest New York Times best-seller, "Black Belt Patriotism." It is also why my wife, Gena, and I are on the board of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which has a Bible-based curriculum that has been used in public schools -- on campus, during school hours, for credit -- for the past 15 years. The NCBCPS curriculum has been implemented in 2,075 public high schools. More than 370,000 students nationwide have taken this elective course to date.
We are proud to announce that the NCBCPS will have an electronic version of its curriculum available starting Dec. 15. It will include movies, videos and slides, in addition to its hardcover text, "The Bible in History and Literature," and also "The Teacher's Companion Guide."
The NCBCPS' curriculum is not the Bible curriculum in circulation that promotes UNESCO in its Bible textbook for students. Please make sure your district uses the Bible curriculum textbook titled "The Bible in History and Literature," by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools. Don't accept counterfeits, if even under candy-coated biblical titles!
If you would like more information on the NCBCPS' curriculum or want help getting it into your local school district, go to http://www.BibleInSchools.net or call 336-272-8838. To date, 94 percent of the school boards approached with this Bible curriculum have voted to implement it.
Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, was right: "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."
That is why, for the sake of our posterity and the preservation of truth in each of our own communities, we all need to accept this challenge by Ronald Reagan: "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done."
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Adding a couple of names to the people thrown under the bus by Obama or whose careers got sidetracked. One is Jon Huntsman, the next moderate to compete for the Republican nomination now serving quietly as Obama's Ambassador to China. He will have to return soon to oppose his boss...
And then there is Hillary. First must mention briefly why her misfortune is humorous. She is a crook and politician of the worst kind. Devised Whitewater and let all her friends go to jail protecting her. The cattle futures lie. The travel office firings destroying careers to install one of her own. The bouncer doing FBI checks on political foes. And the cling to power of with her sham marriage by blaming the Monica Lewinski affair on the vast right wing conspiracy. What does the Democrat party call a crook like that? Frontrunner, but she lost to Obama and in all the excitement attached her future to his. What she didn't notice was that Obama's winning formula was called 'anyone but Hillary'.
Now if she leave to challenge Obama and wins, she will be a back stabber, lose all black support and lose the general election. If she had ignored her loss and moved on, she would still be a relevant, highly regarded Senator from New York, not serving a sham and failed political appointment where all the hot spots of the world were pulled out of her watch, and she still bungled it.
Ironically it was Rush L who called the Obama administration presciently: 'I hope he fails...[to transform America in his vision].
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/she_like_do_over_gBndkHKPPmC2WZRZNRlHsL
Hillary Bet on the Wrong Horse with Obama
She'd like a do-over
Last Updated: 4:16 AM, December 8, 2010
It's that magical time of the year, so let's play political pretend. Let's imagine Hillary turned down the secretary-of-state job two years ago.
Imagine where she would be now. A leader in the Senate, thinking seriously about challenging a damaged President Obama in 2012, that's where.
And she'd be getting tons of encouragement. She'd be free to join and even lead the chorus of outraged Dems and turned-off independents.
Instead, she's checkmated herself. By hitching her wagon to the shooting star Obama was in 2008, she effectively took herself out of the next presidential election.
It seemed like the smart thing to do at the time. Obama's smashing victory and huge popularity sparked talk of a generational realignment in favor of Democrats.
She'd come so close in the primaries that State was the only job that didn't seem like a demotion. Besides, signing on to his team wasn't viewed as giving up anything in 2012 because there was no hope of challenging him. And 2016 was too far off to game.
But the demigod turns out to have clay feet, and Clinton is now stuck to him. He's fallen and she can't get up.
The WikiLeaks fiasco puts an exclamation point on her predicament. The White House is hanging her out to dry -- Obama still has said nothing about the largest security breach in American history -- but she can hardly protest the leading role because the latest batch was mostly State Department cables. It happened on her watch.
Her appearance says it all. Plump and robotic, she looks miserable and thoroughly exhausted.
In a perverse way, Obama's myriad failures actually hurt her more than they hurt him. He could still find redemption through re-election, while she's left with two unappealing choices. Both smack of political dead ends.
She can stay in her job and hope he wins a second term. If he decided to keep her on, and she said yes again, it would mean four more years of flying around the world while the real policy decisions are made in the White House.
Or she can leave at the end of the term, whether he wins or not, and carve out a new role for herself. There would be a book, windfall speaking fees and international celebrity status, much like her husband, only without having achieved the presidency.
The one thing she can't do is probably the thing she would like most -- resign and challenge him for the nomination. One sign is that she keeps in close touch with a tight circle of political confidants who haven't stopped fantasizing about a comeback.
In theory, it's easy to see how she would run against him -- by picking up where she left off in the late 2008 primaries, when she finally found her voice in appealing to working-class Democrats. Many have abandoned Obama, as the midterms proved.
In the real world, it's too late for that. Resigning to challenge Obama would be seen as a monumental act of betrayal. It would repolarize the party and she'd forfeit the black vote, which could kill her in a general election.
As for 2016, it's still too distant to be an active option. While it's always dangerous to count out a Clinton, there is no obvious move that gets her to the White House.
Checkmate.
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Many dems are abandoning Obama. She certainly could, and may well challenge him in 2012.
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"Obama still has said nothing about the largest security breach in American history"
The silence from him is deafening.
Absolutely remarkable. He should be declaring war on these people; instead silence.
I am at a loss to explain why other than that he ideologically agrees with these enemies of our country.
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This can mean only one thing. While it may be good for the country in the short run it could mean four more years of the Bamster. I'll never forget how Limbaugh would explain his shock how Clinton's approval rateings would go from 40 to 60 "overnight" with "one speech" just by out of no where suddenly sounding like a conservative and after years of being a big lib. The swing voters are obviously not about ideology. The time for "big government is over" so said SWift Willie with a perfectly straight face as though he had been that way all along. I hope we don't see a redux of this:
****White House mum on Obama, Clinton agenda on Friday
FOX News – 1 hr 25 mins ago
WASHINGTON – The White House is saying little about the agenda of the meeting Friday between President Barack Obama and one of the few people alive to have held his job, former President Bill Clinton.
The two leaders will meet Friday afternoon in the Oval Office. No media access will be provided.
Press secretary Robert Gibbs says Obama is reluctant to discuss details of his talks with Clinton, even with Obama's own White House advisers. Gibbs says Obama wants to keep such presidential conversations "appropriately private."
The spokesman said only that the two men would discuss a range of domestic and foreign matters.
Obama is having to adjust his tactics to deal with an ascendant Republican Party, just as Clinton had to do in the middle of his own first term.****
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We knew O-Barry was detached, but seriously, this is beyond just phoning it in.....
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/12/10/great-news-bill-clinton-apparently-now-president-again/comment-page-1/#comments
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My guess is that he figured out that --surprise! Bill had settled in and there was no getting the microphone away from him; and rather that standing there like a potted plant, he left. Not the most manly of excuses, but well, no surprise there , , , :roll:
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**Iowahawk proven to have seen this coming!
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/11/obama-names-bill-clinton-to-president-post.html
Obama Names Bill Clinton to Presidential Post
WASHINGTON DC - Ending weeks of speculation and rumors, President-Elect Barack Obama today named Bill Clinton to join his incoming administration as President of the United States, where he will head the federal government's executive branch.
"I am pleased that Bill Clinton has agreed to come out of retirement to head up this crucial post in my administration," said Obama. "He brings a lifetime of previous executive experience as Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States, and has worked closely with most of the members of my Cabinet."
Clinton said he was "excited and honored" by the appointment, and would work "day and night" to defeat all the key policy objectives proposed by Mr. Obama during the campaign.
"I am gratified that the President-Elect has entrusted me with this important responsibility," said Clinton. "I'm looking forward to getting back behind, and under, the Oval Office desk again. As I have told the President-Elect, I pledge to do whatever I can to serve his historic administration by making sure that none of that bullshit he talked about during the campaign will ever see the light of day. Americans can rest assured that he will be safely confined to the East Wing, as far away as possible from any potentially dangerous office equipment or nuclear buttons."
The long anticipated naming of Clinton to head Obama's Oval Office team comes after a week that saw Obama appoint dozens of Clinton associates to his transition team including John Podesta, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder, Larry Summers, and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hundreds of other Clinton Administration holdovers are rumored to be in line for remaining appointments, including Bill Richardson, Janet Reno, Webb Hubbell, Chelsea Clinton, zombie Vince Foster, and zombie Socks the cat.
"Let's face it, it's obvious I'm in way over my head here," explained Obama. "Anyone paying attention knows I am a disaster waiting to happen, and who can blame them? I mean, just look at the stock market. That's why I think it's in the best interest of the country that I hand over the reins to people who, whatever their ethical shortcomings, at least have a faint clue about what they're doing. Come on, man. I've got a 401-k, too."
While the naming of Clinton appears to have momentarily calmed jittery financial markets, it sparked ripples of disapproval at liberal websites like Huffington Post and DailyKos. The progressive blogosphere was an early key source of support for Mr. Obama's candidacy, but a steady stream of Clinton-era appointees since the election has left some charging that he had betrayed his campaign promises to bring them to Washington as part of a sweeping culture of change -- a charge that Mr. Obama vehemently accepted.
"Oh, for crissakes. Are you kidding me? Are you friggin' kidding me?" asked Obama. "Of course I betrayed those goddamned idiots. Have any of you actually spent five minutes with them? I have, unfortunately. Nothing personal, but I wouldn't trust these internet windowlickers with a plastic spork from Taco Bell, let alone a freaking $3 trillion dollar budget global superpower. Look, I may be naive, but I'm not stupid. And if Kose or Koz or whatever the fuck his name is thinks for one second I give a rat's ass about who he wants in charge of the Treasury Department, he's even stupider than he looks."
"Look, I'm sorry I kinda snapped there, and pardon my French," added Obama. "But I just spent the last two years surrounded by these starstruck moonbat retards, and I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna spend the next four with them parked in the next cubicle over."
Obama also announced that he had accepted his own appointment of himself as an Assistant Undersecretary in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
"It's a fairly low-stress job that I'm reasonably qualified for," said Obama. "I really can't do much damage there, and it will give me plenty of free time for Oprah specials. Plus work on my next autobiography and re-election campaign."
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Does anyone remember the scramble of news as the Clintons were exiting the White House. Besides stealing things from the walls and desks of the White House, we had the flurry of pardons. Pardons plotted for four years were all sprung at once. Everyone and their brother wanted one, literally, with Hugh Rodham selling them like magazine subscriptions. The administration and the media were oblivious to the tanking economy and the rising terror threat beneath the headlines that would soon explode on us as they all rushed to get their last pet project pushed through with unaccountable, shameless, lame duck power.
Here we go again. This congress exiting is the group Obama rode in with and he along with his compadres of the last 4 years, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, are still setting the bold, leftist, activist agenda as the least popular congress in history prepares to leave town, hopefully forever.
The focus is to pass things now that can't be undone by the next congress; that is the opposite of a founding principle we used to refer to as consent of the governed.
We can discuss the issues separately and we have, but I just want to make sure this wider Alinsky strategy is pointed out right now, as it is happening.
First the tax dilemma and the tax deal was everything. They left it all to the end against the advice of ALL economists. Republicans weren't going to discuss anything else until a tax package was set so that became the fight of our time, even though everyone presumably knew Obama wasn't going to raise tax rates on everyone coming into his last 2 years and an uphill reelection fight.
Crafty wrote about RINOs on START who cannot hold a line - shame on them, but shame should go mainly to the exiting leaders and their followers who ram all this BS right in the face of an electorate who just gave them a 3-part answer to their agenda: no, NO and Hell No!
Tax rates only got a temporary settlement continuing the exact same uncertainty problem we faced the last two years. Then it was amnesty for illegals, barely a win for sanity and sovereignty making centrist R's look bad to a growing constituency. With their guard down and thinking they owed Obama a favor, in comes the surrender treaty to the Russians. Simultaneous as a diversion, we have the FCC, as if that was not an operating arm of the Obama administration, sliding through a new fatwa proclaiming federal regulatory of the internet with rules that are not made public. The news that the DEBT went up 2 TRILLION in one year goes nearly unnoticed.
The people mostly want to wind up some business of their own, put this rotten year behind us, listen to sleigh bells, go see Christmas lights, dream of sugar plum fairies, relax spiritually or whatever others do over a winter solstice break, and pray for better (meaning less) governance in the new year. This leftist flurry makes sure that the next two years will be all about arguing and undoing the damage of the last two years, not moving the country forward, advancing freedom, innovation or enterprise.
God Bless America. We could use a little help here right now.
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Doug writes:
"Does anyone remember the scramble of news as the Clintons were exiting the White House."
Yes, and I remember how Clinton gave departing speeches at every single stop along the way of his departure.
At the White House, at the departing airport, at the arriving airport. It was as though this guy would just not step off the stage (and shut up).
And the MSM loved every second of it. They still adore him.
While Bamster folded (as I predicted) he would once he couldn't get his way what has happened is every crat around him is adivising him, pleading with him to "move to the middle" and play the same BS game Clinton did to capture the short memoried swing voters. It worked for one of the world's great con artists Clinton and therefore Obama must do it.
This was on display when one day Bama is reeking with anger calling tax cuts the holy grail for repubs and the next day he reluctuntly steps off the stage to let Clinton (do what he can't) and discuss the tax cut "compromise" bill. And then, of course we get some in the MSM attempting to make the case that Obama has been a moderate *all along*. Did anyone hear Walter Shapiro trying to explain how Obama is misjudged and he is really a moderate centrist Democrat and always has been? If Obama seemed far left, it was of course, only to play to his far left base. Not that he is one of them. Obama is really just left of the middle.
Crat revisionism has no bounds. No truth. No honesty. No reality. Just whatever suites the promotion of their agenda. Unfortunately swing voters seem to have short memories and wil go the way of the prevailing winds. I am unconvinced there is some conservative wave overtaking this country. It is all dollars and cents and whose pockets it goes to or from. As it always is. IMHO.
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"Once upon a time, Barack Obama seemed to understand the kind of opposition a personal mandate would generate. That’s why when he ran for president, he was against it — and criticized Hillary Clinton for proposing such a thing."
That line came from a post I just made over on 'constitutional issues', by Tom McClanahan of McClatchy newspapers.
Sad and amazing that I care more about where Obama stood then than he does. I will dig out the quote because I remember watching the debate with interest, and fear. People like that take a stand on either side of a crucial constitutional issue based on pollsters and personal political advantage. Then change sides without acknowledging or explaining what changed. And we reward them by trusting them with not just our healthcare, but nuclear disarmament treaties too!
Here is an example of Obama's position stated in an early Democratic debate:
"I do provide universal health care. The only difference between Clinton’s plan and mine is that she thinks the problem for people without health care is that nobody has mandated, forced them to get health care. What I see are people who would love to have health care & can’t afford it. My plan that makes sure that it is affordable to get health care as good as the health care that I have as a member of Congress. That’s what the American people are looking for & what I intend to provide as president."
Source: 2007 Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Nevada Nov 15, 2007
http://www.ontheissues.org/Archive/2007_Dems_Las_Vegas_Health_Care.htm
My question today, does anybody think he actually changed his mind, that this Harvard educated Alinsky liberal did not know then that if he ever got the shot at it, the mandate would be necessary to expect healthy people buy a government-crafted policy that they don't want, or was he (obviously) lying then for tactical, political advantage, to differentiate himself from her, and Edwards and Dodd and Richardson and Kucinich?
In other words, he burst on the national stage as a new kind of politician, looked America in the eye and lied to our face on all the major issues, healthcare, war, tax cuts, you name it.
When he appointed Hillary he said Americans should not take too seriously some of the things said during “the heat of a campaign.”
They say they want people to engage, learn the issues, watch the debates, etc. But if and when we do engage, we keep getting snowed over with bullshit like this. People who disengage and say all politicians are alike have it just about as right as those of us who try to tune in and pay attention.
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"if and when we do engage, we keep getting snowed over with bullshit like this"
Yes. And if not for Fox and talk radio we would never had even known, heard or had any hint of who Bamster associated with including Rev. Wright.
Not one peep, not one ioda, no questioning, no vetting of this from the MSM who gladly, willingly were accomplices in covering up this guy's past. And of course cover for him now.
Yet the swing voters don't seem to care. I don't get them at all. Some must be THAT stupid. Others I guess want "compromise", others go with the the "flow".
I can't figure them out. Obviously they are not monolithic and are a heterogenous group. (Am I allowed to use that word, "hetero" or did I just commit a poltically incorrect crime against humanity) :roll:
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Following up here on Crafty's post on Energy about solar manufacturing closing here and moving to China. It should go to Fascism and Constitutional Issues as well.
Who do we think we are as a federal government tryiing to pick winners and losers in any industry much less energy? We are so invested now in failed subsidies and wishful industrial planning that we think it is a bad thing to find out we can get solar made somewhere else for less. If solar is our energy future, then we are a consumer of solar energy, not necessarily the hardware manufacturer. The price dropping is a good thing if we are wanting to widely use solar to produce energy and conserve the planet. We are not a low cost manufacturer; that is not our niche, why would we think otherwise? And we can't have low cost energy without low cost manufacturing. Why are we pretending we know enough to accurately pick winners and losers in a business supply chain? In which Article did we derive that power?
This is the thinking of a leader whose total personal private business experience is zero and a cabinet whose total experience is less than 9% private sector; with roughly 0% in the private energy industry. They honestly have no idea how an industry or a market or a free economy works. That void is what gives them the confidence to keep picking winners and losers after being wrong so many times. Paraphrasing Rumsfeld, they don't know that they don't know. They don't know that markets have mechanisms for optimizing the allocation of resources, or that bureaucrats can't and don't have to. The central power should set ground rules and get out of the way.
This is nothing new. One might recall that cash for clunkers took mostly Fords off the road and put mostly new Hondas and Toyotas in their place. We were subsidizing Toyota while we were suing them over brakes (probably wrong about that too). No lesson was learned because in the federal mindset we were only experimenting with play money, not the scarce resource that a capitalist would have to invest. Over at General Motors we bought the company to make them profitable (which article authorized that?) then passed regulations to tear into the profits. The regulator and the regulated became one and the same. The conflicts and complications could confound even the best of the all-knowing.
Makes you wonder who in central planning knew to subsidize Microsoft, Cisco, Qualcomm, Google or Facebook, or J.K Rowling - at just the right time. That's right, no one did.
Random people coming off of spinning fair rides blindfolded could pin tails on donkeys with the same accuracy and consistency as our glib central planners.
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Amen.
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Like the con of Clinton I am beside myself watching the triangulation strategy unfold again. How the public could let the most radical leftist President we have ever had get away with this I don't know. But his friends in the media are already talking of a "learning curve", and his "growing into the job", and "maturing". Now that he can't ram it all down our throats he is suddenly this. And the swing voters will eat it all up and his poll numbers will go us and likely the Republicans who have no equivalent mouthpiece will not be albe to get past this and indeed are already showing signs they will cave in with compromise. All the while the msm push for friendly debate on the issues and deligetimize any angry vocal opposition. If Republicans cannot learn from history we are doomed. I will try not keep posting about this.
***Obama orders review of government regulations
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Tuesday ordered a government-wide review of regulations with the goal of eliminating those that hurt job creation and make the economy less competitive.
Obama took action after unveiling his plan in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he said some rules have placed "unreasonable burdens on business -- burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs."
The executive order marked Obama's latest move to repair relations with U.S. business, which were frayed amid bitter debate over his overhauls of Wall Street regulations and healthcare that some business leaders said would stymie corporate America.
[ For complete coverage of politics and policy, go to Yahoo! Politics ]
Obama has struck a more business-friendly tone since his Democrats lost the U.S. House of Representatives and saw their Senate majority reduced in November congressional elections widely seen as a verdict on his handling of the stumbling economy and persistently high unemployment.
It was not immediately clear, however, how far-reaching Obama's new regulatory strategy would be in changing the way the federal government operates.
Despite Obama's promise, the administration's legislative victories are producing dozens of new regulations, on everything from credit card fees to health insurance premium increases, to the annoyance of the business community.
Obama said he would require that in the future, government agencies "ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth."
He also issued a memorandum to all executive agencies calling for "more transparency and accountability in regulatory compliance" and a second one on the need to "reduce burdens on small businesses whenever possible," the White House said.
Business leaders say government regulations, including those being written for the healthcare and financial reform, have hurt job creation at a time of nearly double-digit unemployment.
"It's a review that will help bring order to regulations that have become a patchwork of overlapping rules, the result of tinkering by administrations and legislators of both parties and the influence of special interests in Washington over decades," Obama wrote.
The president, noting that small businesses create most new jobs in the economy, also said he would direct the government to make a greater effort to reduce the burden regulations place on them.
While vowing to eliminate rules that are "not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb," the president said his administration would not shy away from writing new rules to address "obvious gaps" in government oversight.
(Writing by Eric Beech and Matt Spetalnick; editing by Mohammad Zargham)***
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Obama suddenly worried about excessive regulation, unbleepingbelievable, CCP, I feel your pain. It is a head fake and I hope I am wrong. One very insightful criticism of Bush was that he gave supply side a bad name without ever implementing it. Producers don't respond to tax rates alone. Regulations at this point are probably more harmful to job creation than taxation.
If Obama got to only talk about both sides difficult issues for the next two years, he could win in '12, no contest. In between talks to the nation he will be forced to make hard choices. I can't imagine those choices will include cleaning up the regulatory burden that keeps manufacturers from manufacturing and health providers from innovating.
A perfect example blew up in everybody's face. He was (all talk) going to favor responsible offshore drilling, framing his opponents to favor irresponsible drilling. But it was one of his approval sites that blew up and now we have no drilling.
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Doug,
This is absolutely infuriating to me. Clinton did this in the 90's as we all know and got away with it. He would stand there with a straight face and say things as though that were the case all along - and he got away with it. His polls went right up. The fact he was a gigantic liberal for two years prior made no difference though I do have to say he never did get over 50% of the vote. If the cans had a stronger candidate than Dole the outcome could have been different I suppose.
Yet here is Bamster trying to pull off the same scam. So many said he is too much of an ideologue to do this. Yet the Democrat team behind him are gettinghim to do it.
The jornolist media will drool over this con, support him in every way possible - not call him on any of it. And let him get away with it tooth and nail.
NO I am not happy this guy is supposedly compromising, he is supposidly learining, he is supposidly reaching out to the other side for the benefit of governance and doing the work of the "people". He is full of shit, he is a liar, he is scamming us, and he should get away with this. If team Republilcans cannot come up with a media strategy that calls this guy out, that does not let the left play the sob story game, that stands for America and explain to AMerica why they are right and this guy wrong than I will just drop out of the political process altogether.
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"he should get away with this"
he should *not* get away with this
Pardon
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As Ben Franklin told us, we have a Republic gentlemen, if we can keep it. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. (I forget who said that). We must do our part!
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Wow. Let's see the MSM deal with this now. Remember Crafty you asked why on this board why doesn't Bamster simply produce his birth certificate and put to rest the questions of his birth place. Now we have the answer. His "long" version of his birth certificate cannot be found. Just a written in notation.
So what was the evidence he was born here. Some newspaper articles? Whether he was born here or not matters not with regards to citizenship since his mother was a citizen. But it certainly does matter with regards to his eligibility for President. I do not underestimate the possibility there is some sort of coverup.
Just stating that because the Hill couldn't find anything therefore nothing exists does not explain this.
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BORN IN THE USA?
Hawaii governor can't find Obama birth certificate
Suggests controversy could hurt president's re-election chances
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Posted: January 18, 2011
8:05 pm Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
Neil Abercrombie
Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie suggested in an interview published today that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.
Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star Advertiser he was searching within the Hawaii Department of Health to find definitive vital records that would prove Obama was born in Hawaii, because the continuing eligibility controversy could hurt the president's chances of re-election in 2012.
Donalyn Dela Cruz, Abercrombie's spokeswoman in Honolulu, ignored again today another in a series of repeated requests made by WND for an interview with the governor.
Toward the end of the interview, the newspaper asked Abercrombie: "You stirred up quite a controversy with your comments regarding birthers and your plan to release more information regarding President Barack Obama's birth certificate. How is that coming?"
In his response, Abercrombie acknowledged the birth certificate issue will have "political implications" for the next presidential election "that we simply cannot have."
Get the free, in-depth special report on eligibility that could bring an end to Obama's presidency
Suggesting he was still intent on producing more birth records on Obama from the Hawaii Department of Health vital records vault, Abercrombie told the newspaper there was a recording of the Obama birth in the state archives that he wants to make public.
(Story continues below)
Abercrombie did not report to the newspaper that he or the Hawaii Department of Health had found Obama's long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate. The governor only suggested his investigations to date had identified an unspecified listing or notation of Obama's birth that someone had made in the state archives.
"It was actually written, I am told, this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down," Abercrombie said.
For seemingly the first time, Abercrombie frankly acknowledged that presidential politics motivated his search for Obama birth records, implying that failure to resolve the questions that remain unanswered about the president's birth and early life may damage his chance for re-election.
"If there is a political agenda (regarding Obama's birth certificate), then there is nothing I can do about that, nor can the president," he said.
So far, the only birth document available on Obama is a Hawaii Certification of Live Birth that first appeared on the Internet during the 2008 presidential campaign. It was posted by two purportedly independent websites that have displayed a strong partisan bias for Obama – Snopes.com released the COLB in June 2008, and FactCheck.org published photographs of the document in August 2008.
WND previously reported the Hawaii Department of Health has refused to authenticate the COLB posted on the Internet by Snopes.com and FactCheck.org.
WND has reported that in 1961, Obama's grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, could have made an in-person report of a Hawaii birth even if the infant Barack Obama Jr. had been foreign-born.
Similarly, the newspaper announcements of Obama's birth do not prove he was born in Hawaii, since they could have been triggered by the grandparents registering the birth as Hawaiian, even if the baby was born elsewhere.
Moreover, WND has documented that the address reported in the newspaper birth announcements was the home of the grandparents.
WND also has reported that Barack Obama Sr. maintained his own separate apartment in Honolulu, even after he was supposedly married to Ann Dunham, Barack Obama's mother, and that Dunham left Hawaii within three weeks of the baby's birth to attend the University of Washington in Seattle.
Dunham did not return to Hawaii until after Barack Obama Sr. left Hawaii in June 1962 to attend graduate school at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
Conceivably, the yet undisclosed birth record in the state archives that Abercrombie has discovered may have come from the grandparents registering Obama's birth, an event that would have triggered both the newspaper birth announcements and availability of a Certification of Live Birth, even if no long-form birth certificate existed.
WND has also reported that Tim Adams, a former senior elections clerk for the city and county of Honolulu in 2008, has maintained that there is no long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate on file with the Hawaii Department of Health and that neither Honolulu hospital – Queens Medical Center or Kapiolani Medical Center – has any record that Obama was born there.
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To have a US passport, one must provide the US State Dept. proof of US citizenship, either by birth or by naturalization. Obama had a US passport long before he was a political figure.
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http://www.travel.state.gov/passport/get/minors/minors_834.html
http://www.travel.state.gov/passport/get/secondary_evidence/secondary_evidence_4315.html
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GM,
Well I don't know what he presented for his passport. It doesn't appear it was any kind of copy of a long birth certificate. Here in NJ one can get certified copies if one loses the original.
His mother was a citizen so isn't that alone mean he is automatically a citizen?
Again the issue is not citizenship. It is constittutional eligibility for being President.
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John McCain was born outside the US, but was deemed to be eligible to be president. Obama's citizenship can be presumed to be US, and I doubt he was naturalized, therefore I think it can be reasonably assumed that he is eligible to be president.
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But there was something about McCain's being born on a military base that was figured to be the inclusionary argument I think.
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It's unclear what the founders meant by "natural born".
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2010/12/bizarre-birther-intellectual-dance.html
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GM, If going down this path was worthwhile I would want to see his first passport application with attachments. The intent of that rule (I assume) was to make sure a President didn't have international rather than American loyalties. Whoops.
His current address is his evidence of eligibility for office; the challenge should have been when he first put his name on a ballot for President. The burden of proof goes to the other side(IMO) since he was accepted on the ballot in 50 states and administered the oath of office. Looks to me like no one plans to provide any more documents.
Opponents can focus on these questions or focus on opposing and defeating leftist governing - hard to do both effectively. Personally I want him challenged and defeated over governing philosophy and anything/everything else IMO detracts from that message.
If a document saying otherwise existed, this was the largest blunder ever by the Clintons for all their Nixonian research into people who threaten their power. Bill Clinton is campaigning for an uncontested mayor race in Chicago when he thought he would be head of the UN by now, or hanging out with the first spouses of Spain and France. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1173949/The-day-Carla-met-match-Mrs-Sarkozy-upstaged-Spains-real-princess-glamour-showdown.html
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George Romney and Barry Goldwater also had questions about their eligibilty arise during their quests to become president.
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"But I also have pointed out that Obama's strategy of concealing the records and dismissing the "Birthers" as cranks is not working in the longer term."
Well this is the point of my original post above. Obama is *not playing any strategy in 'not' producing* the best evidence. He is not producing best evidence because he can't. For whatever reason his birth certificate is no where to be found. Therefore he takes the next strategy which is as it always is with him (like past associations with radicals) is to cover up, deny, attack those who question this as crazy, misguided, politcally motivated, racist, and the rest.
As for W's military guard duty I will have to admit the evidence I have read is that he certainly did have a Senator's son's *no show* ghost-like service.
I don't recall seeing any credible evidence he ever showed up like everyone else was supposed to do. Certainly sounds like someone doing a favor for a powerful father.
It reminds me of another Senator's son's service during Vietnam - Algore. He ran around the rear lines as some sort of "reporter"? That said, he was there at all deserves him credit.
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Oh really? So Fukino and Onaka have personally have claimed to have visually verified Bamster's birth certificate. Sounds like a coverup to me.
Remember this:
****Obama's Birth Certificate Verified By State
Health Department Receives Multiple Requests For Copies
POSTED: 12:12 pm HST October 31, 2008
UPDATED: 1:26 pm HST November 1, 2008
Email Print
HONOLULU -- The state's Department of Health director on Friday released a statement verifying the legitimacy of Sen. Barack Obama birth certificate.
The state has received multiple requests for a copy of Obama's birth certificate. State law does not allow officials to release the birth certificate of a person to someone outside of the family.
There were rumors that Obama was born in Kenya, where his father is from. The Constitution requires that the president be a natural born citizen of the U.S.
While many sites and news organizations have released copies provided by the Obama campaign, the rumors have persisted.
"There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawai‘i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record," DOH Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said.
Fukino said she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate.
"Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures," Fukino said.
Fukino said that no state official, including Gov. Linda Lingle, ever instructed that Obama's certificate be handled differently from any other.
Some Obama critics claim he was not born in the United States.
Multiple lawsuits were filed to try and force Obama to provide proof of citizenship. Earlier Friday, a southwest Ohio magistrate rejected a challenge to Obama's U.S. citizenship. Judges in Seattle and Philadelphia recently dismissed similar suits.
Copyright 2008 by KITV.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.****
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Ultimately, the way to resolve this is for states to pass laws requiring that candidates provide proof of citizenship to be on a ballot.
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"for states to pass laws requiring that candidates provide proof of citizenship to be on a ballot"
proof of *natural born* citizenship
Pretty good idea to pass a law setting a process, since there doesn't seem to be any guideline on how to stop an ineligible candidate if all challenges were dismissed without a hearing. The successful challenge would have to happen in a blue or contested state to make any electoral difference.
If he was born offshore to an American mother from Kansas, and McCain was born overseas but both parents were American - maybe the ground he was born on was an American base - it sounds to me like splitting hairs finer than what is explicit in the constitution. If the mom had renounced her citizenship or even written something to change her address (and the newborn to be) to no longer reside in America, then maybe they have something, but that is not what is alleged as I hear it. Just as on the flip side, I don't see how a birth from a foreigner in the US on vacation splits up the citizenship of a family.
Challenge Obama on his record and his governing agenda.
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"Challenge Obama on his record and his governing agenda"
Surely.
There is another issue about 2 state empolyees stating they verify a document that later cannot be found.
Sounds like the US Copyright Office.
It should bother when government officials entrusted with keeping documents secure are/may be lying.
I know for a fact that a person(s) at the Copyright Office tmapers with documents in coordination with people taking things out of our house.
Since it only affects us no one else can give a shit.
But in the case of Obama the whole country should be giving a shit.
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Meanwhile BO's poll numbers are up to 50-53% favorable , , ,
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http://hotair.com/archives/2011/01/21/obama-at-49-in-cbs-poll/
Obama at 49% in CBS poll
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CCP, I hear what you are saying regarding the birth records. I read through all the links and documents at WND last night. More about his early childhood than I ever wanted to know. They do a pretty responsible job of covering it and I googled around elsewhere. Apparently the story has changed regarding which of two hospitals he was born in. But also missing is any indication she left the island at age 18 and pregnant or was even still seeing the Kenyan. Barack Obama Sr. at least as a family man was quite a jerk. Barack Jr. says his father left when he was 2, a story likely passed on by his mom but really there is no indication the dad ever met the kid or acknowledged him in the first ten years. He headed to Harvard, she to Seattle. He makes no mention in interviews or letters acknowledging the marriage or the child. He refers in one letter to his wife but is clearly referring to the one back home. He is very focused on his educational opportunity but not whatsoever as to how that will benefit this family. Then there is the mom, Stanley Ann. She falls for the African student at 17, almost 18. Names her child after him, (changes his name at least 2 more times as life goes on), doubtfully married Obama Sr. but likely wanted to or pretended they did - for 'legitimacy' - this is 1961. Falls for another foreigner, 2 different dates with different locations for that 'second' marriage, probably falsified back to facilitate adoption of young Barry before age 5. She understood the danger of moving herself and her son to then communist (and Muslim) Indonesia, then did it. Sutoro tries to get out of going back, but they all go. She likely renounced his US citizenship (Barry Jr.) at that time to lessen the dangers he would face, giving him the Sutoro surname and calling him Muslim and Indonesian. Indonesia does not allow dual citizenship. Later dumps the kid on her parents, ('typical white folks'). Interrupt here to say: none of this is the young child's fault, but it was his childhood.
The bureaucracy in one place says old passports records shall be destroyed after so many years and in another place says they are retained since 1925.
My take. a) This bizarre story is nothing like saying 911 was an inside job. The constitution requires natural born citizenship, plenty of good Americans have been excluded from consideration for the Presidency for that, and this young fellow had a mixed up early childhood involving two other nationalities withmany relevant documents are missing, altered or fraudulent. b) Stanley Ann was pregnant roughly 30 days after starting at U of Hawaii. Stanley Ann and Obama Sr. were in the same Russian language class. c) Other than conception, assuming he was the father, there didn't ever seem to be a relationship to speak of between Stanley Ann and Barack Sr. much less a marriage, nor did he ever see himself as a father in any sense we would recognize beyond sperm donor status, except for a visit 11 years later in Hawaii after the Sutoro Indonesia fiasco. Very unlikely that he brought her back to Kenya (where he already had at least one wife) from Hawaii while he was finishing 5 years of degrees in 3, even in the summer. d) Assuming Stanley Ann did renounce Barry Jr's citizenship for her next radical, flighty move, that renunciation was likely fraudulent and not young Barry's fault at kindergarden age. e) the missing documents aren't going to prove he was born out of the U.S. Even then, he was born to an American mother in between her semesters at Honolulu and Seattle, with no father. It would be a twist of constitutional intent to say he is anything other than a natural born citizen IMO.
Somewhere in the gossip were the stories that Kenyan relatives said she gave birth there and that the white Grandmother said something like that. No corroboration of any of that. More likely she did get a first passport around the time of the early preganancy in hopes of traveling the world, marrying, moving, visiting etc.
Is there a photo anywhere of a proud father Barack Sr. seen anywhere with a 7, 8, or 9 month visibly pregnant Stanley Ann? I don't think so. Or with newborn Barry or the 3 of them? I don't think they were traveling together anywhere much less Kenya. Then she moved from Hawaii to Seattle to start school 15 days later, without Obama Sr. That is a difficult move if you are hurrying back from Kenya (not close to Hawaii)!
(http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/another_look_at_obamas_origins.html)
Obama knows little about the wedding (of Stanley Ann and Barack Sr.). He writes in Dreams, "In fact, how and when the marriage occurred remains a bit murky, a bill of particulars that I've never quite had the courage to explore. There's no record of a real wedding, a cake, a ring, a giving away of the bride."
In his fair-minded biography, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage, Christopher Andersen concedes, "There were certainly no witnesses -- no family members were present; and none of their friends at the university had the slightest inkling they were even engaged."
In July 2008, speaking at a university roundtable, Michelle Obama said of Barack's mother that she was "very young and very single when she had him."
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The mainstream media, meanwhile, paid more attention to the origins of Trig Palin than to those of the president
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I continue to oppose him based on his public policy agenda.
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Doug,
Excellent post.
What is your take on "dreams *from* my father"?
I haven't read this book or D'Suza's book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage" but it is certainly curious Obama seems to take up the philosophy of his father who he may have never known and appears to have not cared one iota for the boy other than just sleeping with the white woman.
Yet Obamas grandparents who appear to have been good to him he throws under the bus as just a bunch of white people.
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Doug:
Thank you for that post. I confess I do not care for WND as a site, even though many of its biases are similar to some of mine because I think it often careless with inconvenient truths so I greatly appreciate your thorough and fair minded summary and analysis.
Marc
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Hawaii governor silenced and cover- up is now complete:
***Associated Press Mark Niesse, Associated Press – Sat Jan 22, 4:56 am ET
HONOLULU – A privacy law that shields birth certificates has prompted Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie to abandon efforts to dispel claims that President Barack Obama was born outside Hawaii, his office says.
State Attorney General David Louie told the governor that privacy laws bar him from disclosing an individual's birth documentation without the person's consent, Abercrombie spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said Friday.
"There is nothing more that Gov. Abercrombie can do within the law to produce a document," said Dela Cruz. "Unfortunately, there are conspirators who will continue to question the citizenship of our president."
Abercrombie, who was a friend of Obama's parents and knew him as a child, launched an investigation last month into whether he can release more information about the president's Aug. 4, 1961 birth. The governor said at the time he was bothered by people who questioned Obama's birthplace for political reasons.
But Abercrombie's attempt reached a dead end when Louie told him the law restricted his options.
Hawaii's privacy laws have long barred the release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who doesn't have a tangible interest.
So-called "birthers" claim Obama is ineligible to be president because they say there's no proof he was born in the United States, with many of the skeptics questioning whether he was actually born in Kenya, his father's home country.
Hawaii's health director said in 2008 and 2009 that she had seen and verified Obama's original vital records, and birth notices in two Honolulu newspapers were published within days of Obama's birth at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu.
Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo again confirmed Friday that Obama's name is found in its alphabetical list of names of people born in Hawaii, maintained in bound copies available for public view.
That information, called index data, shows a listing for "Obama II, Barack Hussein, Male," according to the department's website.
"The index is just to say who has their records within the department. That's an indication," Okubo said. "I can't talk about anyone's records."
The Obama campaign issued a certificate of live birth in 2008, an official document from the state showing the president's birth date, city and name, along with his parents' names and races.***
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Obama has just placed a check on the Republican team if you will. If he is able to keep up the moderation and bipartisan facade then it is check MATE. Barring of course something unforeseen (to sound like David Gordon when speaking of the markets).
The Republicans are on the defensive already. They come off as too wimpy they lose. If they come off as the p0arty of no they probably lose as well. (remember shutting down government backfired on Newt). Calling Obama as a socialist who wants to redistribute wealth while obviously true is not going to win swing voters. Remember 50% pay no Federal income tax so they don't care about this. Remember most union empolyees are very happy to have the rich pay into their pensions. That is thus NOT a winning strategy. The winner gets the swing voters. The Republicans in my view must go beat the media trails everyday convincing why Obama has been bad for the US. Unfortunately even that has risks too. Remember how adept the Clintonites were in neutering the Repubs in the 90's? Even when the Repubs would come out with good ideas that ring true Clinton would steal the idea and make it his own - case in point - welfare reform. He took and was gloriusly given all the credit for it by the MSM. Even the Blacks were kissing his hand on the issue when indeed we all know it never would have happened without Republicans. So Obama has checked the Repub party. He could easily make it check mate. He is not a genius. The formula is already proven an written out for him. All he has to do is follow the script. There are many progressives around him who will keep him to it.
****WILL “CENTRIST” OBAMA WIN?
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann01.21.2011Share this article
On this, the second anniversary of his inauguration, President Obama is clearly showing a determination to change his image, replacing his hard left dogmatism with a seeming flexibility and openness to the views of the center. Will it work? Will it lead to his re-election? Are we only one-quarter of the way through a two term Obama presidency?
If the Republican Party wimp out and embraces a moderate agenda, trying to meet him in the middle, Obama will succeed and will be with us for six more years. But if the GOP defines itself in stark contrasts and pushes conservative policies, we will beat him. The key is to test Obama’s centrism by confronting him with bold demands to rollback health reform, undo his massive spending, deregulate community banks, enable state bankruptcies, and block pending executive orders to impose carbon taxes, card check unionization, and FCC regulation of talk radio and the Internet.
We have got to make the gentile and lulling waves of Obama’s new-found moderation crash up against the rocks of Republican demands. Then the leftist rib tide that lurks underneath the seemingly calm waters will be exposed and, in the ensuing surf, he will flounder.
Obama’s moderation is only tone deep. Its hallmarks have been the Daily appointment, his Tucson speech, his sham efforts at deregulation, and his forced acceptance of the Bush tax cuts. Now let’s see what he does with health care repeal, spending cuts, and the rest of the Republican agenda.
The Republican Study Committee proposal calling for $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over ten years is a great place to start. The GOP should take the key elements of it and tack them on to the debt limit increase bill and demand that Obama either sign the bill with the cuts or get no rise in the debt limit. As Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa) suggested in a recent op-ed, the government can function without borrowing more for a few months. And during that time, let all of America debate whether or not to cut the budget. Let Obama be on display – day after day – pleading for more spending and borrowing. What will become of his centrism then?
The Study Committee proposal is especially brilliant in its avoidance of any cuts in Social Security and Medicare. Republicans squandered their momentum from Bush’s re-election in 2005 by pushing Social Security reform and won in 2010 by fighting Medicare cuts. To cut or “reform” either program right now would be a disaster. But when it comes to EPA, the Department of Education, Amtrak, the federal workforce, highway construction, public works, stimulus spending, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other non-defense discretionary spending – cut away!
The key to winning the election of 2012 is to force Obama to defend his agenda of 2009-2010 by demanding its repeal and rollback. Republicans need to make him spend 2011 and 2012 defending the programs that brought him down in 2010. And we must also enact budget riders blocking his attempts to jam through by executive orders (even as he postures about cutting federal regulation) carbon taxation, FCC regulation of talk radio, and card check unionization. These issues are all winners.
Obama hopes we forget his past liberalism. After all, in 1996, who remembered Hillarycare? Who voted against Clinton because of his 1993 tax hikes? Nobody. So we need to force these issues to the fore again in 2011 and 2012. We must make Obama run on his record of 2009-2010 by demanding its repeal and forcing him to fight again the same battles that cost him the House in 2010. That is the path to victory.****
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Year 3 of his Presidency, this is an actual headline: Obama looking for ideas to grow jobs. Googling to find where I saw that, I found the same headline coming into State of the Union last year as well:
http://www.morningjournal.com/articles/2010/01/06/news/mj2113672.txt
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/magazine/23Economy-t.html?pagewanted=all
Here's to hoping the next one isn't in his own Utopian fog as he takes the Presidency. Clue: Government is financed as an economic parasite that feeds off of the host. Since many functions of government are necessary and need to be preserved, we should make every effort to stop killing off the host private sector entrepreneurial economy.
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CCP: "Obama seems to take up the philosophy of his father"
Yes maybe by accident, really it is the radical leftism of his mother. That is likely what drew her to the African student as much as race. Obama's other mentors and colleagues had far more direct influence than his father: Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright etc.
The story behind the book 'Dreams of his father' as I recall was a hodgepodge of notes Obama put down until he stalled out with writer's block. Someone else picked it up and drew a story line through it and also probably named it. Pundits/analysts think that was Bill Ayers IIRC. Everyone has a ghost writer or editor so that isn't a big deal, but neither is the book. Obama never visited Kenya until after his father died. I don't blame Obama for searching Africa for the economic success secrets that America lacked, I blame his voters.
People who lie or talk mostly out of both sides of their mouth sometimes anger me, but mostly bore me. I don't learn even what they are thinking by listening to them. I just waste my own time trying to figure them out. It is the chess game of how to catch him in a bad move, defeat him and change the direction that interests me.
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The Dick Morris piece is the sort of thing he does best:
"The key to winning the election of 2012 is to force Obama to defend his agenda of 2009-2010 by demanding its repeal and rollback."
Exactly so.
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Yup.
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Crafty, Doug and GM,
I agree with all of you the Republicans need to keep up the pressure and to do their best to control the airwaves. Obama, as do all Presidents have the big advantage of the bully pulpit.
I agree with Dick 100% and particularly so since he is one of if not the architects of the Clinton resurrection it certainly behooves the right to listen to him on the best strategy to deal with Clinton 2.
Yet just sticking it back at the gangster bamster has it risks as I pointed out with Newt's failed policy of a government shut down that led to HIS not Clinton's down fall.
I don't know exactly how to avoid this and look strong and not just become a compromiser which will result in the gangster getting a second term (again of course barring some unforeseen events like a secoind dip in the economy.) I am not confident about Boehner at this point but perhaps I am prejudging. Certainly Morris felt he made a huge mistake on the tax compromise BEFORE the lame duck session was over. Not a good start. Krauthammer certainly thouth Boehner gave away the farm.
Getting the progressive front man out is without a doubt the only way to save our country from decline IMHO.
So far I don't see anyone on the right who has the charisma to do it. Forget Romney - no charisma (my nephew worked for him for his first run) . Forget Palin no crossover appeal. Forget Huckabee - too wishy washy. Newt my choice probably does not have swing voter appeal. Jindal who my nephew works for now as press secretary does not appear to be prime time national material.
Hopefully someone with the right stuff will bubble up before 2012.
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The economy is tanking. Check out food and gas prices and unemployment.
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Brian Wesbury and Scott Grannis would disagree with you on that. If we want to discuss this particular point further, lets take it over to the Political Economy thread.
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Doug,
"Yes maybe by accident, really it is the radical leftism of his mother. That is likely what drew her to the African student as much as race. Obama's other mentors and colleagues had far more direct influence than his father: Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright etc."
And as noted, his college transcripts, his full birth certificate (albeit debatable as to importance), his pre national politics history all seems vague. We know he did drugs. But we have heard as far as I know, nothing from the leftists he knew and associated with. Dead silence and only for talk radio and Fox we would know nothing of any of it.
Bizzare.
Not one person from College remembers him?
Yes I agree it is all water under the bridge anyway. He and the progressive forces behind him need to be beaten on the issues.
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(http://images.nymag.com/news/politics/obama110131_2_560.jpg)
http://nymag.com/news/politics/70829/index2.html
The president’s friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett sometimes pointed out that not only had he never managed an operation, he’d never really had a nine-to-five job in his life. Obama didn’t know what he didn’t know, yet his self-confidence was so stratospheric that once, in the context of thinking about Emanuel’s replacement, he remarked in all seriousness, “You know, I’d make a good chief of staff.”
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I don't like beating dead horses ie: the lack of a birth certificate. But you know folks, this is not a dead horse. This guy's birth certificate does NOT exist so states the governor of Hawaii. Now we can argue all we want about whether this is a big deal for the Republican strategy. But it is a big deal to me. I want to know why we have State government officials claiming to have seen the document and publicly making claims it was there and intact when it wasn't. I want to know why anyone who questions this has to be labeled as crazy. We have a guy who became President despite the lack of a birth certificate. This is a big deal. There was/is a cover-up.
This is legitimate. All gangster bamster has to do is produce the document. Now it is obvious why he doesn't. He doesn't because he can't.
Maybe many Americans are not bothered by a world class fraud but I am.
What should be done about it? I don't know. Whether or not it is a technicality with regards to his mother being out of the country for only a few months is one issue. But isn't Obama's lying about it, aren't false claims from government officials a crime?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvrb7YqdvxE
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CCP, Very interesting video. There is no long form or record at either of those two hospitals on that day or any other. The short form was issued based on the birth announcement made by the grandparents(?). My guess was going to be that something else embarrassing was going to come out of this such as no marriage, no father, different date, not that he wasn't born in America. One rumor that ran through the internet research, perhaps the family picked up and moved suddenly to Hawaii because she was pregnant. That makes more sense than the real story of starting classes a month late and moving suddenly without explanation. In that scenario, she knew the race of the father and linked up with a more worldly black to give the boy a story and a name. Obama Sr. either was tricked or knew and went along with it with a little pride but no parental connection. Aug. 4 1961 may not have been the actual birth date, altered to fit the story line of meeting Obama Sr. and I highly doubt they were ever married. Would he have to certify he was not already married to get that? Regarding records, remember that Hawaii had been a state for less than 2 years at this time though record keeping doesn't seem to have changed. Maybe the grandparents hired medical professionals into their home for the birth, and then went ahead with this story when they were certain of the mixed race baby. Mixed race was likely a big deal to everybody in 1961. That would explain all the chicanery and secrecy, the avoidance of further embarrassment, respecting the life secrets of his now deceased Mother, why his Obama Sr. never acknowledged until out of curiosity eleven years later.
Again, none of it points to him being born elsewhere, just lacking documents, which is no crime to me. If this whole bizarre story came out, as Michelle almost slipped when she said 'Barack's mother was very single and very alone when she had Barack', it would only in my opinion build political sympathy for him and against those scrutinizing the deep secrets of his mother's past. If Stanley Ann was knocked up by a nameless Seattle black, that makes young Barry more American than even the Kenyan story.
State by state there could be laws passed and challenges made to placing his name on a 2012 ballot. I predict those efforts will fail because no alternative story of being a native born citizen of somewhere else makes any sense or carries with it any evidence.
CCP, like you say, the story keeps giving off more and more reasons for suspicion so it is hard to let it rest, but he looks to me like a sworn-in President with a valid passport, a short form birth certificate, social security number, etc. so the burden to prove otherwise moves to the accusers IMO who have absolutely nothing. She had no reason whatsoever that we know of to leave the country, (checking the map-what foreign country is near Hawaii?) and if she did the baby was still born to an American mom with Hawaiian residence who shortly moved back to Seattle. If Obama was involved in a conspiracy with the Head of the Hawaii Health Dept. to concoct a story that they had examined a non-existent long form, then he is guilty of that, something less I would guess than a high crime and misdemeanor of the impeachable type, and likely impossible to prove. If proof comes out suddenly (it hasn't and it won't) that he is unquestionably not eligible to be President, proceedings should be started immediately to remove him from office and ... drum roll please... President Biden can be immediately sworn in. No one wants that.
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The President hit hard on Education in the State of the Union, unfortunately it doesn't happen to be a federal function as pointed out by George Will today: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view/20110127states_can_handle_school_reform/
In my daughter's public high school, the graduation rate is 99% and the on-to-college rate is 88%; this is a large suburban school district.
A short distance away in Keith Ellison's urban district run by Obama's ACORN allies pushing 'welfare rights', the dropout rate is 45%: http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=638761
Maybe he was reaching out to those kids who were not likely to be listening, but the rest of his agenda has the opposite effect - sending the message constantly that the rich should pay more and the poor should be entitled to more... spread the wealth.
Leftism is the theme in nearly all of the nation's largest cities where high school graduation rates average 50% and a strong work ethic is the theme across most of the rest of the heartland.
The answer is NOT a new federal program. The answer is find out what is going right in certain neighborhoods - mostly working hard, working smart, intact families, self sufficiency etc., and emulate it. Find out what is going wrong in the dysfunctional neighborhoods, mostly a victim, assistance and dependency mentality, and stop contributing to it.
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Doug posts:
"CCP, like you say, the story keeps giving off more and more reasons for suspicion so it is hard to let it rest,"
Hears more today from Drudge. What can I say? All Obama has to do is grant permission to release it. Yet the story keeps on giving with his refusal to do so to the point of spending a lot to stop its' release. The only answer is it simply doesn't exist. Below is another Dem ruse:
Hawaii lawmakers want release of Obama birth info
Buzz up!848 votes ShareretweetEmailPrint Reuters – President Obama makes a point during his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on …
Slideshow:President Barack Obama Play Video Barack Obama Video:Rand Paul: Obama 'Been Co-Opted By The Tea Party' ABC News Play Video Barack Obama Video:Turmoil in the Arab World FOX News By MARK NIESSE, Associated Press Mark Niesse, Associated Press – 1 hr 47 mins ago
HONOLULU – Five Hawaii Democratic representatives want to pass a law making President Barack Obama's birth records public and charge $100 to see them.
The bill, introduced this week, would change a privacy law barring the release of birth records to anyone unless they have a tangible interest.
The measure hasn't been scheduled for a public hearing yet, and can't move forward until that happens.
Its primary sponsor, Rep. Rida Cabanilla, says she wants to end the controversy surrounding Obama's birth by handing over official state records to those who will pay.
She says the fee would help offset the extra work by state employees who handle frequent phone calls and e-mails from people who believe Obama wasn't born in Hawaii.
Hawaii's health director has said she's verified Obama's original records, and notices were published in two newspapers within days of his birth at a Honolulu hospital
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Asked elsewhere: "At the beginning of 1996, Obama was able to get all of his opponents thrown off the ballot." Can you elaborate? How did he do that and who helped him do this?
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Try this link to Chicago Tribune coverage. The one he attacked was the same one who handpicked him as successor and previously endorsed him. It was impressive how instantly he knew which were the bad signatures in his own precincts on a campaign where he so recently worked. Asked how removing names off of the ballot served the electorate, he pointed to the result, himself elected, and said they did pretty well.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-070403obama-ballot-archive,0,5693903.story
Obama knows his way around a ballot
By David Jackson and Ray Long Tribune staff reporters
April 3, 2007
The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.
There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.
Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.
But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.
A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.
One of the candidates he eliminated, long-shot contender Gha-is Askia, now says that Obama's petition challenges belied his image as a champion of the little guy and crusader for voter rights.
"Why say you're for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates?" Askia said. "He talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?"
In a recent interview, Obama granted that "there's a legitimate argument to be made that you shouldn't create barriers to people getting on the ballot."
But the unsparing legal tactics were justified, he said, by obvious flaws in his opponents' signature sheets. "To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up," Obama recalled.
"I gave some thought to … should people be on the ballot even if they didn't meet the requirements," he said. "My conclusion was that if you couldn't run a successful petition drive, then that raised questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be."
Asked whether the district's primary voters were well-served by having only one candidate, Obama smiled and said: "I think they ended up with a very good state senator."
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Obama's new vacuous campaign slogan winning the future (equals the not very family friendly initials) definitely belongs under Humor/WTF in this forum. It was Palin who identified the initials (who should have left it to others), but I forgot that was also the exact title of Gingrich's book. My guess is these speech writers along with the orator have read nothing outside their own cocoon and were copying Clinton's vacuous "Bridge to the 21st Century' the best they could. Wonder if the new, improved, centrist leaning, results oriented administration will take up any ideas from the title they plagiarized: http://www.americansolutions.com/take-action/2011/01/winning-the-future-for-america-or-for-politicians.php
"# UTILIZE ALL OF AMERICA'S VAST ENERGY RESERVES, including oil, natural gas, wind and solar as well as the vast potential for nuclear power to produce clean abundant energy and American jobs.
# TAX REFORM TO FAVOR JOB CREATION, SAVINGS, INVESTMENT, PRODUCTIVITY, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, including eliminating the death tax and capital gains tax.
# GOVERNMENT REFORM TO MAKE EXECUTIVE BRANCH AGENCIES LEANER, MORE ACCESSIBLE AND MORE EFFECTIVE, including acquisition reform, better use of information technology and changing government work rules to make it easier to reward good workers and fire bad ones.
# EDUCATION REFORM TO EMPHASIZE MATH AND SCIENCE LEARNING by giving tax incentives to those who pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) degrees and allowing professionals using their math and science degrees to teach part time without having to go through the unionized credentialing process.
# JUDICIAL REFORM including tort reform to cut down on frivolous lawsuits and stopping the worrying trend of judges using foreign law as precedent in US cases.
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"I forgot that was also the exact title of Gingrich's book"
I would not discount the possibility they knew exactly what they were doing when they used the same phrase as Newt's book title.
In trying to sound more like Reagan, and more emotional like Clinton it would not surprise me if they were co-opting Newt's phrase.
Just like Clinton co-opted "smaller government" and welfare reform. One strategy the Dems use is to steal good Republican ideas and take the credit.
"Wonder if the new, improved, centrist leaning, results oriented administration will take up any ideas from the title they plagiarized"
I agree with your skepticism of this and strongly doubt it is any more than your apt descirption, of a "head fake".
Like Saul said, "if you want to change them pretend you are one of them".
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8304654/WikiLeaks-cables-US-agrees-to-tell-Russia-Britains-nuclear-secrets.html#
Loss for words. WTF!
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Strategically, we probably shouldn't have given Obama the numbers and locations of our arsenal either. Voters should be able to make one small mistake without losing all their security (and freedoms). I suppose wikileaks would have found that out too.
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I wonder if we will hear of this in our main stream media? :roll:
What do you know I just heard a lead in for this story on Fox :-o
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Let's see if NBC/SeeBS/ABC/CNN cover it.
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Sorry, I am not clear here. Was it Bush or BO who slimed the Brits?
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WikiLeaks cables: US agrees to tell Russia Britain's nuclear secrets
The US secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent to persuade them to sign a key treaty, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
**Much worse than the snubs of the Brits Barry has done up to now.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353888/WikiLeaks-claim-US-set-reveal-British-nuclear-secrets-Russia.html
America is to give the Russians details of Britain's Trident missiles under a new treaty, according to the latest WikiLeaks revelations.
The deal, which will be signed by U.S. President Barack Obama next week, will see Moscow given information about the missiles, which are manufactured and maintained in America.
The Daily Telegraph claims the Americans used the details of British nuclear secrets as a 'bargaining chip' to persuade Russia to sign the key treaty.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353888/WikiLeaks-claim-US-set-reveal-British-nuclear-secrets-Russia.html
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Thank you for the clarification and citation.
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Intelligence Failure
By Ralph Peters
New York Post | Thursday, January 08, 2009
WOULD you ask your accountant to perform brain surgery on your child? That's the closest analogy I can find to the choice of Democratic Party hack Leon Panetta to head the CIA.
Earth to President-elect Obama: Intelligence is serious. And infernally complicated. When we politicize it - as we have for 16 years - we get 9/11. Or, yes, Iraq.
The extreme left, to which Panetta's nomination panders, howled that Bush and Cheney corrupted the intelligence system. Well, I worked in the intel world in the mid 1990s and saw how the Clinton team undermined the system's integrity.
Al Qaeda a serious threat? The Clinton White House didn't want to hear it. Clinton was the pioneer in corrupting intelligence. Bush was just a follow-on homesteader.
Now we've fallen so low that left-wing cadres can applaud the nomination of a CIA chief whose sole qualification is that he's a party loyalist, untainted by experience.
The director's job at the CIA isn't a party favor. This is potentially a matter of life and death for thousands of Americans. But the choice of Panetta tells us all that Barack Obama doesn't take intelligence seriously.
Mark my words: It'll bite him in the butt.
After the military, the intel community is the most complex arm of government. You can't do on-the-job training at the top. While a CIA boss needn't be a career intelligence professional, he or she does need a deep familiarity with the purposes, capabilities, limitations and intricacies of intelligence.
Oh, and you'd better understand the intelligence bureaucracy.
Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), who was blindsided - and appalled - by the Obama mafia's choice, has the essential knowledge of how the system works. She, or a similar expert, should have gotten this nod. But the president-elect wanted a clean-slate yes-man, not a person of knowledge and integrity.
We're witnessing the initial costs of Obama's career-long lack of interest in foreign policy, the military and intelligence. He doesn't think the top job at the CIA's important and just wants political cover on that flank. (Guess we got Panetta because Caroline Kennedy has another engagement.)
Forget a "team of rivals." Obama's creating a campaign staff for 2012.
Of course, he's reeling from the shrill rage of the Moveon.org crowd over his nomination of grown-ups to be his national-security adviser, director of national intelligence, administrator of veterans' affairs and, yes, secretary of state. (By the way, how could Hillary be dumb enough to accept a job where success is impossible?)
Panetta's appointment is a sop to the hard left, a signal that intelligence will be emasculated for the next four - or eight - years.
Think morale's been bad at the CIA? Just wait.
Conservatives played into this scenario by insisting that any CIA analysis that didn't match the Bush administration's positions perfectly amounted to an attack on the White House. Well, sorry. The intelligence community's job isn't to make anybody feel good - its core mission is to provide nonpartisan analysis to our leaders.
To be a qualified D-CIA, a man or woman needs a sophisticated grasp of three things: The intel system, foreign-policy challenges and the Pentagon (which owns most of our intelligence personnel and hardware). Panetta has no background - none - in any of these areas. He was never interested.
If you handed Leon Panetta a blank map of Asia, I'd bet my life he couldn't plot Baghdad, Kabul or Beijing within 500 miles of their actual locations. (Maybe he can see China from his California think tank?)
This shameless hack appointment is the first action by the incoming administration that seriously worries me. Get intelligence wrong and you get dead Americans.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/report-cia-chief-based-congressional-mubarak-testimony-on-media-broadcasts/
Report: CIA Chief Leon Panetta Based Congressional Testimony On Mubarak Departure On ‘Media Broadcasts’
by Colby Hall | 10:30 pm, February 10th, 2011
CIA Director Leon Panetta testified to Congress today of a “strong likelihood” that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would step down by the end of the day. The report of his impending resignation was only eclipsed by the news that Mubarak would NOT be stepping down as Panetta had indicated to congress. The worse part isn’t that Panetta was basing his statement on on media reports (and not intelligence.) No, National Intelligence Director James Clapper outdid Panetta with his erroneous claim that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “secular” organization.
Certainly the current upheaval unfolding in Egypt is a fluid situation, best described as a leaderless revolt that has put the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA all on their heels. As it turns out, the true diplomatic stars so far in this story has been the media, who’s on the field reports have not only created compelling visuals for cable news outlets around the world, but also, strangely, informed the CIA director in his statements to Congress.
According to a report by Mark Landler and Mark Mazzetti for the NY Times (emphasis mine):
Mr. Obama watched Mr. Mubarak’s speech on board Air Force One, returning from a trip to Michigan, the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said. As soon as he arrived at the White House, Mr. Obama huddled with his national security aides. The administration appeared as taken aback by Mr. Mubarak’s speech as the crowds in Tahrir Square. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, testified before the House of Representatives on Thursday morning that there was a “strong likelihood” that Mr. Mubarak would step down by the end of the day.
American officials said Mr. Panetta was basing his statement not on secret intelligence but on media broadcasts, which began circulating before he sat down before the House Intelligence Committee. But a senior administration official said Mr. Obama had also expected that Egypt was on the cusp of dramatic change. Speaking at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, he said, “We are witnessing history unfold,” adding, “America will do everything we can to support an orderly and genuine transition to democracy.”
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Woof,
I tell you who needs to step down... our President and his whack job bunch of La la land nincompoops! How can they be so clueless? I tell you guys, what I get from all of this tom foolery is that we are in serious danger of having another 9/11 level terrorist attack coming our way very soon. We are no longer safe because these idiots are not capable of staying ahead of our enemies. Hell, they don't even know who our enemies are!
P.C.
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"American officials said Mr. Panetta was basing his statement not on secret intelligence but on media broadcasts"
I don't know who the "American officials" are.
I don't know that I believe the above statement.
Take nothing the media tells us as "truth". Take it all with a "grain of salt".
We don't know and will likely never know the truth here.
Either way Panetta looks bad. But the above way makes him the fall guy - the other way Obama looks bad too.
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I don't know. Am I too sensitive or what? Am I the only one who finds Obama's trying to copy or compare himself to Reagan as quite offensive? He is the exact opposite in Reagan in personality and in beliefs and in policy. I find his own comparisons to the real "gipper" as quite insulting:
***Obama Refers To Himself As "The Gipper" In Farewell To Gibbs
President Obama recounts an anecdote about the 2004 Democratic National Convention at White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' final press briefing:
"The most challenging problem was what tie to wear. And this went up to the very last minute. I mean, 10 minutes before we were about to go on stage we were still having an argument about ties. I had bought five, six ties. And Michelle didn't like any of them, Axelrod didn't like a couple of them -- him being one of the best dressed men in the world. So we really valued his opinion.
"And then somebody -- I don't remember who it was -- turned and said, 'You know what? What about Gibbs' tie? What about Gibbs' tie? That might look good.' And, frankly, Robert didn't want to give it up because he thought he looked really good in the tie. But eventually he was willing to take one for the gipper, and so he took off his tie, and I put it on. And that's the tie that I wore at the national***
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Any one of these slips is the downfall for ordinary politicians. It takes a little more to bring down a religious figure. You recall he starting biting his lower lip to show compassion after studying predecessor game films. I mentioned on the other thread that the 'cadence' was developed sometime after 1995 tape. His whole oratory style is learned or contrived.
Calling himself The Gipper, coincidentally with this Reagan birthday - unbelievable. Like Dukakis on the tank, Nixon I'm not a crook, Dan Quayle called out on comparing himself to JFK, Clinton I did not have sexual relations with that woman Ms. Lewinsky, George Herbert Walker Bush amazed to see grocery checkout. I don't know which of these personal stories or political mis-steps will become the symbol for his failure. I thought it would be "Cash for Clunkers - The Documentary of a Disappointing One Term Presidency".
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Hmmm methinks we protest too much. Hardly, not as serious as "I'm not a crook" although as a side note, I think Nixon is underrated.
Let's look at the context. We are discussing, in a fun/serious manner what tie to wear. Gibbs is asked to donate his tie.
"Let's take one for the gipper" or "Let's win one for the gipper" is an expression I've heard long before (I'm old)
Reagan was President. It's been a while, but I've heard it used in business and on the sports field.
It's a rather innocuous innocent somewhat playful yet it can be serious phrase. I don't think any disrespect was meant to President Reagan.
I think it dates back to Knute Rockne or somebody, but I forget.... Frankly, I heard it more often in the midwest...
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[The Gipper] "is an expression I've heard long before (I'm old)Reagan was President"
True, but the point wasn't that Reagan claimed authorship; it is an association that everyone our age has with Reagan that Obama who recently studied up on Reagan intentionally co-opted for himself.
"I don't think any disrespect was meant to President Reagan."
True, it was just the opposite. Again the point was to falsely self-compare, something Dan Quayle would have been well-advised to have avoided.
The parallel in a nutshell is this. Both were elected in a mess. Both took on transformation - in polar opposite directions. Both had popularity issues at this point in their Presidency. In Obama's case his main problem is popularity with his policies. At Reagan's low point, his policies that would set off a quarter century of economic growth, bring down the Soviet empire and end inflation were already in place. He had the confidence of knowing the American economic engine was going to roar and it did at growth rates almost never seen before and went from popularity in the 30s to winning 49 states. President Obama has none of that going for him, talks out of both sides of his mouth, and would like to win 49 states.
I'm not a crook was a far more memorable moment but equally false. In the age of youtube and a billion(?) to be spent on reelection, don't think we are done seeing whatever turn out to be symbols of his failures. See GM youtube post for an example. His longing to be like Reagan I am saying could very easily and likely backfire on him.
Nixon was multi-faceted. With hindsight on past Presidents and their stewardship of economies, I can't get past something he did called the price-wage freeze by government on the entire private economy (Fascism, no?) to squeeze out 7% inflation that continued in spite of that up to 14% by the end of the decade. Add Gerald Ford's program (in Nixon's second term) of wearing buttons called Whip Inflation Now, the idea that inflation is caused by citizen's greed and solved by talking people out of acting in their own self interest or by tying their hands. These are(IMO) dunce level understandings of economics and examples of why I draw a distinction between supporting conservative policies and supporting people who place an R by their name to get elected.
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***"I don't think any disrespect was meant to President Reagan."
True, it was just the opposite.***
IT is meant to appear like he is admiring of Reagan. Truth be - he absolutely is not!
It is again the scam - pretend you are one of them and then you can change them!
Some years back I posted Jeffrey Sachs politically charged commencement speech at my nephews graduation wherein he reiterated Carter was/is a hero and was ahead of his time. He pointed out the countries and sovereingty is "medeval" and outdated. He stated that after Carter came Reagan and he set us on the wrong path to continued sovereingty, oil, big business, world poverty, and the rest. And now here we are 30 years later and we are seeing global warming, continued war, over population, population shifts, continued world poverty and relative affuence in other parts of the world. It is all the same theme of the progressives who want one world government, socialism, and windmills. Obama has historically surrounded himself with these people and has always been of this nature.
He does not admire Reagan. Progressives like him *despise* Reagan. JDN - wake up. This is all a ruse. Like I said - you can fool some of the people all of the time.
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"Progressives like him *despise* Reagan. JDN - wake up."
Wait a minute. In general I like/respect President Reagan. And so far, I agree, Obama isn't close to being Reagan. :-)
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Are you a "progressive" like Obama, JDN?
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I prefer to think of myself as a progressive like Theodore Roosevelt; perhaps a bit to the right of him.
I must admit, I am becoming disillusioned with Obama. While I don't have children, it does seem unfair
to burden our youth with even more debt than may be humanly possible to repay in their lifetime, much less mine.
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"And so far, I agree, Obama isn't close to being Reagan."
And "so far"?
Why, he never has been or could he be.
And in that case don't you find it odd he is trying to pretend he is like Reagan?
You don't find it an insult to your intelligence?
JDN you seem like a good guy but you are incredibally naive.
Obama and his managers are trying to manipulate his image.
All the while he is a radical progressive.
He jammed down our throats his agenda and only now that he doens't own Congress he is playing the same con that kept Clinton in the game.
It is a proven winning strategy and you falling for it shows how easy it is to manipulate people. I posted multiple times my biggest fear was Obama would pretend he is moving to the center and fool the swing voters and his ratings would go up - just like Clinton did.
The jornolist people are helping him get this total nonsensical transformation of his image out there.
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"I must admit, I am becoming disillusioned with Obama"
Disillusioned with Obama or his policies?
He has done what he set out to do though not as much as he would like. He has not been able to tax near as much as he could. He hasn't gotten the energy bill passed, he hasn't gotten citizenship pathway for for the hordes of potential Democrat voters (yet).
But he has pretty much been, by far, the most progressive Presdient we have every had though he tries to hide it and deny it.
So what is disappointing to you about him?
Could it be that you are coming to realize he is selling America down the drain by giving away our sovereignty around the world and spending us into oblivion and trying to answer every single humanity discomfort with more government programs?
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@CCP
I'm disillusioned with his policies. As a person, I don't think he is a bad person, just misguided. :-)
He is spending too much; a day or reckoning will soon be upon us. If I spent like he does, I would be bankrupt.
@CCP
You said, "my biggest fear was Obama would pretend he is moving to the center and fool the swing voters and his ratings would go up - just like Clinton did."
I understand your fear that this may enable him to be re-elected. However, one thing I love about our system is the check and balances. I'm glad the Republicans dominated this recent election. My heart, and I think most of America's heart lies in the middle. 10% are too conservative, 10% are too liberal, but 80% like me simply want to be safe, we have a conscious and therefore support reasonable social welfare, education, and infrastructure where truly needed, we believe in fairness and democracy and we want to live in an environment that rewards hard work, creativity, and entrepreneurship. That is what has made us great.
I think the middle is the best place to be for all of that to happen. I love politicians in the middle; the zealots scare me.
And again, I think most of America agrees with me.
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First off for JDN, I asked for your views and you elaborated nicely so I thank you! Secondly we have areas of agreement and disagreement we can followup on.
I have to brush up on my history, off hand I would say I'm no fan of T.R. but would be happy to return to the tax, spend and regulatory levels were during his Presidency 1901-1909. I like that you picked a period prior to the 1913 16th amendment authorizing income taxes. I may be to the left of you; I favor keeping the income tax. but limiting it to a high single digit percentage.
To just pick a year of his progressive Presidency, 1906 revenues were 595million, spending 570million and surplus 25million. http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy11/pdf/hist.pdf (p.25)
Spending and taxes were roughly 8% of GDP which is about right to me. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html I would go up to about 9.9% today but would fight to keep it in single digits. In 2011 the numbers are roughly spending $4 Trillion, revenues $2.5 Trillion and deficit $1.5 Trillion, about 27% of GDP for spending not counting state, local etc. Note we skipped over billions unit somewhere in there. We jumped form millions to trillions. A trillion is a million million, so spending jumped roughly 2000-fold since then.
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"As a person, I don't think he is a bad person, just misguided."
We disagree on that point. I think any President who persistantly deceives the American people on his true intentions, is by definition a bad person.
At least Jimmy Carter was honest. I disagreed with him completely yet I respected him as a person. Remember there was a time when he was the most respected ex-president (though no more). I feel we knew where Presidents stood until Bill Clinton turned it into a fashion statement that lying, deceiving, twisting the truth etc is cool.
You think Omama's intentions are good? A guy who sits and says he is not into distirbuting wealth when anyone can see he is (only for openers)? When did the country lose the concept that honesty is part of a person's character? I guess with Clinton. The left seemed to get more and more excited over his bs. They were gitty with glee at lines like, "what is is"?
BTW, what is a TR progressive?
I cannot figure out your position.
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@CCP
I've always liked TR's quote, "Speak softy, but carry a big stick." TR got things accomplished. TR was a straight shooting (literally) Republican and he had a a heart. Rare in those days.
Then TR formed and ran (he lost) in 1912 on the Progressive Party political party. We take quite of few of these items for granted today,
but at that time, they were quite innovative.
In the social sphere the platform called for
A National Health Service to include all existing government medical agencies.
Social insurance, to provide for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled.
Limited injunctions in strikes.
Farm relief.
Workers' compensation for work-related injuries.
An inheritance tax.
A Constitutional amendment to allow a Federal income tax.
The political reforms proposed included
Women's suffrage.
Direct election of Senators.
Primary elections for state and federal nominations.
The platform also urged states to adopt measures for "direct democracy", including:
The recall election (citizens may remove an elected official before the end of his term).
The referendum (citizens may decide on a law by popular vote).
The initiative (citizens may propose a law by petition and enact it by popular vote).
Judicial recall (when a court declares a law unconstitutional, the citizens may override that ruling by popular vote).
However, the main theme of the platform was an attack on the domination of politics by business interests, which allegedly controlled both established parties. The platform asserted that
To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.[5]
To that end, the platform called for
Strict limits and disclosure requirements on political campaign contributions.
Registration of lobbyists.
Recording and publication of Congressional committee proceedings.
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JDN,
Thanks for the detailed answer.
"To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."
TR tried to address problems that did and still do exist. Seems reasonable attempts at fixing true corruption and an unfair world.
There is no question the rich and wealthy businesses have very unfair advantages. In 1980 the top 1% had 10 % of the country's wealth. Now the estimate is 18%.
This is a problem without any answer from the Crats or the Cans. Free markets make this worse. Yet redistribution doesn't work either. The more we have social programs the lazier and more dependent people become.
We are still being robbed by Wall Street. Big businesses squash smaller ones. Katherine and I are destroyed by the music/entertainment industry while pigs like Gaga tell us how they write stolen lyrics while smoking dope. And we have the President of the USA inviting JLo to the WH for the super bowl even though she claims she wrote or co wrote some lyrics that were stolen from us. So you don't have to convince me about corruption.
I feel the issue is not more regulation per se. I think it just means enforce the laws that already exist with updates for electronic crimes etc. Then again all humans including police, lawyers, government officials, elected officials are all corruptable. It just is this way. Always has been and always will be. Nothing will ever stop this.
***I just come down on the side of more freedom vs more and more and more government that will stifle us till we turn into total wards of the state.***
Neither approach is perfect or great.
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February 22, 2011
But That’s What Community Organizers Do
by Victor Davis Hanson
Pajamas Media
During the Republican convention of 2008, Rudy Giuliani rhetorically asked: what is a community organizer? I think we always knew the answer without even referencing the guidebook of Saul Alinsky.
President Obama need not worry about budget deficits in the manner of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Unlike state officials, he can print money, and raise fees and taxes. The nation’s more affluent, unlike blue-state refugees seeking red-state low tax sanctuaries, cannot flee anywhere. That makes it easy for President Obama to weigh in on the Wisconsin unrest by suggesting an insolvent state government was more interested in destroying the public unions than meeting a $3 billion budget shortfall.
That characteristic eagerness to grandstand on extraneous issues, while ignoring federal crises, is characteristic of this administration. It will not make meaningful progress in addressing its own massive trillion-dollar debts, reexamine the looming disaster of ObamaCare, gear up to produce more gas and oil in the face of skyrocketing energy costs, or seriously explore ways to get unemployment down below 9%.
Yet in the last twenty-four months, we have learned that the president will indeed declare that: the governor of Wisconsin is using his state budget disaster largely to punish public servants; the police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, act “stupidly” and racially stereotype minorities (“typically”) as do most police departments; the state of Arizona harasses Hispanic children when they go out to eat ice cream, and thus Mexico’s efforts to sue the state should be joined by the US government; much of our ills are due to “fat cat” bankers who junket to Las Vegas and the Super Bowl and cannot seem to grasp that at some point they have made enough money; the pro-democracy protestors in the streets of Tehran are not to be encouraged by our “meddling” (because of our past sins of involvement in Iran), but their counterparts in Cairo are to be encouraged by our meddling (despite our past sins of involvement in Egypt).
In addition, why would the president call for “sacrifice” in lean times, advising Americans to cut out going to dinner and to “put off” a vacation — while favoring Martha’s Vineyard for vacation, as the first lady (of erstwhile “downright mean country” repute) seems especially fond of Vail ski escapes in winter and Costa del Sol Mediterranean jaunts in summer? Is not symbolism important in these hard times?
Why, why, why all this? In a word, because that is what community organizers are supposed to do, even — or rather, especially — when they become the establishment. Cannot we answer Giuliani’s question? As a general rule, the “organizer” is not indigenous to the community, but as a sort of roaming utopian he travels widely to detect supposed foci of injustice (think an Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson), even to the point of worrying about professors being locked out of their homes or the tranquility of ice cream parlors in Arizona.
Almost immediately there is an artificial divide constructed between an oppressive “them” and a victimized “us,” usually on rigid class, gender, and racial lines. Some such university study is cited to “prove” injustice based on the absence of parity in income, healthcare, or education. Then the community organizer rallies the “community” to “get in their face” and agitate, which can encompass anything from suing in court, holding mass rallies, conducting voter registration drives with accordant intimidation, visiting the private homes of supposedly culpable officials, bankers, and the wealthy, and threatening strikes, slow-downs and disruptions. These metaphorical “hostage takers” must be “punished” as “enemies,” relegated to a proverbial backseat, and in such a fight have their knives rhetorically trumped by our guns.
Indeed, the supposed exploiters are deemed “fat cats” who often favor “Wall Street,” enjoy privileges that accord them Super Bowl or Las Vegas junkets, continually “raise the bar” on the rest of us folks, and can’t seem to figure out that at some point they have surely made enough money from others.
The remedy is always adolescent — the perceived government program and entitlement are demanded without any worry about who is to fund them or how. The community’s perceived “needs” are the sole point of contention, not society’s ability to meet them. The assumption of the community organizer is that there is an amorphous “they” (so often white, male, heterosexual, upper-middle class, Christian) who have done something wrong, or whose ancestors have done something wrong, that both results in their own present privilege and requires appropriate redress, in the moral sense.
The logic is circular — more public money to deserving constituents ensures political support and in turn requires higher taxes from others to pay for it, a two-pronged redistribution plan of taking from the undeserving to allot to the more worthy. Absent from the community organizer’s ideology is any sense that the individual might in some cases bear some responsibility for the ensuing inequality — encounters with the criminal justice system, poor family planning, reckless use of easy credit, involvement with dangerous and addictive drugs, no interest in formal education, or adoption of a popular culture that promotes anti-intellectualism, misogyny, illegitimacy, and defiance of accepted norms. Again, some sort of deliberate prejudice is more likely, and thus state money is justified as a sort of reparation for the collective sins of society, as well as a wise investment to prevent social disequilibrium, if not outright public unrest.
Note the flip side: those who are better off enjoy such benefaction largely as a result of birth, privilege based on the exploitation of others, bias against someone who does look like them, random chance, accident, illegality, or immorality — rarely is success due to harder work, careful planning, more education and training, deferred gratification, or wiser personal decisions. The point is not how someone got more than others, but the suspect system that allowed them to get that more — and how to correct it.
There is never any followup (think audit of the second stimulus, or reexamination of ObamaCare) about the cost effectiveness of the new grant or program. The key is getting the money, not ensuring that it is well used. The organizer — often far better educated than his constituents — then moves on, either to other crisis spots or into politics on his way up his planned cursus honorum. Moreover, the organizer feels a certain sense of entitlement, given his good works — an exemption as it were to live a particular and much deserved lifestyle not always that different from (and indeed at times far better than) the supposed purveyors of social injustice. That the creation of huge entitlements creates social dependency, disrupts traditional local and family networks of mutual help and reliance, emphasizes poverty entirely in a political rather than a spiritual framework, or enables rather than addresses destructive behavior is of less interest to the careerist organizer — either because he sees problems only in classical material terms, or because he is long gone after the money is allotted, or because unanticipated disasters are not his purview, or because dependency, not alleviation of pathology, is the more important goal.
So we should cease being surprised that the president editorializes about extraneous issues while ignoring critical ones, or that the administration is now addressing breast pumps, or that Obama has ignored the findings of his own debt commission, or that he has added 200,000 new federal workers at a time of fiscal insolvency, and on and on.
You see, that is what community organizers do, now and in the past.
©2011 Victor Davis Hanson
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A book out of print but often referred to with regard to Ayers and Obama, I came across the list today FWIW:
RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)
RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don’t address the “real” issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)
RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)
RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity’s very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)
RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid “un-fun” activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)
RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)
RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)
RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists’ minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)
RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management’s wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)
RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)
RULE 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2009/01/strategies-and-tactics-for-radical-activists-by-saul-alinsky/
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Doug,
Yes, we see this everyday in the MSM propaganda machine.
Rather sickening. I don't see anything in here about the truth or facts.
One correction:
"Unions used this tactic" on rule 10.
Unions aka the Democrat party use all of these rules.
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Now he sounds like Carter for sure. The job is just too big for the ONE. Remember when Carter admitted he didn't know if one man could handle the Presidency anymore? Here we go again:
“Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, ‘No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.’”
“Obama Seeks a Course of Pragmatism in the Middle East,” The New York Times, March 11, 2011.
Mr. Obama is right.
If you’re president of China, people around the world who are fighting for freedom don’t really expect you to help. If you’re president of China, you don’t have to put up with annoying off-year congressional elections, and then negotiate your budget with a bunch of gun-and-religion-clinging congressmen and senators. If you’re president of China, you can fund your national public radio to your heart’s content. And if you’re president of China, when you host a conference on bullying in schools, people take you seriously.
Unfortunately for him and us, Barack Obama is president of the United States. That job brings with it certain special responsibilities. It’s a tough job—maybe tougher than being president of China. But Barack Obama ran for president of the United States. Maybe he should start behaving as one.
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Richmond Time Dispatch Op/Ed
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/oped/2011/mar/15/TDOPIN02-us-stunned-by-latest-undercover-sting-ar-905677/#comments
U.S. stunned by latest undercover sting
By A. Barton Hinkle
Published: March 15, 2011
The nation was left reeling yesterday by the revelation that the presidential election of 2008 was a hoax. The shocking announcement came when White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that Barack Obama has been working in secret with conservative provocateur James O'Keefe since 2007.
The long-running hoax is the most elaborate yet in a series of recent sting operations by primarily right-of-center gadflies that have embarrassed organizations including ACORN, Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio.
Those stunts, as well as the prank call to Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin that was captured on tape last month, proved to be sources of personal or institutional embarrassment. Historians warned yesterday that the latest caper may inspire a sense of national shame.
Origins of a hoax
Carney said the scam entailed pulling together demographic, social, cultural and policy characteristics to create the most exaggerated Democratic candidate possible without stepping over the line into caricature.
"By combining empty, touchy-feely slogans like 'hope' and 'change' with far-left-wing policy planks and presenting them in the person of a racial minority from a major Midwest city with an Ivy League background, we thought we might be able to make a good showing in Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe even capture the Democratic nomination," Carney told reporters. "But the entire country? No. We never, ever for even a second imagined the American people would elect someone who had served only half a term in the U.S. Senate to be the leader of the entire free world."
Obama won the presidency with 52.9 percent of the popular vote, defeating Republican nominee John McCain, who received 45.7 percent.
"All you guys in the press were so giddy about it," Carney continued, "we couldn't really just announce that the whole thing was a big fat joke, you know? I mean, how would that look?"
Contacted by phone, O'Keefe said he, too, was surprised the hoax had lasted as long as it did.
"I thought people would catch on in the early days, like with the clinging-to-guns stuff," said O'Keefe, referring to an incident at a San Francisco fundraiser in which candidate Obama said small-town Americans "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."
O'Keefe said he also expected the ruse would be unmasked when Obama said that "under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket," and again when Obama claimed, "I've now been in 57 (U.S.) states," with "one left to go."
"We modeled the 57-states gaffe on Dan Quayle's 'potatoe' mistake," said O'Keefe, referring to a 1992 incident at a Trenton, N.J., elementary school in which then-Vice President Dan Quayle added an "e" to "potato." "We figured Obama would become a national laughingstock like Quayle, (but we) underestimated the tendency of the press and the public to forgive mistakes by people they like."
Worldwide deceit
Victims of the fabrication stretch around the globe. "President" Obama has held numerous meetings with foreign heads of state, among them Chinese President Hu Jintao, leaders of NATO and the G8, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee also was taken in, awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2009 — only months after he had taken office and just weeks before he announced an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.
Reaction from abroad yesterday was swift.
"I'm not surprised," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"Well, that explains everything, doesn't it?" said British Prime Minister David Cameron. "I mean, really now."
A prank gone too far
As the 2008 campaign wore on, O'Keefe said, insiders grew worried Obama might actually win. They began dropping hints that the candidate was just a parody. They had him complain about the price of arugula to Iowa farmers. When that didn't work, Obama went bowling, scored a 37, and then joked that the almost impossibly poor performance "was like the Special Olympics or something."
"A few right-wing bloggers made a big deal out of it," O'Keefe said. "Nobody else seemed to notice."
The hint-dropping campaign intensified after Obama took office. Justin Whittemore, a former White House staffer who was part of the elaborate plot, said advisers began copying policy positions straight from The New York Times and the liberal Center for American Progress in an increasingly transparent attempt to provoke suspicion.
"We've tried everything," O'Keefe said. "Nationalizing health care, the stimulus, a $4 trillion budget, insane levels of debt, even high-speed rail. No matter how ridiculous a proposal we come up with, people take it seriously."
Asked why he is pulling the plug now, O'Keefe replied that the good of the country was at stake. "Things have gotten way out of hand," he said. "People are talking about a second term now. It's just gone way too far — even for me."
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Bwahahahahahahaha!
Good one, Doug.
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My prediction that BHO will not be the nominee of his own party is totally wrong - so far, with about a year to go. A combination of two things would need to happen I think for Obama to throw in the towel, approvals dropping into the 30s and the emergence of a real, Republican challenger. Maybe neither will happen, we will see, but it is hard to see how approvals won't fall further with the events already set in motion. 62% want Obamcare repealed. Bumbling over Egypt, blathering over Ghadafy, dithering over Japan, not even present over a domestic energy crisis, handing deterrence to the Russians, clueless about the private economy etc. etc. VDH says it all so much better...
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http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/262335/president-hamlet-victor-hanson
Victor Davis Hanson
March 17, 2011 12:00 A.M.
President Hamlet
Thinking out every possible side of a question can mean never acting on any of them.
More than 400 years ago, William Shakespeare wrote a riveting tragedy about a young, charismatic Danish prince who vowed to do the right thing in avenging his murdered father. That soon proved easier said than done. As a result, Hamlet couldn’t quite ever act in time — given all the ambiguities that such a sensitive prince first had to sort out. In the meantime, a lot of bodies piled up through his indecision and hesitancy.
President Obama wanted to give us all universal health care. But then he discovered that the country was broke and that most people did not like his massive federal takeover. So we got both his health care and, so far, more than 1,000 exemptions from his landmark plan for unions, corporations, and entire states.
The president wished to please his liberal supporters with more government redistributive programs and higher taxes on the wealthy. But such entitlements cost lots of money — more than $4 trillion in new borrowing in just three years – and scare to death the job-creating private sector. So the president not only borrows at record levels, but also sets up a commission to warn us that his borrowing will soon bankrupt the country. He damns the “fat-cat bankers” and the rich who “at some point” have made enough money, even as he courts them for campaign donations and begs their companies to start hiring new employees.
Obama warned us that we could not drill our way out of the ongoing gas crisis and needed instead to develop new green energy. As proof, he borrowed billions to promote wind and solar power, and stopped most new leases for fossil-fuel exploration in Alaska, the west, and offshore. But it turned out that we still need lots of oil as gas nears $4 a gallon. So the president brags that America is now pumping more oil under his green administration than ever before — but neglects to mention that this is true only because Presidents Clinton and Bush long ago approved the sort of oil leases that Obama had rejected.
President Obama wanted so much to discontinue George W. Bush’s war on terror that he banned the phrase “war on terror” altogether. He apologized to the Muslim world, promised to “reset” our foreign policy, and vowed to close Guantanamo Bay and stop the other nasty Bush antiterrorism protocols. But our “to be or not to be” Hamlet also wanted to continue to keep the country safe from another 9/11-style terrorist attack, so he kept Guantanamo open, quadrupled the number of Predator drone attacks, and either preserved or expanded all the Bush protocols that he had once derided.
Abroad, a new multilateral Obama wished to act only in concert with the United Nations and our allies. He vowed to respect the sovereignty of other countries and not “meddle” in their affairs by imposing American values. And yet the president also embraced eternal and universal human rights and wanted the United States to be on the right side of history. So he criticized our intervention to foster democracy in Iraq even as his vice president praised it. We surged in Afghanistan even as we posted deadlines to leave. We promised not to meddle to support Iranian protestors, and to meddle to support Egyptian protestors.
Hosni Mubarak was a dictator and was not a dictator, who had to leave yesterday, today, or maybe tomorrow. The situation in Libya is deemed “unacceptable,” but how exactly it could be made acceptable is never spelled out. Intervening there to support rebels is said to be good; but apparently so is supporting Saudi troops intervening in Bahrain to put down rebels and protect the status quo.
Middle East strongmen, the president tells us, are cruel and must leave. But the why and how of it all are also never stated. Are they supposed to flee only when protests reach a critical mass? In Egypt and Tunisia, but not in Saudi Arabia, Syria, or Iran?
President Obama has spent most of his life either in, or teaching, school — or making laws that he was not responsible for enforcing. His hope-and-change speeches were as moving in spirit as they were lacking in details.
But now Obama is chief executive, and learning, as did Prince Hamlet, that thinking out every possible side of a question can mean never acting on any of them — a sort of Shakespearean “prison” where “there is nothing either good or bad.” Worrying about pleasing everyone ensures pleasing no one. Once again such “conscience does make cowards of us all.”
Hamlets, past and present, are as admirable in theory as they are fickle — and often dangerous — in fact.
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Reality Check
BIG Meltdowns Imperiling the U.S.
"If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation." --Samuel Adams
The surfeit of images documenting human suffering and destruction in Japan after the 11 March Tohoku Earthquake and resulting tsunami is dreadful. Though the estimated 10,000 dead in Japan pales in comparison to the more than 200,000 dead in the Haitian earthquake of January 2010, the implications of the unfolding crisis, and its consequences for the 1.5 million Japanese men, women and children now homeless is staggering. Complicating matters is that, as of this writing, almost one-third of Japan's energy production capability is disabled, which is to say that providing basic resources and services for all of Japan is increasingly difficult.
Additionally, the crisis has significant implications for critical U.S. national security objectives and operations in the region, including containment of North Korea and counterbalance to the rapidly growing Chinese deepwater naval threat.
Japan is a vital national security ally in Asia and host to several major U.S. military staging and support bases. Under the post-WWII Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, the U.S. is committed to providing Japan with maritime and ballistic missile defense and disaster response capabilities. In return, the U.S. maintains a major military presence for deployment in the region, including the Seventh Fleet based in Yokosuka, Air Force fighter squadrons at Misawa and Kadena and the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force at Okinawa. More than 35,000 uniformed military personnel and another 5,000 DoD employees compose U.S. forces in Japan.
All that notwithstanding, on the day of the disaster in Japan, Barack Hussein Obama responded with a golf outing (his 61st as president) followed by an evening hobnobbing with major donors and his media sycophants at the annual Gridiron Dinner. While horrifying images of the quake and tsunami were seen around the world, Obama kept to his schedule, unwilling to interrupt it long enough to support Japanese leadership via the basic gesture of a reassuring interview with its national news service, NHK. He did find time, however, to record a presidential address on "Women's History Month."
To be fair, Obama issued a brief statement through the White House communications office: "Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to the people of Japan... The friendship and alliance between our two nations is unshakeable..."
"UNSHAKEABLE"? Perhaps he meant to say, "The friendship and alliance between our two nations will never melt down..." Who could make this stuff up?
By contrast, recall, if you will, 8 January, the day Arizona Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was among those shot by a sociopath, who killed six others. As that event unfolded Obama's PR team released real-time photos of their boss looking very "presidential" in the White House Situation Room, the intelligence management center run by the National Security Council staff.
Apparently, the crisis in Japan offered no immediate opportunity to convert tragedy into political triumph as did the attack in Tucson, so his tee time took precedence.
In the days since the Tohoku Earthquake, Obama has agreed to several televised interviews, all with domestic TV stations in 2012 election battleground states. Oh, and he took time to fill out his March Madness brackets and share his NCAA tournament picks with an ESPN reporter and camera crew before he and the First Family are head off to sunny Rio de Janeiro for the weekend. (Sometimes it is hard to distinguish Obama's lifestyle from that of a lucky lotto winner, except that the lotto winner is spending his winnings, not taxpayer earnings.)
On the other hand, the Leftmedia is using the "nuclear meltdown" at the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 plants as political fodder derail efforts to jumpstart the U.S. nuclear power industry.
However, the greatest nuclear threat to the continental United States is not a power plant meltdown, but the detonation of a fissile nuclear device in a U.S. urban center by jihadi terrorists. Given the meltdown in the Middle East; power struggles in Egypt and Libya; growing unrest in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Algeria, Djibouti, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen; and an emboldened enemy in Iran, the probability for a nuclear attack against the U.S. or against one of our key Western allies has increased significantly.
A quick reality check reveals a direct correlation between dramatically increased instability in the Middle East and Barack Obama's AWOL response to crises in the region. His weakness and timidity and the consequential perception of diminished American influence in the region and around the world are an enormous threat to U.S. national security. (As you may recall, we're also trying to manage a warfront in Afghanistan and ensure stability in Iraq.)
Closer to home, there's a war on our southern border, and it's out of control. For the record, there were more civilians murdered by warring drug factions in one Mexican border town, Ciudad Juarez, adjoining El Paso, Texas, in 2010, than were murdered by Taliban and jihadi forces in all of Afghanistan last year.
Obama is AWOL in that crisis, too, except for a few calls for additional gun control measures on this side of the border -- as if that were going to end violence in Mexico.
Despite all this, the most serious threat to U.S. national security is the meltdown of the U.S. economy orchestrated by Obama and his Democratic Socialists. Obama's radical mentors and benefactors must be proud!
In the words of the inimitable Yogi Berra, "This is like déjà vu all over again." Barack Obama's "leadership" is a redux of Jimmy Carter's ineptitude, but the consequences in terms of international threats, critical energy issues and an imploding domestic economy are far more perilous this time around.
Obama's domestic and international debacles leave one nostalgic for a real president, one with a clear vision for restoring America to her greatness, a national leader in the mold of Ronald Reagan. Fortunately, there are some contenders on the horizon, and there is still time to raise one up.
The next president must possess the leadership attributes that Obama sorely lacks. In the words of Samuel Adams, he must be a man "of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth," in order that "our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation."
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post
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OK now he is the "weakest" prez in history? He is not liberal enough. The guy who with the Dem leadership in both houses rammed the biggest soicalistic agenda down all our throats is suddenly not strong enough? The left still is in denial. He is not falling in poll numbers because he is not liberal enough. They refuse to get it.
Madcow was on the other night saying how the media is not covering the story in Wisconsin enough. She thinks it is huge and they are not covering it. The Miami mayor got fired for raising taxes and giving pay raises to gov employees. Just the opposite of her tirades. Yet, they ignore the truth. They still want to demaguage this to death and the country into the sewer.
Can anyone believe the insanity of below's article with statements like:
"Ditto the country’s ecological health; the American love affair with the car and oil remains undiminished despite any alleged commitment. But the White House appears to shy away from any tough action."
These are the same liberal people who were the first to condemn Bush for Iraq and Afghanistan.
****President Barack Obama's supporters believed that he had the vision to transform America
Friday March 18,2011
By Anna Pukas
INEFFECTUAL, invisible, unable to honour pledges and now blamed for letting Gaddafi off the hook. Why Obama’s gone from ‘Yes we can’ to ‘Er, maybe we shouldn’t’...
Let us cast our minds back to those remarkable days in November 2008 when the son of a Kenyan goatherd was elected to the White House. It was a bright new dawn – even brighter than the coming of the Kennedys and their new Camelot. JFK may be considered as being from an ethnic and religious minority – Irish and Catholic – but he was still very rich and very white. Barack Obama, by contrast, was a true breakthrough president. The world would change because obviously America had changed.
Obama’s campaign slogan was mesmerisingly simple and brimming with self-belief: “Yes we can.” His presidency, however, is turning out to be more about “no we won’t.” Even more worryingly, it seems to be very much about: “Maybe we can… do what, exactly?“ The world feels like a dangerous place when leaders are seen to lack certitude but the only thing President Obama seems decisive about is his indecision. What should the US do about Libya? What should the US do about the Middle East in general? What about the country’s crippling debts? What is the US going to do about Afghanistan, about Iran?
What is President Obama doing about anything? The most alarming answer – your guess is as good as mine – is also, frankly, the most accurate one. What the President is not doing is being clear, resolute and pro-active, which is surely a big part of his job description. This is what he has to say about the popular uprising in Libya: “Gaddafi must go.” At least, that was his position on March 3.
Since then, other countries – most notably Britain and France – have been calling for some kind of intervention. Even the Arab League, a notoriously conservative organisation, has declared support for sanctions. But from the White House has come only the blah-blah of bland statements filled with meaningless expressions
and vague phrases. Of decisive action and leadership – even of clearlydefined opinion – there is precious little sign.
What is the Obama administration’s position on the protests in the Gulf island state of Bahrain, which the authorities there are savagely suppressing with the help of troops shipped in from Saudi Arabia? What is the White House view on the alarming prospect of the unrest spreading to Saudi Arabia itself? Who knows? Certainly not the American people, nor the leaders of nations which would consider themselves allies of America.
The President has not really shared his views, which leads us to conclude that he either doesn’t know or chooses, for reasons best known to himself, not to say. The result is that a very real opportunity to remove an unpredictable despot from power may well have been lost. Who knows when or if such an opportunity will come along again?
Every day for almost the last two months our television screens, radio broadcasts and the pages of our newspapers have been filled with the pictures, sounds and words of the most tumultuous events any of us can remember in the Arab world. The outcome of these events, once the dust has settled, could literally change the world. Yet Obama seems content to sit this one out. He has barely engaged in the debate. Such ostrich-like behaviour is not untypical of the 49-year-old President who burst through America’s colour barrier to become the first African-American to occupy the White House.
Two days after taking office in January 2009, he pledged to close down the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, which has become notorious for holding detainees for years without trial. Obama promised to lose the prison within 12 months and to abolish the practice of military trials of terrorism suspects. It was an important promise. America’s reputation had been severely tarnished by revelations about the conditions at Guantanamo, by reports of waterboarding and extraordinary rendition (transporting prisoners to a third country for torture) and by the appalling treatment of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Closing Guantanamo was a redemptive gesture. Two years on, not only is the prison still in use but its future is as assured as ever. Ten days ago, the President signed an executive order reinstating the military commissions at the island prison. Human rights organisations were outraged. “With the stroke of a pen, President Obama extinguished any lingering hope that his administration would return the United States to the rule of law,” said Amnesty International while Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, declared the President’s action to be “unlawful, unwise and un-American.”
White House spokesmen insisted the President was still committed to closing Guantanamo, which currently has 172 detainees in custody. It was Congress, they said, that had refused to sanction the transfer of the prisoners to the US mainland for trial, leaving no option but to keep the prison open in Cuba. Very little has been achieved in the quest to secure peace in the Middle East. Under Obama, US foreign policy is founded on extreme caution. At first this cool-headedness was a welcome change from the naked aggression of George W Bush and his henchmen Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
It is also true that the President is constantly stymied by a hostile, Republican-ruled Congress. But Obama’s apparent reluctance to engage with momentous events is starting to look like more than aloofness. Some tempering of America’s role as the world’s No1 busybody may be no bad thing but under Obama the US appears to be heading towards isolationism. He is hardly doing much better at home. Economically, the US is in big trouble but the national debt is not shrinking.
Ditto the country’s ecological health; the American love affair with the car and oil remains undiminished despite any alleged commitment. But the White House appears to shy away from any tough action. The energy with which Obama entered the White House seems to have all gone in the push to bring in health care reform, which many Americans didn’t want (or still don’t realise they want).
All of which means that it is starting to look as if Obama and the Democratic Party have but one aim in mind for the rest of this presidential term: to get elected for a second. That means not doing anything that might upset any number of special interest or niche groups, which in effect means not doing very much at all. So, not too many harsh but necessary measures to tackle the financial deficit; no clear direction on where America goes with Afghanistan, even though the war there is going nowhere except from bad to worse.
The Obama government can’t even give clear direction on whether the American people are in danger of exposure to nuclear fallout from Japan following the devastating earthquake and tsunami. The US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin advised San Francisco residents to stock up on radiation antidotes, prompting a run on potassium iodide pills, while the President said experts had assured him that any harmful radiation would have receded long before reaching the Western shores of the US.
Yes we can was a noble and powerful mantra which secured for Barack Obama the leadership of the free world. Those than can, do. It is time he started doing.
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When sanctions don't work, it's ok to use military force to remove a middle eastern dictator!
Glad that's been settled.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZf_au8EZ04&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZf_au8EZ04&feature=player_embedded
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First note, the theme of the video in the previous video might be what finally brings him down. It covers the disengagement very well! Second I note that 64 senators sent a letter to the President asking him to engage on entitlement reform. He was not present, in Rio, not available to receive the letter. Third I would note that regarding basketball a different presumed candidate led her team as point guard to a Cinderella story state championship for highly underrated Wasilla. The incumbent candidate is talking about spectator sports - aka sitting on the couch watching government controlled monopoly television.
Isn't it strange how every story about the administration seems to keep falling under the themes of glibness or cognitive dissonance.
This one, "White House to Push Privacy Bill" flies in the face of all the new invasions on privacy, like HEALTHCARE, and everything we learned from the year of WikiLeaks, that our government can't keep national security information private - private conversations with our closest allies, how are they going to protect the national database of women who had abortions or any other sensitive area of heathcare information.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704662604576202971768984598.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond&om_rid=NsfeYb&om_mid=_BNgLb4B8Zs-2Ds
Same administration, same week, is pushing for school administrators to track children's posts on facebook more closely.
The worst private information seizure I have faced was from trying to change the bank account my state required car insurance gets taken from. They needed DOB, SS no, bank info obviously, all secret questions answered etc, and the only reason I was switching was because of other federal mandates on banks causing that account to be service charged to death and forcing me to use other accounts.
Cognitive dissonance. Stop taking all our data would be the best way for government to help with privacy.
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"The fresh prince of Bill Ayers"
As seen in the comments at hotair.com
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Top 10 Rejected Obama Mission Names
Apparently the White House tossed out a number of perfectly good names before arriving at "Operation Odyssey Dawn":
10.Operation Nine Months In The Senate Didn't Prepare Me For This
9. Operation Organizing for Libya
8. Operation Double Standard
7. Operation FINE! I'll Do Something
6. Operation Enduring Narcissism
5. Operation So That's What the Red Button Does
4. Operation France Backed Me Into A Corner
3. Operation Start Without Me
2. Operation Unlike Bush Wars This One Is Justified Because Hey Look A Squirrel
1. Operation Aimless Fury
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Operation Infinite Vacation
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Operation "I'm not Jimmy Carter"
Operation "End Clinton's primary challenge before it starts"
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Complete amateur hour at the White House. Is this part of the Hoax? I get the impression this young fellow has never met the President, doesn't know how to reach him and is a million miles away from being able to confront him on a tough question before a press briefing. Someone told him to just say the President is commited to corporate tax reform, over and over and over. It is f*kcing YEAR THREE in the Obama administration and YEAR FIVE of being in power in Washington. His not the least bit committed to any kind of ANY kind of tax reform that is complet b*llSh*t. GE is a highly powered lobbying company immersed in industries that are heavily subsidized by a target-this and target-that form of government that we replaced our equal protection system with. The head of G.E. is Obama's CHAIR of the 'Competitiveness Council'. News story: GE is a FORMER American company with $14 billion in profit, makes most of it overseas ande pays no US tax. This kid is aware of the story, it isn't the first year this has happened, he has no idea how to reach the President or what to say if he did. (And we talk about Republicans having no one ready for leadership??) April 1, US will have the highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world - highest incentive to dodge, hide, move and pay none. What part of supply-side policies that increases revenues do these anti-capitalism clowns not get? All of it! (G.E. off course pays enormous taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes, excise taxes, state taxes, local taxes, etc. etc. but they don't get that either.)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/03/25/tapper_asks_whs_carney_about_obama_adviser_immelt_of_ge_not_paying_taxes.html
This is the SPOKESMAN for the President!
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Those comments would also fit in the Fascism thread btw, for this sort of nonsense is exactly what one gets with the Mussolini approach to economics.
Anyway, speaking of GE, also worth noting is that it has a rather hideous record of doing business with Iran involving technology that it might not be a good idea for the Iranians to have. Sorry I don't have any citations on this, but someone with good google fu could find it I bet.
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http://www.911familiesforamerica.org/?p=646
General Electric has admitted that it has contracts in Syria and Iran for electric power plants, oil and gas, lighting, and medical equipment (that latter is humanitarian stuff not subject to sanctions and no one is citing them). GE claims that none of it is being used for military purposes by “Iranian forces” or “Syrian forces.” Here is an excerpt from GE’s response to a 2006 inquiry by the SEC, Office of Global Security Risk:
“In addition to diagnostic, monitoring and life science medical products, our products and services that are sold or otherwise distributed include power generation systems and parts, oil & gas equipment, power control/supply and lighting products in Iran, each of which is sold or distributed pursuant to legal obligations entered into prior to February 2005. We sell our products and services directly and through distributors located in Iran and elsewhere. Our customers include private companies, government-owned electrical utilities and refineries, the Ministry of Oil, public/private hospitals and universities. To the best of our knowledge, none of the products or services we provide has been, or could be, employee in any military application or used by the armed forces of Iran for strategic, tactical or training purposes.”
How about the foreign insurgents financed by Iran, flying into Damascus, being trained in Syrian camps and crossing through the Syrian-Iraq border, what our troops call the “rat line?”
Apparently, General Electric either does not get or care that Iran has been violating international law for 30 years with impunity. Iran has engaged in proxy wars through its terrorist arm Hezbollah and through its Revolutionary Guards. It has kidnapped and killed American citizens and the citizens of its neighbors. It has provided foreign fighters, arms, and money to fight the US and Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It defies the international community in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. It declared war on the US — its enemy — and advocates its destruction, along with Israel.
The purpose of economic sanctions against Iran is to provide the world community with some leverage, to let the ayatollahs know that their murderous, outlaw conduct comes with a price, that there will be consequences. When companies like GE, an iconic American company founded by Thomas Edison, find legal loopholes to do business with the people who call America and its allies their sworn enemies, that not only gives comfort and life support to the ayatollahs, that sends a signal that America and its allies do not even have the support of their own people.
Some time ago, GE changed its corporate slogan from “We bring good things to life,” to “Imagination at work.” The latter is a good description of the mendacity of GE’s lawyers, who told the SEC Office of Global Security that GE’s old contracts were okay. Yet President Bill Clinton put US sanctions against Iran in place in 1995, more than twelve years ago.
When we see Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for “death to America” and watch Iranian fast boats charging US Navy ships, we see the enemy. General Electric sees a customer in good standing.
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"this sort of nonsense is exactly what one gets with the Mussolini approach to economics"
Yes. My anger in this case is aimed personally and professionally at the President. We have 3 wars going on, a 3 year economic collapse, 50 states with revenue shortfalls, U6 unemployment approaching 20% and borrowing / mostly printing more than a trillion a year to keep a bloated government open while a 10 vehicle motorcade heads out for his 64th, 6 hour round of golf. (I love golf and G.E. is a fine, government directed company, doing exactly as they are told.) This clip was my first time seeing his new spokesmodel. Nothing but lies about what his direction has been for over 2 years as President, over 4 years in power and over 6 years since he became the rock star of the movement and the direction he is still headed. Communist China with a lower rate already than ours lowered their rate in Jan. 2008 and took a much softer hit in the downturn. Japan, the only country in the developed world with a rate higher than ours has their s coming down next week, April 1, 2011. GE is doing fine under punitive taxation, proving that a global company can adjust. Obama is completely stuck on stupid, still talking about taxing the rich harder while dishing out more and more tax incentives for this and tax incentives for that, a soft 'Mussolini' style of government directing what our no-longer-private businesses do with their products and investments. Then send out a paid mouthpiece to step up and say exactly the opposite. No attempt to tell the truth, no clue what is going wrong and no curiosity or interest whatsoever about how to solve it - or WHEN?! If there is reform it will be with the President dragged and screaming.
GE for their part is just doing as directed, building wind turbines etc. (offshore) and controllers for subsidized seasonal golf carts to replace the automobile. No different than offering to pay an inner city mom to drop out of school, stay unmarried, stay out of productive work, and have more children, and then find out she dropped out of school, stayed unmarried, unemployed and is having more children.
Sargent Schultz to Colonel Klink: "I know nothing, I know NOTHING!"
Herr Zeller: I've not asked you where you and your family are going. Nor have you asked me why I am here.
Captain von Trapp: Well, apparently, we're both suffering from a deplorable lack of curiosity.
Jake Tapper, ABC: 'G.E. made $14 billion in profits and paid no taxes the last 2 years...'
White House Spokesman: "The President is committed to corporate tax reform."
What President? Where? There is no business in the world that heard that 'commitment' and acted on it to move productive and profitable operations back to the U.S. We all know it is complete BS and yet 48% approve of the job he is doing :?
The honest answer was, "Jack, our tax code is no longer intended to tax evenly or even to collect the revenues we need to pay for our government. It is designed only as a complex experiment in government directed social engineering; it barely pays for 60% of our expenditures. We print the rest. Can't you see that? Next question."
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"and yet 48% approve of the job he is doing"
This is what we get when 50% pay no Federal Income Tax.
What do they care?
And an estimated get more money then they pay in.
The real middle class, that actually works AND pays taxes continues to run faster and faster on the treadmill.
Many of the wealthy continue to enjoy gaming the system. Yes they create wealth but they also have the system gamed.
Nothing ever changes.
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[48% approve]' This is what we get when 50% pay no Federal Income Tax.'
True, I thought about the CCP doctrine ) as I wrote that. I would just point out the the G.E. phenomenon proves their thinking to be wrongheaded. It is actually the supply-siders who are trying to maximize growth and revenues that would be available to spend on those goodies for the unproductive 50%. Once again high tax rates were just proved to chase away production and not raise revenues. At the time Pelosi, Reid and Obama took the majority in congress promising to raise taxes, companies like GE were rearranging their affairs to limit exposure, the polar opposite of maximize growth and hiring.
Obama et al partially understand that you don't raise taxes in a recession. With all those ivy league smarts, why don't they recognize the corollary of that 'law' that it has the same dragging effect on the economy all the time.
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The GE-no income tax- thanks to Charles Rangel- a congressional tax cheat-yet re-elected- and GE payoff to Rangel- with Obama demogogary about corporate greed-etc.
Indeed, it is beyond infuriating. And the 48% who still approve of Bamster are similar to the same croud that re elects a criminal - Rangel. They are all into stealing tax payer moenies.
Everyone is bribed with government money or tax loop holes.
Did you see on Stossel how Bruce Springstein pays no property tax in NJ, the highest property tax state in the country because he has an "organic" gardener/"farm" on his huge spread?
Or Bon Jovi, another one who sings Katherine's song lyrics and claims he writes them (I allege :wink:) and pays no property tax because he breeds bees on his property )http://biggovernment.com/tag/charles-rangel(Or actually they might pay like $200 I think Stossel said).
This is why I am so pessimistic and look at it all like a joke.
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I would like to have it both ways. We need to be careful criticizing the President needlessly on Libya or anywhere at water's edge where the choices are certainly difficult, yet free speech and the search for truth goes on... :-) This starts out about Libya but drifts to historical context and then all things glibness. Obama's thinking in the crisis needs inspection since his final decisions really aren't yet made and since we certainly face another hundred years of crises to deal with in the region.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/30/measuring_force_109390.html
Incoherent Policy
By Thomas Sowell
You don't just walk up to the local bully and slap him across the face. If you are determined to confront him, then you try to knock the living daylights out of him. Otherwise, you are better off to leave him alone.
Anyone who grew up in my old neighborhood in Harlem could have told you that. But Barack Obama didn't grow up in my old neighborhood. He had a much more genteel upbringing, including a fancy private school, in Hawaii.
Maybe that is why he thinks he can launch military operations against Moammar Qaddafi, while promising not to kill him and promising that no American ground troops will be used.
It is the old liberal illusion that you can measure out force with a teaspoon, not only in military operations micro-managed by civilians in Washington, like the Vietnam war, but also in domestic confrontations when the police are trying to control a rioting mob, and are being restrained by politicians, while the mob is restrained by nobody.
We went that route in the 1960s, and the results were not inspiring, either domestically or internationally.
The old saying, "When you strike at a king, you must kill him," is especially apt when it comes to attacking a widely recognized sponsor of international terrorism like Colonel Qaddafi. To attack him without destroying his regime is just asking for increased terrorism against Americans and America's allies. So is replacing him with insurgents who include other sponsors of terrorism.
President Obama's Monday night speech was long on rhetoric and short on logic. He said: "I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us."
Just what would lead him to conclude that this includes the largely unknown forces who are trying to seize power in Libya?
Too often in the past, going all the way back to the days of Woodrow Wilson, we have operated on the assumption that a bad government becomes better after the magic of "change." President Wilson said that we were fighting the First World War to make the way "safe for democracy." But what actually followed was the replacement of autocratic monarchies by totalitarian dictatorships that made previous despots pale by comparison.
The most charitable explanation for President Obama's incoherent policy in Libya-- if incoherence can be called a policy -- is that he suffers from the long-standing blind spot of the left when it comes to the use of force.
A less charitable and more likely explanation is that Obama is treating the war in Libya as he treats all sorts of other things, as actions designed above all to serve his own political interests and ideological visions. Whether it does even that depends on what the situation is like in Libya when the 2012 elections roll around.
As for the national interests of the United States of America, Barack Obama has never shown any great concern about that.
President Obama started alienating our staunchest allies, Britain and Israel, from his earliest days in office, while cozying up to our adversaries such as Russia and China, not to mention the Palestinians, who cheered when they saw on television the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Many people in various parts of the political spectrum are expressing a sense of disappointment with Obama. But I have not felt the least bit disappointed.
Once in office, President Obama has done exactly what his whole history would lead you to expect him to do-- such as cutting the military budget and vastly expanding the welfare state.
He has by-passed the Constitution by appointing power-wielding "czars" who don't have to be confirmed by the Senate like Cabinet members, and now he has by-passed Congress by taking military actions based on authorization by the United Nations and the Arab League.
Those who expected his election to mark a new "post-racial" era may be the most disappointed. He has appointed people with a track record of race resentment promotion and bias, like Attorney General Eric Holder and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Disappointing? No. Disgusting? Yes. The only disappointment is with voters who voted their hopes and ignored his realities.
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"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." --James Madison
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What is also disgusting watching and hearing the liberal media calling Bamster complimentary names like "genius", "cunning", "cautious".
There are no lenghths to whcih they will not go to cover for him.
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Shmeidrec
Shabtsitvaynik
means:
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Glossary/Yiddish_Words/yiddish_words.html#Sh
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"Quit playing games".
I assume he means college basketball picking, golf, soccor etc...
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/04/06/obama_to_gop_on_budget_getting_your_way_is_not_how_it_works.html
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Several things here I have not seen before , , ,
http://www.westernjournalism.com/exclusive-investigative-reports/the-mystery-of-barack-obama-continues/
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Very, very interesting. It is a federal felony to use any SSN aside from your own.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOmTH1fIhBE[/youtube]
Magic!
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He is used to adulation, being the one, everyone listening and bowing to him in awe. Now his bluff is called he has no where to turn.
The Chosen One is now the Phoney One. Even the MSM can't cover for him now. So what's in his thesis??? I want to know. I demand to know. We the American people have a RIGHT to know. Keep it up Trump.
****WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama wants you to know that he is not a golf addict.
He spends so much time unwinding on the links because security restrictions mean he can't go out for long walks or go to the carwash or the grocery store.
The president's comments came during a session with editors and publishers from Hearst Magazines in which he described life behind the scenes in the White House.
The president said he loves his life in the White House but doesn't enjoy some of the ways of Washington, such as the "kabuki dance" among political partisans before serious policy discussions begin. He also regrets his loss of personal privacy.
"I just miss - I miss being anonymous," he said at the meeting in the White House. "I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks. I can't take a walk."
He says he enjoys golf but is not the fanatic that some have portrayed.
"It's the only excuse I have to get outside for four hours at a stretch," he said.
His impossible dream: "I just want to go through Central Park (in New York) and watch folks passing by ... spend the day watching people. I miss that."****
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The Obama Administration’s FOIA Compliance
Posted by David Rittgers
Jim Harper has done a lot of work on the Obama administration’s efforts to be more transparent, especially with regard to “sunlight before signing ,” earmark data , and FOIA compliance . The Obama administration could do a lot more on the FOIA front.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC ) recently added a FOIA Project , which lists all FOIA requests that have become the subject of federal litigation since October 1, 2009. This includes an interactive FOIA Map that lets you zoom in and locate lawsuits across the United States.
TRAC has proven an invaluable resource for tracking federal government activities, and has been litigating FOIA requests for years . A recent Supreme Court decision, Milner v. Department of the Navy , reduced the ability of government agencies to withhold data under FOIA exemptions. Undeterred, an ICE official “informed TRAC that those who had requested and been denied access to documents under the FOIA prior to the court’s ground-breaking decision was rendered had no right to obtain them .” More details are available here .
It’s pretty bad when ICE is hiding behind procedural barriers to sidestep FOIA requests; it’s another ballgame entirely at DHS. DHS officials tried to turn the objective standard of FOIA – disclosure to one is disclosure to all – into a subjective one, looking into the political beliefs of the requester to avoid embarrassment for DHS. An email trail shows how a former Obama staffer asked DHS employees to redact “politically sensitive ” details from FOIA releases. Obama officials defended DHS’s FOIA policy in congressional hearings, and a DHS attorney tried to remove exhibits from the hearings. His explanation :
“As counsel for DHS, I object to counsel for the committee’s refusal to allow exhibits they had shown to the witness and that all are e-mail messages from DHS personnel to DHS personnel on their official DHS-issued accounts and use of e-mail services. These are not committee records, these are, rather, DHS records; and so there is no reason the committee should be able to prevent us from taking them, since they have shown them to the witness and used them in this interview.”
The Obama administration declared that it would be “the most open and transparent in history .” It is falling well short of the mark.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-obama-administration’s-foia-compliance/
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Continuing the coverage and criticism of the incumbent:
1) For his budget speech this week (where Biden snoozed) touted to be serious and news making (turns out it was a speech, not a plan), he invited and Paul Ryan among others came and sat in the front row, only to be personally trashed by the President in a Presidential address, in a partisan rant, without getting his facts correct.
2) Recall that he did that to the Supreme Court Justices at a State of the Union, got them all invited in and seated and then trashed them in front of the nation, their colleagues and the other branches of government, without getting his facts right.
3) Already covered, but his insensitivity to the questioner about gas prices means he is out of touch to the declining standard of living under his watch and flippant about it. He says buy a hybrid (he used to say inflate your tires). They need more vehicle so he says buy an SUV hybrid. He has no idea how old their car is or what they drive or what their income or employment status is, but if they had bought a hybrid at the start of his Presidency based on the gas cost savings, with or without a subsidy, that savings was already swallowed up by the price increases from failed energy policies under his watch. Specifically, this ignorant jerk's refusal to allow real domestic energy production commensurate with our consumption. JMHO.
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"Presidential address, in a partisan rant, without getting his facts correct"
but Doug, MSNBC called his speech a home run??? :roll:
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Stripping Congress of its Power of the Purse?
David Bernstein • April 16, 2011 9:19 am
Via Althouse, I learn the following from Jake Tapper:
One rider [to the bill] – Section 2262 — de-funds certain White House adviser positions – or “czars.” The president in his signing statement declares that he will not abide by it.
“The President has well-established authority to supervise and oversee the executive branch, and to obtain advice in furtherance of this supervisory authority,” he wrote. “The President also has the prerogative to obtain advice that will assist him in carrying out his constitutional responsibilities, and do so not only from executive branch officials and employees outside the White House, but also from advisers within it. Legislative efforts that significantly impede the President’s ability to exercise his supervisory and coordinating authorities or to obtain the views of the appropriate senior advisers violate the separation of powers by undermining the President’s ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Therefore, the president wrote, “the executive branch will construe section 2262 not to abrogate these Presidential prerogatives.”
This raises an extremely serious constitutional question: if Congress has refused to fund the “czars,” where exactly does President Obama get the authority and funding to pay them?
Remember Iran-Contra? The problem for the Reagan Administration there was that Congress banned the president from allocating money to the Contras. The Administration, quite illegally in my view, tried to get around that ban by using funds from arm sales to Iran to subvert the Congressional ban.
At least the Reagan Administration had the decency to do this secretly, knowing that it was acting unconstitutionally. Moreover, the Reagan folks at least were able to claim that they technically weren’t violating the Congressional ban, because they weren’t using Congressionally allocated funds, but the proceeds from arms sales.
The Obama Administration, by contrast, seems to be brazenly violating the Constitution. As I tell my constitutional law students, Congress’s ultimate power is the power of the purse. If Congress objects, for example, to military action engaged in by the president, it can simply refuse to allocate funds.
But the Obama Administration’s position seems to be that so long as it issues a signing statement refusing to abide by restrictions on funding that it deems to interfere with executive prerogatives, it can simply create the funding out of thin air. If there is no statutory funding for the czars, where exactly is the money coming from?
This is a very dangerous position for the Executive branch to take, and I hope even Obama partisans will recoil at this. Imagine if a future Republican president gets the U.S. involved in a deeply unpopular war. A Democratic Congress passes a military spending bill that specifically denies the president authority to spend any additional money on that war after a 60 day period to get the troops out. The president signs the bill, but with a signing statement that says that the bill’s ban on war funding violates the separation of powers and therefore “the executive branch will construe the relevant section not to abrogate these Presidential prerogatives.” Democrats, and anyone concerned with the Constitution for that matter, would be up in arms, and rightly so.
If Obama had such serious constitutional objections to Section 2262, he had only one constitutionally proper move to make, and that was to veto the bill.
UPDATE: A commenter points out that the signing statement doesn’t explicitly state that Obama would/will fund “czars” against a Congressional ban on such funding. I read “legislative efforts that significantly impede the President’s ability to exercise his supervisory and coordinating authorities ... violate the separation of powers” to mean such, but I suppose it’s possible the administration wouldn’t take it that far. Apparently, also from the comments, the administration is claiming that the defunding language won’t have any practical impact, so I guess we won’t find out.
I would hope, however, for a clarifying comment from the White House that it is NOT asserting the authority to fund positions/actions when Congress has passed a bill signed by the president specifically banning such funding.
Also, I’m not asserting that funding a secret war and paying presidential advisors is on the same level of practical malfeasance. As a matter of simple policy, the former is obviously more important.
What I am arguing is that the principle that Obama seems to be asserting, that the president can allocate money from budgetary funds even when the law says he can’t, goes beyond the constitutional sins of the Reagan Administration. Under Reagan, when Congress refused to allow funding for the Contras from normal budgetary funds, Reagan didn’t say, “this violates the separation of powers, so I’m going to spend the money anyway.” Rather, he authorized a secret operation to use funds from arm sales to Iran to fund the Contras. That was itself, in my view, illegal and otherwise problematic, but it still paid fealty to the idea that the president cannot spend funds budgeted by Congress in a way that Congress has explicitly prohibited. Unless we get a contrary clarification from the Obama Administration, its signing statement threatens to become a precedent that erodes or even eviscerates that principle. The long-term endpoint would be that the president, once he ariculates separation of powers concerns, could simply take money that’s been allocated for one thing and spend it not just on something else, but on something else specifically prohibited by law. And I don’t want ANY president, Republican or Democrat, to have such authority.
http://volokh.com/2011/04/16/stripping-congress-of-its-power-of-the-purse/
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"But Obama is awesome".
:roll:
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Comments BD?
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He keeps defining cognitive dissonance:
Obama wants us to be out of oil/gas for our cars, nudged and forced into making other choices. He wants the price to go up - gradually over time - which is to foster scarcity, limit physical supplies so they fail to keep up with economic demand.
He wants us on the edge starving for enegy, vulnerable to even the smallest faraway disruption, unable to handle for example the 'oil shock' of something as small as the war in Libya. Then he started the war.
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I am satisfied with the birth certificate.
I wonder why the ONE refused to release it till now though.
Hats off to Trump! I agree wholeheartedly that he accomplished what no one else could/would do and I absoulety maintain a position that it was absolutely necessary.
As for the school records or how he got into columbia and harvard I personally care less. Affirmative action or not what's the difference?
I would like to know more about the One's political activities and positions while a political science major at Columbia.
One can only imagine the radical America, European, possibly white, capatilism, hating stuff he surrounded himself with.
If not true than why is it kept so secret?
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Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Wed, April 27, 2011 -- 9:24 AM ET
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White House Releases Long Form of President Obama's Hawaii Birth Certificate
President Obama posted a copy of his "long form" birth
certificate, hoping to finally end a long-simmering
conspiracy theory among some conservatives that he was not
born in the United States and was not a legitimate president.
The birth certificate, which is posted online at the White
House website, shows conclusively that Mr. Obama was born in
Honolulu, Hawaii, and is signed by state officials and his
mother.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na
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"I am satisfied with the birth certificate."
What a bizarre chapter in American history this was. What is the significance of keeping the long form in the vault if not to answer a question like eligibility to serve as President? Turns out that for ten bucks he can just order a copy.
I guess The Unifier's handlers wanted this story to fester and divide us by exposing 'racists' who would doubt him - until it approached 70% of Americans doubting his eligibility to serve as President.
I never doubted his eligibility to serve; I oppose the direction he is taking us.
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ONe of the talk radio heads, Smirkonish, I believe had a theory that Bamster was waiting for a debate wherein he would sucker a Repubic into asking him where is the long form at which point he would pull it out and say, "it is right here" in an attempt to embarras him/her.
In any case this should point out the One's *lack of judgement*, and as Crafty eluded to (the "unifier") how he does more to divide us than unify us by being the pompous guy he is.
The anchor gals on CNN who are flaming liberals were outright relieved this AM with obvious giddiness.
I do commend Anderson Cooper for repeatedly asking (the last few days only) why Obama rama just doesn't release the form while very single guest was dreaming every single argument why he doesn't and shouldn't.
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"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington
Government & Politics
The Birther Blather
The Obama birth certificate"I can't spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead." --Barack Hussein Obama in August 2010
Of course, Obama never spent any time with his birth certificate plastered to his forehead, the subterfuge has been part of a successful political charade.
Since Obama's election, we have received some complaints that Mark Alexander has never devoted an essay to the controversy concerning Obama's birth certificate or nationality. The issue has received the mention it deserved in our analysis (not much) but mostly it has been featured in our humor section (e.g., Jay Leno's quip, "Obama's overseas trip has been such a disaster that people in Kenya now claim that he has an American birth certificate.").
Alexander responded to the issue early on, noting that he believed Obama was born in Hawaii, and the birth certificate controversy was one facet of Obama's campaign strategy to divide up opposition resources. In other words, it was a ploy to divert the political capital of some well-meaning Obama detractors, and lead them to focus on the question of where Obama was born, rather than much more important questions about his qualifications to be president.
Alexander noted that at some point, Obama would release his original birth certificate, thus discrediting the so-called "birthers." By extension, and by design, this undermines the credibility of other legitimate concerns about Obama, first and foremost, his socialist agenda for the "fundamental transformation" of our nation.
Apparently this week, Obama's handlers determined they had squeezed all the political juice out of this issue, now that Jerome Corsi's book was out and Donald Trump released his birth certificate. (Was Trump actually born in this galaxy?) Finally, Obama did what any humble and respectable candidate should have done the first day the question was asked -- he released his long form birth certificate. Of course, "humble and respectable" are not characteristics of Obama's Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
For the record, we were as interested as any conservatives should be about the constitutional question of Obama's eligibility to run for president, but understood that even if definitive evidence was produced that Obama was born in Kenya, the question then becomes a statutory debate about eligibility based on the fact that at the time of his birth, his American mother was below the statutory age for recognition of her child as a U.S. citizen.
Further, it was clear two years ago that no matter what form of birth certificate Obama released and when, it would still be seen as a fraud by those claiming he was born in Kenya, and make no difference one way or the other to his sycophantic lemmings.
We still demand that Obama release other information that presidential candidates should release -- transcripts, passport and travel information, etc., but don't expect to see that information in this election cycle.
Finally, we offer this advice to grassroots conservatives: Caveat Emptor! Beware of organizations like WorldNetDaily and other "conservative news" sources, which build readership by hyping issues such as Obama's nationality in order to sell advertising. Many of those controversial stories are based on 10 percent substance and 90 percent fragrance. Hyping political issues serves only their self-interest, and distracts from serious concerns about Obama and his cadres of Leftists, which is precisely what Obama wants.
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You Call This a Recovery? Obama Offers More Excuses Than Solutions
By John Lott
Published April 29, 2011 | FoxNews.com
Call it the "excuses recovery." President Obama and his administration have been warning for the last week that the just announced first quarter GDP growth rate of 1.8 percent would be weak, and they have been quick to blame it on the recent spike prices in oil. The problem is that this whole recovery has been anemic, not just one or two slow quarters of economic growth.
Seven quarters into the Obama recovery, GDP growth has averaged an annual rate of only 2.8 percent. In contrast, since 1970, the first seven quarters of previous recoveries averaged 4.6 percent. The poor growth rate is especially surprising since the preceding recession was so severe, there should have been ample room for high growth as the unemployed returned to work. For example, the Reagan recovery followed a similarly high unemployment rate and saw the economy grow at an average annual growth rate of 7 percent (see graph here ).
The slight decrease in unemployment – currently at 8.8 percent -- has been touted as good news. Yet that slight drop has largely been the result of job-seekers giving up looking for work and leaving the labor force. On top of that, the new jobs that have opened up have primarily been temporary jobs, the number of permanent jobs has actually fallen.
Given all that, Americans are understandably pessimistic about the economy. By an incredible 68 percent to 26 percent margin, The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows that Americans think that the country is headed in the wrong direction, which is the pessimism people experienced at the depths of the recent recession. By a 56 to 40 percent difference , even the liberal Talking Points Memo average of selected surveys finds that Americans disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy.
High oil prices can only explain a small portion of the recent low GDP growth. While some companies, such as those in the transportation sector suffer, others – most notably energy producers – benefit. As workers and capital investments cannot instantly move across states and from one set of jobs to another, the resulting unemployment means that output is temporarily reduced.
Ironically, however, this problem from shifting resources is no different than what happened from Obama's stimulus spending and all his new regulations. By moving money from where companies and consumers would have spent the money to where the Obama and the Democrats wanted it spent, jobs and resources were also moved.
Take a large sector of the economy such as housing. The most recent numbers show that median house price has fallen back to where it was in April 2002. Not surprisingly, with existing housing prices so low, it doesn't pay for anyone to build new housing. But even at those low prices the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales is back to where it was over a decade ago.
But rather than blaming high oil prices, for housing, possibly the Obama administration might want to look in the mirror and ask what impact its regulations have had. On top of previous attempts to force mortgage companies into accepting write downs on the value of mortgages, the Huffington Post recently reported on the Obama administration's new "shock and awe" approach to reviving the housing market:
"The Obama administration is seeking to force the nation's five largest mortgage firms to reduce monthly payments for as many as three million distressed homeowners in as little as six months as part of an agreement to settle accusations of improper foreclosures and violations of consumer protection laws, six people familiar with the matter said."
Would you want to make a new loan if you were one of these mortgage companies? Companies might find huge drops in the value of their loans just a year or two after they are made. Fewer loans mean a drop in the number of purchases and a drop in house prices.
At some point even Democrats are going to have concede that President Obama's "cure" has made the economy worse. How many more quarters of slow growth are Americans going to have to endure?
John R. Lott, Jr. is a FOXNews.com contributor. He is an economist and author of the just released revised edition of "More Guns, Less Crime."
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/04/29/recovery-obama-offers-excuses-solutions/
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Another 4-5 trillion of deficit spending and it would be all better. :roll:
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Hmm, this is a New Yorker piece with plenty of lines to read between. The term "damned by faint praise" comes to mind.
THE CONSEQUENTIALIST
How the Arab Spring remade Obama’s foreign policy.
by Ryan Lizza
MAY 2, 2011 Obama has said that his foreign-policy ideas defy traditional categories and ideologies. Photograph by Martin Schoeller.PRINT E-MAIL SINGLE PAGE
Barack Obama came to Washington just six years ago, having spent his professional life as a part-time lawyer, part-time law professor, and part-time state legislator in Illinois. As an undergraduate, he took courses in history and international relations, but neither his academic life nor his work in Springfield gave him an especially profound grasp of foreign affairs. As he coasted toward winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, in 2004, he began to reach out to a broad range of foreign-policy experts––politicians, diplomats, academics, and journalists.
As a student during the Reagan years, Obama gravitated toward conventionally left-leaning positions. At Occidental, he demonstrated in favor of divesting from apartheid South Africa. At Columbia, he wrote a forgettable essay in Sundial, a campus publication, in favor of the nuclear-freeze movement. As a professor at the University of Chicago, he focussed on civil-rights law and race. And, as a candidate who emphasized his “story,” Obama argued that what he lacked in experience with foreign affairs he made up for with foreign travel: four years in Indonesia as a boy, and trips to Pakistan, India, Kenya, and Europe during and after college. But there was no mistaking the lightness of his résumé. Just a year before coming to Washington, State Senator Obama was not immersed in the dangers of nuclear Pakistan or an ascendant China; as a provincial legislator, he was investigating the dangers of a toy known as the Yo-Yo Water Ball. (He tried, unsuccessfully, to have it banned.)
Obama had always read widely, and now he was determined to get a deeper education. He read popular books on foreign affairs by Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman. He met with Anthony Lake, who had left the Nixon Administration over Vietnam and went on to work in Democratic Administrations, and with Susan Rice, who had served in the Clinton Administration and carried with her the guilt of having failed to act to prevent the Rwandan genocide. He also contacted Samantha Power, a thirty-four-year-old journalist and Harvard professor specializing in human rights. In her twenties, Power had reported from the Balkans and witnessed the campaigns of ethnic cleansing there. In 2002, after graduating from Harvard Law School, she wrote “A Problem from Hell,” which surveyed the grim history of six genocides committed in the twentieth century. Propounding a liberal-interventionist view, Power argued that “mass killing” on the scale of Rwanda or Bosnia must be prevented by other nations, including the United States. She wrote that America and its allies rarely have perfect information about when a regime is about to commit genocide; a President, therefore, must have “a bias toward belief” that massacres are imminent. Stopping the execution of thousands of foreigners, she wrote, was, in some cases, worth the cost in dollars, troops, and strained alliances. The book, which was extremely influential, especially on the left, won a Pulitzer Prize, in 2003. Critics considered her views radical and dangerously impractical.
FROM THE ISSUE CARTOON BANK E-MAIL THIS
After reading “A Problem from Hell,” Obama invited Power to dinner. He said he wanted to talk about foreign policy. The meal lasted four hours. As a fledgling member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and an ambitious politician with his sights set on higher office, Obama agreed to have Power spend a year in his office as a foreign-policy fellow.
In his first news conference after winning election to the Senate, the press asked whether he intended to run for President, but he assured reporters, as well as his aides, that he would not even consider it until 2012 or 2016. He knew that he could not have a serious impact on issues like Iraq or the Sudan as a junior committee member, but he was determined to learn the institution and to acquire, as Hillary Clinton had, a reputation not for celebrity but for substance. In foreign affairs, as in so much else, he was determined to break free of the old ideologies and categories. But he would take it step by step.
bama entered the Senate in 2005, at a moment of passionate foreign-policy debate within the Democratic Party. The invasion of Iraq was seen as interventionism executed under false pretenses and with catastrophic consequences. Many on the left argued that liberal interventionists, particularly in Congress and in the press, had given crucial cover to the Bush Administration during the run-up to the war. Hillary Clinton, who often sided with the humanitarian hawks in her husband’s White House, and who went on to vote for the Iraq war, in 2002, seemed to some to be the embodiment of all that had gone wrong.
One reaction among liberals to the Bush years and to Iraq was to retreat from “idealism” toward “realism,” in which the United States would act cautiously and, above all, according to national interests rather than moral imperatives. The debate is rooted in the country’s early history. America, John Quincy Adams argued, “does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all,” but the “champion and vindicator only of her own.”
In 1966, Adams’s words were repeated by George Kennan, perhaps the most articulate realist of the twentieth century, in opposing the Vietnam War. To Kennan and his intellectual followers, foreign-policy problems are always more complicated than Americans, in their native idealism, usually allow. The use of force to stop human-rights abuses or to promote democracy, they argue, usually ends poorly. In the fall of 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq, Kennan said, “Today, if we went into Iraq, as the President would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.”
As Obama sorted through the arguments, other foreign-policy liberals were determined to prevent Iraq from besmirching the whole program of liberal internationalism. Humanitarian intervention—which Power helped advance, though she vigorously opposed the Iraq War—should not be abandoned because of the failures in Baghdad. Nor should American diplomacy turn away from emphasizing the virtues of bringing the world democracy. Anne-Marie Slaughter, a professor of international affairs at Princeton and a Democrat, wrote in the liberal journal Democracy that an overreaction to the Bush years might mean that “realists could again rule the day, embracing order and stability over ideology and values.”
After little more than a year in the Senate, Obama was bored, and began to take seriously the frequent calls to run for President. To be a candidate, he needed to distinguish himself from his foremost potential opponent, Hillary Clinton, as well as from President Bush. One of the clearest paths to distinction, especially in the primaries, was to emphasize his early opposition, as a state senator, to the Iraq war. He started to move away from the ideas of people like Power and Slaughter. He pointedly noted that George H. W. Bush’s management of the end of the Cold War was masterly. The President had sometimes kept quiet about the aspirations of pro-democracy activists in Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere, in order to maintain the confidence of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Kremlin. It was just the sort of political performance to which Obama aspired.
In making the case against Hillary Clinton, Obama slyly argued that the George W. Bush years were in some ways a continuation of the Bill Clinton years, and that the United States needed to return to the philosophy of an earlier era. The proselytizing about democracy and the haste to bomb other countries in the name of humanitarian aid had “stretched our military to the breaking point and distracted us from the growing threats of a dangerous world,” Obama said in a speech in 2006, a few weeks before he announced his Presidential candidacy. He spoke of “a strategy no longer driven by ideology and politics but one that is based on a realistic assessment of the sobering facts on the ground and our interests in the region. This kind of realism has been missing since the very conception of this war, and it is what led me to publicly oppose it in 2002.”
In 2007, Obama called Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national-security adviser and the reigning realist of the Democratic foreign-policy establishment. Obama told him that he had read his recent book, “Second Chance,” in which Brzezinski criticized Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush and their handling of the post-Cold War world. They began to speak and exchange e-mails about policy, and Brzezinski travelled with Obama during a stretch of the campaign. In September, 2007, Brzezinski introduced Obama at an event in Clinton, Iowa, where the candidate discussed the failures in Iraq. “I thought he had a really incisive grasp of what the twenty-first century is all about and how America has to relate to it,” Brzezinski told me. “He was reacting in a way that I very much shared, and we had a meeting of the minds—namely, that George Bush put the United States on a suicidal course.”
As he campaigned in New Hampshire, in 2007, Obama said that he would not leave troops in Iraq even to stop genocide. “Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have three hundred thousand troops in the Congo right now, where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife, which we haven’t done,” he said. “We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done.”
At a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Obama said, “The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush’s father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan.”
n the end, Barack Obama overcame Hillary Clinton’s campaign warnings that he was too callow, too naïve about dealing with rogue regimes, too untested to respond to the “3 A.M.” emergencies from all corners of the globe. Obama entered the White House at a moment of radical transition in global politics, and one of his most significant appointments was Clinton as his Secretary of State. Although he had made plain in the campaign that he disagreed with some of her foreign-policy views, he admired her discipline and believed that, as a member of the Cabinet, she wouldn’t publicly break with the President. And he would need her. Obama faced economic catastrophe at home and American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; serious regional threats from Pakistan and Iran; global terrorism; the ascendance of China and India; and a situation that was almost impossible to discuss—a vivid sense of American decline.
American values and interests are woven together, and no President is always either an idealist or a realist. Officials who identify with the same label often disagree with one another. Humanitarian interventionists were divided over the Iraq war; Cold War realists had split over détente with the Soviet Union. The categories describe only broad ideological directions and tendencies. But, as Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, observed, “the battle between realists and idealists is the fundamental fault line of the American foreign-policy debate.”
After the Inauguration, the realists began to win that debate within the Administration. The two most influential foreign-policy advisers in the White House are Thomas Donilon, the national-security adviser, and Denis McDonough, a deputy national-security adviser. Donilon, who is fifty-five, is a longtime Washington lawyer, lobbyist, and Democratic Party strategist. McDonough started out as a congressional staffer and campaign adviser to Obama, a role that has given him a reputation as a non-ideological political fixer.
The National Security Council is a bureaucracy that helps the President streamline decision-making, and Donilon seems to have thought extensively about how that system works. Like the President, he values staff discretion. His rule for hiring at the N.S.C. is to find people who are, in his words, “high value, low maintenance.” Obama’s N.S.C. adopted the model of the first Bush Administration. “It’s essentially based on the process that was put in place by General Brent Scowcroft and Bob Gates in the late nineteen-eighties,” Donilon told me, speaking of Bush’s national-security adviser and his deputy, the current Secretary of Defense. The most important feature, Donilon said, is that the N.S.C., based at the White House, controls “the sole process through which policy would be developed.”
One of Donilon’s overriding beliefs, which Obama adopted as his own, was that America needed to rebuild its reputation, extricate itself from the Middle East and Afghanistan, and turn its attention toward Asia and China’s unchecked influence in the region. America was “overweighted” in the former and “underweighted” in the latter, Donilon told me. “We’ve been on a little bit of a Middle East detour over the course of the last ten years,” Kurt Campbell, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said. “And our future will be dominated utterly and fundamentally by developments in Asia and the Pacific region.”
In December, 2009, Obama announced that he would draw down U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of his first term. He also promised, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last year, that he was “moving toward a more targeted approach” that “dismantles terrorist networks without deploying large American armies.”
“The project of the first two years has been to effectively deal with the legacy issues that we inherited, particularly the Iraq war, the Afghan war, and the war against Al Qaeda, while rebalancing our resources and our posture in the world,” Benjamin Rhodes, one of Obama’s deputy national-security advisers, said. “If you were to boil it all down to a bumper sticker, it’s ‘Wind down these two wars, reëstablish American standing and leadership in the world, and focus on a broader set of priorities, from Asia and the global economy to a nuclear-nonproliferation regime.’ ”
Obama’s lengthy bumper-sticker credo did not include a call to promote democracy or protect human rights. Obama aides who focussed on these issues were awarded lesser White House positions. Samantha Power became senior director of multilateral affairs at the N.S.C. Michael McFaul, a Stanford professor who believes that the U.S. should make democracy promotion the heart of its foreign policy, landed a mid-level position at the White House.
Most of the foreign-policy issues that Obama emphasized in his first two years involved stepping away from idealism. In the hope of persuading Iran’s regime to abandon its nuclear ambitions, Obama pointedly rejected Bush’s “axis of evil” terminology. In a video message to Iranians on March 20, 2009, he respectfully addressed “the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” In order to engage China on economic issues, Obama didn’t press very hard on human rights. And, because any effort to push the Israelis and Palestinians toward a final settlement would benefit from help from Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, Obama was not especially outspoken about the sins of Middle Eastern autocrats and kings.
Despite the realist tilt, Obama has argued from the start that he was anti-ideological, that he defied traditional categories and ideologies. In Oslo, in December of 2009, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama said, “Within America, there has long been a tension between those who describe themselves as realists or idealists—a tension that suggests a stark choice between the narrow pursuit of interests or an endless campaign to impose our values around the world.” The speech echoed Obama’s 2002 address to an antiwar demonstration in Chicago’s Federal Plaza. In Chicago, he had confounded his leftist audience by emphasizing the need to fight some wars, but not “dumb” ones, like the one in Iraq. In Oslo, he surprised a largely left-leaning audience by talking about the martial imperatives of a Commander-in-Chief overseeing two wars. Obama’s aides often insist that he is an anti-ideological politician interested only in what actually works. He is, one says, a “consequentialist.”
eanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned her department into something of a haven for the ideas that flourished late in the Clinton Administration. She picked Anne-Marie Slaughter as her director of policy planning—a job first held by George Kennan, in the Truman Administration. She also brought in Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal adviser and a scholar on issues concerning human rights and democracy. Walking around the mazelike building in Foggy Bottom, you get the sense that if you duck into any office you will find earnest young women and men discussing globalization, the possibility that Facebook can topple tyrannies, and what is called “soft power,” the ability to bend the world toward your view through attraction, not coercion.
Not long ago, I met with Kris Balderston, the State Department’s representative for global partnerships. He started working with Clinton ten years ago, when he guided her through the politics of upstate New York during her Senate race. Now he works on an array of entrepreneurial projects that complement traditional diplomacy. He talked excitedly about working with Vietnamese-Americans to build stronger ties to Vietnam and about distributing vaccines in partnership with Coca-Cola. He pointed to a bookcase stocked with devices that looked like a cross between a lantern and a paint bucket. These were advanced cookstoves. “This is a problem that the Secretary saw when she was First Lady,” Balderston said, explaining how lethal cooking smoke can be. “One half of the world cooks in open fires. Two million people die a year from it—that’s more than malaria and tuberculosis combined, and nearly as much as H.I.V.” On a trip to Congo in 2009, Clinton met a woman in a refugee camp who had been raped in the jungle on the outskirts of the camp while gathering wood for her stove. Telling the story at the State Department, Clinton was angrier than Balderston had ever seen her. “We have got to do something about this,” she said. Balderston spends much of his time trying to build a market for inexpensive, clean-burning cookstoves in the developing world.
But Clinton’s involvement in soft-power initiatives was matched by the kind of hardheadedness about foreign policy she had displayed during her Presidential campaign. She has repeatedly aligned herself with the most consistent realist in the Obama Administration: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who was deputy national-security adviser in the first Bush Administration and Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush. Clinton’s advisers told me that, during her first two years in Foggy Bottom, Clinton agreed with Gates on every major issue.
“Secretary Clinton can push the agenda she pushes because she is tough and people know she is tough,” Slaughter said. “It’s very interesting—you’ve had three women Secretaries of State, and she’s the first one who can stand up and say publicly, ‘We are going to empower women and girls around the world. We are going to make development a priority of foreign policy. We are going to engage people as well as governments.’
“Madeleine Albright believed in the importance of those issues, but she could never have made it the core of her public agenda. She was the first woman Secretary of State, which meant that she had to out-tough the tough guys. She did that on the Balkans. Condi Rice helped double foreign aid, but she was first and foremost a Cold Warrior, and she could throw around ‘I.C.B.M.’s and ‘S.L.B.M.’s and ‘MIRV’s with the best of them. That was the only way she could make it, not only as a woman in the nineteen-eighties but as an African-American woman. You had to be way tougher and way more knowledgeable about weapons than any man.” A former Administration official said, “Hillary has to guard her flank. And one of the ways she guards her flank is she rarely deviates from Gates. If she and Gates both weigh in, they are much more likely to get their way.”
bama’s first test at managing the clashing ideologies within his Administration came during the review of Afghanistan policy in 2009. During the campaign, Obama said that he would add troops in Afghanistan, a war, he argued, that Bush had neglected. But Obama’s campaign promise bumped hard against the judgment of several new advisers, including Richard Holbrooke, who tried to convince the President that sending forty thousand more troops to Afghanistan, as the military urged, was counterproductive. It would prevent Obama from rebalancing American foreign policy toward the Pacific, and it would have little impact on Al Qaeda, which is based largely in Pakistan. Obama had appointed Holbrooke his Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Holbrooke, a brash and influential diplomat, found himself in the unusual circumstance of being ignored. He wanted to send far fewer troops and reënergize regional diplomacy, including reconciliation talks with the Taliban. He believed that the lesson of Vietnam was that the diplomats, rather than the generals, needed to be in charge, but he could rarely penetrate the insular world of Obama’s White House to make that case to the President.
Holbrooke had been a devoted supporter of Hillary Clinton during the Presidential campaign, and she protected him from Obama aides who viewed with suspicion his sizable ego and stream of positive press clippings. When a top official at the White House tried to push Holbrooke out, in early 2010, Clinton intervened on his behalf. But Holbrooke still could not get a one-on-one meeting with the President. And at the crucial national-security meetings on Afghanistan Clinton did not adopt Holbrooke’s views. She sided with Gates and the generals in calling for the maximum number of soldiers to surge into Afghanistan. Obama agreed to send thirty thousand more troops, although he insisted that they would start coming home in July, 2011. Holbrooke’s widow, the writer Kati Marton, who has been reviewing her husband’s memos and archives, told me that they “tell a dramatic story of a fractured relationship between the State Department and White House.”
On December 11, 2010, while meeting with Clinton at the State Department, Holbrooke suffered a split aorta, and he died forty-eight hours later. Bill Clinton spoke at Holbrooke’s memorial service, held on January 14th at the Kennedy Center. “I loved the guy—because he could do,” Clinton said. “Doing in diplomacy saves lives.” He went on, “And I never did understand how people would let a little rough edges, which to me was so obvious what he was doing, it was so obvious why he felt the way he did—I could never understand people who didn’t appreciate him.” Several people told Marton they thought that Bill Clinton was sending a message to Obama.
In the end, Obama made a decision about Afghanistan that was at odds with his own goal of rebalancing toward Asia and the Pacific. “The U.S. has been on a greater Middle East detour largely of its own choosing through a war of choice in Iraq and what became a war of choice in 2009 in Afghanistan,” Haass said. “Afghanistan is entirely inconsistent with the focus of time and resources on Asia. If your goal is to reorient or refocus or rebalance U.S. policy, the Administration’s commitment to so doing is at the moment more rhetorical than actual.”
Obama came into office emphasizing bureaucratic efficiency, which he believed would lead to wise rulings. But the Afghanistan decision, like all government work, was driven by politics and ideology. Obama’s eagerness to keep his campaign promise, the military’s view that reducing troops meant a loss of face, Clinton’s decision to align with Gates, and Holbrooke’s inability to influence the White House staff all ultimately conspired to push Obama toward the surge.
bama’s other key campaign promise—to engage with the leaders of countries hostile to the U.S.—sometimes meant deëmphasizing democracy and human rights, which had been tainted by Bush’s “freedom agenda” in the Middle East. Tyrannical regimes are less likely to make deals with you if you talk persistently about overthrowing them. Obama’s speech in Cairo, delivered on June 4, 2009, and devoted to improving America’s relationship with the Muslim world, was organized as a list of regional priorities. He discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Arab-Israeli peace, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He then gave a hesitant endorsement of America’s commitment to democracy in the region. He began, “I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.”
A week later, however, a disputed Presidential election in Iran triggered large demonstrations there, which were soon labelled the Green Revolution. For the first five months after his Inauguration, Obama had tried to engage with the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an effort to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Now he faced the choice between keeping his distance and coming to the aid of the nascent pro-democracy movement, which was rallying behind Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who had finished second behind Ahmadinejad. Obama chose to keep his distance, providing only mild rhetorical support. In an interview with CNBC after the protests began, he said that “the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised.”
During the peak of the protests in Iran, Jared Cohen, a young staffer at the State Department who worked for Slaughter, contacted officials at Twitter and asked the company not to perform a planned upgrade that would have shut down the service temporarily in Iran, where protesters were using it to get information to the international media. The move violated Obama’s rule of non-interference.
White House officials “were so mad that somebody had actually ‘interfered’ in Iranian politics, because they were doing their damnedest to not interfere,” the former Administration official said. “Now, to be fair to them, it was also the understanding that if we interfered it could look like the Green movement was Western-backed, but that really wasn’t the core of it. The core of it was we were still trying to engage the Iranian government and we did not want to do anything that made us side with the protesters. To the Secretary’s credit, she realized, I think, before other people, that this is ridiculous, that we had to change our line.” The official said that Cohen “almost lost his job over it. If it had been up to the White House, they would have fired him.”
Clinton did not betray any disagreement with the President over Iran policy, but in an interview with me she cited Cohen’s action with pride. “When it came to the elections, we had a lot of messages from people inside Iran and their supporters outside of Iran saying, ‘For heaven’s sakes, don’t claim this as part of the democracy agenda. This is indigenous to us. We are struggling against this tyrannical regime. If you are too outspoken in our support, we will lose legitimacy!’ Now, that’s a tough balancing act. It’s easy to stand up if you don’t worry about the consequences. Now, we were very clear in saying, ‘We are supporting those who are protesting peacefully,’ and we put our social-media gurus at work in trying to keep connections going, so that we helped to provide that base for communicating that was necessary for the demonstrations.”
One suggestion that came up in interviews with Obama’s current and former foreign-policy advisers was that the Administration’s policy debates sometimes broke down along gender lines. The realists who view foreign policy as a great chess game—and who want to focus on China and India—are usually men. The idealists, who talk about democracy and human rights, are often women. (White House officials told me that this critique is outlandish.)
Slaughter, who admired Clinton but felt alienated by people at the White House, resigned in February, and in her farewell speech at the State Department she described a gender divide at the heart of Obama’s foreign-policy team. She argued that in the twenty-first century America needed to focus on societies as well as on states. “Unfortunately, the people who focus on those two worlds here in Washington are still often very different groups. The world of states is still the world of high politics, hard power, realpolitik, and, largely, men,” she said. “The world of societies is still too often the world of low politics, soft power, human rights, democracy, and development, and, largely, women. One of the best parts of my two years here has been the opportunity to work with so many amazing and talented women—truly extraordinary people. But Washington still has a ways to go before their voices are fully heard and respected.”
n August 12, 2010, Obama sent a five-page memorandum called “Political Reform in the Middle East and North Africa” to Vice-President Joseph Biden, Clinton, Gates, Donilon, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the other senior members of his foreign-policy team. Though the Iranian regime had effectively crushed the Green Revolution, the country was still experiencing sporadic protests. Egypt would face crucial parliamentary elections in November. The memo began with a stark conclusion about trends in the region.
“Progress toward political reform and openness in the Middle East and North Africa lags behind other regions and has, in some cases, stalled,” the President wrote. He noted that even the more liberal countries were cracking down on public gatherings, the press, and political opposition groups. But something was stirring. There was “evidence of growing citizen discontent with the region’s regimes,” he wrote. It was likely that “if present trends continue,” allies there would “opt for repression rather than reform to manage domestic dissent.”
Obama’s analysis showed a desire to balance interests and ideals. The goals of reform and democracy were couched in the language of U.S. interests rather than the sharp moral language that statesmen often use in public. “Increased repression could threaten the political and economic stability of some of our allies, leave us with fewer capable, credible partners who can support our regional priorities, and further alienate citizens in the region,” Obama wrote. “Moreover, our regional and international credibility will be undermined if we are seen or perceived to be backing repressive regimes and ignoring the rights and aspirations of citizens.”
Obama instructed his staff to come up with “tailored,” “country by country” strategies on political reform. He told his advisers to challenge the traditional idea that stability in the Middle East always served U.S. interests. Obama wanted to weigh the risks of both “continued support for increasingly unpopular and repressive regimes” and a “strong push by the United States for reform.”
He also wrote that “the advent of political succession in a number of countries offers a potential opening for political reform in the region.” If the United States managed the coming transitions “poorly,” it “could have negative implications for U.S. interests, including for our standing among Arab publics.”
The review was led by three N.S.C. staffers: Samantha Power, Gayle Smith, who works on development issues, and Dennis Ross, a Middle East expert with a broad portfolio in the White House. Soon, they and officials from other agencies were sitting in the White House, debating the costs and benefits of supporting autocrats. A White House official involved said the group studied “the taboos, all the questions you’re not supposed to ask.” For example, they tested the assumption that the President could not publicly criticize President Hosni Mubarak because it would jeopardize Egypt’s coöperation on issues related to Israel or its assistance in tracking terrorists. Not true, they concluded: the Egyptians pursued peace with Israel and crushed terrorists because it was in their interest to do so, not because the U.S. asked them to.
They tested the idea that countries with impoverished populations needed to develop economically before they were prepared for open political systems—a common argument that democracy promoters often run up against. Again, they concluded that the conventional wisdom was wrong. “All roads led to political reform,” the White House official said.
The group was just finishing its work, on December 17th, when Mohamed Bouazizi, a vegetable vender in Tunisia, set himself on fire outside a municipal building to protest the corruption of the country’s political system––an act that inspired protests in Tunisia and, eventually, the entire region. Democracy in the Middle East, one of the most fraught issues of the Bush years, was suddenly the signature conflict of Obama’s foreign policy.
n January 25th, the first, crucial day of the protests in Egypt, and eleven days after the removal of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, in Tunisia, Secretary Clinton declared her support for free assembly, but added, “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.” That evening, Obama delivered his State of the Union address, in which he praised the demonstrators in Tunisia, “where the will of the people proved more powerful than the writ of a dictator,” and expressed support for the “democratic aspirations of all people.” But he did not mention Egypt. Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, one of the leaders of the coalition that started the Egyptian revolution, told me that the message the protesters got from the Obama Administration on the first day of the revolution was “Go home. We need this regime.”
A number of familiar ex-diplomats and politicians, led by Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, criticized the treatment of Mubarak, and Israel and Saudi Arabia called on the Administration to stick with him. But, as the protests strengthened, it became clear that Mubarak was doomed. According to a senior Administration official, “The question in our mind was ‘How do you manage that?’ ”
Obama’s instinct was to try to have it both ways. He wanted to position the United States on the side of the protesters: it’s always a good idea, politically, to support brave young men and women risking their lives for freedom, especially when their opponent is an eighty-two-year-old dictator with Swiss bank accounts. Some of Obama’s White House aides regretted having stood idly by while the Iranian regime brutally suppressed the Green Revolution; Egypt offered a second chance. Nonetheless, Obama wanted to assure other autocratic allies that the U.S. did not hastily abandon its friends, and he feared that the uprising could spin out of control. “Look at all the revolutions in history, especially the ones that are driven from the ground up, and they tend to be very chaotic and hard to find an equilibrium,” one senior official said. The French Revolution, for instance, he said, “ended up in chaos, and they ended up with Bonaparte.” Obama’s ultimate position, it seemed, was to talk like an idealist while acting like a realist.
This wasn’t an easy balance to maintain, and the first major problem arose when State Department officials learned that if Mubarak stepped down immediately, the Egyptian constitution would require a Presidential election in sixty days, long before any of the moderate parties could get organized. Egyptian officials warned the Administration that it could lead to the Muslim Brotherhood’s taking over power. “My daughter gets to go out at night,” Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Egypt’s then foreign minister, told Secretary Clinton during one conversation. “And, God damn it, I’m not going to turn this country over to people who will turn back the clock on her rights.”
Obama decided not to call for Mubarak to step down. Instead, the U.S. would encourage a transition led by Mubarak’s newly installed Vice-President, Omar Suleiman. The strategy was to avoid the constitutional process that the State Department feared would lead to chaos. The senior official told me in the midst of the crisis, “I don’t think that because a group of young people get on the street that we are obliged to be for them.”
On January 29th, the White House made two major decisions: the U.S. would announce that it supported a transition in Egypt, and Obama would send an emissary to Mubarak to explain that, in the judgment of the United States, he could not survive the protests. The emissary would tell Mubarak that his best option was to try to leave a positive legacy by steering the country toward a real democratic transformation. Frank G. Wisner, the former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, who has long known Mubarak well, would deliver the message. The next day, Clinton appeared on five Sunday-morning talk shows to announce that Obama supported an “orderly transition” in Egypt. That afternoon, Wisner boarded a U.S. government plane for Cairo.
On January 31st, Wisner met with Mubarak in Cairo. The next day, word leaked out that Mubarak would address the country. That afternoon, Obama’s national-security advisers met in the Situation Room to discuss two issues: whether Obama should call Mubarak and whether Obama should make a public statement. Obama joined the meeting unexpectedly. As the discussion continued, Mubarak’s speech appeared on television, and the President and his aides paused to watch. “I am now careful to conclude my work for Egypt by presenting Egypt to the next government in a constitutional way which will protect Egypt,” Mubarak said. “I want to say, in clear terms, that in the next few months that are remaining of my current reign I will work very hard to carry out all the necessary measures to transfer power.”
In Tahrir Square, the protesters erupted in rage at the meandering and confusing speech. Obama now seemed to be uncomfortable taking an attitude of cool detachment from the people in the street. He called Mubarak, and tried to find a graceful way for the Egyptian President to exit that would also take care of the constitutional concerns Egyptian officials kept raising. He asked Mubarak if there was a way to alter the constitution to allow for a stable transition. He asked if there was a way to set up a caretaker government. A White House official summarized Mubarak’s response as: “Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Brotherhood.”
Obama then made a public statement that was more confrontational: “An orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now.” The urgent message alienated Israel and Saudi Arabia, among other allies. It also startled some people in the State Department. Clinton “walked a very narrow line and managed to do it without making the Egyptians too angry on either side,” a senior State Department official said. “After the President gave his statement, the people surrounding Mubarak began to get quite angry.”
The inherent contradictions of an Administration trying to simultaneously encourage and contain the forces of revolution in Egypt broke into the open on February 5th, when Wisner, who was then in New York, participated via videoconference in an international-affairs conference in Munich. After outlining the constitutional argument for keeping Mubarak in power, he said, “I therefore believe that President Mubarak’s continued leadership is critical; it’s his opportunity to write his own legacy. He’s given sixty years of his life to the service of his country.” According to friends, Wisner, who had talked with Obama before he went to Cairo, believed that his statement was consistent with the policy he was told to follow.
Clinton was at the conference in Munich, and, shortly after Wisner made his remarks, a senior Administration official gathered the press corps travelling with her in a small dining room at the Charles Hotel to brief us on the Secretary’s meetings. The official hadn’t heard Wisner’s comments, but when a reporter read a long excerpt off his BlackBerry the official blanched, his mouth agape.
“Wisner,” the official said, “was not speaking for the U.S. government or the Obama Administration. He was speaking as a private citizen.”
The public and private components of the Administration’s Egypt policy were at odds, and Wisner had risked blowing everything up. His tenure as an envoy was over. “They threw me under the bus,” a close friend remembers him saying.
Wisner referred dismissively to the “reëlection committee” at the White House, according to the friend. But in this case Obama’s political interests—needing to be seen as on the side of the protesters—aligned with the policy views of the idealists. An Obama adviser declared, “Obama didn’t give the Tahrir Square crowds every last thing they sought from him at the precise moment they sought it. But he went well beyond what many of America’s allies in the region wished to see.”
n March, I travelled to Cairo with Secretary Clinton. One evening, she was scheduled to meet with Egyptians who had been prominent in the protests that brought down Mubarak. However, one group, called the Coalition of Youth Revolution, which includes leaders from the activist movements and opposition parties in Egypt, boycotted the meeting. As Clinton talked with other civil-society members upstairs at the Four Seasons Hotel, four members of the abstaining coalition agreed to talk with me and three other journalists in the lobby.
I asked why they weren’t upstairs with the Secretary of State. “Hillary was against the revolution from the beginning to the last day, O.K.?” Mohammed Abbas, of the Muslim Brotherhood, said. “Obama supported this revolution. She was against.”
Abbas and Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, a member of the liberal Democratic Front Party, said that if Obama was upstairs they would meet with him. Abbas lit up at the idea. “We respect Obama’s attitude toward our revolution, and when we were in Tahrir Square we were following all of the leaders all over the world and what were their views,” Abbas said.
“His speeches were more understanding and more appreciative of what we were doing, especially his second one,” el-Ghazaly Harb said, referring to Obama’s demand that the transition “begin now.” He added, “We were in Tahrir Square and people were cheering for Obama’s speech, because they felt he was saying that we”—America—“were inspired by the Egyptian people and we understand what the teen-agers were saying. Maybe he’s using us, but that’s what I see.”
Later, when I relayed these comments to Clinton, she told me she didn’t take the snub personally. She said, “Many years ago, I was active against the Vietnam War, and I was involved in all kinds of student politics, and so I understand there’s always a full range of people in movements like this. And I remember refusing to meet with people.” She was unmoved by the fact that these protesters had been integral to starting the revolution. “The people who start revolutions may or may not be the people who actually end up governing countries.”
The activists she did meet with were not as organized as she had hoped. “As incredibly emotional and moving and inspiring as it was,” she said, speaking of the demonstrations, “I looked at these twenty young people around the table, and they were complaining about how the elections are going to be held, and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists are so well organized, and the remnants of the old National Democratic Party are so well organized. I said, ‘So, well, are you organizing? Do you have an umbrella group that is going to represent the youth of Egypt? Do you have a political agenda?’ And they all looked up and said no. It made my heart sink.”
n March 16th, Clinton flew from Cairo to Tunis to continue her tour of revolutionary North Africa. The route took us over the Mediterranean just off the coast of Libya. The G.P.S. maps in the cabin of Clinton’s Air Force plane lit up with the name “Benghazi,” reminding everyone that, on the ground, Muammar Qaddafi’s men were marching on that city. Earlier in the day, Qaddafi had gone on the radio to warn the citizens of Benghazi. “It’s over. We are coming tonight,” he said. “We will find you in your closets.”
Protesters had started to gather in Benghazi on February 15th. Qaddafi’s security forces reacted with violence four days later, firing on a crowd of some twenty thousand demonstrators in Benghazi and killing at least a hundred of them. On February 26th, the United Nations passed a resolution that placed an arms embargo and economic sanctions on the Libyan regime and referred Qaddafi to the International Criminal Court. Two days later, the U.S., through lobbying led by Clinton and Power, helped remove Libya from its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council. By tightening an economic noose around Qaddafi and isolating him diplomatically, Obama and the international community were beginning to use the tools that Power had outlined in “A Problem from Hell.”
The debate then narrowed to whether the United States and others should intervene militarily. The principal option was to set up a no-fly zone to prevent Libyan planes from attacking the protest movement, which had quickly turned into a full-scale rebellion based in the eastern half of the country. The decision about intervention in Libya was an unusually clear choice between interests and values. “Of all the countries in the region there, our real interests in Libya are minimal,” Brent Scowcroft told me. For a President whose long-term goal was to extricate the U.S. from Middle East conflicts, it was an especially vexing debate.
Within the Administration, Robert Gates, the Defense Secretary, was the most strenuous opponent of establishing a no-fly zone, or any other form of military intervention. Like Scowcroft, Gates objected to intervention because he did not think it was in the United States’ vital interest. He also pointed out a fact that many people didn’t seem to understand: the first step in creating a no-fly zone would be to bomb the Libyan air defenses. Clinton disagreed with him and argued the case for intervention with Obama. It was the first major issue on which she and Gates had different views.
The days leading up to Obama’s decision were perplexing to outsiders. American Presidents usually lead the response to world crises, but Obama seemed to stay hidden that week. From the outside, it looked as though the French were dragging him into the conflict. On March 14th, Clinton arrived in Paris, but she had no firm decision to convey. According to a French official, when Clinton met with President Nicolas Sarkozy she declined to endorse the no-fly zone, which Sarkozy interpreted as American reluctance to do anything. “We started to wonder where, exactly, the Administration was going,” the official said.
Late that evening, at her suite at the Westin hotel in Paris, Clinton met for forty-five minutes with Mahmoud Jebril, a representative from the Libyan opposition. I waited in the lobby with a number of reporters, hoping to talk to Jebril after the meeting. But all we got was Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French philosopher, who had taken up the cause of the Libyan opposition and was shepherding Jebril to his meetings with diplomats. We later learned that Jebril was dejected by Clinton’s unwillingness to commit to the no-fly zone and, not wanting to face the press, left the hotel by another exit.
The next evening, Obama held a meeting in the Situation Room. By then, it had become clear that the rebels, who had once seemed on the verge of sweeping Qaddafi out of power, were weak, and poorly armed; they had lost almost all the gains of the previous days. In New York, the Lebanese, the French, and the United Kingdom had prepared a U.N. resolution to implement a no-fly zone, and the world was waiting to see if Obama would join the effort. The White House meeting opened with an assessment of the situation on the ground in Libya. Qaddafi’s forces were on the outskirts of Ajdabiyah, which supplies water and fuel to Benghazi. “The President was told Qaddafi is going to retake Ajdabiyah in twenty-four hours,” a White House official who was in the meeting said. “And then the last stop on the train is Benghazi. If he got there, he would complete the military offensive, and that could be the place where he goes house to house and where a massacre could occur.”
Obama asked if a no-fly zone would prevent that grim scenario. His intelligence and military advisers said no. Qaddafi was using tanks, not war planes, to crush the rebellion. Obama asked his aides to come up with some more robust military options, and left for dinner. At a second meeting that night, he was presented with the option of pushing for a broader resolution that would allow for the U.S. to protect the Libyan rebels by bombing government forces. He instructed Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., to pursue that option.
On March 17th, I interviewed Clinton in Tunis. She was sitting under a canopy by the hotel pool, eating breakfast. Although she had been noncommittal with the diplomats in France two days earlier, she now made it clear that the Obama Administration had made a decision. It was well known that she favored intervention, but she was frank about the difficulty in making such decisions. “I get up every morning and I look around the world,” she said. “People are being killed in Côte d’Ivoire, they’re being killed in the Eastern Congo, they’re being oppressed and abused all over the world by dictators and really unsavory characters. So we could be intervening all over the place. But that is not a—what is the standard? Is the standard, you know, a leader who won’t leave office in Ivory Coast and is killing his own people? Gee, that sounds familiar. So part of it is having to make tough choices and wanting to help the international community accept responsibility.”
Clinton insisted that the U.S. had to have regional support before it took action, and emphasized that it was crucial that U.N. action had been supported by the Arab League. “So now we’re going to see whether the Security Council will support the Arab League. Not support the United States—support the Arab League. That is a significant difference. And for those who want to see the United States always acting unilaterally, it’s not satisfying. But, for the world we’re trying to build, where we have a lot of responsible actors who are willing to step up and lead, it is exactly what we should be doing.”
The French and the British were shocked by the quick turn of events. Instead of the President announcing the Administration’s position from the East Room of the White House, the U.N. envoy quietly proposed transforming a tepid resolution for a no-fly zone into a permission for full-scale military intervention in Libya. Some officials thought it was a trick. Was it possible that the Americans were trying to make the military options appear so bleak that China and Russia would be sure to block action?
Gradually, it became clear that the U.S. was serious. Clinton spoke with her Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, who had previously told her that Russia would “never never” support even a no-fly zone. The Russians agreed to abstain. Without the cover of the Russians, the Chinese almost never veto Security Council resolutions. The vote, on March 17th, was 10–0, with five abstentions. It was the first time in its sixty-six years that the United Nations authorized military action to preëmpt an “imminent massacre.” Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, wrote, “It was, by any objective standard, the most rapid multinational military response to an impending human rights crisis in history.”
As the bombs dropped on Libyan tanks, President Obama made a point of continuing his long-scheduled trip to South America. He wanted to show that America has interests in the rest of the world, even as it was drawn into yet another crisis in the Middle East.
his spring, Obama officials often expressed impatience with questions about theory or about the elusive quest for an Obama doctrine. One senior Administration official reminded me what the former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said when asked what was likely to set the course of his government: “Events, dear boy, events.”
Obama has emphasized bureaucratic efficiency over ideology, and approached foreign policy as if it were case law, deciding his response to every threat or crisis on its own merits. “When you start applying blanket policies on the complexities of the current world situation, you’re going to get yourself into trouble,” he said in a recent interview with NBC News.
Obama’s reluctance to articulate a grand synthesis has alienated both realists and idealists. “On issues like whether to intervene in Libya there’s really not a compromise and consensus,” Slaughter said. “You can’t be a little bit realist and a little bit democratic when deciding whether or not to stop a massacre.”
Brzezinski, too, has become disillusioned with the President. “I greatly admire his insights and understanding. I don’t think he really has a policy that’s implementing those insights and understandings. The rhetoric is always terribly imperative and categorical: ‘You must do this,’ ‘He must do that,’ ‘This is unacceptable.’ ” Brzezinski added, “He doesn’t strategize. He sermonizes.”
The one consistent thread running through most of Obama’s decisions has been that America must act humbly in the world. Unlike his immediate predecessors, Obama came of age politically during the post-Cold War era, a time when America’s unmatched power created widespread resentment. Obama believes that highly visible American leadership can taint a foreign-policy goal just as easily as it can bolster it. In 2007, Obama said, “America must show—through deeds as well as words—that we stand with those who seek a better life. That child looking up at the helicopter must see America and feel hope.”
In 2009 and early 2010, Obama was sometimes criticized for not acting at all. He was cautious during Iran’s Green Revolution and deferential to his generals during the review of Afghanistan strategy. But his response to the Arab Spring has been bolder. He broke with Mubarak at a point when some of the older establishment advised against it. In Libya, he overruled Gates and his military advisers and pushed our allies to adopt a broad and risky intervention. It is too early to know the consequences of these decisions. Libya appears to be entering a protracted civil war; American policy toward Mubarak frightened—and irritated—Saudi Arabia, where instability could send oil prices soaring. The U.S. keeps getting stuck in the Middle East.
Nonetheless, Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the President’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.” That’s not a slogan designed for signs at the 2012 Democratic Convention, but it does accurately describe the balance that Obama now seems to be finding. It’s a different definition of leadership than America is known for, and it comes from two unspoken beliefs: that the relative power of the U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world. Pursuing our interests and spreading our ideals thus requires stealth and modesty as well as military strength. “It’s so at odds with the John Wayne expectation for what America is in the world,” the adviser said. “But it’s necessary for shepherding us through this phase.”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/02/110502fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all
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Obama argued that what he lacked in experience with foreign affairs he made up for with foreign travel: four years in Indonesia as a boy, and trips to Pakistan, India, Kenya, and Europe during and after college. But there was no mistaking the lightness of his résumé. Just a year before coming to Washington, State Senator Obama was not immersed in the dangers of nuclear Pakistan or an ascendant China; as a provincial legislator, he was investigating the dangers of a toy known as the Yo-Yo Water Ball. (He tried, unsuccessfully, to have it banned.)
Now this is about his speed. Should have stuck with this.
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While I watched the speech I also thought the personal pronoun use was pretty telling and far less than magnanimous.
The First-Person Presidency
President Obama takes credit for operations that would have been impossible had Senator Obama’s views prevailed.
Here are a few excerpts from President Obama’s speech on Sunday night about the killing of Osama bin Laden.
“Tonight, I can report . . . And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta . . . I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action. . . . Today, at my direction . . . I’ve made clear . . . Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear . . . Tonight, I called President Zardari . . . and my team has also spoken. . .These efforts weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief . . . Finally, let me say to the families . . . I know that it has, at times, frayed. . . .”
Most of these first-person pronouns could have been replaced by either the first-person plural (our, we) or proper nouns (the United States, America). But they reflect a now well-known Obama trait of personalizing the presidency.
The problem of first-personalizing national security is twofold. One, it is not consistent. Good news is reported by Obama in terms of “I”; bad news is delivered as “reset,” “the previous administration,” “in the past”: All good things abroad are due to Obama himself; all bad things are still the blowback from George W. Bush.
Two, there is the small matter of hypocrisy. The protocols for taking out Osama bin Laden were all established by President Bush and all opposed by Senator and then candidate Obama. Yet President Obama never seeks to explain that disconnect; indeed, he emphasizes it by the overuse of the first person. When the president reminds us this week of what “over the years I’ve repeatedly made clear,” does he include his opposition to what he now has institutionalized?
Guantanamo proves to have been important for gathering intelligence; Barack Obama derided it as “a tremendous recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.”
Some key intelligence was found by interrogating prisoners abroad; Barack Obama wished to end that practice: “This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of law.” “That will be my position as president. That includes renditions.” Renditions have not ended under Obama, but expanded.
In some cases we are trying suspects through military tribunals; here again, Barack Obama used to deplore the practice he now has adopted: “a flawed military-commission system that has failed to convict anyone of a terrorist act since the 9/11 attacks and that has been embroiled in legal challenges.”
Senator Obama complained about airborne attacks on the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands. President Obama increased Predator assassination attacks fivefold. He has killed four times as many terrorist suspects by Predators in 27 months than did President Bush in eight years.
In January 2007 — three weeks after President Bush announced the surge — Senator Obama introduced the “Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007.” If it had passed, that law would have removed all troops from Iraq by March 2008. Obama derided the surge in unequivocal terms both before and after its implementation: “I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.” “Here’s what we know. The surge has not worked.”
Candidate Obama criticized warrantless wiretaps, in accusing the Bush administration in the harshest terms: “This administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not.” A disinterested examination of present policy regarding both wiretaps and intercepts would show no change from the Bush administration, or indeed considerable expansion of the use of these tools.
If one wonders why former President Bush did not attend ceremonies with President Obama this week in New York, it might be because of past rhetoric like this about policies Obama once derided and then codified: “I taught constitutional law for ten years at the University of Chicago, so . . . um . . . your next president will actually believe in the Constitution, which you can’t say about your current president.” George Bush did not believe in the U.S. Constitution?
In sum, Senator Obama opposed tribunals, renditions, Guantanamo, preventive detention, Predator-drone attacks, the Iraq War, wiretaps, and intercepts — before President Obama either continued or expanded nearly all of them, in addition to embracing targeted assassinations, new body scanning and patdowns at airports, and a third preemptive war against an oil-exporting Arab Muslim nation — this one including NATO efforts to kill the Qaddafi family. The only thing more surreal than Barack Obama’s radical transformation is the sudden approval of it by the once hysterical Left. In Animal Farm and 1984 fashion, the world we knew in 2006 has simply been airbrushed away.
Times change. People say one thing when they are candidates for public office, quite another as officeholders with responsibility of governance. Obama as president naturally does not wish to be treated in the manner in which he once treated President Bush. Conservatives might resent Obama’s prior demagoguery at a critical period in our national security, as much as they are relieved that he seems to have grown up and repudiated it.
Okay, the public perhaps understands all that hypocrisy as the stuff of presidential politics. But I think it will not quite accept the next step of taking full credit in hyperbolic first-person fashion for operations that would have been impossible had his own views prevailed.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/266580/first-person-presidency-victor-davis-hanson
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20110524/ts_yblog_theticket/obama-code-named-smart-alec-in-britain
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20110524/ts_yblog_theticket/obama-code-named-smart-alec-in-britain
What's the Punjabi word for "empty-suit"? Just asking.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tfaPhnQrsU&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCRC9tHyoQ&feature=player_embedded
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/these-are-obamas-top-10-insults-against-britain/
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tfaPhnQrsU&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCRC9tHyoQ&feature=player_embedded
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/these-are-obamas-top-10-insults-against-britain/
What if Bush/Palin/any other republican had done this?
At least he brings that same level of skill and competence to every aspect of his presidency.
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By Conn Carroll
Created May 24 2011 - 4:26pm
The truth behind Chrysler’s fake auto bailout pay back
It is not every day that the White House and Democratic National Committee celebrate a supposedly private company’s debt restructuring plan, but such is the marriage of big government and big business under the Obama administration. The New York Times reports: “Chrysler said Tuesday that it had paid back $7.6 billion in loans from the American and Canadian governments, marking another significant step in the revival of the company, the smallest of the Detroit automakers.”
But as The Truth About Cars reports, the loan pay back is just another Obama con job:
Back in November of 2009, when GM announced that it would repay its government loans, it didn’t take much investigation to realize that The General was simply shuffling government money from one pocket to the other and that true “payback” was still a ways off. … And now that our government finds itself “contemplating a runaway deficit and getting rid of its 8 percent of Chrysler’s equity,” would you believe that a similar federal money-shuffle is under way? Believe it.
American taxpayers have already spent more than $13 billion bailing out Chrysler. The Obama administration already forgave more than $4 billion of that debt when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Taxpayers are never getting that money back. But how is Chrysler now paying off the rest of the $7.6 billion they owe the Treasury Department?
The Obama administration’s bailout agreement with Fiat gave the Italian car company a “Incremental Call Option” that allows it to buy up to 16% of Chrysler stock at a reduced price. But in order to exercise the option, Fiat had to first pay back at least $3.5 billion of its loan to the Treasury Department. But Fiat was having trouble getting private banks to lend it the money. Enter Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu who has signaled that he will approve a fuel-efficient vehicle loan to Chrysler for … wait for it … $3.5 billion. TTAC comments:
Now, technically the DOE loan program is supposed to be used for specific, qualifying retooling projects, so Fiat can’t literally take the DOE money and use it to pay back the government loans. But freeing up $3.5b in capital that would otherwise be spent on retooling with low-cost loans will make it infinitely easier for Chrysler to secure the $3.5b in debt refinancing it needs. And, in light of the GAO’s pointed criticisms of the DOE loan program’s fairness and transparency, it’s hard to overlook the coincidental nature of Chrysler’s need for $3.5b and the government’s allocation of extra funds to apparently guarantee a low cost loan to Chrysler for precisely the same amount. After all, we’ve seen this movie before..
So, to recap, the Obama Energy Department is loaning a foreign car company $3.5 billion so that it can pay the Treasury Department $7.6 billion even though American taxpayers spent $13 billion to save an American car company that is currently only worth $5 billion.
Oh, and Obama plans to make this “success” a centerpiece of his 2012 campaign.
Beltway Confidential audacity auto bailout Chrysler Fiat
Source URL: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/05/truth-behind-chrysler-s-fake-auto-bailout-pay-back
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"Obama plans to make this “success” (auto bailouts) a centerpiece of his 2012 campaign"
BBG, maybe his fund raisers can be called Cash for Clunkers...
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http://detnews.com/article/20110524/MIVIEW/105240374/Payne--SUVs-saved-Chrysler
"But there is one inconvenient truth you won't hear ... Chrysler wouldn't be here had it not defied its green White House masters. Chrysler's return to profitability is a direct result of the fabulous success of its SUVs.
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110524/MIVIEW/105240374/Payne--SUVs-saved-Chrysler#ixzz1NTuNqtlB
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2011/03/27/
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2011/04/10/
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The words speak for themselves:
George W. Bush speech after the capture of Saddam Hussein:
The success of yesterday's mission is a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq . The operation was based on the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator's footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers in the hunt for members of the fallen regime, and in their effort to bring hope and freedom to the Iraqi people. Their work continues, and so do the risks. Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them.
Barack Obama speech after the killing of bin Laden:
And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network. Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan . And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad , Pakistan ..
Obama used the words I, me, or my over a dozen times in his entire speech. George Bush used them twice to say "I thank" and "I congratulate".
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Good post.
The distinction is succinct and clear.
Yet the present Prez is supposedly "personally" popular according to *poll*sters (many of whom are *huck*sters). I have to wonder. :?
The cognitive dissonance of the American Public? :-o
How anyone could like this man is beyond me. :-(
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President Obama is now saying that high energy prices are part of what is holding back our economic growth. IMAGINE THAT!
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Step one on my 'what would you do' discussion is to open up energy production. A good time to start that would have been in the FY1996 budget reconciliation bill (H.R. 2491, §§5312-5344) would have opened ANWR to energy development, but the measure was vetoed: http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/100215.pdf
A good time to energize a national strategy of increased energy development on all fronts the next decade came from the Cheney task force. Instead they attacked it ad hominem. Had we implemented that plan then, Obama might have a better shot at reelection now. I doubt if the incumbent can see that even now. Hindsight is not always 20/20.
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Editorial: Obama's Job-Killing Jobs Council
Posted 06/13/2011 06:41 PM ET
Economy: President Obama says he's 100% focused these days on creating jobs. So why is he taking advice from a bunch of CEOs whose companies have been shedding jobs for years?
In February, Obama chartered the Jobs and Competitiveness Council with a mission of leaving "no stone unturned" in the search of ways to boost the country's anemic job growth. But you could tell from the start that this council would have trouble even finding those stones, let alone turning them over.
After all, Obama stuffed the group full of Fortune 500 CEOs — General Electric, American Express, DuPont, Time Warner, Eastman Kodak and Xerox, among them. While these may be good companies, they've hardly been roaring engines of job growth. In most cases, in fact, the opposite is true. Some examples:
• GE's domestic workforce shrank by 25,000 — almost 16% — between 2001 and 2010, according to the company's annual reports. (The number of overseas GE jobs climbed over those years.)
• AmEx employed 28% fewer workers in 2010 than it did a decade ago.
• Kodak's workforce cratered to just 18,800 last year from 75,000 in 2001.
• Xerox's employee base shrank by nearly a third between 2001 and 2009, before it acquired Affiliated Computer Services and its 74,000 workers in 2010.
• Even Intel has trimmed the number of workers it employs over the past decade.
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Beyond this, the board is made up of the heads of two big unions, an energy company, a railroad, an airline, a couple investment firms, and the like.
Just one business represented on the board — Facebook — is a genuine growth company. And the council is all but devoid of the kind of small- and midsize firms responsible for two-thirds of the nation's new jobs.
It's little wonder, then, that the list of immediate must-do, job-creating ideas the council came up with — and outlined in a Monday op-ed signed by GE's Jeff Immelt and AmEx's Ken Chenault — is so uninspiring.
More money to retrain workers? More tax dollars retrofitting commercial buildings to boost energy efficiency? More government loans passed out by the Small Business Administration? That's the best the council could come up with after almost four months' work?
At least the board did give a nod to job-choking red tape, calling on the administration to streamline permitting processes. But what about the three job-creating free-trade agreements Obama has locked up in his desk drawer? How about an immediate cut in corporate and capital gains taxes? Or for that matter any of the many other job creation ideas we detailed in this space last week?
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/575237/201106131841/Do-As-They-Say.htm
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/canada-turns-away-obamas-old-pal-1960s-domestic-terrorist-bill-ayers/
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The Nation (fair and balanced) pulled its Wikileaks story. Hard not to go 'Media Issues' with this, but the cognitive dissonance of this administration is breathtaking. Big corporations over workers? Markets set prices over government?
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http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_pulled_scoop_shows_us_booste.php
Columbia Journalism Review
A Pulled Scoop Shows U.S. Fought to Keep Haitian Wages Down
By Ryan Chittum
The Nation has a scoop—or had, actually—from Wikileaks cables showing that the Obama administration pressured Haiti not to raise its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour, or five bucks a day.
The magazine posted the story the other day and has now pulled it, saying it will repost it next Wednesday “To accord with the publishing schedule of Haiti Liberté,” its partner on the piece.
But you can’t stuff the news genie back in the bottle. They already put it in my browser and many others, so I’ll summarize what it said (and I’ll link to it once The Nation republishes it).
Two years ago, Haiti unanimously passed a law sharply raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. That doesn’t sound like much (and it isn’t), but it was two and a half times the then-minimum of 24 cents an hour.
This infuriated contractors for American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department involved. The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).
The Nation:
Still the US Embassy wasn’t pleased. A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum “did not take economic reality into account” but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”
Well, hey. Imagine Haitians doing things for their “unemployed and underpaid masses” rather than rich Yankee corporations. The outrage! No wonder we have 9.1 percent unemployment and 16 percent underemployment here while the folks who sent the economy in the tank are back making millions.
Let’s do a little math. Haiti has about 25,000 garment workers. If you paid each of them $2 a day more, it would cost their employers $50,000 per working day, or about $12.5 million a year.
Zooming in on specific companies helps clarify this even more. As of last year Hanes had 3,200 Haitians making t-shirts for it. Paying each of them two bucks a day more would cost it about $1.6 million a year. Hanesbrands Incorporated made $211 million on $4.3 billion in sales last year, and presumably it would pass on at least some of its higher labor costs to consumers.
Or better yet, Hanesbrands CEO Richard Noll could forego some of his rich compensation package. He could $10 million package last year He could pay for the raises for those 3,200 t-shirt makers with just one-sixth of the $10 million in salary and bonus he raked in last year.
And that five dollars a day? The Nation reports that a Haitian family of three (two kids) needed $12.50 a day in 2008 to make ends meet.
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I walk into a doctor's lounge this morning and the TV is on showing the talking heads discussing Boehner's, Biden's, and the One's golf game.
Talk about dissonance with Americans! :-(
Why when I think of Boehner I freely associate to the word "idiot"?
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CCP, I agree and it goes both ways. Obama shouldn't be drawing attention to his hacker addiction. Golf is a wonderful game, a skill game and a strategy game - something to be played when you are done with your work. Lousy golf is meaningless, a walk in the park with guys who are not your friends or your peers and with the secret service, instead of time spent with the two young daughters (they grow up so fast) and loving wife back home, if not on budget matters or the laser focus on jobs. Obama already has amazing amounts of time logged on the golf course, a potential flag if/when the media or the public ever catches up with him. Boehner should not have walked into Obama's trap. This weekend meeting should have been in the budget room. Worst case is that they should be playing openly for who gets to speak first and for how long at the Sunday budget meeting.
Approval of congress is at 21% RCP/ 17% Gallup for a whole lot of reasons. This is not part of the solution.
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Real men spend time shooting and training to win. Any reports on how many times Boehner cried on the outing?
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1631 news stories publicly promoting the fact that they are going to play golf. 6 hours later it reminds me of his economic plan... still no results.
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**Remember how smart Obama was supposed to be?
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2011/06/president-obamas-terrible-mistake.html
President Obama's Terrible Mistake
Posted By Blackfive • [June 23, 2011]
From a Blackfive reader "T":
The President addressing the 10th Mountain Division today at Fort Drum:
"First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously."
As we all know, SSG Sal Giunta, of the 173rd Airborne, was the first living recipient (2011) of the MOH who fought in Iraq/Afganistan. SFC Jared Monti, 10th Mountain Division, was KIA in Afghanistan in 2006. He was posthumously awarded the MOH by Obama in 2009.
How does the Commander-in-Chief mix these heroes up? He put that medal around Giunta's neck and he stood with Monti's parents as they grieved. These fallen heroes leave such a great legacy, and we should know all their names. The ironic part of the speech, and this comes after the announcement of the politically pressured drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, was Obama's closing remark, "Know that your Commander-in-Chief has your back."
It shouldn't take a teleprompter for the C-in-C to get it right.
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(http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/assets_c/2011/06/RAMclr-062811-hokeyIBD.jpg.cms-thumb-460x324.jpeg)
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http://americanglob.com/2011/06/29/one-american-family-will-be-taking-a-nice-vacation-this-summer/
One American Family Will Be Taking A Nice Vacation This Summer
It’s a good thing too because Obama must be exhausted from those countless rounds of golf.
What’s that? You can’t afford a family vacation this summer? Nonsense.
You’re paying for this one, aren’t you?
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2011/06/06/
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2011/06/19/
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/07/01/corporate_jets_and_tax_breaks__110438.html
July 1, 2011
Corporate Jets and Tax Breaks
By Jonah Goldberg
President Obama's core message in his Wednesday press conference, his first since March, could be found in his advice to Republicans. "You go talk to your constituents and ask them, ‘Are you willing to compromise your kids' safety so some corporate-jet owner can get a tax break?'"
This was just one of six shots the president took at corporate-jet owners. A novice might be forgiven for thinking that the president really doesn't like corporate jets or that the Republicans cared so much about the darn things that they had proposed crossing out "arms" in the Second Amendment and replacing it with "corporate jets." Where's Charlton Heston to proclaim, "From my cold dead hands you can have my Learjet 85 . . . "?
A novice might also think that tax status of corporate jets is of disproportionate significance in how to move this country toward a balanced budget.
But the novice would be wrong. For starters, Obama's most recent budget calls for adding $9.5 trillion in new debt over the next decade. If you got rid of the "accelerated depreciation" of corporate jets, Reuters economics columnist James Pethokoukis calculates, it would save a whopping .03 percent of that total.
Sadly, the room was full of journalists who do not consider themselves novices but who nonetheless let Obama get away with this demagogic dishonesty. No one asked the president why he suddenly cares so much about getting rid of a tax break he himself was for before he was against it. Indeed, no one asked why, if it is such an affront to the liberal conscience, it was part of Obama's stimulus bill, which was passed without any Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate (which means Nancy Pelosi voted for special tax breaks for corporate jets and the GOP didn't).
More broadly, no one threw a flag on his claim that "every single observer who's not an elected official, who's not a politician," agrees with him on the burning need to raise taxes as part of any budget deal. This is a good example of Obama's most grating tic, his need to claim that all reasonable and serious people agree with him and anyone who disagrees must be doing so for base or ideological motives.
No one queried why he talks about the need to raise taxes on "millionaires and billionaires" but the fine print of his proposals defines millionaires and billionaires as people who make $200,000 a year as individuals or $250,000 as joint-filing couples. Jay Duckson at Central Business Jets tells the Wall Street Journal that the starting price for a private jet is $10 million dollars. Annual upkeep and fuel is about $500,000. You do the math.
This points to what is most offensive about Obama's focus-grouped class-warfare rhetoric: the total incoherence of the underlying policies.
The day before his press conference, Obama was in Bettendorf, Iowa, at the Alcoa Davenport Works plant to highlight his economic vision for manufacturing. "Alcoa is showing us the future we can build here in eastern Iowa and across the country," he proclaimed.
"The idea is to create jobs now, and to make sure America stays on the cutting edge of manufacturing for years to come," Obama declared.
The factory Obama visited, however, isn't a generic aluminum plant. It is, according to Alcoa, the "premier aerospace supply plant and is today the hub of Alcoa's $3 billion aerospace business."
That includes the general aviation industry, which is centered in Wichita, Kan., where they make private jets "right here in America" as Obama likes to say. The upshot: Obama says that Alcoa must lose business among American customers to repeal a tax break Obama and the Democrats supported because Republicans want to balance the budget.
To be fair, Alcoa's biggest customers aren't manufacturers of private jets but the big manufacturers of commercial jets - you know, like Boeing. Well, that company is being told by Obama's union-hack-packed National Labor Relations Board that it cannot open a new manufacturing plant in South Carolina, because to do so would offend Obama's beloved unions in Washington State.
The point isn't that there's no merit to any of Obama's positions (personally, I'm all for clearing the junk out of the tax code). The point is that at this point merit simply has nothing to do with the positions Obama takes.
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"Iowahawk is a genius!" ... continued here:
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/07/questions-so-many-questions.html
Are you in favor of gay marriage for Libyan bombing crews on Boeing planes made in South Carolina?
Would you get tougher with Iran if you knew they were working with Scott Walker?
When your economic advisers hold policy meetings, do they stuff a towel at the bottom of the door?
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Isn't in Kali-fornia there is a bill that would make mandatory gay history in schools.
We have a large percentage of children who cannot tell you what Abraham Lincoln looks like, who do not know the US was originally part of the British empire but we must have gay history in grade school!
Right. And it wasn't the gays spreading aids it was Ronald Reagan.
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Obama v. Obama
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-vs-obama_576524.html
In the session, Obama rejected a Republican proposal to seek $2.5 trillion in spending cuts and reforms, and insisted on higher taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals.
It is so hard catching this guy in a contradiction.
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Constitutional Law Professor Barack Obama ruled out extreme measures in a budget deal like the Balanced Budget Amendment. Constitutional amendments do not go through the Executive Branch and are none of his business, except to comply if ratified.
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"Constitutional Law Professor Barack Obama"
Mark Levin had a law professor from Univ of Chicago on his show last year. He knew Brock and is a pro 2nd amendment professor. Apparantly this is rare. He stated Brock was the only prof who would never speak to him because of his political stance. He said this was unusual. The other liberal professors would at least be polite and friendly. The world's first post partisan prez was the only one who was a cold fish. This professor also stated he witnessed absolutely no research, no original legal thought, and no real insterest in the Constitution by Brock. the whole reason from what he could tell Brock was at U of C was to establish a political base. It is was all about political calculation.
This goes along with the other circumstantial evidence that Brock was the chosen one by the progressive movement to be their mouthpiece. It also goes along with the obvious that he is not an original thinker, not a conciliator, very political/partisan.
He is the angry Black, who dislikes Jews (he just uses them), whites, capatilizism, and America.
Krauthammer had it slightly wrong. It is not Brock's temperment that is what makes him "special" it is his ability to lie and deceive.
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CCP, Even the 'temperament' is a myth according to an opinion on the Wash Post site yesterday:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/the-myth-of-obamas-great-temperament/2011/03/29/gIQALFPvDI_blog.html
The myth of Obama’s great temperament
By Jennifer Rubin
During the 2008 campaign Obama-spinners and nearly the entire press corps (I repeat myself) bandied about the notion that what the candidate lacked in experience (none when it came to running anything other than the Harvard Law Review) he made up in superior temperament. He was cool, calm, unflappable — a sort of Mr. Spock who put rationality above emotion. Has there ever been a worst case of false advertising? Throughout his presidency Barack Obama has shown himself to be thin-skinned and cranky...
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I hate to pile on, but I can't remember seeing this covered here:
Whoops, Obama lied repeatedly about his mom's health coverage:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/07/14/obama-lied-about-mother%E2%80%99s-health-insurance-problem/
It's not a health care issue, it's a character flaw.
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"It's not a health care issue, it's a character flaw."
Yes, we spoke of his obvious narcisstic personality disorder.
It is not called a "disorder" for nothing. These people can be extraordinarily deceptive, dishonest, placing blame always on others, never really accepting responsibility for anything. They love themselves and think they are superior. As a result they think they can charm and manipulate everyone around them to their whim.
In the beggining they often/usually are successful. Savvy people will soon catch on. Those who think they are good judges of character but are not will take longer. And of course there are those that will always be suckered.
It does appear more and more people are catching on. WE can only hope the Repubs can rally behind a candidate who can give an alternative message before it is too late.
Mark my words if Brock loses we will see him pardon every illegal here and around the world. That will be HIS payback.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jun/21/cocaine-addiction-linked-brain-abnormalities
Scientists have found "significant abnormalities" in the brains of people addicted to cocaine, which could help explain some of the compulsive behaviour associated with using the drug. It may also hint at why some people are more prone to addiction.
Brain scans revealed that cocaine users had a "dramatic decrease in grey matter" in their frontal lobes, according to researchers, which affected key functions including decision-making, memory and attention, while some of their brain's rewards systems were significantly bigger. Karen Ersche of the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cambridge, who led the latest work, found the longer a person had been using cocaine, the poorer their attention was, and the more compulsively they used the drug.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/07/obamas-senior-moment-ill-be-turning-50-in-a-week.html
Obama's Senior Moment: 'I'll be turning 50 in a week.'
July 15, 2011 3:38 PM
Actually…he’ll be turning 50 in three weeks. His birthday is August 4, two days after the debt ceiling deadline. Senior moment?
**He doesn't know how old he is, or how old his daughter is, who he has given the medal of honor to, how many states are in the country.....
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/laura-ingraham-airs-scary-obama-remix-of-jimmy-carters-malaise-speech/
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http://www.punditandpundette.com/2009/09/what-not-to-wear-to-medal-of-honor.html
September 20, 2009
What not to wear to a Medal of Honor award ceremony
You might think a posthumous Medal of Honor award ceremony would be a somber occasion, but not everyone would agree with you. Either this is an especially skillful photo shop effort or Michelle Obama has no clue whatsoever about the nature of this event. U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Jared C. Monti's parents received the award for him. I hope they didn't notice the first lady's stunningly inappropriate dress, but that's unlikely.
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2011/07/16/
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Brock in *his* tizzy speech tonight stated:
"The American people voted for a divided government, not a dysfunctional government."
Wrong on both counts Brockster:
The American people voted for *less* government - ya stooge.
God almighty we have to get rid of this guy.
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By JAMES TARANTO
So this is what we have come to: the president of the United States, and not just any president but the World's Greatest Orator, standing in the White House petulantly reproving his partisan opponents and imploring his supporters: "If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of Congress know."
Three cheers to the U.S. Postal Service, which by all accounts has dealt with the ensuing flood of mail without missing a step.
Earlier yesterday, as National Journal reports, Obama "let his frustration over the stalled debt talks seep into an address on Latino issues, confessing that he'd like to 'bypass Congress and change the laws on my own' ":
He told the National Council of La Raza, "Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you."
But, he had to concede, "that's not how our system works."
Being a dictator is a relatively easy job. Even junior tyrants like Bashar al-Assad and Kim Jong Il can do it. All a dictator needs to be effective is the ability to instill fear. An effective democratic leader needs to be able to command respect.
European Pressphoto Agency
Obama has a problem commanding the respect of his adversaries. Immediately after his address to the nation last night, Speaker John Boehner went on TV with a response. Fox News Channel's Bret Baier reported that apart from the State of the Union, it was the first such response from the opposing party to a presidential address since 2007, when George W. Bush gave a speech on Iraq.
And Boehner mocked Obama's rhetoric: "The president has often said we need a 'balanced' approach--which in Washington means we spend more, you pay more." One might observe that the partisan sniping was mutual. But the president is the higher-status player. He diminishes himself by punching down.
Obama has turned into President Rodney Dangerfield: He doesn't get no respect. (For readers too young to remember Dangerfield, that's not litotes. He used the double negative as an intensifier.) "So we're left with a stalemate," he said last night. "At least that's what Michelle tells me."
OK, we made up that punch line. But it's true that lately Obama hasn't been getting much respect from his friends, either. "I think it would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama believes he's doing," Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent self-styled socialist from Vermont said last week. John Nichols of The Nation, a hard-left magazine, cites a CNN poll that finds this feeling increasingly common among Obama's base:
The number of Americans who say they disapprove of the president's performance because he is not liberal enough has doubled since May. "Drill down into that number and you'll see signs of a stirring discontent on the left," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland, who explains that, "Obama's approval rating among liberals has dropped to the lowest point in his presidency, and roughly one in four Americans who disapprove of him say they feel that way because he has not been liberal enough, a new high for that measure."
"What evidence do we have that Obama knows what he's doing?" former Enron adviser Paul Krugman asked last week. A stopped clock is right twice a day, but Krugman then asked: "When has Obama given progressives any reason to believe they can trust him?"
That may explain Obama's unwillingness to compromise in the debt debate. "Nobody today is talking about tax increases except Barack Obama," CNN's Gloria Borger noted last night. Reports over the weekend had congressional Republicans and Democrats negotiating for an agreement to cut spending without raising taxes. By butting in with his demand for tax increases, Obama only prolongs the standoff. Why? There's one logical explanation: to pander to his left-wing base.
Obama's position is as brittle as it is rigid. It's true that some polls suggest the public is more inclined to blame congressional Republicans than the president if the dispute remains unresolved and the results are disastrous. But Obama would have to be delusional to think that presiding over such a disaster would enhance his re-election prospects.
Fox Business's Charlie Gasparino reports that "administration officials have told bankers that the administration will not allow a default to happen." Our guess is that Obama will end up signing whatever last-minute agreement Congress comes up with. As with last December's deal to avert the Bush tax increases, he will bitterly protest, disclaiming responsibility for the outcome. He will maintain the left's sympathy, but respect, once lost, is hard to recover.
A couple of other points on the Obama speech: The president said he rejected Boehner's plan that "would temporarily extend the debt ceiling" because it "would force us to once again face the threat of default just six months from now." Today the White House issued a written veto threat. Yet last night he praised Congress for raising the debt ceiling 18 times during Ronald Reagan's presidency--once every 5.3 months on average.
In demanding an extension that would carry him through next year's election, Obama is departing from the precedent he cites in support of his position. His anxiousness at the prospect of another such confrontation reflects his political weakness in this one.
Toward the end of his speech, the president threw in some of the sort of airy pieties to which he owes his status as World's Greatest Orator:
America, after all, has always been a grand experiment in compromise. As a democracy made up of every race and religion, where every belief and point of view is welcomed, we have put to the test time and again the proposition at the heart of our founding: that out of many, we are one. We've engaged in fierce and passionate debates about the issues of the day, . . . from slavery to war, from civil liberties to questions of economic justice.
Wait a minute, he's citing slavery as an example of "fierce and passionate debates" leading to "compromise"? As The Nation's Kai Wright wrote in December 2010, the last time Obama trotted out this trope, "Mr. President, WTF?!":
Which one of the "compromises" that allowed a slave republic to endure from more than a century is he celebrating here? Perhaps the one where black people were counted as a fraction of humans in order to preserve a balance of power that allowed Northern and Southern aristocrats alike to get rich off of murderous slave labor? No, we wouldn't have had a union without that. Or maybe he's pitching forward to the "compromises" of the post-Reconstruction era, when the white capitalists of the North got too spooked by white laborers' demands for reasonable wages, and so abandoned the promises of Emancipation. That, too, kept the union plowing forward--into another century of apartheid and state-sanctioned terrorism.
No wonder Obama doesn't get any respect. Either he's woefully ignorant or he thinks everyone else is.
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"Earlier yesterday, as National Journal reports, Obama "let his frustration over the stalled debt talks seep into an address on Latino issues, confessing that he'd like to 'bypass Congress and change the laws on my own' ":
He told the National Council of La Raza, "Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you."
But, he had to concede, "that's not how our system works."
He said this?? The guy is "f*ing" tyrant.
This kind of talk should certainly be headline news on every national media. But of course not a peep from MSM.
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I gather that Boener does not have the votes, and this piece by Peggy N. was written before that was known. Still, its comments on His Glibness remain pertinent.
The Republican establishment reasserted itself this week, and good thing, too, because the establishment was right. It said Republicans in the House should back and pass the Boehner bill on the debt ceiling because it goes in the right directions, contains spending cuts but not taxes, and is viable. So accept victory, avert crisis, and get it to the Senate.
The establishment was being conservative in the Burkean sense: acknowledges reality, respect it, and make the most progress possible within it. This has not always been true of them. They spent the first decade of this century backing things a truly conservative party would not have dreamed of—careless wars, huge spending and, most scandalously, a dreamy and unconservative assumption that it would all work out because life is sweet and the best thing always happens. They were mostly led by men and women who had never been foreclosed on and who assumed good luck, especially unearned good luck, would continue. They were fools, and they lost control of their party when the tea party rose up, rebuking and embarrassing them. Then the tea party saved them by not going third party in 2009-10. And now the establishment has come forward to save the tea party, by inching it away from the cliff and reminding it the true battles are in 2012, and after. Let's hope the tea party takes the opportunity.
As this is written the White House seems desperate to be seen as consequential. They're trotting out Press Secretary Jay Carney, who stands there looking like a ferret with flop sweat as he insists President Obama is still at the table, still manning the phones and calling shots. Much is uncertain, but the Republicans have made great strides on policy. If they emerge victorious, they had better not crow. The nation is in a continuing crisis, our credit rating is not secure, and no one's interested in he-man gangster dialogue from "The Town." What might thrill America would be a little modesty: "We know we helped get America into some of this trouble, and we hope we've made some progress today in getting us out of it."
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But that actually is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about something that started to become apparent to me during the debt negotiations. It's something I've never seen in national politics.
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Martin Kozlowski
It is that nobody loves Obama. This is amazing because every president has people who love him, who feel deep personal affection or connection, who have a stubborn, even beautiful refusal to let what they know are just criticisms affect their feelings of regard. At the height of Bill Clinton's troubles there were always people who'd say, "Look, I love the guy." They'd often be smiling—a wry smile, a shrugging smile. Nobody smiles when they talk about Mr. Obama. There were people who loved George W. Bush when he was at his most unpopular, and they meant it and would say it. But people aren't that way about Mr. Obama. He has supporters and bundlers and contributors, he has voters, he may win. But his support is grim support. And surely this has implications.
The past few weeks I've asked Democrats who supported him how they feel about him. I got back nothing that showed personal investment. Here are the words of a hard-line progressive and wise veteran of the political wars: "I never loved Barack Obama. That said, among my crowd who did 'love' him, I can't think of anyone who still does." Why is Mr. Obama different from Messrs. Clinton and Bush? "Clinton radiated personality. As angry as folks got with him about Nafta or Monica, there was always a sense of genuine, generous caring." With Bush, "if folks were upset with him, he still had this goofy kind of personality that folks could relate to. You might think he was totally misguided but he seemed genuinely so. . . . Maybe the most important word that described Clinton and Bush but not Obama is 'genuine.'" He "doesn't exude any feeling that what he says and does is genuine."
Maybe Mr. Obama is living proof of the political maxim that they don't care what you know unless they know that you care. But the idea that he is aloof and so inspires aloofness may be too pat. No one was colder than FDR, deep down. But he loved the game and did a wonderful daily impersonation of jut-jawed joy. And people loved him.
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The secret of Mr. Obama is that he isn't really very good at politics, and he isn't good at politics because he doesn't really get people. The other day a Republican political veteran forwarded me a hiring notice from the Obama 2012 campaign. It read like politics as done by Martians. The "Analytics Department" is looking for "predictive Modeling/Data Mining" specialists to join the campaign's "multi-disciplinary team of statisticians," which will use "predictive modeling" to anticipate the behavior of the electorate. "We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions."
This wasn't the passionate, take-no-prisoners Clinton War Room of '92, it was high-tech and bloodless. Is that what politics is now? Or does the Obama re-election effort reflect the candidate and his flaws?
Mr. Obama seemed brilliant at politics when he first emerged in 2004. He understood the nation's longing for unity. We're not divided into red states and blue, he said, we're Big Purple, we can solve our problems together. Four years later he read the lay of the land perfectly—really, perfectly. The nation and the Democratic Party were tired of the Clinton machine. He came from nowhere and dismantled it. It was breathtaking. He went into the 2008 general election with a miraculously unified party and took down another machine, bundling up all the accrued resentment of eight years with one message: "You know the two losing wars and the economic collapse we've been dealing with? I won't do that. I'm not Bush."
The fact is, he's good at dismantling. He's good at critiquing. He's good at not being the last guy, the one you didn't like. But he's not good at building, creating, calling into being. He was good at summoning hope, but he's not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire.
And so his failures in the debt ceiling fight. He wasn't serious, he was only shrewd—and shrewdness wasn't enough. He demagogued the issue—no Social Security checks—until he was called out, and then went on the hustings spouting inanities. He left conservatives scratching their heads: They could have made a better, more moving case for the liberal ideal as translated into the modern moment, than he did. He never offered a plan. In a crisis he was merely sly. And no one likes sly, no one respects it.
So he is losing a battle in which he had superior forces—the presidency, the U.S. senate. In the process he revealed that his foes have given him too much mystique. He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser.
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"The fact is, he's good at dismantling. He's good at critiquing. He's good at not being the last guy, the one you didn't like. But he's not good at building, creating, calling into being. He was good at summoning hope, but he's not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire."
Not exactly right in this analysis. The problem is the guy does not like America as we know it. He is angry at whites, capitilism, conservatism. He is hugely anti what America has been all about for 200+ years. As his obnoxious statement,
""Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you."
But, he had to concede, "that's not how our system works."
He *again* reveals his disdain for our republic and is in all out effort to change the system to what suits him. He has been obvious this way from day one but only to those who listened carefully and were not stupid of naive enough to fall for his con.
I have agreed with all those about his true nature - liberal, angry minority, personality DISORDER. I suspected this guy would fold once people finally started to catch on more and more to his con.
Unfortunately there are many people who are quite happy to support him and many indeed who feel he has not played liberal enough and want wealth transfer and big government so Brock is certainly not without a big group of people who are also angry and dislike America.
Yes he is ultimately a loser, but it is his whole philisophy about himself his role who he is and his beliefs that make him that way.
Not just incompetance.
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President Obama Is No Longer Tethered To Reality
By Peter Ferrara | Forbes – Thu, Jul 28, 2011
President Obama Is No Longer Tethered To Reality
President Barack Obama's speech to the nation Monday night was highly disturbing. Because read carefully, it reveals a president wildly divorced from the fundamental realities of the nation he is supposed to be leading.
President Obama actually told America on national television that it is a nation "with a system in which the deck seems stacked against middle class Americans in favor of the wealthiest few." It is incomprehensible how a man serving as president of these United States could make such a fundamentally false assertion about his own country.
As I explain in my new book, America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, before Obama was even elected, official IRS data showed that for 2007 the top 1% of income earners paid more in federal income taxes than the bottom 95% combined. The top 1% paid 40.4% of all federal income taxes that year, almost twice their share of income. The middle fifth of income earners, the actual middle class, paid 4.7% of federal income taxes. Deck stacked against the middle class in favor of the wealthiest few?
Moreover, the bottom 40% of income earners as a group paid no federal income taxes that year. They instead received net payments from the IRS equal to 4% of total federal tax revenues. As my book explains, this was actually the result of nearly 30 years of Reaganomics. Today close to 50% of Americans pay no federal income tax.
We see the same in some states. In California, the top 1% pay 48% of all state income taxes. In New York, the top 1% pay 41% of all state income taxes. In New Jersey, until recently the top 1% paid 46% of state income taxes.
Moreover, America's corporate income tax rate is virtually the highest in the industrialized world at nearly 40% on average, counting state corporate rates. Even Communist China has a 25% corporate rate, with the average in the mostly socialist European Union below that. In formerly socialist Canada, the corporate rate today is 16.5%, scheduled to fall under current law to 15% next year. Doesn't sound like America suffers a deck stacked against the middle class in favor of the wealthiest few.
And already scheduled under current law for 2013 are increases in the top tax rates of every major federal tax, apart from the already too high corporate tax rate. That is because the ObamaCare taxes become effective that year, and the Bush tax cuts expire. So the top two income tax rates would go up nearly 20%, the capital gains tax rate would go up nearly 60%, the tax on corporate dividends would nearly triple, and the Medicare payroll tax would go up 62% for the nation's small businesses, job creators and investors.
Obama's wildly erroneous statement Monday night indicates he is not living in the real world, which is dangerous for America. These tax policies so heavily skewed against the nation's small businesses, job creators and investors are central reasons why there has been no recovery from the last recession, why working people can't get jobs, why their wages are falling in real terms, why unemployment is still rising 3.5 years after the last recession started, why a record number of Americans are in poverty. As a consequence, in reality, it is Obama's anti-market economic policies that are actually in effect stacked heavily against the middle class, working people and the poor.
Obama also told the nation Monday night he wants to "ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries." This is another false truism that is widely circulated throughout the liberal/left. The allegation arises because capital gains income is taxed at 15%, while individual income tax rates range higher than that. But as I explain in my book, the fundamental mistake is the failure to recognize that capital income is taxed multiple times, not just by the capital gains tax. It is taxed at least four times, by the individual income tax, the corporate income tax, and the death tax, besides the capital gains tax. That is why the most fair as well as most economically productive rate for the capital gains tax would be zero, as is the case in much of the industrialized world.
The president further proclaimed Monday night that "most Americans don't understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare benefits before we ask corporate jet owners and oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don't get." But his ObamaCare law already more than asks seniors to pay more for their Medicare benefits. It requires them to pay 40% to 200% more if they, in the President's infinite wisdom, earn too much, defined as over $85,000 a year this time.
Note also the tax break for corporate jet owners was adopted in the Obama stimulus to create jobs in corporate jet manufacturing. Yet, such tax breaks for corporate jets or oil companies that other companies do not get are special interest, central economic planning loopholes that undermine the economy rather than advance it. The only truly pro-growth tax policy is the lowest possible tax rates for all, with no special interest loopholes. But the amount of revenue lost on Obama's corporate jet scam is so trivial it is not even worth talking about as possibly even contributing to solving the deficit and debt crisis.
Finally on Monday night, Obama threatened America's seniors with more, saying that if House Republicans don't agree to his tax increase to increase the debt limit, "we would not have enough money to pay the bills -- bills that include monthly Social Security checks." This can only be described as calculated deception.
The Social Security trust funds include $2.7 trillion in government bonds, which are due and payable when needed to pay Social Security benefits. As I also show in my book, those bonds do not represent any real savings and investment. They involve only a statement of the legal authority Social Security has to draw from general revenues, on top of payroll tax revenues. But in dealing with a crisis over the debt limit, that legal authority can be the critical factor.
While those bonds are explicitly not transferable, and so cannot be sold to the public to raise money, under prior practice they would be cashed out by selling new government bonds to the public. Since the Social Security trust fund bonds are included in the national debt subject to the debt limit, they can be replaced by such new public bonds without the total debt going over the limit.
Moreover, those Social Security trust fund bonds are explicitly backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. That means Obama is constitutionally required to pay them when needed to pay Social Security benefits. In addition, there is more than enough general revenue coming in to just cash out the trust fund bonds as necessary in any event, even without issuing any new public bonds.
As a result, Obama is constitutionally required to pay Social Security benefits, under his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That means failing to pay those benefits would be an impeachable offense.
Peter Ferrara is director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, general counsel for the American Civil Rights Union and senior fellow for the Carleson Center for Public Policy. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as associate deputy attorney general under the first President Bush. He is the author of America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, now available from HarperCollins.
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P.C.
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Unfortunately, it's as secret as his academic and health records.
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This PROVES we will not have fiscal responsibility till Brock is thrown out once and for all.
****By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR - Associated Press | AP – 8 mins agotweet153ShareEmailPrintWASHINGTON (AP) — Health insurance plans must cover birth control as preventive care for women, with no copays, the Obama administration said Monday in a decision with far-reaching implications for health care as well as social mores.
The requirement is part of a broad expansion of coverage for women's preventive care under President Barack Obama's health care law. Also to be covered without copays are breast pumps for nursing mothers, an annual "well-woman" physical, screening for the virus that causes cervical cancer and for diabetes during pregnancy, counseling on domestic violence, and other services.
"These historic guidelines are based on science and existing (medical) literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
The new requirements will take effect Jan. 1, 2013, in most cases. Over time, they are expected to apply to most employer-based insurance plans, as well as coverage purchased individually.
Sebelius acted after a near-unanimous recommendation last month from a panel of experts convened by the prestigious Institute of Medicine, which advises the government. Panel chairwoman Linda Rosenstock, dean of public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that prevention of unintended pregnancies is essential for the psychological, emotional and physical health of women.
As recently as the 1990s, many health insurance plans didn't even cover birth control. Protests, court cases, and new state laws led to dramatic changes. Today, almost all plans cover prescription contraceptives — with varying copays. Medicaid, the health care program for low-income people, also covers contraceptives.
Indeed, a government study last summer found that birth control use is virtually universal in the United States, according to a government study issued last summer. More than 90 million prescriptions for contraceptives were dispensed in 2009, according the market analysis firm INS health. Generic versions of the pill are available for as little as $9 a month. Still, about half of all pregnancies are unplanned. Many are among women using some form of contraception, and forgetting to take the pill is a major reason.
Preventing unwanted pregnancies is only one goal of the new requirement. Contraception can help make a woman's next pregnancy healthier by spacing births far enough apart, generally 18 months to two years. Research links closely spaced births to a risk of such problems as prematurity, low birth weight, even autism. Research has shown that even modest copays for medical care can discourage use.
In a nod to social and religious conservatives, the rules issued Monday by Sebelius include a provision that would allow religious institutions to opt out of offering birth control coverage. However, many conservatives are supporting legislation by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., that would codify a range of exceptions to the new health care law on religious and conscience grounds.
Although the new women's preventive services will be free of any additional charge to patients, somebody will have to pay. The cost will be spread among other people with health insurance, resulting in slightly higher premiums. That may be offset to some degree with savings from diseases prevented, or pregnancies that are planned to minimize any potential ill effects to the mother and baby.
The administration did allow insurers some leeway in determining what they will cover. For example, health plans will be able to charge copays for branded drugs in cases where a generic version is just as effective and safe for the patient.
The requirement applies to all forms of birth control approved by the Food and Drug Administration. That includes the pill, intrauterine devices, the so-called morning-after pill, and newer forms of long-acting implantable hormonal contraceptives that are becoming widely used in the rest of the industrialized world.
Coverage with no copays for the morning-after pill is likely to become the most controversial part of the change. The FDA classifies Plan B and Ella as birth control, but some religious conservatives see the morning-after drugs as abortion drugs. The rules HHS issued Monday do not require coverage of RU-486 and other drugs to chemically induce an abortion.
Advocates say the majority of women will be covered once the requirement takes effect in 2013, although some insurance plans may opt to offer the benefit earlier. Aside from the religious conscience clause, there is one additional exception. Plans that are considered "grandfathered" under the law will not be affected, at least initially. Consumers should check with their health insurance plan administrator.****
If people want their erectile dysfuction and birth control paid by insurers than they should pay more for insurance and others can opt for plans that do not include this and those people don't get shafted with these bills.
If we can't even do this than there really is NO hope.
I agree with the greatest conservative talk show host of all time Bob Grant - it is too late.
We are in MHO looking at some serious upheavels and social disruption.
We are looking at Europe.
Bob Grant noted when a caller to his program this weekend to his talk show expressed his belief that Brock's goal is to destroy this country that one of Brock's favorite pet sayings was if you want to rebuild a house you have to tear it down first.
Well he doing an outstanding job.
With all the fiscal problems he is now telling us to worry about birth control - a nod to the female activists. :-(
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Snapshots from President Obama's efforts to improve America's standing in the world, 923 days into his administration:
A is for the Arab world, and our standing in it: This year, Zogby International found that 5% of Egyptians had a favorable view of the U.S. In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, it was 9%.
B is for the federal budget deficit, which is estimated to come in at around 11% of GDP in 2011, up from about 3% in 2008.
C is for China's military budget. For 2012, Beijing plans to increase spending on defense by 12.7%. The Obama administration, by contrast, proposed Pentagon cuts in April averaging out to $40 billion per year over the next decade, and Congress may soon cut a lot more.
D is for—what else—the federal debt, which grew to $14.3 trillion this month from $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008. D is also for the dollar, which has lost almost half its value against gold since Aug. 2008.
E is for energy. The average retail price of a gallon of gas hovered near the $1.80 mark when Mr. Obama was inaugurated. It has since more than doubled. E is also for ethanol, the non-wonder fuel the U.S. continues to subsidize to the tune of $5 billion a year.
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F is for free trade. Bill Clinton signed Nafta in 1994, which facilitates $1.6 trillion in the trade of goods and services between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. George W. Bush midwifed more than a dozen FTAs, from Australia to Singapore to Morocco to Bahrain. Number of FTA's signed by the current president: zero.
G is for Guantanamo, which remains open, and for Gadhafi, who remains in power, and for Greece, which offers a vision of America's future if we don't reform our entitlement state.
H is for Hillary Clinton, who—I can't believe I'm writing this—would have made a better president than Mr. Obama.
I is for Israel, a Middle Eastern country the president claims to support even as he routinely disses its prime minister, seeks to shrink its borders and—why not?—divide its capital.
J is for jobs. In November 2008, president-elect Obama promised he would create 2.5 million jobs by 2011. By October 2010 the economy had shed 3.3 million jobs.
K is for Karzai, Hamid, Afghanistan's feckless leader. Still, the Obama administration probably did itself no favors by publicly dumping on the man, leading him to seek new best friends in Tehran.
L is for Laden, Osama bin. The president's greatest triumph, which will forever put him one notch—if only one notch—above Jimmy Carter.
M is for Mexico, a country that manages 5.4% unemployment and 4.2% annual growth even as it fights a war against the drug cartels.
N is for NATO, once a pillar of Western security, which Mr. Obama is in the process of destroying through his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and his refusal to give NATO the push it needs to win in Libya.
O is for ObamaCare, which goes far to explain B, D, J as well as the Greek part of G.
P is for Pyongyang, whose ruler the administration is once again attempting to engage in the six-party talks. This is after the Kim regime welcomed Mr. Obama's plea for a nuclear-free world by testing a nuclear bomb, torpedoing a South Korean ship, shelling a South Korean village, and unveiling a state-of-the-art uranium enrichment facility.
Q is for QE2, the most disastrous experiment in monetary policy since Fed Chairman William Miller's low-interest rate policy crashed the dollar in 1978.
R is for the reset with Russia, the principal result of which is an arms-control treaty that brings us to parity in strategic nuclear weapons, leaves us behind in the tactical category, and ill-equips us for the challenge of a proliferating world.
S is for shovel-ready. Enough said.
T is for taxes, which Mr. Obama would like to see raised for "millionaires and billionaires"—curiously defined as people making $200K and up.
U is for Iran's uranium enrichment. When Mr. Obama came to office promising to extend his hand to the mullahs, Iran had enriched 1,000 kilos of uranium. Today they have produced more than 4,000 kilos.
V is for Venezuela, a country whose extensive subterranean links to Iran the administration has consistently downplayed.
W is for the Dubya, whose presidency now looks like a model of spending restraint.
X is for Liu Xiaobo, an example of what a deserving winner of the Nobel Peace Prize looks like. X is also for Xanax, likely to be remembered as the drug of choice of the Obama years.
Y is for Yes, We Can! Unfortunately, it's also for Yemen.
Z is for zero, which is the likelihood that one of the current GOP hopefuls will defeat Mr. Obama in 2012.
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"Z is for zero, which is the likelihood that one of the current GOP hopefuls will defeat Mr. Obama in 2012."
I disagree.
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I agree with CCP. Other than that ending, it was a clever and wide ranging recap (Bret Stephens, WSJ) of the Obama years so far. The surprise ending that none of a wide range of challengers can possibly defeat him, more than a year out, seems to defy the reality that Obama has sank like a stone in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, etc etc.
I guess his point is either that the successful victor will come from other than 'one of the current GOP hopefuls' (other than Perry and perhaps Palin I don't expect more serious entrants), or is it that this country and world is doomed so why bother subscribe or read his future columns(?)
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To me it is a wonderment that his numbers are as high as they are. Also remember that a goodly percentage of his negatives (25% IIRC) come from disappointed progressives. Note too the approval numbers of Congress are WAY lower than Baraq's.
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"To me it is a wonderment that his numbers are as high as they are." - Agree, unfortunately. We are only winning the argument against all powerful government at the margins. We had to lose almost all industries to complete government control in order to approach 50% of the people saying they have gone too far.
"Also remember that a goodly percentage of his negatives (25% IIRC) come from disappointed progressives."
Yes, maybe not that high but becoming very significant. A two edged sword: the loss of support from his base will never turn into Bachmann, Perry or Cain votes, but it does weaken him. Loss of support from his base contributed to the growing irrelevance and early lame duck status of G.W.Bush, (but that was during his second term).
"Note too the approval numbers of Congress are WAY lower than Baraq's."
Yes. These numbers were consistently miserable for a long time and I don't understand exactly why. I watch the numbers at Real Clear Politics. Currently they have congressional approval at 18.5% with the number that follows fairly evenly split, R's over D's by 1.2%. My read of that number with poll bias (poll responders versus actual voters) has been that Republican had to be less than 4-5% behind to break even in the real election. In that sense they are up by a little more than the 1%. Congressional approval is difficult to judge. How is a John Boehner or Harry Reid fan supposed to judge the other chamber or like the overall results? 75% disapproval means that R's, Dems and independents alike agree that they are not getting their way in congress.
For the President, the Rasmussen index maps strong approval against strong disapproval for a pretty good idea of where the energy in the room is. That bottomed at -21% a few days ago when no deal was coming through, now back to -18%, 23% strongly approve vs. 41% strongly disapprove: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/obama_approval_index_history
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"To me it is a wonderment that his numbers are as high as they are."
I agree. I guess it shows the power of bribery for those who are getting entitlements. It goes to show the exteme hurdle the right must overcome when 50% pay no fed income taxes.
"These numbers were consistently miserable for a long time and I don't understand exactly why."
I don't think it is much better than when Pelosi was in charge.
Some of it those on the right and left wings are not happy.
The MSM likes to encourage bashing the House yet protect Brock.
The MSM likes to demarginalize the Tea Party.
It is easier for Americans to blame the Houses for all our spending rather than admit many of us are responsible or need to stop feeding at the trough. You know the not in my back yard or don't take from me take from them attitude.
The circus was not what happened with this debt ceiling debate but the lack of fight over all previous debates. In the past the clowns were those in both houses who would raise the debt ceiling endlessly without question.
We were the dupes. If not for the T party we still would be.
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Looking forward to the first mainstream analysis to point out that the timing deadline of the deal was based more on the Aug 4 birthday party than the Aug 3 default.
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I consider myself quite accomplished in the field of bungled analogies, but President Obama telling the nation, or was it just the rich, to eat peas will go down sadly as the most memorable moment of this lousy episode that we just survived of our nation's great history.
A degree from Columbia and a degree from Harvard, he came from the very best private schools in Hawaii, he served in the State Senate of Illinois and then in the world's greatest deliberative body - the United States Senate, and the best he could do to characterize the incentive/disincentive effects of raising tax rates on the producers and job creators in the private sector of a dynamic, competitive, global, capital investment based productive economy is ... ... "eat your peas"??
We may think Carter was the bungler with his malaise speech and his gas rationing lines, but people should recall that the Republican economic wisdom of those years wasn't a whole lot better. President Ford thought the answer to spiraling inflation was a PR campaign called "Whip Inflation Now", as if merchants foregoing a price increase and workers turning down a wage increase was the cure for inflation or the path to prosperity. That was only a little better than his predecessor, President Nixon, who in a Stalinist moment decided to implement a nationwide "price, wage, freeze" and form a committee, in advance of the Obamacare waiver committee, to review any emergency exceptions to our national price fixing program that may be necessary.
Reagan slashes tax rates and revenues double in a decade. Volcker gets control over the money supply and the dollar stabilizes. Clinton and Gingrich end welfare as we know it, pass Reagan's hemisphere-wide free trade and slashed the rate of taxation on gains from long term capital investments and the economy surged to the point of a briefly, unheard of, balanced budget!
The Bush economy surged 50 months only after growth policies finally kicked in and retreated after the ending to growth policies was electorally certain.
Then along comes President Obama. Program after Keynesian program has failed, from 'Cash for Clunkers' to Shovel Ready Projects' to the tune of a trillion and half 'fiscal stimulus' per year and with new debt at the permanent rate of borrowing an amazing $4 billion a day. All of it making things worse. Why? Because the problem in the first place was not that the public sector had gotten too small!
So what is this President's last flailing? Eat your peas.
Excuse me but where is the evidence to support the idea that higher tax rates are good for us? History seems to say otherwise. Aren't boiled and canned peas about the least nutritious of all the green vegetables, besides still being bland even with all the added salt?
Lastly Mr. President, with all due respect, we are adults now and you are not our parent. The vegetables will be of OUR choosing and we might even decide to have a little ice cream later - without asking. :wink:
- Doug
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What if I'm alergic to peas or not rich?
Good stuff Doug. I agree completely.
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Thank you Hello Kitty for the kind words.
"What if I'm allergic to peas..."
Very funny!
It turns out fresh peas are high in fiber, iron, magnesium, potassium, and Vitamin A, B6, and C.
But if you are allergic or are fighting hypermagnesemia, the answer with an all-powerful central government is still eat your peas. If a new federal minimum wage law does more harm than good in an isolated village somewhere in America, the answer is fire everyone working below the new minimum wage. If 26 states don't want Obamacare, their answer is Obamacare. If your kidney, heart or diabetic condition could be eased with raw milk (http://www.realmilk.com/milkcure.html) or some new drug bogged down in the FDA bureaucracy, the answer is... tough luck. Government knows best and you just don't realize that how good coercion can be for you.
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The comments from the Democratic party led by Brock is so of the charts crazy now one has to conclude he really is about destroying America only to rebuild as a some sort of Marxist state. I firmly believe this is what he is all about.
But the mainstream media that protects him is really criminal....
There cannot be any compromise - he must be completely defeated along with the rest of the progressives.
I hope it is not too late.
I hope those bribed on entitlements will soon wake up and smell the rot that has infected America.
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:-o
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A family man with a wife, 2 small children and a dog named BO wouldn't want to spend this special birthday during August recess with his family, when the opportunity presents itself to sell tickets to big donors for big money.
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Here a clip you just might hear during the campaign:
Today Show with Matt Lauer Feb 1 2009 (with Gallup approval rating at 66%):
“Look, I’m at the start of my administration. One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. You know, I’ve got four years,” Obama told The Today Show’s Matt Lauer on February 1, 2009.
“A year from now I think people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress,” said Obama. ”But there’s still going to be some pain out there. If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28975726/ns/today-today_people/t/obama-were-suffering-massive-hangover/#.TjsAwL9bapU
Video at the link.
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"One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable"
To finish his unstated thoughts...
..... by my political enemies. Howevery I will deny responsibility for anything that turns out bad and take credit for every and any good news.
I will deny responsibility at every moment every turn every stop.
It is all the fault of the tea party, the republicans, the racists, the rich, the corporations.
Thank God I am here to protect the American people from them.
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CCP, Yes, 'it was worse than we thought'. George Bush screwed up left field so badly that nobody can play it.
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CNBC Oct 16, 2009
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33342777/My_Interview_With_Treasury_Secretary_Tim_Geithner
...
Sec. GEITHNER: Well, recovery is going to work for Americans requires a recovery led by the private sector, requires recovery led by private demand that's going to be strong enough to be sustainable. And that means that you're going to have to still make sure there's enough support to reinforce that process of recovery. But when we have growth back in place, we also got to bring down those long-term deficits, make sure we go back to living within our means. And that's like the difficulty--that's the--that's the difficult balance to get right. But I think we're going to get that right. We're not going to make the mistake many countries made in the past of putting the brakes on too early and creating risk that we have a, you know, weaker recovery with even higher levels of unemployment going forward.
...
Sec. GEITHNER: Stimulus has been remarkably effective, and the combined effect of stimulus, as it was designed and the efforts we took to stabilize the financial system, bring capital and private capital in, have been remarkably effective in arresting the freefall in economic growth we saw here and around the world and laying the foundation for growth. Now, you're seeing growth now for the first time, really, in almost two years. And that's a very encouraging sign. But it's very early still, and again, our job is to make sure that we're encouraging that process. And recovery act was designed so it's going to provide support over a two-year period of time, and you're just now starting to see--probably in the summer you started for the first time to see money start to flow and projects start to get financed. But a key part of stimulus was tax cuts to businesses and families and support to state and local governments, and those things had very immediate, very powerful effect.
...
BARTIROMO: So do we need a second stimulus? ...
BARTIROMO: A good case for a second stimulus?
Sec. GEITHNER: No
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Some turnover is normal, but what happened to economic advisers Volcker, Buffet, Summers, Roemer and now Goolsby?
Austan Goolsby, Obama's current Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, will leave his position this summer and return to teaching.
http://www.news-gazette.com/opinions/editorials/2011-06-10/bad-economy-taking-its-toll-advisers.html
"Goolsby, a longtime Obama adviser, has been one of the leading proponents of the idea that increased government spending would stimulate the economy into a roaring recovery."
SHOULD HE BE TEACHING?
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/08/06/flashback_geithner_says_no_risk_to_us_aaa_credit_rating.html
Flashback: Geithner Says No Risk To US' AAA Credit Rating
"No risk of that, no risk," Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner said on the Fox Business Network in April. (source The Hill) Video at the link.
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How do you handle the stress, as Commander in Chief, of identifying Navy Seal Team Six as the group who "got him" [bin Laden] only to have them shot down over an enemy territory within just a few months, worst loss in 10 years in Afghanistan, that he has already announced abandoning?
How do you respond to the worst financial slap in our history, to have S&P Frriday after market closing downgrading the United States of America, for the first time in our history, leaving 18 countries with higher ratings, and planning to downgrade us further if you continues on the same course?
What is your next course of action, if you are President, on both fronts, not to mention jobs? He must be swamped in advisory or deep in his own thought, brainstorming for solutions and direction. Maybe even praying for wisdom and solutions to come to him in church?
Nope, he's commanding his SUV motorcade over to the golf course today. Followed by a beer and cheeseburger. It's Sunday and he's the leader of the free world and he will do what he wants, whenever he wants. Crisis? What Crisis?
Right now, saving bogey is more important than any economic or military setback. Those can be led from behind. The golf ball just sits there on the tee until you take a swing at it. Good luck America.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/08/where-is-the-leader-of-the-free-world-golfing/
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Too bad he doesn't play violin. He could play while the markets burn tomorrow.
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Sinking like a stone, but maybe people will like us better without all that prosperity.
(http://thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/18-countries-credit-rating.jpg)
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Is Obama finally bringing left and right together?
Byron York on Drew Westen’s Sunday NYT piece chopping up Obama from the left:
Why has Obama been such a disappointment? Westen comes up with a few theories that sound strikingly familiar to Obama’s critics on the right. Perhaps Obama “is simply not up to the task” of being president. Perhaps the Democrats who were so dazzled by his campaign speeches should have noticed “some disquieting aspects of his biography.” Among those disquieting aspects: “that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted ‘present’ (instead of ‘yea’ or ‘nay’) 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.” Go to any conservative blog, and you’ll find many similar critiques, dating to well before the 2008 election.
P.S.: Westen also finds Obama’s core argument that his health care reform will “bend the cost curve” to be an “unbelievable and even more uninspiring claim.” Common ground! …
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/08/obama-brings-us-together/
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http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/08/krauthammer-blasts-obama-as-weak-plaintive-and-small/
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The aircraft was large, modern and considered among the world's safest. But that night it was flying straight into a huge thunderstorm. Turbulence was extreme, and airspeed indicators may not have been functioning properly. Worse, the pilots were incompetent. As the plane threatened to stall they panicked by pointing the nose up, losing speed when they ought to have done the opposite. It was all over in minutes.
Was this the fate of Flight 447, the Air France jet that plunged mysteriously into the Atlantic a couple of years ago? Could be. What I'm talking about here is the Obama presidency.
When it comes to piloting, Barack Obama seems to think he's the political equivalent of Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager and—in a "Fly Me to the Moon" sort of way—Nat King Cole rolled into one. "I think I'm a better speech writer than my speech writers," he reportedly told an aide in 2008. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm . . . a better political director than my political director."
On another occasion—at the 2004 Democratic convention—Mr. Obama explained to a Chicago Tribune reporter that "I'm LeBron, baby. I can play at this level. I got game."
Of course, it's tempting to be immodest when your admirers are so immodest about you. How many times have we heard it said that Mr. Obama is the smartest president ever? Even when he's criticized, his failures are usually chalked up to his supposed brilliance. Liberals say he's too cerebral for the Beltway rough-and-tumble; conservatives often seem to think his blunders, foreign and domestic, are all part of a cunning scheme to turn the U.S. into a combination of Finland, Cuba and Saudi Arabia.
I don't buy it. I just think the president isn't very bright.
Socrates taught that wisdom begins in the recognition of how little we know. Mr. Obama is perpetually intent on telling us how much he knows. Aristotle wrote that the type of intelligence most needed in politics is prudence, which in turn requires experience. Mr. Obama came to office with no experience. Plutarch warned that flattery "makes itself an obstacle and pestilence to great houses and great affairs." Today's White House, more so than any in memory, is stuffed with flatterers.
View Full Image
Associated Press
President Barack Obama
.Much is made of the president's rhetorical gifts. This is the sort of thing that can be credited only by people who think that a command of English syntax is a mark of great intellectual distinction. Can anyone recall a memorable phrase from one of Mr. Obama's big speeches that didn't amount to cliché? As for the small speeches, such as the one we were kept waiting 50 minutes for yesterday, we get Triple-A bromides about America remaining a "Triple-A country." Which, when it comes to long-term sovereign debt, is precisely what we no longer are under Mr. Obama.
Then there is Mr. Obama as political tactician. He makes predictions that prove false. He makes promises he cannot honor. He raises expectations he cannot meet. He reneges on commitments made in private. He surrenders positions staked in public. He is absent from issues in which he has a duty to be involved. He is overbearing when he ought to be absent. At the height of the financial panic of 1907, Teddy Roosevelt, who had done much to bring the panic about by inveighing against big business, at least had the good sense to stick to his bear hunt and let J.P. Morgan sort things out. Not so this president, who puts a new twist on an old put-down: Every time he opens his mouth, he subtracts from the sum total of financial capital.
Then there's his habit of never trimming his sails, much less tacking to the prevailing wind. When Bill Clinton got hammered on health care, he reverted to centrist course and passed welfare reform. When it looked like the Iraq war was going to be lost, George Bush fired Don Rumsfeld and ordered the surge.
Mr. Obama, by contrast, appears to consider himself immune from error. Perhaps this explains why he has now doubled down on Heckuva Job Geithner. It also explains his insulting and politically inept habit of suggesting—whether the issue is health care, or Arab-Israeli peace, or change we can believe in at some point in God's good time—that the fault always lies in the failure of his audiences to listen attentively. It doesn't. In politics, a failure of communication is always the fault of the communicator.
Much of the media has spent the past decade obsessing about the malapropisms of George W. Bush, the ignorance of Sarah Palin, and perhaps soon the stupidity of Rick Perry. Nothing is so typical of middling minds than to harp on the intellectual deficiencies of the slightly less smart and considerably more successful.
But it takes actual smarts to understand that glibness and self-belief are not sufficient proof of genuine intelligence. Stupid is as stupid does, said the great philosopher Forrest Gump. The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does.
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My psychoanalysis is that he is intelligent in certain respects but has a deficient personality.
He has no self insight. He is unable to take real responsibility.
He blames others for his faults mistakes and errors.
He cannot get past this.
I believe one aspect of real intellegence is to be able to objectively evaluate oneself and one's beliefs. He is unable. He is deficient in this regard. In this respect he is totally mentally retarded.
His triumphant con game no longer flies. He is unable to change. This is a hallmark of a personality disorder. They are always right.
They love themselves beyond anything else. It is all about him and his self love.
He can't see it any other way.
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One additional point. These kinds of people are extraordinary liars. They will keep lying even when everyone knows they are lying. They will even know the game is up and everyone knows they are lying but will continue to lie. Unfortunately there are many in the US who have a lot of skin in the game so he has a lot of people covering and lying right along with him.
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Funny that the Bret Stephens piece Crafty/WSJ) uses the word 'Glibness' while the rest includes a theme of cognitive dissonance. IIRC this thread started as the 'Obama phenomenon' and was presciently renamed to the above after his election or around the time of inauguration? A bit negative I think but we have found 18 long internet pages of material to support it.
WSJ 4/30/09 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124105013014171063.html
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid...tells of congratulating freshman Sen. Obama on a phenomenal speech. Without a hint of conceit, Mr. Obama replied, "Harry, I have a gift."
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JAMES TARANTO, WSJ quotes Time's Joe Klein bringing Carter and Reagan into the comparison, then answers him:
Kline: "At a similar point in his presidency, Jimmy Carter delivered his famous "malaise" speech--the word was never actually used--that was an accurate description of the problems we faced then (it reads very well 30 years later) but a complete bummer. The public needed to hear more than a description of what wrong [sic]; it needed to be told what was necessary to make it right. Ronald Reagan came along, posited optimism and an easily comprehensible set of principles--and Carter was history.
I am not suggesting Obama is Carter. But they do share a trait: an inability to tell a story. The most popular stories have good guys and bad guys. If he wants to be re-elected, Obama is going to have to start telling us who the bad guys are and what he plans to do about them."
Tarranto (WSJ): In citing Reagan, Klein unwittingly underscores the liberal misunderstanding of his success at "communication," which Peggy Noonan explores in her most recent column. There's a world of difference between "an easily comprehensible set of principles," which Reagan did offer, and a fairy tale about "good guys and bad guys." The former is for adults, the latter for children (or for adults seeking mere entertainment).
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http://hotair.com/archives/2011/08/09/wapo-columnist-suddenly-discovers-mr-cool-is-rather-cold/
WaPo columnist suddenly discovers Mr. Cool is rather cold
posted at 11:25 am on August 9, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
Somewhere in Richard Cohen’s column for today’s Washington Post shines a little light of belated understanding. Cohen tries to hide it behind a broadside against the GOP, writing — and obviously hoping — that Barack Obama’s eventual 2012 challenger will be “stuck in the amber” of extremism from the primaries and will end up rescuing Obama from himself. That doesn’t change Cohen’s conclusion about Obama as an overrated narcissist, even if Cohen can’t quite make the diagnosis explicit:
Obama, in contrast, was raised in the great American muddle, not rich and not poor. Yet when the stock market fell more than 500 points last week and the image that night was of the president whooping it up at his birthday party, the juxtaposition — just bad timing, of course — seemed appropriate. He does not seem to care.
This quality of Obama’s, this inability to communicate what many of us think he must be feeling, has lately cost many trees their dear lives — reams of essays and op-ed pieces. One of the more interesting ones, by Drew Westen, a psychology professor at Emory University, ran in Sunday’s New York Times. It cited Obama’s frequent inability or unwillingness to explain himself or to appear empathetic. All this is true. But Westen’s most salient point was contained in the title: “What Happened to Obama?” The answer: Nothing.
And if Obama is overrated and not particularly concerned about anyone else but himself, who overrated him? On that score, Cohen is significantly more honest:
Obama has always been the man he is today. He is the very personification of cognitive dissonance — the gap between what we (especially liberals) expected of the first serious African American presidential candidate and the man he in fact is. He has next to none of the rhetorical qualities of the old-time black politicians. He would eschew the cliche, but he feels little of their pain. In this sense, he has been patronized by liberals who looked at a man and saw black and has been reviled by those who looked at a black man and saw “other.”
That’s precisely what most of us on the Right said about the odd love affair with a one-term backbencher with no executive or business experience in the 2008 presidential race. Cohen and other liberals in the media saw a black man running for President and filled in their own narrative, as Cohen admits here. Those of us who challenged that narrative with the facts about Obama’s record (and lack thereof) were dismissed and often slimed as racists, a narrative that continues to this day.
In fact, Cohen goes on to honestly state that the media is still giving Obama a pass:
Westen faults Obama for his lack of storytelling abilities. But this is because Obama is himself the story. Consider for a moment that Obama’s account of how he had to fight to get medical coverage for his dying mother is not exactly true. The White House’s response to this revelation was grudging silence. It did not dispute the story and it soon died. This was because the Obama story is not what he says but who he is. That remains unchanged, and so the very people who would pummel a Republican for such a mischaracterization were silent about Obama’s. Obama did not deign to reply. He does not have to.
Even Cohen can’t quite get away from his substance-free crush, though:
Obama is the very soul of common sense. As he talks, I nod my head in agreement.
Really? I guess it’s easy to be “the very soul of common sense” when muttering generalities and platitudes. Presidents, however, are generally expected to lead with plans and specifics. Cohen may have written this column prior to yesterday’s speech, so it could be unfair to ask him what in that ten minutes amounted to useful common sense, but the same thing could be said for every other public statement given by Obama over the last few weeks – months, really — about spending and debt.
Still, give Cohen one cheer for recognizing that the media sold a myth, not the man, and that they’re still engaged in mythmaking — or perhaps more precisely at this point, myth maintenance. Regardless of the reason why they built the myth in the first place, they seem more motivated in protecting Obamas’ reputation in order to protect their own now.
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Can you believe the arrogance of this selfserving, elitist Leftist? It's you and your policies that people are fed up with Barack!
NEW YORK (AP) — Aligning himself with a public fed up with economic uncertainty and Washington gridlock, President Barack Obama declared Thursday: "There is nothing wrong with our country. There is something wrong with our politics."
His toughly worded message — he said there was frustration in his voice, in case anyone missed the point — came amid a series of polls showing that people are disgusted with political dysfunction and are dispensing blame all around, including on Obama.
Obama aired his frustration with the ways of Washington at an event in Michigan before pivoting to his re-election campaign and a pair of big-money fundraisers in New York City.
He delivered a condensed version of that message at a fundraiser at the lower Manhattan home of movie producer Harvey Weinstein, where celebrities Gwyneth Paltrow and Jimmy Fallon, were among the approximately 50 guests who paid $35,800 each to attend.
Obama said he told his Michigan audience that it deserves better than what it's been getting from Washington.
"They look at what's happening in Washington and they think these folks are really from outer space because they don't seem to understand how critical it is for us all to work together, Republicans, Democrats, independents, in order to move this country forward," Obama said.
He added that the country is realizing the need to get involved.
"We're going to have to get engaged and we're going to have to speak out," Obama said. "We're going to have to register the fact that we expect more and we expect better."
Obama's visit Thursday to Holland, Mich., and New York, was his first official trip outside Washington after spending more than a month in the nation's capital dealing with the debt debate. Obama said Americans were right to be worried about the country's 9.1 percent unemployment rate and fluctuations in the stock market. The contentious and partisan debt debate in Washington, he said, has done little to help.
"Unfortunately what we've seen in Washington in the last few months has been the worst kind of partisanship, the worst kind of gridlock, and that gridlock has undermined public confidence and impeded our efforts to take the steps we need for our economy," Obama said after touring a Michigan factory that makes advanced batteries for alternative-fuel vehicles.
A Washington Post poll released this week showed widespread and deep discontent with Washington. Nearly 80 percent said they were dissatisfied with the way the country's political system works, compared with 60 percent in November 2009. Seventy-one percent said the federal government is mostly focused on the wrong things, up from 55 percent in October 2010.
Both Obama and congressional Republicans were targets of unhappiness, with only 19 percent of people polled saying that Obama had made progress in solving the country's major problems, and just 10 percent saying that about Republicans. At the same time, 28 percent said Obama had made things worse, while 35 percent said congressional Republicans had done that.
Obama sought to channel the public's anger in order to avoid being sunk by it himself. He urged the public to tell Washington lawmakers they'd had enough with the bickering and stalemates.
"You've got to tell them you've had enough of the theatrics, you've had enough of the politics, stop sending out press releases. Start passing some bills that we all know will help the economy right now," he said. "That's what they need to do. They've got to hear from you."
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, promptly responded with a news release, calling the president's remarks "political grandstanding" and urging him to deliver on promises to outline recommendations to rein in the nation's deficits.
The president has said he will send those recommendations in the coming weeks to a congressional supercommittee tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in savings. He also said on Thursday that he'd be offering new proposals "week by week" to create jobs, though he provided no details.
Despite Obama's calls for urgent action on the economy, Congress has left Washington for its August recess and Obama will soon follow for his annual summer vacation in Martha's Vineyard.
Obama urged lawmakers to get to work in September and pass a series of initiatives the White House says will spur job growth, including an extension of the payroll tax cut, three free-trade agreements and funding for road and bridge construction.
Obama has touted spending on clean-energy technologies as a job creator, and on advanced batteries such as those made at the Johnson Controls plant in Holland, Mich., as a way to boost U.S. auto companies.
Obama won Michigan in the 2008 presidential election and the economically battered state is crucial to his re-election hopes in 2012.
After the Michigan stop, Obama attended a pair of fundraisers in lower Manhattan that raised more than $2 million.
He attended a reception with about 15 people at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Battery Park that was thrown by Gary Hirshberg, chief executive of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm, before heading to dinner at Weinstein's brick row house. Weinstein and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour were hosts.
Other notables seated at the round dinner tables were New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, singers Alicia Keys and Chris Martin, who is Paltrow's husband, Gayle King and designer Vera Wang. Obama's motorcade passed by ground zero on the way to the dinner.
The $35,800 admission price is the legal maximum donation per person. Obama's campaign keeps $5,000 and the Democratic National Committee pockets the remaining $30,800.
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Associated Press writers Tim Martin in Holland, Mich., and Jeff Karoub in Detroit contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-something-wrong-countrys-politics-194019280.html (http://news.yahoo.com/obama-something-wrong-countrys-politics-194019280.html)
P.C.
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Translating to the language developed by the incumbent, Gallup is now reporting that President Obama has created or saved nearly 39 approval points.
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The Daily Caller – Thu, Aug 11, 2011tweet3Share0EmailPrintThe White House’s published guest list for this year’s Ramadan Iftar dinner was much shorter than previous years’ roster. It excluded the names of several controversial advocates who have attended the event in the past, including some who The Daily Caller can confirm did attend on Wednesday night.
“It was a squeaky clean list,” said Durriya Badani, director of the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, an annual event organized by the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center and the Qatari government. The guests on the published list are “not controversial at all,” said Badani, whose name is on the list the White House provided to reporters.
“It was a lot more low-key … It was a more intimate event this year,” said Haris Tarin, the Washington director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, whose invitation was kept off the published list. “I have no idea why they didn’t publish [MPAC’s invite] … I’m going to learn about that a little bit more,” he told The Daily Caller.
Mohamed Magid also attended but did not appear on the White House’s publish list. Magid is imam of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque in Northern Virginia and the current president of the Islamic Society of North America. Along with MPAC, Magid’s two organizations have drawn criticism from a loose network of online critics who claim they are sympathetic to Islamist groups.
Whether intentional or not, the shorter list limited the risk of a political embarrassment for the White House because it downplayed the attendance of several ideological Islamist groups, including MPAC, said Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a pro-Western Muslim group. But the White House also failed to invite any of the 25 pro-liberty American Muslim groups and individuals in Jasser’s American Islamic Leadership Coalition, he said.
Iftar is the evening meal when Muslims break their fast during the month of Ramadan.
At last year’s event, President Obama publicly endorsed the planned construction of a mosque at the Ground Zero site in New York City. But Obama avoided controversial topics in his short speech Wednesday night. (RELATED: Obama gives Small Business Admin. the coal shoulder)
The president lauded American Muslims who reacted to the 9/11 attack. “How do we honor these patriots, those who died and those who served? … The answer is the same as it was ten Septembers ago. We must be the America they lived for, … An America that doesn’t simply tolerate people of different backgrounds and beliefs, but an America where we are enriched by our diversity.”
The public guest list did include ambassadors from Muslim-majority democratic countries, such as Iraq and Bangladesh, as well as the ambassador of Israel, roughly 20 percent of whose population is Muslim. Also included were numerous ambassadors from Islamic countries that do not accept democracy or welcome non-Islamic religions. These included Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and both Yemen and Bahrain, whose governments have violently suppressed public demonstrations this year.
Obama, Jasser complained, “has not been clear on what America stands for, on the freedom agenda in the Middle East, [so] he ends up at an Iftar dinner that panders to ambassadors” who oppose American’s vision of freedom, Jasser said.
The list also excluded a few controversial attendees, such as Tarin from MPAC and Mohamed Magid, who is the imam of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque in Northern Virginia and the current president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
Critics of Tarin’s and Magid’s organizations — including the Investigative Project on Terrorism — use the Internet to publish court records, translate Arab-language media reports, and record information released by Muslim advocacy groups in the United States and overseas. For example, court records now available online show that the federal government designated ISNA an unindicted co-conspirator during the 2008 trial of Texas Muslims who smuggled money to the Hamas terror group.
Hamas is the branch of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, and has stated that its goal is to violently destroy the Jewish state of Israel. Tarin denies any ties to the Islamist groups and the brotherhood. “We’re critical of the Muslim Brotherhood ourselves,” he told TheDC.
Asked about MPAC’s welcome for the 2010 U.S. tour of Tariq Ramadan, who is one of Europe’s foremost Muslim Brotherhood advocates, Tarin said MPAC supports “robust discourse and discussion.”
Tarin says the White House’s omission of his name from the Iftar invitation list remains unexplained. He told TheDC that he received a personal phone call from Obama several weeks ago. That would not have happened, he added, “if they wanted to stay away politically, and avoid criticism.”
While White House officials excluded MPAC’s leader from its published invitation list, Jasser believes the Obama administration continues to engage with the group in its political outreach because “they don’t have the political will to hold MPAC accountable for their ideology.”
According to a recent Gallup study of American voters, just 3.5 percent of U.S. Muslims said the MPAC most represented their interests. Almost half, or 48.5 percent, of Muslim respondents declined to name a Muslim advocacy group that most represented their interests.
White House officials, Jasser offered, should reach out to the Muslim groups in his coalition and invite them to the 2012 Iftar. With this approach, he said, the White House would “empower the liberty-minded, Western-minded anti-Islamists.”
This year’s White House Iftar was more sparsely attended than last’s year’s. Officials working for President George W. Bush also pruned their invite list following several embarrassing episodes, including a September 2001 appearance that placed Bush alongside Abdul Alamoudi and Nihad Awad.
Alamoudi founded the American Muslim Council, was a prominent Islamist advocate in D.C., and raised funds for both Democrats and Republicans until 2004. That’s when he pled guilty to several terror offenses and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Awad is the founding director of the Council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR and ISNA were both named as unindicted co-conspirators in the 2008 Hamas trial.
As the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack approaches, Badani said, White House officials “need to be very careful.”
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-iftar-guest-list-omits-controversial-attendees-202005815.html (http://news.yahoo.com/obama-iftar-guest-list-omits-controversial-attendees-202005815.html)
P.C.
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Yet my fellow Jews are not too far behind :?:
****(CNSNews.com) -- Eighty percent of Muslim Americans approve of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president, according to a newly released survey conducted by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, a partnership between Gallup and the Crown Prince Court of Abu Dhabi.
According to the survey, 65 percent of Jewish Americans approve of the job Obama is doing; 60 percent of atheists, agnostics, and those of no religion approve; 50 percent of Catholics approve; 37 percent of Protestants approve and 25 percent of Mormons approve.
Although published this month, the survey of Muslim Americans was actually completed on April 9. (In Gallup’s overall polling in the week that ended April 10, Obama’s approval was at 45 percent, slightly higher than the 42 percent it hit last week.)
Obama’s approval among Muslim Americans has declined since 2009 but still remains far higher than the approval President George W. Bush’s won among Muslim Americans in 2008. In that year, only 7 percent of Muslim Americans said they approved of the job Bush was doing.
In 2009, 84 percent of Muslim Americans said they approved of the job Obama was doing. That dropped to 78 percent in 2010 and then rose to 80 percent this year.
The Abu Dhabi Gallup Center says it interviewed 3,883 self-identified Muslim Americans between Jan. 1, 2008 and April 9, 2011 to get its polling trends in that community. The interviews were part of Gallup’s ongoing polling of at least 1,000 American adults 350 days per year.****
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Prentice:
Would you please post that in the Islam in American thread as well? Thank you.
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(http://pl-mgroup-akamai.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2011/08/smrx1huede2nra9ekfcpqg.gif)
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(http://pl-mgroup-akamai.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2011/08/smrx1huede2nra9ekfcpqg.gif)
Gallup is obviously raaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaaaacist!
:roll:
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I hadn't thought of racism. I just thought it was Glen Beck's fault.
Speaking of unexpected racists, Black Unemployment was 7.9% when Obama (and Pelosi-Reid-Hillary-Biden et al) took the majority, and 16% now http://www.bls.gov/data/, more then DOUBLE what it was just 5 years ago under Republicans. Who are the racists?
Like President Obama says, elections have consequences.
(http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/7411/blackunemploymentbushvo.jpg)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIoALj0csAA
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From my post of July 15:
"Mark my words if Brock loses we will see him pardon every illegal here and around the world. That will be HIS payback."
Fast forward to present.
Well since he is cratering in the polls (along with the country) he has decided not to wait to start the pardon process.
Just as he finishes his "bus tour" of those gun and religion "clinging" middle America types he pulls
this proverbial "eat me" or "middle finger" to conservatives:
****New DHS Rules Cancel Deportations – Washington Times
The Homeland Security Department said Thursday it will halt deportation proceedings on a case-by-case basis against illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria such as attending school, having family in the military or are primarily responsible for other family members’ care.
The move, announced in letters to Congress, won immediate praise from Hispanic activists and Democrats who had chided President Obama for months for the pace of deportations and had argued he had authority to exempt broad swaths of illegal immigrants from deportation.
“Today’s announcement shows that this president is willing to put muscle behind his words and to use his power to intervene when the lives of good people are being ruined by bad laws,” said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat.
In the letters to Congress, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said her department and the Justice Department will review all ongoing cases and see who meets the new criteria on a case-by-case basis.
“This case-by-case approach will enhance public safety,” she said. “Immigration judges will be able to more swiftly adjudicate high priority cases, such as those involving convicted felons.”
The new rules apply to those who have been apprehended and are in deportation proceedings, but have not been officially ordered out of the country by a judge. Miss Napolitano said a working group will try to come up with “guidance on how to provide for appropriate discretionary consideration” for “compelling cases” in those instances where someone has already been ordered deported.
It was unclear how many people might be affected by the new rules, though in fiscal year 2010 the government deported nearly 200,000 illegal immigrants who it said did not have criminal records.
The Obama administration has argued for months that it did not have authority to grant blanket absolution, and Miss Napolitano stressed that these cases will be treated individually, though the new guidance applies across the board.
In June, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that handles interior immigration law enforcement, issued new guidance expanding authority to decline to prosecute illegal immigrants. The goal, ICE leaders said, was to focus on their priority of catching illegal immigrants who have also committed other crimes or are part of gangs.
The chief beneficiaries of the new guidance are likely to be illegal immigrant students who would have been eligible for legal status under the Dream Act, which stalled in Congress last year.
“Today is a victory not just for immigrants but for the American people as a whole because it makes no sense to deport Dream Act students and others who can make great contributions to America and pose no threat,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “It is not in our national interest to send away young people who were raised in the U.S. and have been educated here and want only to contribute to this country’s success. “
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who earlier this year wrote asking Homeland Security to exempt illegal immigrant students from deportation, said the move will free up immigration courts to handle cases involving serious criminals.
Both men said, though, that they will continue to push for legislation that would grant a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants and expands new pathways for more immigrants to come legally in the future.
But groups pushing for a crackdown on illegal immigration said the administration’s move abused the Constitution by usurping a power Congress should have.
“Supporters of comprehensive and targeted amnesties for illegal aliens have consistently failed to win approval by Congress or gain support from the American public,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “Having failed in the legislative process, the Obama administration has simply decided to usurp Congress’s constitutional authority and implement an amnesty program for millions of illegal aliens.”****
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Obamas reportedly flying separate his and hers jets to Martha's Vineyard (http://www.mvgazette.com/article.php?31587), is air force one not safe enough for the family or too noisy for the first lady? No intent to nitpick, but I am curious - given that the earth has a fever and we have a very short opportunity, that we may have already gone past, to curb our emissions and save this man-made planet. They keep changing their pattern, last year the dog "Bo" reportedly flew on the separate jet http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obamas-fly-dog-on-separate-jet-to-maine with virtually no concern for the impact of his carbon paw print.
Secondly, will the 28 acre Obama compound on the vineyard have border security? If so, why? (Can't we all just get along?) Will they give amnesty to those who storm the compound and take up illegal residence? If not, why not? Just curious.
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"Secondly, will the 28 acre Obama compound on the vineyard have border security? If so, why? (Can't we all just get along?) Will they give amnesty to those who storm the compound and take up illegal residence? If not, why not? Just curious."
What if it's Los Zetas, just trying to do the work the Secret Service won't do? Somos Hermanos!
Very good point, Doug.
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Two observations from the recent bus trip:
Wisconsin was the battleground of all battlegrounds this year - the preview to the political fights we are going to be having all over the country. 3 years ago as the Senate's no. 1 liberal candidate Obama won Wisconsin over the Senate's most moderate Republican by 14 points. Since then the Republicans swept the Governor's office, the state House and the state Senate, and put a Tea Party businessman in Sen. Russ Feingold's seat. The spending restraint crowd allegedly overstepped on the public union powers and the big recalls were called. $30 million spent for a few August special elections and the result is roughly the same. Madison was the scene of all the energy. Try planning a bus trip from the Twin Cities to destinations in Illinois that doesn't go through Madison where all this was fought, where Republicans so egregiously overstepped. Copy 'St. Paul MN to Chicago IL' into google maps and see where you go (right through Madison no matter which freeway you take). But instead they drove around Wisconsin went though Iowa, not Ames or Des Moines, and ended in Peoria IL (no events there) and flew back to Washington from there (to get Bo the dog, grant some amnesty and head out to the Cape. My point I guess is that Mr. Tough Guy-Make my day, don't call my bluff, ready for battle President drove to great lengths to avoid all of Wisc. Illinois is not a swing state. Missouri is - right across the border. Nothing there either.
If you take the detour around Wisc (http://www.tripline.net/trip/Map_of_President_Obama%27s_Midwest_Bus_Tour-23522433146210049A599B63F4F3AC54) and you have this historic Healthcare President heading right through Rochester MN, a healthcare town like no other, home of the Mayo Clinic, where people come from everywhere for high quality care, from King Hussein of Jordan to President Reagan to Billy Graham, Johnny Carson, Mohammed Ali, etc. The whole town is built around the healthcare industry. He stopped nearby at a park in Cannon Falls for a talk. What did the President's agenda say for Rochester? "No events scheduled". Local paper reports that they didn't even slow down.
http://postbulletin.typepad.com/sellnows_journal/2011/08/obama-zooms-through-rochester-today-without-slowing-down.html
How can he stop there when he has 30 people waiting for him in Atkinson IL?
Googling the bus trip I find stops added early August in swing state Pennsylvania. Oops, that was 2008!
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Drugereport reveals POTUS has decided to release Bin Laden death photo.
For the life of me I cannot understand why NOW. Absolutely no one I know or have read or seen is questioning if Bin Laden is dead or not.
This has to be a political decision. Like to remind us what a great military leader he has been because "he" got the guy.
As far as I am concerned I don't need to see the photo.
As far as I am concerned this won't help this guy in the polls.
Wow is he desparate or what?
Even Jimmy Carter was not this bad.
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Drugereport reveals POTUS has decided to release Bin Laden death photo.
For the life of me I cannot understand why NOW. Absolutely no one I know or have read or seen is questioning if Bin Laden is dead or not.
This has to be a political decision. Like to remind us what a great military leader he has been because "he" got the guy.
As far as I am concerned I don't need to see the photo.
As far as I am concerned this won't help this guy in the polls.
Wow is he desparate or what?
Even Jimmy Carter was not this bad.
Total desperation. At this point, he'll show up at the debates with the picture printed on a t-shirt. It's the one thing he can claim as an accomplishment as president.
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Some of the comments are rather funny
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080711080121AAP7mBQ
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I was surprised to learn from the administration that this unexpected east coast earthquake that could be quite damaging to the economy occurred on a little known fault line that crosses this country known as Bush's Fault.
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I was surprised to learn from the administration that this unexpected east coast earthquake that could be quite damaging to the economy occurred on a little known fault line that crosses this country known as Bush's Fault.
:-D :-D :-D
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Given the following, it is worth noting that Baraq refused to waive the Jones Act for foreign oil skimmers during the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
========================
WASHINGTON — In its hurry to transport millions of barrels of oil from federal stockpiles to stabilize world oil prices earlier this summer, the Obama administration has repeatedly bypassed federal law by allowing nearly all the oil to move on foreign-owned vessels, drawing protests from domestic maritime operators.
The domestic ship owners say that 46 times the administration has waived the Jones Act, a 90-year-old law requiring purely domestic cargo to move on United States-flagged ships except under extraordinary circumstances. Only once this summer has oil from the reserve moved on American barges.
Even as unemployment hovered over 9 percent, the administration approved dozens of applications to transport nearly 30 million barrels of domestic crude oil within the borders of the United States on tankers employing foreign crews and flying the flags of the Marshall Islands, Panama and other countries.
The move, which saved time and money for the oil companies that bought the oil, took potential work from more than 30 American cargo vessels and as many as 400 sailors, American ship owners said in recent days.
“This has literally flabbergasted the American maritime industry,” said Christopher Coakley, vice president for legislative affairs at the American Waterways Operators, an association of domestic ship and barge operators. “The idea was to create American jobs and help the economy. But all the profit from the sale of the oil has gone to traders and oil companies and all the profit from movement of the oil has gone to foreign shippers and crewmen, and that’s galling.”
In late June, the Obama administration, acting in concert with the 27 nations of the International Energy Agency, released the oil from the Department of Energy’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to make up some of the shortfall caused by the conflict in Libya. The administration said it wanted to get the oil to market quickly to lower prices and ensure supplies for the summer travel season. To meet that goal, it set very short deadlines for transporting the crude.
To waive the Jones Act, the president must find that there is a national security emergency and that domestic carriers are not available in a timely manner. The cutoff of oil from Libya and a lack of large-capacity American tankers provided the legal rationale for circumventing the law.
Representative Peter T. King, the New York Republican who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that it appeared that the administration had met the formal requirements for waiving the Jones Act, but he questioned the political and economic wisdom of doing so.
“The spirit of the law is when possible, use a U.S. vessel, especially in tough economic times,” Mr. King said. “I think it has to hurt the American economy, hurt the maritime industry and affect American jobs.”
The government originally issued a blanket waiver, allowing the oil buyers to use foreign ships without prior approval, as it had when it released oil from the strategic reserve after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. When the industry protested the proposed blanket waiver in June, the administration said it would review each application. To date, there have been 47 shipments of oil from the caverns in Texas and Louisiana where the petroleum reserves are stored, according to maritime industry officials. One 150,000-barrel shipment moved on a domestic barge.
Most of the shipments were to East Coast refineries from loading points in the Gulf of Mexico.
Administration officials said that the oil was sold in large lots, most of them 500,000 barrels or more, and the dozen or so oil companies and traders that bought them found it faster and more economical to move the oil on 500,000-barrel capacity ocean-going tankers rather than on American-owned coastal barges. With only a couple of exceptions, the coastal barges tend to hold 150,000 barrels or less.
Clark Stevens, a White House spokesman, said that the administration tried to accommodate the domestic maritime industry by lowering the minimum lot size and by considering individual waivers. The administration would have preferred to use American ships but they were not available, he said.
In an e-mailed statement, he said: “Due to the volumes requested by the purchasing companies and the focus on getting this oil to U.S. markets as quickly as possible, the Department of Homeland Security — working with the Maritime Administration and the Department of Energy — determined that individual Jones Act waivers were appropriate since the U.S. fleet had only small barges available, and the buyers bid on the basis of larger, more efficient tankers.”
OSG, a shipping company based in New York, transported oil for three of the oil companies that bought crude from the petroleum reserve. It moved one shipment on an American-flagged barge and three on large tankers that are registered in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
Morten Arntzen, the company’s chief executive, said that the United States was not an oil-exporting country and therefore did not have the capacity to move large shipments of oil on short notice. He said that a relatively large sale from the petroleum reserve was a rare event and that it did not make sense for domestic oil shippers to maintain fleets of tankers.
“The United States hasn’t been exporting oil for decades, so this isn’t a cargo movement anybody positions their fleets for,” he said.
Government officials said that since 1995, 39 American-flagged large-capacity tankers had been taken out of commission, leaving only nine such ships, which generally are used on runs to the West Coast from Alaska. None were available on the short timeline dictated by the government, officials said.
The maritime operators said there was sufficient domestic shipping capacity available, although it would have required breaking the oil shipments into smaller lots, increasing the cost and prolonging delivery times.
Mr. Coakley of the Waterways Operators said that domestic jobs should have been more important than the speed of delivery.
“The urgency of that timeline is ridiculous when you consider that today, two months after the sale of the oil, almost 10 million barrels of the 30 million barrels released hasn’t yet been transported,” he said.
Mr. King said, “I don’t see this as a partisan issue. But I would think a Democratic administration would be making some effort to help American workers.”
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Past PGA champion, ESPN Golf analyst Paul Azinger tweets:
Facts: Potus has played more golf this month than I have: I have created more jobs this month than he has.
(Azinger recently launched a new application for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch called Golfplan: http://golfplanpro.com/)
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Looks like His Glibness is backing off from trying to speak during the Rep. candidates debate :lol:
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"Looks like His Glibness is backing off from trying to speak during the Rep. candidates debate"
It seems the bully who wanted to take audience from the Republican debate now can compete the the long awaited NFL opener with the world champion Wisconsin Packers playing the 2 year ago champion New Orleans Saints. The excesses of capitalism go straight up against yet another round of government-centric job talk. Nielson ratings callers will be busy.
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Being from WI I know what I will watch. :-D
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:lol:
In Brandon Lee's movie ("In the Line of Fire"?) one bad guy says to another bad guy "Don't ask for what you can't take."
Word!
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"Being from WI I know what I will watch."
I will miss the Reagan center debates Wednesday with my aging warrior team (senior tennis) training for nationals. For the great ratings war on Thurs maybe I will watch exciting debate replays. Don't tell me who won. :wink:
For a real Obama jobs plan announcement, may I respectfully suggest that he and his terrorist veep resign during the speech. THAT would signal to the markets and to the world that he is serious.
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Obama needs to do an LBJ, let Shillary or another dem take a swing. He never was that into the job anyway. He's already got a new trip to Tahiti lined up, to show the public how much he cares.
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"let Shillary or another dem take a swing"
Well Sabato was on saying how Brock HAS to go negative against the Republicans (hasn't he always done this in retrospect?) because he cannot run on his record.
If everyone agrees that it is true the incumbant's record is such a failure than why is running at all?
If his campaign strategy is vote for me the other guy is worse then he should for the "sake of the American people" step aside and get out of the way.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/early_obama_letter_confirms_inability_to_write.html
August 29, 2011
Early Obama Letter Confirms Inability to Write
By Jack Cashill
On November 16, 1990, Barack Obama, then president of the Harvard Law Review, published a letter in the Harvard Law Record, an independent Harvard Law School newspaper, championing affirmative action.
Although a paragraph from this letter was excerpted in David Remnick's biography of Obama, The Bridge, I had not seen the letter in its entirety before this week. Not surprisingly, it confirms everything I know about Barack Obama, the writer and thinker.
Obama was prompted to write by an earlier letter from a Mr. Jim Chen that criticized Harvard Law Review's affirmative action policies. Specifically, Chen had argued that affirmative action stigmatized its presumed beneficiaries.
The response is classic Obama: patronizing, dishonest, syntactically muddled, and grammatically challenged. In the very first sentence Obama leads with his signature failing, one on full display in his earlier published work: his inability to make subject and predicate agree.
"Since the merits of the Law Review's selection policy has been the subject of commentary for the last three issues," wrote Obama, "I'd like to take the time to clarify exactly how our selection process works."
If Obama were as smart as a fifth-grader, he would know, of course, that "merits ... have." Were there such a thing as a literary Darwin Award, Obama could have won it on this on one sentence alone. He had vindicated Chen in his first ten words.
Although the letter is fewer than a thousand words long, Obama repeats the subject-predicate error at least two more times. In one sentence, he seemingly cannot make up his mind as to which verb option is correct so he tries both: "Approximately half of this first batch is chosen ... the other half are selected ... "
Another distinctive Obama flaw is to allow a string of words to float in space. Please note the unanchored phrase in italics at the end of this sentence:
"No editors on the Review will ever know whether any given editor was selected on the basis of grades, writing competition, or affirmative action, and no editors who were selected with affirmative action in mind." Huh?
The next lengthy sentence highlights a few superficial style flaws and a much deeper flaw in Obama's political philosophy.
I would therefore agree with the suggestion that in the future, our concern in this area is most appropriately directed at any employer who would even insinuate that someone with Mr. Chen's extraordinary record of academic success might be somehow unqualified for work in a corporate law firm, or that such success might be somehow undeserved.
Obama would finish his acclaimed memoir, Dreams from My Father, about four years later. Prior to Dreams, and for the nine years following, everything Obama wrote was, like the above sentence, an uninspired assemblage of words with a nearly random application of commas and tenses.
Unaided, Obama tends to the awkward, passive, and verbose. The phrase "our concern in this area is most appropriately directed at any employer" would more profitably read, "we should focus on the employer." "Concern" is simply the wrong word.
Scarier than Obama's style, however, is his thinking. A neophyte race-hustler after his three years in Chicago, Obama is keen to browbeat those who would "even insinuate" that affirmative action rewards the undeserving, results in inappropriate job placements, or stigmatizes its presumed beneficiaries.
In the case of Michelle Obama, affirmative action did all three. The partners at Sidley Austin learned this the hard way. In 1988, they hired her out of Harvard Law under the impression that the degree meant something. It did not. By 1991, Michelle was working in the public sector as an assistant to the mayor. By 1993, she had given up her law license.
Had the partners investigated Michelle's background, they would have foreseen the disaster to come. Sympathetic biographer Liza Mundy writes, "Michelle frequently deplores the modern reliance on test scores, describing herself as a person who did not test well."
She did not write well, either. Mundy charitably describes her senior thesis at Princeton as "dense and turgid." The less charitable Christopher Hitchens observes, "To describe [the thesis] as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be 'read' at all, in the strict sense of the verb. This is because it wasn't written in any known language."
Michelle had to have been as anxious at Harvard Law as Bart Simpson was at Genius School. Almost assuredly, the gap between her writing and that of her highly talented colleagues marked her as an affirmative action admission, and the profs finessed her through.
In a similar vein, Barack Obama was named an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Although his description of the Law Review's selection process defies easy comprehension, apparently, after the best candidates are chosen, there remains "a pool of qualified candidates whose grades or writing competition scores do not significantly differ." These sound like the kids at Lake Woebegone, all above average. Out of this pool, Obama continues, "the Selection Committee may take race or physical handicap into account."
To his credit, Obama concedes that he "may have benefited from the Law Review's affirmative action policy." This did not strike him as unusual as he "undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my academic career."
On the basis of his being elected president of Law Review -- a popularity contest -- Obama was awarded a six-figure contract to write a book. To this point, he had not shown a hint of promise as a writer, but Simon & Schuster, like Sidley Austin, took the Harvard credential seriously. It should not have. For three years Obama floundered as badly as Michelle had at Sidley Austin. Simon & Schuster finally pulled the contract.
Then Obama found his muse -- right in the neighborhood, as it turns out! And promptly, without further ado, the awkward, passive, ungrammatical Obama, a man who had not written one inspired sentence in his whole life, published what Time Magazine called "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician."
To question the nature of that production, I have learned, is to risk the abuse promised to Mr. Chen's theoretical employer. After all, who would challenge Obama's obvious talent -- or that of any affirmative action beneficiary -- but those blinded by what Obama calls "deep-rooted ignorance and bias"?
What else could it be?
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The writing is instructive. Amazing for one thing because it seems to be a rare sighting of what is likely his own work. He starts with a simple grammatical error, holds himself up as evidence the system is working and dives into to a logic-free loop of impossible to follow ramble. When he said later, Harry I have gift, I think he meant the delivery not the writing of speeches.
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Next week if everyone shows up we will have the entire Executive and Legislative branches assembled all in one room and the one who knows the very least in the country about job creation will be the only person allowed to speak. Unbelievable.
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A satirist at Reason magazine writes that the Obama administration's approval of the American public has now dipped to an all time low.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/02/state-of-the-union
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In everyday life, when you don't have something to say, you avoid the stage. In our nation's capital, by contrast, the world operates like the one Alice found behind the Looking Glass. That's a world where you have to run as hard as you can just to stay still. Which helps explain why President Obama will this week be addressing a joint session of Congress that doesn't really want to hear from him about a jobs plan that he doesn't really have.
Expectations are high, the byproduct of a highly publicized back and forth with Republican Speaker John Boehner over the date of the president's speech. If you're a White House with a message, that's a good thing. Unfortunately for President Obama, he doesn't have one.
How do we know he doesn't? We know it from the White House itself. On Friday, Ed Henry quoted an unnamed presidential aide telling Fox News that while he didn't want to "downplay the speech," he needed to shoot down "the idea that this is the be-all and end-all."
So if this is not the "be-all and end-all" we've been told it was for weeks, why the initial announcement it would be held the same night Republican presidential candidates were holding a televised debate? And why do it before a joint session of Congress?
The answer to the first is that the speech most probably did not start out as a calculated attempt to upstage the Republican candidates. More likely, Thursday night was what White House aides originally had in mind—until they realized it would clash with the NFL's opening day. So they moved it back a day. That backfired because it looked so ungracious, but if you were President Obama, whom would you rather go up against: the GOP or the Green Bay Packers?
Enlarge Image
CloseBloomberg
Barack Obama: Too small for the house?
.The answer to the other question has more to do with our Looking Glass Beltway. In this universe, a bigger stage is often the solution for a lack of substance. Put it this way: Without the backdrop of a joint session of Congress, how many networks would broadcast another Obama jobs speech?
You can't fault the logic. When Mr. Obama entered office, he told us unemployment would not rise over 8% if we passed his stimulus. Now his economic advisers have just told us that unemployment will not fall below the 9% mark through next year. As if to underscore the grim news, the latest jobs report—released in time for Labor Day weekend—shows zero net job growth for August.
The politics requires not only that the president address the economy's dismal jobs performance but that he be seen by the American people to be doing it. And that's where the teleprompter meets the road.
The truth is that there is practically nothing Mr. Obama could do to gin up better jobs numbers before next year's election without massively increasing the deficit—and the Republicans won't let him do that. Even with the word "stimulus" banished from his remarks this week, no one will be fooled by new calls to "invest" in roads and bridges and infrastructure. Or by the expected hodgepodge of other proposals from extending the payroll tax holiday to tax credits for new hires.
The irony is that the president has blown the one chance to do something of substance without looking weak. Back in July when he was negotiating with Speaker Boehner, the two had agreed on a grand bargain that would include real cuts in entitlements. The "give" on the Republican side was that the deal would address "revenues," which to the president means raising taxes and to the speaker means relying on growth to bring in more money to the Treasury's coffers.
For the president, that deal would have allowed him to do something serious about spending—in a highly public and bipartisan way. Even better for him, it might have split the opposition. For such a deal would likely have left Republicans bickering, with some arguing we should wait for a Republican president and others screaming "sellout."
The president, however, got greedy, and killed the deal when he asked for more. That's been his problem all along. Notwithstanding incessant calls to rise above politics, on issue after issue the president has proved himself incapable of matching his large rhetoric with equally large actions.
In music there's a saying about a performance that was "too small for the house." That's becoming true of the president. There was a day when Mr. Obama's taste for the marvelous—a campaign address in Berlin, the faux presidential seal, the Greek columns that surrounded him during his speech accepting the Democratic nomination—all seemed to herald something exciting and historic.
Even inside the Beltway, however, substance ultimately tells. Three years into his presidency, the grander the stage the smaller Mr. Obama comes across.
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Yes, small time amateur show in a grand national venue, like perhaps having a middle school football game in the Superdome and the cameras try not to show the empty seats. In this case, a full house (why would anyone go?) but the cameras will be panning for reactions to a presumably partisan speech touting more already proven to be failed policies. Is he going to change course? What headline is he looking for Friday morning? Republicans will sit politely expressionless and comment candidly after. He will give them 1 or 2 fake applause lines, tax reform, exports, trade? But all that he knows falls into a government centric world pitting labor versus management and bigger and bigger government versus free markets and capital investment.
Combine 2 posts of this morning, 81% say his policies failed, then he demands prime time full venue to draw attention to that, propose more of the same, while calling opponents (the majority in the room) "enemies". "terrorists", "barbarians" and "sons of bitches"?
I suggested that he and Biden resign if the love their country and want jobs to recover before 2013. The point of reserving this venue and national television spot should only be to announce a serious change of course - endorse real economic growth policies. Of course he will do neither. The only thing he knows how to do is blame others and propose more of the same.
For a clue as to content, the new chair of his economic advisers was the lead administrator of Cash for Clunkers. Yet he still expects the reaction to be women fainting in the front row?? Unless they poisoned the food, it ain't gonna happen.
Sorry Harry, I have lost my gift.
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Above posts simply confirm that OBama is nothing more than a messanger.
There is no evidence he has ever been creative or an original thinker.
Clearly his books were not written by him.
I have not seen one example of anything that is original thought on his part.
Indeed it is remarkable this guy who went to Columbia and Harvard has absolutely no writing which indicates any creative thinking. From what I recall reading about other Harvard law students and professors their lauding him was based only on his seeming ability to referee differences. He seemed to make everyone think he agreed with them on all sides of arguments or debates and in the end no one knew what HE actually believed.
Similarly today he plays Reagan, Lincoln, Clinton, Bush, all the while attempting to hide his real agenda. Even though everyone is on to him now he still plays the same game. Because - he knows no other. IT also fits my theory he is a try disordered personality who will continue to lie, scape goat, blame others, and be a pompous ass - to the end.
That said it is quite clear why he is such a failure. Without taking marching orders from the real brains behind the progressive movement he is lost as to what to do.
His backing off the climate emmissions regulations is really an example of he knows full well his policies kill the economy.
Yet he is so set on his ideolgical agenda her won't give in.
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CCP, Besides his dearth of writings, there is no evidence or indication anywhere that he has even read a book on economics that did not oppose our economic system.
CCP: "His backing off the climate emissions regulations is really an example of he knows full well his policies kill the economy."
Spot on, as well as his agreement to 'extend the Bush tax cuts'. He knows full well that taxes, regulations and spread the wealth programs are economic killers. He was willing to accept anti-growth 'fairness' in an academic sense, but the reality of it setting in is killing his Presidency and our country. He is troubled by the former more so than the latter.
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(Stolen form Crafty's post yesterday:)
"Daydreams of a fair world which would treat him according to his real worth are the refuge of all those plagued by a lack of self-knowledge." (Ludwig von Mises)
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By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN
When it comes to the economy, presidents, like quarterbacks, often get more credit or blame than they deserve. They inherit problems and policies that affect the economy well into their presidencies and beyond. Reagan inherited Carter's stagflation, George H.W. Bush twin financial crises (savings & loan and Third World debt), and their fixes certainly benefitted the Clinton economy.
President Obama inherited a deep recession and financial crisis resulting from problems that had been building for years. Those responsible include borrowers and lenders on Wall Street and Main Street, the Federal Reserve, regulatory agencies, ratings agencies, presidents and Congress.
Mr. Obama's successor will inherit his deficits and debt (i.e., pressure for higher taxes), inflation and dollar decline. But fairly or not, historians document what occurred on your watch and how you dealt with your in-box. Nearly three years since his election and more than two years since the economic recovery began, Mr. Obama has enacted myriad policies at great expense to American taxpayers and amid political rancor. An interim evaluation is in order.
And there's plenty to evaluate: an $825 billion stimulus package; the Public-Private Investment Partnership to buy toxic assets from the banks; "cash for clunkers"; the home-buyers credit; record spending and budget deficits and exploding debt; the auto bailouts; five versions of foreclosure relief; numerous lifelines to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; financial regulation and health-care reform; energy subsidies, mandates and moratoria; and constant demands for higher tax rates on "the rich" and businesses.
Consider the direct results of the Obama programs. A few have performed better than expected—e.g., the auto bailouts, although a rapid private bankruptcy was preferable and GM and Chrysler are not yet denationalized successes. But the failed stimulus bill cost an astounding $280,000 per job—over five times median pay—by the administration's inflated estimates of jobs "created or saved," and much more using more realistic estimates.
Cash for clunkers cost $3 billion, just to shift car sales forward a few months. The Public-Private Investment Partnership, despite cheap federal loans, generated 3% of the $1 trillion claimed, and toxic assets still hobble some financial institutions. The Dodd-Frank financial reform law institutionalized "too big to fail" amid greater concentration of banking assets and mortgages in Fannie and Freddie. The foreclosure relief program permanently modified only a small percentage of the four million mortgages the president promised. And even Mr. Obama now admits that the shovels weren't ready in all those "shovel-ready" stimulus projects.
Perpetually overpromising and underdelivering is not remotely good enough, not even for government work. No corporate CEO could survive such a clear history of failure. The economic records set on Mr. Obama's watch really are historic (see nearby table). These include the first downgrade of sovereign U.S. debt in American history, and, relative to GDP, the highest federal spending in U.S. history save the peak years of World War II, plus the highest federal debt since just after World War II.
The employment picture doesn't look any better. The fraction of the population working is the lowest since 1983. Long-term unemployment is by far the highest since the Great Depression. Job growth during the first two years of recovery after a severe recession is the slowest in postwar history.
Moreover, the home-ownership rate is the lowest since 1965 and foreclosures are at a post-Depression high. And perhaps most ominously, the share of Americans paying income taxes is the lowest in the modern era, while dependency on government is the highest in U.S. history.
That's quite a record, although not what Mr. Obama and his supporters had in mind when they pronounced this presidency historic.
Enlarge Image
Close...President Obama constantly reminds us, with some justification, that he was dealt a difficult hand. But the evidence is overwhelming that he played it poorly. His big government spending, debt and regulation fix has clearly failed. Relative to previous recoveries from deep recessions, the results are disastrous. A considerable fraction of current joblessness, lower living standards, dependency on government and destroyed savings is the result. Worse, his debt explosion will be a drag on economic growth for years to come.
Mr. Obama was never going to enthusiastically embrace pro-market, pro-growth policies. But many of his business and Wall Street supporters (some now former supporters) believed he would govern more like President Clinton, post-1994. After a stunning midterm defeat, Mr. Clinton embarked on an "era of big government is over" collaboration with a Republican Congress to reform welfare, ratify the North American Free Trade Agreement and balance the budget. But Mr. Obama starts far further left than Mr. Clinton and hence has a much longer journey to the center.
The president still has time to rebound from his economic policy missteps by promoting permanent, predictable policies to strengthen forecasted anemic growth. But do Mr. Obama and his advisers realize their analysis of the economic crisis was flawed and their attempted solutions mostly misconceived? That vast spending, temporary tax rebates and social engineering did little of lasting value at immense cost? That the prospect of ever more regulation and taxation created widespread uncertainty and severely damaged incentives and confidence? That the repeated attempts to prevent markets (e.g., the housing market) from naturally bottoming and rebounding have created confusion and inhibited recovery?
Can Mr. Obama change course, given the evidence that the economy responded poorly to top-down direction from Washington rather than the bottom-up individual initiative that is the key to strong growth? Is he willing to rein in the entitlement state erected under radically different economic and demographic conditions? And will he reform the corporate and personal income taxes with much lower rates on a broader base? Or is he going to propose the same failed policies—more spending, social engineering, temporary tax cuts and permanent tax hikes?
On the answer to these questions, much of Mr. Obama's, and the nation's, future rests.
Mr. Boskin, a professor of economics at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.
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Perhaps the most memorable and candid moment from the summer of Obama 2008 was this line in a long explanation of how good his elaborate economic tinkering could be for this country:
"I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody."
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2008/10/spread-the-weal/
My observations 3 years later:
a) When we had economic growth, the emphasis of the left was always on disparity, not success or opportunity.
b) Obama succeeded in the first part: there are now millions fewer millionaires.
c) Destroying, capturing and hindering the creation of obscene, excess wealth did not help the downtrodden whatsoever. To pick the one group where his message resonates best, black unemployment doubled since Dems took power in Washington. Who knew?
d) Lastly and the reason I bring that quote back is that he was specifically and memorably admitting that we had wealth in this country just before he won the Presidency. In 3 years we went from an academic argument about what to do with our wealth to not being able to find any.
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"there are now millions fewer millionaires."
I believe you. Any chance you have a citation for this? There's someone I would love to beat up with it :evil:
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I don't! It's not true! :-D
Fact - There are 8% more millionaires in 2010 than 2009. And in
2009 the number rose too.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/16/news/economy/millionaires/index.htm
The rich get richer and the middle class pays. :-(
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Over to you Doug , , ,
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I agree with JDN. - Just kidding. :wink:
First this: "The rich get richer and the middle class pays."
What did that mean? As rich get richer, they pay more and more in dollar and percentage of the load. Is there any data that say otherwise? In what way does the middle class pay at a higher rate than the rich? At the median 50th percentile (middle) taxpayer, the federal income tax they pay is zero.
When a news story conflicts with what you see with your own eyes it is time to dig deeper. A couple of things stand out that I see. For one thing, in the story they admit the total number still has not recovered to pre-recession levels. For another thing, the 'illusory gains' mentioned in the March story unfortunately were wiped out by the market performance over the summer.
The rich do get richer in times of real economic growth. But now we have stocks down again. Real estate down. Sure some are getting richer - likely investing outside the reach of the regulatory hurricane and the impending U.S. tax increases.
The point really is just that the plights of investors and workers are inextricably linked. When you attack investment, you hurt jobs. You don't spread the wealth. You destroy the wealth.
The story that caused me to make that comment was this in the WSJ last week:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512501087811480.html?mod=googlenews_wsj&_nocache=1315498848661&mg=com-wsj
Review and Outlook - Wall Street Journal - AUGUST 17, 2011
Millionaires Go Missing
There's nothing like a recession to level incomes.
(http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AO095_3irs_D_20110816182704.jpg)
Speaking of "millionaires and billionaires" (see above), the real tax news is that there are fewer of both these days. This month the IRS released more detailed tax data for 2009, and the nearby table records the decline of the taxpaying rich.
In 2007, 390,000 tax filers reported adjusted gross income of $1 million or more and paid $309 billion in taxes. In 2009, there were only 237,000 such filers, a decline of 39%. Almost four of 10 millionaires vanished in two years, and the total taxes they paid in 2009 declined to $178 billion, a drop of 42%.
Those with $10 million or more in reported income fell to 8,274 from 18,394 in 2007, a 55% drop. As a result, their tax payments tanked by 51%. These disappearing millionaires go a long way toward explaining why federal tax revenues have sunk to 15% of GDP in recent years. The loss of millionaires accounts for at least $130 billion of the higher federal budget deficit in 2009. If Warren Buffett wants to reduce the deficit, he should encourage policies to create more millionaires, not campaign to tax them more.
The millionaires who are left still pay a mountain of tax. Those who make $1 million accounted for about 0.2% of all tax returns but paid 20.4% of income taxes in 2009. Those with adjusted gross income above $200,000 a year were just under 3% of tax filers but paid 50.1% of the $866 billion in total personal income taxes. This means the top 3% paid more than the bottom 97%. Yet the 3% are the people that President Obama claims don't pay their fair share. Before the recession, the $200,000 income group paid 54.5% of the income tax.
For the past three decades, the political left has obsessed about income inequality. As the economy experienced one of the largest and lengthiest economic booms in history from 1982-2007, the left moaned that the gains went to yacht club members.
Well, if equality of income is the priority, liberals should be thrilled with the last four years. The recession and weak recovery have been income levelers. Those who make more than $200,000 captured one-quarter of the $7.6 trillion in total income in 2009. In 2007 the over-$200,000 crowd had one-third of reported U.S. taxable income. Those with incomes above $1 million earned 9.5% of total income in 2009, down from 16.1% in 2007.
It's an old story: The best way to produce income equality is to destroy trillions of dollars of wealth. Everyone loses, but the rich lose relatively more than the poor and the middle class. By that measure, if few others, Obamanomics has been a raging success.
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Ah Doug, you Subject was "Spread the Wealth? Millions fewer millionaires was not a good jobs program."
The FACT is there are 8% more millionaires in 2010 and 16% more millionaires in 2009! :-o :-o :-o
I guess Crafty will have to hold his comments.... :evil:
The fact is more are getting richer under Obama.... More MILLIONAIRES in spite of a down real estate market. They are just not paying taxes....
Obviously, they are NOT "paying MORE as a percentage of the load".
But then that's another problem that needs to be addressed.... :-)
The rich are not "spreading the wealth" rather they are clipping coupons and $%^$$$ the middle class. And we are suppose to reduce their taxes??? :?
Waren Buffett is right....
The rich will always keep their wealth; it's the middle class I worry about. As CCP pointed out, the disparity of incomes is truly atrocious.
I noticed the President of Yahoo, a local company, just got fired for incompetence. She was on the job for less than 2 years. She was a failure. Yet her Golden Handshake is approximately 10 million dollars. :-o
What does the average middle class guy get when he get's fired for incompetence?
America needs to support the middle class... The rich always take care of themselves.... And they %^&**$$$ everyone else.
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Sorry but I don't speak emotocon very well and I think we have had this argument before.
"Obviously, they are NOT "paying MORE as a percentage of the load"."
Sorry, nothing is obvious to me. Please link or support that. You are saying their income went up in a progressive rate system. If so, their load increased.
Yes, the economy is growing consistently now at about 0.0% under Obama so it is possible that people are getting richer. Your March data ignore the summer crash and the years you point to deny when power actually changed in Washington:
The policy arrow in Washington turned over to the spread-the-wealth /tax-the-rich direction in Nov 2006. That was when the young glibness and cohorts took majority in both chambers of congress and that was when W took lame duck status according to every liberal leftist pundit and awake observer:
Washington Post Nov. 2006: "Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid of Nevada told supporters, "All across America tonight . . . there is in the air a wind of change." " http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/07/AR2006110700473.html
Yes. Change for the worse.
CBS 2006: "Bush Is Now A Lame Duck" http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/17/opinion/meyer/main1623700.shtml
Yes. Democrats will be calling the shots and are promising to raise taxes and spread wealth. Probably expand the CRA too and get the last homeless person into home ownership...
Christian Science Monitor, November 8, 2006: Bush faces daunting challenges in his lame-duck years http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1108/p09s01-cojh.html
Washington Post October 18, 2006: Elections May Leave Bush An Early Lame Duck http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/17/AR2006101701586.html
Huffington Post: Bush was a lame duck President after the 2006 Mid-terms according to Democrats like Harry Reid and Nanci Pelosi and the CBS,ABC,MSNBC,NPR,CNN,NYT,AP,RUETERS,DNC, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/GulfportM/gdp-us-q2-second-quarter-expectations_n_913032_99898728.html
50 months consecutive job growth ended at this moment. What changed? You've got a different theory?
(http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/LNS14000000_28894_1315547893909.gif)
"And we are suppose to reduce their taxes??"
No. You aren't supposed to do anything. But if you want to stop the job killing you will have to alleviate the disincentives to produce. You are supposed to fight back for more job killing and we are supposed to defeat you. (Why do you revert to arguing anti-growth economics while endorsing Huntsman before and after he came out with a supply side plan?)
For all of this time in power there has been a promise that tax rates will be raised on the rich right around the next corner. For the most part that never happened so we got the Murphy's Law combination of all of the production and wealth destruction with none of the revenue increases that the higher rates would have allegedly yielded. Completely braindead economics. His new chief economic adviser was the architect of cash for clunkers. Now it is the OBAMA tax cut extensions that need to be made permanent, yet he refuses to remove this warclub from over their heads while he piles on page after page of new regulations and presiding over a doubling of energy costs.
What part of OWNERSHIP of their results do they not understand?
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"the disparity of incomes is truly atrocious."
The disparity in what different people produce in the economy is 'atrocious'.
(http://i1.cpcache.com/product/330320814/dont_spread_my_wealthspread_my_work_ethic_sti.jpg)
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Maybe we can create some sort of govenment agency that could redistribute the wealth?
What could possibly go wrong?
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The point about Bush being a political nullity from 2006 forward seems a fair one to me, thus muddying the meaning of the data from 2007-9 about the number of millionaires.
What I notice in my life is that the low interest rate policies are in fact a war on savers. Given the chaos in the markets I would dearly love to have a place of refuge for what I have left that did not automatically entail losses -- which is how I perceive the interface of current interest rates for savers and inflation plus taxes. Even accepting the IMO dishonest official inflation rate taxes, interest rates for savers are now negative and we the taxpayers are subsidizing free money to the same bankers who gleefully exploited the Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's loan guarantees (loans at rates below t-bill rates).
The class warfare of "tax the rich" is IMO both an absurdity (the top 3% already pay as much as everyone else so how can it be said that they are not paying their share?) and a deception (don't notice that we are bailing out the banks instead of allowing them to go bankrupt and be taken over by new owners).
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Crafty: "The point about Bush being a political nullity from 2006 forward seems a fair one to me, thus muddying the meaning of the data from 2007-9 about the number of millionaires."
It doesn't muddy the waters; and I'm not trying to spin the data, or find the "meaning" just report the facts. There were more millionaires the last two years....
JDN "Obviously, they are NOT "paying MORE as a percentage of the load"."
Doug: "Sorry, nothing is obvious to me. Please link or support that. You are saying their income went up in a progressive rate system. If so, their load increased."
I'm just using your data/link Doug. Fact, (my link) there are more millionaires the last two years. Fact, (your link) shows a decline of millionaire taxpayers.
I guess my logic was that since there are 25% more millionaires today than two years ago, but less millionaires according to the tax rolls, a lot of millionaires are not paying their share, nor
are they paying MORE; actually they seem to be paying less as a group according to your data.
That said, I am not proposing "class warfare" or a "tax the rich" plan. But a small increase is obviously affordable. Further, as Doug's data indicates, as does Buffett mention, the rich are able to avoid taxes
much easier than the middle class.
We toss out horrid progressive tax numbers, but few rich pay even close to the top. I'ld rather see a lower number like Huntsman suggested, but eliminate ALL the deductions and tax havens.
It's more honest. Frankly, I bet a lot of the rich end up paying more if all their precious deductions are eliminated.
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Well, we are starting to drift into Liberal Fascism territory here, but I would submit that the tax code is a major, perhaps THE major tool of fascism (both liberal and corporate).
The poor are told "We are taxing the rich."
The rich are told "Don't worry, its all a game, here's some shelters, loopholes, and deductions"
The special interests are told "We will funnel money to you via the workings of the tax code according to how much you donate to our campaigns."
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Some follow up points because this is central to evaluating this president and this election - then back to the other threads.
We hold Gov Perry to results in Texas during his time and Romney in Massachusetts for his. But the operative Obama line is "when we got here" meaning post-crash Jan. 2009, and that everything that happened when they took control of both chambers of congress, took control of domestic policy and bragged swaggeredly about taking full control in Nov 2006 did not count. We can blame Bush for losing that midterm election and losing congress and losing all control of domestic policy but Jan. 2007 is certainly when they got there, if one is talking about control and direction of policies in Washington.
One could also say that Obama was only a junior senator and only one senator of 100 but he was the rock star in the party even as a candidate ever since his keynote speech at the 2004 convention and he was a de facto leader in the senate and congress the day he arrived in Washington. When they took the majority two years later he waited less than 30 days to launch his successful Presidential run. Hillary was the presumed nominee and next President but his only policy difference with Hillary turned out to be that he opposed the individual mandate. Go figure. The direction of the Pelosi-Reid congress under lame duck Bush was something Obama had a direct hand in or should have, while saying he was ready to run it all. They were saying trust us to govern and then they were saying watch what we do, correcting disparities etc. and they did, and now I am pinning those results on them just as they wished - back then.
The tie between investment results and unemployment is economic and inextricable. It follows policies choices and policy mistakes, not calendar years or names on office doors. We attempted this discussion before. If wealth went up slightly during brief interludes on the graph posted, like when unemployment went from 10.2 to 9.1, then so be it. They are still linked. If you kill investment and wealth, you kill jobs and opportunities for workers and young people.
My real point is that disparity during economic growth is a fact. When policies move away from job-killing to more neutral and economic growth resumes or better yet grows gangbusters, those who are invested in the economy, putting their own money on the line, owning stocks and small businesses, holding the faith, taking the risks and making the innovations, those are the ones who will benefit first and disproportionately the most, as compared with those who have nothing of their own at stake and are sitting this one out. It is a fact of economic life and it is not atrocious, it is freedom and choice. To the disparity-phobics I say - get over it. A growing economy with all its unfairness, unevenness and blemishes is far better than the alternatives, as we now see! To the have-nots, it represents only opportunity to do anything you want, not a trickle-down. Whether or not they take advantage of that opportunity depends on personal choices, not a government program.
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"the rich are able to avoid taxes much easier than the middle class"
Yes but only by avoiding productive investment and taxable income. Once it hits line 32 or whatever it is - it gets taxed.
"I'd rather see a lower number like Huntsman suggested, but eliminate ALL the deductions and tax havens"
Me too!
"Frankly, I bet a lot of the rich end up paying more if all their precious deductions are eliminated."
No, they end up paying a lot more when rates are lowered. The purpose of allowing deductions like business expenses is to calculate income accurately. The failed attempts at social engineering should be limited to the spending side and limited to what we take in in actual revenues. It wasn't the rich who wrote the precious deductions, it was the greedy, power hungry, know it all, technocrat, representatives of the people. For example, how did healthcare creep even further into the tax code under Obama if we were really trying - laser focus - to energize private sector jobs? Isn't that a public spending question? Really a personal and private one?
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I'd love to see the Home mortgage interest deduction eliminated. Let's see how you all in the blue states like that. After all, you're rich, right JDN?
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Hi, wearing my Thread Continuity Nazi Hat right now :-D
Lets take that to the Tax thread please.
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"A", I'm NOT rich, too bad though, :-( but frankly I would like to see the home mortgage deduction phased out. At the moment, impossible,
but a home is a place to live, not necessarily an investment. Why is there a mortgage deduction, worse people get a second and third line of credit that is deductible, but a poor/middle class person who rents is not able to deduct any interest? There is no mortgage interest deduction in Canada, Australia or England. However home ownership is just fine.
So I agree, let's eliminate the mortgage interest deduction and a lot more deductions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/magazine/305deduction.1.html?pagewanted=print
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Hi, wearing my Thread Continuity Nazi Hat right now :-D
Lets take that to the Tax thread please.
Sorry, I responded without reading your quote, but also, while we are on the subject of appropriate threads, is there a way
to move whole threads to another thread?
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"A", I'm NOT rich, too bad though, :-( but frankly I would like to see the home mortgage deduction phased out. At the moment, impossible,
but a home is a place to live, not necessarily an investment. Why is there a mortgage deduction, worse people get a second and third line of credit that is deductible, but a poor/middle class person who rents is not able to deduct any interest? There is no mortgage interest deduction in Canada, Australia or England. However home ownership is just fine.
So I agree, let's eliminate the mortgage interest deduction and a lot more deductions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/magazine/305deduction.1.html?pagewanted=print
Define "rich". You live in a gated community in Santa Monica, right? I'm pretty sure that's not poor. You have more than others, got to spread that wealth around!
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Huh? :? I don't live in Santa Monica or even near Santa Monica (Crafty does) nor do I live in a gated community.
Then again, I never said I was "poor" either.
For example, my neighbor behind me is a LAPD Police Captain. My neighbor across the street is a Superior Court Judge.
Both make good money, but both will deny that they are "rich".
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Hey, "rich" is relative. You don't live in a housing project in Watts, right? I bet your fellow Obama voters there would define you as rich and insist that you spread your wealth around.
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For the record I live some 15-20 miles from Santa Monica. I drive a 21 year old truck and make my living teaching martial arts. :-P
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I still haven't gathered the strength of stomach to read or watch the speech yet. Fascinated by what a non-news story it is. We had back-to-school curriculum night last night as did thousands of school districts I'm sure and I made the right choice. I will read the bill when there is one. One revelation seems to be that Obama had another half-tril of cuts he was willing to make but was hiding and saving those to offset new spending. We will see. This time maybe we can pass the cuts and skip the new spending and 'revenue enhancers'.
It seems to me he set his own trap and caught himself being the anti-jobs, anti-growth, anti-private sector president that he is. It was a mistake to draw attention to his worst quality. 'Pass it and I'll tell you what's in it.' Should instead have made one more speech on the killing of OBL, then say he needs to spend more time with family - and golf without criticism - and will not be running again.
People with better senses of humor than me set out to enjoy the pre-game speech with BINGO boards and drinking games. Let's drag out the film and pass out the board markers. See how many you can get:
(http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/Obamaspeechbingo-2.jpg)
Bingo!
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"For the record I live some 15-20 miles from Santa Monica. I drive a 21 year old truck and make my living teaching martial arts."
On a brighter note, your truck jumped in value under Obama. The replacement model may have the Fred Flintstone drive system mandated.
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Whoever came up with that bingo board is OBVIOUSLY a racist biggoted person. :wink:
Must be one of those crazy loon Tea Party types. :lol:
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Whoever came up with that bingo board is OBVIOUSLY a racist biggoted person. :wink:
Must be one of those crazy loon Tea Party types. :lol:
Very uncivil and with a violent subtext to boot. :roll:
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"Must be one of those crazy loon Tea Party types"
Barbarians!
In the re-sizing to post I lost track of crediting the source. I took it from Steven Hayward at Powerlineblog and he credits: http://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=8333
They missed the new catch phrase: pass the bill.
Pres. Obama needed, since the beginning of his Vineyard stay, to tell us this on Wednesday. Thursday was going to be too late. On Thursday he said pass the bill, pass the bill, pass the bill, perhaps two dozen times, but no bill Wednesday or Thurs. Today is Friday... No bill. He has already been humiliated by CBO this year who said they score bills; they don't score speeches.
925 days without a jobs bill was the headline around Aug 31. Many things werre done faster. http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2011/09/01/what_can_happen_in_fewer_than_925_days Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific in 542. Now before it's written he wants it passed without reading it. Really without writing it. Then he wants it passed without reading it or debating it or running it by the constituents who may in fact hold more wisdom than him and his cash for clunkers chief adviser. We did this with healthcare. We did this with TARP. We did this with Stimulus 1 and Stimulus 2, and QE1 and QE2. We did this with Dodd Frank. We did this with the debt ceiling super-anti-constitutional committee formation. What could possibly go wrong someone asked. Pretty much everything, as we have seen.
Certain stunts and maneuvers have been named after people, like a Lewinsky. Is he pulling an Obama here again?
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The details of this can go under energy, but it must be pointed out under dissonance that even though the Obama crowd says the job growth in Texas was mostly about energy (13% IIRC), the word 'energy' does not appear anywhere in his jobs speech.
John Hinderacker of Powerline has a headline that articulates my view better than I can:
"Want More Jobs? The Low-Hanging Fruit Is Energy".
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/09/want-more-jobs-the-low-hanging-fruit-is-energy.php
A friend just came back from Williston, ND, a state where the unemployment rate is 3% and said the hotel rooms are all booked through next March. They don't come there for the scenery or for horse racing or pro football or concerts or for the weather or the beaches. They come for energy, energy jobs and for the economic activity all of that is generating. Rocket fuel, not rocket science!
But Pres. Obama did not even use the word energy in his jobs speech.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-obama-speech-remarks,0,3432522.story
Energy production doesn't just create energy production jobs. It makes every factory, every delivery service, every office building, every college, every hospital, every bridge construction project, every farm, etc. operate more cost effectively and to be more competitive in a growing global market.
Yet no mention whatsoever. Not the word 'energy', not 'oil', not 'drill', not 'explore' or 'exploration', not 'refine' or 'refinery', not 'pipeline', not new 'nuclear', not clean 'coal' or carbon sequestration, not 'natural gas', and not 'power generation' of any kind. We are going to quadruple exports, re-open our factories, train and hire back our workers by the millions and we are going to do it on pedal power?? Even that is not mentioned. To do it efficiently would require pedals made in China and shipped without using even more imported oil.
The topic is jobs and the message is, 'you listen, I'll talk'. That's not audacity, it is arrogance, short-sightedness and stupidity. If you don't have the answers Mr. President, respectfully, shut your mouth for a moment and open your eyes and big ears. and let some obvious common sense from others seep in.
But a conservative site to him with an obvious answer to the exact challenge he faces gets just a reaction that they are barbarians, 'enemies' and sons of bitches. 'Stop listening to them!'
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While I can see some benefits, I also can see the severe disadvantages of increased domestic energy production.
Yet, I don't quite understand your comment,
"Energy production doesn't just create energy production jobs. It makes every factory, every delivery service, every office building, every college, every hospital, every bridge construction project, every farm, etc. operate more cost effectively and to be more competitive in a growing global market."
Drilling for oil is going to make the local colleges, the local hospitals operate more cost effectively and be more competitive? :?
I find it interesting that while China has an enviable record of economic and job growth, their industries seem rather "cost effective and competitive", yet China is able to do so with minimal domestic energy production. The same applies to Japan, Germany, and many other countries without oil reserves.
By the way, isn't "clean coal" an oxymoron? It isn't just the Federal government; disastrous oil spills have prompted state governments to prohibit additional oil drilling. There is a reason no one wants oil drilled in their back yard. In survey after survey people overwhelmingly vote for environmental concerns over drilling. I too would rather have pay a few more cents at the pump than have another oil spill off California.
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You continue to amaze me. I wish I could tell when you are just pulling my chain.
"I also can see the severe disadvantages of increased domestic energy production."
As much as I love Canada and wish the best for Mexico, our failure to produce more of our own energy also enriches enemies and adversaries as far away Iran, Venezuela, Russia and tea party havenTexas. It plays a major role in our trade deficit, which causes other problems monetary. It makes us vulnerable in terms of both security and economics. It caused us to use strategic reserves for extremely temporary political purposes. It is such a beautiful day here I hate to expand on this but I could.
"Drilling for oil is going to make the local colleges, the local hospitals operate more cost effectively and be more competitive? huh "
JDN, Really? You don't know that every factory, every university, every everything that we do relies on energy and reasonable energy prices? And that cost just DOUBLED under this President's policies. How many vehicles does UCLA own? How about the state government of California? How much oil does tghe federal government use? That money could be used for stimuli and helping out the people who don't want to work. What is the energy bill in a year for everything that happens in a year in a hospital, not just the lights, heat and AC, but the shipping of medicines and everything else. How about an outage? Who on a heart lung machine in a hospital might that hurt? Who cares??
Then off goes the argument to China. China doesn't have a net trade deficit like we do. They are using OUR dollars to buy THEIR energy and drive our costs and deficits up even further. Also they are building new plants and chasing new sources at an amazing rate so the comparison fails. While Obama is stopping them. You think Japan doesn't have an energy crisis right now? What?? I think I could find traces of it on at least 5 threads on this board. You like their growth rate? The additive effect of these huge economies importing instead of producing energy, and Germany held hostage to Russian natural gas supplies does not make our failure okay, it makes it far worse. How is Japan without oil analogous to us leaving ours in the ground - while subsidizing production in Brazil? You approve of that? Really??
"isn't "clean coal" an oxymoron?"
You don't know the difference between today's best plants and those that spew soot and sulfur into the air? Really? http://webecoist.com/2009/04/15/clean-coal-dirty-coal-plants/ Or is this a CO2 argument. Fine, then back to nuke. Zero CO2. Big construction potential. Not in the speech.
While you are entitled to your opinion that you would rather have energy produced further from home, transported in danger of spill, and funding those who arm the people who kill our troops, the question at hand is: ... What should a failed leader that is laser-focused on jobs do?
Our massive energy production deficit is a force raising the price of all energy everywhere, especially at home, killing jobs and job growth. BTW, we drill and spill in deep water when our regulators ban rigs near shore. Like it or not, that is cognitive dissonance.
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Doug, let's be a little reasonable. I think YOU are pulling my chain. :-) Drilling in America is going to lower prices so factories in America, UCLA, etc. will be more effective? :?
"The problem is this: While increased oil and gas drilling in the United States may create good-paying jobs, reduce reliance on foreign oil and lower the trade deficit, it will have hardly any impact on gas and oil prices.
That's because the amount of extra oil that could be produced from more drilling in this country is tiny compared to what the world consumes.
Plus, any extra oil the country did produce would likely be quickly offset by a cut in OPEC production.
"This drill drill drill thing is tired," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, which calculates gas prices for the motorist organization AAA. "It's a simplistic way of looking for a solution that doesn't exist."
http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/25/news/economy/oil_drilling_gas_prices/index.htm
According to the CONSERVATIVE American Enterprise Institute,
Ken Green, resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute think tank.
But experts disagreed about how much impact additional drilling could have. Crude oil is a global commodity, Green said.
"The world price is the world price," Green said. "Even if we were producing 100 percent of our oil," he said, if prices increase because of a shortage in China or India, "our price would go up to the same thing.
"We probably couldn't produce enough to affect the world price of oil," Green added. "People don't understand that."
And please, while I know Obama is far from perfect, blaming him for World High Oil Prices is even stretching it for you. Again, article after article
says he has very little if any control on world oil prices. Maybe you blame him for sun spots too; he probably has equal control over that as well.
As for "clean coal" being an oxymoron, well.... it is. It's a terrible pollutant. Period. Just read your own link.
Frankly, most energy production is dirty; just look at the terrible impact of oil spills,or nuclear spills so in many ways I'm "happy" to see it done somewhere else.
The answer is for America to use less energy. Decrease demand, not increase Supply. But no one seems to want to do that.
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Anyone who claims that additional oil production won't drop prices obviously flunked out of Economics 101. You know, supply and demand.
Saudi Arabia has successfully been our "frienemy" since WWII due to the House of Saud altering production to offset oil price spikes for us.
Us getting back in the oil game creates jobs for us as well. Not just McJobs, but well paying ones.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkDJpGXHsIw&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkDJpGXHsIw&feature=player_embedded
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Anyone who claims that additional oil production won't drop prices obviously flunked out of Economics 101. You know, supply and demand.
Odd; did you read my post? Somehow THEY (the oil industry experts who probably passed Econ 2&3 as well) seem to think our additional oil production WON'T affect oil prices. Pretty straightforward I would say. Is there something you don't understand?
Us getting back in the oil game creates jobs for us as well. Not just McJobs, but well paying ones.
Yes, it's true. More jobs. That's great. No question.
But at what price? Oil spills? Costing billions of dollars? Pollution? Destruction of the environment? Ask the fisherman in the Golf how their job
is going? How sick they are... How it affected the fish and the eco system....
Domestic drilling won't affect prices, so I still say, let's cut demand not increase supply. In the end, we will all be better off.
The USA consumes 25% of the world's energy yet we have only 5% of the world's population. Surely there is room for improvement.
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JDN:
1) The Keynesian calamity of Obamanomics in conjunction with the attendant monetization of the US deficit has caused, as has been commented and discussed in the US dollar thread, the US dollar to dive-- thus triggering an inverse climb of commodity prices-- most certainly including oil. Obamanomics IS responsible for high oil prices.
2) "But at what price? Oil spills? Costing billions of dollars? Pollution? Destruction of the environment? Ask the fisherman in the Golf (sic) how their job is going? How sick they are... How it affected the fish and the eco system...."
Of course this is why Obama is subsidizing the Brazilians to drill in the same area while puppeteer Soros profits :roll: :roll: :roll:
There is also the matter of Exxon now working the Arctic with the Russians because US policies block them here. Meantime the deep water rigs that worked the Gulf have now permanently left US waters for Africa :-o and elsewhere-- no doubt the environmental standards there are as rigorous as the US's. :roll: Similarly lets make sure that the Canadians do not connect their shale oil to the US and instead build a pipeline to the Pacific Ocean so the Chinese can buy it. No doubt the planet will thank you , , , :roll:
3) "Domestic drilling won't affect prices, so I still say, let's cut demand not increase supply. In the end, we will all be better off."
Yes I get that on the whole oil is fungible and so in a macro world economy sense prices may not be affected that much on the margin, but there is the matter of the vulnerability and political volatility of many of the supply sources (Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela, the whole fg mid-east) which puts a rather stiff risk premium on the prices from those sources which would NOT be the case of US sources. Connected to this is the cost of foreign policies motivated by securing oil supplies.
"Cutting demand"? That's just what our teetering on collapse economy needs! Shrewd, real shrewd.
"In the end" we will be fuct if we follow your prescriptions.
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"Odd; did you read my post? Somehow THEY (the oil industry experts who probably passed Econ 2&3 as well) seem to think our additional oil production WON'T affect oil prices. Pretty straightforward I would say. Is there something you don't understand?"
If the supply increases, would that result in a price drop? I'm not talking about a temporary tapping of the strategic oil reserve, where a salt cavern is damaged to put a day's worth of oil on the market at vast expense to the taxpayers, I'm talking about tapping American oil fields, creating jobs to boot.
I realize that you, like most of your peers in the PRK think food magically appears at the supermarket and gasoline magically appears at the gas station and jobs are just a government program away from becoming reality, but it isn't so.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/13/us-energy-summit-capacity-idUSTRE75C4B320110613
Concerns are growing over the kingdom's ability to pump more oil beyond an anticipated summer boost, leaving the world exposed to any further unexpected disruptions. The world's top exporter promised to produce as much oil as the market needs after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries last week failed to reach a deal.
Saudi newspaper al-Hayat reported Saudi Arabia would boost output to 10 million barrels per day (bpd) in July, which Goldman Sachs' global head of commodities research Jeff Currie said would leave only 500,000 bpd spare. Currie and his team have warned for months about overstated Saudi output capacity.
"If you get up to (10 mln bpd), you start to really create a very tight market relative to spare capacity," he told the Reuters Global Energy and Climate Summit in London.
"But the question that's more appropriate is when do you get to 9.5, when do you get to 10? Because when you start to look out over the horizon, their ability to create more flexibility in spare capacity increases tremendously."
Peter Oosterveer, group president for energy and chemicals with global engineering giant Fluor Corp (FLR.N), recently met with executives in the Middle East, and returned with a feeling that Saudi Arabia's capacity was not as large as some estimates.
He did not provide any specific numbers on the kingdom's overall production, but said workable spare capacity was in the range of 1.5 to 2 million bpd.
"That doesn't mean to say that it isn't ultimately available," Oosterveer said at the Summit. He added that there did not seem to be a great deal of concern in Saudi Arabia about the current level of capacity.
"There's always a lot of activity in Saudi, and there's still a lot of activity in Saudi as we speak," he added, with more focus there on exploration and production projects compared with two or three years ago.
CENTRAL BANK OF OIL
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world with a significant base of idle capacity, and therefore can act as a supplier of last resort in times of crisis. It has already ramped up output following the halt in Libya's over 1 million bpd of oil exports, and is expected to pump more shortly.
Following a wave of investment as oil surged to a record high $147 a barrel in 2008, Saudi Arabia says its capacity stands at 12.5 million bpd, giving it a comfortable cushion based on recent output estimates.
But analysts are still beginning to debate the risk of a repeat of the last decade, when years of underinvestment and a surge in Chinese demand forced OPEC to pump nearly flat out, drawing down their reserve to less than 1 million bpd.
That fundamental tightness underpinned the five-year rally that lifted prices six-fold until 2008. While few expect that to recur as spectacularly, some are warning of spikes.
"Once spare capacity falls below 2 million bpd, which will be sometime next year, then we will see substantial spikes in the oil price from time to time," Robeco fund manager Peter Csoregh told the Summit.
"There's an inherent bias, especially in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia, to overstate their spare capacity."
**Wait, you mean production impacts price? :roll:
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To JDN and Pres. Obama: [This has already been well answered.] Energy use is tied to economic activity. We make efficiency gains over decades but in the immediate term lower energy use means fewer people going to work and less product produced. Anti-growth economics - Obamanomics - is the POLAR OPPOSITE of having a laser focus on jobs. That's why we call it 'cognitive dissonance'. You can shrink economic activity or you can grow jobs. You can't do both simultaneously. If you don't know that energy prices are a major component of everything and differences at the margin matter greatly, I honestly don't know how to help you.
"Decrease demand, not increase Supply."
Fill our tires, eat our peas. Oil will spill and nuclear plants melt down, let's do without more energy? That's the thinking that got us into this mess. You can do without growth - you can do without jobs, - but you will also do without a second term. If you don't put fuel into the planes, trucks, cars, ambulances etc. they don't go. It's physics. Heat and AC are used in commercial buildings only if people are working there. Oil is used in manufacturing, not just transportation, also to grow food. Put transportation on the electric grid and you will need to ad kilowatts. Actually gigawatts.
"The USA consumes 25% of the world's energy..." yes, about 4 terawatts, and 25% of the world's oil. We produce 11% of the world's oil.
25% is a better guideline of how much we should produce. That would stop the flow of billions of dollars leaving the country every day to buy oil and we have the resources.
Small changes in supply make big differences in price. OPEC has prospered on that fact?
I'm unreasonable, yet candidate Huntsman came out as a complete energy production hawk, the same proposals and you support him. Can't follow your logic. Is it because I'm black?
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/04/028734.php
Posted on April 1, 2011 by Scott Johnson
The secret of Brazil’s energy success
As subtly foreshadowed here yesterday, today’s Wall Street Journal carries Steve Hayward’s “The secret of Brazil’s energy success.” Steve writes:
The Obama administration’s energy policy is in the midst of transition from being stubbornly ideological to being wholly incoherent. That much was clear when President Obama unveiled his Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future this week.
With gasoline prices climbing above $4 a gallon, the administration is talking about tapping our Strategic Petroleum Reserve in a desperate attempt to hold down pump prices. It’s also expanding subsidies and incentives for energy supplies that cost a lot more than oil, and it’s aiming to reduce our dependency on foreign oil by one-third over the next 10 years.
Meanwhile, in a bizarre turn, Mr. Obama recently expressed enthusiasm for aggressive offshore drilling–in Brazil.
At least the president is practicing the green virtue of recycling. His energy address featured all the greatest hits of past presidential declarations of energy independence, including even George W. Bush’s paean to switchgrass ethanol. Yet Mr. Obama’s energy “blueprint” will get no further than all previous presidential schemes for the same reason: It is unserious at its core. . . .
You will want to read it all to discover the deep secret of Brazil’s remarkable energy success.
UPDATE: Over at NRO, Steve footnotes his Journal column.
JOHN adds: Since non-subscribers won’t be able to read the Journal column, here is a key paragraph:
Brazil has gone from importing 77% of its oil from foreign sources in 1980 to importing no oil by 2009. A great success story in conservation and alternative energy? Not really. Total Brazilian oil consumption still more than doubled. The biggest factor is that Brazil increased its domestic oil production over the last two decades by 876% (not a typo). Most of that production has come from offshore exploration.
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I'm unreasonable, yet candidate Huntsman came out as a complete energy production hawk, the same proposals and you support him. Can't follow your logic. Is it because I'm black?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KglSPl7g14Q[/youtube]
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(http://danieljmitchell.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/anchor-cartoon.jpg)
http://danieljmitchell.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/anchor-cartoon.jpg
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GM, On the Andy Rooney film, very funny. On the Obamacare anchor, very sad but true.
Thank to our moderator for indulging us on this thread. We know what impact bad energy policies have on our economy. The question is why our we doing this to ourselves?
Thanks to JDN for bringing the other viewpoint front and center on the forum; we are lucky to have you have advancing these arguments with a straight face:
"Decrease demand, not increase Supply."
If that is what Obama believes... how do we explain everything he does? The only way you would separate energy use from economic activity is to change EVERYTHING that we do and if you really believed that as leader you would set some kind of consistent example from the top. Who is more visible, more influential, better able to change mindsets and behaviors than someone who waltzed in with a 69% approval rating in Jan 2009.
Pres. Obama is not unique for being a hypocrite nor unique among Presidents for the security needs of flying he wasteful Jumbo jets for personal transportation. But he was supposed to be different.
Does anyone remember the picture of the motorcade this summer? Just the energy to build 2 million dollars of buses as his styrofoam pillars for 2 days of campaigning is odd, but did you see the entourage that requires? Just security needs, one might argue. And they fly the largest jet past their destination to board the photo-opp bus. How about the security needs of the Spanish villa trip? The President didn't even go - the wife needed a get-away. We've trashed the wastefulness of American Las Vegas, let's go to Spain. Who hasn't felt the need to get away to Spain with all the stress and whatnot. Fire up the jets, close the beaches, we're comin' in. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1300852/Spanish-police-close-public-beach-Michelle-Obamas-250k-Spanish-holiday.html
I think it all started with the well-publicized "date night" in NYC. Boosting his popularity up among rich women perhaps to show his romantic getaway side seemed to make sense but 'flew' right in the face of changing the way we use energy. You others out there need to put air in your tires. He was just proving my point. If I want to go see the most spectacular sights in the Rocky Mountains, I have to put gas in my car - 3 times each way. Same goes for him but with a bigger budget on a million-fold scale.
Let's say we accept that, a little first couple togetherness and he gets the jet fuel free anyway. How about the used of separate jets on subsequent trips, anyone follow that story? True that the dog BO flew on a separate jet. I'm sure it was going there anyway. But how about the first lady? Couldn't travel with the husband? Not enough room on Air Force One?
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http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2011/08/19/michelles-separate-travel-costs-taxpayers-thousands/
"Michelle Obama and President Obama traveled to Martha’s Vineyard just hours apart, costing taxpayers thousands in additional expenses so she could have just a bit of extra vacation time....
The extra costs related to Mrs. Obama’s solo trip mainly include the flight on a specially designed military aircraft she took instead of Air Force One, as well as any extra staff and Secret Service that had to be enlisted to go with her. She would also have had her own motorcade from the airport to her vacation residence.
Mrs. Obama’s separate jet travel sends the wrong message on a host of issues, from global warming to the budget deficit to the economy – in which currently so many people can’t afford to take a vacation at all.
This is not the first time Michelle has gone on vacation ahead of the president on the taxpayers’ tab. Last December, she racked up what was likely more than $100,000 in expenses leaving early for their Hawaii vacation."
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Only if you are a global warming denier do you measure the cost of separate jets in dollars - and then not care. Whatever they say about Perry can be said right back at the First Lady and Commander in Chief. These arrogant, self-indulged people don't give a rat's ass about energy use or carbon emissions. Bringing down the economy knowingly was done in the name of "fairness", not conservation, and now they are conflicted about what to do with the political fallout.
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http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/04/22/earth-day-ends-obamas-53300-gallon-trip
President Obama declared today's 41st annual Earth Day proof of America's ecological and conservation spirit—then completed a three-day campaign-style trip logging 10,666 miles on Air Force One, eating up some 53,300 gallons at a cost of about $180,000. And that doesn't include the fuel consumption of his helicopter, limo, or the 29 other vehicles that travel with that car.
In a two-page statement issued before leaving Los Angeles, his last stop in a three city-fund-raising tour that also included important policy pronouncements like his plan to probe what's behind high gas prices, Obama proclaimed: "For over 40 years, our nation has come together on Earth Day to appreciate and raise awareness about our environment, natural heritage, and the resources upon which generations of Americans have depended. Healthy land and clean water and air are essential to the health of our communities and wildlife. Earth Day is an opportunity to renew America's commitment to preserving and protecting the state of our environment through community service and responsible stewardship."
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http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/watercooler/index.php?blogid=667
Harry Reid arrives at clean energy summit. . . in a fleet of giant SUVs
Clean, Green Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rolled up to the Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada last week. . . in a fleet of giant SUVs.
The Heartland Institute reports that while the Senate Majority Hypocrite "and other high-profile environmental activists blasted carbon-based fuels at the Reid-sponsored summit, Reid and other bigwigs were caught on film driving to and from the summit in several SUVs."
"I was absolutely astonished, not to mention appalled, that Harry Reid would retain a fleet of gas-guzzling SUVs so that he and a few aides would not have to walk the mere 100 yards to address environmental activists," said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow James M. Taylor, who took the attached photo. "If greenhouse gas emissions are such a problem, you would think Reid might have actually made the short stroll through the parking lot, or at least retain Priuses rather than large SUVs for the summit," said Taylor.
Reid's arrogance is routine in Washington where pols ride in Secret Service-provided GMC Yukons and Chevy Suburbans while denouncing SUVs as wasteful transportation to the peasants.
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Doug, I didn't know about Huntsman, then again I doubt if I will agree 100% with all his policies. That's ok. And you are black? I didn't know... :-)
But let's back up a minute. First, let's agree it's a fact America increasing production will NOT alter or lower world oil prices. That seems quite clear. That was my main point; frankly my only
point when I initially responded.
Doug said, "If you don't know that energy prices are a major component of everything and differences at the margin matter greatly, I honestly don't know how to help you."
I do know that, but again, fact, if we produced more oil it would NOT lower the price, therefore it would have no effect on energy prices therefore margins.
And like Obama, I too like to see Brazil increase production. Nice to have a new player other than OPEC.
I do agree it would help stem the flow of dollars leaving the country. That is a plus.
Further, I agree in the short run, "Energy use is tied to economic activity." "You can shrink economic activity or you can grow jobs. You can't do both simultaneously."
And that is the problem... But other issues exist besides jobs.
Let me give you a personal example of from maybe 15 years ago. A friend of mine here in LA had a furniture manufacturing plant near downtown LA. He designed inexpensive furniture,
put it together, stained it, painted it, etc. He wasn't small time; he employed a little over 4000 employees in LA; another 3000 employees near San Francisco. And he was quite profitable.
GM - this guy met my definition of "rich".
But CA passed clean air laws. All the chemicals he used, the glue, etc. was polluting the air. My friend had to shut down his operation, lay off 7000+ employees, and move to Mexico.
Did CA lose jobs. Heck yes. Was my friend unhappy? Yes, although he liked Mexico and we would fly in his plane quite often down to Mexico.
But am I glad CA closed down the furniture industry? Yes I am. I lost a good friend, but Air pollution in CA is much better because CA became very strict about air pollution. My point is maybe you are right
we needs jobs so desperately now we have no choice, but we will pay indirectly for those jobs in the long run through spills and air pollution. Air pollution isn't just tears in the eye,
it's numerous medical problems ($$$) including various cancers, clean up problems, and negative effect on the ecology. So in the long run, CA is better off without his business. (other stupid CA policies not being discussed here).
So yeah, looking long term, it's not nice, but I would rather have Brazil increase production, offer us an alternative oil source, and let them destroy their environment versus America doing the same.
As a side note, the price of oil in general is not going down. Further, oil is a finite resource. So if we drill now, or in 10 or 20 years from now, we might be further ahead. The oil
isn't going anywhere.
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"Did CA lose jobs. Heck yes. Was my friend unhappy? Yes, although he liked Mexico and we would fly in his plane quite often down to Mexico."
Did the pollution magically only appear on the Mexican side of the border?
Air pollution from China crosses the Pacific and contributes to SoCal's smog. It appears you pollu-apatheid plan doesn't work, JDN.
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JDN, You are confusing the issue of putting toxic poisons in the air we breathe with the existence of the safe and essential trace molecule carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is appropriate on this thread because so is Obama, although only in his rhetoric. I am looking forward to an actual case of a human, plant or animal health issues caused by breathing air with an elevated level of CO2, lol. BTW, how come they won't keep Air Force One out of LAX when he comes only for a fundraiser?
In the spirit of fighting back on this not in my backyard argument I hereby offer my yard and garage for the storage of nuclear waste casks sealed to Yucca Mountain safety specs at the market rate that utilities pay for storage. Our all time Richter record here is 0.0. Not totally risk free but safer than a mountain motorcycle ride and cleaner than a solar panel or CFL factory.
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http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_californias_environmentalism.html
A dirty secret about California’s energy economy is that it imports lots of energy from neighboring states to make up for the shortfall caused by having too few power plants. Up to 20 percent of the state’s power comes from coal-burning plants in Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Montana, and another significant portion comes from large-scale hydropower in Oregon, Washington State, and the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas. “California practices a sort of energy colonialism,” says James Lucier of Capital Alpha Partners, a Washington, D.C.–area investment group. “They rely on western states to supply them with power generation they are unwilling to build for themselves”—and leave those states to deal with the resulting pollution.
Another secret: California’s proud claim to have kept per-capita energy consumption flat while growing its economy is less impressive than it seems. The state has some of the highest energy prices in the country—nearly twice the national average, a 2002 Milken Institute study found—largely because of regulations and government mandates to use expensive renewable sources of power. As a result, heavy manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries have been fleeing the Golden State in droves for lower-cost locales. Twenty years ago or so, you could count eight automobile factories in California; today, there’s just one, and it’s the same story with other industries, from chemicals to aerospace. Yet Californians still enjoy the fruits of those manufacturing industries—driving cars built in the Midwest and the South, importing chemicals and resins and paints and plastics produced elsewhere, and flying on jumbo jets manufactured in places like Everett, Washington. California can pretend to have controlled energy consumption, but it has just displaced it.
It isn’t just the high price of power that’s compelling California businesses to shift operations to other regions. The state’s unreliable power grid has its economic costs, too. A 2003 U.S. Department of Energy report noted that “a recent rolling blackout in the greater San Francisco Bay area caused an estimated $75 million in losses in the Silicon Valley.” A 20-minute outage at a Hewlett-Packard circuit-fabrication plant, the report observed, “would result in a day’s production loss at a cost of $30 million.” As Jack Gerard, then-president of the National Mining Association, put it in a 2001 speech: “Events are proving that the most expensive kilowatt is the one that’s not there when needed.”
The shortages are starting to rattle some Silicon Valley heavyweights. Intel chief executive Craig Barrett, for instance, vowed in 2001 not to build a chip-making facility in California until power supplies became more reliable. This October, Intel opened a $3 billion factory near Phoenix for mass production of its new 45-nanometer microprocessors. Google, meanwhile, has chosen to build the massive server farms that will fuel its expansion anywhere but in California. The most celebrated is an enormous installation along the Columbia River in The Dalles, Oregon, a facility that will house tens of thousands of computers, requiring mind-boggling amounts of power. A 1.8-gigawatt hydroelectric power plant will offer Google power for a small fraction of what it would cost in the Golden State. The irony is that the Silicon Valley companies that have become the face of California’s twenty-first-century economy are increasingly building the facilities that will give them their future value in other states.
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GM:
That's important stuff. Lets post in on the Energy thread.
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George Will is making good sense today, calling out economic foolishness for what it is. The cost of saving each job that wasn't even saved was 5 times the median income. Layoffs at Bank of America and the Postal Service: "Such churning of the labor market would free people for new, more productive jobs — except that to reduce unemployment, the economy needs a 3 percent growth rate, triple today’s rate."
Economy should render Obama speechless
By George F. Will
Thursday, September 15, 2011 - Updated 2 hours ago
WASHINGTON — In societies governed by persuasion, politics is mostly talk, so liberals’ impoverishment of their vocabulary matters.
Having damaged liberalism’s reputation, they call themselves progressives. Having made the federal government’s pretensions absurd, they have resurrected the supposed synonym “federal family.” Having made federal spending suspect, they advocate “investments” — for “job creation,” a euphemism for stimulus, another word they have made toxic.
Barack Obama, a pitilessly rhetorical president, continues to grab the nation by its lapels but the nation is no longer listening. This matters because ominous portents are multiplying.
Bank of America, which reported an $8.8 billion loss last quarter, plans 30,000 layoffs out of a work force of nearly 300,000. The Postal Service hopes to shed 120,000 of its 653,000 jobs (down from almost 900,000 a decade ago). Such churning of the labor market would free people for new, more productive jobs — except that to reduce unemployment, the economy needs a 3 percent growth rate, triple today’s rate.
Consumers of modest means are so strapped that Wal-Mart is reviving layaway purchases for Christmas. The Wall Street Journal reports that Procter & Gamble, which claims to have at least one product in 98 percent of American households, is putting new emphasis on lower-priced products for low-income shoppers.
During the debt-ceiling debate, The New York Times [NYT], liberalism’s bulletin board, was aghast that Republicans risked causing the nation to default on its debt. Now two Times columnists endorse slow-motion default through inflation: The Federal Reserve should have “the deliberate goal of generating higher inflation to help alleviate debt problems” (Paul Krugman) and “sometimes we need inflation, and now is such a time” (Floyd Norris).
For two years, there has been one constant: As events have refuted the Obama administration’s certitudes, it has retained its insufferable knowingness. It knew that the stimulus would hold unemployment below 8 percent. Oops. Unemployment has been at least 9 percent in 26 of the 30 months since the stimulus was passed. Michael Boskin of Stanford says that even if one charitably accepts the administration’s self-serving estimate of jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus, each job cost $280,000 — five times America’s median pay.
The economic policy the “federal family” should adopt can be expressed in five one-syllable words: Get. Out. Of. The. Way.
Instead, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose department has become a venture capital firm for crony capitalism and costly flops at creating “green jobs,” praises the policy of essentially banishing the incandescent light bulb as “taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money.”
Better to let the experts in his department and the rest of the federal family waste other people’s money.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view/2011_0915economy_should_render_obama_speechless/
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solargate.
Great one; genius for the ages; most brilliant President we have ever had;
lost money in a stock he claims he didn't even know he invested in while he was lobbying for the company.
This is impeachment stuff. Though I guess he was a senator at the time?
Here comes the what "is is" stuff and she had sex with me not vice versa stuff. Oh and how can I forget. A "right wing conspiracy". And racist stuff will of course be thrown in.
I guess no fifth spot on Mt Rushmore?
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solargate.
Great one; genius for the ages; most brilliant President we have ever had;
lost money in a stock he claims he didn't even know he invested in while he was lobbying for the company.
This is impeachment stuff. Though I guess he was a senator at the time?
Here comes the what "is is" stuff and she had sex with me not vice versa stuff. Oh and how can I forget. A "right wing conspiracy". And racist stuff will of course be thrown in.
I guess no fifth spot on Mt Rushmore?
Tony Rezko's buddy? No way! :roll:
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"lost money in a stock he claims he didn't even know he invested in while he was lobbying for the company."
I am not following here. Are you saying Baraq held stock in Solyndra while he lobbied for it as a Senator? If so, I have not seen this elsewhere , , ,
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(http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/pb-110920-wave-rs.photoblog900.jpg)
It's going to take a lot of bowing to fix this one......
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/09/20/which-foreign-leader-did-obama-call-first/
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aufAtuTwKlE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aufAtuTwKlE&feature=player_embedded
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GM,
Brock is giftwrapping 2012 for the Repubs.
Thank God he didn't pull one of the phoney triangulation schemes ala the BS artist extraordinaire Clinton. He would have had a shot at 2012.
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For the record, with regard to post 991 by GM, I happened to see a clip of this. The photogs were taking an inordinate amount of time and finally BO politely raised his hand to as part of saying "Yo! Can we wrap this up please?" at just the moment the photog snapped the photo.
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Well coming from the Bamster who feels the DOJ should be expanding civil rights units (aka, get the hetero white men) I suppose this should be no surprise. Like the DOJ shouldn't be doing far more urgent and important matters than going after school kid bullying.
So what in the world is this crap now?:
"Social Innovation and Civic Participation Council"
"The group leads a number of social justice global initiatives and espouses an ideology that government intervention is necessary to fix what it claims are various social and racial injustices that permeate U.S. society."
No, we don't have a communist in the white house :cry:
***New Obama czar moonlighting for whom?
Organization accuses U.S. of 'structural racism,' promotes government intervention
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: September 22, 2011
9:10 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein
© 2011 WND
The newly appointed chief of President Obama's Social Innovation and Civic Participation Council doubles as the director of a social justice group funded by George Soros.
The organization, the Aspen Institute, works closely with Soros and even was reportedly used by the billionaire in a failed attempt to engineer the defeat of President Bush in the 2004 elections.
Jonathan Greenblatt was appointed the new head of Obama's Social Innovation Unit earlier this month.
Get the New York Times best seller that exposes ALL the Obama czars – $4.95 today only!
Greenblatt is the founder of a civic service company that works in partnership with Google and the Huffington Post. He has several ties to Google.
Greenblatt also serves as director of the Impact Economy Initiative at the Aspen Institute.
Aspen's mission statement says the nonprofit seeks "to foster values-based leadership, encourag[e] individuals to reflect on the ideals and ideas that define a good society, and ... provide a neutral and balanced venue for discussing and acting on critical issues."
The group leads a number of social justice global initiatives and espouses an ideology that government intervention is necessary to fix what it claims are various social and racial injustices that permeate U.S. society.
Aspen's website says the group is dedicated to repairing what it terms "structural racism."
The group contends that "public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity in every key opportunity area, from health, to education, to employment, to income and wealth."
A member of Aspen's board is Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor who sparked a national race controversy in July 2009 when Obama criticized local Cambridge police who had arrested Gates after a burglary had been reported on his property.
Aspen runs a program that provides training and seminars for federal judges.
'Clandestine' Soros summit
Soros has provided significant funding to the Aspen Institute. His Open Society Institute has provided more than $400,000 to the group since 2004.
The New Yorker magazine reported on a 2004 "clandestine summit meeting" that took place at the Aspen Institute.
"The participants, all Democrats, were sworn to secrecy," said the magazine, including Soros and four other billionaires who "shared a common goal: to use their fortunes to engineer the defeat of President George W. Bush in the 2004 election."
Soros himself spoke at numerous Aspen events, including a 2004 seminar entitled "America's Role in the Fight Against Global Poverty" that also featured Al Gore as a speaker.
Aspen hosted Soros in 2006 for a talk about his new book, "The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror."
Discover the Networks notes that Jim Spiegelman, Aspen's director of communications, formerly worked as a "special assistant" to Soros.
Also, Arjun Gupta, who serves on Aspen's board of overseers, is a vice president at the Chatterjee Group, which advises the Soros Fund Management Group.
Meanwhile, Greenblatt is the founder and president of All for Good, an open source, Web-based initiative that says it seeks to engage more Americans in service. It is the largest database of volunteer listings ever compiled and provides content to a wide range of government, nonprofit and personal websites.
Greenblatt has stated he was inspired to found All for Good in December 2008 by Obama's call for more participatory civic service.
Greenblatt formerly served on the Technology and Innovation working group of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition team.
All for Good was built by a group of volunteers from Google, the Craigslist Foundation and other organizations, reportedly with input from Arianna Huffington. The group currently maintains strategic partnerships with Google and the Huffington Post.
With additional research by Chris Elliott.***
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Obama tells blacks to 'stop complainin' and fight
By MARK S. SMITH - Associated Press | AP – 4 hrs agotweet96Share14EmailPrintRelated Content
President Barack Obama delivers his remarks at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's …
President Barack Obama delivers his remarks at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation …
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a fiery summons to an important voting bloc, President Barack Obama told blacks on Saturday to quit crying and complaining and "put on your marching shoes" to follow him into battle for jobs and opportunity.
And though he didn't say it directly, for a second term, too.
Obama's speech to the annual awards dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus was his answer to increasingly vocal griping from black leaders that he's been giving away too much in talks with Republicans -- and not doing enough to fight black unemployment, which is nearly double the national average at 16.7 percent.
"It gets folks discouraged. I know. I listen to some of y'all," Obama told an audience of some 3,000 in a darkened Washington convention center.
But he said blacks need to have faith in the future -- and understand that the fight won't be won if they don't rally to his side.
"I need your help," Obama said.
The president will need black turnout to match its historic 2008 levels if he's to have a shot at winning a second term, and Saturday's speech was a chance to speak directly to inner-city concerns.
He acknowledged blacks have suffered mightily because of the recession, and are frustrated that the downturn is taking so long to reverse. "So many people are still hurting. So many people are barely hanging on," he said, then added: "And so many people in this city are fighting us every step of the way."
But Obama said blacks know all too well from the civil rights struggle that the fight for what is right is never easy.
"Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes," he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. "Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'. We are going to press on. We have work to do."
Topping the to-do list, he said, is getting Congress to the pass jobs bill he sent to Capitol Hill two weeks ago.
Obama said the package of payroll tax cuts, business tax breaks and infrastructure spending will benefit 100,000 black-owned businesses and 20 million African-American workers. Republicans have indicated they're open to some of the tax measures -- but oppose his means of paying for it: hiking taxes on top income-earners and big business.
But at times, Obama also sounded like he was discussing his own embattled tenure.
"The future rewards those who press on," He said. "I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I don't have time to complain. I'm going to press on."
Caucus leaders remain fiercely protective of the nation's first African-American president, but in recent weeks they've been increasingly vocal in their discontent -- especially over black joblessness.
"If Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House," the caucus chairman, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, recently told McClatchy Newspapers.
Like many Democratic lawmakers, caucus members were dismayed by Obama's concessions to the GOP during the summer's talks on raising the government's borrowing limit.
Cleaver famously called the compromise deal a "sugar-coated Satan sandwich."
But Cleaver said his members also are keeping their gripes in check because "nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president."
Still, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., caused a stir last month by complaining that Obama's Midwest bus tour had bypassed black districts. She told a largely black audience in Detroit that the caucus is "supportive of the president, but we're getting tired."
Last year, Obama addressed the same dinner and implored blacks to get out the vote in the midterm elections because Republicans were preparing to "turn back the clock."
What followed was a Democratic rout that Obama acknowledged as a "shellacking."
Where blacks had turned out in droves to help elect him in 2008, there was a sharp drop-off two years later.
Some 65 percent of eligible blacks voted in 2008, compared with a 2010 level that polls estimate at between 37 percent and 40 percent. Final census figures for 2010 are not yet available, and it's worth noting off-year elections typically draw far fewer voters.
This year's caucus speech came as Obama began cranking up grass-roots efforts across the Democratic spectrum.
It also fell on the eve of a trip to the West Coast that will combine salesmanship for the jobs plan he sent to Congress this month and re-election fundraising.
Obama was leaving Sunday morning for Seattle, where two money receptions were planned, with two more to follow in the San Francisco area.
On Monday, Obama is holding a town meeting at the California headquarters of LinkedIn, the business networking website, before going on to fundraisers in San Diego and Los Angeles and a visit Tuesday to a Denver-area high school to highlight the school renovation component of the jobs package.
___
P.C.
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The only ones holding Blacks back are Blacks. Ironically Brock is doing more to hurt then to help them with expansion of government. He is not empowering them in their minds.
Herman Cain knows it. West knows it. And more and more are finally realizing it.
The Indians have had no problem coming to the US and working their behinds off to be quite successful.
Does anyone think they were welcomed with open arms?
Does anyone remember the Spike Lee movie years ago which shows some middle age Blacks sitting and drinking beer all day looking at the Koreans accross the street running a successful business and one of them says to the other, something to the effect how come they come here and do well and we are just sitting here drinking beer and complianing.
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(http://www.yesemails.com/goofypolitics/fan/1.jpg)
YES !!!
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eom
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Here illegally, in public housing ahead of citizens, collected welfare, collected $51,000 in disability,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHoAuk76fT8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=cSavIWCJiUo
The mind boggles , , ,
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I wonder if health food fanitic Brock likes Brockly...anyway -
Hat tip to Michael Savage radio today for this:
****Crony Socialism: Obama Gives $737 Million to Solar Firm Linked to the Pelosi Clan
Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, September 28, 2011, 12:14 PM
It’s as if Solyndra never happened. The Obama Administration is giving $737 million to a Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve. PCG is an investment partner with SolarReserve. Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law happens to be the number two man at PCG.
Team Obama is spending $737 million to create 45 permanent jobs.
The Hill reported, via Free Republic:
The Energy Department announced Wednesday that is has finalized a $737 million loan guarantee for a Nevada solar project.
The decision comes several weeks after a California-based solar manufacturer that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration in 2009 filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers, setting off a firestorm in Washington.
The $737 million loan guarantee will help finance construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar-power-generating facility in Nye County, Nev. The project is sponsored by Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve.
Crescent Dunes is the latest solar project to receive a loan guarantee from the Energy Department in recent weeks. The department announced a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to Abengoa Solar for a solar generation project in California and a $150 million loan guarantee to 1366 Technologies for a Massachusetts solar manufacturing project earlier this month.
The Energy Department says the project will result in 600 construction jobs and 45 permanent jobs.
It looks like Rep. Allen West was right.
Obama IS trying to destroy the economy.
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"Disapproval among Jewish voters exceeded approval of Obama's presidency for the first time during the current administration. Jewish approval of Obama’s performance as president declined to 45%, with another 48% disapproving and 7% undecided."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4128190,00.html
Black support dropped from 98% at election time to 58% approval today. Washington Post/ABC News poll: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/09/28/blacks_leave_obama_111503.html
"With only 26 percent of Americans approving of Obama's handling of the economy..."
- Who are these 26%? Can we give them a lie detector test?
Dick Morris speculates Obama may not stand for reelection. Join the club. I was saying that when approvals were in the 70s. Stranger things have happened.
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What are we stupid? The first broad "quietly" shops at Target. It is so quiet the pictures get out all over the internet. Check it out. She shops at Target just like you and me. She IS so down to Earth. :roll: :wink:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/30/first-lady-steps-out-quietly-does-some-shopping-at-target/
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"I mean, there are a lot of things we can do," Obama said. "The way I think about it is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and, you know, we didn't have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track."
Recall I pointed out how a narcissistic personality disorder is totally incapable of accepting any blame, will twist all logic to blame everyone else, will never admit to anything, continue to lie and deceive and play the same con game till death do us part.
He blames the country on going soft. He blames blacks for whining. He blames the tea party. The racists. And so on.
What is totally mind boggling about his above statement that if one agrees the country has gone soft in the "last couple of decades" one can ask why that would be. The answer is obvious. What has happened in the last couple of decades?
Well remember we have had the great society, more welfare, more liberal benefits to government employees, the endless entitlement increases, the demographic wave of senior citizens reaching sit on their ass and collect time, more people letting the immigrants take many of the jobs they won't do. It is all this entitled mentality which Brock himself has done more to promote and expand upon!
True to form a personality disorder is unable to be objective. The fault is always someone or something else.
Unfortunately he brings all of us down in his delusional crazy thinking.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576597781965791022.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond
More of the Same Old Change
Obama's latest economic proposals are just like the earlier ones, only worse.
By PETE DU PONT
In the last few years, as promised, the Obama administration has fundamentally transformed America. Our country is now in serious decline. Income is lower, unemployment is higher, jobs are fewer, government is much larger. Federal spending is way up, and America's economic status is way down, as is the global view of our country and our economy. Hardly anyone sees any sign of economic recovery or improvement.
A look at long-term unemployment shows just how bad our economy is. Look at the Labor Department data on the number of Americans 16 and older unemployed for 52 weeks or more during the five most recent recessions:
1976 750,000
1982 1,600,000
1994 1,200,000
2004 1,100,000
2010 4,300,000
Total government spending averaged about 19% of gross domestic product from 1996 to 2007 and rose to about 21% in 2008. In the three years of the Obama administration, it has soared to 25%.
The administration is focused on its increasing control of health care, propping up labor unions, increasing taxes, and expanding the scope and size of government. In the first 70 years of the 20th century, American and European economic growth increased together, but then the Europeans shifted toward socialism, and their growth lagged. But with America is rapidly moving toward the European model, we are starting to see its detrimental impact.
President Obama's recent spending and tax policy proposals would only make things worse. He wants to increase the federal deficit by increasing spending and providing some targeted, but short term, payroll tax cuts. At a time when we need to bring the federal deficit down, his plan would actually increase it by $447 billion over the next year or two. But Mr. Obama has promised this increase will be "paid for," and has proposed a series of permanent tax increases to do that.
But our economy is already facing significant increases in taxes. First will be the end of the Bush tax cuts in December 2012. And because of ObamaCare, starting in 2013 taxpayers making more than $200,000 will pay an additional 3.8% on investment and interest income, another substantial tax increase.
We face other increases as well. The new Obama proposals include reduced itemized deductions allowed for any individuals earning more than $200,000 a year ($250,000 for married couples). In addition to what lower mortgage deductions might mean for our economy, think of the inevitable impact on charitable giving. What a reduction in deductions for charitable giving implies is a government plan that takes some of the money that would go to charity and instead funnels it to federal government spending--a serious step backwards.
The president also has proposed what he calls the "Buffett rule." He hasn't specified how it would work, but its purpose is to make sure millionaires pay higher income taxes. It would likely increase taxes on investment income, but in our current poor economy the last thing our economy needs is higher taxes on business investment.
And tax rate increases often bring in reduced tax dollars. The Cato Institute's Alan Reynolds showed in his recent Wall Street Journal piece that the 28% tax rate on long-term capital gains brought in $36.9 billion a year from 1987 to 1997, while the current 15% rate in 2004 to 2007 brought in $96.8 billion per year. Which once again shows that lower tax rates can get higher government tax revenues.
Add in higher taxes on the oil industry ($40 billion), jet plane owners ($3 billion), and hedge fund managers with carried interest ($18 billion), and you can see the basic effort of the Obama administration against people and industries. Last December when the president extended the Bush tax cuts, he acknowledged that tax hikes both slow economic growth and deter job creation, something he seems to have forgotten.
The higher taxes on energy producers are particularly discouraging, given the importance of energy to our economic recovery and the administration's continued clampdown on energy production. In another measure that is counterproductive to economic growth, the Obama plan includes extending benefits for the long-term unemployed, even though studies show that long term employment benefits raise the unemployment rate from 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points.
President Obama has said that "everything in [his new] bill will be paid for--everything," and that it "will not add to the deficit." But it will be paid for in the future, and the president is saying we should add some more to the deficit now in return for promises of future spending.
All these programs do not look good for the future of America or its people, for as American Enterprise Institute's Director of economic policy Kevin Hassett said earlier this month, the Obama administration's position "throughout this recovery has been that the U.S. can have the highest corporate tax on earth, a big regulatory crackdown, and a vast expansion of labor-union power and still expect a positive jobs story because of cash-for-clunkers and green jobs. This jobs report indicates how much damage that view has done."
In the end, the newest Obama proposals are proof that his recent centrist posturing was just that, posturing. The new proposals are a continuation of the old Obama policies, policies that sadly have extended the recession, stifled economic growth, and will, for some years, have weakened America.
Author is chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis and former Governor of Delaware
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Pete DuPont has been thinking and writing about these issues for years and it shows in his ability to make his point buttressed by simple, powerful, bottom-line data.
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Obama goes in to Bank of America
President Obama walks into the Bank of America to cash a check. As he
approaches the cashier he says "Good morning Ma'am, could you please
cash this check for me"?
Cashier: "It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please show me your ID?"
Obama: "Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me as I didn't think
there was any need to. I am President Barack Obama, the President of
the United States of America!"
Cashier: "Yes sir, I know who you are, but with all the regulations,
monitoring, of the banks because of imposters and forgers, etc I must
insist on seeing ID."
Obama: "Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell
you. Everybody knows who I am."
Cashier: "I am sorry Mr. President but these are the bank rules and I
must follow them."
Obama: "I am urging you please to cash this check."
Cashier: "Look Mr. President this is what we can do: One day Tiger
Woods came into the bank without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods he
pulled out his putting iron and made a beautiful shot across the bank
into a cup. With that shot we knew him to be Tiger Woods and cashed
his check. Another time, Andre Agassi came in without ID. He pulled
out his tennis racquet and made a fabulous shot whereby the tennis
ball landed in my cup. With that spectacular shot we cashed his check.
So, Mr. President, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only
you, as the President of the United States?"
Obama stood there thinking, and thinking and finally says: "Honestly,
there is nothing that comes to my mind. I can't think of a single
thing I can do."
Cashier: "Will that be large or small bills, Mr. President?"
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Please refer back to five posts ago by ccp. The time has come for the politicians to stop staging and manipulating the media and us.
She is no more than the first broad. No respect from me.
Obviously it was staged yet the lame stream media reports that the first broad "quietly" slipped out to Target to shop.
No more likely when she shops on Rodeo (sp?) Drive in LA, or Madison Ave in NYC she quietly slips out.
No end to the deceit from this WH:
***Figures. White House Tipped Off AP Reporter Ahead of Michelle Obama’s Target Photo-Op
Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, October 1, 2011, 11:35 PM
Another staged moment in the lives of Barack and Michelle Obama.
Michelle Obama just had to get out to Target to do a little shopping last week. But, before the shopping run the White House tipped off AP photographer Charles Dharapak so that he would be at the store to memorialize the moment.
Michelle Obama checks out at Target. That’s her assistant behind her carrying the bags. (AP)
At least she wore a shirt that is reportedly from Old Navy(?) and not a designer T-shirt like she wears out when she paints community centers.***
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Nixon was tricky. Ford was clumsy. Carter was dour. Reagan was sunny. Bush 41 was prudent. Clinton felt your pain. Bush 43 was stubborn. And Barack Obama is . . .
Early in America's acquaintance with the man who would become the 44th president, the word that typically sprang from media lips to describe him was "cool."
Cool as a matter of fashion sense—"Who does he think he is, George Clooney?" burbled the blogger Wonkette in April 2008. Cool as a matter of political temperament—"Maybe after eight years of George W. Bush stubbornness, on the heels of eight years of Clinton emotiveness, we need to send out for ice," approved USA Today's Ruben Navarrette that October. Cool as a matter of upbringing—Indonesia, apparently, is "where Barack learned to be cool," according to a family friend quoted in a biography of his mother.
The Obama cool made for a reassuring contrast with his campaign's warm-and-fuzzy appeals to hope, change and being the ones we've been waiting for. But as the American writer Minna Antrim observed long ago, "between flattery and admiration there often flows a river of contempt." When it comes to Mr. Obama, boy does it ever.
We caught flashes of the contempt during the campaign. There were those small-town Midwesterners who, as he put it at a San Francisco fund-raiser, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who are not like them." There were those racist Republicans who, as he put it at a Jacksonville fund-raiser, would campaign against him by asking, "Did I mention he's black?" There was the "you're likable enough, Hillary," line during a New Hampshire debate. But these were unscripted digressions and could be written off as such.
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.Only after Mr. Obama came to office did it start to become clear that contempt would be both a style and method of his governance. Take the "mess we have inherited" line, which became the administration's ring tone for its first two years.
"I have never seen anything like the mess we have inherited," said the late Richard Holbrooke—a man with memories of what Nixon inherited in Vietnam from Johnson—about Afghanistan in February 2009. "We are cleaning up something that is—quite simply—a mess," said the president the following month about Guantanamo. "Let's face it, we inherited a mess," said Valerie Jarrett about the economy in March 2010.
For presidential candidates to rail against incumbents from an opposing party is normal; for a president to rail for years against a predecessor of any party is crass—and something to which neither Reagan nor Lincoln, each of them inheritors of much bigger messes, stooped.
Then again, the contempt Mr. Obama felt for the Bush administration was merely of a piece with the broader ambit of his disdain. Examples? Here's a quick list:
The gratuitous return of the Churchill bust to Britain. The slam of the Boston police officer who arrested Henry Louis Gates. The high-profile rebuke of the members of the Supreme Court at his 2010 State of the Union speech. The diplomatic snubs, petty as well as serious, of Gordon Brown, Benjamin Netanyahu and Nicolas Sarkozy. The verbal assaults on Wall Street "fat cats" who "caused the problem" of "10% unemployment." The never-ending baiting of millionaires and billionaires and jet owners and everyone else who, as Black Entertainment Television's Robert Johnson memorably put it on Sunday, "tried rich and tried poor and like rich better."
Now we come to the last few days, in which Mr. Obama first admonished the Congressional Black Caucus to "stop complainin', stop grumblin', stop cryin'," and later told a Florida TV station that America was losing its competitive edge because it "had gotten a little soft." The first comment earned a rebuke from none other than Rep. Maxine Waters, while the second elicited instant comparisons to Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech. They tell us something about the president's political IQ. They tell us more about his world view.
What is it that Mr. Obama doesn't like about the United States—a country that sent him hurtling like an American Idol contestant from the obscurity of an Illinois Senate seat to the presidency in a mere four years?
I suspect it's the same thing that so many run-of-the-mill liberals dislike: Americans typically believe that happiness is an individual pursuit; we bridle at other people setting limits on what's "enough"; we enjoy wealth and want to keep as much of it as we can; we don't like trading in our own freedom for someone else's idea of virtue, much less a fabricated concept of the collective good.
When a good history of anti-Americanism is someday written, it will note that it's mainly a story of disenchantment—of the obdurate and sometimes vulgar reality of the country falling short of the lover's ideal. Listening to Mr. Obama, especially now as the country turns against him, one senses in him a similar disenchantment: America is lovable exactly in proportion to the love it gives him in return.
Hence his increasingly ill-concealed expressions of contempt. Hence the increasingly widespread counter-contempt.
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I have wanted to hear someone coherently explain the motive of the scandal so that we might understand what they were trying to do and what they are now hiding.
Please correct if this is wrong. Rush L the all time home run leader of political commentary (aka biased blogger) took a stab at it today while I was listening briefly. It went something like this:
The Obamites were sending guns across the border so that they would be found in violent acts and then they could use that information to argue for greater cutailment of gun sales in the U.S.
Far fetched or was that obvious to everyone but me? Someone else have a better explanation?
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That is the pink elephant in the room most are afraid to say out loud. If true, tis truly heinious what they have done. Lets continue this on the Gun thread.
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I don't think I need to go into detail on Brick Brock's political diabtribe this AM.
He continues to demonstrate why he is far of a worse President than Jimmy Carter ever was - not only totally in over his head but continuues to deceive, lie and mislead. At least Carter was honest if not competent.
Can anyone tell me we need to emulate China by wasting government money on solar?
We should to the exact opposite. Let the Chinese waste their money and we copy and steal any scientific gains THEY get from it. Just like they do to us.
"F" (I mean "forget") solar. For God's sake why can't we use our oil, gas coal?
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CCP: "I don't think I need to go into detail on Brick Brock's political diatribe this AM."
Besides bad policies, he suffers from over-exposure. For the last couple of big policy speeches he got zero bump in the polls. He was the lyricist who could put out words that people could fill with their own meaning. Amazing that it worked once or worked twice. He outwitted and outlasted Richardson, Biden and Kucinich to inherit the anti-Hillary vote and outwitted and outlasted McCain to ride the anti-Bush vote in. But it was all meaningless blather. His claim to fame was to be the most consistent anti-Iraq-war candidate. We are still in Iraq. Then the strongest on anti-Guantanamo and the base is still open. The one who could get healthcare done but it is now further from done facing the Courts, the polls and new elections than it was before it passed. We are lazy or cowards if we yawn at Stimulus Seven yet they have not found even an economist who could explain a plausible economic theory behind robbing job creators to pay interest groups in an election.
CCP: " "F" (I mean "forget") solar."
That's very funny! What he doesn't get is that if solar is 15 times the cost of coal, then a little push here and little pull there doesn't take it to the front of the line and shut down all the coal and nuclear with energy to burn. In a prosperous society, people can CHOOSE little clean wind and solar supplements installed with pride on their abode without caring how that compares with current electric billing rate. When you have lost your job and are losing your house, that is not so.
Has he visited the Bakken fields in North Dakota, the state with zero structural unemployment to see what is working? Not even curious about surging state revenues and surpluses that has the looking at repeal of the state income tax. These are red states. He didn't even make it to the "Midwest Katrina of 2011". http://www.allamericanblogger.com/tag/flood-of-2011/
Natural gas use has carbon emissions but is far cleaner than clean coal. The Obama brain trust fights it and uses its dupes in the media to bring up new objections. Nuclear is 100% carbon free and now we can learn how to survive an earthquake with 100 times stronger force than the Loma Prieta quake that brought down the Bay Bridge and World Series in San Francisco 1989. We know where the fault line are and we have made amazing advances in transmission technology. The Obama plan: fill your tires and eat your peas. Rob Peter, pay Paul.
If we aren't going to fix anything that is wrong under his watch, why should we tune in?
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From Doug:
"He was the lyricist who could put out words that people could fill with their own meaning. Amazing that it worked once or worked twice."
From another genius:
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
[Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)
16th president of US (1809 - 1865)]
The some of the people all of the time are apparantly the 42% or so who still would vote for Brock. Despite the disaster we are witnessing in the White House there are still that many in our country - virtually all who want payouts - who still believe in this con artist.
The all of the people some of the time where the other 10 or 15 % who voted for him to begin with who hav since realized they were wrong to do so. Brock is no longer fooling that group. There were people like me and most on this board who were never taken in by the con in chief.
And of those 15 or 20% who have changed their minds many of them have done so because he is not liberal enough in his policies although he certainly would be if he could get away with it.
Mark Levin is finally calling it a political civil war. Others including me have been stating this for a decade now.
Michael Savage has pointed out that in history their will not be blood in the streets till people are starving.
I don't know. But threatening entitlements may be enough in our society. I do agree with Brock that we are soft. I don't agree with the reasons or what we do about it.
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Did 2008 Come True?
October 16, 2011 - 11:15 am - by Victor Davis Hanson
The Right-Wing Complaint of 2008
In 2008, the following was the general right-wing argument against Obama’s candidacy:
a) The self-professed “uniter” Obama had, in truth, little record of uniting disparate groups. From community organizing to politics, his preferred modus operandi was rather to praise moderation, but politick more as a radical, and sometimes go after opponents as unreasonable or illiberal. Thus the most partisan voting senator in the Congress, who talked grandly of “working across the aisle,” also urged supporters to “get in their faces” and “take a gun to a knife fight.” Acorn, Project Vote, and SEIU were not ecumenical organizations.
b) Obama knew very little about foreign affairs, or perhaps even raw human nature as it plays out in power politics abroad. At times, he seemed naive about the singular role of the U.S. in the world, especially his sense that problems with Iran, the Middle East, Venezuela, Russia, and others were somehow predicated on American arrogance and unilateralism (and neither predating nor postdating George Bush) — to be remedied by Obama’s post-racial, post-national diplomacy.
c) In truth, Obama, for all his rhetorical skills and soft-spoken charisma, had little experience in the private sector outside of politics, academia, foundations, and subsidized organizing. Consequently, he did not seem to understand the nature of profit and loss, payrolls, how businesses worked and planned, or much of anything in the private sector.
d) Obama at times seemed to lack common sense, and perhaps even common knowledge. He appeared confused about everything from the number of U.S. states to the idea that air pressure and “tune-ups” might substitute for new oil exploration. He seemed assured when reading a teleprompted script, and yet lost much of his eloquence when it came to repartee and question and answer.
e) Obama saw race as essential to his persona and his success, rarely incidental. Collate the writings and rantings of his triad of pastors and friends — Rev. Wright, Rev. Pfleger, and Rev. Meeks — and one sees a common theme of racism (sometimes overt), anti-Semitism, and class warfare. It was considered irrelevant to remind voters in 2008 that Michelle Obama had alleged that the U.S. was a downright mean country, or that she had confessed to never heretofore being very proud of her country until it gave consideration to her husband as a presidential candidate — though both sentiments would seem rare for a potential first lady.
f) Obama, it was also felt, counted on a sense of entitlement. His admissions to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard were alleged not to have been based on the usual competitive test scores or grades — and such charges were not refuted, but considered ancient history. As Harvard Law Review editor, he seemed to assume, quite rightly, that he did not have to publish an article. As a University of Chicago Law School lecturer he also rightly assumed that Chicago — and later Harvard as well — would, if he had wished, granted him tenure, again, despite nonexistent publication. Sen. Clinton argued, without much refutation, that as a state legislator Obama had both authored very little legislation and voted present on any vote that might be considered problematic for a higher political office — a charge that later disappointed supporters would come to echo, along with admissions of prior inexperience on Obama’s apart.
g) Obama, like many on the elite left, had an ambiguous attitude about affluence and its dividends. The more, as a community organizer, he had railed about bankers and unfairness, the more he had enjoyed a mini-mansion and dealt with the soon-to-be criminal Tony Rezko. The current Wall Street protests take their cue not just from presidential anger at “millionaires and billionaires,” but also from the idea that affluent young people are exempt from their own rhetorical charges.
Yet in 2008, to suggest “spread the wealth” meant anything important was to be either racist or a rank partisan. But Obama in 2001 in a Chicago public radio interview could not have been clearer about the need for government to redistribute income and his unhappiness that the Constitution seemed to prohibit that. Here is a telling excerpt in all its half-baked Foucauldian vocabulary:
But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in the society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. … I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.
Again, to refer to all of the above in 2008 was considered not so much unfair as improper.
The Proving Ground
Then came the election, and a perfect storm of events. The general unhappiness with Bush over deficits and Iraq, the recession that had started in December 2007, the absence of any incumbent vice president or president in the race for the first time since 1952, an unusually unenergetic McCain campaign, and a nakedly partisan media — all that by early September still had not given Obama the lead. But the mid-September 2008 financial crash did. And so what in the last fifty years was usually considered improbable — the election of a northern Democratic liberal — soon seemed foreordained.
The Reality of 2011
We are now nearing the third year of the Obama administration. Were those worries of 2008 at all justified? Let us briefly review them in the same order:
a) Uniter? The country is divided, perhaps more so than in 2006 — except to the extent of gradually unifying around opposition to Obama, who now polls around 40% approval and is heading to Bush levels in three rather than seven years. “Get in their faces”transmogrified into “punish our enemies,” a lawsuit against Arizona, “stop the smears”/ JournoList/AttackWatch.com, and a shellacking in 2010 that led the president to abandon any pretense of “bipartisanship” in favor of revving up the base with them/us rhetoric. Let me juxtapose these two quotes that sum up the current weird Obama atmosphere:
* “I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic.” — Hillary Clinton in 2003 objecting to the Bush administration.
* “These are not patriots, people who love this country want to see jobs created. They don’t love this country. … I don’t think they love this country. They’re not concerned about the economic well being of the country as a whole.” — Rep. Linda Sanchez, in 2011, in response to congressional opposition to President Obama’s job’s bill.
Could now-Secretary Clinton address Rep. Sanchez’s charges?
b) Abroad? Obama soon began treating allies and enemies alike as near neutrals: outreach to Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Cuba, while petty slights and sometimes serious rebuke to Israel, the UK, and eastern Europe. Once the most vocal of Bush’s critics, Obama ended up copycatting all of his predecessor’s anti-terrorism protocols – but without a gesture of gratitude. As Predator in chief, Obama quintupled the number of targeted assassinations, on the apparent theory that dead suspected terrorists would cause fewer problems than incarcerated confessed terrorists. Reset and outreach faded and are now terms of yesteryear: China is as anti-American as ever, more so Pakistan. Iran allegedly now tries to kill inside Washington. Putin is still Putin. “Leading from behind” proved that a thug like Gaddafi could resist NATO’s big three for eight months. The Arab Spring may become a winter of anti-Semitism, anti-Christianism, and anti-Americanism. The Arab Spring also suggests so far two tragic truths: the Middle East changes only when the U.S. removes a psychopath, and then spends lots of blood and treasure fostering a new government — something that has zero political support after Iraq; and two, Middle East dictators are sometimes more liberal than the masses to whom they deny freedoms. In general, we still have Afghanistan and Iraq, plus Libya and now a small force in Africa. Israel, Cyprus, Taiwan, North Korea, and the former Soviet republics are more volatile, not less.
c) Economy? Obama’s EU-like economic plan is in shambles. Prior to Obama, Keynesians had argued that no one had given them a fair shot since the Depression. But borrowing nearly five trillion in less than three years, near zero interest rates, vastly expanding food stamps and unemployment benefits, absorbing private companies, and issuing vast new financial and environmental regulations turned an anticipated recovery into another near recession. In any case, Obama’s economic architects of such policies — Goolsbee, Orszag, Romer, Summers — mysteriously did not last three years.
d) Common sense? 2008 campaign “slips” prefaced things like “corpse-man” and speaking Austrian — perhaps understandable, but not in the media climate of zero media tolerance for “nucular.” Presidents I suppose in the future will have to be taught by handlers not to bow to emperors and kings. Going to our ally Germany to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall was apparently less important than jetting to Copenhagen to lobby for a Chicago Olympics. The 2009 Cairo speech was one of the most factually incorrect speeches in recent presidential history, as almost every assertion was demonstrably false. Well before Solyndra, the secretary of energy quipped that gas prices should reach European levels, that California farms would some day blow away, and that Americans, in essence, could not be trusted to buy the right light bulbs. From “man-made disasters” to “overseas contingency operations” to “my people” and “cowards” to videos assuring that immigration laws will not be enforced, the Obama cabinet is about what one could have predicted back in 2008.
e) Racial healing? All these earlier bothersome tidbits like “typical white person” reappeared with an entire litany of them/us calumnies, none of them in isolation of any importance, but in toto quite disturbing. Do we remember them all — from the beer summit and Eric Holder’s “my people” and “cowards” to “wise Latina,” “punish our enemies,” “moats and alligators,” the faux-southern black preacher cadences and condescending addresses to “bedroom slippers” African-American audiences, or the video appealing to constituents by racial categories? Few imagined in 2008 that the Congressional Black Caucus in 2011, in the new period of post-racialism, would be accusing opponents of wanting a return to lynching and Jim Crow laws.
f) Political savvy? Why federalize health care in the midst of a recession with 10% plus unemployment? Obama promised the public in November 2010 not to raise taxes in a recession, in 2011 to raise them a lot. Solyndra seems far worse than Enron, but Fast and Furious perhaps as bad as Iran Contra — except that Americans died in the former and not the latter. In 2010, potential Republican opponents and the Democratic base were worried that Obama would triangulate as Clinton had in 1995; in 2011, most observers are exasperated that he thinks more of what failed in 2010 is the remedy in 2011.
g) Hate or love of the elite? The hints of the 2008 attraction and distrust of wealth only magnified by 2011. In the midst of “at some point” we have made enough money, of not the time for profits on Wall Street, of “millionaires and billionaires,” of “corporate jets,” of going after everyone from guitar factories to Boeing — in the midst of all that, where do all the all elite vacation spots and golf resorts fit in — along with massive donations from Goldman Sachs and BP? How strange that the more one demonizes the good life that unimaginable riches provide, the more one seems comfortable with the good life that unlimited government subsidizes?
The skeptics of 2008 proved prescient; those who demonized them should be embarrassed. And we should remember that candidates, of both parties, will govern mostly as they campaign. Slips are not indiscretions, but often will prove in hindsight windows of the soul.
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/did-2008-come-true/?singlepage=true
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http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/280986/biden-s-fourth-grade-economics-mark-steyn?pg=1
Biden’s Fourth-Grade Economics Mark Steyn October 22, 2011
How to justify unaffordable and inefficient stimulus
In one of those inspired innovations designed to keep American classrooms on the cutting edge of educational excellence, the administration has been sending Joe Biden out to talk to schoolchildren. Last week, it was the fourth grade at Alexander B. Goode Elementary School in York, Pa., that found itself on the receiving end of the vice president’s wisdom:
Here in this school, your school, you’ve had a lot of teachers who used to work here, but because there’s no money for them in the city, they’re not working. And so what happens is, when that occurs, each of the teachers that stays have more kids to teach. And they don’t get to spend as much time with you as they did when your classes were smaller. We think the federal government in Washington, D.C., should say to the cities and states, look, we’re going to give you some money so that you can hire back all those people. And the way we’re going to do it, we’re going to ask people who have a lot of money to pay just a little bit more in taxes.
Who knew it was that easy?
So let’s see if I follow the vice president’s thinking:
The school laid off these teachers because “there’s no money for them in the city.” That’s true. York City School District is broke. It has a $14 million budget deficit.
So instead Washington, D.C., is going to “give you some money” to hire these teachers back.
So, unlike York, Pa., presumably Washington, D.C., has “money for them”?
No, not technically. Washington, D.C., is also broke — way broker than York City School District. In fact, the government of the United States is broker than any entity has ever been in the history of the planet. Officially, Washington has to return 15,000,000,000,000 dollars just to get back to having nothing at all. And that 15,000,000,000,000 dollars is a very lowball figure that conveniently ignores another $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities that the government, unlike private businesses, is able to keep off the books.
So how come the Brokest Jurisdiction in History is able to “give you some money” to hire back those teachers that had to be laid off?
No problem, says the vice president. We’re going to “ask” people who have “a lot of money” to “pay just a little bit more” in taxes.
Where are these people? Evidently, not in York, Pa. But they’re out there somewhere. Who has “a lot of money”? According to President Obama, if your combined household income is over $250,000 a year you have “a lot of money.” Back in March, my National Review colleague Kevin Williamson pointed out that, in order to balance the budget of the United States, you would have to increase the taxes of people earning more than $250,000 a year by $500,000 a year.
Okay, okay, maybe that 250K definition of “bloated plutocrat” is a bit off. After all, the quarter-mil-a-year category includes not only bankers and other mustache-twirling robber barons, but also at least 50 school superintendents in the State of New York and many other mustache-twirling selfless public servants.
So how about people earning a million dollars a year? That’s “a lot of money” by anybody’s definition. As Kevin Williamson also pointed out, to balance the budget of the United States on the backs of millionaires you would have to increase the taxes of those earning more than 1 million a year by 6 million a year.
Not only is there “no money in the city” of York, Pa., and no money in Washington, D.C., there’s no money anywhere else in America — not for spending on the Obama/Biden scale. Come to that, there’s no money anywhere on the planet: Last year, John Kitchen of the U.S. Treasury and Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin published a study called “Financing U.S. Debt: Is There Enough Money in the World — and At What Cost?”
Don’t worry, it’s a book with a happy ending! U.S.-government spending is sustainable as long as by 2020 the rest of the planet is willing to sink 19 percent of its GDP into U.S. Treasury debt. And why wouldn’t they? After all, if you’re a Chinese politburo member or a Saudi prince or a Russian kleptocrat or a Somali pirate and you switched on CNN International and chanced to catch Joe Biden’s Fourth Grade Economics class, why wouldn’t you cheerily dump a fifth of your GDP into a business model with such a bright future?
Since 1970, public-school employment has increased ten times faster than public-school enrollment. In 2008, the United States spent more per student on K–12 education than any other developed nation except Switzerland — and at least the Swiss have something to show for it. In 2008, York City School District spent $12,691 per pupil — or about a third more than the Swiss. Slovakia’s total per-student cost is less than York City’s current per-student deficit — and the Slovak kids beat the United States at mathematics, which may explain why their budget arithmetic still has a passing acquaintanceship with reality. As in so many other areas of American life, the problem is not the lack of money but the fact that so much of the money is utterly wasted.
But that’s no reason not to waste even more! So the president spent last week touring around in his weaponized Canadian bus telling Americans that Republicans were blocking plans to “put teachers back in the classroom.” Well, where are they now? Not every schoolmarm is down at the Occupy Wall Street drum circle, is she? No, indeed. And in that respect York City is a most instructive example: Five years ago (the most recent breakdown I have), the district had 440 teachers but 295 administrative and support staff. If you’re thinking that sounds a little out of whack, that just shows what a dummy you are: For every three teachers we “put back in the classroom,” we need to hire two bureaucrats to put back in the bureaucracy to fill in the paperwork to access the federal funds to put teachers back in the classroom. One day it will be three educrats for every two teachers, and the system will operate even more effectively.
It’s just about possible to foresee, say, Iceland or Ireland getting its spending under control. But, when a nation of 300 million people presumes to determine grade-school hiring and almost everything else through an ever more centralized bureaucracy, you’re setting yourself up for waste on a scale unknown to history. For example, under the Obama “stimulus,” U.S. taxpayers gave a $529 million loan guarantee to the company Fisker to build their Karma electric car. At a factory in Finland.
If you’re wondering how giving half a billion dollars to a Finnish factory stimulates the U.S. economy, well, what’s a lousy half-bil in a multi-trillion-dollar sinkhole? Besides, in the 2009 global rankings, Finnish schoolkids placed sixth in math, third in reading, and second in science, while suffering under the burden of a per-student budget half that of York City. By comparison, America placed 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and 31st in math. So the good news is that, by using U.S.-government money to fund a factory in Finland, Fisker may be able to hire workers smart enough to figure out how to build an unwanted electric car that doesn’t lose its entire U.S.-taxpayer investment.
In a sane world, Joe Biden’s remarks would be greeted by derisive laughter, even by fourth graders. Certainly by Finnish fourth graders.
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http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/02/file-not-found
Reason Magazine
File Not Found
Why does the most open and transparent administration in history prefer to lie about government records?
Jacob Sullum | November 2, 2011
When he took office, Barack Obama promised "an unprecedented level of openness in Government." As a major part of that commitment, he pledged fidelity to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which he called "the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government."
It is hard to reconcile these lofty memos with the Justice Department's proposed rule instructing federal agencies to falsely deny the existence of records sought under FOIA. But at least the Obama administration is open about its desire to mislead us.
Enacted in 1966, FOIA "encourages accountability through transparency," as Obama put it in his 2009 memo. The law created a general assumption that Americans have a right to information about their government unless there is a good reason to withhold it, such as when disclosure would violate people's privacy, undermine a criminal investigation, or threaten national security.
Congress amended FOIA in 1986, adding Section 552(c), which addresses situations where confirming the existence of records would tip off the target of a criminal investigation, compromise a confidential informant, or reveal classified information. In such cases, agencies "may treat the records as not subject to the requirements of" FOIA, which the courts and leading members of Congress have long understood to mean issuing a response that neither confirms nor denies the records' existence.
But the Obama administration prefers to lie. Under the rule proposed by the Justice Department, an agency with records believed to be exempt under Section 552(c) "will respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist."
As the American Civil Liberties Union, OpenTheGovernment.org, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington note in their comments on the rule, it would "dramatically undermine government integrity by allowing a law designed to provide public access to government information to be twisted to permit federal law enforcement agencies to actively lie to the American people." The rule also would impede judicial review of agencies' decisions to withhold records, since requesters would be led to believe that no records were being withheld.
Since requesters cannot demand a justification for withholding records they do not know exist, agencies would not have to convince a court that the information they believe qualifies for a FOIA exemption actually does. And while the lies supposedly would be limited to the three situations described in Section 552(c), agencies would be sorely tempted to deny the existence of any records they would rather not reveal.
Obama himself suggested where such unbridled discretion can lead. "The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears," he declared in 2009. But who can say whether that is happening if agencies can evade oversight by lying?
The ACLU suggests a FOIA response that avoids disclosing information shielded by Section 552(c) but is nevertheless accurate and preserves the possibility of judicial review: "We interpret all or part of your request as a request for records which, if they exist, would not be subject to the disclosure requirements of FOIA pursuant to section 552(c), and we therefore will not process that portion of your request." In an October 28 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, demands to know why that option is unsatisfactory and threatens to block the Obama administration's mendacious alternative.
It may be too late for that. Last spring U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney rebuked the government for falsely denying the existence of records sought under FOIA, not only to the requesters but to him. Carney noted that "it is impossible for the court to determine compliance with the law and to protect the public from Government misconduct if the Government misleads the Court." The Justice Department says its new rule merely codifies a practice dating to the Reagan administration, which means they've been lying to us all along.
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and a nationally syndicated columnist.
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http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/11/07/seal-commander-whose-team-killed-bin-laden-slams-obama?cmpid=NL_FiredUpFoxNation_20111107#ixzz1d2XnKJMy
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http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4145266,00.html
According to a Monday report in the French website “Arret sur Images,” after facing reporters for a G20 press conference on Thursday, the two presidents retired to a private room, to further discuss the matters of the day.
The conversation apparently began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington’s strong objection to the move.
The conversation then drifted to Netanyahu, at which time Sarkozy declared: “I cannot stand him. He is a liar.” According to the report, Obama replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”
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FYI to the C in C: The microphones are NEVER off.
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http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4145266,00.html
According to a Monday report in the French website “Arret sur Images,” after facing reporters for a G20 press conference on Thursday, the two presidents retired to a private room, to further discuss the matters of the day.
The conversation apparently began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington’s strong objection to the move.
The conversation then drifted to Netanyahu, at which time Sarkozy declared: “I cannot stand him. He is a liar.” According to the report, Obama replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”
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FYI to the C in C: The microphones are NEVER off.
He's used to them shutting off when the teleprompter stops feeding him words.
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Staff changes show direction. Chief of Staff Bill Daley was the bipartisan big tent attempt. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/23/AR2009122302439.html That is done. Daley was a Fannie Mae Director for years, also JP Morgan - a Wall Street Bank. Now the administration is anti-Wall Street, pro-Occupy Wall Street. Daley downgraded, no longer in charge of day to day affairs. In other words - out of that job. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/05/giuliani-obama-owns-occupy-wall-street-movement/
Meanwhile Giuliani says OWS will be Obama's ending. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/05/giuliani-obama-owns-occupy-wall-street-movement/
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From Media Issues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFz_Rm4YnPU&feature=player_embedded
Similar disorientations destroyed the futures of people like Palin, Bachmann, Cain and Perry. Do you think he still has a shot at his nomination? Why are slips like this okay, asked and answered in the post: he is a Democrat. My question, why is the double standard so widely accepted?
My take, innocent slip with no attempt at correction - just a glimpse into his mind. He is not new to Hawaii nor was he confused about where he was standing and speaking. He just never thought of himself as being from America. Like Superman, he is from somewhere else. Not Kenyan, Indonesian, Honolulan, Chicagoan or anywhere that specific, certainly not from Kansas, just somewhere else.
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From Media Issues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFz_Rm4YnPU&feature=player_embedded
Similar disorientations destroyed the futures of people like Palin, Bachmann, Cain and Perry. Do you think he still has a shot at his nomination? Why are slips like this okay, asked and answered in the post: he is a Democrat. My question, why is the double standard so widely accepted?
My take, innocent slip with no attempt at correction - just a glimpse into his mind. He is not new to Hawaii nor was he confused about where he was standing and speaking. He just never thought of himself as being from America. Like Superman, he is from somewhere else. Not Kenyan, Indonesian, Honolulan, Chicagoan or anywhere that specific, certainly not from Kansas, just somewhere else.
The key difference being that Superman loved America.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rSokGrpCoWA[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rSokGrpCoWA
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The piece by Peggy Noonan makes a strong case about why Herman Cain is not a serious candidate with his lack of attention to important foreign matters. I was corresponding with a centrist friend and reminded that in other circles, just saying the name Palin, Bachmann, Cain and others - these are one word punch lines in their world. In most cases they forgot to tell us why the joke is funny. On the conservative side, same goes for Pelosi, Reid and especially Pres, Obama. Maybe Newt can do it but he carries his own contradictions, but the candidate and certainly the VP candidate will need to be able to articulate persuasively the case that this incumbent is not a serious candidate for President in 2012. VDH does it quite well IMO right here:
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-imaginarium-of-barack-obama/?singlepage=true
The Imaginarium of Barack Obama
November 16, 2011 - by Victor Davis Hanson
The presidency of Barack Obama is full of funny things that need not follow any sort of logic. Images and ideas just pop in and out, without worry of inconsistency, contradiction, or hypocrisy. It’s a fascinating mish-mash of strange heroes and bogeymen, this imaginarium of our president.
In the imaginarium there are no revolving doors, earmarks, or lobbyists. So Peter Orszag did not go from being OMB director to a Citigroup fat-cat. Once chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel did not make $16 million for his well-known banking expertise. The more you damn the pernicious role of lobbyists and the polluting role of big money, the more you must hire and seek out both. Public financing of campaigns is wonderful for everyone else who lacks the integrity of Barack Obama who understandably must renounce such unfair impositions.
Those who now vote against raising the large Obama debt ceiling are political hucksters and opportunists; those who not long ago voted against raising the smaller Bush debt ceiling were principled statesmen. “Unpatriotic” presidents borrow $4 trillion in eight years; patriotic ones we’ve been waiting for can trump that in three.
Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo is very bad; killing suspected ones by drone assassinations — and anyone unlucky enough to be in their general vicinity — is exceptionally good. Tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, and all that were bad ideas under Bush-Cheney, but could become good ideas under Barack Obama, the law professor who often sees no need to follow the law when an immigration or marriage statute is deemed regressive.
A million Iranians protesting a soon-to-be-nuclear theocracy is false revolutionary consciousness and to be left alone; a few thousand Israelis wanting to buy apartments in the Jerusalem suburbs is subversive and worthy of presidential condemnation. And when atoning for supposed American lapses, what better place to begin apologizing than in Turkey, the incubator of the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish mass killings? We need to deny history to make the case that America is not exceptional, and to invent it to persuade us that the Muslim world is extraordinary.
Twenty-four months of a Democratic Congress, and over $4 trillion in spending, resulted in 9.1% unemployment and near nonexistent growth. Yet the culprit for the current situation is ten months of a Republican-controlled House that has yet to approve another $500 billion of borrowing. In the imaginarium, just a little more of the massive amount that has failed will not fail. But if the Republicans are to be blamed for not wanting to waste the last half-trillion, are the Democrats to be praised for borrowing the first wasted $4 trillion?
In the imaginarium, all sorts of demons and devils can unite to derail the brilliance of Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan. ATMs have for the first time after 2009 begun to eliminate jobs. But then so did the Japanese tsunami and the EU meltdown. The DC earthquake did its part, but then so did climbing oil prices and the Arab Spring. Of course, the ghost of George Bush floats over all the present mess. Economic gurus like Austan Goolsbee, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, and Larry Summers used to write brilliant essays of what would work if they were to be in charge, and now write brilliant essays about why it did not work when they were in charge.
There are lots of ways to bring Americans together across class and racial lines. One in the imaginarium is to focus on the “teabag, anti-government people.” Another is to encourage Hispanics to “punish our enemies” — or have the attorney general lambaste Americans as racial “cowards” and to defend “my people.” Joining foreign governments to sue a fellow American state is no more red/no more blue state unity. Still another is to divide up the people between the suspect who make over $200,000 and the noble who make less, or yet again target the dubious “1%” at “the very top” who do not pay “their fair share,” a mere 40% of the aggregate income tax.
Inside the imaginarium, the way to demonize the “1%” is to vacation among them — whether at Martha’s Vineyard or Costa del Sol. Buying a corporate jet is a waste of the people’s money — unlike daily flying on a much bigger private jet paid by the people.
To encourage energy self-sufficiency, the administration lent a half-billion dollars to campaign donor insiders and got unsellable solar panels in return — as it prevents a huge pipeline from Canada that will bring “shovel-ready” jobs and fuel to the United States far more cheaply than from the volatile Middle East. We have a brilliantly obtuse energy secretary who is a Nobel laureate but who thinks California farms — a record $15 billion in exports this year — will soon blow away and that gas should climb to European levels of about $9 a gallon. In the imaginarium, the purpose of Dr. Chu’s Department of Energy is not to encourage energy production and lower prices, but to find ways to prevent its development in search of raising its cost. The attorney general must be entirely conversant in small matters like a Black Panther voting intimidation case, but was completely ignorant of large ones like Fast and Furious that saw his subordinates sell automatic weapons to Mexican drug cartels.
The president regrets that we are not innovative any more, and have gone “soft” and “lazy.” You see, his efforts at ensuring cradle-to-grave health care entitlements, of granting 99 weeks of unemployment insurance, and of extending food stamps to nearly 50 million are apparently incentives that should have led to a “hard” and “industrious” populace that was more self-reliant and willing to take risks on their own. “Spread the wealth” is a time-honored way of galvanizing people to become more self-disciplined and sufficient.
Business has failed us as well. And the way to get Las Vegas and Super Bowl junketeering CEOs profitable enough again to fund the growing redistributive state, is for them to take risks that result in the sort of massive projects that used to be an American trademark — things like the Hoover Dam, which changed the environmental landscape far more than would the apparently cancelled gargantuan pipeline from Canada to Texas. Business can be encouraged not to be lazy by a prod now and then — either by trying to shut down a big aircraft plant or a small guitar factory. And in the imaginarium, the way to gently chide the private sector is with words of encouragement like “millionaires and billionaires,” and “corporate jet owners,” along with grandfatherly advice to clueless capitalists about realizing the point at which they should cease making money.
In the imaginarium of Barack Obama there is no contradiction between smearing and shaking down Wall Street, a bunch that needs both to be told when and when not to profit, and to whom and to whom not to give tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. Barney Frank, who helped pressure Wall Street and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to issue billions in unsound loans, and Chris Dodd, who shook down fat cats for below-market interest rates for his vacation home, logically are the eponymous heroes of the Dodd-Frank fiscal reform act to ensure others do not do as did they. Former liberal governor, senator, and Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine, who both wrecked MF Global and can’t account for $600 million in lost investments, is, in George Soros-like fashion, the best emblem of the contradictory desire to be the worst pirate on Wall Street in order to make the most money in order to be its most liberal critic. In the imaginarium we receive advice about the need for higher income taxes from multibillionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates who have always sought to avoid them. Big government and big inheritance taxes, both magnates swear are good, and therefore the administration of their own postmortem fortunes will forever avoid both.
In the imaginarium, community organizer Barack Obama never lived in a small mansion. John “two Americas” Edwards never lived in a big one. “Earth in the balance” Al Gore never lived in a few of them, and yacht owning John Kerry never lived in lots of them. You see in the imaginarium of Barack Obama you can be whatever you wish to be. Just wishing and saying something can wonderfully make it so.
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Why oh why cannot we not have more like VDH, Rush, Levin, Klein, Grant, who can articulate running for office. Yes the names I mention may not be politically savvy but at least they can speak in complete sentences, string sentences together to bespeak a coherent logical thought, idea, or ideology.
We do have some coming up in the ranks who are learning but just aren't world class yet.
Such as Rubio, hopefully Bachman, and a few others.
WE may have to stop worrying about the candidates personal baggage as well. It is rare enough finding someone with the political skills needed to run a country. It is quite a bit rarer to find one with those skills and who has lived their life like a saint.
There is truly only one Abe Lincoln.
The Dems have already demonstrated they made that deal with the devil a long time ago.
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Very good piece by VDH.
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What is sad for Obama is that this disapproval is happening while everything is going according to plan. He got the debt limit increase he wanted, the spending, the stimuli, the QE, the economy is growing, we got bin Laden, won the war in Libya, other wars are ending, and unemployment is in line with what you expect for welfare state social democracies, actually below Greece, France and the EU overall.
Gallup didn't find any President with a lower approval at this point in the Presidency:
-- Barack Obama: 43 percent.
-- James Carter: 51 percent.
-- Harry S. Truman: 54 percent.
-- Dwight Eisenhower: 78 percent.
-- Lyndon B. Johnson: 44 percent.
-- Richard M. Nixon: 50 percent.
-- Ronald Reagan: 54 percent.
-- George H.W. Bush: 52 percent.
-- Bill Clinton: 51 percent.
-- George W. Bush: 55 percent.
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/11/29/obamas-job-approval-drops-below-carters
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx
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White House won’t say if attorney general should resign for ‘lack of oversight,’ as Obama advocated in 2007
Published: 11:47 PM 11/29/2011 | Updated: 1:11 PM 11/30/2011
By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller
Spokespeople for President Barack Obama have refused to answer a series of questions from The Daily Caller about whether the president thinks criticisms he made about former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales also apply to Attorney General Eric Holder.
In 2007 Obama called for Gonzales’ resignation during an appearance on CNN’s Larry King Live and said he believed it’s the Attorney General’s responsibility to constrain the power of the president.
In addition to politically-motivated firings of U.S. Attorneys, Obama said Gonzales needed to resign because of a “lack of oversight” during one particular law enforcement program.
“You’ve got a situation in terms of the FBI where the procedures used for issuing national security letters seemed to have been completely sloppy and based on erroneous fact — there doesn’t seem to be any oversight there,” Obama said.
During that FBI scandal, it was alleged that investigators had misused “national security letters.” National security letters are administration documents that allow certain government officials to obtain information without probable cause or judicial oversight.
White House senior communications staffer Eric Schultz refused comment when TheDC asked if Obama thought calls for Holder’s resignation over Operation Fast and Furious are warranted, given Obama’s call for Gonzales’ resignation over a “lack of oversight.” (RELATED: Holder lashes out at Daily Caller while refusing to address growing calls for his resignation [AUDIO])
Obama also criticized Gonzales’ loyalty to President George W. Bush. “What you get a sense of is an Attorney General who saw himself as an enabler of the administration as opposed to somebody who was actually trying to look out for the American people’s interests,” Obama said of Gonzales.
When TheDC asked if Obama thinks Holder’s continued refusal to comply with a subpoena issued by House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa makes Holder an “enabler,” Schultz also wouldn’t comment.
Holder has withheld 11 of 12 subpoenaed witnesses and won’t provide subpoenaed documents and communications relating to the drafting a February 4, 2011 Justice Department letter to Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. That letter contained statements Holder and his Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, the head of the DOJ’s criminal division, have admitted were false and inaccurate.
During his call for Gonzales to resign, Obama added that Gonzales “seemed to be a capable attorney” but wasn’t acting as the “people’s attorney.”
When TheDC asked if Holder’s actions during the Fast and Furious congressional investigation, and the “lack of oversight” of a program that claimed the lives of at least 300 people in Mexico and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry counted as acting as the “people’s attorney” in Obama’s mind, Schultz refused to comment as well.
There are currently 52 congressmen, three presidential candidates and two sitting governors demanding Holder’s immediate resignation — and, on Tuesday, Georgia Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson became the first U.S. senator to call for Holder’s immediate resignation.
Obama isn’t defending Holder, nor are congressional Democrats. In a Tuesday afternoon outburst at the White House, Holder accused TheDC of being “behind” calls for his resignation. “Stop this,” he said.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/29/white-house-wont-say-if-attorney-general-should-resign-for-lack-of-oversight-as-obama-advocated-in-2007/
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Obama is visiting the 0.001%, the 0.0001%, and the 1% respectively, as he begins his evening at a private gathering in Manhattan with "25 to 30 people, each of whom paid $10,000" Next the president travels to Gotham Bar and Grill for a fundraiser with 45 supporters who contributed $35,800 apiece, including "Caroline Kennedy, Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld and Susan Sarandon. (Source: Fair and Balanced)
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"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow..." (in fact it did!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D77Vv3U8ofU
The Ghosts of Obama's Past - and Present and Future
Ad for US Senate candidate - running against Obama's governance.
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Hard to let this one go by. Axelrod regarding Gingrich. Isn't it Barack Obama who climbed the highest up the pole exposing his other side. Imagine if the leading GOP strategist said this about the President!
"At briefing for reporters, Chicagoan (Obama campaign manager David Axelrod) says of the Georgian (Newt Gingrich): "The higher a monkey climbs on the pole the more you can see his butt."
http://thepage.time.com/2011/12/13/axelrod-sets-sights-on-gingrich/#ixzz1h05iF7PT
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She gets the free ride on Air Force One and I don't because she is the wife of the President and deserves to be WITH him. That makes sense. Other than that, why do unelected millionaires get paid vacations??
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/with-more-vacation-days-and-separate-travel-price-of-obama%E2%80%99s-annual-hawaiian-holiday-rises/123
With More Vacation Days and Separate Travel, Price of Obama’s Annual Hawaiian Holiday Rises
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN - KAILUA, OAHU - The U.S. Secret Service has arrived, street barricades are in place, and the U.S. Coast Guard has stationed itself in the waters surrounding Kailua, Oahu. That is a sure sign President Barack Obama’s security team is preparing for the first family to arrive in the small beachside community as early as Friday night for what is expected to be a 17-day vacation.
The President and his family are traveling separately to Hawaii because he wants resolve the payroll tax cut issue before leaving Washington – and his wife does not want to wait.
But the advanced trip and the cost that comes with it – as much as $100,000 (flight and security) – adds to an already expensive vacation for the taxpayers.
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This $4 million figure [taxpayer cost of the vacation, up from 1.5 million for last year's trip] is nearly 100 times the average annual salary of an American worker
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100124892/barack-obama%E2%80%99s-big-government-vacation-the-president-adds-nearly-4-million-to-the-national-debt-with-his-lavish-hawaiian-holiday/
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"At a certain point, I think you've had enough vacations". :roll:
I believe the whole vacation will cost the American taxpayer about 4 million, but it makes Michelle feel better about America, so it's worth it.
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Its worth it to the country just to have them NOT at work.
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Very funny. We should offer $8 million to stay away all winter.
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Blogs bash Obama's historic claim
NewsBusters calls Obama's statements made during his '60 Minutes' interview 'laughable.'
By MJ LEE | 12/20/11 9:35 AM EST Updated: 12/20/11 12:26 PM EST
Newt Gingrich isn’t the only one on the campaign trail who sees himself as a towering historical figure. President Barack Obama has just joined the club.
Obama’s comments in a recent “60 Minutes” interview that his legislative and foreign policy accomplishments top all but three former presidents has sparked fierce blowback among right-leaning blogs.
The president’s claim didn’t air in the show’s Dec. 11 television broadcast but was included in the full interview video that CBS posted on its website that day.
The “60 Minutes Overtime” video shows Obama telling correspondent Steve Kroft:
“The issue here is not going be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do.”
NewsBusters pounced on the comments with a story under the headline: “60 Minutes broadcast edits out laughable Obama claim as 4th best president.”
“Eh! No big deal. Barack Obama is better…at least in his own mind. Such was the laughably absurd claim of President Obama on 60 Minutes last Sunday. What? You didn’t see it? That was because 60 Minutes conveniently left it out of its broadcast,” P.J. Gladnick wrote.
He continued, “So kneel, all you presidential peons, before the greatness that is Obama. His radiance shines so bright that it dazzled Steve Kroft to the extent that he didn’t even bother to ask an obvious follow-up question.”
Big Journalism headlined its story: “Selective Editing: CBS News Omits Embarrassing Obama Boast from TV Interview.”
And the Blaze’s Madeleine Morgenstern also berated the president’s remarks, writing that he “essentially declared himself the fourth best president in terms of his accomplishments.”
While the president didn’t quite go that far, Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft also joined the tune of the other bloggers on Monday.
“You have got to be kidding. … After destroying the American economy, tripling the national deficit, blowing a trillion dollars on a failed stimulus plan and nearly doubling the unemployment rate, Barack Obama told “60 Minutes” last week that he considered himself the 4th best president in US history. Unbelievable. (Is this guy out to lunch or what?),” Hoft wrote.
Scott Paulson, the Examiner’s “conservative examiner,” concluded that Obama has “a much higher opinion of his accomplishments than most Americans have of him.”
Gingrich has received his share of criticism for tooting his own horn on the campaign trail, once crediting himself for having “helped lead the effort to defeat communism.”
Kevin Tedesco, executive director of “60 Minutes,” told POLITICO in an email: “We don’t discuss our editorial process but we made the entire interview available to all on our webcast, 60Minutes, Overtime, Where it has been for nine days.”
Dylan Byers contributed to this story.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70684.html
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On 'Constitutional Issues', a liberal Dean of a public law school took what I called selective outrage at the rhetoric coming out of the Republican side of the presidential debate, at one point declaring "I don't recall prominent candidates for presidential nominations — Democratic or Republican — ever talking in such tones."
What President would ever sit down the members of the Supreme Court of the United States and berate them over a decision he or she did not like in front of a formal Joint Session of Congress??
That hasn't happened ever? or at least not since ... President Obama did it January 27, 2010 in his second State of the Union!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1PWQtCDaYY
American elections in effect turned over to foreign enemies by this Supreme Court, he said in so many words, to their face, in front of Congress, on national television broadcast worldwide. Is that not calling the Court "anti-American" and "grotesquely dictatorial"?! He received his instant gratification political reward for his slander - a standing ovation of what would appear to be all Democrats in the room.
Or as the Dean said about Gingrich and Santorum: "I don't recall prominent candidates for presidential nominations — Democratic or Republican — ever talking in such tones."
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Biden's gaffe's would have gotten him laughed out of the GOP debates. In fact his inaccuracies debating Palin were unforgivable - and ignored.
The story of dropping has lingered beneath the newsprint for nearly four years waiting for someone notable to quote on it. Doug Wilder is the former Gov of Virginia, Virginia's first African American Governor. Harsh criticism with the ultimate penalty: drop him. Besides the VP issue, Biden will not be a young man or electable in 2016, win or lose this year.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/12/20/fmr_dem_gov_doug_wilder_to_obama_drop_biden_from_2012_ticket.html
"You go back to the reasons that Joe Biden was put on the ticket in the very first instance. It was supposedly because he had the great experience. He had been there for years. He had been Foreign Relations chair. He had been chairman of the Judiciary and supposedly knew the workings of the Senate. Now, has that worked to the president's better interest or has it taken away from the president? And the gaffe is not just a question of will Joe Biden make a gaffe and incidentally I like him. Personally, I think he is a fine fellow," Former Gov. Douglas Wilder (D-VA) said on FOX News.
"But, Is he the person you want in place? You know, you always hear that thing. Suppose something would happen to the president, who would be in charge? The Vice President. Joe Biden? You have got to be kidding today when you say the Taliban's not our enemy," Wilder told Neal Cavuto.
"I fought in Korea, front line. I knew who the enemy were. The enemy were the people who were firing at me. And shooting at me. And so for some guy to come back and today, incidentally, to meet with the returning veterans and their families and I don't believe he would tell them 'Oh, look, the Taliban is not your enemy.' Just like they would have told us in Korea, 'Well, you know, the Chinese are not really your enemy, they're just helping out the North Koreans.' Get ahold of yourself, Joe," he said.
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Blogs bash Obama's historic claim
The president’s claim didn’t air in the show’s Dec. 11 television broadcast but was included in the full interview video that CBS posted on its website that day.
The “60 Minutes Overtime” video shows Obama telling correspondent Steve Kroft:
“The issue here is not going be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do.”
NewsBusters pounced on the comments with a story under the headline: “60 Minutes broadcast edits out laughable Obama claim as 4th best president.”
“Eh! No big deal. Barack Obama is better…at least in his own mind. Such was the laughably absurd claim of President Obama on 60 Minutes last Sunday. What? You didn’t see it? That was because 60 Minutes conveniently left it out of its broadcast,” P.J. Gladnick wrote.
He continued, “So kneel, all you presidential peons, before the greatness that is Obama. His radiance shines so bright that it dazzled Steve Kroft to the extent that he didn’t even bother to ask an obvious follow-up question.”
Big Journalism headlined its story: “Selective Editing: CBS News Omits Embarrassing Obama Boast from TV Interview.”
And the Blaze’s Madeleine Morgenstern also berated the president’s remarks, writing that he “essentially declared himself the fourth best president in terms of his accomplishments.”
(http://media.hotair.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ramirez-obama-4thgreatest-lg.jpg)
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Consistent with his pathological narcisstic personality disorder. That is why he is in the personality *disorder* class. A lot of people are narcisstic but he is incapable of seeing it any other way and would be indignant at anyone else who doesn't see him in the same light. "They are stupid, they are "inferior", they are "wrong", they ae "ignorant".
This guy has to be discarded into the waste bin of history in the next election. Unfortunately there is no shortage of people happy to be bought off with other people's money who will go and vote for him.
In his eyes he will always be the ONE.
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One of the Republicans landed a punch recently in the campaign about the attack on Christmas, and like clockwork the Obama family was off to church, first time in a long time, on what is typically a golf day.
In support of African American heritage, the Obamas are now honoring Kwanzaa this holiday season. Good grief. My experience in the black inner city and with successful African Americans I know through sports, friendships and business is that the holiday most are celebrating this season is ... Christmas. African Americans as a group are more religious and more likely Christian than the population as a whole. (http://www.christianpost.com/news/african-americans-most-religiously-devout-group-36736/)
http://news.investors.com/Article/595902/201112261944/kwanzaa-barack-obama-michelle-obama.htm
The Obamas mark Kwanzaa in the spirit of umoja
"Michelle and I send our warmest wishes to all those celebrating Kwanzaa this holiday season.
Today marks the beginning of the week-long celebration honoring African American heritage and culture through the seven principles of Kwanzaa -- unity, self determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.
We celebrate Kwanzaa at a time when many African Americans and all Americans reflect on our many blessings and memories over the past year and our aspirations for the year to come.
And even as there is much to be thankful for, we know that there are still too many Americans going through enormous challenges and trying to make ends meet. But we also know that in the spirit of unity, or Umoja, we can overcome those challenges together.
As families across America and around the world light the red, black, and green candles of the Kinara this week, our family sends our well wishes and blessings for a happy and healthy new year."
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Working from memory here, but pretty sure I have it right: Kwanza was "created" in 1966 by a black studies prof.
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Kwanza is not religious based, so there is no contradiction in celebrating it and Christmas. 30 million people worldwide, in a report I read recently, observe Kwanza. It is based on values, culture and family... something I would think we can agree is valuable.
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A different impression than I have entirely; I see it as a racialist-racist progressive creation celebrated for real by pretty much no one. To mention it as an analog to or in some way comparable to Christmas or Hanukah irks me not a little.
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I certainly meant no offense to you, Guro.
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Nor none taken!
It is just a pet peeve of mine to have my children come up from school with this progressive racist claptrap (I find the idea that blacks need "their own" holiday as racist) and my wife getting irked with me when I set them straight for fear that they will be portrayed as racist if they question it when they go back to school.
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http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=20535
Happy Kwanzaa
By: Paul Mulshine
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, December 26, 2002
On December 24, 1971, the New York Times ran one of the first of many articles on a new holiday designed to foster unity among African Americans. The holiday, called Kwanzaa, was applauded by a certain sixteen-year-old minister who explained that the feast would perform the valuable service of "de-whitizing" Christmas. The minister was a nobody at the time but he would later go on to become perhaps the premier race-baiter of the twentieth century. His name was Al Sharpton and he would later spawn the Tawana Brawley hoax and then incite anti-Jewish tensions in a 1995 incident that ended with the arson deaths of seven people.
Great minds think alike. The inventor of the holiday was one of the few black "leaders" in America even worse than Sharpton. But there was no mention in the Times article of this man or of the fact that at that very moment he was sitting in a California prison. And there was no mention of the curious fact that this purported benefactor of the black people had founded an organization that in its short history tortured and murdered blacks in ways of which the Ku Klux Klan could only fantasize.
It was in newspaper articles like that, repeated in papers all over the country, that the tradition of Kwanzaa began. It is a tradition not out of Africa but out of Orwell. Both history and language have been bent to serve a political goal. When that New York Times article appeared, Ron Karenga's crimes were still recent events. If the reporter had bothered to do any research into the background of the Kwanzaa founder, he might have learned about Karenga's trial earlier that year on charges of torturing two women who were members of US (United Slaves), a black nationalist cult he had founded.
A May 14, 1971, article in the Los Angeles Times described the testimony of one of them: "Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said."
Back then, it was relatively easy to get information on the trial. Now it's almost impossible. It took me two days' work to find articles about it. The Los Angeles Times seems to have been the only major newspaper that reported it and the stories were buried deep in the paper, which now is available only on microfilm. And the microfilm index doesn't start until 1972, so it is almost impossible to find the three small articles that cover Karenga's trial and conviction on charges of torture. That is fortunate for Karenga. The trial showed him to be not just brutal, but deranged. He and three members of his cult had tortured the women in an attempt to find some nonexistent "crystals" of poison. Karenga thought his enemies were out to get him.
And in another lucky break for Karenga, the trial transcript no longer exists. I filed a request for it with the Superior Court of Los Angeles. After a search, the court clerk could find no record of the trial. So the exact words of the black woman who had a hot soldering iron pressed against her face by the man who founded Kwanzaa are now lost to history. The only document the court clerk did find was particularly revealing, however. It was a transcript of Karenga's sentencing hearing on Sept. 17, 1971.
A key issue was whether Karenga was sane. Judge Arthur L. Alarcon read from a psychiatrist's report: "Since his admission here he has been isolated and has been exhibiting bizarre behavior, such as staring at the wall, talking to imaginary persons, claiming that he was attacked by dive-bombers and that his attorney was in the next cell. … During part of the interview he would look around as if reacting to hallucination and when the examiner walked away for a moment he began a conversation with a blanket located on his bed, stating that there was someone there and implying indirectly that the 'someone' was a woman imprisoned with him for some offense. This man now presents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and elusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment."
The founder of Kwanzaa paranoid? It seems so. But as the old saying goes, just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean that someone isn't out to get you.
ACCORDING TO COURT DOCUMENTS, Karenga's real name is Ron N. Everett. In the '60s, he awarded himself the title "maulana," Swahili for "master teacher." He was born on a poultry farm in Maryland, the fourteenth child of a Baptist minister. He came to California in the late 1950s to attend Los Angeles Community College. He moved on to UCLA, where he got a Master's degree in political science and African Studies. By the mid-1960s, he had established himself as a leading "cultural nationalist." That is a term that had some meaning in the '60s, mainly as a way of distinguishing Karenga's followers from the Black Panthers, who were conventional Marxists.
Another way of distinguishing might be to think of Karenga's gang as the Crips and the Panthers as the bloods. Despite all their rhetoric about white people, they reserved their most vicious violence for each other. In 1969, the two groups squared off over the question of who would control the new Afro-American Studies Center at UCLA. According to a Los Angeles Times article, Karenga and his adherents backed one candidate, the Panthers another. Both groups took to carrying guns on campus, a situation that, remarkably, did not seem to bother the university administration. The Black Student Union, however, set up a coalition to try and bring peace between the Panthers and the group headed by the man whom the Times labeled "Ron Ndabezitha Everett-Karenga."
On Jan. 17, 1969, about 150 students gathered in a lunchroom to discuss the situation. Two Panthers—admitted to UCLA like many of the black students as part of a federal program that put high-school dropouts into the school—apparently spent a good part of the meeting in verbal attacks against Karenga. This did not sit well with Karenga's followers, many of whom had adopted the look of their leader, pseudo-African clothing and a shaved head.
In modern gang parlance, you might say Karenga was "dissed" by John Jerome Huggins, 23, and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter, 26. After the meeting, the two Panthers were met in the hallway by two brothers who were members of US, George P. and Larry Joseph Stiner. The Stiners pulled pistols and shot the two Panthers dead. One of the Stiners took a bullet in the shoulder, apparently from a Panther's gun.
There were other beatings and shooting in Los Angeles involving US, but by then the tradition of African nationalism had already taken hold—among whites. That tradition calls for any white person, whether a journalist, a college official, or a politician, to ignore the obvious flaws of the concept that blacks should have a separate culture. "The students here have handled themselves in an absolutely impeccable manner," UCLA chancellor Charles E. Young told the L.A. Times. "They have been concerned. They haven't argued who the director should be; they have been saying what kind of person he should be." Young made those remarks after the shooting. And the university went ahead with its Afro-American Studies Program. Karenga, meanwhile, continued to build and strengthen US, a unique group that seems to have combined the elements of a street gang with those of a California cult. The members performed assaults and robberies but they also strictly followed the rules laid down in The Quotable Karenga, a book that laid out "The Path of Blackness." "The sevenfold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black," the book states.
In retrospect, it may be fortunate that the cult fell apart over the torture charges. Left to his own devices, Karenga might have orchestrated the type of mass suicide later pioneered by the People's Temple and copied by the Heaven's Gate cult. Instead, he apparently fell into deep paranoia shortly after the killings at UCLA. He began fearing that his followers were trying to have him killed. On May 9, 1970 he initiated the torture session that led to his imprisonment. Karenga himself will not comment on that incident and the victims cannot be located, so the sole remaining account is in the brief passage from the L.A. Times describing tortures inflicted by Karenga and his fellow defendants, Louis Smith and Luz Maria Tamayo:
"The victims said they were living at Karenga's home when Karenga accused them of trying to kill him by placing 'crystals' in his food and water and in various areas of his house. When they denied it, allegedly they were beaten with an electrical cord and a hot soldering iron was put in Miss Davis' mouth and against her face. Police were told that one of Miss Jones' toes was placed in a small vise which then allegedly was tightened by one of the defendants. The following day Karenga allegedly told the women that 'Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what I know.' Miss Tamayo reportedly put detergent in their mouths, Smith turned a water hose full force on their faces, and Karenga, holding a gun, threatened to shoot both of them."
Karenga was convicted of two counts of felonious assault and one count of false imprisonment. He was sentenced on Sept. 17, 1971, to serve one to ten years in prison. A brief account of the sentencing ran in several newspapers the following day. That was apparently the last newspaper article to mention Karenga's unfortunate habit of doing unspeakable things to black people. After that, the only coverage came from the hundreds of news accounts that depict him as the wonderful man who invented Kwanzaa.
LOOK AT ANY MAP OF THE WORLD and you will see that Ghana and Kenya are on opposite sides of the continent. This brings up an obvious question about Kwanzaa: Why did Karenga use Swahili words for his fictional African feast? American blacks are primarily descended from people who came from Ghana and other parts of West Africa. Kenya and Tanzania—where Swahili is spoken—are several thousand miles away, about as far from Ghana as Los Angeles is from New York. Yet in celebrating Kwanzaa, African-Americans are supposed to employ a vocabulary of such Swahili words as "kujichagulia" and "kuumba." This makes about as much sense as having Irish-Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day by speaking Polish. One possible explanation is that Karenga was simply ignorant of African geography and history when he came up with Kwanzaa in 1966. That might explain why he would schedule a harvest festival near the solstice, a season when few fruits or vegetables are harvested anywhere. But a better explanation is that he simply has contempt for black people.
That does not seem a farfetched hypothesis. Despite all his rhetoric about white racism, I could find no record that he or his followers ever raised a hand in anger against a white person. In fact, Karenga had an excellent relationship with Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in the '60s and also met with then-Governor Ronald Reagan and other white politicians. But he and his gang were hell on blacks. And Karenga certainly seems to have had a low opinion of his fellow African-Americans. "People think it's African, but it's not," he said about his holiday in an interview quoted in the Washington Post. "I came up with Kwanzaa because black people in this country wouldn't celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that's when a lot of bloods would be partying." "Bloods" is a '60s California slang term for black people.
That Post article appeared in 1978. Like other news articles from that era, it makes no mention of Karenga's criminal past, which seems to have been forgotten the minute he got out of prison in 1975. Profiting from the absence of memory, he remade himself as Maulana Ron Karenga, went into academics, and by 1979 he was running the Black Studies Department at California State University in Long Beach.
This raises a question: Karenga had just ten years earlier proven himself capable of employing guns and bullets in his efforts to control hiring in the Black Studies Department at UCLA. So how did this ex-con, fresh out jail, get the job at Long Beach? Did he just send a résumé and wait by the phone? The officials at Long Beach State don't like that type of question. I called the university and got a spokeswoman by the name of Toni Barone. She listened to my questions and put me on hold. Christmas music was playing, a nice touch under the circumstances. She told me to fax her my questions. I sent a list of questions that included the matter of whether Karenga had employed threats to get his job. I also asked just what sort of crimes would preclude a person from serving on the faculty there in Long Beach. And whether the university takes any security measures to ensure that Karenga doesn't shoot any students. Barone faxed me back a reply stating that the university is pleased with Karenga's performance and has no record of the procedures that led to his hiring. She ignored the question about how they protect students.
Actually, there is clear evidence that Karenga has reformed. In 1975, he dropped his cultural nationalist views and converted to Marxism. For anyone else, this would have been seen as an endorsement of radicalism, but for Karenga it was considered a sign that he had moderated his outlook. The ultimate irony is that now that Karenga is a Marxist, the capitalists have taken over his holiday. The seven principles of Kwanzaa include "collective work" and "cooperative economics," but Kwanzaa is turning out to be as commercial as Christmas, generating millions in greeting-card sales alone. The purists are whining. "It's clear that a number of major corporations have started to take notice and try to profit from Kwanzaa," said a San Francisco State black studies professor named "Oba T'Shaka" in one news account. "That's not good, with money comes corruption." No, he's wrong. With money comes kitsch. The L.A. Times reported a group was planning an "African Village Faire," the pseudo-archaic spelling of "faire" nicely combining kitsch Africana with kitsch Americana.
With money also comes forgetfulness. As those warm Kwanzaa feelings are generated in a spirit of holiday cheer, those who celebrate this holiday do so in blissful ignorance of the sordid violence, paranoia, and mayhem that helped generate its birth some three decades ago in a section of America that has vanished down the memory hole.
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Obama’s Postmodern Vision
Will we have another four years of his selective reading of the law?
By Victor Davis Hanson January 11, 2012 National Review
There has been for months a popular parlor game of tallying instances in which President Obama seems to have either ignored or simply bypassed federal law. But what started out as a way of exposing occasional hypocrisy is now getting a little scary.
Most recently, President Obama made several recess appointments — a tactic that as a senator he once criticized — even though Congress was not in recess. In December, the president signed a $1 billion omnibus spending bill, but notified Congress that he might not abide by some of the very provisions he had just signed into law. During the Libya war, Obama felt that bombing Qaddafi’s forces did not really constitute military operations, and therefore he had no need to notify Congress under the War Powers Act.
It is clear that Arizona is not trying to circumvent federal immigration law, but rather is desperately trying to find some way to enforce it, given that the Obama administration has selectively chosen not to do so. In response, the federal government is suing the state of Arizona, even as it assures illegal aliens that they will not be arrested if they have not committed a crime — as if Obama can by himself decide that illegally entering and residing in the United States is not a federal crime in the first place.
President Obama argued that it was constitutional to force citizens to purchase federalized health care, and that all Americans would be subject to his new health-care law — except some 2,000 businesses and organizations that were given politically driven waivers. Obama decided to reverse the legal order of creditors in the bailout of a bankrupt Chrysler Corporation in favor of more politically suitable constituencies. The administration does not like the Defense of Marriage Act, and therefore announced that it won’t enforce it. When a federal judge struck down an Obama- administration ban on new leases for gas and oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama for a time ignored the injunction. When a BP oil leak in the Gulf outraged America, the president met with company executives and announced that they had agreed to set up a $20 billion “fund” to pay for imminent damage claims — as if our chief executive now meets with culpable private businesses to assess what he thinks they should pony up to avoid federal retaliation.
Every administration, of course, has constitutional disputes with Congress, the courts, and the public over the exact limits of its power. But in the case of the Obama administration there is a new sort of lawlessness unseen in recent governments. Is that predictable or surprising, given Obama’s own constant references to himself as a former constitutional scholar and community organizer?
Both as a state legislator and as a U.S. senator, Obama blasted as unconstitutional or abuses of presidential power almost all of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols — Guantanamo, renditions, military tribunals, preventive detention, the Patriot Act — which as president he later embraced or expanded. Apparently, Obama’s own status as an out-of-power senator or an in-power president, and the degree to which such issues were or were not politically useful to his larger agenda, alone determined whether something like renditions or military tribunals was lawful.
Other than the normal explanations of abject hypocrisy and political expediency, why has the Obama administration shown such a disdain for the integrity of the law? In a word, Obama is a postmodernist. That is a trendy word for someone who leaves academia believing that there are not really absolute facts, but merely competing ideas and discourses. In this view, particular ideologies unfortunately gain credibility as establishment icons only from the relative advantage that arises from race, class, and gender biases.
In postmodern jurisprudence, “critical legal theory” postulates that law and politics are inseparable. Those with power call their self-serving rules “the law.” But “laws” are not sacrosanct. Instead, they are mere embedded reflections of wealthy, white, and male privilege — dressed up in some bogus timeless concept of “justice.”
A few critical and progressive minds among the legal technocracy have the ability to spot these fictions. And thus a Barack Obama or an Eric Holder has a duty on our behalf to use his training to make the necessary corrections, even if the rest of us don’t quite fathom what is going on. Federal voting-rights laws, for example, do not mean ensuring that no one intimidates voters. Hardly. They are instead fluid and relative, properly focusing only on those who are not now intimidating voters but whose ancestors might have, while exempting those who now are but whose ancestors might have been intimidated.
Whether Congress is, or is not, in recess, or whether wealthy bondholders should be paid back before working-class union pensioners, or whether some company should or should not be allowed to drill in the Gulf — these and others are moral and political, but not necessarily legal, issues. To the degree that he can, on any given challenge Obama assesses the politics of favoring his constituency of the “poor” and “middle class,” and then uses the necessary legal gymnastics post facto to offer the veneer of lawfulness.
If someone is breaking a federal “law” by entering Arizona illegally from Mexico, there must be a way to make the enforcer of that “law” the real suspect — given that a Sheriff Joe Arpaio is by allegiance of the privileged 1 percent and those whom he arrests most surely are not. Consumers are deemed to need federal help more than do lenders; accordingly, Congress “really” is now in recess. In other words, we are witnessing with this administration the ancient idea of the supposedly exalted ends justifying the somewhat ambiguous means — albeit dressed up in trendy Ivy League legalese and progressive moralizing.
Our postmodern president is not content with just picking and choosing which laws he will follow in advancing his social agenda. The war against the myth of disinterested Western jurisprudence extends also to free-market economics, as we see with the monotonous demonization of the so-called 1 percent and those who make over $200,000 per year. Sometime after January 2009, we learned that the “wealthy” did not gain their riches by a wide variety of what we once thought were legitimate means — luck, inheritance, work, health, intelligence, expertise, experience, education, or an overriding desire for money and status, coupled with an avoidance of classical sins like sloth, crime, and drunkenness.
Rather, we were taught that there was something else going on, something innately unfair in the manner in which we are arbitrarily compensated. In some sense, we are back to the old notion of a labor theory of value (e.g., an hour of working at Starbucks is inherently no less valuable to our society in terms of how much the worker should be paid than an hour crafting a deal at Goldman Sachs). The role, then, of government is not to ensure an equality of opportunity — which is impossible, given inherent and unending race, class, and gender exploitations — but to strive for an equality of result.
That utopian task demands that the best and the brightest in government redistribute capital, or rather use the state to make right what the private sector has distorted. (Of course, no one dares to suggest that Obama himself is cynically interested mostly in power and the delights thereof — and so as a postmodernist he simply constructs these egalitarian stage-sets as a means to enjoy the privileges of the technocratic class that he surrounds himself with.)
Tally up Obama’s early and recent unrehearsed and unguarded quips about wealth — “Spread the wealth”; his regrets that the Supreme Court has not addressed “redistributive change”; his concern that some have not realized that they already have made “enough” money; his warnings that now is not the time for “profit.” That serial message bookends the president’s slurs about millionaires and billionaires, corporate-jet owners, fat-cats, profit-driven doctors, and Vegas and Super Bowl junketeers.
All this unscripted editorializing reflects a recurring theme: Those with superior intelligence and higher moral authority must correct for warped private-sector compensation and human greed. And they can do that by deciding roughly how much each of us deserves to end up with.
In concrete terms, this pop socialism leads Obama to wish to enact more regulations, higher taxes on fewer taxpayers, and more on entitlements. Larger government can absorb health care and also many private-sector companies, as more federal and state workers likewise can even out the playing field. Near-zero interest rates, and renegotiating mortgage or student loans, along with higher deficits, more national debt, and expansionary monetary policy are likewise means to correct the inherent imbalances of the system and counter the greed of a few among us.
It does not matter that much whether, in the attempt to do all that, the better-off must be demonized with crude sloganeering. It does not matter that the poor must be caricatured as Steinbeck’s Joads, starving and poorly clothed, lacking iPhones, $200 sneakers, and big-screen TVs. It does not matter that 20th-century phenomena like National Socialism, Communism, and the European Union — and any other crackpot effort of a self-anointed elite to redistribute wealth and expand the state under the banner either of nationalism, or the global proletariat, or enlightened world citizens — have led only to poverty and chaos, at least for those outside the small exempt managerial class that implements, profits from, and often survives the ensuing disaster.
What makes Barack Obama a different president is not his racial heritage, his liberal outlook, or his mellifluous cadences, but rather the banal idea that the United States is fundamentally in need of this sort of radical change, and that only a select few like himself have the insight and skills necessary to both implement and preside over it. We simply have not seen that redistributive ideology in a president since Jimmy Carter, and then only in part. So far the biggest edge for Obama is his inability to push more of his agenda through first a friendly and now a not-so-friendly Congress — as if to say, “How could I be a redistributionist when they did not let me redistribute as planned?”
The fulfillment of that old vision of mandated equality of result is what the 2012 election is about — nothing more, nothing less.
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Is this true?!? :-o
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Very Interesting Bit Of Detective Work
1. Back in 1961 people of color were called 'Negroes.' So how can the
Obama 'birth certificate' state he is 'African-American' when the term wasn't
even used at that time?
2. The birth certificate that the White House released lists Obama's birth
as August 4, 1961. It also lists Barack Hussein Obama as his father. No
big deal, right? At the time of Obama's birth, it also shows that his father
is aged 25 years old, and that Obama's father was born in " Kenya, East
Africa ". This wouldn't seem like anything of concern, except the fact that
Kenya did not even exist until 1963, two whole years after Obama's birth,
and 27 years after his father's birth. How could Obama's father have been
born in a country that did not yet exist? Up and until Kenya was formed in
1963, it was known as the "British East Africa Protectorate".
3. On the birth certificate released by the White House, the listed place
of birth is "Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital". This cannot
be, because the hospital(s) in question in 1961 were called "KauiKeolani
Children's Hospital" and "Kapi'olani Maternity Home", respectively. The name
did not change to Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital until 1978,
when these two hospitals merged. How can this particular name of the
hospital be on a birth certificate dated 1961 if this name had not yet been
applied to it until 1978?
Resources:
_http://www.kapiolani.org/women-and-children/about-us/default.aspx_
(http://www.kapiolani.org/women-and-children/about-us/default.aspx)
Post-colonial history (from
Wikipedia)_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kenya_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kenya)
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya)
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I don't know anything about the veracity of that but wonder about this:
If Virginia and a few other states were to keep the incumbent President off of their ballot in their state based on insufficient or inconclusive documentation provided, the campaign of the former constitutional law professor would certainly respect that decision based on the decision in the Perry case and their respect for "states rights". No?
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"If Virginia and a few other states were to keep the incumbent President off of their ballot in their state based on insufficient or inconclusive documentation provided, the campaign of the former constitutional law professor would certainly respect that decision based on the decision in the Perry case and their respect for "states rights". No?"
Short answer, no. :wink:
It is clear to me that the birth certificate on the WH website is a fraud. As far as I know the phrase "African American" was not even dreamed of in 1961. We all know it seemed to evolve at some point within the past few decades (80's?) after negro was changed to more acceptable "black" to later African American. I am certainly ok with calling a group of people whatever they wish. No problem there. As for the Kenya thing I am not sure when that name was dreamed of. I think it true some call a country a certain name before it really has existed. Perhaps the father called it that?
I have been thinking this for some time but have elected not to bring it up again since now we would be calling the Brock the L word. Trump was right in what he did. He also questioned the WH posted document. He was destroyed in the media. Bachmann even suggested the original be verifed by document examiners. She was mocked.
I think the only ttuth is the mock is on the American people.
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***Post-colonial historyThe first direct elections for Africans to the Legislative Council took place in 1957. Despite British hopes of handing power to "moderate" African rivals, it was the Kenya African National Union (KANU) of Jomo Kenyatta that formed a government shortly before Kenya became independent on 12 December 1963, on the same day forming the first Constitution of Kenya.[42] During the same year, the Kenyan army fought the Shifta War against ethnic Somalis who wanted Kenya's Northern Frontier District joined with the Republic of Somalia. The Shifta War officially ended with the signature of the Arusha Memorandum in October, 1967, but relative insecurity prevailed through 1969.[43][44] To discourage further invasions, Kenya signed a defence pact with Ethiopia in 1969, which is still in effect.[45]
The former Kenyan President and founder of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta.On 12 December 1964 the Republic of Kenya was proclaimed, and Jomo Kenyatta became Kenya's first president.[46]***
This doesn't prove to me that there were not independence minded people who were calling the country Kenya before it was official but this is certianly very suspicious to me.
Obviously the whole thing is too pol incorrect to do anything about it.
Most people could simply not conceive of such fraud at such a high level.
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What is the URL of the birth certificate on the White House site?
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What is the URL of the birth certificate on the White House site?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate
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I can't see it clearly enough. Is his race listed as "African American"?
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I can't see it clearly enough. Is his race listed as "African American"?
African
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No idea as to the trustworthiness of this site
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2012/01/georgia-judge-malihi-denies-obamas.html
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http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2012/01/georgia-judge-malihi-denies-obamas.html
Shouldn't this be in the humor section? :-)
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Banana republics have trouble attracting capital because of a reputation for arbitrarily changing the rules whenever it suits the populist in power. With last week's decision to block TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama stunned investors by demonstrating that he doesn't see anything wrong with the banana republic way of doing things.
The administration seems to think that it can use environmental claptrap to convince the American public that it is behaving ethically and legally in denying the TransCanada permit, even after the company has spent $1.9 billion over 40 months carefully adhering to the federal regulatory process. And a lot of Americans will not have the time or inclination to get into the weeds on this issue.
Enlarge Image
Associated Press
A Keystone XL Pipeline protest at the White House, Sept. 2, 2011.
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Yet what is unseen by the public is likely to be more dangerous to the well-being of the society than what is seen, as the 19th-century journalist and political philosopher Frédéric Bastiat famously warned. In this case, the unseen is the effect that Mr. Obama's unmitigated cynicism and abuse of power is likely to have on investors. Unlike the general public, those who have ready capital to deploy to infrastructure projects like Keystone will fully analyze this decision. Seeing how our president has behaved, they are not likely to come away feeling confident about the rule of law.
To understand how Mr. Obama is thumbing his nose at the law, recall the State Department's decision in November to delay permit approval based on a complaint from the state of Nebraska about the pipeline route there. State had already issued three environmental impact statements over three years finding that there would be "no significant impact" on the environment from the pipeline. But as it prepared to issue its final ruling, the environmental lobby descended on the White House with protests.
Within days, State announced that a rerouting in Nebraska was necessary, which implied yet another round of environmental impact studies. It was a "green" victory because it meant delaying the permitting at least another three years, not counting the inevitable litigation and notwithstanding State's forecast that it would be done in 15 months.
It was an absurd proposition. Keystone XL will run more than 2,000 miles. The disputed segment is about 100 miles and by late November the company had already begun working with Nebraska on a rerouting plan. With some 20,000 new direct construction jobs and more than 100,000 indirect jobs along the pipeline route hanging in the balance, Republicans decided to give Mr. Obama a way out of the problem he faced of having to do another long, drawn-out environmental impact study. They attached a rider to the Dec. 23 payroll-tax bill that instructed the president to rule within 60 days on whether the oil pipeline crossing the U.S. border is in the national interest.
In making the determination, the rider said, the president should consider factors like the economy, energy security, foreign policy, employment, trade and even, notably, the environment. For example, Mr. Obama could have said that oil from Canada's oil sands is bad for the global environment. Perhaps that's what he wanted to say. It is, after all, the position of some of his most generous campaign contributors.
But with unemployment at 8.5%, Iran threatening to close off the Strait of Hormuz and Hugo Chávez jailing dissidents, denouncing Canadian energy isn't a winning campaign slogan. It may also be discriminatory, and thus a violation, under the North American Free Trade Agreement and U.S. membership in the World Trade Organization.
Out of options, Mr. Obama concluded last week that it is not in the national interest to grant the permit because of the State Department's view that further environmental studies are required due to the Nebraska rerouting. It's a nice try. But it directly contravenes the rider, which specifically states that the one thing Mr. Obama need not concern himself about—indeed could not consider—is any new environmental impact studies.
The three bullet points that cover this point in the rider couldn't be much clearer: First, "the final environmental impact statement issued by the Secretary of State on August 26, 2011, satisfies all requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 . . . and section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act." Second, "any [my emphasis] modification" to the route "shall not require supplementation of the final environmental impact statement . . ." Third, "no further Federal environmental review shall be required."
Congress anticipated that Mr. Obama would try to use the complex process of environmental study as a fig leaf for further delaying the pipeline. But if the law is to be followed, since the president failed to make a national interest determination as specified in the rider, it means that "the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline . . . shall be in effect by operation of law." The only question is whether Mr. Obama can be made to obey the letter and the spirit of that law and whether Republicans will try to enforce it. Investors will be watching.
Write to O'Grady@wsj.com
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"You can see the results of last year's investments in clean energy"..."A California company that will put a thousand people to work making solar panels." - President Obama, State of the Union, January 27, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PzNP37XMmX0
$535 million for a thousand jobs? http://blog.heritage.org/2011/08/31/politically-connected-solar-firm-goes-under-despite-federal-support/
Who was involved? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/solyndra-key-players/
Are you better off now than you were five trillion dollars ago?
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The state of the union was another laundry list of government based patchwork ideas from our Solyndra President (IMHO). Then the canvas was cleansed with this for you to paint your own painting:
That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more. - What :?
The federal government is in charge of teachers and K-12 education. He didn't say from which Article that came. Last year I think it was police and firefighters are federal responsibilities. As Bill Clinton used to say: "We can do more." With a trillion plus a year deficit - really, we can do less.
He touted a union factory being open in Milwaukee - happens to be battleground Wisconsin, home of the Scott Walker recall contest.
He says we don't have to choose between energy and growing our economy. Gas prices are up 83%! I guess we did choose. Gas prices would be far higher than that if the economy was healthy at this level of energy production. But he says production is at record levels, meaning there is no problem there that he has to address. And government inventing fracking so quit your whining about government being the problem.
He kept saying that congress should write and pass a bill with his agenda and he will sign it. I suppose so.
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'This speech offered a vision of a profoundly technocratic and activist government, with its hands in every nook and cranny of the nation’s economic life—a government guiding particular business decisions and nudging individual choices through just the right mix of incentives and rules to reach just the right balance between fairness and growth while designing the perfect website for job retraining programs and producing exactly the proper number of “high-tech batteries.” The president described the government’s bailout of the Detroit automakers as a roaring success and then said “What’s happening in Detroit can happen in other industries. It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh.” If he thinks that all the tasks he laid out for government are things that people “cannot do better by themselves” then he must have a very high opinion of how well government can do things, or a very low opinion of how well people can do things by themselves, or (most plausibly) both.'
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/289189/state-denial-yuval-levin
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Two words hardly mentioned in Barack Obama’s 65-minute State of the Union address to Congress: freedom and liberty. President Obama’s fourth and possibly last State of the Union speech was long on big government proposals, but short on the principles that have made America the world’s greatest power. His lecturing tone exuded arrogance, and he failed to present a coherent vision for getting the United States back on its feet after three years of economic decline. It was heavy on class-war rhetoric, punitive taxation, and frequent references to the Left-wing mantra of “fairness”, hardly likely to instil confidence in a battered business community that is the lifeblood of the American economy.
Above all, he remains in denial over the levels of federal debt that threaten the country's long-term prosperity. This was not a speech that was serious about the biggest budget deficits since World War Two. There was no sense at all that America is a superpower on a precipice, sinking in a sea of debt that threatens to undermine America’s power to project global leadership for generations to come. In fact, his interventionist proposals will only make matters worse.
From new federally funded infrastructure projects to increasing regulations on financial institutions, President Obama remains wedded to big government – an approach rejected by a clear majority of Americans, who view it as a millstone around their necks. As Gallup’s polling has found, nearly two thirds of Americans see big government as "the biggest threat" to their country.
This should have been a serious speech addressing the economic problems facing the United States. Instead it was a laundry list of half-baked proposals designed to appease the Left. The president should have been talking about reining in spending, lowering taxes, and fostering greater economic freedom, but he opted for policies that will speed America’s decline, not reverse it.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100131525/barack-obama-is-still-driving-america-towards-decline/
(Gardiner goes on with a great excerpt to compare the inspiration that Reagan offered at the same point in his Presidency - at the link.)
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Text and Video State of the Union: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/state-of-the-union-video-text-2012_n_1229888.html
Text and Video of Mitch Daniels Response: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/mitch-daniels-response-_n_1228467.html
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So Brock implies Licoln was a big government man. Here is keeping HIM honest. I doubt Lincoln lied or misleads like Obama:
http://biggovernment.com/cjohnson/2012/01/25/exclusive-noted-lincoln-scholar-says-obama-misquotes-lincoln/
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Curious, do people think you have to be Catholic to be offended by the Obama administration assault on the religious liberty if it is not your own? I hope not.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/feb/02/dont-trample-on-religious-liberty/
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A Christian President who has joined no Washington church other than his own now claims Jesus Christ to be one of his followers(?) Taken to task by Peter Wehner at Commentary Magazine (excerpt):
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/02/03/barack-obama-theology-taxes/
In the same speech in which he quoted Lewis [‘Christianity has not, and does not profess to have a detailed political program. It is meant for all men at all times, and the particular program which suited one place or time would not suit another.’], Obama also said this:
"And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others."
For Obama to move from the Biblical injunction that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required” to higher marginal tax rates on those making $250,000 or more is laughable theology. Why draw the line at $250,000? Why not draw it at $125,000? Or $500,000? And why doesn’t Obama, in the name of Jesus, propose increasing the highest marginal tax rates to 90 percent? In fact, why doesn’t he endorse a plan for the government to take over people’s property and their life savings and distribute it to the poor under the banner of “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required”? Why doesn’t he propose a plan to take money from Americans making $25,000 a year in order to send it to people in Africa making a dollar a day? And why doesn’t St. Barack, in order to set an example for us all, commit that his net worth will never exceed $1 million? Or perhaps the argument being made by the president is that if we read the book of Acts carefully enough, we’ll find that God’s preferred tax rate just happens to be the one championed by Obama.
My point in this exercise is to illustrate what a ludicrous dart game Obama is playing. But it’s actually worse than that. What the president is doing is using the Scriptures to advance a transparently partisan political agenda, and he did so in a setting where past presidents have traditionally stayed away from such stunts.
To be clear: I believe, and have long argued, that people’s faith should help shape their political ethics. But I have also written that Scripture does not provide a governing blueprint and that, while whether the top marginal tax rate should be 70 percent, 40 percent, or 28 percent is a serious public policy issue, neither the New Testament nor the Hebrew Bible sheds light on the matter. The Christian ethicist Paul Ramsey put it best when he said, “Identification of Christian social ethics with specific partisan proposals that clearly are not the only ones that may be characterized as Christian and as morally acceptable comes close to the original New Testament meaning of heresy.”
In the vast majority of cases, what we are talking about are prudential judgments about competing priorities, and we need to approach them with humility and open minds. No president, even Barack Obama, should not pretend his tax policies have been chiseled on stone tablets delivered to him on Mt. Sinai.
It’s no secret that Obama, in order to win re-election, is attempting to divide us by class. But that, apparently, is too restrictive a category for Obama. Now he wants to divide us based on faith, portraying his position on taxes as consistent with the teaching and spirit of Jesus and those who oppose his agenda as being anti-Christian (as well as anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish).
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577206980068367936.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
A Fairness Quiz for the President
Is it fair that some of Mr. Obama's largest campaign contributors received federal loan guarantees?
By STEPHEN MOORE
President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria?
Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?
Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?
Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?
Is it fair that President Obama sends his two daughters to elite private schools that are safer, better-run, and produce higher test scores than public schools in Washington, D.C.—but millions of other families across America are denied that free choice and forced to send their kids to rotten schools?
Is it fair that Americans who build a family business, hire workers, reinvest and save their money—paying a lifetime of federal, state and local taxes often climbing into the millions of dollars—must then pay an additional estate tax of 35% (and as much as 55% when the law changes next year) when they die, rather than passing that money onto their loved ones?
Is it fair that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel and other leading Democrats who preach tax fairness underpaid their own taxes?
Is it fair that after the first three years of Obamanomics, the poor are poorer, the poverty rate is rising, the middle class is losing income, and some 5.5 million fewer Americans have jobs today than in 2007?
Is it fair that roughly 88% of political contributions from supposedly impartial network television reporters, producers and other employees in 2008 went to Democrats?
Is it fair that the three counties with America's highest median family income just happen to be located in the Washington, D.C., metro area?
Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy—pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is "subsidized"?
Is it fair that those who work full-time jobs (and sometimes more) to make ends meet have to pay taxes to support up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits for those who don't work?
Is it fair that those who took out responsible mortgages and pay them each month have to see their tax dollars used to subsidize those who acted recklessly, greedily and sometimes deceitfully in taking out mortgages they now can't afford to repay?
Is it fair that thousands of workers won't have jobs because the president sided with environmentalists and blocked the shovel-ready Keystone XL oil pipeline?
Is it fair that some of Mr. Obama's largest campaign contributors received federal loan guarantees on their investments in renewable energy projects that went bust?
Is it fair that federal employees receive benefits that are nearly 50% higher than those of private-sector workers whose taxes pay their salaries, according to the Congressional Budget Office?
Is it fair that soon almost half the federal budget will take income from young working people and redistribute it to old non-working people, even though those over age 65 are already among the wealthiest Americans?
Is it fair that in 27 states workers can be compelled to join a union in order to keep their jobs?
Is it fair that nearly four out of 10 American households now pay no federal income tax at all—a number that has risen every year under Mr. Obama?
Is it fair that Boeing, a private company, was threatened by a federal agency when it sought to add jobs in a right-to-work state rather than in a forced-union state?
Is it fair that our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids—who never voted for Mr. Obama—will have to pay off the $5 trillion of debt accumulated over the past four years, without any benefits to them?
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"Today I am pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office." - Pres. Obama, Feb 2009
Not going to happen: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/02/16/president_obama_punts_on_us_deficit_113142.html
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Obama Budget Director says no budget in the Senate is Republicans fault because 60 votes are needed. Yet he knows damn well that budget matters only need a simple majority to pass, 51 votes, 50 votes, sometimes fewer.
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President Obama argues that the health care penalty for not buying health insurance is not a tax.
In Court, for the constitutional authority to levy it (or impose an individual mandate) he is arguing that it is a tax.
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How could anyone ever defeat this guy? Hmmm.
One possibility might be to go negative - with your surrogates (lots of material available) - while the nominee paints a positive, pro-growth and pro-freedom path forward for the nation.
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Subject: FAVORITE MOVIE QUIZ
Take the 30 seconds to do this!!!This is amazing, it's a simple mathematical exercise that can predict your favorite movie. It must have been created by a real genius. Don't know how it works, but it works every time! Be honest and don't look at the movie list below till you have done the math! Try this test and find out what movie is your favorite. This amazing math quiz can likely predict which of 18 movies you would enjoy the most.
Movie Quiz:
1. Pick a number from 1-9.
2. Multiply by 3.
3. Add 3.
4. Multiply by 3 again.
5. Now add the two digits of your answer together to find your predicted favorite movie in the list of 17 movies below:
SCROLL DOWN TO SEE MOVIE LIST
Movie List:
1. Gone With the Wind
2. E.T.
3. Blazing Saddles
4. Star Wars
5. Forrest Gump
6. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
7. Jaws
8. Grease
9. The Obama Farewell Speech of 2012
10. Casablanca
11. Jurassic Park
12. Shrek
13. Pirates of the Caribbean
14. Titanic
15. Raiders of the Lost Ark
16. Home Alone
17. Mrs. Doubtfire
Now, ain't that something...?
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**Who could have seen this coming?
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/02/16/arab-spring-bears-fruit-chemical-weapons-civil-war/
February 16, 2012
Arab Spring Bears Fruit: Chemical Weapons, Civil War
The Arab Spring is finally beginning to bear fruit. An article in today’s FT reports that Syria has a decades-old chemical weapons program that may fall into the hands of terrorist groups amidst the chaos of Syria’s civil war. Syrian stockpiles include significant amounts of nerve gas and “mustard blister agent,” and while they are apparently well-protected by the Assad regime, it’s anyone’s guess what could happen to them if the regime falls. The opposition group, like its counterparts in Libya, is difficult to pin down and is a diverse set of anti-Assad elements rather than a unified movement. Should Assad fall, the fate of the weapons would lie largely on which group took power and how quickly and effectively it could secure these stockpiles. With Hezbollah and al-Qaeda reportedly eyeing the country, this is a gamble few would be anxious to take.
During the halcyon days of the protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, Western media outlets were filled with lofty predictions: the end of autocracy in the Middle East, the rise of the Arab twitterati youth, and the emergence of a liberal majority in the Middle East that would wipe away decades of tyranny and oppression. One year later, with repression in Egypt, fighting in Libya, and civil war in Syria, these predictions have been revealed for what they were: wishful thinking marred by an absence of critical thought about the region and its history. The reality is much uglier.
GM: While not absent of conccection to Baraq, this post clearly belongs on the Syria thread or the FUBAR thread, or the WMD thread.
MARC
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"The Obama Farewell Speech of 2012" :-D
I wouldn't put it past him to pull a "Cleveland" in 2016. :-o
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I am embarassed to say that I need an explanation of the reference :oops:
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Cleveland I think was the 22nd and 24th President. Obama may also want to take a little break.
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Gas prices are the issue that won't go away in the election. The only way they can go down is if the economy tanks bringing demand with it. Keep in mind he also wanted electricity prices to rise substantially. If he was running now as a first time candidate, it would be as a fringe candidate making Ron Paul look centrist.
Walter Russell Mead has it about right: "If you are a politician who wants to raise the price of gas, you have two choices in America: you can persuade the military leadership to install you in office through a coup d’etat, or you can lie to the voters and pursue your agenda on the sly."
(Now he is taking credit for the North Dakota boom which happened only because it is not federal land that he controls.)
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/02/23/rising-gas-prices-all-part-of-obamas-plan/
February 23, 2012
Rising Gas Prices: All Part of Obama’s Plan?
Politico is shedding some light on a three year-old sound bite that continues to haunt the Obama Administration: Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s comments that American gas prices should be as high as Europe’s:
“Somehow,” Chu said, “we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
Unsurprisingly, Republicans have latched on to these comments as evidence that the Obama Administration is out of touch with regular Americans and harbors an agenda favoring green special interests over the needs of American businesses. With gas prices rising to the point where they threaten the already-fragile economic recovery, this figures to be a potent weapon against the president in the upcoming election.
While this position may be slightly unfair to the President (Mr. Chu was not yet in the Administration at the time he made the remarks, so any link between it and administration policy is tenuous), the quote devastatingly reveals just how tone-deaf and myopic white-collar, progressive intellectualism can be. The delusion that jacking up energy prices is part of a “good government” agenda is one of the pieces of insanity that keeps the blue intelligentsia from consolidating its position as a natural governing class.
More surprising here is that Politico is jumping on the bandwagon—although it notes that Chu’s remarks have been detrimental to Obama, the piece laments that the goal of raising gas prices doesn’t get the sympathetic attention it obviously deserves, given the support of numerous “experts.” With thinking like this dominating media and intellectual circles, it’s little wonder that the mainstream media is perceived as elitist and out of touch.
What most Americans mean by energy policy is this: government policies that aim to make energy as abundant and cheap as possible, given some very basic environmental concerns (no oil on the beach). No other approach can get you elected.
For Politico, the reason more politicians don’t discuss these ideas more favorably is that they have something called a ‘survival instinct’. Politicians who boast about their successful initiatives to raise the price of gasoline don’t last. If you are a politician who wants to raise the price of gas, you have two choices in America: you can persuade the military leadership to install you in office through a coup d’etat, or you can lie to the voters and pursue your agenda on the sly.
A number of Democrats seem to have chosen the second option. The significance of the Chu sound bite is that some voters think President Obama has a stealth energy agenda, and rising gas prices tend to strengthen that perception.
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Start with the link, must enlarge the poster to see he is on the agenda, 'The Love Song of Saul Alinsky' "with Special Post-Show Discussions. Panelists include: (among others *) (state) Sen. Barack Obama.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/04/obama-alinsky-love-song
* Read on to find out who are the others. Breitbart wrote:
So, what’s in the play? It truly is a love song to Alinsky. In the first few minutes of the play, Alinsky plays Moses – yes, the Biblical Moses – talking to God. The play glorifies Alinsky stealing food from restaurants and organizing others to do the same, explaining, “I saw it as a practical use of social ecology: you had members of the intellectual community, the hope of the future, eating regularly for six months, staying alive till they could make their contributions to society.”
In an introspective moment, Alinsky rips America: “My country … ‘tis of whatthehell / And justice up a tree … How much can you sell / What’s in it for me.” He grins about manipulating the Christian community to back his programs. He talks in glowing terms about engaging in Chicago politics with former Mayor Kelly. He rips the McCarthy committee, mocking, “Everyone was there, when you think back – Cotton Mather, Hester Prynn, Anne Hutchinson, Tom Paine, Tom Jefferson … Brandeis, Holmes … Gene Debs and the socialists … Huey Long … Imperial Wizards of all stripes … Father Coughlin and his money machine … Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd … and a kicking chorus of sterilized reactionaries singing O Come, All Ye Faithful …”
And Alinsky talks about being the first occupier – shutting down the O’Hare Airport by occupying all the toilet stalls, using chewing gum to “tie up the city, stop all traffic, and the shopping, in the Loop, and let everyone at City Hall know attention must be paid, and maybe we should talk about it.” As Alinsky says, “Students of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your juicy fruit.”
The play finishes with Alinsky announcing he’d rather go to Hell than Heaven. Why? “More comfortable there. You see, all my life I’ve been with the Have-Nots: here you’re a Have-Not if you’re short of money, there you’re a Have-Not if you’re short of virtue. I’d be asking more questions, organizing them. They’re my kind of people – Hell would be Heaven for me.”
That’s The Love Song of Saul Alinsky. It’s radical leftist stuff, and it revels in its radical leftism.
And that’s Barack Obama, our president, on the poster.
This is who Barack Obama was. This was before Barack Obama ran for Congress in 2000—challenging former Black Panther Bobby L. Rush from the left in a daring but unsuccessful bid.
This was also the period just before Barack Obama served with Bill Ayers, from 1999 through 2002 on the board of the Woods Foundation. They gave capital to support the Midwest Academy, a leftist training institute steeped in the doctrines of -- you guessed it! -- Saul Alinsky, and whose alumni now dominate the Obama administration and its top political allies inside and out of Congress.
Stanley Kurtz, author of Radical-in-Chief
, described the Midwest Academy as a "crypto-socialist organization.” Yet almost no one has heard of Midwest Academy, because the media does not want you to know that the president is a radical's radical whose presidency itself is a love song to a socialist "community organizer."
The reason Newt Gingrich surged in the Republican primary contest in January is that he was attempting to do the press's job by finding out who the current occupant of the White House actually is. Millions also want to know, but the mainstream media is clearly not planning to vet the President anytime soon. Quite the opposite.
For example, Miner tries to turn Obama’s appearance on the Alinsky panel into a plus for the president:
Obama was on the panel that talked about Alinsky the last Sunday of the play's run at the Blue Rider Theatre in Pilsen. Neither Pam Dickler, who directed the Terrapin Theatre production, nor Gary Houston, who played Alinsky, can remember a word Obama said. But he impressed them. "You never would have known he was a politician," says Dickler. "He never said anything at all about himself. He came alone, watched the play, and during the panel discussion was entirely on point and brilliant. That evening I called my father, who's a political junkie, and told him to watch out for this man, he's going places." Houston was just as taken by Obama—though he remembers him arriving in a group.
But is it a good thing to impress the sort of people who show up to laud The Love Song of Saul Alinsky? Here are the other members of the Obama panel:
Leon Despres: Despres knew Saul Alinsky for nearly 50 years, and together they established the modern concept of “community organizing.” Despres worked with secret Communist and Soviet spy Lee Pressman to support strikers at Republic Steel in Chicago in 1937; the strike ended in tragedy when 14 rioting strikers were killed and many wounded in a hail of police bullets. Despres worked with another Communist Party front, the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, but eventually left because of the “Stalinism” of its leaders.
Also in 1937, Despres and his wife delivered a suitcase of “clothing” to Leon Trotsky, then hiding out from Stalin’s assassins in Mexico City. Despres and his wife not only met with the exiled Russian Communist, but Despres’s wife sat for a portrait with Trotsky pal and Marxist muralist Diego Rivera while Leon took Rivera’s wife Frida Kahlo to the movies.
Quentin Young: From 1970 until at least 1992, Quentin Young was active in the Communist Party front organization, the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights – a group dedicated to outlawing government surveillance of radical organizations. He was also a member of the Young Communist League. Young, a confidante and physician to Barack Obama, is credited with having heavily influenced the President’s views on healthcare policy.
Timuel Black: An icon of the Chicago left, Black was originally denied officer training because military intelligence claimed he had secretly joined the Communist Party. Black also worked closely with the Socialist Party in the 1950s, becoming president of the local chapter of the Negro American Labor Council, a organization founded by Socialist Party leader A. Phillip Randolph.
In the early ‘60s Black was a leader of the Hyde Park Community Peace Center, where he worked alongside former radical Trotskyist Sydney Lens and the aforementioned Communist Dr. Quentin Young. Black served as a contributing editor to the Hyde Park/Kenwood Voices, a newspaper run by Communist Party member David S. Canter. By 1970, Timuel Black was serving on the advisory council of the Communist Party controlled Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights.
Timuel Black says he has been friends with domestic terrorists William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, “going back to 1968, since long before I knew Barack.” In April 2002, Black, Dohrn and Democratic Socialists of America member Richard Rorty spoke together on a panel entitled “Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?” The panel was the first of two in a public gathering jointly sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals and the University of Illinois, Chicago. Bill Ayers and Barack Obama spoke together on in the second panel at that gathering. Communist academic Harold Rogers chaired Timuel Black’s unsuccessful campaign for Illinois State Representative.
Studs Terkel: A sponsor of the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace in 1949, which was arranged by a Communist Party USA front organization known as the National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions.
Roberta Lynch: A leading member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and a leader of the radical Marxist New American Movement (NAM).
Are we expected to believe that “Baraka Obama” was a countervailing voice of reason on a panel of radicals?
The reason that Obama's Alinskyite past, and his many appearances in political photography and video from the 1990s, are conspicuously missing from the national dialogue is that State Senator Barack Obama's reinvention as a reasonable and moderate Democratic politician could not withstand scrutiny of his political life.
Because the mainstream media did not explore his roots, the American public remains largely ignorant of the degree to which Obama’s work with ACORN and his love of Alinsky were symbolic of his true political will.
If any of the candidates can resist the media, and parlay Newt’s strategy into a nomination, we’ll have the choice between an imperfect but well-known Republican and the real “Baraka” Obama, not the manufactured one the media prefers.
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This came to me without URL:
It's hard to believe that CBS actually said something that wasn't flattering to this so-called President!
Air Force One:
This is from Mark Knoller of CBS.
The pilots and crew of Air Force One are flying more hours than a rookie on a beer run.
They are tired of it too, and are adding more crew to Air Force-1, - I know this for a fact because I'm one of the instructors that trains the crews. Our company (Atlas Air) has had the Air Force-1 and E-4 contract for over two years and I've been doing it for about 8 months now.
Last year (2010) Obama flew in Air Force One 172 times, almost every other day. White House officials have been telling reporters in recent days that the Democrat doesn't intend to hang around the White House quite so much in 2011. They explain he wants to get out more around the country because, as everyone knows, that midterm election shellacking on Nov. 2 had nothing to do with his health care bill, over-spending or other policies, and everything to do with Obama's not adequately explaining himself to his countrymen and women.
And with less than a year remaining in Obama's never ending presidential campaign, the incumbent's travel pace will not likely slacken. At an Air Force-estimated cost of $181,757 per flight HOUR (not to mention the additional travel costs of Marine One, Secret Service, logistics and local police overtime), that's a lot of frequent flier dollars going into Obama's carbon footprint.
$80 Million every time it lands & takes off.
We are privy to some of these numbers thanks to CBS' Mark Knoller, a bearded national treasure trove of presidential stats. According to Knoller's copious notes, during the last year, Obama made 65 domestic trips over 104 days, and six trips to eight countries over 22 days. Not counting six vacation trips over 32 days. He took 196 helicopter trips, signed 203 pieces of legislation and squeezed in 29 rounds of left-handed golf.
Obama last year gave 491 speeches, remarks or statements. That's more talking than goes on in some entire families, at least from fatherly mouths. In fact, even including the 24 days of 2010 that we never saw Obama in public, his speaking works out to about one official utterance every 11 waking hours. Aides indicate the "Real Good Talker" believes we need more.
Related: Obama spends nearly half his presidency outside Washington, plans to travel more.
Related: Vacationer-in-Chief Spends $1.75 Million to Visit Hawaiian Chums.
Obama has spent over $100 million taxpayer dollars flying around in Air Force One, and probably another $100 million on his entourage.
And we seniors have to "tighten our belts"
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IN GOD WE TRUST
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"Obama made 65 domestic trips over 104 days, and six trips to eight countries over 22 days. Not counting six vacation trips over 32 days. He took 196 helicopter trips, signed 203 pieces of legislation and squeezed in 29 rounds of left-handed golf."
Paraphrasing a wise man (Crafty Dog), I wish he had played more golf.
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"signed 203 pieces of legislation"
Probably not even 1% of the electorate has the remotest clue what these are. Including myself.
And I try to stay a bit informed.
No wonder it is so easy to bribe blocks of voters with other people's monies.
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Look here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/signed-legislation
"signed 203 pieces of legislation"
Probably not even 1% of the electorate has the remotest clue what these are. Including myself.
And I try to stay a bit informed.
No wonder it is so easy to bribe blocks of voters with other people's monies.
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"Look here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/signed-legislation" (signed legislation)
CCP, You will have to look very deep through the links at the link because the names of the bills are often opposite or no correlation to the content. For example, mandating what people previously deemed to be unaffordable and removing the most effective restraints on costs is called the 'affordable care act'.
Good news to hear of a new post office coming to Staten Island. Is that a growth industry or a growth market, does anyone know?
Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012, that was the extension of perhaps the best way to lower tax revenues while creating the least marginal incentive to produce more or create jobs. It doesn't create jobs and FICA wasn't supposed to be tax in the first place; it is an "insurance contribution". They didn't even get the year right, it was an extension of a program that also didn't create jobs in 2011.
I would be more impressed with their record if they had repealed 203 laws.
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Must hear the President to be in his own words, in his own voice, on the audio at the link. (Please also visit the advertisers.)
— Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/11/02/obama-ill-make-energy-prices-skyrocket/
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"CCP, You will have to look very deep through the links at the link because the names of the bills are often opposite or no correlation to the content."
Doug, Thanks,
I haven't taken the time to do so.
BD,
Thanks for the link.
As for the cap and trade and gas prices... what can anyone say.
Since Clinton whatever the President says is meaningless. They say and do whatever they want. They can say one thing one day something else the next they can spin anything around from the truth. The MSM very infrequently to never ever takes Obama on.
I remember Clinton making complete turnabouts and then taking the credit for what was the day before Republican initiatvies and all the MSM would do would say, "he sounds so good".
The worst part of it is that it works. If it sounds good the MSM plays along and poll numbers respond.
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He had mentors like Ayers, Alinsky, Rev. Wright, the latest to come out is radical Prof. Derrick Bell. Pres. Obama hired extremists like Van Jones, Anita Dunn, plenty of others, maybe Glen Beck can help with the rest of the names. He had a Nancy Pelosi-led Dem House for 2 years and he had 60 votes in the Senate for a minute or 2. He got 'healthcare' done but only in what he considered a transition program to single payer, watered down and necessarily complicated to get the votes of the retiring centrists like Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Joe Lieberman, Jim Webb, etc.
Then he had 2 years still running where he can't get more done because of the nay-saying Republican House and his super-slim majority in the Senate, and he is blaming Republicans, really the centrists for refusing to go any further with his agenda although to an unprecedented extent his is legislating what he can from the Czar level and from the spending and regulatory authorities of the Executive Branch.
I have a serious question that is probably impossible to answer:
Without exaggeration or defamation, what would Pres. Barack Obama's policies be in detail, across the board, if he was not constrained whatsoever by Republicans, centrists, the constitution, the media or anyone else?
What are his own views? Is he more centrist now than in his radical days or is he a political survivor and tactician still hellbent on changing the direction of the country? What would the constitution say about the limits on government if he could write it? What would the tax rates be? On whom? What would spending be if it could be set be Presidential decree? What powers would he ceded to the U.N. or a stronger world government if he could? What would the borders and immigration policy look like if not hounded by the Republicans and the bitter clingers? What would energy use restrictions be? Etc. etc.
We have had roughly 4 years to get to know this guy and he wants 4 more. What are his real views right now on public policy?
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What are his real views right now on public policy?
The end of America. By whatever means he can accomplish it.
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**Imagine if a republican said this.......
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/03/rutherford-b-hayes-obama-telephone.html
It's not unusual for President Obama to criticize his Republican predecessors from time to time, but this morning, he targeted his scorn not at George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, but ... Rutherford B. Hayes. As Politico reported:
Speaking about the need to develop new sources of American energy in Largo, Md., Obama used our 19th president as a failure of forward-thinking leadership.
"One of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone: 'It’s a great invention but who would ever want to use one?'" Obama said. "That's why he's not on Mt. Rushmore."
"He's looking backwards, he's not looking forward. He's explaining why we can't do something instead of why we can do something," Obama said.
Burn.
We thought it was a bit unsporting of Obama to attack President Hayes, who is quite unable to respond. So we called up the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, where Nan Card, the curator of manuscripts, was plenty willing to correct Obama's ignorance of White House history. Just as soon as she finished chuckling.
"I've heard that before, and no one ever knows where it came from," Card said of Hayes's alleged phone remark, "but people just keep repeating it and repeating it, so it's out there."
Wait, so Hayes didn't even say the quote that Obama is mocking him for? "No, no," Card confirmed.
She then read aloud a newspaper article from June 29, 1877, which describes Hayes's delight upon first experiencing the magic of the telephone. The Providence Journal story reported that as Hayes listened on the phone, "a gradually increasing smile wreathe[d] his lips and wonder shone in his eyes more and more.” Hayes took the phone from his ear, "looked at it a moment in surprise and remarked, 'That is wonderful.'"
In fact, Card noted, Hayes was not only the first president to have a telephone in the White House, but he was also the first to use the typewriter, and he had Thomas Edison come to the White House to demonstrate the phonograph. "So I think he was pretty much cutting edge," Card insisted, "maybe just the opposite of what President Obama had to say there."
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**Imagine if a republican said this.......
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/03/rutherford-b-hayes-obama-telephone.html
It's not unusual for President Obama to criticize his Republican predecessors from time to time, but this morning, he targeted his scorn not at George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, but ... Rutherford B. Hayes. As Politico reported:
Speaking about the need to develop new sources of American energy in Largo, Md., Obama used our 19th president as a failure of forward-thinking leadership.
"One of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone: 'It’s a great invention but who would ever want to use one?'" Obama said. "That's why he's not on Mt. Rushmore."
"He's looking backwards, he's not looking forward. He's explaining why we can't do something instead of why we can do something," Obama said.
Burn.
We thought it was a bit unsporting of Obama to attack President Hayes, who is quite unable to respond. So we called up the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, where Nan Card, the curator of manuscripts, was plenty willing to correct Obama's ignorance of White House history. Just as soon as she finished chuckling.
"I've heard that before, and no one ever knows where it came from," Card said of Hayes's alleged phone remark, "but people just keep repeating it and repeating it, so it's out there."
Wait, so Hayes didn't even say the quote that Obama is mocking him for? "No, no," Card confirmed.
She then read aloud a newspaper article from June 29, 1877, which describes Hayes's delight upon first experiencing the magic of the telephone. The Providence Journal story reported that as Hayes listened on the phone, "a gradually increasing smile wreathe[d] his lips and wonder shone in his eyes more and more.” Hayes took the phone from his ear, "looked at it a moment in surprise and remarked, 'That is wonderful.'"
In fact, Card noted, Hayes was not only the first president to have a telephone in the White House, but he was also the first to use the typewriter, and he had Thomas Edison come to the White House to demonstrate the phonograph. "So I think he was pretty much cutting edge," Card insisted, "maybe just the opposite of what President Obama had to say there."
(http://t.qkme.me/3ocalx.jpg)
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**Imagine if a republican said this.......
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/03/rutherford-b-hayes-obama-telephone.html
It's not unusual for President Obama to criticize his Republican predecessors from time to time, but this morning, he targeted his scorn not at George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, but ... Rutherford B. Hayes. As Politico reported:
Speaking about the need to develop new sources of American energy in Largo, Md., Obama used our 19th president as a failure of forward-thinking leadership.
"One of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone: 'It’s a great invention but who would ever want to use one?'" Obama said. "That's why he's not on Mt. Rushmore."
"He's looking backwards, he's not looking forward. He's explaining why we can't do something instead of why we can do something," Obama said.
Burn.
We thought it was a bit unsporting of Obama to attack President Hayes, who is quite unable to respond. So we called up the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, where Nan Card, the curator of manuscripts, was plenty willing to correct Obama's ignorance of White House history. Just as soon as she finished chuckling.
"I've heard that before, and no one ever knows where it came from," Card said of Hayes's alleged phone remark, "but people just keep repeating it and repeating it, so it's out there."
Wait, so Hayes didn't even say the quote that Obama is mocking him for? "No, no," Card confirmed.
She then read aloud a newspaper article from June 29, 1877, which describes Hayes's delight upon first experiencing the magic of the telephone. The Providence Journal story reported that as Hayes listened on the phone, "a gradually increasing smile wreathe[d] his lips and wonder shone in his eyes more and more.” Hayes took the phone from his ear, "looked at it a moment in surprise and remarked, 'That is wonderful.'"
In fact, Card noted, Hayes was not only the first president to have a telephone in the White House, but he was also the first to use the typewriter, and he had Thomas Edison come to the White House to demonstrate the phonograph. "So I think he was pretty much cutting edge," Card insisted, "maybe just the opposite of what President Obama had to say there."
(http://t.qkme.me/3ocalx.jpg)
(http://t.qkme.me/3occuu.jpg)
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**Imagine if a republican said this.......
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/03/rutherford-b-hayes-obama-telephone.html
It's not unusual for President Obama to criticize his Republican predecessors from time to time, but this morning, he targeted his scorn not at George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, but ... Rutherford B. Hayes. As Politico reported:
Speaking about the need to develop new sources of American energy in Largo, Md., Obama used our 19th president as a failure of forward-thinking leadership.
"One of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone: 'It’s a great invention but who would ever want to use one?'" Obama said. "That's why he's not on Mt. Rushmore."
"He's looking backwards, he's not looking forward. He's explaining why we can't do something instead of why we can do something," Obama said.
Burn.
We thought it was a bit unsporting of Obama to attack President Hayes, who is quite unable to respond. So we called up the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, where Nan Card, the curator of manuscripts, was plenty willing to correct Obama's ignorance of White House history. Just as soon as she finished chuckling.
"I've heard that before, and no one ever knows where it came from," Card said of Hayes's alleged phone remark, "but people just keep repeating it and repeating it, so it's out there."
Wait, so Hayes didn't even say the quote that Obama is mocking him for? "No, no," Card confirmed.
She then read aloud a newspaper article from June 29, 1877, which describes Hayes's delight upon first experiencing the magic of the telephone. The Providence Journal story reported that as Hayes listened on the phone, "a gradually increasing smile wreathe[d] his lips and wonder shone in his eyes more and more.” Hayes took the phone from his ear, "looked at it a moment in surprise and remarked, 'That is wonderful.'"
In fact, Card noted, Hayes was not only the first president to have a telephone in the White House, but he was also the first to use the typewriter, and he had Thomas Edison come to the White House to demonstrate the phonograph. "So I think he was pretty much cutting edge," Card insisted, "maybe just the opposite of what President Obama had to say there."
(http://t.qkme.me/3ocalx.jpg)
(http://t.qkme.me/3occuu.jpg)
(http://t.qkme.me/3ocfdk.jpg)
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Romney called the President a economic lightweight. That is giving him the benefit of the doubt. This is a great charge because it begs the followup question to press Romney to back that up with something which is a slow hanging curve ball over the heart of the plate. If you can't hit that one out of the park you shouldn't be in the game.
The Rutherford Hayes thing is weird. Mr. President, 6 million jobs are gone, Iran, North Korea and al Qaida are going nuclear, the middle east is in flames, we're a trillion a year in deficit, we shrunk the economy, we diluted the currency by multiple trillions and 19% of the workforce can't find full time work - why are you babbling about Rutherford Hayes!?
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Romney called the President a economic lightweight. That is giving him the benefit of the doubt. This is a great charge because it begs the followup question to press Romney to back that up with something which is a slow hanging curve ball over the heart of the plate. If you can't hit that one out of the park you shouldn't be in the game.
The Rutherford Hayes thing is weird. Mr. President, 6 million jobs are gone, Iran, North Korea and al Qaida are going nuclear, the middle east is in flames, we're a trillion a year in deficit, we shrunk the economy, we diluted the currency by multiple trillions and 19% of the workforce can't find full time work - why are you babbling about Rutherford Hayes!?
He's gotta do something between golf and March Madness brackets.
As usual, it's Buraq trying to point out how much more awesome he is than most any other president in history. Remember, he pretty much thinks only 4 are better than him (maybe).
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http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/293728/obama-s-history-lesson-mark-steyn?pg=1
Delivering his big speech on energy at Prince George’s Community College, he insisted the American economy will be going gangbusters again just as soon as we start running it on algae and windmills. He noted that, as with Wilbur and his brother, there were those inclined to titter:
Let me tell you something. If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail — [Laughter] — they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society. [Laughter.] They would not have believed that the world was round. [Applause.] We’ve heard these folks in the past. They probably would have agreed with one of the pioneers of the radio who said, “Television won’t last. It’s a flash in the pan.” [Laughter.] One of Henry Ford’s advisers was quoted as saying, “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a fad.” [Laughter.]
The crowd loved it. But President Algy Solyndra wasn’t done:
There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don’t believe in the future, and don’t believe in trying to do things differently. One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, “It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?” [Laughter.] That’s why he’s not on Mount Rushmore — [laughter and applause] — because he’s looking backwards. He’s not looking forwards. [Applause.] He’s explaining why we can’t do something, instead of why we can do something.
It fell to Nan Card of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Ohio to inform the website Talking Points Memo that the quotation was apocryphal. Hayes had the first telephone in the White House, and the first typewriter, and Edison visited him to demonstrate the phonograph.
But obviously Rutherford B. Hayes isn’t as “forward-looking” as a 21st-century president who believes in Jimmy Carter malaise, 1970s Eurostatist industrial policy, 1940s British health-care reforms, 1930s New Deal–sized entitlements premised on mid-20th-century birth rates and life expectancy, and all paid for by a budget with more zeroes than anybody’s seen since the Weimar Republic. If that’s not a shoo-in for Mount Rushmore, I don’t know what is.
I was interested in the rest of Obama’s yukfest of history’s biggest idiots. Considering that he is (in the words of historian Michael Beschloss) “the smartest guy ever to become president,” the entire passage sounded as if it was plucked straight from one of those “Top Twenty Useful Quotes for Forward-Looking Inspirational Speakers” websites. And whaddayaknow? Rutherford B. Hayes, the TV flash in the pan, the horse is here to stay — they’re all at the Wikiquote page on “Incorrect Predictions.” Fancy that! You can also find his selected examples at the web page “Some Really Really Bad Predictions About the Future” and a bazillion others.
Given that the ol’ Hayes telephone sidesplitter turned out to be a bust, I wondered about the others. The line about television being a “flash in the pan” is generally attributed to “Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948.” She was a New Zealand–born lass who while at Oxford wrote to the newly founded BBC with some ideas on using radio in schools. By the Seventies, the educational programming she had invented and developed was used in 90 percent of U.K. schools, and across the British Commonwealth from the Caribbean to Africa to the Pacific. She apparently used the flash-in-the-pan line in a private conversation recounted some years after her death by her fellow BBC executive, Grace Wyndham Goldie, a lady I knew very slightly. It was in the context of why she was pessimistic about early attempts at educational television. Mary Somerville would not have been surprised by American Idol or Desperate Housewives, but she thought TV’s possibilities for scholarly study were limited. If you remember Leonard Bernstein giving live illustrated music lectures on Beethoven on CBS in the Fifties, and you’ve lived long enough to see “quality public television” on PBS dwindle down to dreary boomer nostalgia, lousy Brit sitcoms, Laurence Welk reruns, and therapeutic infomercials, you might be inclined to agree that as an educational tool TV certainly proved “a flash in the pan.” And that’s before your grandkid gets home from school and complains he’s had to sit through Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth again.
**Read it all.
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This could go in Energy Policy but it really is only about nonsense coming out of the mouth of the President of the United States:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/03/17/krauthammer_obama_energy_speech_a_double_technical.html
Charles Krauthammer on the Obama Community College energy speech: “You know, in basketball this would be a double technical,” Krauthammer said. “Obama will stomp on anybody, living or dead, if he’ll get a laugh out of it, and you know eight people who will end up on his side on Nov. 6. But I think the whopper in his speech was where he said, at one point, he said, ‘The real way to reduce prices on gas in America is to decrease demand.’ Then, within three minutes of the same speech, he said we can increase production offshore all we want. It will have no effect on the world price.”
Does he even read these speeches before he delivers them. Is he a complete moron or does he think you are one?
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This could go in Energy Policy but it really is only about nonsense coming out of the mouth of the President of the United States:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/03/17/krauthammer_obama_energy_speech_a_double_technical.html
Charles Krauthammer on the Obama Community College energy speech: “You know, in basketball this would be a double technical,” Krauthammer said. “Obama will stomp on anybody, living or dead, if he’ll get a laugh out of it, and you know eight people who will end up on his side on Nov. 6. But I think the whopper in his speech was where he said, at one point, he said, ‘The real way to reduce prices on gas in America is to decrease demand.’ Then, within three minutes of the same speech, he said we can increase production offshore all we want. It will have no effect on the world price.”
Does he even read these speeches before he delivers them. Is he a complete moron or does he think you are one?
Well, we have someone here that has the same grasp of oil price and supply/demand.
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Obama: "That’s why he’s not on Mount Rushmore"
Remember I have posted how Obama holds up his chin like he is posing for a spot on Mt Rushmore? Well this supports my theory that that is exactly what he is doing:
http://mikesright.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/white-house-obama-triggered-libyan-uprising/obama-chin-very-high/
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And THIS is what he does best?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=erYpXzE9Pxs#!
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(http://cbswashington.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/obama.jpg?w=300)
Captures him perfectly!
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Doug that video is a riot. The greatest mind to ever occupy the WH using canned words. As for Denmark everyknows Danes can't box :lol:
"Yo, Ben, I got your back bro." :wink:
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And THIS is what he does best?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=erYpXzE9Pxs#!
JDN is very, very proud of him.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304724404577295601147645884.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
By KARL ROVE
This month, Barack Obama's re-election campaign released a 17-minute film, "The Road We've Traveled," that previews the Democratic general election narrative. Directed by Academy Award winner Davis Guggenheim and narrated by actor Tom Hanks, the film explores Mr. Obama's most important decisions.
Viewers are told Mr. Obama deserves re-election for restoring America to prosperity after a recession "as deep as anything . . . since the Great Depression." He accomplished this in part, so the film says, by bailing out the auto companies—deciding not to just "give the car companies" or "the UAW the money" but to force them to "work together" and "modernize the automobile industry." The president, we're told, also confronted "one of the most worrisome problems facing America . . . the cost of health care."
Abroad, Mr. Obama ended the Iraq war and, in the "ultimate test of leadership," Osama bin Laden was killed on his watch. The film heralds Mr. Obama as a leader committed to "tough decisions" and as someone who "would not dwell in blame" in the Oval Office.
Where to begin? Perhaps with the last statement: Mr. Obama has spent three years wallowing in blame. His culprits have ranged from his predecessor, to tsunamis and earthquakes, to ATMs, to Fox News, to yours truly. If you Google "Obama, Blame, Bush" and "Obama, Inherited," you'll get tens of millions of hits.
As for inheriting the worst economy since the Great Depression: Perhaps Mr. Obama has forgotten the Carter presidency, which featured double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates, and high unemployment.
The film is riddled with other inaccuracies and misleading claims. For example, the United Auto Workers may not have gotten "money" in the bailout, but as an unsecured creditor, the union received a 17.5% ownership interest in General Motors and 55% of Chrysler, while the companies' bondholders got hosed.
The film asserts that the auto companies "repaid their loans." But they still owe taxpayers $26.5 billion, and the Treasury Department's latest report to Congress noted that nearly $24 billion of the bailout money is gone forever.
The film includes Mr. Obama's 2008 claim that the death of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, from cancer "could have been prevented" if only she "had good, consistent insurance." But earlier this year, a biography of Dunham by Janny Scott, "A Singular Woman," revealed that she had health insurance that covered most all her medical bills, leaving only a few hundred dollars a month in deductibles and uncovered costs. For misleading viewers, the Washington Post fact checker awarded this segment of the film "Three Pinocchios."
The film also offers up numerous straw men. For example, opponents of Mr. Obama's auto industry bailout, we're told, just wanted to "let it go," as if an orderly bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler in the courts rather than by presidential fiat was never an option. It was.
Almost as important as what the film says is what it doesn't. There's not a word about the failure of the president's stimulus to produce the jobs he pledged—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer Americans are working today (132.7 million) than when Mr. Obama was sworn in (133.6 million).
There's nothing about his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term—according to Treasury's Bureau of Public Debt, the administration has piled up more debt in three years and two months ($4.93 trillion) than his predecessor did in eight years ($4.8 trillion).
, , ,
Nothing is said about the centerpieces of last year's State of the Union—green energy jobs (Solyndra anyone?) and high-speed rail (fizzled). Nada on the president's promises about how ObamaCare would lower premiums and lower the deficit while allowing people to keep their existing coverage (all untrue).
There's nothing about the crumbling situation in Afghanistan, strained relations with allies like Israel, Mr. Obama's unpopularity in the Islamic World, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, multiple missteps with Iran (from failing to protest the stolen Iranian elections in 2009 to the mullahs' unchecked pursuit of nuclear weapons), and Mr. Obama's flip flops on closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and providing civilian trials for terrorists.
As for the killing of Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama did what virtually any commander in chief would have done in the same situation. Even President Bill Clinton says in the film "that's the call I would have made." For this to be portrayed as the epic achievement of the first term tells you how bare the White House cupboards are.
Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions, 2010).
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The campaign is still lying about Obama's mom's battle with her insurance company over the treatment of her cancer: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-road-weve-traveled-a-misleading-account-of-obamas-mother-and-her-insurance-dispute/2012/03/18/gIQAdDd4KS_blog.html
None of our business except that is it was given as a first hand example and primary reason that we needed the 1.7 trillion dollar, anti-constitutional healthcare act. Also interesting to find out from time to time, who tells the truth and who doesn't.
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**Hey Obama, the Kim family is just trying to spread the wealth around! Why do you hate social justice in North Korea?
Best quote: "It is like you are looking across 50 years into a country that has missed 40 years or 50 years of progress," Obama marvelled later, after taking a helicopter back to teeming, prosperous Seoul, just 25 miles (40 kilometres) away.
Yeah, almost like Detroit.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/obamas-disbelief-staring-n-korea-174551638.html
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From the "But he wore a kippa at AIPAC" file:
President Barack Obama and Turkey’s controversial Islamist prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have become such bosom buddies that Erdogan is giving Obama advice on raising his American daughters.
Obama, who met with Erdogan March 25 at the nuclear summit in South Korea, has already met with Erdogan numerous times. He touted their relationship as a “friendship” in a January interview that was hyped by Erdogan’s press allies.
The two met in South Korea on Sunday, Eastern Time, to discuss Syria’s civil war and Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but they also talked about the president’s two daughters, Malia and Sasha, Obama said during a press conference, according to a White House statement.
“The bottom line is that we find ourselves in frequent agreement upon a wide range of issues… [and] because he has two daughters that are a little older than mine — they’ve turned out very well, so I’m always interested in his perspective on raising girls,” Obama said.
One of Erdogan’s two daughters, Sumeyye, is entering Turkish politics via her father’s Islamist party, according to the Turkish press.
She wears Islamist-style clothes that obscure her hair and shape.
In Sept. 2010, the then-29 year old met with her father and U2 singer Bono while wearing a scarf that covered her hair and throat, long-sleeves that covered her forearms and a baggy overcoat that hid her figure.
In Feb. 2011, Sumeyye attended a meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York while wearing a tight head-scarf that hid her hair and throat. She was accompanied by Erdogan’s wife, Ermine, who wore a head-to-toe black cloak.
Obama’s daughters, 13 year-old Malia and 10 year-old Sasha, dress far more liberally in typical American fashion.
The first lady, Michelle Obama, is a feminist and does not wear head scarves or throat scarves and often leaves her arms bare.
By openly acknowledging Erdogan’s advice on child-rearing, Obama “didn’t realize what he’s saying,” said Barry Rubin, an expert on Turkish politics.
Obama likely made the error, Rubin said, “because he is so unselfconscious and is not used to having to think through his remarks.”
Still, “it is shocking that [Obama suggests] he takes child-raising advice from a radical Islamist,” whose wife dresses in black cloaks or tight headscarves when traveling in the West, said Rubin.
Overall, the White House statement about the meeting “goes beyond polite praise and good manners and practically slobbers over a repressive, pro-Iran leader whose hatred for Israel is literally hysterical,” said Rubin.
The White House statement included statements by both Obama and Erdogan, but no press questions.
“I just want to say how much I appreciate the opportunity to once again meet with my friend and colleague, Prime Minister Erdogan … I find Prime Minister Erdogan to be an outstanding partner and an outstanding friend on a wide range of issues,” Obama began.
Erdogan responded to Obama by saying, “My dear friend, Barack, thank you very much for a very fruitful meeting today,” and then sketched out his plans to visit Iran’s theocratic government this week and to arrange a U.S-Turkey summit in June, before he ended with the comment that, “I also told you about my daughters.”
Over the last decade, Erdogan has pushed Turkey in an Islamist direction, rolling back the country’s secular laws — including laws that curb the wearing of Islamist headscarves — jailing many journalists, cooperating with Iran’s theocracy, spurring hostility towards Israel and demanding Israel apologize for forcibly stopping a May 2010 Islamist flotilla that was launched from Turkey.
In January 2009, he angrily walked out of a public event with Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres after accusing Israel of attacking Arabs and killing Arab children.
In contrast, Obama told Newsweek in January that Erdogan is one of five foreign leaders with whom he shares “friendships and the bonds of trust.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/26/obama-turkeys-islamist-prime-minister-discuss-nukes-teenagers/
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A freshman congressman caught reading DBMA forum:
Geithner Admits Obama Was Part of Congress that Caused Economic Woes
At a hearing today on Capitol Hill, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner blamed members of Congress (before 2008) for the economic troubles:
When Geithner is reminded by freshman GOP congressman Tom Graves of Georgia that President Obama was a member of that congressional body, he's forced to admit, "Oh, I see your point. That's a good point. He was a senator for two years. You're right."
Graves then says, "He had an opportunity to be part of the solution."
Geithner replies, "That's true."
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Kind of an obvious point, but pointed out by almost no one.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/geithner-admits-obama-was-part-congress-caused-economic-woes_634778.html
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An internet friend writes to me:
Marc,
I read your Facebook post regarding Obama yesterday, and thought you might be interested in this profile. Discover the Networks is an excellent resource generally, but their profile of Obama is especially illuminating. I was struck by your description of Obama as a "Professor" at Chicago Law School, which I don't think is technically accurate, though in their statement, the Law School does state that "Senior Lecturers" are considered professors. I think this is greatly stretching the definition of professor - as he was NOT full-time or tenure-tracked. Also, he was certainly not - as often repeated in mainstream media organs - a "Constitutional Law Professor." I am also quite familiar (and have been since his election as U.S. Senator) with the audio of him on Chicago Public Radio referring to the U.S. Constitution as a "charter of negative rights," and saying it "fails to say what the government must do [in the citizens'] behalf."
The man is a despicable Marxist in my opinion, who clearly has ZERO regard for the Constitution, except when it happens to coincide with his own agenda, which amounts to re-making this nation into a mythical Marxist utopia upon the ashes of the Founders' republic. See the two links below:
www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1511
www.law.uchicago.edu/media
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I believe Obama caught some criticism for calling himself a professor, but to have taught constitutional law should be quite a wonderful credential for a potential President. Unfortunately there is quite a split in this country regarding what that means. To the far left IMO the study and teaching of the constitution and the ruling and precedents is in the ends justify means quest to enlarge the power and scope of government.
"the audio of him on Chicago Public Radio referring to the U.S. Constitution as a "charter of negative rights," and saying it "fails to say what the government must do [in the citizens'] behalf." "
This is helpful. I had hoped that as the 2008 campaign unfolded we would learn more about his views which I assumed were radical about the meaning to him of the constitution. He mostly got a pass on that. Now we can judge 2 of his appointees (so far) and gradually discover more about his past and current views.
If more of his views come out I think people will see he is more radical than the center of the Dem party- he voted no on confirmation of Justices Roberts because though he will apply the law correctly on 95% of the cases he will not have same values as Obama to go beyond the letter of the constitution?! http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124390047073474499.html For those who think the constitution is document limiting the size and scope of government, you do not have an ally in the White house IMHO.
A right to healthcare including a duty to others to provide it for you and the power of government to enforce all that is just one example of how radicals such as our President believe the founding fathers fell short in their duty. Yet unexplainably they see no need for an amendment necessary to make the correction.
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Sen. Obama on his Roberts 'No' vote, link above:
. . . [T]he decision with respect to Judge Roberts' nomination has not been an easy one for me to make. As some of you know, I have not only argued cases before appellate courts but for 10 years was a member of the University of Chicago Law School faculty and taught courses in constitutional law. Part of the culture of the University of Chicago Law School faculty is to maintain a sense of collegiality between those people who hold different views. What engenders respect is not the particular outcome that a legal scholar arrives at but, rather, the intellectual rigor and honesty with which he or she arrives at a decision.
Given that background, I am sorely tempted to vote for Judge Roberts based on my study of his resume, his conduct during the hearings, and a conversation I had with him yesterday afternoon. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind Judge Roberts is qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. Moreover, he seems to have the comportment and the temperament that makes for a good judge. He is humble, he is personally decent, and he appears to be respectful of different points of view.
It is absolutely clear to me that Judge Roberts truly loves the law. He couldn't have achieved his excellent record as an advocate before the Supreme Court without that passion for the law, and it became apparent to me in our conversation that he does, in fact, deeply respect the basic precepts that go into deciding 95% of the cases that come before the federal court -- adherence to precedence, a certain modesty in reading statutes and constitutional text, a respect for procedural regularity, and an impartiality in presiding over the adversarial system. All of these characteristics make me want to vote for Judge Roberts.
The problem I face -- a problem that has been voiced by some of my other colleagues, both those who are voting for Mr. Roberts and those who are voting against Mr. Roberts -- is that while adherence to legal precedent and rules of statutory or constitutional construction will dispose of 95% of the cases that come before a court, so that both a Scalia and a Ginsburg will arrive at the same place most of the time on those 95% of the cases -- what matters on the Supreme Court is those 5% of cases that are truly difficult.
In those cases, adherence to precedent and rules of construction and interpretation will only get you through the 25th mile of the marathon. That last mile can only be determined on the basis of one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy.
In those 5% of hard cases, the constitutional text will not be directly on point. The language of the statute will not be perfectly clear. Legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision. In those circumstances, your decisions about whether affirmative action is an appropriate response to the history of discrimination in this country, or whether a general right of privacy encompasses a more specific right of women to control their reproductive decisions, or whether the Commerce Clause empowers Congress to speak on those issues of broad national concern that may be only tangentially related to what is easily defined as interstate commerce, whether a person who is disabled has the right to be accommodated so they can work alongside those who are nondisabled -- in those difficult cases, the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart.
I talked to Judge Roberts about this. Judge Roberts confessed that, unlike maybe professional politicians, it is not easy for him to talk about his values and his deeper feelings. That is not how he is trained. He did say he doesn't like bullies and has always viewed the law as a way of evening out the playing field between the strong and the weak.
I was impressed with that statement because I view the law in much the same way. The problem I had is that when I examined Judge Roberts' record and history of public service, it is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak. In his work in the White House and the Solicitor General's Office, he seemed to have consistently sided with those who were dismissive of efforts to eradicate the remnants of racial discrimination in our political process. In these same positions, he seemed dismissive of the concerns that it is harder to make it in this world and in this economy when you are a woman rather than a man.
I want to take Judge Roberts at his word that he doesn't like bullies and he sees the law and the court as a means of evening the playing field between the strong and the weak. But given the gravity of the position to which he will undoubtedly ascend and the gravity of the decisions in which he will undoubtedly participate during his tenure on the court, I ultimately have to give more weight to his deeds and the overarching political philosophy that he appears to have shared with those in power than to the assuring words that he provided me in our meeting.
...
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http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/04/10/Visibly-Annoyed-Obama-Gets-Lecture-Form-Female-President-of-Brazil
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Yet Brock calls Republicans/teaparty affilitates "radicals". I don't look forward to the next several months of this:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/04/09/Rev-Wright-Admits-Radical-Preaching-Never-Changed-and-Obama-Listened-to-20-Years-Of-It
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And here's the Rev. himself
www.theblaze.com/stories/church-refuses-to-allow-fox-news-to-play-blaze-exposed-video-of-rev-wright/=
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(http://taxprof.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c4eab53ef016303dcf2e8970d-550wi)
Obama's brand
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Not enough to be autographing basketballs with your face printed on them at taxpayer expense (?), but to answer the question about American Exceptionalism as he did, right alongside the leaders of two neighboring countries, is narcissism beyond explanation.
President Obama: "my entire career has been a testimony to American exceptionalism" !!!!!
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577321844137787970.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
Obama Puts the 'I' in 'Exceptionalism' - James Tarranto, WSJ
"It's worth noting that I first arrived on the national stage with a speech at the Democratic convention that was entirely about American exceptionalism and that my entire career has been a testimony to American exceptionalism," Obama said at a press conference alongside Mexican president Felipe Calderón and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
...doesn't he have an aide who can tell him that the symbol of America is not the bald ego?
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King Joffrey Baracktheon
You'll have to watch "Game of Thrones" to get it.
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"my entire career has been a testimony to American exceptionalism" !!!!!
Not accurate. His entire career is boasting about his OWN exceptionalism while at the same time bashing America.
"they cling to their guns their religion"
"social Darwism"
sat voluntarily listening to "God damn America" for decades.
His wife, "i am ashamed of America". (until now she is rich and famour and a celebrity)
A class act he is not.
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God help us , , ,
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/obamas-gaffes-are-his-own.php
Posted on April 17, 2012 by John Hinderaker in Obama administration
Obama’s Gaffes Are His Own
Yesterday Barack Obama addressed the Summit of the Americas in Colombia and spoke about the conflict between the United Kingdom and Argentina over the Falklands. Obama seemed to tilt toward Argentina by calling the islands the “Malvinas” rather than the Falklands, which Argentina insists is their proper name.
Only Obama didn’t say Malvinas, he said Maldives–an entirely different group of islands located thousands of miles from the Falklands in the Indian Ocean:
So with one word, Obama both offended the British and made himself a laughingstock with the Latin Americans. Here in the U.S., we are used to such embarrassing errors by our president, but the international press hasn’t quite caught up. My complaint, specifically, is about this account of Obama’s gaffe in the Telegraph, not a particularly left-wing paper by British standards. The Telegraph’s article is headlined “Barack Obama makes Falklands gaffe by calling Malvinas the Maldives.” It begins:
Barack Obama made an uncharacteristic error, more akin to those of his predecessor George W Bush, by referring to the Falkland Islands as the Maldives.
Really? When did Mr. Bush ever display such geographic ignorance? It is Obama, not Bush, who is prone to putting his foot in his mouth in a matter that causes diplomatic embarrassment. Can we finally, after well over three years, leave his predecessor out of it and let Obama own his many gaffes and blunders?
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GM, don't you know, that according to the leftist position, just speaking with a Texan accent automatically makes one stupid.
Obama's gaffe, will be discarded as an honest mistake because he was sucking up to minorities.
I just got back to the States yesterday and had Roscoe's chicken and waffles. Evidently Obama had just been there too, so they named a special after him. It's good to see that he is staying in touch with his constituents instead of at least learning to insult thee State's allies properly.
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Like I said the self proclaimed sage of the age will EAT those words!:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/india-test-long-range-missile-week-230825737.html
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http://frontporchpolitics.com/2012/04/barack-obamas-lawyer-admits-birth-certificate-is-forged/
It appears the web is a buzz with information concerning the New Jersey court contest in regards to Barack Obama’s eligibility to be on the state’s ballot. At the center of the controversy now is the fact that Barack Obama’s own lawyer has apparently conceded the fact that the document is a forgery.
According to TeaPartyTribune.com, attorney Alexandra Hill, of the Newark-based law firm Genova, Burn and Giantomasi, admitted that the image of Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery and made the absurd claim that, therefore, it cannot be used as evidence to confirm his lack of natural born citizenship status. She concluded her analysis of the online birth certificate arguing that it is “irrelevant to his placement on the ballot”.
She then went on to try and establish his eligibility by speaking of his political popularity, not legal qualification, in order to be a candidate!
Penbrook Johannson, editor for The Daily Pen said, “Sadly, regardless of her moral deficiency, Hill is legally justified. Obama’s eligibility is a separate matter than the charges of forgery and fraud. Of course, we have evidence that he is not eligible. But, evidence of forgery by as yet unidentified counterfeiters working on behalf of Obama is not what legally excludes Obama from appearing on a ballot, by itself, until some authority is willing to consider this as evidence of forgery on its merit as an indication of actual ineligibility in a court of legal authority. Until some court of competent jurisdiction is willing to hear evidence of forgery and fraud, you can’t legally punish a political candidate for that crime which has not been proven that they committed. However, since Obama is not eligible because of a lack of authenticated evidence to the contrary, he could be held off the ballot for that reason.”
So what this comes down to is legal tip toeing around the issue. Let me put it simply. Obama’s own lawyer admits that the birth certificate which was put out by the White House is a forgery. The forgery does not prove Obama is not a “natural born” citizen since it is a forgery. Therefore, the plaintiffs have not made their case and Barack Obama should be left on the ballot. I’ll bet Mr. “It depends on what is, is” was behind this bit of legal wrangling.
As far as I can see that makes it a bigger issue than just that of the State of New Jersey. This is most definitely a national issue. The President of the United States’ own lawyer has just stated unequivocally that the President knowingly put out a forged document and claimed it was his birth certificate. Ladies and gentlemen, why in the world then, is there no immediate cries for impeachment and more than that, charges of treason brought against Barack Hussein Obama?
I’ll tell you why. It’s an election year for one. Two you have a Democrat led Senate that will never vote to convict him. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it as their duty, but sadly the reality is that impeachment proceedings against a sitting President are purely political. However, I would hope that the Republican led Congress might get some brass ones and begin the proceedings anyway, letting people know they intend to carry out impeachment, even if Barack Obama is elected again and to encourage others to vote in those who are principled enough to uphold the Constitution, especially when it comes to a usurper in the Oval Offfice.
In a nut shell, the above is exactly why Barack Obama and the Democratic Party do not fear mocking the American people with their blatant forgery, lies and manipulation of the Constitution and the facts. In order to remove the man it would have to be done by force or by impeachment and impeachment will never happen with the way things are now. It is my opinion that since our military takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution from both enemies foreign and domestic, that they should be looking at the evidence and act accordingly.
Tim Brown
FrontPorchPolitics.com
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I'm going to wait on icing the champagne until I see this from some other source. :roll:
http://frontporchpolitics.com/2012/04/barack-obamas-lawyer-admits-birth-certificate-is-forged/
It appears the web is a buzz with information concerning the New Jersey court contest in regards to Barack Obama’s eligibility to be on the state’s ballot. At the center of the controversy now is the fact that Barack Obama’s own lawyer has apparently conceded the fact that the document is a forgery.
According to TeaPartyTribune.com, attorney Alexandra Hill, of the Newark-based law firm Genova, Burn and Giantomasi, admitted that the image of Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery and made the absurd claim that, therefore, it cannot be used as evidence to confirm his lack of natural born citizenship status. She concluded her analysis of the online birth certificate arguing that it is “irrelevant to his placement on the ballot”.
She then went on to try and establish his eligibility by speaking of his political popularity, not legal qualification, in order to be a candidate!
Penbrook Johannson, editor for The Daily Pen said, “Sadly, regardless of her moral deficiency, Hill is legally justified. Obama’s eligibility is a separate matter than the charges of forgery and fraud. Of course, we have evidence that he is not eligible. But, evidence of forgery by as yet unidentified counterfeiters working on behalf of Obama is not what legally excludes Obama from appearing on a ballot, by itself, until some authority is willing to consider this as evidence of forgery on its merit as an indication of actual ineligibility in a court of legal authority. Until some court of competent jurisdiction is willing to hear evidence of forgery and fraud, you can’t legally punish a political candidate for that crime which has not been proven that they committed. However, since Obama is not eligible because of a lack of authenticated evidence to the contrary, he could be held off the ballot for that reason.”
So what this comes down to is legal tip toeing around the issue. Let me put it simply. Obama’s own lawyer admits that the birth certificate which was put out by the White House is a forgery. The forgery does not prove Obama is not a “natural born” citizen since it is a forgery. Therefore, the plaintiffs have not made their case and Barack Obama should be left on the ballot. I’ll bet Mr. “It depends on what is, is” was behind this bit of legal wrangling.
As far as I can see that makes it a bigger issue than just that of the State of New Jersey. This is most definitely a national issue. The President of the United States’ own lawyer has just stated unequivocally that the President knowingly put out a forged document and claimed it was his birth certificate. Ladies and gentlemen, why in the world then, is there no immediate cries for impeachment and more than that, charges of treason brought against Barack Hussein Obama?
I’ll tell you why. It’s an election year for one. Two you have a Democrat led Senate that will never vote to convict him. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it as their duty, but sadly the reality is that impeachment proceedings against a sitting President are purely political. However, I would hope that the Republican led Congress might get some brass ones and begin the proceedings anyway, letting people know they intend to carry out impeachment, even if Barack Obama is elected again and to encourage others to vote in those who are principled enough to uphold the Constitution, especially when it comes to a usurper in the Oval Offfice.
In a nut shell, the above is exactly why Barack Obama and the Democratic Party do not fear mocking the American people with their blatant forgery, lies and manipulation of the Constitution and the facts. In order to remove the man it would have to be done by force or by impeachment and impeachment will never happen with the way things are now. It is my opinion that since our military takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution from both enemies foreign and domestic, that they should be looking at the evidence and act accordingly.
Tim Brown
FrontPorchPolitics.com
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Yaaa , , , you are right :cry: :cry: :cry:
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If true, there is no way conservative talk radio, Hannity, Brietbart, etc will let this slide like the MSM and Karl Rove and "Bush" Republicans will.
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Barack Obama addressed the Summit of the Americas in Colombia and spoke about the conflict between the United Kingdom and Argentina over the Falklands. Obama seemed to tilt toward Argentina by calling the islands the “Malvinas” rather than the Falklands, which Argentina insists is their proper name.
Only Obama didn’t say Malvinas, he said Maldives–an entirely different group of islands located thousands of miles from the Falklands in the Indian Ocean:
So with one word, Obama both offended the British and made himself a laughingstock with the Latin Americans.
- John Hinderacker, Powerline
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Revealed: The official fears US and Britain shared about over President Obama's 'anti-American' and 'anti-white' fatherBy Claire Ellicott, Sam Greenhill and Martin Robinson
PUBLISHED: 18:00 EST, 17 April 2012 | UPDATED: 09:24 EST, 18 April 2012
In his three years as U.S. president, Barack Obama has been dogged by claims he is not patriotic enough.
Last year he even had to publish his birth certificate to silence doubters who suggested he was not born an American.
Now it emerges that similar fears were expressed about his father, who was categorised with others as ‘anti-American and anti-white’ when he moved to the United States in 1959.
Father and son: The Barack Obamas together, when the US President was just 10 years old
Barack Obama with his mother Ann Dunham
Barack Obama, Sr. in a snapshot from the 1960s
Father: Barack Obama with his wife Michelle and daughters Malia (left) and Sasha (right)
Mr Obama Snr had grown up in Kenya under British rule and aroused the fears of both colonial officers and American officials when he won a chance to study in Hawaii. The officials felt Kenyan students were ‘academically inferior’ with a ‘bad reputation’ for turning anti-American.
More...Senator says Secret Service brought TWENTY prostitutes to hotel - as it is revealed agents BRAGGED about protecting Obama while partying at Colombian brothel
The Decline of the American Empire
A memo from a British diplomat in Washington to Whitehall – released today by the National Archives in West London – sets out their concerns about the young Kenyans.
Dated September 1, 1959, it says: ‘I have discussed with the State Department. They are as disturbed about these developments as we are. They point out that Kenya students have a bad reputation over here for falling into the wrong hands and for becoming both anti-American and anti-white.’
In one of the Foreign Office files, the future president’s father appears on a list of Kenyan students as ‘OBAMA, Barack H’ – they shared the same name.
At the age of 23, he enrolled at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu to study economics with classmates including Ann Dunham, a 17-year-old white American from Kansas. The couple had a short marriage that led to the birth in 1961 of the future president, Barack Obama II.
Mr Obama Snr was among 100 or so Kenyan students brought to America by the African American Students Foundation.
U.S. and British officials were deeply suspicious of this outfit, observing that the AASF – though backed by singer Harry Belafonte and actor Sidney Poitier – had links to a Kenyan nationalist leader.
‘The motives behind this enterprise, therefore, seem more political than educational,’ warned a letter from the British Embassy in Washington.
It added: ‘The arrival here of these students, many of them of indifferent academic calibre and ill-prepared for the venture, is likely to give rise to difficult problems.’
Mr Obama Snr, who died in 1982, is not singled out for concern in any of the documents.
After leaving Hawaii he took a PhD in economics at Harvard and later became a senior economist with the Kenyan government.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2131290/Revealed-Official-fears-U-S-UK-President-Obamas-anti-American-anti-white-father.html
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When Buraq is playing golf and the course features a "dogleg", does he call it a "drumstick"?
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When Buraq is playing golf and the course features a "dogleg", does he call it a "drumstick"?
Is "Bo" really a pet, or a very special dinner intended for after the election?
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(http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/obama_hypoallergenic_dog_healthbolt.jpg)When sightseeing in DC, make sure to bring a snack.
"When sightseeing in DC, be sure to bring a snack!"
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/dc-trawler/
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Obama would never put a dog on top of a car. It dries out the meat.
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"After leaving Hawaii he (Mr Obama Snr,) took a PhD in economics at Harvard and later became a senior economist with the Kenyan government."
Kenya per capita income nearly 50 years later: US$ 2.00/day, $60/mo. - Living the Dream!
I wonder what they teach for economics over at those Ivy League Schools... Fairness?
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"After leaving Hawaii he (Mr Obama Snr,) took a PhD in economics at Harvard and later became a senior economist with the Kenyan government."
Kenya per capita income nearly 50 years later: US$ 2.00/day, $60/mo. - Living the Dream!
I wonder what they teach for economics over at those Ivy League Schools... Fairness?
No worries, if Buraq gets his 2nd term, our per capita income will be close to that, it's only fair.....
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I've known his birth certificate to be fake for years. Call it instinct. No-one spends more than a million dollars concealing their past unless they have something to hide, regardless of what side of the aisle they sit on.
My experience has shown me that we're all dirty, because we're human. We make mistakes.
The people that worry me, aren't the ones that have made mistakes or are imperfect and flawed, but the ones that try to pass themselves off as lily-white, especially when the same people are granted a measure of lower from the public. They should be
absolutely transparent, or we're right not to trust them because they're hiding and being deceptive. I don't mind Slick Willie being a pothead and a cheat nearly as much as I mind him lying about it. Hell, I understand everything except the lies. Obama's misdeeds and lying will come to light someday, but in true Liberal fashion, they'll find some way to justify it or shift focus onto something else.
them, because the3y
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I am hearing that what the govt attorney said was that "EVEN IF the cert. were a fraud" as a matter of logic it would not prove anything (and this is correct), which is QUITE a bit different that what I posted asserted.
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If I had a dog, it would look like the one Obama ate...
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David Burge @iowahawkblog. A haiku:
At dinner table / Faraway Jakarta / Hungry boy, tough Spot
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That is wickedly funny.
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"It's a coooooookboooook!"
(http://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/12/4/18/z8ZuB-eBckuOsOoif_L4JA2.jpg)
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Even funnier.
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/hitler-finds-out-obama-ate-his-dog.php
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If I had a dog, it would look like the one Obama ate...
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DwJKitJ2ock/T5A60QCVuII/AAAAAAAADE8/VzmiEYfK460/s1600/DOGEATDOG.jpg)
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I am in Dublin and in no position to track down the validity of what follows. Perhaps our own Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Snark himself, can track this down :-D
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/obama-lawyer-admits-birth-certificate-is-a-forgery/question-2603749/
Obama defense attorney Alexandra M. Hill admitted that the long form
birth certificate released online by the White House in April 2011
<http://www.therightperspective.org/2011/04/27/obama-releases-the-birth-certificate/>
is indeed a forgery that "did not originate from an actual paper
document and therefore, it cannot be used as evidence to confirm his
lack of natural born citizenship status." ... President Obama's birth
certificate "was likely part of a contrived plot by counterfeiters to
endow Obama with mere political support while simultaneously making the
image intentionally appear absurd and, therefore, invalid as evidence
toward proving Obama's ineligibility in a court of law," the /Tea Party
Tribune/ quoted Hill as saying.
April 19, 2012
By Monte Kuligowski
For several years, an Orwellian-type fear of being "marginalized" held
reporters and pundits back from questioning Barack Obama's eligibility to hold
the office of the presidency. To raise an eyebrow at the bizarre secrecy
of Obama was off-limits. To question whether the historic definition of
"natural born citizen" applied to Obama was taboo.
The era of fear, however, is happily winding down. It will take some time
for this realization to fully take hold. But make no mistake: the tables
have turned.
Like it or not, the ground has shifted, and it cannot shift back. The
evidence of Obama's forgeries is not going away.
Up until this point, Mr. Obama controlled everything, including the
talking points and burden of proof.
Rather than simply produce certified paper copies for state election
officials and make the original available for officials to inspect in Hawaii,
Obama played games with his purported birth certificate.
We were told for three years that Obama's birth certificate had been posted
online in 2008 -- though it turns out that it was a scant certification.
In 2010, when confronted with the alarming doubts of the American people,
Mr. Obama lamented to a sympathetic Brian Williams of NBC: "I can't spend
all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead."
The following year, out of left field, on April 27, 2011, Obama "released"
the elusive birth certificate by posting a now-discredited file image
online.
This time he wasn't teasing. It was "proof positive." Mr. Obama, in his
robotic style, barked that it was time to stop the "silliness" and move on.
No one ever wanted Obama to get all crazy and walk around with his birth
certificate plastered on his forehead. But many took the reasonable
position of wanting the mysterious birth certificate produced, not plastered or
uploaded to a computer. Many wanted Obama to produce certified copies for
state officials and make the original available for inspection.
But because no authority forced him to comply with basic legal standards,
Mr. Obama was able to create a sideshow atmosphere by selecting non-experts
to verify his internet postings behind closed doors.
His media sycophants were able to make those who questioned Obama's staunch
secrecy appear as the unreasonable ones. Somehow the burden of proof was
erroneously placed on the citizenry to prove that Obama wasn't born in
Hawaii.
Well, the burden never actually rested with the people to prove anything.
That was all smoke and mirrors. No conspiracy theories are needed to
demand that Obama comply with basic legal standards -- especially in context of
a state with a history of certifying foreign births as Hawaiian.
After Obama "released" the birth certificate in 2011, nonpartisan computer
software experts immediately recognized that the embarrassing image had
been computer-assembled. Of course, few in the free press dared to report on
the "silliness."
Fox News quickly summonsed Adobe-certified expert Jean-Claude Tremblayto to
conclude, nothing fishy here (but his ORC explanation has been
demonstrably debunked by the control-test findings of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's
investigative team -- see below).
It's simply unfathomable to the consensus media that the One they worked
so hard to elect could be a fraud -- or, at minimum, could have something to
hide.
Unfortunately, Sheriff Joe Arpaio's team of law enforcement and
investigative experts were able to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that
forgeries have been committed. It turns out that the sheriff simply confirmed
the "open secret" shared by technical document experts across the country.
As with many crimes, if not for their abject carelessness, the forgers
might have gotten away with it. But the strength of the evidence is such that
local law enforcement was able to conclude that "probable cause" exists to
show that the White House uploaded a computer-generated forgery of a birth
certificate. Ditto with Obama's Selective Service registration form: it
is also a crude forgery.
Who would have thought that Obama's illegal immigration nemesis, Sheriff
Joe Arpaio, could turn the tables on Obama?
With the help of his friends in the consensus media, Mr. Obama had been
afforded the luxury of effectively remaining silent for years. Obama was
able to sit back as a third-party onlooker as the media attacked, maligned, and
ignored those who raised valid questions.
But the recent findings are similar to the events of a trial in which the
burden of proof shifts from one party to the other. In our context, the
burden of proof was absurdly placed on the people, but finally it has shifted
to Obama. The six-month investigation by trained law enforcement and
forensic experts has resulted in a compelling case-in-chief.
Anyone who views the video presentations of the law enforcement team can
plainly observe the sea change which shifted the burden to rebut to Obama.
Even though crimes were allegedly committed, at this point, what is taking
place is comparable to a civil trial. As such, it is time for Mr. Obama
to produce competent evidence. If he has no evidence to produce, he's in
public opinion trouble. If a court or Congress forces the production of his
original documents, it's over for Obama.
Simple little mistakes: hastily uploading an assembled image without first
printing and scanning, and cutting a "2008" rubber stamp to create the
appearance of "1980." And the Selective Service forgery alone is enough to
end Obama's presidency.
Sheriff Arpaio is under personal attack, but curiously, the control-test
findings of his team are not being refuted. Apparently oblivious of the
fact that the White House tried to cover its tracks by quickly replacing its
original file image, NPR naively reports: "For the record, we opened the
file using Adobe Photoshop and found that [the birth certificate] contained
only a single layer of information." Fortunately, thousands have the
original White House posting preserved for perpetuity.
The establishment media are trying every way they can think of to
discredit Sheriff Joe. As WND.com president Joseph Farah recently wrote, "[t]hey
are no longer just protecting Obama. They are now protecting their own
reputations." The problem, of course, is that after all the attacks on Joe
Arpaio are exhausted and after all the dust settles, the evidence of Obama's
forgeries will remain.
The problem for Obama and his enablers is that the evidence is objective.
And it's there for everyone to see. Generations from now, professors in
Adobe Photoshop and journalism classes will be discussing and analyzing the
evidence of Obama's forgeries.
The very result that timid conservatives and liberal reporters feared will
eventually catch up with them: loss of credibility.
On the flipside, those who questioned Obama's bizarre secrecy eventually
will be vindicated.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/the_sea_change_obamas_confirmed_forg
eries_are_not_going_away.html#ixzz1ssg3rVhQ_
<http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/the_sea_change_obamas_confirmed_forg%20eries_are_not_going_away.html#ixzz1ssg3rVhQ_>
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I really don't see how this is NOT an impeachable offense. To offer a fraudualant document as valid identification on the WH website to the entire world is frankly worse than the cover up of a break in (by Nixon) in my opinion.
Is the media picking up on this at all other than some talk radio?
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Evidence of fraud debunked??? Or is this bunk?
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/birthcertificate.asp
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CCP, Yes, prove fraud and he is out. Short of that I don't see an endgame to the birth certificate forgery story. I don't worship snopes but it sure looks like this has been looked at thoroughly. The Dan Rather forgery in contrast was unraveling on the internet (Free Republic and Powerline) within minutes of the story and document release. Nothing shifts the burden back to Obama short of one renowned expert demonstrating to everyone that the document presented is without a doubt a forgery.
There is no reason to doubt Obama was born in this country. His mom is from Kansas and Washington state and lived in Hawaii before his birth and Washington right after. She was never photographed offshore in that time. 9 months pregnant is no time to travel from Hawaii to Kenya - check the map on that, 10844.3 miles and further with flight connections. Not something the grandparents would have sprung for, just to give birth. There are no other borders close to Hawaii. If it was to get away from family in Hawaii they would have stayed away. There was no reason to visit 'family' in Kenya; Barack Sr's other wives lived there, and they didn't go there as a couple or a family before or after that. The only other theory is that Barack Sr is not the father and Barack Jr. was born perhaps earlier. At this point, so what. Except that IF this is BS and coverup, it becomes a Nixon-like breach of public trust.
Until then, the birth certificate issue is the shiny object distracting attention away from the issues and the record.
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Sounds like you are on top of this Doug. I guess I just keeping hoping :lol:
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http://www.dickmorris.com/obamas-lavish-lifestyle-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/#commentblock
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"I guess I just keeping hoping"
If the incumbent is forced off the ticket after the primary season, the powers of the party will put Hillary on the ballot, or Joe Biden!
We need to get rid of this guy the old fashioned way, not the Chicago way. By defeating his ideas. At the ballot box. By converting some voters. Demotivating his base and energizing ours. By chipping some votes off of key Dem constituencies, like cutting 20 points off of his advantage with young voters and winning over a few Latinos that don't want their grandchildren paying $30 trillion plus interest in debt. We need to double our black vote from 3 to 6%,lol. Win the key swing states, the electoral count, the House and the Senate with a specific and identifiable mandate.
What I meant with my prediction that President Obama will not be the nominee of his own party was that moderate, non-radical Dems would rise up, reach to the middle and offer an alternative. Jim Webb, Evan Bayh, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, a swing state governor like Colorado's hickelberry(sp?)! I was wrong. Forcing Hillary or Biden up the ticket with the same management team is not a change.
It is too late now. We want the incumbent and his record on the ballot. MHO.
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A fair piece of reasoning.
This one is for GM in particular:
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2012/04/23/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+daybydaycartoon%2FkUnt+%28Day+by+Day+Cartoon+by+Chris+Muir%29#006500
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Re. GM post on Political Economics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q63yE4dhiPU&feature=player_embedded
How do you go from getting elected by saying to the voters:
"You pay as you go. If you want to start a new program, then you've gotta cut an old program that doesn't work" ...
to governing like he did...
to even running for reelection.
Why would anyone take him seriously?
(Republicans in name only spent way too much in the 2000s, but the deficit was $161 billion in the year that Pelosi-Reid-Obama-Biden-Clinton and a number of currently vulnerable Senators took power in Washington by sweeping both chambers of congress and it has averaged 1.3 Trillion during the Obama Presidency.) http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_deficit
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"the powers of the party will put Hillary on the ballot"
There is already promotional talk of a Hillary VP slot *with* Brockman.
Of course that would in *their* minds be "formidable".
They do fit together - two of the most corrupt pols we have ever seen.
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I saw an extended interview by Wolf Blitzer on CNN with Hillary and Leon Panetta while I was in Munich. A real soft interview of course, but I must say that Hillary is seeming warmer, more human, and more likable recently. She and P. were laughing and joking with each other a lot. It seemed like their personal comfort level was very high. Not saming I'm buying it, but what with pictures of her drinking beer, partying, and other things, on top of a lot of people thinking she has been well seasoned by her stint as SecState, I do think that she would make a formidable addition to Baraq's chances. A lot of women would see her as being a shoo-in for 2016 after VPing for 2012-2016.
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After serving in the Senate and Sec of State and having been the most recent runner up, she is no longer what she was, a woman who only got what where she did on the coattails of her husband - and that criticism never stopped her either. Nor did the fact that she is a felon in the commodities case except for the expiration of the statute of limitations and was the center of the corruption in Arkansas for all those years where everyone except the Clintons went to prison for her business dealings.
She is as qualified as Condoleeza Rice and more, certainly enough to be VP. Yes that would add change and excitement (for someone) to the ticket. Joe Biden, though stupid, may know enough about the Chicago way to know that if that is what they want, he must step down. There is an Ambassador job open somewhere or he could 'spend more time with family'. OTOH, Biden is the least of Obama's problems right now.
And maybe Dems will remember why they turned her away last time. Her speeches will be mostly vacuous in content as she will be stuck with defending Barack Obama's economic record. Loose and relaxed (and prone to steal the show) may not be the level of discipline the masterminds of the reelection are looking for. Her job in the reelection will be attack dog so the new relaxed look would turn ugly quickly. After 4 years of failure she wouldn't be allowed to say a word about how she would have done things differently.
She might be better positioned in 2016 if she can start distancing herself from the domestic side of this tragic chapter in our history. Link back instead to the more center-left governing of the 90s, balanced budgets, etc.
Too bad that with either Hillary or Biden that they are not grooming any new leaders with more traditional Dem values for the future.
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"Too bad that with either Hillary or Biden that they are not grooming any new leaders with more traditional Dem values for the future."
Andrew Cuomo is next in line I think.
He would win before the Biden clown.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_q9ns8LVVs&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_q9ns8LVVs&feature=player_embedded
If only there was something that could be done.....
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"Andrew Cuomo is next in line I think." - CCP
Very interesting. It's not my job to help them, but if true they should put him at second chair right now.
I remember that in 1984 Mario Cuomo was the Barack Obama of his day with his gift of oratory on display in the keynote Dem convention address that would send Walter Mondale to the White House and end the Reagan debacle. He was the moment and then somehow he fizzled out. So did Mondale - one day later.
Youtube is amazing. Who knew they were there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOdIqKsv624 8 minutes of history, watch this!
Reagan went on to win 49 states, lol. The whole soup-line-America message was way off track. We were growing at an unprecedented rate at that time and he was clueless to it. The economic doldrums then really were from his predecessor. The ridiculed shining city on a hill became more true than ever imagined as the Soviet republics and East bloc all reached to copy our freedoms. No one in America who wanted in to the prodiuctive economy was left behind. It wasn't trickle down, it was all around. Just a bunch of BS. Really Cuomo was one or two years too late to say that Reaganomics would not work. By 1984, it already had.
As I listen again, any chance John Edwards stole the failed message of 'The Tale of Two Cities'?
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There are two Americas! One where slimy lawyers use campaign slush funds to hide mistresses.....
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Doug,
Cuomo is below the national radar screen now. I don't keep up with NJ much les NY politics but everything I have read or heard about him is he is doing a good job in NY. Even talk show host Bob Grant who hated Mario said this not too long ago.
The fact he is his father's (flaming liberal) son, and the fact he is a Democrat makes it hard for me to be objective but
this is what I am hearing.
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I too have heard some decent things about him.
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Of course the man who said this was thinking he is the smartest guy on everything else:
Good article by Jonah Goldberg on Corzine and Obama.
http://www.nationalreview.com/author/56454/latest
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CCP; your link was an interesting read, but it has nothing to do with Corzine or Obama. It talks about immigration and ID Cards.
I do know where you are coming from; I read the article by Goldberg about Corzine in the LA Times, but that was not the link.....
Here is the one that I think you mean.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg-corzine-obama-occupy-20120424,0,3061597.column
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Of course the Pravdas will be all over this , , ,
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Why does every statement about Buraq's personal history seem to be a lie?
http://twitchy.com/2012/04/26/debunked-michelle-obama-tries-to-spread-the-obamas-student-loan-debt-lie-and-fails/
Debunked: Michelle Obama tries to spread the Obamas’ student loan debt lie and fails
Posted at 1:34 pm on April 26, 2012 by Twitchy Staff | View Comments
Michelle Obama✔
@MichelleObama
The Obamas know the challenge of student loan debt firsthand. Stand with @BarackObama to make college affordable: OFA.BO/FRbaWX
26 Apr 12 Reply
Retweet
Favorite
“We know the ‘challenge’ of student loan debt.” On an income of $272,000 per year!
Man and woman of the people! Only not so much, as ABC’s Jonathan Karl reported earlier.
Here’s a rundown of the president’s income, according to his tax returns, in the years before he paid off his student loans:
2004: $207,647
2003: $238,327
2002: $259,394
2001: $272,759
2000: $240,505
In 2001 and 2002, the Obamas would have met the $250,000 standard the president has set for those wealthy enough to afford to pay more taxes.
It’s also notable that the Obamas didn’t claim deductions for student loans on any of those years, most likely because they made too much money to qualify for the student loan deduction.
How “challenging” having to pay back money that you willingly borrowed, all on a measly $272,759 per year!
Twitter users help with the debunking.
Michelle Obama✔
@MichelleObama 26 Apr 12
The Obamas know the challenge of student loan debt firsthand. Stand with @BarackObama to make college affordable: OFA.BO/FRbaWX
George Carl@georgecarl1955
@MichelleObama Why did the Dems Pass the bill to double the rate in the first place? This is a phony argument. Made up.
26 Apr 12 Reply
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Debra J. Saunders@debrajsaunders
The Obamas’ struggle to pay off #studentloans. It's heart-rending story about sacrifice and doing without. blog.sfgate.com/djsaunders/201…
26 Apr 12 Reply
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Heh. Excellent snark.
Gary Ward@gwardhome
Not lack of $. Maybe no sense of responsibility? RT@DougDueck: What took Obama so long to payoff their student loans? abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics…
26 Apr 12 Reply
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Kevin@keder 26 Apr 12
ABC News: Obama is full of crap when he talks about how he and his wife struggled with paying back student loans abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics…
Jay Caruso@jaycaruso
@keder "they made too much money to qualify for the student loan deduction." One percenters!!!
26 Apr 12 Reply
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Wow. Talk about a “silver spoon.”
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GM "pandering" not helping.
I agree. Nor will this. So what has BO done for us lately. This is OLD news and while good news not worthy of re-election.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/04/obama-holds-bin-laden-interview-in-situation-room-121873.html
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"Why does every statement about Buraq's personal history seem to be a lie?"
It used to be said of the Clintons: It isn't that they lie, but that they lie with such ease!
The challenge for Obama would be to post something he says that is just straight-up truth. What is the longest string of sentences on anything relevant he has uttered that was truthful? Personal history, energy, taxes, spending, defense, war, immigration, healthcare, student loans, Bush's fault, Republicans in congress, any of it?
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Regarding "Pandering". It isn't old NEWS nor is it even NEWS.
What a bunch of hogwash. What's the expression, "If you don't have the facts on your side, use B S.
That's why I like Snopes; it separates the truth from bloggers like "Twitchy". :?
Obama's statement is true. “We know the ‘challenge’ of student loan debt.”
No lies; it's just the wacko bloggers who lie.
After graduation, Obama and his wife did have substantial student debt. It took
them years to pay it off; it hung over their head just like it hangs over doctors and other recent lawyer graduates,
not to mention less lucrative diplomas. So yes, Obama can honestly say he understands the the challenge of student loan debt.
So does Michelle.
In contrast, Romney's dad just wrote a check for the full amount. Same thing for Ann. Like paying for the groceries. Maybe the pen was silver too?
There’s no doubt that in the early years, the Obamas made little money as they accumulated student debt.
As Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Tribune wrote during the last campaign, Obama worked his way through college and law school – including jobs selling trinkets, making sandwiches at a deli in Hawaii and working as a telemarketer pitching subscriptions to The New York Times. Michelle’s early jobs included work as a camp counselor and a typist/assistant for the American Medical Association. In the early years, nobody would call the Obamas rich.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/money.asp
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As usual, we can count on JDN to carry water and attempt to distort and distract. As JDN is both stupid and dishonest, it's hard to tell which is at play here. Snopes, like JDN has an agenda of blind loyalty to Buraq and will use it's supposed credibility to spin.
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ABC News has, thus far, ignored its own revelation that, contrary to insinuations made by Barack Obama, the then-private citizen and his wife "were making enough to be considered 'wealthy' by the president’s own definition in the years before his loans were paid off." ABC relegated this story to a posting on its website, not mentioning it on Wednesday's World News or Nightline.
The story was similarly skipped on Thursday's Good Morning America. World News did touch on student loans, but only to accuse Mitt Romney of flip-flipping on the issue. David Muir dug up a clip of the Republican telling a college student to shop around and not expect the government to bail him out.
On Tuesday, President Obama said this: "We only finished paying off our student loans off about eight years ago...That wasn’t that long ago. And that wasn’t easy – especially because when we had Malia and Sasha, we’re supposed to be saving up for their college educations, and we’re still paying off our college educations."
Yet, as Jon Karl explained on ABCNews.com, Obama was sometimes making over $250,000 ($272,759 in 2002). He reported:
But according to their tax returns, which are available on the White House website, the Obamas had a healthy, six-figure income by the year 2000 (the earliest return available). And for at least two years before his loans were paid off, Obama, by his own definition, made so much they were wealthy enough to pay higher taxes.
Here’s a rundown of the president’s income, according to his tax returns, in the years before he paid off his student loans:
2004: $207,647
2003: $238,327
2002: $259,394
2001: $272,759
2000: $240,505
In 2001 and 2002, the Obamas would have met the $250,000 standard the president has set for those wealthy enough to afford to pay more taxes.
It’s also notable that the Obamas didn’t claim deductions for student loans on any of those years, most likely because they made too much money to qualify for the student loan deduction.
Interesting, pertinent information, but apparently not worthy of appearing on the actual ABC network.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2012/04/26/abc-ignores-its-own-revelation-obama-was-wealthy-while-paying-studen
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http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4111483&page=1
In sharp contrast to his tough talk about ethics reform in government, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., approached a well-known Illinois political fixer under active federal investigation, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, for "advice" as he sought to find a way to buy a house shortly after being elected to the United States Senate.
The parcel included an adjacent lot which Obama told the Chicago Tribune he could not afford because "it was already a stretch to buy the house."
On the same day Obama closed on his house, Rezko's wife bought the adjacent empty lot, meeting the condition of the seller who wanted to sell both properties at the same time.
Rezko had been widely reported to be under investigation by the U.S. attorney and the FBI at the time Obama contacted him and has since been indicted on corruption charges by a federal grand jury in a case that prosecutors say involves bribes, kickbacks and "efforts to illegally obtain millions of dollars."
This week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered the Rezko trial to begin Feb. 25.
Obama maintains his relationship with Rezko was "above board and legal" but has admitted bad judgment, calling his decision to involve Rezko "a bone-headed mistake."
Rezko's behind-the-scenes connection in the Obama house deal became public as Rezko revealed personal financial details as he sought to post bail.
While Rezko's wife paid the full asking price for the land, Obama paid $300,000 under the asking price for the house. The house sold for $1,650,000 and the price Rezko's wife paid for the land was $625,000.
Obama denies there was anything unusual about the price disparity. He says the price on the house was dropped because it had been on the market for some time but that the price for the adjacent land remained high because there was another offer.
Obama then expanded his property by buying a strip of the Rezko land for $104,5000, which the senator maintains was a fair market price.
Obama later told the Chicago Sun-Times, "It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe he had done me a favor."
Obama had known Rezko long before the house deal, calling him a "friend."
An ABC News review of campaign records shows Rezko, and people connected to him, contributed more than $120,000 to Obama's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate, much of it at a time when Rezko was the target of an FBI investigation.
"It surprised me that late in the game he [Obama] continued to take contributions from somebody who was under a rather dark cloud in the state," said Cynthia Canary of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a group that has worked closely with Obama and supported his legislative efforts.
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Yes GM it is a good example of what bullsh*tters SNOPES can be. They don't have ANY idea how much Barack Obama paid for college each year nor how much of his college cost the TAXPAYER paid or other benefactors paid but ready to put their full reptution on the lineconfirming whatever he said. They also don't have any knowledge of his college records to know what he got for the money he or we paid.
SNOPES: "It took them years to pay it off"
Is "years" a quantitative answer?? Why did it take years? Because it involved taxpayer subsidized interest rates with NO INCENTIVE to pay off any sooner.
SNOPES: "he understands the the challenge of student loan debt"
Really?? Debt burden is measured in percentages of SOMETHING. Not at SNOPES. I he was burdened, what was the burden? NUMBERS! Median income is less than 1/5 of their income. No he doesn't the challenge of the others.
"So does Michelle"
The wives are off-limits. Ooops. The wives are back in.
SNOPES: Michelle made 317k plus 45,000 from a Tree House where served on the Board
Just last week serving on a board IS NOT WORK and now it is worth as much as the median family income in America. Same poster posts. Attack one; defend the other. What a crock.
To SNOPES": Between Occidental and Columbia he took a trip around the world.
I guess they missed that part. The asked if it was true! On Federally subsidized student loans - or coke dealing money? They don't say.
To SNOPES: "even though he has a brilliant mind."
Unable to verify? Where are the records. Or was that the part where they said FALSE.
It turns out SNOPES is the blogger like "Twitchy". Who JDN is "Twitchy"?
We are in the student financial aid mess right now and they don't even offer the federally subsidized loans up to the full amount of private college tuition costs no matter your merit scholarship level.
They choose to keep these financial details private which is good and then they pretend they have given us all the information to know they are just like us which is a G*d Damned lie.
If he paid the loans off with money that came from when the book royalties escalated in public life as SNOPES says then he DOESN'T know the burden the others face. The definition of being the rock star is the guy on the stage, not the masses in the audience.
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Looking at SNOPES I see their independence was verified by FactCheck of the Annenberg Project. Speaking of being on the Board of Directors, not being a job, isn't that where Barack Obama was the Chair? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Annenberg_Challenge An incestual profession. Just the facts is what JDN writes too. Maybe they all worked together over there on bringing us the truth, lol.
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LOL; yes Doug I have to LOL.
EVERYONE, on the left and the right, except a few xxxxxx seem to accept Snopes.com as impartial and FACTUAL.
GM's story was listed under "Urban Legends" right next to "Martians invade Minneapolis". LOL
Oh that's right, you too prefer Twitchy! Or at least GM does. That was GM's source; see above. Great name, huh? LOL
As for Annenberg, everyone knows they are first rate. As for Obama being on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Board (a fund raising organization for education), I think he volunteered, he "served" so NO it wasn't work. My local community has a fund raising group for schools too. Or maybe you call it work if you volunteer for your church? I doubt if even Romney calls that "work". I don't.
This subject is dead. You get your butt(s) handed to you. May I suggest you move on....
LOL
Or go look for those Martians. LOL Your odds are better there. :-D
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"As for Annenberg, everyone knows they are first rate."
I was just reading at length in their current pieces and I was not impressed in the least. About a half a notch above Charles Blow with better disguise. Their conclusions are opinions and they are quite often misleading. MHO.
The board work for 45k was Michelle at the TreeHouse. The board work you attacked was of the candidate's wife. Barack's board was the incest with the thugs. He is clean in your book because he bought the house although he got the yard from a gangster. Suit yourself. I have no idea why you reply but can't read then come on with insults. But when you win an argument you really do make sure you have your t's dotted and your i's crossed. I'm impressed.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/obamas_lost_annenberg_years_co.html
Obama's Lost Annenberg Years Coming to Light
By Thomas Lifson
The cloak of media invisibility is slowly beginning to lift from Barack Obama's most important administrative leadership experience, helming an expensive educational reform effort in Chicago that failed to produce any measurable academic gains, according to the project's own final report.
Add in the fact that former Weatherman and admitted terrorist William Ayers (whom Obama described in the Philadelphia debate as merely a "neighbor") was head of the operating arm of the CAC, working with Obama on distributing scores of millions of dollars to grantees in the wards of the city, and you have a topic that the Obama campaign wishes to avoid at all costs.
A compliant media has averted its eyes so far. A timeline of Obama's career from George Washington University omits it. Why the McCain campaign has not raised more questions on the subject is a question beyond my pay grade. But there are signs it is on the case.
The four plus years (1995-1999) Barack Obama spent as founding chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) represent his track record as reformer, as someone who reached out in a public-private collaboration and had the audacity to believe his effort would make things better. At the time he became leader of this ambitious project to remake the public schools of Chicago, he was 33 years old and a third year associate at a small Chicago law firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland.
This was a big test for him, his chance to cut his teeth on bringing hope and change to the mostly minority inner city school children trapped in Chicago schools. And he flopped big time, squandering lots of money and the time of many public employees in the process.
Given Senator Obama's lack of any other posts as leader of an organization, someone unschooled in the ways of the American media might expect that for months reporters have been poring over the records of the project to get an idea of how it managed to fail so badly. Examining the track record of the guy who wants to lead the federal government would seem to be part of the campaign beat for media organizations.
But as a matter of fact, until recently, only a few bloggers were looking into the most important organized effort ever led by Barack Obama, prior to his successful campaigns for public office.
The Cover-up
Now, it appears a cover-up is underway, in order prevent journalists and researchers from getting access to the records of this charitable project housed in a taxpayer supported library. And there is a mystery:
The UIC Library says it is acting on behalf of the donor, whom it refuses to name.
It took Stanly Kurtz, of National Review Online to ask permission to see the files held by the publicly-funded University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). After initially agreeing, The Richard J. Daley Library withdrew permission. Kurtz writes:
"The Special Collections section of the Richard J. Daley Library agreed to let me read them, but just before I boarded my flight to Chicago, the top library officials mysteriously intervened to bar access. Circumstances strongly suggest the likelihood that Bill Ayers himself may have played a pivotal role in this denial. Ayers has long taught at UIC, where the Chicago Annenberg Challenge offices were housed, rent-free. Ayers likely arranged for the files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge to be housed in the UIC library, and may well have been consulted during my unsuccessful struggle to gain access to the documents."
It is highly unusual and legally questionable for a publicly-funded archive to deny access to records in its collection, particularly when they have a bearing on matters of intense public interest: the qualifications of a man seeking to be Commander in Chief.
But even if the university manages to stall release of the records until after the election, it is only drawing attention to the project. Already, the nation's mainstream media have taken notice (however imperfectly) of the University's unusual actions, albeit without exploring the subject in any depth yet.
In the midst of a heated presidential campaign, it is going to be hard to keep this interest in Obama's Annenberg years contained, now that it has surfaced.
A blogger, Steve Diamond, has put together enough data from public sources to seriously embarrass Obama over the closeness of his association with Ayers in the project, and to describe the wrong-headed and politicized approach taken by the project. Anyone can go to this page and look at the latter half of the very lengthy post to see the data uncovered by this intrepid researcher. At a minimum, it proves that Obama has seriously misled the public about his association with Ayers. And it documents and analyzes some of the complex left wing politics underlying the effort.
As the public begins to notice this outlines of the history of the CAC presented by Diamond, more questions are bound to be asked.
The First Cover-up
Diamond examined public documents, receiving cooperation from the Brown University Library, where the Annenberg Challenge Program national headuarters had been housed. Until, that is, Diamond's requests for further information fell on deaf ears following publication of a post highlighting a grant to one of Ayers' former revolutionary cohorts in the Weathermen. He writes:
"...while the representative from the university I originally corresponded with had been quite friendly and accommodating prior to my June 23 post, afterwards my additional requests for further information went unanswered. I did not pursue it at the time because I felt I had told a significant part of the story already. Thanks to the diligent work of Dr. Kurtz, however, we now know there is much more to know."
So the appearance of a cover-up actually began in June.
If Ayers were the sole point of interest in seeking the Annenberg Challenge files promised to Kurtz, all "132 boxes, containing 947 file folders, a total of about 70 linear feet of material", then the Obama camp might claim it was merely guilt-by association and persuade at least some of its own partisans. But the fact that Obama was in charge of a massive expensive project makes it indisputably a matter of proper vetting to examine his track record at delivering on promises of hope and change.
The Obama camp has already noted that it does not control the archives at UIC. All well and good, though it would be nice for the candidate to plead with the university and the mystery donor to let the sun shine on his track record. After all, he is a new kind of politician.
But even if he doesn't, the Annenberg Challenge is slowly entering the national consciousness, and that's very bad news for Barack Obama.
Thomas Lifson is editor and publisher of American Thinker.
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Oh that's right, you too prefer Twitchy! Or at least GM does. That was GM's source; see above. Great name, huh? LOL
Ever hear of Twitter, stupid?
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http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/larrykudlow/2012/04/27/geithner_goes_over_the_edge (Kudlow)
Is Tim Geithner the most politically partisan treasury secretary in history? Certainly sounds like it these days. As the government’s chief financial officer, he’s spending a lot of time firing campaign barbs at various Republicans and their policies.
Geithner has blasted Mitt Romney by name on several occasions. He frequently attacks Representative Paul Ryan and the GOP budget. And he recently fired a broadside at top-Romney economist Glenn Hubbard, who is presently dean of the Colombia Business School.
Responding to a Hubbard op-ed in the Wall Street Journal -- which calculated that the president’s spending plans would require an 11 percent tax increase on people earning less than $200,000 a year -- Geithner said, “That’s a completely made-up, remarkably hackish observation for an economist.”
Hubbard a hack?
Besides running a highly respected Ivy League business school, he was the chairman of President George W. Bush’s council of economic advisors. He also earned his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.
But Hubbard is advising Romney, and before that he counseled Bush, so the very political Mr. Geithner blasted him as a hack.
By the way, all Hubbard did was calculate that even after all of Obama’s proposed tax hikes on millionaires, investors, and upper-end business people, revenues would rise by about $150 billion a year. But Obama’s budget schedules spending to rise by $500 billion a year. So Hubbard concluded that an across-the-board tax hike of 11 percent for everybody -- including below-$200,000 earners -- would be required.
... the arithmetic gap between spending and revenues per year is unmistakable. It’s not a hackish statement. It’s an informed opinion.
... more at the link
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Seven Of The Most Disturbing Quotes From Members Of The Obama Administration
Birds of a feather flock together and so when we see Barack Obama stacking his cabinet with radicals, it tells us a lot about his mentality. Of course, the fact that his entire term in office has been nothing but a slow motion evisceration of the American dream should tell you a lot about how he thinks, too -- but a little more evidence is always welcome. Take a look at these quotes from members of Barack Obama's administration and then ask yourself what sort of man WANTS people like this to help him govern the American people?
1) "Somewhat more broadly, I will suggest that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law." -- Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama Administration. Yes, we have someone in charge of regulations in D.C. who thinks pigs should be able to sue farmers and cats should be able to sue their owners. Do you think it's a coincidence that the cost of business keeps skyrocketing under Obama because of all the new regulations?
2) "Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’ The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you." -- Joe Biden, Vice President. When this is how the Vice President of the United States thinks, is it any wonder that this country may only be a decade away from defaulting on our debts and heading into an economic death spiral that we'll never recover from in the lifespan of anyone reading this column?
3) "There’s a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer." -- Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State. Yes, the butcher of Syria is a real "reformer," isn't he? If you want to know why our foreign policy has been all bowing, "leading from behind," and chaos, look no further than our Secretary of State who knew nothing about foreign policy going in, but made a career out of being married to the right man.
4) "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." -- Eric Holder, Attorney General. Eric Holder is a throwback to the bad old days in America, when whether you got justice or not depended on the color of your skin. Is it any wonder he doesn't care about Mexicans or a white border patrol agent who lost his life because of Operation Fast and Furious? Is it a surprise that Holder turned a blind eye to the New Black Panthers engaging in voter intimidation and putting a bounty on George Zimmerman's head?
5) "When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — (Obama) charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering." -- Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator. When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, he said, "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind." Well, while Obama goes on and on about "investment," "science," and "the future," we've actually taken one giant leap backwards since we no longer have a manned space program. Guess we needed to save that money to funnel into the businesses of people who contribute to Obama's campaign.
6) "One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society." -- John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. So, we have a man with the morals of Joseph Mengele advising the President on science. It also shouldn't be lost on anyone that while Obama is yammering on about a "war on women," he has someone on his staff who has come out in favor of FORCED ABORTIONS.
7) "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." -- Steven Chu, Energy Secretary. Ever wonder why gas prices are so high under Obama? Could it be because Obama's Energy Secretary wants to dramatically increase the price of gas? Gas is more than $8 a gallon in most of Western Europe. Guess that gives them something to shoot for if Obama gets a second term.
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Better in the Afpakia thread , , ,
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Stranger than dating a composite girlfriend and writing about a life changing racial incident that never happened is that at 22, he didn't know his name:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/05/barrys-imaginary-girlfriend.php
John Hinderacker:
It was striking to me that when Genevieve met Obama he was a 22-year-old college graduate, but hadn’t yet figured out what his name was. In high school, he had generally been called “Barry,” but by this time he apparently was looking for something more formal:
(From the book): She called him Bahr-ruck, with the accent on the first syllable, and a trill of the r’s. Not Bear-ick, as the Anglophile Kenyans pronounced it, and not Buh-rock, as he would later be called, but Bahr-ruck. She said that is how he pronounced it himself, at least when talking to her.
JH: I find that very odd. Think how fundamental a part of you your name is: when you were in elementary school, did you have any doubt about what to call yourself? At 22, Obama was still trying out names.
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I adopted a more formal, mature name at 19. I have a friend who changed names at 30.
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"I adopted a more formal, mature name at 19. I have a friend who changed names at 30. "
Guessing you started using the more formal name you already had (?) and you knew how to pronounce it? Did you add or subtract a trill to the r's and change the syllable with the accent? If so, I wasn't trying to offend, just trying to get to know a guy who invites us to read two autobiographies about his past personal life.
When naming my daughter, your thought crossed my mind, what name sounds good for a little girl and what version of her name will she want as a business professional or as President. I have tried not to call certain relatives by the -y or -ie version of their first name in front of their colleagues, assuming they prefer the more professional version as surgeons.
I get the part where he went from Barry to Barack and dropped the last name of a step father period of his life gone by. Maybe the confusion over pronunciation was due to the absence of his father but his mother knew his father and no doubt used his long name a time or two.
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" (From the book): She called him Bahr-ruck, with the accent on the first syllable, and a trill of the r’s. Not Bear-ick, as the Anglophile Kenyans pronounced it, and not Buh-rock, as he would later be called"
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Not like he's alone in this, notice the curious coincidences in timing as to when Hillary uses her maiden name too: Hillary Rodham Clinton instead of Hillary Clinton.
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George Will nails it, asked and answered in 50 seconds.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/05/06/will_without_first-person_pronouns_obama_would_fall_silent.html
“If you struck from Barack Obama’s vocabulary the first-person singular pronoun, he would fall silent, which would be a mercy to us and a service to him, actually,” Will said. “Because he was been so incontinent for the last three years that you wind up with, as you said, [an] Ohio State University with empty seats.”
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Zang!
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Boston Herald reporting there will be no annual island luxuriating with the elites this year. Okay to golf while troops are in harm's way but not if it jeopardizes job one, holding onto power. Off the coast of Mass. is not a swing state.
http://bostonherald.com/track/inside_track/view/20220510prez_snubbing_the_vineyardthis_summer/srvc=home&position=6
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Hat tip to Daybydaycartoon.com
http://www.directorblue.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-05-11T07:29:00-04:00
President Barack Obama's Complete List of Historic Firsts [Updated]
Yes, he's historic, alright.
• First President to Preside Over a Cut to the Credit Rating of the United States Government
• First President to Violate the War Powers Act
• First President to Orchestrate the Sale of Murder Weapons to Mexican Drug Cartels
• First President to issue an unlawful "recess-appointment" while the U.S. Senate remained in session (against the advice of his own Justice Department).
• First President to be Held in Contempt of Court for Illegally Obstructing Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
• First president to intentionally disable credit card security measures in order to allow over-the-limit donations, foreign contributions and other illegal fundraising measures.
• First President to Defy a Federal Judge's Court Order to Cease Implementing the 'Health Care Reform' Law
• First President to halt deportations of illegal aliens and grant them work permits, a form of stealth amnesty roughly equivalent to "The DREAM Act", which could not pass Congress
• First President to Sign a Law Requiring All Americans to Purchase a Product From a Third Party
• First President to Spend a Trillion Dollars on 'Shovel-Ready' Jobs -- and Later Admit There Was No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Jobs
• First President to sue states for requiring valid IDs to vote, even though the same administration requires valid IDs to travel by air
• First President to Abrogate Bankruptcy Law to Turn Over Control of Companies to His Union Supporters
• First President to sign into law a bill that permits the government to "hold anyone suspected of being associated with terrorism indefinitely, without any form of due process. No indictment. No judge or jury. No evidence. No trial. Just an indefinite jail sentence."
• First President to Bypass Congress and Implement the DREAM Act Through Executive Fiat
• First President to Threaten Insurance Companies After They Publicly Spoke out on How Obamacare Helped Cause their Rate Increases
• First President to Openly Defy a Congressional Order Not To Share Sensitive Nuclear Defense Secrets With the Russian Government
• First President to Threaten an Auto Company (Ford) After It Publicly Mocked Bailouts of GM and Chrysler
• First President to "Order a Secret Amnesty Program that Stopped the Deportations of Illegal Immigrants Across the U.S., Including Those With Criminal Convictions"
• First President to Demand a Company Hand Over $20 Billion to One of His Political Appointees
• First President to Terminate America's Ability to Put a Man into Space.
• First President to Encourage Racial Discrimination and Intimidation at Polling Places
• First President to Have a Law Signed By an 'Auto-pen' Without Being "Present"
• First President to send $200 million to a terrorist organization (Hamas) after Congress had explicitly frozen the money for fear it would fund attacks against civilians.
• First President to Arbitrarily Declare an Existing Law Unconstitutional and Refuse to Enforce It (DOMA)
• First President to Tell a Major Manufacturing Company In Which State They Are Allowed to Locate a Factory
• First President to refuse to comply with a House Oversight Committee subpoena.
• First President to File Lawsuits Against the States He Swore an Oath to Protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN, etc.)
• First President to Withdraw an Existing Coal Permit That Had Been Properly Issued Years Ago
• First President to Fire an Inspector General of Americorps for Catching One of His Friends in a Corruption Case
• First President to Propose an Executive Order Demanding Companies Disclose Their Political Contributions to Bid on Government Contracts
• First President to Preside Over America's Loss of Its Status as the World's Largest Economy (Source: Peterson Institute)
• First President to Have His Administration Fund an Organization Tied to the Cop-Killing Weather Underground
• First President to allow Mexican police to conduct law enforcement activities on American soil
• First president to propose budgets so unreasonable that not a single representative from either party would cast a vote in favor ("Senate unanimously rejected President Obama's budget last year in 0-97 vote", Politico, "House Votes 414-0 to Reject Obama’s Budget Plan", Blaze)
• First President to press for a "treaty giving a U.N. body veto power over the use of our territorial waters and rights to half of all offshore oil revenue" (The Law Of The Sea Treaty)
• First President to Golf 90 or More Times in His First Three Years in Office
But remember: he will not rest until all Americans have jobs, affordable homes, green-energy vehicles, and the environment is repaired, etc., etc., etc.
Linked by: Don Surber and Parkway Rest Stop. Thanks!
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii
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I finally agreed with Doug and others that the first *jerk* president was born in the US -
and now this.
I assume he let the literacy agency use the "born in Kenya" thing knowing it wasn't/isn't true?? Or was he born in Kenya and now he is lying? Which is it? Did he lie by proxy till 2007 or is he lying since 2007?
Who is the bigger scum bag him or Warren? :cry: :?
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I will stick to my story that he was not born in Kenya. I believe there was one Kenyan relative who said he was but misspoke. Obama Sr had other wives with other children so it can be confusing. Her statement caused a story but proved nothing. This story is different, and strange.
(http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Obama-book-Breitbart.jpg)
Literary Agent now says it was a mistake. Yes it was! But by Whom?
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/05/17/literary_agent_says_1991_booklet_was_a_mistake.html
"This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me -- an agency assistant at the time. There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii."
His denial on beholf of the President could be true. He also could be covering for an Elizabeth Warren type mistake where he caused or allowed that story to run when convenient but not when it prevents hius current eligibility. Whatever he said to the agent left the impression that he was he was not from around these parts and they billed it up as a headline. If these were autobiographies, wouldn't the answer be in the book?
Was Obama SO BIG and so detached in 1991 that he never read what his own agent was writing on his behalf? I don't believe that, nor that the books were non-fiction. I am visualizing a more likely scenario that he has his promotional materials taped on his bathroom mirror for when he asks the who's the fairest question each morning. He liked the promotion (my guess), and didn't until later see the conflict with his future aspiration.
An "agent", BTW, "is one who acts for, or in the place of, another, by authority from him". Not a pundit, stalker or casual observer.
The leaflet with the retraction means nothing, but it it validates the request to see and judge ther birth certificate. The birth certificate was released and created its own confusion. I think Sheriff Joe is the most prominent person to question it, no offense to him. It had a number of strange things about it but it certainly has not been proven to be a forgery.
In contrast, take a look at what happened with a 'real' forgery just minutes after 60 Minutes released it's National Guard letter. Readers of Free Republic and Powerline blog ripped it to shreds and by this point in the process Dan Rather was unemployed, Powerline was Time Magazine's blog of the year and SeeBS had quite a black eye.
The 61st Minute (The unraveling of the fake but true forgery)
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2004/09/007699.php
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"An "agent", BTW, "is one who acts for, or in the place of, another, by authority from him". Not a pundit, stalker or casual observer."
Exactly. The *first* jerk President knew this was on there. Indeed one can rightly wonder if he told them he was born in Kenya for some reason as opposed they made the claim based on some sort of misrepresentation on purpose or by mistake. But the FACT it wasn't changed till 2007 clearly shows he made no effort on his part to correct the dishonest misrepresentation.
He was milking the idea of him being born in Kenya for some reason. I am not clear what that reason would be.
To have never contacted them to correct their mistake for 16 years - until - he ran for Prez - is not just strange - it is deliberate fraud.
But it won't matter. The wagons have again circled around the first Jerk and he will be insulated.
Yet this does speak to HIS character. For a few who cannot decide who to vote for in November it might make a shred of difference. But for the majority of those who cannot make up their mind by now about him - it will probably come down to what the gas prices are the day of the election. I don't know how else to explain how the "independents" seem to keep changing their minds from one day to the next based on poll results that are all over the place. Unless the pollls are just that screwed up.
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The Breitbart website has made a claim that they will vet him if no one else will. If this was their only piece or best shot they would not be using it in May. Born in a faraway land was what he was comfortable with saying to make himself hip, mystic or popular. Same with changing the pronunciation of his name, same with other things. Romney I think gets it. Concede all the hip and glib qualities to the opponent. If you need a rock star, if you want the best delivered Greek column cliches and platitudes, the guy who hangs with the most NBA stars and hollywood types, a guy who can slow jam the news best on late night, I'm not your guy. If you want policy change in Washington that will get the economy going again and give your kids and grandchildren a better future, then please take a look.
The problem with birth certificate type thinking is that we need to defeat Barack Obama on the issues, in the polling booth. We need to have that argument in order to win it. 2010 was like an outlier type poll unless it can be followed up with a direct win, in a Presidential year, on the issues.
In MN we went through something like the idea that Obama could be removed by ballot ineligibility or caught in a personal failing. Sen. Paul Wellstone was a liberal as they come, way left of even Minnesota, but popular. He died in a plane crash, Republicans even took the seat for a term, but never defeated him on the issues. Today Al Franken sits in that seatand didn't need a cornhusker kickback to support every new power of government. The failed ideology did not die and never was defeated.
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"The failed ideology did not die and never was defeated."
That is why in another thread I felt Brian Wesbury is in a dreamworld when he comes out and states socialism as in Europe is in its death throes. This ideology will never die. Yes it may wax and wane a little but it is definitely the malignant cancer that cannot be eradicated. We will always have soicalists, liberals, communists. We will always have those who will call for the government to give them what they can't do on their own. I am not against government. But for me government is to maintain law and order, protect our country, and be an advocate of its people not control us, our soiciety, our culture.
As for me my government failed me when it couldn't protect me against organized crime. When in my own life I needed help they wouldn't lift a finger. Government is not the answer to every one of the world's/life's ills.
Yet there will always be those who will never admit this, or accept it.
Bottom line this failed ideology will never be defeated. Only kept at bay.
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"Bottom line this failed ideology will never be defeated. Only kept at bay."
By defeated, I only mean mean to win by something like 53-46% like Obama did. Better would be to win by some margin in almost all demographic groups and states so that we the people would mean we are all part of pulling together to solve this.
The rob Peter, pay Paul, tax the guy behind the tree thing is not my idea of equal protection, we the people or consent of the governed.
Go ahead and soak the rich - at any rate of taxation that YOU want to pay on your first and every dollar. Go ahead and start a new program - that you can provide for EVERYONE and is paid for by getting rid of all the old failed ones.
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The blowback on austerity in Europe is proof that socialism is alive and well and is in my opnion contrary to Wesbury's argument that the sprial downward of the Euro is the beginning of the end for socialism.
We sit on the fulcrum here in the US as pointed out by many on the right.
Perhaps a few on the left governors Brown in Kalifornia, Cuomo in NY recognize the problem with some attempts at reforms.
I guess because they are crats they can get away with it without being blasted from the left.
Republicans would be crucified for the same things.
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My = the possessive case for I and me. And I thought it was the people's congress.
President Obama yesterday: "...this euro project...means that there’s got to be some more effective coordination on the fiscal and the monetary side and on the growth agenda. And I think that there was strong intent there to move in that direction. Of course, they’ve got 17 countries that have to agree to every step they take. So I think about my one Congress, then I start thinking about 17 congresses and I start getting a little bit of a headache. It’s going to be challenging for them." http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/21/remarks-president-nato-press-conference
They are separate articles, one and two. The legislative branch defined first is not any part of his executive branch, but is where fiscal bills originate. The Federal Reserve was also an act of congress.
The President rightfully has some frustration with his congress and his budgets. The House voted down his budget 414-0 and the Senate voted it down 99-0.
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/218931-house-clobbers-obama-budget-proposal-in-0-414-vote
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/227857-senate-rejects-obama-budget-in-99-0-vote
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May 22, 2012
Obama Thinks He's the Fairness Czar
By Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle
Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J., came across as a moderate, sensible Democrat when he said on "Meet the Press" Sunday that negative political ads are "nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright."
Booker, a Barack Obama surrogate, later tried to walk back his comments. He posted a video in which he explained that he was expressing his frustration with negative campaigning when he spoke out, effectively undermining the president's re-election narrative. (Booker also referred to the biggest non-story in politics last week, about a political consultant who recommended that a super PAC use Wright in an anti-Obama ad. That ad didn't get made.)
But there is no walking back from Booker's disapproval of the Obama campaign's attacks on Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Mitt Romney founded. Last week, Team Obama released an ad that told the story of a Kansas steel mill that Bain bought in 1993 and that went bankrupt in 2001. In the ad, laid-off steelworkers had some choice words for Romney. Like "vampire" and "job destroyer."
The problem with such ads, Booker said Sunday, is that "we're getting to a ridiculous point in America." Pension funds, unions and others invest in companies like Bain Capital. Bain's record has been to grow businesses. To Booker, Bain Capital has been good for America. To Obamaland, Bain Capital has been bad for America.
As a mayor, Booker said, he, too, has had to lay off workers "because it's the only way" his "government would survive." He added, "Call me a job cutter if you want."
I should note that PolitiFact rated as "mostly true" this statement from the Obama campaign: "After purchasing the company, Mitt Romney and his partners loaded it with debt, closed the Kansas City plant and walked away with a healthy profit, leaving hundreds of employees out of work with their pensions in jeopardy." Missing from the story: the fact that Romney wasn't in charge anymore and that in 2001, the steel industry was in a world of hurt -- with low steel prices and high production costs -- which drove a lot of mills out of business.
I would add that the steelworkers in the political ad were talking about the heyday of the steel industry, which occurred long before Bain stepped in to rescue an ailing mill.
Monday, a reporter asked Obama about Booker's remarks and the role of private equity. The president explained that the goal of private investment is to "maximize profits," whereas a president's job is to make sure that everyone has "a fair shot" and that everyone pays his or her "fair share" of taxes.
That's the problem with Obama; he thinks he's the fairness czar. He didn't say that a president is supposed to create an environment that nurtures business success. He said a president is supposed to make sure that nobody walks away with too much.
When you're president, Obama said, "your job is to think about those workers who get laid off and how are we paying for their retraining." Obama's war is a war on private money. He thinks his job is to create job training programs, not create an environment that creates real jobs.
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In Poland they prefer to call them Nazi death camps. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18264036 You would think a Harvard Law Review Editor would be an expert at catching this kind of error blamed on his teleprompter writer.
This is the lack of global awareness we would expect from a repub who reads nothing but hunting magazines..
It's not like it's a pattern snubbing our allies the Poles, although he did choose to play golf on the day of the funeral of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the Polish First Lady, and 94 senior officials who perished in the Smolensk air disaster, eight months after he humiliated Warsaw by canceling the agreement to place a missile defense site in Poland(and the Czech Republic). http://blog.heritage.org/2012/05/30/obama-insults-poland-with-crass-and-ignorant-polish-death-camp-remark/
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A brief search on the subject. Amongst Jews there were many memories of Poles very happy to see them exterminated. Is this fair?
Is this accurate? I don't really know but I do remember growing up many olders Jews discuss this subject. My impression is very anecdotal but I was left the impression many Poles as well as Germans were quite OK with them being sent to death camps.
Perhaps this article points out that this perception is wrong or unfair. I certianly agree to expect anyone to risk his/her own life to save others during such a situation is expecting people to be worthy of Sainthood and not realistic.
In short I agree Brock made a foolish mistake. But I do not take my eye off the fact many Poles were not only not Saints, they may well have been gleeful. Is that fair or not I don't know:
http://www.polishresistance-ak.org/10%20Article.htm
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IBD Editorials takes a look at performance and confidence in this 'recovery' compared to Reagan recovery and even the Bush economy.
http://news.investors.com/article/612950/201205291845/consumer-confidence-flatlines-under-obama.htm
A No Confidence Vote For Obamanomics
05/29/2012 06:45 PM ET
Economy: Consumer confidence took a "surprise" tumble in May, as home prices hit 10-year lows. Tell us again why economists keep calling bad economic news about Obama's so-called recovery "unexpected"?
Analysts had predicted the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index would climb to 70 in May. Instead it dropped more than four points to 64.9, the biggest drop since last fall.
It's the latest in another round of disappointing numbers. Just a few weeks ago, new jobs came in "unexpectedly" low. And before that, GDP data disappointed.
Underperforming economic indicators have been so common under Obama that the only mystery is why the experts keep getting caught off guard.
In the case of the Consumer Confidence Index, the current number — bad as it is — doesn't even tell the whole story.
First, it's worth noting the index has fallen for three months. Even if it had hit forecasts, it would still be well below 90, which signals a healthy economy.
The current reading is worse when you realize that under President Bush — you know, the guy who Obama says ruined the economy — confidence averaged 88.
That's despite two recessions, a terrorist massacre and two long wars. Throughout Obama's "recovery," the index has averaged 57.
To really get a sense of how dismal Obama's confidence ratings have been, you need to compare them to those during the Reagan recovery (for a visual display, see chart).
The 1981-82 recession lasted almost as long as the last one — 16 months vs. 18 months — and pushed unemployment higher. Yet confidence roared back as Reagan's economic policies powered a strong and sustained recovery, with the index topping 100 most months.
(http://www.investors.com/image/WebObama053012_345_01.gif.cms)
What reason do people have to feel confident today?
Almost three years into the recovery, unemployment is still above 8%, household incomes are down more than 5%, gasoline prices remain at historic highs, and the economy can only eke out meager gains.
On top of this, we learned this week that housing prices are back at their mid-2002 levels. So, naturally, Obama's again making excuses and shifting blame.
It's the fault of the long recession, he says. The economy is still facing "head winds." The GOP is "standing in the way" of his new stimulus spending plans and creating "uncertainty" with its calls for more spending cuts in exchange for another debt ceiling increase.
The real reason the economy is so vulnerable to "head winds" is because Obama's recovery has been so lousy. That has nothing to do with the recession, since deep recessions are typically followed by even more powerful recoveries.
Indeed, the only reason the economy continues to struggle for breath is because Obama continues to choke off its air supply. Even now, he has no clue how his policy prescriptions of vast new federal spending, gargantuan debt, massive regulation, a government health care takeover, and endless bashing of businessmen, profits and the "rich" are hampering growth.
Still, we are confident of one thing. The economy will come roaring back to life once all that stops.
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"A brief search on the subject. Amongst Jews there were many memories of Poles very happy to see them exterminated. Is this fair?... http://www.polishresistance-ak.org/10%20Article.htm"
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CCP, This quote from your link says it all:
"Poland was the only country in occupied Europe where giving any kind of help to the Jews resulted in summary execution of the helper and his or her family."
When death to your family was at stake in a Nazi military occupation, it is hard to judge any lack of resistance. I assume there was no death camp in Poland that preceded Nazi-occupation. Poles suffered enough in WWII and don't need to be blamed in American President misspeak for hosting the Holocaust.
You would think the President pushing anti-wall street / anti-wealth rhetoric now, not much different from 1930s politics, would be more careful.
Obama has shown his lack of historic knowledge previously: "I had an uncle who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps."
Auschwitz was 'liberated' by the Soviets.
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I agree. No one can in their right mind expect people to risk their own lives and family's lives in such a situation.
I really don't know that Poles were any more or less antisemitic than other Europeans.
But some did hold thumbs up watching Jews pass by on trains to death camps.
As for Poland being the only country where those who helped Jews were executed - actually I doubt that very much.
When I have more time I could perhaps do a more thorough search. This article was something I just pulled up. The author's points may well be more accurate than not. I just don't know.
I had a patient who recalled a story to me as a young girl in occupied Czechoslovakia. A Jew suddenly barged into their house and hid under the bed. A "gestapo" agent knocked on the door and asked her mother if she saw this man. At the risk of her own life and her daughter's life she said no.
After the Gestapo left the Jewish man came out from under the bed and was advised to hide in the barn. The next morning when they went to the barn he was gone.
She told me the gestapo WAS just like in the movies. They wouldn't take any bull from anyone and would quite quickly have blown them away if they realized they were lying and hiding a Jew.
I had tears in my eyes. Would I have been as courageous? I think one can not know until that "moment of truth" as they say.
The woman told me this story because she was immensely proud of the bravery and kindness her mother showed. I couldn'ty agree more.
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eom
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Also could be entitled famous people reading the forum. :wink:
The Obama Spending Record
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303674004577434822504189672.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond
By JAMES FREEMAN
Every journalist not in the re-election tank has been shredding President Obama's recent claim that spending growth has been modest on his watch. But kudos in particular to the Associated Press for hitting several White House accounting gimmicks in a dispatch last week.
Team Obama has lately been arguing that the astronomical spending blowout of fiscal 2009 was President Bush's fault and that outlays have since climbed only moderately. This means ignoring that Mr. Obama's $831 billion stimulus was enacted during that notorious fiscal year that straddles both presidencies. And AP cataloged various other distortions embedded in the Obama claim. For example, early in his term Mr. Obama signed an omnibus appropriations bill that also increased spending in fiscal 2009. This was less than a month after the stimulus.
Beyond the AP report, it's also worth noting that Mr. Obama endorsed other 2009 spending that he now blames for today's deficits. As a senator, Mr. Obama was habitually absent during significant votes. But one that he did show up for in 2008 was the Senate's vote on the 2009 budget resolution, and he voted "yes." Mr. Obama showed up again in the fall to vote for TARP. One can reasonably label this as Bush spending, but it occurred with an explicit Obama approval.
Where Senator Obama did oppose the spending patterns of the Bush years, it was often, as with Medicaid, because Mr. Obama wanted to spend more. Speaking of health care, and given all of this attention on the Obama spending history, it should not be forgotten that the big taxpayer bills generated by ObamaCare are still to come.
Is federal spending really the issue that Barack Obama wants at the center of this campaign?
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Also very much worth noting is that TARP, Stimulus 1, 2, etc were all supposed to be one time propositions, not permanent increases to federal spending-- which was 20% under Bush and is now 24% under Baraq.
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"Also very much worth noting is that TARP, Stimulus 1, 2, etc were all supposed to be one time propositions, not permanent increases to federal spending-- which was 20% under Bush and is now 24% under Baraq."
Yes. As much as any other force, the Pelosi-Reid-Obama caused the downturn. They passed all the temporary emergency spending. They score it all in the 'before inauguration' category, even the parts that weren't. They went on to make temporary emergency spending levels permanent. (Who could have seen THAT coming??) Then claim they exercised spending restraint, blaming their predecessor. But their predecessor WAS the Pelosi-Reid-Obama congress. They were IN power before they took power. (Bush deserves blame too, but that has already been thoroughly accomplished!)
On top of all that, they describe the spending at 24% of GDP problem as temporary, a glitch in accounting just because GDP happens to be unusually low. But lowered GDP was the policy choice, not some earthquake or meteor that hit us from somewhere unforeseen. Fannie Mae, CRAp, the Fed, the debt, the bubble, the excessiver regulations, the impending tax increases, their fingerprints are all over all of it.
They expressly wanted to give up economic growth for fairness and they got us neither.
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Yes. The point needs to be clearly, repeatedly, and loudly made: The DEMS controlled spending beginning in 2006.
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It was nice to see the President in the neighborhood today. You can see Wisconsin from here. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/31/president-obama-wisconsin_n_1561263.html Scott Walker is rolling to victory on Tuesday. For some reason the President does not want to weigh in on a fundamental red vs. blue governing question in a strongly blue state.
Obama won Wisc in 2008 by 14 points and had over 70% of the vote in both Milwaukee and Dane County (Madison). http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/wi.htm Now its just flyover country for him. If Obama loses Wisconsin in Nov it will mean Romney has won 40-44 states.
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Followup to what I wrote 6/1, but it is mind-boggling that Pres Obama, who does all things political, is flying around Wisconsin air space trying to look like Wisconsin recall is not his fault. The biggest vote short of Nov is today. Who knows the outcome... But if the recall effort fails and Obama didn't help, how is that better for him than if it fails and he did help? What will he be saying when he finally does come to Wisconsin, Badger stadium in October: 'Wisconsin, I need your help. I can't do this without you.'
Pres. Clinton gets it. Came to Wisconsin. Praised Romney's Sterling business career.
Magic touch or emperor has no clothes, Pres. Obama ever since delivering the presentation about himself to the Olympic committee can no longer say "Harry, I have a gift."
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Clinton is obviously campaigning for Hillary for '16.
He must have decided better for Brock to lose now and have Hillary run against the Repub in 16 rather than follow Brock's coat-tails.
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A comment that he may live to regret politically. 1.9% growth is not either acceptable or growth.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303665904577454582896970206.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
Obama might have done better to follow the advice of the Washington Post's Ed Rogers: "If you are president of the United States and you don't have anything to say, don't have a press conference to say it. If you're the president of the United States and by Thursday it's widely believed you've had one of the worst weeks of your presidency, take Friday off, and specifically avoid having a press conference."
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Problem is that he still believes: "Harry, I have a gift."
Mr. President, you have no gift (of oratory that substitutes for leadership). You have policies that suck and people are seeing there is no deity-like figure running the ship.
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This seems to be the best he can do:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/06/14/obama_this_election_is_about_our_economic_future.html
52 minutes of your life you will never get back.
"That Decade" he now calls it. It was called "the failed economic policies of the last 30 years" - until Bill Clinton took him out to the woodshed.
During 'that decade' of course he includes the recession left over by the Clinton administration. And then it includes the 2 years of disaster when HE, Sen Obama, and Pelosi-Reid-Ellison et al took control of purse strings in congress. If one looked at a growth curve, one would find more than 50 months continuous months of robust growth in between those Dem tainted end posts.
'That decade' brought us:
"huge tax cuts" - Like my friend here, he fails to distinguish between tax RATE cuts which we had and tax revenue cuts that only happened under HIS plan. Revenues in fact grew 35% in 3 years between 2003 and 2006, prior to the swearing in of the Pelosi-Obama congress. That is double digit (almost 12%) annual growth over a sustained period - until voters were bored with growth and pursued loftier goals. Obama: "There is no data that the tax cuts paid for themselves". Yes there is: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200
"Fewer Regulations" - Really? When were there fewer regulations? The bubble and collapse were a direct result of BUNGLED regulations. CRAp, Fannie Mae, war against domestic energy production etc.
"The wealthiest 1% Americans income grew 275% over the decade." - No they didn't. Income inequality data mixes in a new batch of rich people every year; it doesn't track at all how much any citizen's income rose. Ten years later, FYI, successful people were selling their products and services into a larger and richer world economy. Ten years later at the low end people were either contributing nothing or working plenty hard without increasing the value of what they were producing. That is by definition. If they had dramatically increased the value of what they were producing, they wouldn't be at the low end of income measurement. The main increases in production and productivity come from CAPITAL INVESTMENT. But the end point with the trick data is necessarily measured AFTER Obama and his colleagues had acted to destroy capital investment.
"The economy started to grow 6 months after I took Office and has grown continuously for 3 years since." - That was BEFORE his policies went into effect. Doesn't sound like they underestimated how bad it really was. Unless you agree with he implication of 'Mission Accomplished', "the private sector is doing fine", he is admitting that he has absolutely no idea about how to grow the private sector any faster than 1.9% growth except more of the same and expect a different result.
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Not from the speech, but his line (of BS) less than a week ago was that the "headwind" from Europe are inhibiting our growth at home. After all, "Europe is our largest trading partner":
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/obama-push-congress-jobs-european-crisis-hurting-economy/story?id=16524225#.T9qBhsjNnpM
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2012/06/obama_blames_europe_his_economic_press_conference_ducks_the_bad_jobs_report_.html
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/08/obama-europe-turmoil-threatens-u-s-economy/comment-page-1/
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/350211/20120608/obama-private-sector-doing-fine-warns-headwinds.htm
http://www.rttnews.com/1903111/citing-headwinds-from-europe-obama-calls-on-congress-for-action-on-jobs.aspx?type=usp&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=sitemap
My question, is it not (also) the other way around, that exacerbating Europe's problem is the sluggish performance and mismanaged economy of THEIR largest trading partner, across the Atlantic?
The answer is no, and don't expect big media to follow up on it. It only counts if it fits the script.
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Posted on behalf of Crafty Dog...
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/2012-06-20-chronicle.jpg)
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More than a dozen I and me references, but one word missing was capital.
Labor without capital, in a word,.is ... unemployed.
Maybe we can discuss capital / capitalism during the Obama second term over on the crime and punishment thread.
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Thanks to BD for links provided. I will read those over the weekend. I would rather thw Pres be an expert on this than me.
It is a delicate balance between separation and oversight.
I would settle as a matter of principle for Dems in the White House to govern with whatever princples they espoused when those roles were reversed.
How naive of me!
The response ads to a Romney the flipflopper charge keep gettimg easier.
I know about border agent Terry murder and 800 violent crimes inside Mexico, but who died and what taxpayer funds were sqaundered on Dick Cheney's energy task force? I don't recall young Barack the constitutional scholar bucking his party to come to the previous administration's defense.
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With all the worries about Egypt and GM not here to point this out, but we can rest assured that Pres Obama's Dir of Intelligence Klapper told us last year that the Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular. Who knew?
I can't link right now but see Mark Steyn's column today.
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Love Steyn! Please post it when you have a moment.
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Love Steyn! Please post it when you have a moment.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/303860/brothers-day-mark-steyn
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By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN
President Obama should put Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" at the top of his summer reading list. This was clear after listening to his 54-minute list of economic excuses and policy proposals delivered earlier this month on the campus of Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland.
At times Mr. Obama suggested that the profit motive is somehow ignoble, an opinion shared by many on the far left. But every student learns in introductory economics class that the pursuit of profits is essential to a successful economy, allocating resources to the use consumers value most.
This is not exactly a new insight. Writing in 1776, Adam Smith noted, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
The president spent nearly an hour demonizing his Republican opponent Mitt Romney's economic policies and doubling down on his own failed agenda. He called for higher taxes on our most productive citizens and successful small businesses, more government spending and debt, and Washington micromanagement of wide swaths of the economy.
Instead of doubling down, Mr. Obama could have seen his party's 2010 midterm defeat as a message from voters to move to the center, announcing that his vast expansion of government was temporary and necessitated by the financial crisis and deep recession.
That's similar to what President Clinton did after his 1994 midterm rebuke that swept Republicans to control of Congress and led to bipartisan agreement to balance the budget and reform welfare. Mr. Clinton won re-election handily.
Enlarge Image
CloseBettmann/CORBIS
Portrait of Adam Smith by John Kay, 1790.
.Here are four things the president could have proposed (but didn't) to remove headwinds to growth and instill confidence in the economy:
1) Avoid the 2013 "fiscal cliff," which the Congressional Budget Office says would put us back in recession, by extending all the Bush tax cuts for one year (leaving him free to pursue his tax hikes on the "rich" later).
2) Approve the Keystone pipeline and speed up oil and gas drilling approvals, with appropriate environmental safeguards, back to the levels they were before the 2010 moratorium following the BP oil disaster.
3) Enact long-run entitlement and tax reform with lower rates and a broader base, using the proposals of the Simpson-Bowles Commission—which the president appointed, but has so far ignored—as a starting point for negotiations.
4) Invest political capital to energize the moribund Doha Round of global trade liberalization and bilateral free-trade agreements.
By taking these four steps, the president would have given the recovery a greatly needed boost and encouraged more businesses to invest and hire. He may well look back on this missed opportunity to move toward the middle as the mistake that ultimately cost him re-election.
Mr. Obama constantly reminds us, with justification, that he inherited a recession. But the recession ended over three years ago, while the recovery has been distressingly anemic. He also blames an "obstructionist" Congress. But Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and control of the House his first two years. Republicans couldn't obstruct anything. He's even blamed the Japanese tsunami and the European debt crisis.
Is it any wonder that recent polls show the majority of Americans disapprove of the president's economic policies and are asking why his explosion of spending and debt has done so little good. Mr. Obama claims that when he took office nobody knew just how deep this recession really was. Not so. I and other economists said it was going to be the worst recession in a generation, and immediately after the 2008 election urged him to temporarily set aside his big-government social-engineering agenda, from energy to health-care reform. Whatever their pros and cons, it was the worst possible time to add such a cost burden and uncertainty to the economy. He was mistaken in the hope the economy could withstand his change.
In 2009, 2010 and 2011, the administration forecast average economic growth of 4% in the next two years. But the economy has not had even one quarter of 4% growth during Mr. Obama's stewardship. Rather, our economy has experienced its longest string of consecutive quarters of economic growth below 4% since World War II. Growth has averaged 1.4% in Mr. Obama's first 13 quarters as president.
His record on jobs is just as bad. Mr. Obama's initial forecast claimed unemployment would never reach 8% if his $800 billion stimulus bill passed in early 2009 (as it did) and would now be below 6%. That's off by 3.9 million unemployed workers, millions more if we include those who have given up looking for work.
Perhaps we should not have expected more from the eloquent apostle of hope and change. Mr. Obama had little experience in or respect for the "for profit" part of the economy. Of his one brief sojourn in the business world, he says in his autobiography he felt "like a spy behind enemy lines."
He now says that Mr. Romney's business career—which former President Clinton describes as "sterling"—is not a qualification to be president. How would he know? Before becoming president, he had no executive experience of any kind—private or public.
Mr. Obama's most recent statements reveal a strange disconnect from basic economic reality. In a press conference on June 8 he said, "The private sector is doing fine," adding that we needed more federal spending subsidizing state and local government jobs, where he claims the jobs problem is centered. But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 11 unemployed private-sector workers for every unemployed government worker.
Last month Mr. Obama said, "Since I've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years." But it turns out he was quoting a blogger who did not count the massive 2009 stimulus spending. Careful administration fact-checking served former presidents well. Is this administration's standard no longer facts but anything on the Internet?
Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.
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A MUST LISTEN audio. Cognitive Dissonance is just putting it nicely. Full of shit is a better description.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/07/06/obama_in_2004_dismisses_job_creation_of_310000_new_jobs_under_bush.html
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After the economy added 310,000 jobs in May 2004 and the unemployment rate was 5.6%, then-candidate Barack Obama used the Democrat weekly radio address to attack the Bush administration for citing good economic numbers.
“For the past few weeks, President Bush and members of his administration have traveled the nation to celebrate recent improved economic statistics. Well, I’ve been traveling too, all over this large and diverse state. In cities and suburbs, downstate and upstate, I’ve heard from people who say it’s way too early to claim victory when it comes to our economy,” Obama says in the Democrats’ radio address from June 26, 2004.
“After three dismal years of job-loss, we all welcome encouraging statistics,” Obama acknowledges in the 2004 address. “But for most Americans, the health of our economy is measured in a different and more personal way: If I lose my job, where will I find one that pays as well and offers real benefits? Can I afford health-care coverage on my own, or the cost of sending my children to college? Will I ever be able to save and retire with dignity and security? These are the questions I hear hardworking people asking. For them, the basic rewards of a middle-class life, rewards that we once took for granted, have become an elusive dream.”
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/president-obama-if-youve-got-a-business-you-didnt-build-that-somebody-else-made-that-happen/
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1) It's all the golf you can play and as many free vacations as you want. The teleprompter tells you what to say to the crowd and if anybody makes a joke about you, someone calls him a racist!
2) You get a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up.
3) No matter how much worse black Americans do under you than George W. Bush, Kanye West is never going to say, "Barack Obama doesn't care about black people."
4) You can eat a dog and PETA will still love you.
5) No one seems to find it odd that you simultaneously repeat Harry Truman's famous line, "The buck stops here" -- as you blame George Bush, Republicans in Congress, greedy corporations, the European economy, and even ATM machines for your many, many failures.
6) The Occupy Movement still loves you despite the fact that you've shoveled billions of dollars in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street firms via bailouts and loan programs.
7) You can have a net worth of 11 million dollars, go on multiple 6 figure vacations per year, and hobnob with the wealthiest Americans at swanky 40k a plate fundraisers; yet no one bats an eye when you criticize Mitt Romney for being rich.
8 ) The press doesn't incessantly repeat the body count in Afghanistan in every article about the war, like it did when George Bush was in Iraq.
9) You get to keep Gitmo open, sign on to the Patriot Act, fight in Afghanistan and kill terrorists with drone attacks while leftists complain that you haven't tried to go after Bush for committing "war crimes" because he did the same things.
10) The mainstream press judges you not on what you've done, but on whatever you happen to be saying right this moment, even if it's different from what you were saying yesterday.
11) After creating jobs overseas with stimulus money, you can criticize Mitt Romney for having a Swiss bank account without being laughed at despite the fact you're holding fundraisers in Switzerland, Sweden, Paris and China.
12) The same press that was utterly uninterested in your background when you ran for office in 2008 considers Mitt Romney's religion, what date he left Bain Capital, and how hard his wife worked when she was taking care of their kids much more important than anything you did over the last 3 1/2 years as President.
13) You can simultaneously block the keystone pipeline and ANWR while you hold up offshore drilling in the Gulf and demonize oil companies, yet claim with a straight face that you're trying to reduce gas prices.
14) Despite the fact that you're conducting war across the globe and have never served in the military, nobody calls you a chickenhawk.
15) Even though your administration helped kill 300 people with guns, including an American citizen, gun control advocates have zero interest in getting to the bottom of it.
16) You have the single most important job on earth and yet, most people seem to be thrilled that you're spending more time campaigning for reelection than you do working.
17) The mainstream media is much more concerned with the possible racism or bad motives of anyone questioning you than it is with whether your policies actually work.
18) No matter how much of an utter failure you are, most black Americans feel compelled to pretend you're not a disaster because they're afraid everyone will judge them by how incompetent you turned out to be.
19) You have a National Debt Charge Card with a limit of "Infinity" and you're not scared to use it.
20) Your biggest accomplishments so far after killing Osama Bin Laden are ending the manned space program, having the longest string of over 8% unemployment of any President since WWII, putting more Americans for food stamps than any other President in history, killing the work requirements in welfare, giving up on stopping illegal aliens, adding more debt in three and a half years than Bush did in eight, and decimating America's health care system with the least popular entitlement program in history. Yet, you still have a chance to be reelected. It doesn't get any better than that.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2012/07/17/20_reasons_why_its_great_to_be_barack_obama/page/full/
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Must see. Keep clicking on next page at the bottom of each page at the link, it continues...
http://didntbuildthat.com/
I like this one:
(https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/603380_496557517037287_1590165457_n.jpg)
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Charles Murray at the American Enterprise Institute's Ideas blog, July 18:
President Obama's horrendous political gaffe last week—"You didn't build that"—triggered the same reaction I had when he insisted on pushing through Obamacare. Then, I had the creepy feeling that I was living in an occupied country. American politics didn't work that way. Neither Democrats nor Republicans had ever forced through a transformative piece of legislation without substantial bipartisan support. A major American politician had never (to my knowledge) been indifferent to the kind of voter sentiment so clearly expressed in the Massachusetts senatorial election.
"You didn't build that" is another example of the president's tone-deafness when it comes to the music of the American culture. The phrase is not taken out of context. It didn't come after a celebration of the inventiveness and risk taking of individual Americans that has made this country great. The president gave the mildest of acknowledgements to the role of the individual, followed by a paragraph of examples that cast American history as a series of collective accomplishments. . . .
It is as if a Dutch politician—an intelligent, well-meaning Dutch politician—were somehow running for the American presidency, but bringing with him the Rawlsian, social-democratic ethos that, in the Netherlands, is the natural way to talk about a properly run society. We would listen to him and say to ourselves, "He doesn't get this country." That's the thing about Obama. Time and again, he does things and says things that are un-American. Not evil. Not anti-American. Just un-American.
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Posted on behalf of Crafty Dog...
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/obama_sealed.jpg)
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President on the trail, is: “going to ask anybody making over $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rates they were paying under Bill Clinton, back when our economy created 23 million new jobs.”
That's great - for a campaign with a motto of "forward". Are they going to compete in a 1990's global economy too. Maybe have an internet boom, dot com and housing bubbles too. Can he get our competitors to set the clock back 20 years too? How about rolling back regulations on businesses 20 years, lol.
Or he could ask his own advisers, the tax increase will cost the economy a couple million jobs.
"extending for one year the Bush tax cuts for families making less than $250,000"
The Obama plan sets the tax rate increase coming problem in motion for a third time, as if the first two didn't do enough damage.
Insanity: Do the same thing, expect a different result.
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Quite relevant here to this attempted meme of "We just want to go back to what was the case under Clinton" is the existence of various other new taxes since then in addition to the increases in other tax rates.
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Pres. Obama yesterday: "...our union may not be perfect, but it is perfectible."
Meaning: The founders and the 43 Presidents before me were a little off the mark but my vision for the country is right.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/07/25/obama_our_union_may_not_be_perfect_but_it_is_perfectible.html
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A week ago:
"The mistake of my first term—couple of years," the president allowed, "was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right." At times, Obama confessed, he'd forgotten that "the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times."
http://reason.com/archives/2012/07/17/obama-descends-into-self-parody
No, Mr. President. The mistake of your first term was policy; you got it wrong.
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If you have already seen Pres. Obama's You didn't build that speech in context AND Elizabeth Warren's Someone else paid for that rant, then this video is a must see.
Obama and Warren bungled it. Even the liberal professor, leader of progressives credits the taxpayers for what government has accomplished.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KzN3AZk6f-Q#!
George Lakoff - No One Got Rich On Their Own
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Jay Carney Refuses To Identify Capital Of Israel Twice In White House Press Briefing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGEn1TZtEmQ&feature=player_embedded
White House Press Briefing, July 26, 2012
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That would also fit in the Israel thread.
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Baraq at it again
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/olympics/sns-rt-us-oly-usa-flag-adv1bre86p1j6-20120726,0,3401915.story
For your reference here are the facts:
Chapter 1 of Title 4 of the United States Code (4 U.S.C. § 1 et seq).
The flag should never be dipped to any person or thing, unless it is the ensign responding to a salute from a ship of a foreign nation. This is sometimes misreported as a tradition that comes from the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, where countries were asked to dip their flag to King Edward VII: American team flag bearer Ralph Rose did not follow this protocol and teammate Martin Sheridan is often, though apocryphally, stated as proclaiming that "this flag dips before no earthly king."[2] This tradition was codified as early as the 1911 U.S. Army drill regulations.[3]
US Naval traditions allow for flag dipping under certain circumstances. That is when another ship passing dips its flag and then returns it to full staff. At that time, the US ship dips the flag and returns to full staff. No other circumstances exist.
Of course, even though codified in law, there are no penalties for not complying.
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I see no mention of President Obama's influence on this decision.
Another POV: http://msn.foxsports.com/olympics/fencing/story/Opening-ceremony-flag-issue-make-US-ugly-Americans-at-London-Olympics
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Jay Carney Refuses To Identify Capital Of Israel Twice In White House Press Briefing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGEn1TZtEmQ&feature=player_embedded
White House Press Briefing, July 26, 2012
It's complicated.
Most of the world, including the USA does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Most embassies including ours is located in Tel Aviv.
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The way we normally determine where the Capital is in a state of foreign land is ... ASK THEM.
The Capital of North Korea is ... Pyongyang. How do we know that? They said so.
Israel has declared in Israeli law that Jerusalem is the Capital. How could the Capital be anywhere else? Is Israel a less legitimate nation than North Korea? Less of an ally??
Barack Obama and team don't want to say the longer story. Israel says the Capital is Jerusalem, Israel's enemies object. We the Obama administration side with the enemies on this one. (Bush's fault.)
Life is complicated, foreign policy too, if you don't or can't distinguish between good and evil.
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The way we normally determine where the Capital is in a state of foreign land is ... ASK THEM.
The Capital of North Korea is ... Pyongyang. How do we know that? They said so.
Israel has declared in Israeli law that Jerusalem is the Capital. How could the Capital be anywhere else? Is Israel a less legitimate nation than North Korea? Less of an ally??
Barack Obama and team don't want to say the longer story. Israel says the Capital is Jerusalem, Israel's enemies object. We the Obama administration side with the enemies on this one. (Bush's fault.)
Life is complicated, foreign policy too, if you don't or can't distinguish between good and evil.
Doug, almost no other country accepts that Jerusalem is the legitimate capital of Israel; it isn't just "Israel's enemies" that object. We have never accepted that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Obviously, we as well and all other countries don't think it's a legitimate claim. Nor would we accept North Korea's claim to a city below the 38th parallel as their legitimate capital.
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Not following you JDN. You didn't say what is the capital of Israel. In what city is the Knesset? Wouldn't that be the capital? In what country is Jerusalem?
If the right answer is that the capital of Israel is in Tel Aviv, why didn't Jay Carney say that?
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Not following you JDN. You didn't say what is the capital of Israel. In what city is the Knesset? Wouldn't that be the capital? In what country is Jerusalem?
If the right answer is that the capital of Israel is in Tel Aviv, why didn't Jay Carney say that?
It's complicated. :-)
I guess the question is from whose perspective. Israel considers Jerusalem the Capital. Ambassadors have to travel from Tel Aviv or from wherever they have their embassy to Jerusalem to present their papers. Yet, nearly the entire world, friends and enemies of Israel, don't recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Nor does almost any country consider that Jerusalem is entirely in Israel.
As for Jay Carney, perhaps Tel Aviv isn't the capital, but then neither is Jerusalem. So maybe he doesn't know; I don't know, but he knows and I know that the legitimate capital of Israel is not Jerusalem.
You brought up North Korea. Imagine if they crossed the 38th parallel, captured a city using force and declared it their new "capital". Do you really think anyone in the world would honor that except North Korea?
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"I guess the question is from whose perspective."
I was asking YOU.
cap·i·tal [kap-i-tl] noun
1. the city or town that is the official seat of government in a country, state, etc.: Tokyo is the capital of Japan. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capital
If NK says somewhere other than Pyongyang or outside the country is the Capital of North Korea, it wouldn't be so.
If I have one dog and one cat but then I say my cat is a dog, how many dogs do I now have? Still just 1. Saying a cat is a dog doesn't make it so.
The official seat of the government of Israel is in Jerusalem. Is it not?
You think the President's spokesman does not know that?
"As for Jay Carney, perhaps Tel Aviv isn't the capital, but then neither is Jerusalem. So maybe he doesn't know; I don't know, but he knows and I know that the legitimate capital of Israel is not Jerusalem."
Wikipedia: "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel..."
CIA Fact book: "Country: Israel, Capital: Jerusalem"
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/is.html
Israel is not a legitimate country so where they locate the official seat of their government is not the capital? Is that what you're thinking? 193 countries in the UN, where else do we not recognize a capital?
Do you realize what an odd discussion this is?
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Doug's logic seems sound to me , , ,
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Doug's logic seems sound to me , , ,
:? :? :?
Perhaps better to give it up, but I'll try again.
"I guess the question is from whose perspective."
I was asking YOU.
I gave you my perspective; I agree with the USA, England, Germany, Japan, et al (all our allies) that I do not recognize Jerusalem as the legitimate capital of Israel.
1. the city or town that is the official seat of government in a country, state, etc.: Tokyo is the capital of Japan. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capital
If NK says somewhere other than Pyongyang or outside the country is the Capital of North Korea, it wouldn't be so.
Did you read my analogy carefully? I said IF NK invaded and attacked land over the 38th parallel that is not their land (similar to what Israel did) and then declared that the city they conquered is their new "capital" would it be so?
If I have one dog and one cat but then I say my cat is a dog, how many dogs do I now have? Still just 1. Saying a cat is a dog doesn't make it so.
Better to say if you have one dog and you stole a neighbor's dog, do you own two dogs? Saying you have two dogs doesn't mean you OWN two dogs.
The official seat of the government of Israel is in Jerusalem. Is it not?
Let me correct you; the official seat of the government of Israel is ILLEGALLY in Jerusalem.
You think the President's spokesman does not know that?
And yes, the President's spokesman DOES know THAT. It's like if you know you best friend stole something, he's still a good friend, but you don't respect or honor his theft.
So like the President's spokesman, you simply don't talk about it.
Wikipedia: "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel..."
Wikipedia "..." goes on to say, "though not internationally recognize as such."
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JDN, I agreed with you at the beginning, "Perhaps better to give it up". lol.
No, I don't have any best friends who broke into their neighbor's house, stole a major city, car, jewelry, whatever, and are still my best friend, and that isn't what happened, good grief. Why have these threads if you can't or won't read them. Enemies of Israel attacked Israel and lost land in the process. Which part of that was ILLEGAL? Did it happen some other way? Israel is occasionally accused of taking a disproportionate response. I hope so. If you (or Carney or Obama) side with Israel's enemies, just say so. I guess you did.
Israel to you and these others is an illegitimate nation, and the other 192 nations in the UN are fine. Unbelievable. We could pick dozens of examples to show how absurd that is. Why is North Korea a legitimate nation? Did they rightfully acquire the land under their capital? Did the US acquire the land under Washington D.C. through war? Why do we recognize our own country or capital. Considering the anti-border enforcement movement, maybe you don't. Why can't you see Israel is being singled as appeasement to the enemies of Israel, not because they are worse than all 192 others. Why is that right, it isn't, and what did we gain through that policy, nothing.
If you and others side with the enemies of Israel, fine, but then why do we have to hear all the BS about how they are our ally and we stand by them. They are but we don't.
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Sacramento is the capital of California whether Mexico likes it or not.
"Enemies of Israel attacked Israel and lost land in the process."
Makes sense to me.
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Sacramento is the capital of California whether Mexico likes it or not.
"Enemies of Israel attacked Israel and lost land in the process."
Makes sense to me.
Makes sense to you? :?
Odd, it doesn't make sense to ANY other country. Truly, NO other respected country or government supports Israel's position.
As for your 150 year old CA/Sacramento analogy...
I'm surprised you brought that up.
Yep, we fought and easily won a war with Mexico MORE THAN 150 years ago.
After, for California, we PAID Mexico 15 million dollars and assumed certain debts.
That's a little more than we paid for the entire Louisiana Purchase and more than
double what we paid for Alaska.
Israel is NOT illegitimate. But forcibly taking over Jerusalem, giving no compensation, and calling land in the occupied territory your "capital" is illegitimate.
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We're gonna run a different kind of campaign, we're not gonna go around doin' negative ads. - Barack Obama - April 2008, Wilson, NC
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/07/30/obama_promised_not_to_run_negative_ads_in_2008.html
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We kicked Mexico's ass and took nearly half of its landmass. Now we get to say where the capitals of the states of that landmass are whether Mexico likes it or not-- and trust me, they don't.
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In Oakland, California, the president said "I’m also going to ask anybody making over $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rates they were paying under Bill Clinton, back when our economy created 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history and everybody did well.”
ABC News: "This pitch on occasion has meant that President Obama at times sounds as if he’s claiming some ownership of the Clinton economy – referring to “our plan” "
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/obama-now-partly-running-on-bill-clintons-record-our-plan/
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Bill Clinton cut capital gains taxes, declared that the era of big government is over, ended welfare as we knew it, worked with Republicans co-opting much of their agenda, passed the Reagan-inspired hemisphere-wide free trade agreement, backed away from healthcare when the people rejected it, grew the economy and balanced the budget. What part of that reminds anyone of the Obama agenda or record?
Mitt Romney is not Bush and Obama is no Bill Clinton.
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Who runs US foreign policy? A Stanford Senior Fellow says political implications come first.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/124041
The Foreign Policy of David Axelrod
by Fouad Ajami (Senior Fellow and cochair, Working Group on Islamism and the International Order)
In the Obama administration, politics trumps grand strategy.
By latest count, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has logged 843,448 miles on the job: She is officially now the most traveled Secretary of State in U.S. history, 102 countries have seen her come and go. In one dispatch, it was breakfast in Vietnam, lunch in Laos, and dinner in Cambodia for our chief diplomat.
In the interim, campaign strategist David Axelrod has stayed close to home, Chicago and Washington, with one notable stop in Boston, where he sought to besmirch the gubernatorial record of Mitt Romney. But the foreign policy of Barack Obama is the foreign policy of David Axelrod. Gone is that hallowed past when the legendary George Marshall observed a strict separation between foreign policy and the political play at home: He had refused to cast a vote in presidential elections and he had bristled when the “political people” in President Truman’s circle of advisors intruded into the foreign policy domain.
We needn’t exalt the past—presidents always worried about the impact of foreign crises on their standing at home. Still, the subordination of foreign policy to the electoral needs of the Obama campaign stands apart in recent American history. Foreign policy has been masterfully neutralized in the Obamian world, taken off the board in this campaign.
Strategic Abdication in Afghanistan & Iraq
The meteoric rise of Barack Obama, the adoring crowds in Paris and Berlin, and the early dispatches from an Islamic world that looked upon him as a kindred spirit, concealed a political man with scant interest in foreign lands. Mr. Obama left the devotees to their own imagination; they read into him what they wished. He had come into office in the aftermath of an uncompromising American nationalist; he held aloft symbols of cosmopolitanism, and a supra-national elite took to him. But the animating drive of his foreign policy was his own quest for power.
Right from the start, he would play the foreign world safe. He had trumpeted Afghanistan as the “good war of necessity,” but he never gave the war his all. This was not Lyndon Johnson haunted by Vietnam, or George W. Bush pressing on in Iraq when all appeared lost in 2006–2007, defying the popular mood, launching a surge in the teeth of a hostile Congress, and a Republican party that had grown uncertain about Iraq.
Barack Obama came up with his own surge in Afghanistan, but he undercut the effort there by announcing a set date for American withdrawal in 2014—two safe years after his bid for reelection. There would be no “heat,” no soaring poetry about Afghanistan.
Early on, President Obama had talked of a “civilian surge” to go along with the additional military force he had dispatched—agricultural specialists, educators, engineers, and lawyers who would tackle the problems of the country from the bottom up in the provinces. By the second year of his presidency, Mr. Obama would say little if anything about the reform of Afghanistan. The early dream of “nation-building” was abandoned. It was well understood that this commander-in-chief was marking time in Afghanistan.
He had his Republican rivals on the horns of a dilemma: They could neither outflank him from the right by calling for more troops and a deeper commitment, nor urge writing off the entire venture as a doomed enterprise. Mission Accomplished, Mr. Obama had inoculated himself on Afghanistan.
The success of Mr. Obama’s (read: Axelrod’s) approach was made manifestly clear in the speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars that Governor Romney made on July 24. Hitherto, Mr. Romney had made the obligatory challenge to the Obama deadline. But he, too, now accepted 2014 as a set date for an American withdrawal. The Taliban needn’t worry: The electoral verdict in November 2012 is of no consequence to them. They could wait out the American presence. The Hamid Karzai reign of plunder and extortion would be ready for the plucking by then.
In the same vein, there were strategic gains secured in Iraq, but Mr. Obama headed for the exits. Politics clashed with strategic interests, and politics prevailed. It was well understood that the Iraqi government was eager for a residual American presence that would give it sufficient time to make its way in the region. Further, it was known that the Iraqis and the American military commanders on the scene had in mind an American force of roughly 20,000 military personnel, or close to it.
But Mr. Obama made the Iraqis an offer they were meant to refuse; a token force of less than 5,000, hardly enough to fend for itself, let alone offer the Iraqis any meaningful protection. Mr. Obama got the result he wanted. His surest applause line, in his acceptance speech this summer, will be the boast that he kept the promise to his base of bringing to an end the American campaign in Iraq.
A Fluke in Libya
Admittedly, Libya was the one exception to this foreign policy of strategic abdication. The Libyans were lucky: This was a solar-lunar eclipse. Mr. Obama had done his best to keep the struggle against Moammar Gaddafi at bay, but David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy had taken the plunge into Libya, and American power—decisive in the end—destroyed the Gaddafi dictatorship. Gaddafi had been particularly obtuse: He had stated for the world to hear his intention of bringing death and slaughter to the rebellious city of Benghazi.
Mr. Obama’s reputation was in the scales of history, a mini-Rwanda appeared to be in the offing. Mr. Obama did right by the Libyans. But he tipped his hand. The Obama administration steadfastly refused to celebrate or claim the victory in Libya. That country would be kept at arm’s length, even as a parliamentary election handed a defeat to the Islamists, and went the way of a big secular/tribal coalition headed by a technocrat with an American doctorate. Libya would not be repeated elsewhere, it was a fluke, not a template. No Obama doctrine at work here.
Syria: “We Miss Bush’s Audacity”
The Syrians would come to envy the luck of the Libyans. For seventeen remorseless months, the Syrian people would be subjected to all kinds of cruelties. More than two dozen “torture centers” would mete out to a suffering population unspeakable barbarisms. Over 1,200 children have perished in this pitiless war of a regime against its own population; young children would be brutalized, used as human shields by the convoys of the security forces; benign farming villages would become code names for heartlessness.
“Massacres have become like breakfast to us,” a political activist recently observed. In the face of all this, the Obama policy has been one of total abdication. The Secretary of State has carried out her president’s brief: She has been running out the clock, seeking cover behind the arcane doings of the United Nations Security Council, making it appear as though deliverance hinged on a change in the attitude of Russia at the United Nations. Any “Model UN” high school team would have foreseen the vetoes of Russia—and China—at the Security Council. Truth is that Russian diplomacy has been a convenient alibi for a quiescent American policy.
The sophistry that has gone into arguing that “Syria is not Libya” is unworthy of a great liberal power. Nor can the exquisitely tortured discussions of the “difficult” borders of Syria stand any scrutiny. If anything, those sensitive borders and the spillover of Syria’s troubles and pathologies into Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey, should have long tipped the scales in favor of an interventionist Syria policy. There is will—and there are resources—in the region to upend the Syrian dictatorship, for Bashar al-Assad has unleashed a full-scale sectarian war that has unnerved and antagonized his neighbors.
But the world is what it is, and the regional powers await an American green light that has never come. Plainly, an American president boastful that he had quit Iraq can not stand before his “progressive” base and proclaim the assumption of a new burden in Syria.
“The tide of war is receding” is one of the favorite mantras of this administration and its leaders. But what is receding before our eyes is the American influence in the world order. Mr. Obama has narrowed the horizons of a country with historically wide vistas. In the Obamian world, that which can’t be done with drones and the daring of our SEALs is left untended. In a note of exquisite irony, Barack Obama had made much of his predecessor’s poor standing in Islamic lands. Trumpet the polls, fall to them: Mr. Obama’s standing in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, is now lower than George W. Bush’s standing. A placard carried by a group of Syrian protesters tells it all: “We miss Bush’s audacity.”
Now it could be that the American people have been made weary by foreign engagements, and that the economic distress—our debt, our deficits, an anemic recovery, persisting high levels of unemployment—has made us reticent in the face of burdens abroad. That would be an irony all its own—a president who mismanaged the economy being rewarded for the lack of confidence his presidency itself has generated.
From the very beginning, Mr. Obama has been a herald of a “declinist” reading of America. We can’t aid the Syrians, our touch would sully them. We can’t identity ourselves with the democratic aspirations of the Iranians, for we must conciliate their rulers. We can’t defend the cause of liberty and freedom, for in that Obamian worldview, freedom is a fragile, uncertain bet the world over.
So our Secretary of State circles the globe, nine countries in thirteen days in one recent expedition. The bet of this president is that the American people will neither notice, nor care about, the erosion of the American ascendency that enabled this country to do good and to do well in the order of nations. Come November, the country will deliver its verdict on this stunted vision of its place in the world.
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This would be better in the Foreign Policy thread.
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http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/09/14/FLASHBACK-Obama-The-Day-Im-Inaugurated-Muslim-Hostility-Will-Ease
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I caught the last third or so of BO's speech at the UN this morning and I must say I thought he spoke rather well. Instead of harassing youtube to take down the clip, or having the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff call up an outlier Christian preacher to ask him to cool it, or dhimmi statements, he actually spoke rather well in defense of free speech. There were some additional things he said and they sounded nice too-- though feel good fuzziness will not carry the day. That said, for the average voter much of it probably sounded pretty coherent.
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We knew it was al Qaida within 24 hours, America was attacked again, and they sent out UN Ambassador Susan Rice to all the Sunday talk shows, I saw 2 or 3 of them, and she dished out the known false company line about a video no one saw and spontaneous crowds etc.
Isn't that the kind of deception they were (falsely) accusing of Bush all through the Iraq war?
Begs the questions, why lie and what else are they lying about?
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We knew it was al Qaida within 24 hours, America was attacked again, and they sent out UN Ambassador Susan Rice to all the Sunday talk shows, I saw 2 or 3 of them, and she dished out the known false company line about a video no one saw and spontaneous crowds etc.
Isn't that the kind of deception they were (falsely) accusing of Bush all through the Iraq war?
Begs the questions, why lie and what else are they lying about?
They are lying about everything. As far as this 9/11 attack, because in 2008 Buraq was marketed to a war-weary American public as the answer to the global jihad. He'd get elected and use his star power to make the seething hatred from the muslim world evaporate with enough groveling.
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We must hate the rich! Oh, unless they are loyal party members.....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2205541/280-000-champagne-tower-Obama-fundraiser-Jay-Z-Beyonce-Manhattan-night-club.html
Speaking to the 47%: The $105,000 champagne tower featured at Obama fundraiser hosted by Jay-Z and BeyonceBy Toby Harnden
PUBLISHED: 09:07 EST, 19 September 2012 | UPDATED: 02:06 EST, 20 September 2012
Comments (258) Share
President Barack Obama attended a fundraiser at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Manhattan that featured a champagne tower of 350 bottles worth $105,000 - more than twice the median household income of an American family.
The tower of $300-a-bottle Armand de Brignac Brut Gold, known as 'Ace of Spades' because of its label, is a permanent fixture at the club.
'It’s floor-to-ceiling gold bottles in the entire space,' a 40/40 representative told the New York Post. 'It’s beautiful—breathtaking. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in.'
The median income for an American family was $51,413 in 2011.
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/09/19/article-2205541-1517E3ED000005DC-132_634x505.jpg)
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2205541/280-000-champagne-tower-Obama-fundraiser-Jay-Z-Beyonce-Manhattan-night-club.htm
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We must hate the rich! Oh, unless they are loyal party members.....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2205541/280-000-champagne-tower-Obama-fundraiser-Jay-Z-Beyonce-Manhattan-night-club.html
Speaking to the 47%: The $105,000 champagne tower featured at Obama fundraiser hosted by Jay-Z and BeyonceBy Toby Harnden
PUBLISHED: 09:07 EST, 19 September 2012 | UPDATED: 02:06 EST, 20 September 2012
Comments (258) Share
President Barack Obama attended a fundraiser at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Manhattan that featured a champagne tower of 350 bottles worth $105,000 - more than twice the median household income of an American family.
The tower of $300-a-bottle Armand de Brignac Brut Gold, known as 'Ace of Spades' because of its label, is a permanent fixture at the club.
'It’s floor-to-ceiling gold bottles in the entire space,' a 40/40 representative told the New York Post. 'It’s beautiful—breathtaking. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in.'
The median income for an American family was $51,413 in 2011.
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/09/19/article-2205541-1517E3ED000005DC-132_634x505.jpg)
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2205541/280-000-champagne-tower-Obama-fundraiser-Jay-Z-Beyonce-Manhattan-night-club.htm
http://news.investors.com/092512-626958-household-income-down-82-under-president-obama.aspx
In another sign that the economic recovery under President Obama is not producing gains for average Americans, median household incomes fell 1.1% in August to $50,678, according to a report released Tuesday by Sentier Research.
Since the economic recovery started in June 2009, household incomes are down 5.7%, the Sentier data show, and they are down more than 8% since Obama took office.
"Even though we are technically in an economic recovery, real median annual household income is having a difficult time maintaining its present level, much less recovering," said Sentier co-founder and former Census Bureau official Gordon Green.
Earlier this month, the Census Bureau released its annual report showing that the number of people in poverty was nearly 3 million higher in 2011 than in 2009, an increase of 6%.
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First this from the previous post: "Earlier this month, the Census Bureau released its annual report showing that the number of people in poverty was nearly 3 million higher in 2011 than in 2009, an increase of 6%."
- I first read that posted by GM on our cognitive dissonance thread. Can you imagine how many times and how many places that would be running if this were 5 weeks before an election and George Bush was President!
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John Hinderaker from Powerline covering Pres. Obama's speech to the UN mixing quotes and commentary, might be easier to read at the link:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/09/obamas-speech-at-the-united-nations.php
Obama’s Speech at the United Nations
Barack Obama and Mitt Romney both delivered foreign policy speeches in New York today, Obama at the United Nations and Romney at the Clinton Global Initiative. The coincidence offers an opportunity for comparison. For now, let’s look at Obama’s speech, and I will try to get to Romney’s tomorrow.
The context for Obama’s speech was turmoil in the Arab world and the murder of Ambassador Stevens and other Americans in Benghazi. The speech wasn’t as bad as it might have been; for one thing, Obama offered, for the first time, a reasonably strong defense of free speech. On balance, I give it a C-.
Obama began with a tribute to Chris Stevens’s career, as was appropriate. But at the key moment, Obama characteristically slipped into the passive voice:
Two weeks ago, he travelled to Benghazi to review plans to establish a new cultural center and modernize a hospital. That’s when America’s compound came under attack. Along with three of his colleagues, Chris was killed in the city he helped to save.
The compound “came under attack.” By whom? At least this time, Obama acknowledged that it was an attack and not a demonstration. And Stevens “was killed.” Again, while Obama was not explicit, he seemed to be backing away from the smoke inhalation theory. But who killed Stevens, and how, and when? We are not likely to learn anything more about his fate until after the election.
The next passage is dishonest:
If we are serious about upholding these ideals, it will not be enough to put more guards in front of an Embassy; or to put out statements of regret, and wait for the outrage to pass. If we are serious about those ideals, we must speak honestly about the deeper causes of this crisis.
Why won’t it be enough to put more guards in front of an embassy? The embassy in Cairo was protected by Marine guards, and the mob didn’t sack it, although they did succeed in tearing down the stars and stripes and replacing it with al Qaeda’s flag. More guards could have prevented that. And the consulate in Benghazi apparently wasn’t guarded at all. It should have been. Here, Obama implicitly lets himself off the hook for the needless deaths of four Americans.
Obama expressed enthusiasm for the “Arab spring.” As he ticked off his administration’s actions with respect to each country, he highlighted, certainly unintentionally, the lack of any coherent policy:
We were inspired by the Tunisian protests that toppled a dictator, because we recognized our own beliefs in the aspirations of men and women who took to the streets.
We insisted on change in Egypt, because our support for democracy put us on the side of the people.
We supported a transition of leadership in Yemen, because the interests of the people were not being served by a corrupt status quo.
We intervened in Libya alongside a broad coalition, and with the mandate of the U.N. Security Council, because we had the ability to stop the slaughter of innocents; and because we believed that the aspirations of the people were more powerful than a tyrant.
And as we meet here, we again declare that the regime of Bashar al-Assad must come to an end so that the suffering of the Syrian people can stop, and a new dawn can begin.
With hindsight, maybe we shouldn’t have “insisted” on regime change in Egypt, or led from behind on Libya.
Obama’s discussion of the “deeper causes” of Muslim unrest included the inevitable denunciation of the YouTube video that ostensibly provoked the protests:
That is what we saw play out the last two weeks, as a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well – for as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and religion. We are home to Muslims who worship across our country. We not only respect the freedom of religion – we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe. We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them.
This is profoundly hypocritical. Certainly the video puts Islam and Muhammad in a bad light, but no more so than countless movies, plays, books, etc. have portrayed Christianity and Judaism. Moreover, compared to much popular entertainment, it is neither crude nor disgusting. As just about everyone has pointed out, Hillary Clinton screamed with glee at “The Book of Mormon,” which is at least as disrespectful toward the Mormon church as the YouTube video is toward Islam, and considerably cruder. It is not the case that America rejects insults to religions; on the contrary, every one of its powerful cultural institutions encourages such insults. But I guess that is a little more truth than Obama thought his audience could handle.
Next, Obama went on to explain why he didn’t ban the video. (The same explanation would apply to “The Book of Mormon,” but apparently no one has suggested that he should ban that play.):
I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. The answer is enshrined in our laws: our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech. Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense. Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs. Moreover, as President of our country, and Commander-in-Chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so. Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views – even views that we disagree with.
Yes, that’s right–Barack Obama and Jesus, they are both subject to so much unfair abuse!
We do so not because we support hateful speech, but because our Founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views, and practice their own faith, may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics, or oppress minorities. We do so because given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech – the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.
I know that not all countries in this body share this understanding of the protection of free speech. Yet in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete. The question, then, is how we respond. And on this we must agree: there is no speech that justifies mindless violence.
There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents. There is no video that justifies an attack on an Embassy. There is no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon, or destroy a school in Tunis, or cause death and destruction in Pakistan. …
All true, although it assorts oddly with the administration’s hauling in the maker of the YouTube video for questioning. Obama went on to discourse on who must and must not control the future, culminating with this:
The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.
Really? There is a great deal to criticize in Islam, and in the life of the “prophet,” which was anything but exemplary. Peoples who now labor under the yoke of Islam will never make progress until such critiques are heard and acted upon. My own view is that the future very much belongs to those who “slander”–or criticize, anyway, which is the same thing–the “prophet of Islam.” Obama next tries to draw a parallel with other religions:
Yet to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see when the image of Jesus Christ is desecrated, churches are destroyed, or the Holocaust is denied.
This is, of course, a false parallel; slandering the prophet is by no means on a par with burning down churches and murdering their congregants, which is what happens in the Islamic world. And the problem with Holocaust denial is that it is not an academic debate, however disingenuous; rather, the danger is that those who deny the Holocaust, like, say, Ahmadinejad and his followers, yearn to repeat it. And whom is Obama kidding? Neither he nor anyone else has any intention of defending Christians and Jews against either symbolic or real assaults. For example, don’t hold your breath waiting for Obama to denounce Bill Maher’s (that would be million-dollar Bill) slurs against Christianity.
Next, this:
Among Israelis and Palestinians, the future must not belong to those who turn their backs on the prospect of peace. Let us leave behind those who thrive on conflict, and those who reject the right of Israel to exist.
The Israelis must wonder why Obama had to drag them into it. What do they have to do with the riots that roil various Muslim countries? Nothing. And if the Obama administration protected America’s embassies and consulates as competently as Netanyahu’s government protects Israel’s, Obama wouldn’t have to begin his speech with a tribute to a murdered ambassador.
Well, that’s enough. Obama concluded his speech with what amounted to a plea for his own re-election, which probably puzzled his listeners. Having walked through the speech once more, I think my grade may have been a bit generous. D+ is perhaps closer to the mark.
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Elsewhere I have heard the opinion from those who were involved in previous administrations that the intention of the written intelligence briefing is to start the discussion on security risks, not to end it.
"one giant difference between then (Reagan's missed briefings) and now: Sept. 11, 2001"
" interestingly, since my columns appeared, Obama attended his PDB meeting seven days in a row for the first time in seven months. If live briefings are no better than paper briefings, why has Obama suddenly begun receiving briefings in-person?"
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-bogus-defense-of-obamas-intelligence-briefing-record/2012/09/25/f5ae10de-071d-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_print.html
A bogus defense of Obama’s intelligence briefing record
By Marc A. Thiessen, Published: September 25
The Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, takes issue with my report that since taking office President Obama has skipped his daily intelligence meeting more than half the time. So let’s fact check the Fact Checker.
The facts
After hearing from sources in the intelligence community that President Obama was not attending his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis, I asked researchers at the Government Accountability Institute, a nonpartisan research group headed by Peter Schweizer (who is also my business partner in a speechwriting firm, Oval Office Writers) to examine at Obama’s official schedule. We found during his first 1,225 days in office, Obama had attended his daily meeting to discuss the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.
After Islamist radicals stormed our embassy in Cairo and terrorists killed our ambassador to Libya on Sept. 11, I further reported that Obama also skipped his daily intelligence meeting every day in the week leading up to the attacks. The day after the attack, he scheduled but then canceled his daily intelligence meeting, while finding time to go to Las Vegas for a campaign rally.
These facts are not in dispute. Indeed, before publishing both of my columns, I specifically asked National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor if there were instances where the president had, in fact, held his daily meeting on the PDB that did not appear on the official public calendar. He offered no examples, and not once did he challenge the numbers I presented. Neither has any White House official challenged them in the weeks since this controversy erupted. So, as a factual matter, Kessler offers no evidence that the information I presented on Obama’s PDB meeting attendance is wrong.
What Kessler and the Obama White House do argue is a matter not of fact but of opinion — that it does not matter if Obama attends a daily intelligence meeting because he reads his PDB every day. Kessler compares Obama to former presidents going back to Reagan and Nixon and finds that “many did not have an oral briefing” — and that this means Obama has simply “chosen to receive his information in a different manner than his predecessor.” There are several problems with this.
First, Kessler ignores one giant difference between then and now: Sept. 11, 2001.
Comparing lax presidential briefing habits before and after 9/11 is like comparing lax presidential security habits before and after the Kennedy assassination. After terrorists killed 3,000 people in our midst, everything changed — and the president’s daily intelligence meeting took on dramatically increased importance. President Bush made it a priority to sit down with his senior intelligence advisers every day to discuss overnight intelligence on threats to the country. President Obama has not.
Kessler notes that Bill Clinton’s CIA director could not get a meeting with him, and that Clinton was known to comment that his morning papers were better than the intelligence brief. This is more an indictment of Clinton than a defense of Obama. On Clinton’s watch, terrorists attacked us repeatedly without cost or consequence — from the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, to the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, to the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, to the USS Cole in 2000.
As for Nixon and Reagan, comparing Obama’s briefing habits to those of presidents who served 30 to 40 years ago — in an era when advanced technology consisted of electric typewriters — is irrelevant in an age of 21st-century surveillance and collection capabilities. The volume, speed and complexity of intelligence has changed dramatically in the intervening decades — and with it the need for interactive briefings.
Without criticizing Obama, former CIA director Mike Hayden recently explained the value of the in-person meeting: “With President Bush, I really saw the value of the personal interaction that we had on an almost daily basis. There was rich give-and-take, so that not only did the president get the advantage of knowing the analysts’ innermost thoughts, but they also were able to leave the room understanding what the president believed he needed in order to make the kind of decisions he had to make.”
In addition to the PDB, Hayden said, Bush also received two longer, magazine-length pieces each week, and additional in-person briefings were held on each of these. On Thursdays, Hayden also briefed Bush for a half-hour on sensitive collection programs and covert action.
The Pinocchio test
Perhaps Obama does not feel he needs such daily interaction. But the fact that he has not been having it is indisputable. (Though, interestingly, since my columns appeared, Obama attended his PDB meeting seven days in a row for the first time in seven months. If live briefings are no better than paper briefings, why has Obama suddenly begun receiving briefings in-person?)
It is a fact that for eight years before Obama took office, there was a daily meeting to discuss the PDB. And it is a fact that, on taking office, Obama stopped holding the daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis. Kessler may not think that is important, and he is entitled to his own opinion — but not his own facts.
I give Four Pinocchios to the Fact Checker.
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"In March, "Foreign Policy" magazine reported that "several high-level sources" in the Obama administration had revealed Israel's secret relationship with Azerbaijan, where Israeli planes could refuel to or from an air strike against Iran's nuclear facilities." http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/09/27/obama_versus_obama_part_iv_115591.html
Not really undermining an ally if they aren't really an ally.
This was last March. Where was the investigation? Where is the outrage?
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The View, the Noise, the Nuke and the Nut
"Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason." --Benjamin Franklin
One man at the UN gets it -- Netanyahu drew the red line for Iran's nuclear program
After two weeks of steady denials that recent strikes on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt, were terrorist attacks -- along with blaming a YouTube clip for violence and unrest in all of the Muslim world -- this week opened with another smooth move from Team Hope-n-Change.
Kicking off his latest oratorical mini-seminar this week at the UN General Assembly, Barack Obama belted out a 30-minute paean to free speech and tolerance. He also grudgingly reserved only two paragraphs near the end of his screed to address what should have been his main point, the threat posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions. Although two weeks late-to-need, the speech was nonetheless underwhelming when it finally arrived.
While the majority of his remarks were supposed to be devoted to advocacy for free speech and mutual respect between differing religions and worldviews, Obama undermined his own case by once again rejecting the individual free speech rights of the producer of the 14-minute YouTube clip, "The Innocence of Muslims." He declared that the "crude and disgusting" video had "sparked outrage" among Muslims for its disparaging remarks about Mohammed. (As a side note, the man responsible for the video, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, was arrested Thursday because unsupervised Internet activity allegedly violates his parole from a previous conviction.)
At once alienating the U.S. government from this particular individual's right to free speech, Obama apparently saw no irony in affirming a commitment to that constitutional right for Americans. He must have been thinking in terms of "collective rights" -- the only kind statists allow -- so this oversight is somewhat understandable. It's also interesting to note that just the day before this denunciation, Obama told the leftist gaggle on "The View" that "the best way to marginalize that kind of speech is to ignore it." Obviously, he thinks the best way to "ignore" such a video is to denounce it in six different languages at the UN General Assembly.
Of course, immediately after stating that the U.S. Constitution protects free speech, he went on to make this pathetic addition: "I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech. We recognize that." If the video is indeed one of the causes of violence in the Muslim world, it becomes self-evident that those affected countries are not exactly huge fans of free speech and tolerance. Pakistan tops our list as "most tolerant," after Pakistan's railway minister offered $100,000 to anyone who kills the maker of the video.
To be sure, Obama did attempt to make a case against extremism, reminding his audience, "Let us remember that Muslims have suffered the most at the hands of extremism." While technically correct, it's another Obama half-truth as most Muslim suffering is self-inflicted. None of these attacks and protests were the work of non-Muslims. (In related news, the New York display of the taxpayer funded "art" piece "Piss Christ," in which a crucifix is submerged in the artist's urine, did not cause rioting or murderous violence from Christians.)
Throwing gas on the fire, Obama let loose a string of "the future must not belong to" so-and-so remarks, including, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." He followed up this statement with a quote from Gandhi and a pleasant bromide about condemning intolerance, generally. Which statement is more likely to be repeated by Muslim extremists?
Again, perhaps the president should have focused on the imminent danger posed to the world by Iran. The ongoing Iranian nuclear crisis warranted short shrift in Obama's speech -- clearly, the matter is not a priority for him. Maybe it should be, though: In his usual, even-keeled delivery, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week again called for the "elimination" of Israel. We suppose this sounds slightly better than the phrase he used in 2005 -- that Israel should be "wiped off the map" -- but it still reflects deadly intent and nukes would be a tool to that end.
Nor would Obama meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who warned that Iran will effectively have a nuclear weapon by next summer, and helpfully drew a literal red line so the illiterates at the UN understand. The president was too busy chatting with the harpies on "The View" to be bothered with what he told "60 Minutes" was "noise." Obama's priorities are so out of whack, even NBC News Obamaphile Andrea Mitchell scolded, "This was not the moment to sit down with 'The View.'"
No, it was actually the moment to sit down with other world leaders, one-on-one, in serious discussions about grave matters, as many foreign heads of state -- including Israel's Netanyahu -- had asked him to do. However, that task fell to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. No doubt foreign leaders were unimpressed by the president's acting like they didn't exist.
Something else didn't exist, either: respect from the president for those who were murdered in Libya. In that same "60 Minutes" interview, the tone-deaf Leader of the Free World referred to the violence in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere, including the context of four murdered Americans, as "bumps in the road." As columnist Charles Krauthammer notes, "If Romney had said that the death of our ambassador, the attack on our embassy, the death of three other Americans, the hoisting of the black al Qaeda flag over four U.S. embassies, and demonstrations all over the Middle East all the way to Indonesia including a burning in effigy of Obama in Sri Lanka of all places is a bump in the road, it would be a three day headline." Indeed. The president's statement is disgraceful.
We close where we started: remember those denials of terrorist attacks on American sovereignties abroad? Well, not so fast. Now Secretary Clinton has conceded "preliminary findings" that, yes, well, indeed these attacks might have been terrorist strikes after all. But don't judge the administration too harshly for having zero situational awareness on the entire set of events. After all, who could have known that rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) used in coordinated attacks against American assets on the anniversary of 9/11 "might" suggest a link to terrorism?
Post your opinion.
Quote of the Week
"My statement to the United Nations would have been, 'The future does not belong to those who attack our Embassies and Consulates and kill our Ambassadors. The Angel of Death in the form of an American Bald Eagle will visit you and wreak havoc and destruction upon your existence.'" --Rep. Allen West (R-FL)
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President Obama now has more months over 8% unemployment than the last 14 Presidential terms combined, all Presidents since 1948 when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began recording the monthly unemployment rate. The score is 43 for Obama and 39 for Truman, Eisenhower 1st term, Eisenhower 2nd term, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan 1st term, Reagan 2nd term, Bush, Clinton first term, W Bush 1st term, W Bush 2nd term.
Source: BLS
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Quote excerpts from (Democrat) Walter Russel Mead. (His post also praises the President's UN speech). http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/09/26/the-presidents-speech/
"...some of the administration’s (foreign policy) misjudgments have been serious. Perhaps the most fundamental and most consequential was the decision to downplay the degree to which what the administration refuses to call the global war on terror still dominates American policy and American strategic thought. Like the characters in a Harry Potter story who don’t want to speak Lord Voldemort’s name because they are afraid that using his name makes him stronger,...
The administration sought to demobilize the American people and encouraged the nation to stand down from the war footing we assumed after the first 9/11. Instead of providing leadership and guidance to a public baffled, weary and confused by the struggles of the last decade, this administration sought to turn the national conversation away from the radical threat. It tried to change the subject when it should have helped the country develop a serious and sophisticated view of a complicated, dangerous and continuing international threat. 9/11/12 has blown the obfuscation away. The global war on terror (or whatever we call it, and the old Bush-era name is flawed) hasn’t ended; it has evolved."
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/09/26/the-presidents-speech/
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Missing in the scandal is some storyline about what was supposed to go right that unfortunately went wrong in Operation Fast and Furious. Here and on right wing radio the story is advanced that Obama's far lefties were sending guns to be used in violence to help them to ban more guns. I actually think that is true and no other story line has been advanced to my knowledge. Since this sounds cynical and far fetched, people don't know what to think about it, IMO. Just a scandal of an R House trying to shake down a Dem White House for more documents to embarrass them.
The White House first defense was that this was Bush program. That wasn't true, but if it was, didn't they promise to end the failing programs of the Bush administration - so that is no defense even if it were true!
The Dept of Justice operates in the Executive Branch with oversight and funding from congress. Oversight is hindered because of the stonewall but were they really authorized in law to perform such an operation?
Did they consult or inform the Mexican government? Was permission granted?
Who was responsible for security in Benghazi? State Dept? Marines? DOD? WHO?? No one.
Who took credit for the one achievement overseas, killing Osama? Well that one is easy. President Obama directed the mission. 14 times in the first person, he made the tough decision, even declared as recently as yesterday through his surrogate on Meet the Press that Romney would not have done it. Obama did it because he is the Commander in Chief and the buck stops there. But only if the operation is successful.
One might recall that the President made the Secretary of the Navy issue a memo taking full responsibility while the troops were taking their positions, just in case the operation failed.
President Obama should be addressing the nation after this Univision piece, APOLOGIZING TO MEXICO, apologizing to America and the victims families, taking full responsibility, explaining what it was they were trying to accomplish and explaining what went wrong. He will not do that.
What a worm we have for a President.
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Stephens: Benghazi Was Obama's 3 a.m. Call Libya was a failure of policy and worldview, not intelligence.
Why won't the Libya story go away? Why can't the memory of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and his staff be consigned to the same sad-and-sealed file of Americans killed abroad in dangerous line of duty? How has an episode that seemed at first to have been mishandled by the Romney camp become an emblem of a feckless and deluded foreign policy?
The story-switching and stonewalling haven't helped. But let's start a little earlier.
The hour is 5 p.m., Sept. 11, Washington time, and the scene is an Oval Office meeting among President Obama, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi has been under assault for roughly 90 minutes. Some 30 U.S. citizens are at mortal risk. The whereabouts of Ambassador Stevens are unknown.
What is uppermost on the minds of the president and his advisers? The safety of Americans, no doubt. So what are they prepared to do about it? Here is The Wall Street Journal's account of the meeting:
"There was no serious consideration at that hour of intervention with military force, officials said. Doing so without Libya's permission could represent a violation of sovereignty and inflame the situation, they said. Instead, the State Department reached out to the Libyan government to get reinforcements to the scene."
So it did. Yet the attack was far from over. After leaving the principal U.S. compound, the Americans retreated to a second, supposedly secret facility, which soon came under deadly mortar fire. Time to call in the troops?
"Some officials said the U.S. could also have sent aircraft to the scene as a 'show of force' to scare off the attackers," the Journal reported, noting that there's a U.S. air base just 450 miles away in Sicily. "State Department officials dismissed the suggestions as unrealistic. 'They would not have gotten there in two hours, four hours or six hours.'"
The U.S. security detail only left Washington at 8 a.m. on Sept. 12, more than 10 hours after the attacks began. A commercial jet liner can fly from D.C. to Benghazi in about the same time.
All this is noted with the benefit of hindsight, and the administration deserves to be judged accordingly. But it also deserves to be judged in light of what it knew prior to the attack, including an attack on the mission in June and heightened threat warnings throughout the summer.
So how did the administration do on that count? "That the local security did so well back in June probably gave us a false sense of security," an unnamed American official who has served in Libya told the New York Times last week.
The logic here is akin to supposing that because the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center failed to bring down the towers, nobody need have been concerned thereafter. But let's still make allowances for the kind of bureaucratic ineptitude that knows neither administration nor political party.
The more serious question is why the administration alighted on the idea that the attack wasn't a terrorist act at all. Also, what did the White House think it had to gain by adopting the jihadist narrative that a supposedly inflammatory video clip was at the root of the trouble?
Nobody can say. All the administration will acknowledge is that it has "revised [its] initial assessment to reflect new information that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack."
That's from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. It suggests that our intelligence agencies are either much dumber than previously supposed (always a strong possibility) or much more politicized (equally plausible).
No doubt the administration would now like to shift blame to Mr. Clapper. But what happened in Benghazi was not a failure of intelligence. It was a failure of policy, stemming from a flawed worldview and the political needs of an election season.
Let's review:
The U.S. ignores warnings of a parlous security situation in Benghazi. Nothing happens because nobody is really paying attention, especially in an election year, and because Libya is supposed to be a foreign-policy success. When something does happen, the administration's concerns for the safety of Americans are subordinated to considerations of Libyan "sovereignty" and the need for "permission." After the attack the administration blames a video, perhaps because it would be politically inconvenient to note that al Qaeda is far from defeated, and that we are no more popular under Mr. Obama than we were under George W. Bush. Denouncing the video also appeals to the administration's reflexive habits of blaming America first. Once that story falls apart, it's time to blame the intel munchkins and move on.
It was five in the afternoon when Mr. Obama took his 3 a.m. call. He still flubbed it.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
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Update: American diplomats in Libya made repeated requests for increased security for the consulate in Benghazi. Request denied. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/house-committee-says-requests-for-more-security-for-us-diplomats-in-libya-were-denied/2012/10/02/82183b4c-0cac-11e2-97a7-45c05ef136b2_story.html
From Crafty's post: "...there's a U.S. air base just 450 miles away in Sicily." (L.A. to Reno, NV roughly)
This must have been a haunting feeling in the end. Imagine you are one of the diplomats under attack. The nearest support is 450 miles away and the strongest country in the world who sent you there is not willing to send help for fear of offending the group that is tracking you down, attacking and killing you. Other than that, how do you feel about your security?
Meanwhile, we are closing out in Iraq without leaving a force 'over the horizon' and preparing to do the same in Afghanistan, before we send in our future diplomats. There is something missing in a strategy of surrender without locking in gains, providing arms without safeguards, leading from behind without establishing a base or any military presence, enemy and terrorist denial, and scaling down our military superiority as our rivals and enemies are scaling theirs up.
Stephens, WSJ continued:
"Let's review:
The U.S. ignores warnings of a parlous security situation in Benghazi. Nothing happens because nobody is really paying attention, especially in an election year, and because Libya is supposed to be a foreign-policy success. When something does happen, the administration's concerns for the safety of Americans are subordinated to considerations of Libyan "sovereignty" and the need for "permission." After the attack the administration blames a video, perhaps because it would be politically inconvenient to note that al Qaeda is far from defeated, and that we are no more popular under Mr. Obama than we were under George W. Bush. Denouncing the video also appeals to the administration's reflexive habits of blaming America first."
Voters are confused about what to do in the Middle East right now, but the approach taken by this administration is ripe for valid criticism. If we deny American interests are at stake, why are American diplomats on the ground? If we deny they are at risk post 9/11/01 and after all the other attacks and embassy bombings and knowing al Qaida types are part of the coalition we supported, then we are fools escalating our own danger.
I don't know the answers but the first step is to see the enemy for what it is. This President didn't and doesn't. Sent his underling out to 5 Sunday shows to say it was a spontaneous reaction to an unwatched video trailer. Egypt did not get safer after the Obama Cairo speech. The enemies are not enemies of George Bush or Republicans; they are enemies of America.
Who got fired over the lack of security in Benghazi and isn't the James Clapper referenced here the same 'intelligence' director who said the Muslim Brotherhood is secular?
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Who knew?
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/18/calif-official-whose-agency-under-reported-unemployment-stats-was-obama-campaign-donor/
Calif. official whose agency under-reported unemployment stats was Obama campaign donor
Marty Morgenstern, the secretary of the California agency that substantially under-reported unemployment claims last week, contributed to President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election campaign, The Daily Caller has learned.
On Oct. 11, the federal government reported that weekly jobless claims were down significantly, suggesting a dramatic national increase in economic growth and a steep decline in layoffs. Jobless claims, according to the Labor Department, had fallen by 30,000 to 339,000, their lowest level since February 2008.
The good news for the Obama administration spread quickly, with outlets like CNN and Bloomberg declaring, “Jobless claims fall to four-year low.”
But within hours, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Labor Department analysts announced that one major state had failed to fully document jobless claims. They declined to name the state.
Speculation among market watchers and economists initially focused on California, but the state’s Employment Development Department strongly denied that it had failed to properly document the data.
“Reports that California failed to fully report data to the U.S. Department of Labor, as required, are incorrect and irresponsible,” California Employment Development Department director Pam Harris said in a statement last week. “The California Employment Development Department, which administers the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program in the state, has reported all UI claims data and submitted the data on time.”
Early Thursday, the federal government finally revealed that California had, in fact, under-reported jobless data, skewing the national jobless claims results. This week’s updated jobs report corrected the error and showed unemployment claims spiking back up by 46,000 to 388,000.
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Morgenstern to lead the California Labor & Workforce Development Agency in 2011. The state agency oversees the Employment Development Department.
According to campaign disclosure records, Morgenstern donated $4,600 — the maximum amount allowed by law — to the 2008 Obama camapaign, beginning with a $1,000 contribution to Obama for America in February 2008. Morgenstern followed up that donation with a $1,300 contribution in June, and then a $2,300 payout in early September.
On all three disclosures, Morgenstern indicated that he was either ”not employed” or “retired.”
According to the Sacramento Business Journal, however, Morgenstern was employed since 2003 as a consultant for the liberal University of California education system.
California officials have denied wrongdoing.
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Bob Woodward: Obama 'mistaken' on sequester
'What the president said is not correct,' Woodward told POLITICO | AP Photo
By LEIGH MUNSIL | 10/23/12 4:24 PM EDT Updated: 10/23/12 6:02 PM EDT
Bob Woodward says President Barack Obama got some of his facts wrong on sequester at Monday night’s debate.
Woodward’s book, “The Price of Politics,” has been the go-to fact check source for the president’s answer, in which he claimed the idea of using deep, automatic, across-the-board domestic and defense spending cuts to force Congress to address the nation’s burgeoning federal deficit originated from Congress, not from the White House.
“What the president said is not correct,” Woodward told POLITICO Tuesday. “He’s mistaken. And it’s refuted by the people who work for him.”
Woodward, a Washington Post journalist who was a key reporter on the initial coverage of the Watergate scandal, said he stands behind his reporting in the book, which drew upon sources involved in last year’s deficit talks and detailed notes taken in the meetings.
(Also on POLITICO: Woodward's book: 5 telling moments)
Woodward reports in his book that White House Office of Management Director Jack Lew and Legislative Affairs Director Rob Nabors took the proposal for sequestration to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and then it was presented to congressional Republicans.
During the debate, however, Obama said the idea originated on Capitol Hill.
“First of all, the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed,” Obama said, adding his strongest pronouncement to date on its future: “It will not happen.”
Woodward said there’s a possibility the president was unaware of how the idea came about.
“It’s a complicated process — and in fairness to the president — maybe he didn’t know that they were doing this because it’s kind of technical budget jargon,” Woodward said.
“What I wrote — it’s specific date, time, place, participants,” he said. “What I’ve reported is totally accurate. Call Nabors and Lew. Or ask the White House. I mean, they know that’s accurate.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82772.html#ixzz2AAjIgMNA
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Did Pres. Obama know about two PRIOR Benghazi attacks?
If he did, then he knew this was a terror attack too BEFORE any report or investigation.
If he did not, were they in the daily intelligence briefings that he did not attend in person.
If they were in there and he did not see them, did he play golf or hold fund raisers on those days.
Just curious.
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report-bret-baier/blog/2012/10/19/benghazi-documents-show-stevens-worried-about-security-threats-al-qaeda
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"Maybe peace would have broken out with a different kind of White House, one less committed to waging a perpetual campaign--a White House that would see a 51-48 victory as a call to humility and compromise rather than an irrefutable mandate."
- The junior Senator from Illinois, Audacity of Hope, 2006, p.20, regarding George W Bush's reelection in 2004
http://books.google.com/books?id=4vlcQZU6mwQC&pg=PA20#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Obama's 3am call came in at 5pm(?) and he was already awake.
Pres Bush was visiting a Kindergartner class when the 9/11/01 attacks unfolded and took several minutes to pull away. The delay became a major theme in a movie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WztB6HzXxI
One hour and 18 minutes after the attacks in Benghazi began, the President was in the room. Still doing nothing about it. (?)
Right or wrong that it was so hard to get his attention, it took 2 months with a national election elapsed to even get the question asked publicly: Where was he when he learned the United States was under attack and what exactly did he do in response to everything he learned - in real time.
We still have no answer. (Please correct if wrong.)
The official White House schedule indicates he was in the White House when it happened: http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-11
Benghazi is a coastal, Mediterranean city. We had a drone in the air. We have an Naval air base in Sicily with some of the fastest planes in the world.(?) If the base in Sicily is only to protect Sicily, why the planes?
The stand down order has been denied.(?) The election is over. I understand the media's role in the election but can we please now learn what was known when and what exactly was our response.
The argument over defense cuts is academic when we don't use the defense assets to that we have to protect American lives, embassies and diplomats.
Were we just trying to set a good example for Israel in our advocacy of Obama's do-not-defend-your-own-country doctrine?
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Is anyone following this?
http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2012/12/chuck-hagel-for-defense-secret.php
http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/search?q=hagel
http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/chuck-hagels-record-on-israel-draws-scrutiny-85123.html
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/12/my-thesis-about-hagel.php
Glick: "Obama wants to fundamentally transform the US relationship with Israel."
Hagel's record rom the 2nd link:
# In August 2006, Hagel was one of only 12 Senators who refused to write the EU asking them to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
# In October 2000, Hagel was one of only 4 Senators who refused to sign a Senate letter in support of Israel.
# In November 2001, Hagel was one of only 11 Senators who refused to sign a letter urging President Bush not to meet with the late Yassir Arafat until his forces ended the violence against Israel.
# In December 2005, Hagel was one of only 27 who refused to sign a letter to President Bush to pressure the Palestinian Authority to ban terrorist groups from participating in Palestinian legislative elections.
# In June 2004, Hagel refused to sign a letter urging President Bush to highlight Iran's nuclear program at the G-8 summit.
Here's what the National Review wrote about Hagel's stance on Israel in 2002:
"There's nothing Hagel likes less than talking about right and wrong in the context of foreign policy. Pro-Israeli groups view him almost uniformly as a problem. 'He doesn't always cast bad votes, but he always says the wrong thing,' comments an Israel supporter who watches Congress. An April speech is a case in point. 'We will need a wider lens to grasp the complex nature and consequences of terrorism,' said Hagel. He went on to cite a few examples of terrorism: FARC in Colombia, Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, and the Palestinian suicide bombers. Then he continued, 'Arabs and Palestinians view the civilian casualties resulting from Israeli military occupation as terrorism.' He didn't exactly say he shares this view - but he also failed to reject it."
And here's what the anti-Israel group, CAIR, wrote in praise of Hagel:
"Potential presidential candidates for 2008, like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Joe Biden and Newt Gingrich, were falling all over themselves to express their support for Israel. The only exception to that rule was Senator Chuck Hagel ?" [Council on American-Islamic Relations, 8/28/06]
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/08/15/barack-obama-this-is-your-exotic-life/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2012-12-18_186359&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_186359_186366
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(http://cdn.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/gunironyobama3.jpg)
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(http://cdn.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/gunironyobama2.jpg)
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/12/barack_obama_s_eulogy_to_daniel_inouye_told_us_more_about_the_president.html
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On that Inouye eulogy (previous post in the thread) the final count was “my” 21 times, “me” 12 times and “I” an incredible 30 times for total first person pronouns of 63. http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/even-inouyes-funeral-is-all-about-obama/#QyyllVKBjupR5b0Z.99
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In the Glibness cabinet, we have:
Lawless Holder at Justice,
Tax cheat Geithner at Treasury
The silent lady in hiding - Hillary - as chief diplomat
Replacing her with Sandinista supporter and admitted war criminal John Kerry.
Rumored for Defense is the most anti-Israel Senator of modern time - Chuck Hagel.
Some protest that Hagel is a bad choice, but he looks to me like a pretty good fit.
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http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2012/10/can-it-all-be-coincidence.html
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http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2012/10/can-it-all-be-coincidence.html
Absolutely!
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Great American Companies started in the Obama era:
Could be a thread in itself, trying to track this. Henninger at WSJ writes:
"the number is about zero (Facebook emerged in 2004; Twitter in 2007)"
Solyndra?
Feel free to add to the list...
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Only people with "connections" have a chance under the fundamentally changed nation.
Great American Companies started in the Obama era:
Could be a thread in itself, trying to track this. Henninger at WSJ writes:
"the number is about zero (Facebook emerged in 2004; Twitter in 2007)"
Solyndra?
Feel free to add to the list...
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I wish the President all the time with his family he can muster, and a little time out of the office. Commuting to and from and to and from Hawaii for a false crisis he created however seems wasteful. The cost of flying Air Force One from Andrews AFB, Washington DC to Hawaii is $1,800,000 - one way - slightly more than four years salary of being Commander in Chief. He took four of those flights, ($7.2 million?) hopefully 'carpooling' with family on two of them, unlike the trips to Martha's Vineyard where they flew separately. That money could have bought a lot of free birth control for the homeless.
Some complain of the cost. Not me, my worry is with the CO2 emissions. While he is playing little gotcha games with political opponents for a deal tht still leaves trillion dollar deficits, the Arctic is melting.
With fiscal issues still burning we can expect a fossil fuel excise tax soon that applies to ... the rest of us.
(http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/Presidents-Golf001--252x155_22_0_3644819696-1.jpg)
Washington Post photo, the President drains an expensive putt while the east coast Sandy victims wait for relief
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All government employees are required by federal law to use official email accounts to conduct government business. You wouldn't want any Freedom of Information Requests to miss any correspondence/. Or would you?
Lisa Jackson, aka Richard Windsor, abruptly resigned from EPA last week. Another scandal brewing?
http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/12/epa-chiefs-secret-alias-email-account-revealed/#ixzz2HF1pXGo2
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/12/28/richard-windsor-drove-lisa-jackson-from-the-epa/
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/hide_sneak_aKyvy71WIkHfG3q1CcVmqM
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Laws are for the little people. Ask David Gregory.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HeoxAmmxnI
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Laws are for the little people. Ask David Gregory.
David Gregory is a gun criminal. How will he ever look Eric Holder in the eye again?
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Laws are for the little people. Ask David Gregory.
David Gregory is a gun criminal. How will he ever look Eric Holder in the eye again?
Next week on "Meet the Press", he loads the magazine, loads the mag into an AR-15 and then gives the AR to a los zetas sicario.
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Obama actually passed up a qualified candidate to be the first woman Sec of Defense in history. Hagel was more convincingly anti-Israel.
The Republican debates had more diversity than this:
(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/09/us/09personnel-1/09personnel-1-articleLarge.jpg)
Dems made big fun of Romney's successful search for competent women to fill his top posts as Governor.
Ignoring race and gender and picking competence is the Obama story line. Two thoughts on that: 1) We could have done that at the top of the ticket, and 2) what large agency has Chuck Hagel run where he demonstrated competence beyond that of all American blacks, Hispanics, gays and women?
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Omaha World Herald July 3 1998:
Openly gay nominee won't get Hagel vote
By Jake Thompson for The World-Herald July 3, 1998
http://www.omaha.com/article/19980703/NEWS/121229971/1685
One day last month, Bob Kerrey asked his Senate colleague and fellow Nebraskan, Chuck Hagel, a favor: Could Kerrey stop by with a controversial ambassadorial nominee who wanted to make a personal pitch to Hagel?
Sure, Hagel said, bring him over.
The meeting didn't turn out as Kerrey wished.
As a courtesy to Kerrey, Hagel said, he would listen to the man - James C. Hormel, 64, a Democratic donor, lawyer and philanthropist - whose nomination to become ambassador to Luxembourg has been blocked in the Senate, his backers say, simply because he is gay.
Perhaps Kerrey had hoped Hormel's Nebraska tie might help. The nominee's grandfather, George A. Hormel, founded the giant Hormel Foods, which opened a meatpacking plant in Fremont in 1947.
Perhaps Kerrey had hoped Hormel's philanthropic record would impress. The National Society of Fundraising Executives named him its outstanding philanthropist for 1996.
"We would love to have somebody like James Hormel as part of the Omaha community," Kerrey said recently. "He's actively involved, he gives generously to very important civic efforts."
Hormel, trying to move his nomination forward, had contacted Kerrey, who turned to Hagel. On June 3 Kerrey escorted Hormel and a State Department official to a meeting in Hagel's office. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, which is overseeing the nomination, Hagel could play a helpful role.
"We had a good conversation," Hagel, a Republican, recalled last week. "He's a nice fellow."
Kerrey, a Democrat, called Hormel "as well - qualified a nominee as I've seen" and said the meeting led him to think Hagel would support Hormel for the job.
Not so.
Ambassadorial posts are sensitive, Hagel explained.
"They are representing America," he said. "They are representing our lifestyle, our values, our standards. And I think it is an inhibiting factor to be gay - openly aggressively gay like Mr. Hormel - to do an effective job."
Hagel noted a documentary, filmed with money Hormel donated, that showed teachers how they could teach children about homosexuality. He said he had seen another video clip that showed Hormel at what Hagel called an anti - Catholic event in San Francisco, featuring the "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence," a group of male drag queens.
"It is very clear on this tape that he's laughing and enjoying the antics of an anti - Catholic gay group in this gay parade," Hagel said. "I think it's wise for the president not to go forward with this nomination."
Luxembourg, he noted, is about 95 percent Roman Catholic.
Hagel thus became the latest of a group of Senate conservatives to come out against Hormel's nomination. Critics say the group is discriminating against a qualified nominee.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D - Calif., has defended Hormel, saying he opposes all forms of discrimination.
Over the years Hormel, a former dean of the Chicago Law School, has given money to civil - rights groups, colleges, symphonies, and to groups fighting autism, breast cancer and AIDS. Hormel listed the contributions in a letter to a supporter, Sen. Gordon Smith, R - Ore. In the letter, Hormel said he provided "minor" support for the teacher documentary and had no control over its content.
The Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group, says the videotape from the San Francisco event resulted when men dressed as nuns walked past a broadcast booth where Hormel, a well - known civic leader in the city, was giving an interview to a local reporter.
Hormel's homosexuality is not the problem, say Hagel and other opponents of the nomination. It's his openness about being gay and his advocacy of some causes, they say.
The Senate's majority leader, Trent Lott, R - Miss., heated the issue recently when he said homosexuality was a problem that should be treated "just like alcohol or sex addiction or kleptomania."
Fellow Republican Sen. Alfonse D'Amato of New York took him to task: "On a personal level, I am embarrassed that our Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, is seen to be the force behind this injustice," D'Amato wrote to Lott, calling for the nomination to be brought to a vote.
Then Sen. Jesse Helms, R - N.C., weighed in against D'Amato, accusing the New Yorker of using the issue to boost his re - election bid.
Helms, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has vowed to continue blocking a vote on Hormel. The committee on a voice vote last October recommended Hormel's nomination to the full Senate. It has been held up since.
Hormel's supporters say they have the 60 votes needed to break the hold on the nomination - if Lott will allow it to come to the floor.
Hagel, meanwhile, said a homosexual should not necessarily be disqualified from all ambassadorships.
His approach to nominees, he said, has been to examine the person's qualifications first. The United States has had gay ambassadors in the past and gays in the military, who have done well by quietly adopting the Pentagon's current "don't ask, don't tell" attitude.
Hormel, however, has gone beyond that, Hagel said.
He "very aggressively told the world of his gayness and the funding and all the things he's been involved in. I think you do go beyond common sense there, and reason and a certain amount of decorum," Hagel said.
"If you send an ambassador abroad with a cloud of controversy hanging over him, then I think it's unfair to our country, it's unfair to the host country and it's unfair to the ambassador because the effectiveness of that individual is going to be seriously curtailed. That's just a fact of life. And I believe Hormel's situation is one of those."
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Hagel until this process began agreed with extremists Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin on the question that cost them Senate seats this past year:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/09/is-there-anything-chuck-hagel-won-t-say.html
Senate-candidate Hagel said that he "tightened" his position on abortion after he said he discovered that abortion in the case of rape and incest are "rare"...
Assuming that isn't what attracted the President to this 'Republican', it must have been his anti-Israel views.
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Nice find Doug.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNxzQUyZu_U&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Do you believe that the former Director of OMB / Office of Management and Budget, Chief of staff, graduate of Harvard and Georgetown, does not know that passing a budget in the Senate requires only 51 votes?
Does Candy Crowley not know that either?
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The point is cloture. The implicit assumption is that GOP senator(s) will filibuster.
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The point is cloture. The implicit assumption is that GOP senator(s) will filibuster.
I believe you cannot filibuster a budget bill under current Senate rules.
"Budget bills are governed under special rules called "reconciliation" which do not allow filibusters."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_Rules_of_the_United_States_Senate
Under reconciliation, bills cannot be filibustered and can thus pass the Senate by majority vote.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2009/04/20-budget-mann
The reconciliation process, by contrast, limits debate to 20 hours and bypasses the filibuster altogether. It was instituted to ensure that minority obstruction couldn't block important business like passing a budget or reducing the deficit.
http://prospect.org/article/50-vote-senate
Budget reconciliation is a procedure created in 1974 as a way of making changes in federal policy to meet fiscal guidelines set by Congress. Because the process includes a limit of 20 hours of debate, reconciliation bills cannot be blocked by filibuster in the Senate and need only a simple majority to pass.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/congress/budget_reconciliation/index.html
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http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/02/parliamentary-procedure
"It's true that you cannot filibuster a budget resolution in the Senate, because the Budget Act provides special rules for consideration of a budget resolution, including a time limit on debate. So the Senate can pass a resolution with only a majority vote. However, the resolution does not take effect when the Senate passes it. It takes effect in one of two ways: if the House and Senate pass an identical resolution, usually in the form of a conference report; or if the Senate passes a separate Senate Resolution (as opposed to a concurrent resolution, which is what a budget resolution is) that says the House is “deemed” to have agreed to the budget resolution passed by the Senate.
But there are no special procedures for the simple Senate Resolution required by this second, “deeming” process, so it is subject to the unlimited debate allowed on almost everything in the Senate. If you do not have the support of 60 Senators to invoke cloture and end a filibuster, or prevent a filibuster from even starting (because everyone knows 60 Senators support cloture), you cannot pass such a deeming resolution in the Senate.
Because its rules are different, the House with a simple majority can pass a resolution deeming that the House and Senate have agreed to the House resolution so that it can take effect. This means the allocations in the resolution, such as for appropriations, are in effect in the House and anybody can raise a point-of-order against legislation that would cause a committee to exceed its allocation.
But this is for purposes of enforcement in the House only. What the House does has no effect whatsoever on the Senate or its budget enforcement. And vice versa, if the Senate deems that its budget resolution has been agreed to."
The point is cloture. The implicit assumption is that GOP senator(s) will filibuster.
I believe you cannot filibuster a budget bill under current Senate rules.
"Budget bills are governed under special rules called "reconciliation" which do not allow filibusters."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_Rules_of_the_United_States_Senate
Under reconciliation, bills cannot be filibustered and can thus pass the Senate by majority vote.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2009/04/20-budget-mann
The reconciliation process, by contrast, limits debate to 20 hours and bypasses the filibuster altogether. It was instituted to ensure that minority obstruction couldn't block important business like passing a budget or reducing the deficit.
http://prospect.org/article/50-vote-senate
Budget reconciliation is a procedure created in 1974 as a way of making changes in federal policy to meet fiscal guidelines set by Congress. Because the process includes a limit of 20 hours of debate, reconciliation bills cannot be blocked by filibuster in the Senate and need only a simple majority to pass.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/congress/budget_reconciliation/index.html
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Excellent discussion, but it belongs on the Congress thread. Would someone please paste it there so we can continue the discussion there? TIA-- I am on my way out the door in a few minutes.
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Total first person pronouns used in his eulogy of Sen Inouye: 63. So we know he knows how to use them.
"... will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they've already racked up through the laws that they passed."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324081704578231542240171394.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond
What did Harry Truman say? The buck stops ... ... over there!?
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Ummm , , , the fact is that under the Constitution the Congress must pass spending that originates in the House. The Reps control the House. They lack the testicles to stand erect.
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, , , the fact is that under the Constitution the Congress must pass spending that originates in the House...
All the Senate needs to do is pick up a House bill, change the amounts until they can pass it in good faith under the terms of the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act that created CBO and most of the current process. The House has passed a budget every year. The Senate has not passed a budget other than "continuing resolutions" since April 2009, roughly 5 trillion dollars of debt ago. It cannot be filibustered under Senate rules in effect since 1974.
Crafty, yours is not the reason that Lew gave. He gave a false reason for why they haven't passed a budget, putting blame on Republicans in the Democratic controlled chamber. It is a lie and a deception. As an expert on the process (OMB Director under two Presidents!), he knew that was false.
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/145259-house-passes-republican-budget-for-fy-2011-in-x-y-vote
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/us/politics/house-passes-ryan-budget-blueprint-along-party-lines.html?_r=0
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-02/u-s-house-passes-budget-bill-averts-most-tax-increases.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/jack-lews-misleading-claim-about-the-senates-failure-to-pass-a-budget-resolution/2012/02/12/gIQAs11z8Q_blog.html?wprss=fact-checker
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021012-600854-democrats-refusal-to-pass-budget-is-illegal.htm
http://www.dailypaul.com/269094/the-law-requires-congress-to-pass-a-budget-every-america-hasnt-had-since-2009
It's true that you cannot filibuster a budget resolution in the Senate, because the Budget Act provides special rules for consideration of a budget resolution, including a time limit on debate. So the Senate can pass a resolution with only a majority vote.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/02/parliamentary-procedure
Budget resolutions are not subject to a filibuster.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/206309-gop-well-pass-budget-every-year-#ixzz2HcHcSPvT
“But we also need to be honest. You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support. So unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed. And I think he was reflecting the reality of that that could be a challenge.”
--White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew, on CNN, Feb. 12. 2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/jack-lews-misleading-claim-about-the-senates-failure-to-pass-a-budget-resolution/2012/02/12/gIQAs11z8Q_blog.html?wprss=fact-checker
"Four Pinocchios"
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/fact-checker/StandingArt/pinocchio_4.jpg?uuid=zmHlfEniEeCn1tWe_T6KGA)
"We wavered between three and four Pinocchios, in part because the budget resolution is only a blueprint, not a law, but ultimately decided a two-time budget director really should know better." - The hard-right Washington Post
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I thank you for continuing my education (no snarkiness at all, this is 100% sincere). I find what you post to be persuasive.
My post was responding to:
"What did Harry Truman say? The buck stops ... ... over there!?"
My intention is to underline just how much power and RESPONSIBILTY the Constitution imbues in the House of Representatives with regard to budgetary matters.
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http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=155
Step Three: Enforcing the Terms of the Budget Resolution
The main enforcement mechanism that prevents Congress from passing legislation that violates the terms of the budget resolution is the ability of a single member of the House or the Senate to raise a budget "point of order" on the floor to block such legislation. In some recent years, this point of order has not been particularly important in the House because it can be waived there by a simple majority vote on a resolution developed by the leadership-appointed Rules Committee, which sets the conditions under which each bill will be considered on the floor.
However, the budget point of order is important in the Senate, where any legislation that exceeds a committee's spending allocation — or cuts taxes below the level allowed in the budget resolution — is vulnerable to a budget point of order on the floor that requires 60 votes to waive.
Appropriations bills (or amendments to them) must fit within the 302(a) allocation given to the Appropriations Committee as well as the Committee-determined 302(b) sub-allocation for the coming fiscal year. Tax or entitlement bills (or any amendments offered to them) must fit within the budget resolution's spending limit for the relevant committee or within the revenue floor, both in the first year and over the total multi-year period covered by the budget resolution. The cost of a tax or entitlement bill is determined (or "scored") by the Budget Committees, nearly always by relying on the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which measures the bill against a budgetary "baseline" that projects entitlement spending or tax receipts under current law.
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http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=155
Step Three: Enforcing the Terms of the Budget Resolution
...
However, the budget point of order is important in the Senate, where any legislation that exceeds a committee's spending allocation — or cuts taxes below the level allowed in the budget resolution — is vulnerable to a budget point of order on the floor that requires 60 votes to waive.
...
Yes, BD, but a Budget Point of Order is a rule defined in the 3rd step, to apply to changes after a budget is passed. The second step (same link) says this:
"Once the committees are done, their budget resolutions go to the House and Senate floors, where they can be amended (by a majority vote)...It also requires only a majority vote to pass, and its consideration is one of the few actions that cannot be filibustered in the Senate."
We never got past Step 2, to pass a budget by April 15. Step 3 controls the process after there is a budget resolution passed. It defines rules they must follow to change what was passed. But there wasn't one passed in the Senate in the 3 years in question. Right?
The original point about Lew and a lying White House is that the threat of a filibuster was not the reason the Senate had not passed a budget. Lew said it was. This was a Susan Rice moment. He was sent up to create a false impression of what happened and what didn't happen. Republicans wanted Senate Democrats to pass a budget - to show their hand; they were not trying to stop them, nor could they. Republicans with control of the House in 2 of those years had no need to stop a budget in the Senate and no power to stop it. This is a matter of political gamesmanship and they deserve to be called out. Republicans wanted Democrats to 'show us your spending' as required under the 1974 law. Show us your cuts, show us your spending and we will use that either get cuts done or for other political advantage: 'Senator so-and-so voted to cut Medicare, here is the record', or he/she refused to make any cuts at all to close a trillion dollar gap.
But there was no need for a Dem majority Senate to follow the law and pass a budget because there is no penalty defined in the 1974 law. They just kept the spending going without real cuts for years with continuing resolutions, blamed the Republicans, and using the cover provided by willing accomplices in the media like professional journalist Candy Crowley in the clip.
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Again, great stuff, but this belongs in the Congress thread. Thank you.
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Well, if this turns out to be true, a lot of people are going to owe an apology , , ,
http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/?p=375765
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Pelosi, Obama et al voted against debt ceiling hikes under Bush to protest further spending on the Iraq war. Now the President says the debt ceiling has nothing to do with spending. It is only about paying bills already incurred.
The mainstream professional journalists have jumped ALL OVER HIM for the contradiction. (Just kidding)
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President Obama Monday: "They don't think it's smart to protect endless corporate loopholes and tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans rather than rebuild our roads and our schools . . ."
But wait. It was President Obama who insisted that the recent tax bill be loaded with tens of billions of dollars worth of additional "corporate loopholes," including for his billionaire buddies in the green-energy business (and Hollywood)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324581504578231721868759336.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Mainstream professional journalists jumped ALL OVER HIM yesterday for this most obvious contradiction. (Just kidding)
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Lies or deception, you make the call, "... mid-decade...and then we will work on paying down our debt"
Our spending will not add to the debt. Interest on even the last 4 years of debt is NOT OUR SPENDING?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QMQwic-JdxQ
These are Lew's figures for new deficits that don't add to the debt:
Year Deficit
2010: $1.293 trillion
2011: $1.645 trillion
2012: $1.101 trillion
2013: $768 billion
2014: $645 billion
2015: $607 billion
2016: $649 billion
2017: $627 billion
2018: $619 billion
2019: $681 billion
2020: $735 billion
2021: $774 billion
------------------------------
Sen. Sessions said he won't vote for the this guy. Sen. Bernie Sanders also opposes Lew, for different reasons, Lew's experience at Citigroup.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/9/lews-time-citigroup-division-was-profitable/
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-10/business/36272371_1_citigroup-unit-treasury-secretary-wealth-management
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=12E4DE20-F0CD-446B-8CBB-5A45EE80B56A
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Reliability unknown, but it sure sounds plausible:
=======================================
Jack Seckel
Let me get this straight because I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Barack Obama is insisting on more stringent "background checks" for American citizen's wanting to purchase firearms but his own social security number was rejected by E-Verify?
President Barack Obama could not pass a background check if he was applying for a gun permit or a job. Why has this man been allowed to remain in office or take the oath for a second time?
During the 2008 campaign, it was known that:
His official, long form birth records were SEALED.
His Occidental College records were SEALED.
His Columbia College records were SEALED.
His Harvard College records were SEALED.
His College thesis – SEALED.
His Harvard Law Review articles – SEALED.
His Indonesian adoption records – SEALED.
His passport file – SEALED.
His medical records – Unavailable
His baptism records – Unavailable
His papers from his service in the Illinois legislature – Unavailable
His Illinois State Bar Association records - Unavailable
The birth certificate that the White House released is reputed by document experts to be false.
The Social Security number he has used was issued to someone else. He could not pass an E-Verify test. The first three numbers of his Social Security ID are reserved for applicants with Connecticut addresses, 040-049. The number was issued between 1977 and 1979. Obama’s earliest employment reportedly was in 1975 at a Baskin-Robbins in Oahu, Hawaii.
SOMEBODY BETTER DO SOMETHING REAL QUICK!
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"long form birth records were SEALED"
Yet the left mocks those who questioned this as "birthers"
Yet the left attacks those who questioned this as racist.
Now even "descending colon" Powell called this racist.
Yes he is full of shit.
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Obama’s Startling Second Inaugural Admission
Posted By Tom Blumer On January 22, 2013 - www.frontpagemag.com
President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address on Monday was mostly what one would have expected: A paean to the wonders of statism and how great America could be if we would just overcome our unhealthy legacy. In Obama’s world, we would all be so much better if we could get over obsessions like rugged individualism and the true meaning of the words contained in our nation’s Constitution, and let a benevolent, all-knowing government take more control over our everyday lives.
But in the midst of his “we know better” exercise, Obama made the most stunning admission of abject failure I have heard a president utter in my lifetime. I’ll have more on that shortly.
In his speech, Obama made a pretense of paying homage to our Founding Fathers, but followed it with a clear indication that he believes their wisdom is passé by claiming that “preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.” Other than our involvement in wars, which he falsely claims will soon be coming to an end, I can’t imagine what he could be thinking of. Obama even added a dose of coldly calculated and contemptuous ridicule to the mix by including an insulting reference to the modern wartime inadequacy of “muskets and militias.”
Though it was indeed, as the Politico’s Glenn Thrush correctly noted, “the most liberal speech he has delivered as president,” it clearly disappointed some of those in the establishment press who wanted to hear Obama go for his opponents’ jugulars. That group includes John Dickerson, who has been Political Director at CBS News since November 2011.
Dickerson put on his best game face at Slate after the speech, but it’s clear from reading his previous 2,000-word battle plan disguised as a column on Friday that Obama didn’t go as far as he would have liked.
The column’s headlines called for Obama to “Go for the Throat!” and “declare war on the Republican Party.” In his content, Dickerson claimed that Republican recalcitrance meant that “Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize,” and that the president “can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP.” Slate was so thrilled with the piece that it amped up its “most popular” tease list title to read: “Why Obama Should Seek To Destroy the Republican Party.” Dickerson’s occupation of such an influential perch at CBS and the presence of so many others like him at other news outlets largely explain why last year’s establishment press coverage of the GOP primaries and the general election was so ruthlessly biased against Republicans and especially conservatives.
Given the content of the rest of his speech, it was astonishing to hear Obama say the following five words: ”An economic recovery has begun.”
Wow.
We’re just three weeks shy of the fourth anniversary of the passage of the February 2009 “stimulus plan.” It was supposed to turn the economy around after the evil George W. Bush ruined everything. Obama’s Keynesian economists told us that without the stimulus plan’s immediate implementation, unemployment would rise to an unacceptable 9 percent by the summer of 2010. But if we would just pass this monstrosity which nobody read, unemployment would peak at 8 percent in just a few months and gradually fall to 5.2 percent by the end of 2012.
What really happened is that despite the plan’s passage (actually, largely because of it), the unemployment rate hit 10 percent before 2009 was even over, stayed above 8 percent for a post-World War II record 43 months, and is still at 7.8 percent. The Obama government, set into fiscal motion by the Democratic Congress of 2009-2010 and running on autopilot ever since, has run up $5 trillion in supposedly stimulative budget deficits and has been the beneficiary of four years of supposedly stimulative near-zero interest rates courtesy of Ben the Betrayer Bernanke’s Federal Reserve.
Now, after all of that ruinous stimulus, the best our president can say is: “An economic recovery has begun.” It’s almost as if he wants us to believe that this strange, uncontrollable beast called the economy has finally decided to get better on its own.
Unfortunately for those who are unemployed, under-employed, and discouraged, there’s still reason to believe that the economy, after so many false starts during Obama’s first term, is once again sputtering.
Economists have been wearing out their erasers and “delete” keys writing down their estimates of economic growth during the fourth quarter of 2012. The rough consensus is that gross domestic product will grow by an annualized 1.5 percent, down from 3.1 percent in the third quarter – if we’re lucky.
Seasonally adjusted job growth has only averaged 130,000 during the past ten months. That’s below the 150,000 jobs needed just to keep pace with growth in the adult population. Additionally, in a sign that the trend is in the wrong direction, the raw number of jobs changes before seasonal adjustment has been lower than that seen in the same month of the previous year during three of the past four months.
Finally, in perhaps the most ominous sign of decay, last week’s report on initial jobless claims told us that the raw number of claims filed (i.e., before seasonal adjustment) was greater than the comparable week a year ago — the first time this has happened in a truly comparable non-holiday week since October 2009.
The way things are going, Obama’s successor may very well use those same five words — “An economic recovery has begun” — in his or her inaugural address four long years from now.
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Trivia question:
Forget about Chuck Hagel and Jack Lew for a moment...
On what foreign policy question or issue was incoming Sec. of State John Kerry ever right?
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A wild guess.
He voted for the war in Iraq?
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A wild guess.
He voted for the war in Iraq?
Trivia question:
Forget about Chuck Hagel and Jack Lew for a moment...
On what foreign policy question or issue was incoming Sec. of State John Kerry ever right?
Should have read: trick question, instead of trivia question. I'm not aware of Sen Kerry ever getting a foreign policy question right - at least from my way of thinking. Yes he voted to start the war in Iraq, but his famous I voted for the funding before I voted against it likely cost him the Presidency. Iraq overall was not his strongest issue.
If you count his flip flops he is going to have moments of being right: http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-250_162-646435.html
Breitbart compiled a list of his top ten worst policy mistakes: (Anyone disagree with these?)
10. Honduras (2009) - Sen. Kerry backed Obama’s dubious claim that leftist President Manuel Zelaya--an antisemite and autocrat in the Hugo Chavez mode--had been ousted in a coup. He even tried to reverse a contrary finding by the Law Library of Congress.
9. Terrorism (1996) - In a debate with former Gov. Bill Weld, Sen. Kerry opposed the death penalty for terrorists, at a time when lack of vigilance by the Clinton administration allowed Al Qaeda to become a deadly threat. (After 9/11, Sen. Kerry changed his mind.)
8. Nicaragua (1985) - As Mary Anastasia O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal noted last week, Sen. Kerry encouraged Congress to end aid for the Contras, who were opposing the Sandinista regime, which quickly found support from the Soviet Union and Cuba.
7. Iraq (2003) - In 2002, Sen. Kerry voted to authorize the Iraq War; in 2003, he voted against continued funding and aid necessary to secure victory. The flip-flop was not only indefensible, but also cost Sen. Kerry the 2004 election against George W. Bush.
6. Colombia (2003) - Sen. Kerry described FARC, a drug-fueled terrorist guerilla army in Colombia much beloved by Chavez and the far left, specializing in kidnappings and hostage-taking, as having “legitimate complaints” against the Colombian government.
5. Gulf War (1991) - Not only did Sen. Kerry vote against authorizing UN-approved action against Saddam Hussein, but he also argued for a “new world order” not led by the U.S. and criticized the American-led coalition President George H.W. Bush had built.
4. Iran (2007) - Our own William Bigelow notes: “In 2007, Kerry voted against a Senate resolution that wanted to “combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
3. Israel (2003) - As CBS News has noted, Sen. Kerry called Israel’s anti-terror security barrier--which has saved hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian lives--a “barrier to peace” in October 2003. (As on many other issues, Sen. Kerry soon reversed his position.)
2. Syria (2009) - Though Sen. Kerry condemned Syria as a supporter of terrorism in 1991, when Syria had aligned with the U.S. in the Gulf War, he later embraced dictator Bashar al-Assad, leading Democrats’ efforts to rehabilitate the murderous regime.
1. Vietnam (1971) - As bad as Sen. Kerry’s record has been since, nothing quite tops his national debut in the “Winter Soldier” investigation as a decorated veteran telling false stories about war crimes allegedly committed by American troops in Vietnam.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/12/30/Top-Ten-Worst-John-Kerry-Foreign-Policy-Mistakes
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Obama’s new French economic adviser has ‘faith in redistribution’
http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/22/obamas-new-french-economic-adviser-has-faith-in-redistribution/#ixzz2J5y4Lh9g
The French economist selected by President Barack Obama to serve as one of his top second-term global development advisers reportedly has “faith in redistribution,” supported far left-wing political theories and leaders, and provided the intellectual framework for French Socialist President Francois Hollande’s electoral victory, records reveal.
Obama announced his intent late last month to appoint French economist and MIT professor Esther Duflo to the President’s Global Development Council, a new governmental advisory board that Obama created by executive order last year. Obama announced bond investor Mohamed A. El-Erian as his pick to chair the council.
The council “will be comprised of no more than 12 individuals from a variety of sectors outside the Federal Government, including, among others, institutions of higher education, non-profit and philanthropic organizations, civil society, and private industry,” according to a 2012 White House press release. “The Council will inform and provide advice to the President and other senior U.S. officials on U.S. global development policies and practices.”
Duflo, who is 40 years old, is the Abdul Latif Jameel professor of poverty alleviation and development economics at MIT and the co-founder and director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, which was initially funded by Saudi billionaire Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel.
Duflo’s appointment by Obama might have directly political motivations.
During Socialist Francois Hollande’s successful 2012 French presidential campaign, his three voter mobilization strategists, all former Harvard or MIT students, applied theories they first learned from Duflo, whose experiments “when applied to electioneering, had quantified the ability of a single door knock to deliver a vote.”
The tactics behind Hollande’s “campaign operation aimed at nonvoters” were first employed by Obama’s 2008 campaign and were most fully realized during Obama’s 2012 campaign, when a powerful voter database enabled Obama staffers to register new voters based on demographic and behavioral trends.
These tactics helped “alter the very nature of the electorate” in 2012, according to the New York Times, “making it younger and less white.”
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"All Americans are poorer as a result of Obama's policies, but the poor are hit hardest."
"Forbes magazine calculates that if long term discouraged workers, those who've dropped out to collect disability payments, and those working part time because they cannot find full time work were counted, the real unemployment rate would hover around 22 percent."
"The anti-poverty talk was missing from the 2012 campaign. It was all about the middle class. Perhaps that's because Obama's first term created so very much more poverty. There are more poor people in America today than at any time since the Great Depression. There were 32 million Americans collecting food stamps in 2008. Now that figure is 47 million. Spending on food stamps doubled between 2007 and 2011."
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/charen012513.php3#.UQa5iFJRRdg
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My first positive post on the Obama administration, I heard firsthand this weekend from a good friend that knew him personally, that local native Denis McDonough, Obama's new chief of staff, is quite a good guy, smart, genuine, etc.
That concludes the positive portion of my post. As deputy national security adviser, McDonough handled the Benghazi attack aftermath from inside the White House - and got promoted.
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How Jack Lew Failed Up - WSJ
Jack Lew profited from failed crony capitalism, took millions, left the losses to taxpayers, now promoted to Treasury Secretary nominee.
At NYU he was making more than the University President. Doing what?
http://live.wsj.com/video/opinion-how-jack-lew-failed-up/21A14CF0-4492-4013-AFAD-88391BE9D61F.html?mod=WSJ_article_outbrain&obref=obnetwork#!52D5B70E-FBC8-4800-9973-3E0962DEB069
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My father was a big believer in "The Peter Principle" (in an organization, people rise to their level of incompetence i.e. they get promoted as long as they are doing a good job, until they get to where they aren't doing a good job-- and that is where they stay).
That is worse than that by quite a bit!!!
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My father was a big believer in "The Peter Principle" (in an organization, people rise to their level of incompetence i.e. they get promoted as long as they are doing a good job, until they get to where they aren't doing a good job-- and that is where they stay).
That is worse than that by quite a bit!!!
Yes! Lew I'm sure is a sharp guy and so was Geithner. They got caught up in implementing and defending horrendous policies. Lew didn't cause Citicorp's failure, but wouldn't you think the people responsible that are not prosecuted would have to return to ordinary jobs.
As you suggest, this is worse than the Peter Principle. This is not promotion until you reach your level of incompetence, this is promotion after a record of abject failure.
The problem with us analyzing from across the aisle is that we are seeing it backwards from his view. Pres. Obama's business is collectivist-failure and Lew has a well rounded background in it.
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http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/28/dubious-congresswoman-challenges-obama-to-skeet-shooting-match/
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The humor in the skeet shooting challenge is that we have seen his golf swing. :oops: :-o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVd6M_ZOSM0
Not exactly Heisman precision:
http://www.youtube.com/user/corycotton
(turn volume at least partway down)
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Mr. Smooth, with everything going right from reelection to inauguration to winning every exchange with congress, has Gallup popularity below Nixon at this point and tied with George W. Bush for most unpopular re-elected president since Gallup began measuring presidential job-approval. That dismal figure could be his best and last before word of economic stagnation/freefall starts to get around.
Obama has about 3 minutes to start something going in the right direction or he will lose control of most of the next 4 years. Little tricks like lying about progress in Libya and Egypt, boxing in opponents over budgets and stonewalling congress over scandals like Fast and Furious are not going to do it.
The lead guy on immigration reform is now Marco Rubio. The lead guy on entitlement reform and budget sanity is still Paul Ryan. The lead guy on anything to do with American liberty is Rand Paul. Policy initiatives advanced during his last, easy, big interview with '30 minutes' were completely missing.
Good luck getting a second bill of rights centered around big government through the 26 states that sued, lost and are angry over Obamacare. One guy calling it a tax increase instead of a cost savings did not rescue its unpopularity.
He should consider sitting back and writing a memoir, except he's already done that twice. Could work on his golf game, but been there, done that too. Now what?
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.Skeet shooting?
Hey, it's not Obama's fault the economy is very racist or something.
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(http://media.hotair.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ramirez-robot.jpg)
Or, download the Wesbury 2.0 software....
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-white-houses-curious-silence-about-obamas-claim-of-skeet-shooting/2013/01/30/be78bb10-6b35-11e2-95b3-272d604a10a3_blog.html#
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"We cannot JUST cut our way to prosperity."
The case that we have gone too far with cutting might have been strengthened by pointing to one thing that actually has been cut.
The lady who waited 6 hours to vote started to get that same feeling again as the speech went on and on.
He got a couple of things right, but that is his way - to take more than one side of an issue before turning sharply left.
His programs and proposals will not add one dime to the deficit. Really? They already added six trillion.
NY Times: [speech was] "proudly liberal"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/opinion/from-obama-a-proudly-liberal-message.html?_r=0
Comments anyone?
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(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/CognativeDissonance.jpg)
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Forgive my ignorance, but what is that puff of smoke going off 90 degrees to the right?
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The bbl. appears to be ported, usually done to reduce muzzle rise.
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Interesting. I have only shot trap and shot skeet one time each a long time ago. Does his gun show enough incline to be a skeet shot or is that a target shot?
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Crafty - here is some additional info, just FYI, I don't like porting because of the increased muzzle flash, and hot gasses that may escape and burn you depending on where you fire the gun (an issue only with handguns) for rifles and shotguns, the gasses usually aren't an issue, but I still dislike the increased noise and muzzle flash. I haven't found it to be particularly noticeable in decreasing muzzle rise, either. Just my opinion:
How Porting Works
Porting consists of adding holes through the shotgun’s barrel, near the end. These holes are placed along the upper sides of the barrel by a gunsmith (don’t try to drill them yourself!). When the shotgun is fired, some of the hot gases will escape through the port holes, rather than through the muzzle. Since the port holes are near the end of the barrel, there is virtually no effect upon the speed at which the shot or slugs exit the shotgun.
Pros of Porting
Porting results in a reduction of recoil and a reduction in muzzle climb. The recoil reduction comes from the fact that some of the hot gases that would normally help propel the shotgun backward against the shooter’s shoulder (recoil) are instead directed out of the port holes. Similarly, the reduction in the tenancy of the muzzle to rise when the shotgun is fired (also referred to as muzzle climb, muzzle flip, muzzle lift, etc.) is reduced. This is because the hot gases exiting the port holes will help push the barrel back down. The net result is that porting results in a gun that recoils more softly, and stays on target better. This can be especially beneficial for recoil sensitive individuals.
Cons of Porting
Porting is not appropriate for every shotgun, however. Porting increases the amount of noise heard by the shooter and those standing next to the shooter. Porting also results in a more visible flash when the shotgun is fired. Both are the result of having the hot gases from the combustion of gun power exit the barrel through the port holes, rather than through the muzzle. The extra noise is primarily a concern when the shotgun is fired for sporting, rather than self defense purpose. The extra flash, however, could be an issue for self defense at night, since it may worsen the effect upon the shooter’s night vision. The hot gases which exit through the port holes can also cause burns, which may be either a benefit or liability if firing the shotgun in self defense at close range.
Conclusion
I whole heartedly endorse the porting of shotgun barrels, and have multiple shotguns with ported barrels. My home defense guns, which I fire regularly at the range have ported barrels. I don’t mind the slight increase in noise that I’ve noticed, nor the flash. I also know other gun owners who feel differently, so barrel porting is a decision for each person to make.
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Interesting. I have only shot trap and shot skeet one time each a long time ago. Does his gun show enough incline to be a skeet shot or is that a target shot?
To me, it looks like a shot at a static target. Probably a round of birdshot for the photo.
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Interesting. I have only shot trap and shot skeet one time each a long time ago. Does his gun show enough incline to be a skeet shot or is that a target shot?
To me, it looks like a shot at a static target. Probably a round of birdshot for the photo.
Yes. The context of the photo release was that he said he was shooting skeet "all the time" at Camp David. To support that claim they release a photo of him shooting last summer - at a target.
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So that 90 degree porting in this picture is vertical? For some reason my eyes saw it as going to the right-- which made no sense to me.
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Pres. Barack Obama: "And you know, I think these are both the best of times and the worst of times for large portions of the African American community."
No recognition whatsoever of the unemployment and dependency damage that his policies have caused. All partisanship about the hatred of Republicans.
I can't believe host Al Sharpton didn't ask tougher questions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVH8IMm_ulk&feature=player_embedded#!
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African American Teen Unemployment Rate at a 25 Year High
http://www.laprogressive.com/african-american-teen-unemployment/
155,000 New Jobs Added, But Black Unemployment Rises
http://atlantablackstar.com/2013/01/04/155000-new-jobs-added-but-black-unemployment-rises/
Black teen unemployment still 4 times national average
http://thegrio.com/2011/03/04/is-black-teen-unemployment-the-biggest-threat-to-us-economy/
seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for African Americans between the ages of 16 and 19 reached 49 percent, up from 45.4 percent in August and 41.7 percent for the same period last year.
http://www.laprogressive.com/african-american-teen-unemployment/
once unemployed, Blacks are less likely to find jobs and tend to stay unemployed for longer periods of time. Blacks remained unemployed longer than Whites or Hispanics in 2011, with a median duration of unemployment of 27.0 weeks (compared to 19.7 for Whites and 18.5 for Hispanics).
http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/reports/blacklaborforce/
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Best of times because of increased opportunities - in an intentionally shrinking economy?
Fool me once, fool me twice, looks like a pattern...
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BOB WOODWARD: A 'Very Senior' White House Person Warned Me I'd 'Regret' What I'm Doing
Brett LoGiurato|Feb. 27, 2013, 6:53 PM|
Wikimedia/Bektour
Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a "very senior person" at the White House warned him in an email that he would "regret doing this," the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.
CNN host Wolf Blitzer said that the network invited a White House official to debate Woodward on-air, but the White House declined.
"I think they're confused," Woodward said of the White House's pushback on his reporting.
Earlier today on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Woodward ripped into Obama in what has become an ongoing feud between the veteran Washington Post journalist and the White House. Woodward said Obama was showing a "kind of madness I haven't seen in a long time" for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns.
The Defense Department said in early February that it would not deploy the U.S.S. Harry Truman to the Persian Gulf, citing budget concerns relating to the looming cuts known as the sequester.
"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" Woodward said on MSNBC.
"Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need?'" Or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters,' ... because of some budget document?"
Woodward began stirring controversy last weekend, when he called out Obama for what he said was "moving the goal posts" on the sequester by requesting that revenue be part of a deal to avert it.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bob-woodward-obama-sequester-white-house-reporting-price-politics-2013-2
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http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/02/27/they-told-me-if-i-voted-republican-the-white-house-would-start-threatening-reporters-and-they-were-right/
They Told Me If I Voted Republican the White House Would Start Threatening Reporters, And They Were Right!
by
Bryan Preston
Legendary reporter Bob Woodward tells Politico that White House staffers have threatened him over his sequester reporting.
Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a “very senior person” at the White House warned him in an email that he would “regret doing this,” the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.
CNN host Wolf Blitzer said that the network invited a White House official to debate Woodward on-air, but the White House declined.
What’s there to debate? Bob Woodward’s reporting has spoiled Obama’s plan. That plan was to blame the entire sequester on Republicans, then allow the cuts to hit, and blame them again. Woodward reported that the sequester was the Obama White House’s idea, blowing the plan to bits.
Woodward isn’t easily dismissed. He’s a veteran reporter who helped bring down the last truly paranoid president we had, Richard Nixon, and at 69 years old is going after another arguably more paranoid president.
So all the president’s men are threatening Woodward. Politico picks up the story.
Bob Woodward called a senior White House official last week to tell him that in a piece in that weekend’s Washington Post, he was going to question President Barack Obama’s account of how sequestration came about – and got a major-league brushback. The Obama aide “yelled at me for about a half hour,” Woodward told us in an hour-long interview yesterday around the Georgetown dining room table where so many generations of Washington’s powerful have spilled their secrets.
Digging into one of his famous folders, Woodward said the tirade was followed by a page-long email from the aide, one of the four or five administration officials most closely involved in the fiscal negotiations with the Hill. “I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today,” the official typed. “You’re focusing on a few specific trees that give a very wrong impression of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here. … I think you will regret staking out that claim.”
Woodward repeated the last sentence, making clear he saw it as a veiled threat. “ ‘You’ll regret.’ Come on,” he said. “I think if Obama himself saw the way they’re dealing with some of this, he would say, ‘Whoa, we don’t tell any reporter ‘you’re going to regret challenging us.’ ”
“Madness,” indeed.
Barack Obama has spent the entire week lying about the consequences of the sequester, which Woodward reports and Congressional sources verify was personally approved by the president. What happens when March 1 comes and the so-called cuts kick in and the sky does not fall?
Barack Obama will have all the credibility of the Mayan calendar that told us the world would end last December.
Woodward stands in the way of Obama’s escape path — blame it all on Republicans. Obama’s fans know that his credibility is very much on the line. They’re savaging Bob Woodward tonight.
Listen for the sound of drones lurking over the Beltway for the next couple of days.
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"“I think if Obama himself saw the way they’re dealing with some of this, he would say, ‘Whoa, we don’t tell any reporter ‘you’re going to regret challenging us.’ ”
Yet even after all this Woodward still buckles and gives cover to the ONE. The same ONE who said "we reward our friends and punish our enemies". It all sounds like Obama strategy and unwritten policy to me.
Obama's only lament would be the aide made this threat in a verifiable email rather then a "he said she said" verbal conversation.
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He hasn't managed to disarm the public yet....
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/341997/obama-i-am-not-dictator-andrew-stiles
Obama: ‘I Am Not a Dictator’
By Andrew Stiles
March 1, 2013 1:13 P.M.
“I am not a dictator,” President Obama told members of the White House press corps Friday, in response to a question about why he was unable to force congressional leaders to reach an agreement to replace sequestration — the $85 billion in automatic spending reductions scheduled to take effect at 11:59 p.m. today. “Ultimately if Mitch McConnell or John Boehner say, ‘We need to go to catch a plane,’ I can’t have Secret Service block the doorway,” the president added.
It is hardly the first time Obama has felt it necessary to remind the American people, or has lamented the fact, that he is not a more authoritarian type of ruler. A few examples:
King: “My cabinet has been working very hard on trying to get it done, but ultimately, I think somebody said the other day, I am president, I am not king,” Obama told Univision in October 2010, when asked why he had yet to achieve comprehensive immigration reform. “I can’t do these things just by myself.” He reiterated that sentiment in a February 2013 interview with Telemundo. “I’m not a king,” he said.
President of China: “Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China,” the New York Times reported in March 2011.
Emperor of the United States: “This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency,” Obama said during a Google hangout event in February. “The problem is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed.”
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(http://cdn.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/OBAMANOTADICTATOR.jpg)
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We originally thought this was maybe a Two Pinocchio rating, but in light of the AOC memo and the confirmation that security guards will not face a pay cut, nothing in Obama’s statement came close to being correct.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/sequester-spin-obamas-incorrect-claim-of-capitol-janitors-receiving-a-pay-cut/2013/03/01/3407535c-82a9-11e2-b99e-6baf4ebe42df_blog.html
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/fact-checker/StandingArt/pinocchio_4.jpg?uuid=zmHlfEniEeCn1tWe_T6KGA)
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I saw a similar thing about Head Start.
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Another perfect fit for the Obama second term cabinet and inner circle:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/07/high-ranking-doj-official-gave-false-testimony-about-voter-intimidation-case.php
High-ranking DOJ official gave false testimony about voter intimidation case
Federal Judge Reggie Walton has found that internal DOJ documents about the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case “contradict Assistant Attorney General [Thomas] Perez’s testimony that political leadership was not involved in” the decision to dismiss the case. In other words, as Hans Von Spakovsky says, “the sworn testimony of Perez, the Obama political appointee who heads the Civil Rights Division, before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was apparently false.”
Judge Walton serves on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He has presided over high profile trials including those of Scooter Libby and Roger Clemens.
This particular case was brought by Judicial Watch, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking “documents relating to the DOJ’s decision to dismiss civil claims in the New Black Panther Party case.” According to Judge Walton, the DOJ documents, including emails from former Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli (who was the number-two official at DOJ) and former Democratic election lawyer and Deputy Associate Attorney General Sam Hirsch, “revealed that political appointees within DOJ were conferring about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther Party case in the days preceding the DOJ’s dismissal of claims.”
This finding directly contradicts the sworn testimony of Assistant Attorney General Perez. At a hearing before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on May 14, 2010, Perez was asked whether “any political leadership [was] involved in the decision not to pursue this particular case.” Perez’s answer, on page 79 of the transcript of that hearing, was an unqualified “No.”
Accordingly, as von Spakovsky concludes, it is clear that Judge Walton was being polite when he said that thre documents and the testimony of Perez are contradictory and “cast doubt on the accuracy” of Perez’s account.
Perez’s conduct should, at a minimum, be the subject of an investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (did Perez violate his ethical and professional obligations as a DOJ attorney) and/or the DOJ inspector general (did Perez violate 18 U.S.C. §1621, which outlaws presenting false statements under oath in official federal proceeding). But don’t hold your breath.
And don’t expect much, if any, any coverage by the mainsteam media which, no doubt, would be howling if a Republican political appointee at DOJ had been found by a federal judge to have given “inaccurate” testimony under oath.
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Obama’s Nominee for Secretary of (Illegal Alien) Labor
By Michelle Malkin • March 13, 2013
http://michellemalkin.com/2013/03/13/obamas-nominee-for-secretary-of-illegal-alien-labor/
My column today refreshes your memories of radical assistant attorney general for Obama’s DOJ civil rights division, Thomas Perez. As icing on the corrupto-cake, here’s a brand-spanking — emphasis on spanking — new DOJ Inspector General’s report on the racialist foul play at Perez’s bureau, where “polarization and mistrust” reign.
Former DOJ attorney and brave whistleblower J. Christian Adams has much more. He writes:
The 250-page report offers an inside glimpse of systemic racialist dysfunction inside one of the most powerful federal government agencies.
The report was prepared in response to Representative Frank Wolf’s (R-VA) outrage over the New Black Panther voter intimidation dismissal. In response to the report, Rep. Wolf said today, the “report makes clear that the division has become a rat’s nest of unacceptable and unprofessional actions, and even outright threats against career attorneys and systemic mismanagement.”
Former Voting Section Chief Chris Coates and I both testified about the hostility towards race-neutral law enforcement by the Justice Department.
Today’s report paints a disgusting portrait, confirming our accounts.
Roll over or stand up to this injustice, GOP? Your move.
***
Obama’s Nominee for Secretary of (Illegal Alien) Labor
by Michelle Malkin
The Beltway is buzzing over President Obama’s likely nomination of Thomas E. Perez as the next head of the U.S. Department of Labor. But when Americans find out whom Perez has lobbied for most aggressively over the course of his extremist leftwing social justice career, they’ll be wondering which country Obama’s pick really plans to serve.
Press accounts describe Perez, currently the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, as a “tireless advocate of worker and civil rights.” The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Perez was a former special counsel for the late illegal alien amnesty champion Sen. Ted Kennedy.
During the Clinton years, Perez worked at the Justice Department to establish a “Worker Exploitation Task Force” to enhance working conditions for … illegal alien workers. While holding down his government position, Perez volunteered for Casa de Maryland. This notorious illegal alien advocacy group is funded through a combination of taxpayer-subsidized grants (totaling $5 million in 2010 alone from Maryland and local governments) and radical liberal philanthropy, including billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
That’s in addition to more than $1 million showered on the group by freshly departed Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez’s regime-owned oil company, CITGO.
As I’ve reported previously, Perez rose from Casa de Maryland volunteer to president of the group’s board of directors. Under the guise of enhancing the “multicultural” experience, he crusaded for an ever-expanding set of illegal alien benefits, from in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students to driver’s licenses and tax-subsidized day labor centers. Casa de Maryland opposes enforcement of deportation orders, has protested post-9/11 coordination of local, state and national criminal databases, and produced a “know your rights” propaganda pamphlet for illegal aliens that depicted federal immigration agents as armed bullies making babies cry.
The group can claim credit for pushing the White House to issue an estimated 800,000 illegal alien deportation waivers by executive fiat. And now, Casa de Maryland is currently leading the charge for an even broader illegal alien “path to citizenship.”
Questioned by GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions during his DOJ confirmation hearing in 2009 about the illegal alien rights guide produced by Casa de Maryland, Perez grudgingly stated that “the civil rights division must not act in contravention to valid enforcement actions of our federal immigration laws.”
But “act(ing) in contravention” of the law is at the heart of Perez’s and Casa’s radicalism — and not just on behalf of illegal aliens.
During his tenure with the Obama DOJ, Perez sought to undermine electoral integrity by attacking South Carolina’s voter ID law. His race card antics were rebuked by a unanimous U.S. District Court panel (which included a Clinton appointee), and the law prevailed.
Perez was instrumental in covering the backsides of the militant New Black Panther Party thugs who menaced voters and poll watchers in Philadelphia in 2008. The American Spectator’s Quin Hillyer recounted that a federal judge challenged the veracity of Perez’s testimony about DOJ political appointees’ interference on behalf of the Panthers. “This came after Perez also had, apparently unlawfully, refused to honor valid subpoenas from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights — and it was in addition to yet another falsehood by Perez, this one to the effect that DOJ had sought the maximum allowable penalty against the Panthers,” Hillyer reported. “While the original decision to dismiss the case pre-dated Perez’s appointment to the Justice Department, his direct involvement in, and hands-on management of, what amounted to a cover-up of the decision’s origins should alone be disqualifying for any Cabinet post.”
Perez also helped spearhead the lawsuit against Arizona over its immigration enforcement measures and launched a three-year DOJ witch-hunt against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The vengeful investigation against Arpaio, the nation’s most outspoken local law enforcement official against illegal alien crime, was dropped without charges last summer. Perez is leading similar witch-hunts against police departments across the country based on leftwing junk science theories about racial “disparate impacts.”
With Senate Republicans John McCain, Lindsey Graham and company folding like lawn chairs on Obamamnesty, open-borders groups are thrilled at the prospect of another victory with Perez’s nomination.
Last week, conservatives stood with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., over John Brennan’s nomination as CIA director. Who will stand for American workers in opposition to Obama’s pending secretary of illegal alien labor? Anyone?
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http://www.westernjournalism.com/obamas-newest-partner-in-crime/
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mVWHgMMF0cM
He golfs with Tiger (what did that cost?) but can't swing a club, hangs with NBA legends but can't make a free throw (video above is pretty amazing), and he wants to run the economy but has still never read a book on economics that isn't about dismantling our system. Just getting to know the guy - as our nation heads down the tubes.
If his story was that he is a lousy basketball player or golfer (honesty), I would be impressed. If his story is that he works on improving our economy so much, that is why his former sporting prowess has suffered, i would say - what a crock.
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Humorist Scott Ott at Scrappleface reports:
Obama Declares April 1 ‘Fiscal Responsibility Day’
Obama signs National Fiscal Responsibility Day declarationPresident Obama declares April 1 ‘National Fiscal Responsibility Day’, as the infants and toddlers of Wall Street bankers crawl around his desk just out of the camera’s view.
In a White House ceremony this morning, surrounded by young children of Wall Street bankers, and of staffers at the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, President Barack Obama signed an executive order designating today as ‘National Fiscal Responsibility Day.’
The president said the declaration would both “recognize the Herculean efforts of members of Congress and the Executive branch in paring down the federal budget to its core essentials...
Obama noted that from now on, the first day of April each year will “remind all Americans of the kind of government we ordained and established in our Constitution — one of limited, enumerated powers, that maximizes individual liberty.”...
[Too bad this is only an April Fools joke.]
http://scrappleface.com/?p=2009
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/01/embarrassing-obama-shoots-22-baskets-but-can-you-guess-how-many-he-actually-made/
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http://www.dickmorris.com/is-michelle-running-the-administration-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports
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(http://www.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2013/04/RAMclr-040513-change-IBD-COLOR-FINAL.jpg.cms_.jpeg)
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White House blames lousy jobs report on the sequester!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04/05/employment-situation-march
Solution: Higher taxes and more government spending.
a) Everything is fine. If you don't believe a), then try: b) Everything that is wrong is attributable to Republicans.
"The Administration continues to urge Congress to replace the sequester with balanced deficit reduction (raising taxes), while working to put in place measures (more government spending) to put more Americans back to work like rebuilding our roads and bridges and promoting American manufacturing."
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Of course the tax increases and the implementation of Obamacare have nothing to do with it , , ,
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:x :x :x
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-overrides-congress-to-buy-690-mil-worth-of-russian-choppers-for-afghan-air-force/
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The ignored trial of Gosnell puts images to the beyond far left policies that State Senator Barack Obama from Illinois sponsored. If the intent was to kill the baby, kill the baby. Who knew that abortion rights could get ugly?
OTOH, Wouldn't it be more liberal and caring to protect those who are most vulnerable?
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The rhetorical flourish here about women strikes me as rather stupid, but the dissonance of sending representatives to Chavez's funeral but not Thatcher's speaks for itself.
http://www.libertynews.com/2013/04/war-on-women-obama-snubs-thatcher-funeral-doesnt-send-a-single-person/
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At least they didn't send Biden, but did they really send no one to Margaret Thatcher's funeral? Unbelievable.
You would think they would be more sensitive after all their other mistakes with our closest ally - even if they don't give a damn.
The decision to send no one was announced before the Boston bombing, so that wasn't it. It was the gun control momentum that is so easy to lose when it is a top issue for 4% of the American people.
Obama agrees that Thatcher is in a class with Churchill and Reagan, all his ideological opponents.
His view is shared by the UK protesters who wasted no time getting up a sign saying "The Bitch is Dead" and made “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” from The Wizard of Oz the No. 1 download at Amazon U.K. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/345435/mrs-thatchers-losing-victory-mark-steyn
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Obama's Boston statement would sound sincere and Presidential if he didn't say nearly the same thing about Benghazi before it was swept under the carpet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh6Lc5vmO0o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1gF0I2Ecmw
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In other news, the Sec. of State on who bombed Boston: WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE NOW?
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Tom Perez as Sec of Labor should fit in just fine with the Obama cabinet:
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Perez gave false testimony to the Civil Rights Commission about the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case. Under oath, Perez said that no “political leadership” at DOJ was involved in the decision not to pursue that matter. But a federal district court judge (Reggie Walton) found that internal Justice Department documents “contradict” this testimony.
Perez made false statements to investigators who looked into a deal he orchestrated with the City of St. Paul. Under Perez’s deal, the DOJ caused the dismissal of a suit against the City of St. Paul, one that could have netted $180 million to U.S. taxpayers, in exchange for the City’s agreement to drop a Supreme Court appeal (in the case of Magner v. Gallaher), the outcome of which might have invalidated DOJ’s pet method of proving racial discrimination in housing cases.
The Wall Street Journal describes Perez’s dishonesty over this quid pro quo arrangement:
Mr. Perez told investigators he hadn’t heard of the Magner case until the Supreme Court agreed to hear it on November 7, 2011. But HUD Deputy Assistant Secretary Sara Pratt told investigators that she and Mr. Perez had a discussion about the case well before that.
Mr. Perez also says he didn’t propose the quid pro quo. But St. Paul’s lawyer, David Lillehaug, testified that Mr. Perez first called him on November 23, 2011 to discuss Magner and on November 29 met him to propose a “potential solution”: the quid pro quo. It defies logic to believe St. Paul wanted to drop a case it had been fighting for nearly a decade and after the High Court had finally agreed to hear it.
Perez has worked in additional ways to cover-up his involvement in the quid pro quo.
On January 10, 2012, Mr. Perez left a voicemail for Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Brooker, instructing him not to link Magner and Newell in the memo explaining why Justice wouldn’t intervene in Newell.
Mr. Perez also told investigators he didn’t have “any recollection” of using his personal email to correspond about the quid pro quo. . .Congressional investigators later discovered a personal email Mr. Perez sent to St. Paul’s lawyer, Mr. Lillehaug, on December 10, 2011. They have subpoenaed Mr. Perez for his Verizon email account, but Mr. Perez has not complied with the subpoena.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/04/will-senate-republicans-turn-a-blind-eye-to-tom-perezs-dishonesty.php
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/26/insuring-racial-discrimination/
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/07/high-ranking-doj-official-gave-false-testimony-about-voter-intimidation-case.php
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/03/how-tom-perez-traded-u-s-money-to-protect-pet-race-discrimination-theory.php
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323346304578426950656708348.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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http://teapartyorg.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=4301673%3ATopic%3A1496560&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_topic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rqtJrJ40Cio
This is over three hours long. I am told it starts to really get traction at about 1:02:00
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1) Oballah
2) Oblahblah
======================
"In the wake of Benghazi, the country endured an intense debate over how much free speech we could afford because of the savage intolerance of rioters half a world away. Obama and Clinton fueled this debate by incessantly blaming the video -- as if the First Amendment was the problem. Clinton and Obama both swore oaths to support and defend the Constitution. But after failing to support and defend Americans left to die, they blamed the Constitution for their failure. That's what difference it makes." --columnist Jonah Goldberg
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I hope all the uproar over the Benghazi attack lying, IRS shutting down political dissent, White House tracking reporters' phone records, and Secretary Sebelius overtly fundraising from those she wishes to regulate will not draw time and resources away from the administration's commitment to get to the bottom of the FAST AND FURIOUS, dead Mexicans and border guard scandal.
I don't know why I haven't heard an update on that. Does anyone know when Attorney General gets out of jail for his CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS citation? Who prosecuted that anyway?
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Obama plays monopoly. Holder gets the "Get out of jail free card".
Axelrod spinning (out of control):
Government *too big* for the Brockster to control. WOW! :lol: :-D
Axelrod IS (from my armchair view) the guy who needs an investigation. This is the guy who probably needs to be in jail. It appears he is the source of this corruption. Of course Obama gives him the nods. But obamster is just the front man. He is not the strategist brains. I am not sure if Axelrod is the only one but he is probably the head of the politburo.
There is something sickening on how all this only is going nuclear because as Crafty (the media "ox is being gored") and many others on radio are pointing out because that the media were being spied on.
Otherwise they would still be covering for their ONE. I can only say the media entertainment complex does a lot of spying and snooping including much of it illegally of their own. They hold tremendous power. More than ever by far.
But if this is what it takes to get Obama for his crimes than so be it. It is "manna from heaven". Hey how come the media is not being accused of going after the Black guys Obama and Holder. Where is Geraldo:
"this is all about RACE afterall, no?" that idiot. Well he is only half Jewish. That's explains him. I still don't understand the 75% who support the crats....
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/348346/scarborough-goes-axelrod-spinning-ap-tapping-%E2%80%98save-somebody-else-buy-that%E2%80%99
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What Would Bulworth Do?
Barack Obama's bizarre movie idol.
by JAMES TARANTO
A New York Times story on President Obama's plague of scandal contains this eyebrow-raising revelation:
Yet Mr. Obama also expresses exasperation. In private, he has talked longingly of "going Bulworth," a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Mr. Beatty's character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Mr. Obama's desire to be liberated from what he sees as the hindrances on him.
"Probably every president says that from time to time," said David Axelrod, another longtime adviser who has heard Mr. Obama's movie-inspired aspiration. "It's probably cathartic just to say it. But the reality is that while you want to be truthful, you want to be straightforward, you also want to be practical about whatever you're saying."
Perhaps the Times didn't want to spoil the film for its readers--which we are about to do, so please skip the subsequent four paragraphs if you're planning on seeing it and want to be surprised. But the Times's description comes nowhere near doing justice to the film and Beatty's character--and to how strange it is that it is the object of a presidential fantasy.
"Bulworth" is a satire about a politician going through something of a midlife crisis. Sen. Jay Billington Bulworth, a veteran Democrat from California, is a radical leftist at heart, but the exigencies of electoral politics have required him to pose as a moderate. He's up for re-election and running behind a young challenger. His marriage is on the rocks.
Depressed and suicidal, he offers a favorable vote to an insurance company in exchange for a bribe--a $10 million life policy with his daughter as beneficiary. Of course the policy is void if he takes his own life, so he hires a hit man to assassinate him instead.
He drinks heavily, and the combination of alcohol and imminent death has a disinhibiting effect. He begins speaking his mind at campaign events. Then he begins rapping his mind. We're not making this up: "Yo, everybody gonna get sick someday / But nobody knows how they gonna pay / Health care, managed care, HMOs / Ain't gonna work, no sir, not those / 'Cause the thing that's the same in every one of these / Is these m-----f---ers there, the insurance companies! . . . Yeah, yeah / You can call it single-payer or Canadian way / Only socialized medicine will ever save the day! Come on now, lemme hear that dirty word--SOCIALISM!"
The burst of media attention revives his campaign. He begins an affair with a young staffer. Suddenly things are looking better for Bulworth. He cancels the assassination contract and decides to run for president. Then he gets shot anyway--by someone from an insurance company who opposes socialized medicine.
What would it mean for Obama to "go Bulworth"? We suppose we had a hint of it a month ago tomorrow, when he raged against the Senate for rejecting his calls for gun control, a subject on which he had cultivated a pretense of moderation during both his presidential campaigns.
Another example is a June 30, 2003, video of Obama, then a state senator, telling an AFL-CIO gathering: "A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see." Bulworth might have added: But you ain't gonna get it from no insurance company.
Given the revelation that Obama fantasizes about going Bulworth, and the long-established fact that Obama has made statements consistent with the fictitious senator's view that only socialized medicine will ever save the day, it seems to us some apologies are in order from those who insisted it was crazy to think Obama is a socialist. John Avlon should go first.
Let us be clear: We think it unlikely that the president will go Bulworth, and although we're sure we'd enjoy the spectacle, we think it would be bad for the country if he did. An unhinged president would be dangerous to America and the world in a way that an unhinged senator would not.
At any rate, there doesn't seem to be much danger that Obama will go Bulworth. Consider this story from National Journal about Obama's hypovehiculation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service:
Under pressure to show who's boss, President Obama called a press conference late Wednesday to say he was "angry" that the IRS singled out conservative groups for extra vetting and to announce that the agency's acting commissioner had been forced out.
"It's inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it," he said. "I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives."
Unlike the gun-control statement, this one didn't have the feel of being a genuine cry from the heart. Instead, the president seemed to be saying what he had to say.
By contrast, National Review Online notes that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri had some Bulworthy comments about Obama's opponents yesterday on MSNBC's "Hardball": "He has taken control / Of their soul / And their obsession / Is prolonging our recession . . . It's going to be very very, very difficult for us to erase / Some of the things that people have embraced . . . And they simply want this to be a figment / Of his pigmentation."
The prevailing image of Obama in the face of the past week's scandalous revelations is more similar to the weak and aimless Bulworth of the film's beginning. "The challenges underscore a paradox about the 44th president," as that Times piece puts it:
He presides over a government that to critics appears ever more intrusive, dictating health care choices, playing politics with the Internal Revenue Service and snooping into journalists' phone records. Yet at times, Mr. Obama comes across as something of a bystander occupying the most powerful office in the world, buffeted by partisanship and forces beyond his control.
The scandals have even former White House aide David Axelrod complaining that government is too big. Yesterday he said this to MSNBC's Joe Scarborough:
Look, it's an interesting case study because if you look at the inspector general's report [on the IRS abuses], apparently some folks down in the bureaucracy--you know we have a large government--took it upon themselves to shorthand these applications for tax-exempt status in a way that was, as I said, idiotic, and also dangerous because of the political implications. One prima facie bit of evidence that nobody political was involved in this, is that if anybody political was involved they would say: Are you nuts?
Part of being president is there's so much underneath you that you can't know because the government is so vast.
To David Ignatius of the Washington Post, it's all evidence that government is dangerously ineffective:
The crippling problem in Washington these days isn't any organized conspiracy against conservatives, journalists or anyone else. Rather, it's a federal establishment that's increasingly paralyzed because of poor management and political second-guessing.
What should frighten the public is not the federal government's monstrous power but its impotence.
But there's a more disquieting interpretation. The Benghazi and IRS scandals were both clearly political in nature: The dissembling about what happened in Libya was manifestly an effort to prevent a foreign-policy disaster from becoming a political problem for the president in the weeks before the election; the IRS abuses were an effort to intimidate and silence the president's political enemies.
What about the Justice Department's decision to cast aside decades-old traditions governing press freedom in order to monitor the communications of Associated Press reporters and editors? This Washington Post report suggests a political motive for that one, too:
For five days, reporters at the Associated Press had been sitting on a big scoop about a foiled al-Qaeda plot at the request of CIA officials. Then, in a hastily scheduled Monday morning meeting, the journalists were asked by agency officials to hold off on publishing the story for just one more day.
The CIA officials, who had initially cited national security concerns in an attempt to delay publication, no longer had those worries, according to individuals familiar with the exchange. Instead, the Obama administration was planning to announce the successful counterterrorism operation that Tuesday.
As HotAir.com's "AllahPundit" interprets it: "CIA asked AP not to expose Yemen terror plot bust until White House was ready to crow about it publicly."
If you think about the government in terms of its original mission--"to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty"--then Ignatius is right. It's disturbingly ineffective.
But what if the government between 2009 and 2012 took on a different mandate, namely helping to re-elect Barack Obama? Then the Benghazi and IRS scandals, and possibly the AP one, look frighteningly effective.
If, as Axelrod implies, agents of the government did all this without the president's direction or even knowledge, that is even more frightening. That would mean, to quote a great orator, that the federal government has become "some separate, sinister entity" in which the leaders we entrust with authority cannot be held accountable for its abuse.
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Problem is how to stop this regime which runs the US government like a mafia, punish your enemies and pay off your friends. When nearly half the population is on some sort of assistance.....
http://www.steynonline.com/
How do we ever get mafia dons?
Law enforcement bugs, covertly eaves drop, get witness to turn. The only strategy we can use here is the latter. That is why we need a special prosecutor. But doesn't Justice or the President have to appoint one?
So we are screwed.
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"Obama must work to salvage what’s left before Republicans likely win big in 2014, and he goes from being a lame duck to a soiled, sitting duck amid investigation after investigation."
A.B. Stoddard writing at The Hill, 5/15/13.
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/ab-stoddard/300021-a-time-for-humility#ixzz2TlY9dR39
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The IRS 'heightened scrutiny' targeting of conservative groups in an election year, the Benghazi coverup, the Sebelius story of cronying up with big health care etc., all these known scandals together are but the tip of the iceberg of the misconduct that occurred between the administration and the campaign in the 2012 election.
I am calling for 'heightened scrutiny' of the campaign's "data mining" operation for its collusion with government regarding the supposedly private information owned by the various departments of the governments. They knew who was African American, they knew who was Hispanic and they knew who all the program recipients were in all the key states. Is there not one 'low level' Cincinnati Census or food stamp official ready to come forward and tell us how it really worked?!
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Put my data mining allegation under wildcard, here are the brackets:
(http://cdn4.ricochet.com/var/ezwebin_site/storage/images/media/images/scandalbracketsm2/4044678-1-eng-US/ScandalBracketSm_large.png)
Click here for full size view: http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/351/scandalbracket.png
Who will be the Champion of Obama scandals? I say a wildcard pick will win it. We know about the arrogance of power; we just don't yet know all the details.
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Some have already suggested we have a fourth scandal though few seem to be paying attention -> the recess appointments when there was no recess.
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If you are counting the non-recess appointments, that would make 5 scandals:
2) Benghazi
3) IRS
4) AP
5) Sebelius shakedown
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Bob Schieffer, of all people, on Charlie Rose, CBS News, of all places, inadvertently draws the parallel between this administration's handling of it's affairs and the struggle of a young, medicated rock star dealing with illness, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd in Comfortably Numb. "Is there anyone home?"
Bob Schieffer with Charlie Rose, 5/16/2013:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/16/schieffer_on_scandals_its_very_very_disturbing_what_were_seeing.html
"This is more of a case, is anybody home? All of a sudden you have this thing with the Justice Department where they’re getting all these phone records of all the reporters. The Attorney General, well he didn’t know anything about it. You get to the IRS, they don’t seem to know anything about the Tea Party thing. You come to White House, they don’t know anything about Benghazi. Somebody’s got to grab hold of this thing. It’s very, very disturbing what we’re seeing here."
Roger Waters saw it decades ago and called it "Comfortably Numb" (Pink Floyd, The Wall, 1979), brought to life with music and guitar solo by David Gilmour:
Hello, Hello, Hello,
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone home?
...
Relax
I'll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?
...
I can't explain
You would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become Comfortably Numb
...
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move
But I can't hear what you're saying
...
The child is grown
The dream is gone
I have become Comfortably Numb
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This President, oblivious to unintended consequences, is the master of them. Who knew that withdrawing from war would spark new violence there, that abandoning support for an ally in Egypt would empower anti-Americans there, that launching a war on gun and ammunition sales would boost sales in that industry to record levels, or that launching a war against employers would come back to bite employees? Who knew?
Now President Obama has achieved what President Reagan could only dream of: Putting distrust of government on the front page of every newspaper, even the liberal ones, day after day after day.
President Obama's answer to every scandal is that this government is so large I have no idea what is going on in any part of it, please hand me a 5-iron.
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Nothing like turning a weekend that is supposed to be reserved to honor our military by turning it to yet another lecture from the ONE. This is the strategy - triangulate. He is above and isolated from all the lies, the scandals, the cover-ups, the abuse of his office. Just sickening folks. This guy has no shame. He is a Clinton clone - only more radical:
http://news.yahoo.com/politics/
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Upon advice and wisdom of leadership, I move my Eric Holder post from yesterday to here. I agree that these personal threads can detract from the issue threads. These cabinet officials running wild are only relevant in that the unelected A.G. in this case was chosen by the President who continues to stand by him. That said, Eric Holder is quite a piece of work, loaded with power and worthy of further study and discussion.
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...Holder got his honesty and scandal handling training as Deputy A.G. for the Clintons so he is a confidant of both camps. One might say only half-jokingly, he knows where there bodies are buried.
Here is Michael Ramirez with picture worth more than a thousand words, describing the current investigation of Holder investigating Holder.
(http://www.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2013/05/RAMFNLclr-053013-holder-IBD.jpg.cms_.jpeg)
Before Fast and Furious, Eric Holder had already made a name for himself. "When he pushed through the pardon of Marc Rich, he didn’t know Rich had assisted America’s enemies, including Iran, or that Rich’s wife had donated large sums to Democratic and Clinton interests."
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/05/eric-holders-pattern-of-giving-false-testimony.php
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/01/the-moment-of-truth-about-eric-holders-moment-of-truth.php
Also among Holder's work was the pardons of the FALN terrorists, and lying about legal work done for Blagojevich, famous as the convicted seller of the Obama Senate seat.
Holder has stated under oath that he didn't know about the Fox News wiretapping when it was he who signed the complaint and handling the judge shopping.
In his opening remarks for confirmation, Holder stated that law enforcement must be untainted by politics. He also insisted that the Department of Justice represents the people, not the president.
Let's judge him by his own standard.
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WH alters Michelle transcript.
No surprise.
One can only wonder how many secret emails, white house transcripts of IRS meetings, Benghazi communications are being deleted and hard drives switched or altered as we speak.
Last resort is going to Library of Congress to stuff papers down your underwear..... :x
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/04/michelle-obama-heckled-at-dnc-event-threatens-to-leave/
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The LA Times calls them the "liberal hawks": http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-heilbrunn-obama-rice-power-20130607,0,4704730.story
There is too much material from these two to even know where to start. A contributor at Politico today says Susan Rice is a great choice because of character, strong ethical standards and a clear lens of strategic analysis. http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/susan-rice-and-samantha-power-up-close-92279.html Same Susan Rice who analyzed Benghazi and told it straight to the nation. Rice has a history of other problems well documented in the forum.
Samantha Power, architect of the world apology tour, is quite a bit scarier. Before getting to her statements, take a look at the fascist-left views of Cass Sunstein, her husband, writing about one of his favorite subjects, justifying coercive paternalism, which means opposing individual liberty, which I wrote about here: http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=2177.msg70158#msg70158 and was picked up by the WSJ here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324105204578382572446778866.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
Washington Free Beacon: Samantha Power’s Five Worst Statements
http://freebeacon.com/samantha-powers-five-worst-statements/
Samantha Power will take over at as ambassador to the United Nations following Susan Rice’s promotion to national security adviser. Here are Power’s five most embarrassing comments.
1. Power called for global apology tour
Power wrote that U.S. foreign policy “needs not tweaking but overhauling,” in a 2003 New Republic article. Power recommended that United States officials should apologize to the world for its past failures in order to enhance credibility with foreign countries.
“A country has to look back before it can move forward,” Power wrote. “Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors.”
She reasoned that terrorists depend for their sustenance on “mainstream anti-Americanism throughout the world,” and that anti-Americanism is the fault of the United States.
“Some anti-Americanism derives simply from our being a colossus that bestrides the earth,” argued Power. “But much anti-Americanism derives from the role U.S. political, economic, and military power has played in denying such freedoms to others.”
2. Power recommended the United States intervene with a “Mammoth Protection Force” in Israel, then called the idea “weird”
Power made several recommendations on what the United States should do to alleviate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which she compared to the Rwandan genocide, in a 2002 discussion at Berkeley.
Though she stopped just short of calling it genocide, she did say that she saw “major human rights abuses” in Israel. Power advised that the United States should stop spending money on the Israeli military, and instead invest billions in a new Palestinian state.
“It may mean sacrificing—or investing I think more than sacrificing—literally billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine,” Power explained.
She continued by recommending that the United States invest billions to send “a mammoth protection force” in order to create a “meaningful military presence” in Israel.
One of the few concerns for Power was that such action would alienate the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. “Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import,” Power said.
3. Power praised Obama’s willingness to meet with enemies without preconditions
Power offered praise for President Barack Obama’s statement that he was willing to meet with rogue leaders without preconditions in the first year of his administration. According to the Huffington Post, Power saw this statement by Obama as a turning point for his campaign and talked positively of his staunch insistence on the point.
“I can tell you about the conference call the day [after Obama made the proclamation],” she recalled. “People were like, ‘Did you need to say that?’ And he was like ‘yeah, definitely.’”
4. Power lost her job with Obama for calling Hillary Clinton a “monster”
Power was forced to resign from Obama’s presidential campaign for calling Hillary Clinton a “monster” in 2008. The comments came during an interview with a Scottish newspaper.
“She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything,” Power said.
She went into depth on what she believed were deceitful tactics by the Clinton campaign. “You just look at her and think, ‘Ergh.’ But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.”
5. Power on John Kerry: “He must have thought that having got shrapnel in his ass out there bought him some credibility. It didn’t.”
Power had strong words for Secretary of State John Kerry following his failed 2004 campaign for president. Power thinks that it was a mistake for Kerry to assume his military record alone would be enough to deflect attacks on the merits of his service in Vietnam.
“The lesson we got was that the only thing worse than John Kerry being Swiftboated was his being slow to respond,” Power told the New Statesman. “God love him, he must have thought that having got shrapnel in his ass out there bought him some credibility. It didn’t.”
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Same paper, Susan Rice's 5 worst moments: http://freebeacon.com/susan-rices-worst-5-moments/
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FWIW Levin theorizes that Brock the Great's apt of Rice is not much ado about in your face "Republican boy" as bribe to her to shut her up from turning on the "One"/
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Historian Victor Davis Hanson puts context on the current mess. Obama is just being Obama, 'who changed the rules?'
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/ June 9, 2013
Suddenly, half the country is upset with Obama for the recent flurry of scandals. Even some in the media are perplexed. Why the sudden angst, given that Obama is simply being Obama? We, not he, changed the rules.
Once Barack Obama was elected to the Illinois legislature, his career as a statesman was mostly an afterthought — either voting “present” on controversial legislation (cf. Hillary’s 2008 complaint) or simply showing up to sign off on a straight left-wing agenda. Even his supporters can cite no lasting legislative achievement other than his controversial votes to allow babies born alive from botched abortions to be liquidated. As a political unknown, he got elected and defined his tenure as a legislator into a perpetual effort to find higher office.
Ditto the U.S. Senate. Obama was noted in his brief career mostly for compiling the most partisan record among a diverse group of 100 senators, while making the argument that he worked “across the aisle” and was a model of “bipartisanship.” Because newly elected Senator Obama swore that he would not run for the presidency, we inferred that he would certainly do just that. (Yes, it is axiomatic that when Obama swears ["make no mistake about it"/"let me be perfectly clear"], then we expect what will follow will prove to be the very opposite.)
In the Senate, there was no signature legislation, no principled opposition, not much of anything, except a vote against Justice Alito and some similarly failed efforts at other filibusters to deny nominees an up-or-down vote. He spent most of his brief sojourn attacking George W. Bush for the very protocols that he as president would later embrace. The only thing important was getting elected in the first place as a left-wing senator, and Obama accomplished that in brilliant, if not Machiavellian, fashion — with the help of the leaked divorced records of both his primary and general opponents.
The Man Who Never Was
The saga of Obama is marked by the uncanny ability to soar through the academic and government cursus honorum without ever being held too accountable for what followed. Obama’s selection as editor of the Harvard Law Review broke new ground. But to this day, no one cares much that his record was mediocre with no scholarly work to show for his tenure.
For that matter, ditto also his law career at the University of Chicago: an impressive appointment, but no scholarly book as promised, not even an article, and no distinguished record of teaching. Not much of anything. The point of the Nobel Prize was winning it — not doing anything that might have earned it. Just as there was no foreign policy achievement that preceded the prize, so there was naturally none following it. Why expect anything different now?
The Mind of the Liberal Elite
Obama always has a unique insight into a disturbing pathology among wealthy white liberal elites, who often seek, in condescending fashion, to promote particular aspiring minority candidates into positions of power and influence by virtue of their profile rather than past record. Hence the prep-schooled Barry Dunham returned to the more exotic Barack Obama, an authentic enough “other” fresh out of Rev. Wright’s Church, but also the pet of the Ivy League. Had he been born in Chicago to a Daily ward boss, it would have been a bit much to win statewide office. Had Obama been named Reggie Davis I don’t think the liberal resonance would have been there. Had he intoned like Jesse Jackson — all the time — he would have worried big-money liberals. Had his mannerisms been Al Sharpton-like, that would have been a bridge too far. There is something in the liberal mind that ignores the anti-constitutional transgressions of a smooth Eric Holder, but goes berserk over the comparatively minor obfuscations of a twangy Texan Alberto Gonzalez, perhaps along the lines of “how dare he?” Politics aside, liberal elites would always prefer to hear a Barack Obama fudge than a Clarence Thomas tell the truth.
Obama brilliantly threaded the multicultural, Ivy-League, prep-school, affirmative action, just like us-sorta, yuppie needle. I’ll let you decide whether wealthy liberals practice such racialist paternalism because of feelings of guilt, because of their intrinsic dislike of the NASCAR/Sarah Palin working and middle classes, or as a sort of medieval exemption — the huge “Obama for President” sign on the lawn of the Palo Alto professor means never having to put your kids in schools where some are bused in from East Palo Alto. But what is absolutely non-controversial is that Obama’s prior record as a university undergraduate, a Harvard Law Review editor, a Chicago law lecturer, an Illinois legislator, and a U.S. senator was as undistinguished as his efforts to obtain those posts were absolutely dazzling.
The presidency followed the same earlier script. Obama ran a brilliant campaign both in 2008 and 2012, more inspired even than Richard Nixon’s 1972 CREEP run, or Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” 1984 touchy-feely pastel effort. In 2008, Obama offered cadences of something known as “hope and change” that were supposed to cure the evils of George Bush — and left everything else to the media. The second time around, he turned a decent Mitt Romney into a veritable greedy ogre from the Utah nuthouse, who did everything from ignoring his African-American garbage man to torturing his poor dog to buying pricey horses for his wife who was found guilty of being an equestrian.
But Obama’s record as president? There is pretty much nothing other than ramming through an unpopular takeover of health care, leveraged by political bribes and deemed unworkable even before it is enacted. A “train wreck” is how its author in the Senate dubbed his own legislative offspring. Otherwise it was golf, down time, and free rein for zealous subordinates to “fundamentally transform America” by any means necessary, usually through administrative fiat and subversions of the vast and always growing bureaucracy.
Obama is now somewhat shocked that a few in the media hold him responsible for lots of bad things that his administration did: destroyed the reputation of the IRS; had a rogue EPA director invent a phony persona; let the HHS secretary shake down PR money from corporations to sell Obamacare; turned the Justice Department into a veritable Stasi enterprise going after the phone records of reporters; reduced the State Department into an arm of the 2012 Obama reelection effort; and helped erode the reputations of both Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice, who advanced campaign narratives about Benghazi that were not just untrue, but were demonstrably false the moment they were presented.
So What?
So where’s the beef? Obama, who was given a pass from Rev. Wright to Tony Rezko, is justifiably confused: who now changed the rules? Why should he suddenly be held accountable in a way he never was prior? He signed up to be a transformational president who was above politics, not someone subject to the vagaries of Washington scandals.
The result of the serial dishonesty is that Obama almost immediately reverted to his natural campaign mode, the soaring rhetoric and non-traditional persona that won him everything on the guarantee that there would be no audit, no assessment, no final appraisal. In other words, Obama never really became president of the United States. He simply kept running for the office against “them” even when he is now “them” holding the highest office. So Pavlovian was his campaign mode that he never quite stopped to wonder why he was running against himself — now damning the very abuses of power that he committed, upset only that someone might be disturbed about a record in a manner that they never were at Harvard, in the Senate, or during his first term.
Quo Vadimus?
Where do the scandals lead? To about three more months of Washington inaction. At some point soon, the Democrats will accept that the novelty of Obama in opposition to the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments has worn off. Who cares to hound out our first black president, our first northern liberal commander in chief in a half-century? Likewise the media will strut a bit to show it is not entirely reptilian, but then will revert to the usual hagiography. Why endanger Obamacare, or “lead from behind,” or the apology tours, or the new 50 million on food stamps by cannibalizing your own?
There are lots of metaphors for Obama. Some cite King Henry II, who dreams out loud for advantageous things to follow, only to shed alligator tears when toadies reify his deadly desires (Becket dead? That was a bit much, wasn’t it?). Others cite the clueless Jimmy Carter, whose agendas proved unworkable and ended up as caricatures of a presidency. I still prefer Chauncey Gardiner of Being There. In January 2012, I wrote the following on these pages:
What got Obama to the presidency was being a man without a past or present, Chauncey Gardiner of Being There — without a college record, a medical record, a scholarly record, or much of a legislative record, the “smartest” president in history without having to say or do anything smart, who “busted hump” his entire life without any proof that he ever did any such thing, who proclaimed himself a greater president than all but three, but left nothing great in his wake, now or in the past. Obama had forgotten that winning non-persona for a time, and so after 2009 fooled himself into thinking out loud that at times he would play a real Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Kennedy, or Reagan.
But now Obama accepts what he was and always will be — Chauncey Gardiner.
And just being there is apparently the way to being president a bit longer.
Nothing has changed in the last 18 months, and the Obama presidency remains what it has been since 2009: a path-breaking candidate who was elected America’s first African-American president; a gifted teleprompted speaker who is as accomplished from a script as he flounders ex tempore; and an opportunist haunted by George Bush and the post-2010 Republican House that are supposed to be responsible for most of what he gets caught for.
Otherwise there is not a lot there—mostly a carnival of McCarthyite (AttackWatch, JournoList, IRS) henchmen and left-wing extremists trying to push through an agenda by any means necessary that the majority of America probably does not welcome.
Obama is perturbed that we question any of this malfeasance. I think he is right to be angry. In his case, we made up the Obama rules that symbolism (not performance) and amnesty (not accountability) count. So why break our covenant with him, and now start asking for concrete and honest accomplishment when the teleprompter was always enough? In 2008, did we ask for the specifics of “the audacity of hope,” or ponder how someone who did not miss a service at Trinity Church (“Yep. Every week. 11 o’clock service”) somehow missed Rev. Wright’s serial racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-American rants? That we now want to know the president’s role in Benghazi, or in the IRS, AP, and Fox scandals is something that was just not part of the smartest-president-in-history bargain—as if once upon a time America ever demanded, “What the hell is your hope and change?”
So as they say here in Selma, “Get over it”.
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"Suddenly, half the country is upset with Obama for the recent flurry of scandals"
Well not exactly right. Half the country has been disgusted with this guy for 5 years now. But finally there is enough bad news that even the adoring MSM and fellow Dems are getting nervous reading the polls.
"At some point soon, the Democrats will accept that the novelty of Obama in opposition to the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments has worn off."
We'll see if the Republicans can figure it out. Some have but most are still clueless.
In any case Obama was the front man. He's got some backup on the stage (holder, Biden) while he is the lead singer. The real brains are unclear to me. Axelrod? Soros? Probably them and a whole slew of other liberals most likely from the Ivys funded by the entertainment complex and Wall street fascists.
Not only does he give a good tele-prompted speech reading his lines flawlessly with the novel yet annoying (to me anyway) up note at the end of every line he delivers, he has the personality suited for the job.
An effortless liar, narcissistic far beyond simply being confident or even cocky. Supremely and ruthlessly political and an extraordinary believer in leveling the playing field. Megalomaniac with only a conscious to himself.
Clinton was absolutely narcissistic. He definitely has many narcissistic traits but I can't really say he rises to the level of being a narcissistic *personality disorder*. While Clinton is a serial liar he still can garner sympathy as the son of the alcoholic just seeking love and approval. Hence he was able to adapt to the polls and govern closer to the middle. It was all about his approval ratings. Of course polls ratings to count for power as he demonstrated his second term.
Obama on the other hand is far more angry. Far more about getting even. Is he white? Is he black? Is he Christian? Is he Muslim? Is he an American? The answer to the first four no longer need matter. He is human. However with regards to the last one - is he American? I hope to God most Americans still think that matters. Many Ivy league libs who are the brains behind Obama, the front man, no longer that is important. That portends poorly for us.
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It's OK for Obama to have access to everyone's contacts, credit buys, downloads, links, etc.
Yet he can have media over to the WH for "off the record" meetings whatever the f* that means, and no one has a right to know who these people are.
He can have endless visits to his house scheming and plotting his politics as he works for us yet no one has a right to know. Yet we have no privacy rights.
As someone for years who has been under surveillance - I can tell you it is not pleasant. Most people don't think they are targets so they are aloof about this. Just they wait.
Boehner - This is the leader of the party I have voted for?
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As the scientific ties between CO2 and warming get weaker and weaker, our glib President tells his closed door, fund raising audiences he is getting ready to double down:
Obama Tells Keystone Foes He Will Unveil Climate Measures
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/obama-tells-keystone-foes-he-will-unveil-climate-measures.html
The actions will focus on governing from the executive branch alone, without a check or balance with the legislative branch.
And this guy used to teach constitutional law...
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Yes . He is going to ram as much liberal agenda through as he can over the next 3.5 yrs.
Now we are going to get involved in Syria. He we go again with the tail that wags the dog.
Have you noticed the Clintons in the news nearly every day now?
Bush Clinton again? As much as I don't agree with Bush at least he and his family seem honorable. I can't say the same for either of the Clintons or Obama.
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"And this guy used to teach constitutional law..."
Actually IIRC it was one particular Amendment and how to use it for progressive litigation , , ,
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I don't want to be anti-Michelle, but here she comes, getting all political, with all of the same glibness.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillmatthews/2013/06/13/is-there-another-elected-obama-in-our-future/
Is There Another Elected Obama In Our Future?
"she would likely embrace virtually all of her husband’s economic policies — and could be even further to the left."
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Note: All of the problems confronting the President today happened before the election and were investigated and reported after the election.
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In overall approval, the President was +8 in May's (CNN) poll, 53-45. But in the most recent poll the President's approval rating has dropped to 45-54 or -9.
That's a negative shift of 17 percentage points in one month.
Every Democrat who has been pointing to the President's fairly steady approval numbers as evidence that his goodwill among his base has an insulating property to protect him against the NSA snooping, the IRS, the Benghazi problem, the DoJ collecting reporters' phone records and targeting Fox's James Rosen, Syria, Turkey, and maybe a Kryptonite asteroid that might have the Earth in its sights.
On what are known as the "issue handling" questions (Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling:
The Economy - 42-57 (-15)
Foreign Affairs - 44-54 (-10)
Deficit/budget - 34-64 (-30)
Immigration - 40-56 (-16)
NSA/Surveillance - 35-61 (-26)
I didn't leave out the good issues. That's the whole list.
On the "Do you consider the President to be honest & trustworthy" question the result was 49-50.
That is only minus one so it doesn't look so bad. But a month ago that result was 58-41 (+17). So, it represents an 18 percentage point drop.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/06/19/headwinds_for_obama_118867.html#ixzz2WfhOvaGc
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Pres. Obama drew 200,000 in Berlin, 2009. Today 6000.
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Living Rich and Famous, Obama Style
If Not for Double Standards... The $100 MILLION Family Vacation
By Mark Alexander • June 20, 2013
"We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape...? --James Madison (1788)
Obama One
For all the class warfare rhetoric spewed by Barack Hussein Obama and his NeoCom cadres, he and his co-conspirator, Michelle LaVaughn, live like royalty.
Their let-'em-eat-cake lifestyle is even more contemptible, however, when one considers that it comes at the expense of those whom they purport to represent.
For all the references to "fat cats," it turns out the fattest cats of all now occupy the White House, and much like their record accumulation of national debt, their unmitigated arrogance and bloated hypocrisy exceeds all that of previous executive administrations combined.
Perhaps there are no better cases in point than the Obamas' exotic resort vacations and golf junkets whilst the rest of the nation exercises austerity measures necessitated by the regime's failed economic policies.
This week, Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha hitched a ride on Air Force One to the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland. Then MO requisitioned Air Force Two so that she and her entourage could spend two days touring Dublin and the surrounding area. Once there, MO, her 11- and 14-year-old kids, and 30 members of her retinue set up shop in the lavish 5-star Shelbourne Hotel, where she booked the $3,300-per-night Princess Grace Suite.
By day, they hobnobbed with glitterati, lunching over Dalkey Lobster and Crab Salad or Road Rack of Wicklow Spring Lamb with such notables as U2 singer Bono. By night they were treated to royal boxes at theater performances such as "Riverdance," where Michelle told an adoring crowd, "It is good to be home."
Conde Nast, leftist travel magazine of the rich and famous, devoted a special section under "Bigwig Vacations," to Michelle's travel plans, noting, "It looks like she has taken a leaf or two from our 'Iconic Irish Itinerary.'" The Huffington Post Style pages opined under the heading, "Michelle Obama's Ireland Trip Wardrobe Is Making Us Jealous," then gushed about her "awesome printed Lela Rose vest, an on-trend Burberry trench coat and a covetable utility jacket."
Isn't that special.
Michelle's two-day $5.2 million side trip, however, was a mere slum tour compared to the Obamas' next taxpayer funded junket -- a "heritage tour" of three nations in southern Africa the week of June 26 to July 3, with an estimated cost between $80 and $100 million.
Beyond the five-star accommodations, this Africa tour will put an enormous burden on the Air Force. In addition to the already-huge operational cost of Air Force One, USAF cargo planes will airlift 14 limousines and 42 support vehicles, including three trucks with sheets of ballistic glass for the royal family's hotel windows. Helicopters will be ferried in along with the largest Secret Service team and support network ever. The entire trip with be under 24-hour cover of Air Force fighter jets, and a large Navy presence will be maintained off the east coast of Africa in case of any security or medical emergencies.
Calculating the total cost of the Africa trip is difficult, because so many expenses are classified, but the $100 million estimate came from the Washington Post. When the Post questioned the added cost of one excursion, an exotic Tanzanian safari, the White House canceled it. Seems that would have just been over the top...
According to Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy adviser for strategic communications, "The infrastructure that accompanies the president's travels is beyond our control." (Yes, that's the same Ben Rhodes who's "credited" with the White House Benghazi rewrites, and the same Ben Rhodes whose brother David is the president of CBS News.) However, canceling exorbitantly expensive vacations is completely within Obama's control.
For the record, presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also made trips to Africa at enormous cost to taxpayers and military budgets, but not at the same time they were blaming what Obama calls "the Republican Sequester" for across-the-board cuts to government agencies, with the deepest cuts of all hitting our nation's military budgets. (Ironically, national defense is one of the few federal expenses that is actually authorized by the Rule of Law enshrined in our Constitution.)
Also for the record, neither Clinton nor Bush devoted reams of classist rhetoric condemning corporate depreciation of private aircraft all while commuting in the world's most expensive taxpayer-funded exec jet. On a political junket a few months ago, Obama said, "What we don't want to do is give somebody who's buying a corporate jet an extra tax break that ordinary people can't get because they don't need it. ... They don't need an extra tax break, especially at a time when we're trying to reduce the deficit. Something's got to give."
Barack's "Heritage Tour" Outfit
Only an archetypal case study of Narcissistic Personality Disorder would commute on Air Force One to Kansas for a socialist stump speech, at a cost to taxpayers of $181,757 per flight-hour, not including the enormous cost of support personnel, facilities, and additional support aircraft, and lecture laid-off aircraft workers about why private-sector companies shouldn't receive the same write-off for an aircraft that they do for other business equipment.
Need I also mention the enormous cost to states and local government treasuries, and the significant inconvenience to other air travelers and local commuters every time Obama comes to town for a fundraiser?
Writing about the opulence of this administration in "Presidential Perks Gone Royal," author Robert Keith Gray notes that $1.4 billion in taxpayer funds was spent on the Obamas last year, including "the biggest staff in history at the highest wages ever" and Air Force One "running with the frequency of a scheduled air line."
Not only does Obama have the audacity to chastise corporate use of aircraft, but among the high profile sequester cuts Obama demanded was the cancelation of traditional flyovers at the Air Force and Naval Academy graduations two weeks ago.
So here's the question nobody has asked Obama spokesman Jay Carney: How does Obama justify the cancelation of flyovers to honor the commitment and sacrifice of our next generation of young military officers taking their oaths "to support and defend" our Constitution with their blood and lives, while their commander in chief is using Air Force One to ferry him and his adoring entourage around the nation to political fundraisers, and around the world on vacation junkets, at colossal expense to the defense budget and American taxpayers?
USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said this week that Obama's sequester has grounded 33 squadrons, and many pilots are losing their proficiency. "If we were ordered to go do" a no-fly zone over Syria, "we'd go do it," but we would be "accepting the risk of those people not being as current. For me, that's a risk we don't want to be accepting."
Perhaps we should sequester the use of Air Force exec jets, including Air Force One, and also sequester $100 million royal family vacations.
Perhaps these savings could offset the $70 million in IRS bonuses to be paid this year -- to administrators who have benignly supported the harassment of Obama's "Enemies List." The Africa heritage tour funds alone would be sufficient to reopen public White House tours for the next 25 years.
Indeed, if it weren't for double standards, BO and MO wouldn't have any. If there's one defining characteristic of Leftist protagonists that is universally true, it is their consummate hypocrisy.
Pro Deo et Constitutione — Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis
Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post
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(http://www.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2013/06/GOP-Presidents-copy.jpg)
"And then Obama compared himself to me. . ."
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/the-week-in-pictures-obama-faceplant-edition.php
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-best-editorial-cartoons-of-2013-so-far/2013/06/06/72679fd8-cebe-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_gallery.html#photo=37
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4AJ843ERnU
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http://townhall.com/tipsheet/danieldoherty/2013/07/02/poll-obamas-approval-rating-hits-historic-low-n1632622
President Obama's approval rating tumbled to a record low as Americans reacted to the government's sweeping surveillance programs and other scandals, according to the latest IBD/TIPP Presidential Leadership Index.
* http://www.creators.com/opinion/thomas-sowell.html
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State department denies, denies, denies, then admits Sec. Kerry was out yachting during the Egypt coup. (CBS) Bottoms up to the dreaded 3am phone call. Let's party.
Meanwhile Pres. Obama cancelled fireworks displays on military bases due to budget constraints, takes his own $100 million extended working vacation, is the first(?) President to vacation outside the U.S. over the 4th of July. What is all this liberty-mania about anyway?
This is a working trip; he is writing his own Declaration of Coercive Paternalism.
The winning tweet on Obama's handling of the Egypt crisis goes to Glenn Reynolds:
"On Egypt, Obama should strive for irrelevance. It’s the best he is going to do."
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http://www.examiner.com/article/overpasses-for-obama-s-impeachment-movement-growing-across-the-country
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/19/ap-fact-check-obama-spins-exaggerates-benefit-of-health-care-law/
Scathing AP Fact-Check: ‘Another Year, Another Round of Exaggeration from President Barack Obama…’
Jul. 19, 2013 7:32am Billy Hallowell
Editor’s Note: The following is a fact check written by the Associated Press entitled, “Fact Check: Obama Spins Health Insurance Rebates.”
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Another year, another round of exaggeration from President Barack Obama and his administration about health insurance rebates.
In his speech defending his health care law Thursday, Obama said rebates averaging $100 are coming from insurance companies to 8.5 million Americans. In fact, most of the money is going straight to employers who provide health insurance, not to their workers, who benefit indirectly.
Obama danced around that reality in remarks that also blamed problems in establishing affordable insurance markets on political opponents, glossing over complex obstacles also faced in states that support the law.
AP Fact Check: Obama Spins, Exaggerates Benefits of Health Care Law
President Barack Obama stands with families who benefitted from the health care law provision that provides consumers with a refund if their insurance company doesn t spend the majority of premium dollars on medical care as he speaks about health care reform and the Affordable Care Act in the East Room at the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 18, 2013. Credit: AP
A look at some of his claims and how they compare with the facts:
-”Last year, millions of Americans opened letters from their insurance companies. But instead of the usual dread that comes from getting a bill, they were pleasantly surprised with a check. In 2012, 13 million rebates went out, in all 50 states. Another 8.5 (million) rebates are being sent out this summer, averaging around 100 bucks each.”
- After introducing several people who got rebate checks last year: “And this is happening all across the country. And it’s happening because of the Affordable Care Act. Hasn’t been reported on a lot. I bet if you took a poll, most folks wouldn’t know when that check comes in that this was because of Obamacare that they got this extra money in their pockets. But that’s what’s happening.”
-”If they’re (insurers) not spending your premium dollars on your health care – at least 80 percent of it – they’ve got to give you some money back.”
THE FACTS: Just as he did a year ago, Obama made a splashy announcement about rebates that incorporates misleading advertising.
The health care law requires insurance companies that spend too much on administrative expenses to issue rebates to customers. But those customers are often employers that in turn offer insurance to workers and bear the bulk of the costs. In workplace plans, the rebate goes to the employer, which must use it for the company health plan but does not have to pass all or part of it on to the worker. People who buy their own insurance and qualify for a rebate get it directly.
Obama was on solid ground in saying “millions of Americans” got rebate checks last year, but the number was not close to 13 million as he implied.
Of the 12.8 million rebates announced last year, health policy experts estimated 3 million would go directly to the insured. The government didn’t know how many.
AP Fact Check: Obama Spins, Exaggerates Benefits of Health Care Law
President Barack Obama stands with families who benefited from the health care law provision that provides consumers with a refund if their insurance company doesn t spend the majority of premium dollars on medical care as he speaks about health care reform and the Affordable Care Act in the East Room at the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 18, 2013. Credit: AP
Nearly two-thirds of the 12.8 million were only entitled to pro-rated and decidedly modest rebates, because they were covered by employers that pay most of their premiums. Workers typically pay about 20 percent of the premium for single coverage, 30 percent for a family plan. Employers pay the rest.
And employers can use all the rebate money, including the workers’ share, to benefit the company health plan, perhaps restraining premiums a bit or otherwise improving the bottom line. The law requires insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premiums they collect on medical care and quality improvement, or return the difference to consumers and employers.
Altogether, this year’s rebates are worth $500 million, down from $1.1 billion returned last year. The government says the lower rebates mean insurance companies are becoming more efficient.
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CLAIM: “I’m curious, what do opponents of this law think the folks here today should do with the money they were reimbursed? Should they send it back to the insurance companies?”
THE FACTS: Even in that unlikely event, most people could not send it back to insurance companies because the money doesn’t go “in their pockets” and they have no control over what their employers do with it.
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CLAIM: “In states that are working hard to make sure this law delivers for their people, what we’re seeing is that consumers are getting a hint of how much money they’re potentially going to save because of this law. In states like California, Oregon, Washington, new competition, new choices, market forces are pushing costs down.”
THE FACTS: It is simply not known whether health insurance will become less expensive in those states — or nationally — than it is now, or than it would have been absent the law. And hitches in setting up the new insurance marketplaces called exchanges are not limited to Republican-led states where leaders object to the law, although that political pushback is certainly part of what’s going on.
AP Fact Check: Obama Spins, Exaggerates Benefits of Health Care Law
President Barack Obama applauds before he speaks about health care reform and the Affordable Care Act in the East Room at the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 18, 2013. Credit: AP
In California, for example, where there is plenty of competition by health insurers wanting to get into the exchange, an actuarial report commissioned by Covered California, the state agency running the insurance marketplace, found that middle-income residents could see individual health premiums increase by an average of 30 percent while costs go down for lower income people.
In West Virginia, Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin — also a cooperative partner in expanding Medicaid and setting up an exchange — complained to federal officials this week about delays in rules and guidelines from Washington as the state struggles to meet deadlines under the law.
“Many West Virginia families have expressed frustration” trying to find out how much policies from the exchange will cost them and whether they will get a subsidy, he said, and the state is “dangerously close” to falling short of requirements under the law.
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http://savingtherepublic.com/blog/2013/07/obama-supporters-petition-to-grant-him-immunity-for-all-crimes-he-commits-while-in-office/
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Second post:
http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2013/07/obama-strongly-supported-stand-your-ground-when-in-illinois-senate.html
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Every once in a long while someone uses 'tweeting' for what it was designed - to send out a profound thought in a concise, repeatable format. This one is from 'Kathy in SC':
The most famous white Hispanic helped rescue 4 Americans. The most famous black Caucasian refused to rescue 4 Americans! Who’s A HATER?
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George Zimmerman grabs fire extinguisher, pulls family from overturned SUV
http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/22/george-zimmerman-grabs-fire-extinguisher-pulls-family-from-overturned-suv/#ixzz2ZstMVG9X
Pres. Obama for the first time in American history ordered rescue efforts to "Stand Down" while Americans were under siege in Benghazi.
If President Obama had a son, he would not look like Ambassador Chris Stevens. After freeing the slaves 150 years ago and empowering women to vote nearly 100 years ago, when did we start caring, aloud from the bully pulpit, what Americans look like?
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Forbes writes today,'The President Doubles Down on Moving Left - More of the Same':
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougschoen/2013/07/24/more-of-the-same/
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I like this from the WSJ this morning:
"before a government can redistribute wealth, the private economy has to create it"
Too bad the Romney campaign, with a billion in the bank, couldn't resonate one sentence of economics to a suffering nation.
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CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I find it astonishing that he goes around making speeches in which he deplores the state of the economy, the growing income inequality, chronic unemployment, staggering middle class income, and it's as if he has been a bystander, as if he's been out of the country for the last five years. It's his economy; he's the president.
He's talking as if this is the Bush economy, I don't know, the Eisenhower economy, and he just arrived in a boat and he discovers how bad the economy is. This is a result of the policies he instituted. He gave us the biggest stimulus in the history of the milky way, and he said it would jump start the economy. The result has been the slowest recovery, the worst recovery since World War II, and that is the root of all of the problems he's talking about, the income inequality -- the median income of the middle class of Americans has declined by 5% in his one term. So who's responsible for that? Those were his policies. He talks about this in the abstract and he actually gets away with it in a way that I find absolutely astonishing, it's magical. This is his economy and he's pretending he's just stumbled upon it. And the policies he proposes are exactly the ones he proposed and implemented in the first term. (Special Report, July 29, 2013)
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Of 953,000 Jobs Created In 2013, 77%, Or 731,000 Are Part-Time
Obamacare discourages full time employment.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-02/obamacare-full-frontal-953000-jobs-created-2013-77-or-731000-are-part-time
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Posted in Race, black teenage unemployment rate is now 42%.
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What the hell is wrong with us that we want a sputtering economy? How do we help people's long term chances for affordable health care by killing off real jobs? The growth rate coming out of a hole this deep should be >8% IMHO.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/10236302/First-dog-Bo-is-airlifted-to-Obama-holiday-home.html
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/10236302/First-dog-Bo-is-airlifted-to-Obama-holiday-home.html
The true face of imperial power.
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Photo of the Day, With Commentary on Golf and Benghazi
Reporters have followed President Obama to Martha’s Vineyard, where they are standing by to inform us of any wonderful deeds He might perform. Today, pool reporters were ecstatic that they were permitted to watch Obama play golf. You can read their #kneepadmedia–Brad Thor’s hashtag–tweets about the golf outing here. Zeke Miller, a political reporter for Time, tweeted this photo of Obama, taken just after he missed a putt:
(http://4-ps.googleusercontent.com/h/www.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2013/08/599x509xBRZtmqyCAAA7v7v.png.pagespeed.ic.QCTYH_yGHW.jpg)
The pool report says: “He let out a little, ‘Ooooh,’ as it happened.” Like his fellow reporters, Miller apparently found the photo more adorable than it might seem to the average American, who–for example–may have been cut back to 29 hours a week because of Obamacare. Miller also tweeted the pool report’s description of Obama’s reaction to the missed putt:
First putt was a miss, which Obama reacted to by leaning back & kicking his knee up, as if trying to coax the ball into breaking right.
So I’m wondering: when do you suppose our intrepid press corps will report on Obama’s whereabouts and actions during the Benghazi crisis in the same detail, and with the same enthusiasm, that they devote to his missing a putt?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/08/photo-of-the-day-with-commentary-on-golf-and-benghazi.php
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This was posted here by Doug and I pasted it on the Benghazi thread as well and somehow in the process I deleted it here so now that I re-post it, it appears under my name instead of Doug's.
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The Mother of All Scandals by Victor Davis Hanson
August 12th, 2013
IRS?
A system of voluntary tax compliance cannot survive a dishonest IRS. Lois Lerner and company have virtually ruined the agency. For the foreseeable future, each time an American receives a tax query, he will wonder to what degree his politics ensures enhanced or reduced scrutiny — or whether his name as a donor, activist, or partisan has put him on a watch list.
Worse still, when a high commissioner of the IRS takes the 5th Amendment, it sends a frightening message: those audited go to jail when they refuse to testify; those who audit them who do the same do not.
AP?
The Associated Press/James Rosen monitoring by the Obama administration was creepy not just because it went after a heretofore obsequious media, but because Obama’s lieutenants alleged that the reason was aiding and abetting the leaking of classified material.
Of course, disclosing top-secret information and thereby damaging the national interest is no small thing. But was leaking the real reason that Eric Holder lied under oath when he assured his congressional inquisitors that he was not monitoring the communications of Americans — after he had done just that in the case of James Rosen of Fox News?
No modern administration has leaked classified data like the Obama administration. Do we remember a frustrated Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warning White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon “to shut the f— up” for disclosing the secret details of the bin Laden hit?
Or was John Brennan’s effusive blow-by-blow description of the Navy SEAL team protocol worse? Or for that matter, why did David Sanger and David Ignatius seem to have access to classified details about the bin Laden document trove and the Iranian Stuxnet cyber-war campaign? The obvious answer is that after the midterm election of 2010, a panicking Obama administration worried about reelection, and especially polls that suggested the president was weak on national-security issues.
To rectify that image, politicos began leaking the nation’s most intimate secrets to remind the public that, behind the scenes, Obama was a veritable Harry Truman. The problem with the AP was not that it leaked, but that it did not leak in a fashion and at a time of the administration’s own choosing. In other words, the Associated Press was a competitor when Obama wished a monopoly on the leaking franchise.
NSA?
No one knows much about the NSA mess. But already there are some disturbing developments. How can Director of National Intelligence James Clapper outright lie under oath without consequences after he assured the Congress that the agency did not monitor the communications of American citizens?
After the president’s press conference last week, an embarrassing paradox arose: the president promised all sorts of new NSA reforms. But why now, and for what reason the sudden worry? After all, Obama offered no new protocol to ensure that classified matters did not end up in the hands of a high-school dropout and highly ideological computer hacker like Eric Snowden.
Instead, the president de facto made Snowden’s case. It was only because of the illegal acts of Snowden that Obama promised future measures — not against the next Snowden, but against abuses promulgated by himself. Consider the logic: Snowden is supposed to be a criminal for leaking a top-secret intelligence gathering operation, but in response to that illegal conduct, Obama for the first time promises to address just the sort of abuses that Snowden outlined.
With enemies like Obama, the lawbreaking Snowden hardly needs friends.
Benghazi!
Of the four most prominent scandals — and by “four” I do not wish to deprecate “Fast and Furious,” or EPA Director Lisa Jackson’s fake email persona, or the arbitrary non-enforcement of the law, from ignoring elements of Obamacare to granting pre-election amnesty by fiat to over one million illegal aliens — Benghazi is by far the most disturbing; the scandal is insidious.
Death?
Four Americans were slaughtered under conditions that we still cannot fathom. It was rumored but not confirmed that Ambassador Stevens in extremis was either raped or brutalized, though those details remain murky — given that the assassination of an American ambassador is rare, and the vicious brutalization of his person is unprecedented. Witnesses of the attack on the CIA annex have either disappeared or gone silent. The families of the deceased have received conflicting accounts of how loved ones were murdered. All that we know for now is that the entire scene of the caskets arriving on U.S. soil — from the melodramatic assurances that the perpetrators would shortly feel American retaliation, to the demonization of Mr. Nakoula as the cause of the deaths — was a lie, and a cynical one at that.
Military protocol?
The American military takes incredible risks to come to the aid of its own beleaguered. When it does not — consider Wake Island in World War II — a national scandal erupts. For now, we know that those under assault requested aid; that sending such help was imminently feasible; and that no one yet can explain why such succor was not sent.
We are left with the suspicion that some official surmised that the reelection campaign did not want a Mogadishu-style shoot-out less than two months before the election, or a messy Libya, or the risk of beefing up security. The reelection mantra was instead that Osama bin Laden was dead; al Qaeda was nearly defunct; and that the “lead from behind” removal of Moammar Gaddafi had helped to energize the Arab Spring and lead to a new age of reform. No wonder someone ordered a stand-down to preserve that fantasy.
“Leading From Behind” has led to “Leaving Them Behind.”
If Obama can monotonously “spike the ball” on Osama bin Laden, cannot he offer a little clarity to the families of the deceased? Nearly a year after the murders, what happened to Obama’s reelection boast that he would bring the perpetrators to justice?
Cover-up?
Barack Obama, Susan Rice, and Hillary Clinton all falsely swore that the obscure amateur video maker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was guilty of prompting a mass riot at Benghazi. Nakoula — petty crook and loud opponent of Islam — was a fall guy right out of central casting.
A favorite topos of Barack Obama — consider the al-Arabiya interview, or the Cairo speech — is his courageous and principled opposition to supposedly ubiquitous Islamophobes. Beating up on the unsympathetic Nakoula killed two birds with one stone: it reminded the world that the multiculturalist Obama would not tolerate anti-Muslim thought on his shores, and it propped up the sinking narrative of an extinguished al-Qaeda.
There were absolutely no professional consequences for publicly lying — to the nation, to television audiences, to the relatives of the deceased, to the United Nations — that the Nakoula video was the cause of the deaths of our Benghazi personnel. Barack Obama was reelected. Hillary “what difference does it make” Clinton retired from the secretary of State post to congratulations and media frenzy about her likely 2016 presidential campaign. Susan Rice was promoted to National Security advisor.
There is almost no one left at his 2012 post. In addition to the above, General Carter Ham, in charge of Africa Command, has retired. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has retired. CIA Director David Petraeus has resigned.
How did it happen that just nine months after the attack, most all of the relevant decision-makers — Clinton, Ham, Panetta, Petraeus, Rice — have vanished from their jobs?
Ron Ziegler Redux
Jay Carney cannot be believed. He lied when he said that there were only “stylistic” changes made to CIA talking points, when in fact the administration’s revisions were both major and predictably aimed at serving a false narrative. Carney also did not tell the truth when he repeated on several occasions that Mr. Nakoula was the culprit for the violence, a fact that he knew at the time was false. And when Carney deprecated Benghazi as a “phony” scandal, we heard the ghost of Ron Ziegler stonewalling with “third-rate burglary.”
The Engaged President
We saw minute-by-minute pictures of Obama in command surrounded by advisors during the bin Laden raid. Why not the same level of photographed attention on the night of Benghazi? In a nutshell, in one operation we sent lots of soldiers after a few enemies, and in the other, lots of our enemies were sent after a few of our soldiers. Saving trapped Americans from a pre-planned al-Qaeda hit is not a photo-op in a way a preplanned American attack on al-Qaeda most certainly could be. Otherwise, I have no idea where the president was during that long tragic night, only that we will never know until he is well out of office.
“National Security”
The hallmark of most recent American presidential scandals — whether Watergate or Iran-Contra — has been the evocation of “national security” and often the supposed role of the CIA that must preclude full disclosures. For now, almost a year later, no one knows what exactly the CIA was doing in Benghazi, only that hiding whatever it was doing — perhaps gunrunning confiscated weapon stockpiles to insurgents of some sort in Syria — was of utmost importance, at least in the political context of late 2012. I have read the accounts of the original CIA talking points, reviewed the public statements of Gen. David Petraeus both before and after his resignation, collated the assertions of top administration officials — and the narratives cannot be squared. Someone at some point flat-out lied and thought it critical to hide American activity in Benghazi.
A False Campaign?
The election of 2012 may well have been altered by the Benghazi cover-up, in ways that transcend debate moderator Candy Crowley’s puerile and unprofessional efforts to shield Obama from Romney’s questioning about the deaths. Imagine the fallout on voters had we been told from the very beginning that an al-Qaeda affiliate had stormed our consulate — ill-prepared and unable to obtain needed beefed-up security, reliant for safety on local suspect tribal militias, in a country that had deteriorated into a failed society after our Libyan bombing — and slaughtered four Americans, apparently stationed in Benghazi to help in some way a covert CIA operation.
So here we have it: a beleaguered “consulate” that was refused additional security and relied on local militias, apparently due to administration worry over destroying an Obama campaign narrative of a reborn Libya and dying al-Qaeda. A CIA operation of some sort supplied something to someone, but what and why and to whom, we are not supposed to know. Four Americans, the very best the country had to offer, are dead, denied assistance when assistance could have saved them — the why and the how and the when of it all we are not told. We fear it might have been a crackpot cost-benefit analysis: four lives versus another Mogadishu and an Obama November defeat.
We know only that the dead were far more heroic than the leaders who chose not to aid them.
And in reaction to all this, we jail a petty video maker, who makes the perfect scapegoat as a supposedly right-wing Islamophobic hate monger whose take-down advances our president’s politically correct narrative of Muslim outreach. That yarn required a president, secretary of state, and UN ambassador to lie repeatedly. When we ask questions, witnesses are browbeaten, the knowledgeable fade into the Washington woodwork, the luminaries have all left their offices, and we are left with “phony” scandal and “what difference does it make.”
All in all — the mother of all scandals.
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The greatest leaders respond to the challenges of their times:
"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." - Winston Churchill
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." - John Kennedy
“In no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground, that would involve a longterm campaign.” “We’re not considering any open commitment.” - Barack Obama
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“This is not the time to be spectators to slaughter,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (When is the time to be 'spectator to slaughter'?) “Neither our country nor our conscience can afford the cost of silence.” ("I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.") Kerry said that Assad had used chemicals after repeated warnings from the president, Congress and U.S. allies. ("[The American military] raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, bl(ew) up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages like Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside")
Too bad not to have leaders with credibility in a time of crisis.
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It is true tragedy to have the leaders we have.
:cry: :cry: :cry:
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Barack Obama, 2002, genocide can be contained without American intervention. In 2007: Preventing genocide does not justify an American presence.
He is speaking about Iraq [adapted for Syria 2013] from a 2002 speech, links are below.
"Now let me be clear--I suffer no illusions about [Bashar al-Assad]. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.
He's a bad guy. The world, and the [Syrian] people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that [Assad] poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the [Syrian] economy is in shambles, that the Syrian military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.
In 2007 Obama asserted that American troops should be withdrawn from Iraq [Syria] even if that would result in genocide:
"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now--where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife--which we haven't done," Mr. Obama told the AP. "We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea."
Credit: James Taranto, WSJ
Speech quotes:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090108155556/http:/en.wikisource.org/wiki/Barack_Obama%27s_Iraq_Speech
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118541112759578392.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet
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The more I have thought about it the more I conclude the Republicans should stand with the Dovish Dems and not authorize military action.
Cite Obama's previous remarks.
Cite how our interventions in the Middle East have been more trouble than help.
Then campaign on stopping Iran from getting finished nuclear weapons.
One reason I conclude this is some experts opinions that we cannot eradicate sarin or other chemical agents from Syria without serious military intervention.
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U.S. Knew Syrians Were Preparing for Chemical-Weapons Attack
http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/u-s-knew-syrians-were-preparing-for-chemical-weapons-attack-20130830
The Obama administration had advanced warning of possible chemical attacks by the Assad regime in the last year but was able to forestall such an outcome through diplomatic efforts.
That's according to senior administration officials, speaking to reporters after the U.S. released evidence of a chemical-weapons attack last week in the Damascus suburbs. One official said when an attack was imminent, the U.S. deployed either direct messaging to the Assad regime or conducted public diplomacy, which included speeches from President Obama.
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Flashback, President Obama, Aug 2013 on Martha's Vineyard, shows his concern for impending Syrian chemical weapons assault on civilians, women and children:
(http://4-ps.googleusercontent.com/h/www.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2013/08/599x509xBRZtmqyCAAA7v7v.png.pagespeed.ic.QCTYH_yGHW.jpg)
Imagine if this was Bush...
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"Then campaign on stopping Iran from getting finished nuclear weapons."
Care to flesh that out?
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CD asks,
"Then campaign on stopping Iran from getting finished nuclear weapons."
Care to flesh that out?
*** On 2d thought.... maybe would not be a good campaign issue....
One a loser issue -
Two telegraphs intentions -
Yet I agree with the Rachel's post that this should be the goal.
Their should be consistent honest up front strong positions by any Republican candidate on this. OTOH by 2016 it sounds like it will be too late. Iran will have nucs and try doing something then...
If one thinks it crazy now forget about it then. Iran will dominate the Mideast.
It sounds like this is what Israel analysts think.
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http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/04/obama-on-syria-i-didnt-set-a-red-line-my-credibility-is-not-on-the-line-video/
Obama on Syria: ‘I didn’t set a red line’ … ‘My credibility is not on the line’ [VIDEO]
9:34 AM 09/04/2013
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2WRxoJjBtQ#t=15[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2WRxoJjBtQ#t=15
President Obama told reporters in Sweden Wednesday that he never “set a red line” when it came to deciding to intervene militarily in Syria.
That claim directly contradicts Obama’s remarks in August of last year, when he announced his “red line” for action in Syria during a White House press conference.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avQKLRGRhPU[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avQKLRGRhPU
Obama also dismissed concern Wednesday that his credibility is at risk if the United States fails to intervene in the country following evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gassed thousands of his own people last month.
“My credibility is not on the line,” Obama said Wednesday. Instead, Obama said, the international community and the American Congress — who Obama has asked to authorize action in Syria — both face credibility risks.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/04/obama-on-syria-i-didnt-set-a-red-line-my-credibility-is-not-on-the-line-video/
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campaign on stopping Iran from getting finished nuclear weapons...
One a loser issue - Two telegraphs intentions"
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Yes. You state what you would do on foreign policy, but run with an economic freedom and prosperity focus. Stopping rogue nations from proliferating, threatening, or using dangerous weapons should be a given, not an issue. Obama should have knocked out Iran's nuclear and Syria's chemical stockpile when he learned of them, not after genocide. If the UN security is skewed in favor of oppression and murderous dictators, he should have formed a new group - somewhere in his first 5 years!
This is failed Presidency. There are no such things as prosperity through higher taxes, freedom through larger government programs, or shaping world events by "leading from behind".
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"Teddy Roosevelt based his foreign policy on this maxim: "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Obama's foreign policy is based on this maxim: "Speak endlessly and carry a toothpick."
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"Teddy Roosevelt based his foreign policy on this maxim: "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Obama's foreign policy is based on this maxim: "Speak endlessly and carry a toothpick."
Or was it just - speak endlessly. I didn't see a toothpick.
With danger accelerating in the world, China in a one power arms race, Russia reinvigorated and supporting enemy regimes, the entire Middle East a tinder box and other unknowns, what is the U.S. under Obama doing to prepare for or to deter war? Defense outlays fell 7.6% this year.
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Americans for Whatever the Hell Obama Wants make their push for the war. Send money.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-sdO6pwVHQ
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/09/11/satire_help_kickstart_world_war_iii.html
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/opinion/dowd-losing-the-room.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130918&_r=0
:-o :lol:
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"The man who connected so electrically and facilely in 2008, causing Americans to overlook his thin résumé, cannot seem to connect anymore."
Yet his approval ratings if one believes the polls are forever 50% or close to it.
Why the Republicans cannot close in is because they still don't get it.
How do we deal with the "entitlement" crowd? How do we win at least some no whites? How do we stop Hillary from winning 50% of the electorate for no reason other than her sex? (I guess being bisexual gives her a double advantage - not that we didn't already know. :wink:). I would be very curious to know if other(s) on this board including Rachel would give me insight to the power of the "women's vote".
We should not underestimate this! From talking with women in my family to those I work with I can tell you there is no question there is an unlocked political tsunami in addressing women's imaginations. If Repubs don't fully grasp this then Hillary sure will. I sat with four female relatives from two generations three who are left and one who is right on the political spectrum. They will all tell me women are not treated the same, do not have the same opportunity make less money and all the rest.
My response is I don't get it. Women now can choose (if economically feasible) to stay home, to work, get time off for pregnancy, for family care, get benefits for their kids, more lawyers now are female, more are doctors, they run for high office. And yet they still bitch? Their response - I just don't see it. Like the men in their lives.
So do not underestimate the Hillary - women's thing. It will be big. Big enough - only time will tell. Dredging up all the stuff we know about Bill and Hill - like today's Gennifer Flowers thing will not persuade anyone that is already not persuaded. It will take more. Rove doesn't get it. Bushes don't get it. Cruz is closest for me.
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Very good comments, but perhaps the discussion would be better on The Way Forward or the 2016 threads.
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(http://proteinwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ramirez_20130923.jpg)
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http://www.capitalisminstitute.org/obamas-golf-courses/
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Great line summing up the effects of the Obama Presidency and liberal governance in general - from G M's Niall Furgeson 'Debt is the Threat' post over on the programs-spending-deficit-debt thread:
Hey, does anyone else smell something burning?
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The non-reporting of this Glibness story should go in Media Issues. I googled this fact and found it only in the original source, buried deep in the story, and all the rest were right wing sources. When George Bush's approval hit the 30s, it was front and center, then he lost Congress and we lost the country.
In spite of the lapdog media, the era of Hyde Park Hope and Change is over, in terms of public opinion.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/10/09/media-fail-obama-approval-drops-to37
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http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/10/10/is-obama-locked-in-victim-mentality/
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http://news.yahoo.com/obama-nurtures-faith-away-spotlight-131525947.html
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The Goldberg File
By Jonah Goldberg
October 25, 2013
Dictators and Liberal Standards
It's not uncommon for some on the right to sniff dictatorial tendencies in Obama (just as many on the left thought Bush was going to be an American Caesar). And to be sure, there's a decidedly anti-democratic strain in Obama's thinking. He has a certain contempt for democratic norms and the need to engage his political opponents in good faith. He is deeply enamored with the liberal cult of technocratic infallibility (this was one of the main reasons he was so blasé about the implementation of Obamacare; of course the propeller heads will solve it, we're geniuses). Like Tom Friedman, he believes the greatest impediment to social progress is the Neanderthalian refusal of certain Americans to accept that the experts know exactly what to do and how to do it. He openly fantasizes about imposing military obedience on the American people.
And as the author of Liberal Fascism, I think I'm more apt than most to recognize the rough iron underneath the warm and fuzzy exterior of liberalism. But as I've written many times, I don't think we have much reason to fear traditional jack-booted dictators in this country. Ironically, the main reason we don't have to worry about them is that we worry about them so much. An obsessive-compulsive hypochondriac who washes his hands 30 times a day probably doesn't have to worry about getting syphilis, but the greatest guarantee that he won't is his own paranoia about getting it. Deep in American DNA is a visceral aversion to despotism. Sometimes, during a war or other crisis, it can be suspended for a while, but eventually we remember that we just don't like dictators.
The bad news is that we don't feel that way -- anymore -- about softer, more diffuse and bureaucratic forms of tyranny. Every American is taught from grade school up that they should fear living in the world of Orwell's 1984. Few Americans can tell you why we shouldn't live in Huxley's Brave New World. We've got the dogmatic muscle and rhetorical sinew to repel militarism, but we're intellectually flabby when it comes to rejecting statist maternalism. We hate hearing "Because I said so!" But we're increasingly powerless against, "It's for your own good!"
(Sadly, the surest route to the 1984-ification of America is to embrace Brave New Worldism. Once you've created a society of men without chests -- in C. S. Lewis's phrase -- you've created a society ripe for a father-figure to make all of the decisions).
For instance, when the national-security types intrude on our privacy or civil liberties, even theoretically, all of the "responsible" voices in the media and academia wig out. But when Obamacare poses a vastly more intrusive and real threat to our privacy, the same people yawn and roll their eyes at anyone who complains. If the District of Columbia justified its omnipresent traffic cameras as an attempt to keep tabs on dissidents, they'd be torn down in a heartbeat by mobs of civil libertarians. But when justified on the grounds of public safety (or revenue for social services or as a way to make driving cars more difficult), well, that's different.
And it is different. Motives matter. But at the same time, I do wish we looked a bit more like the America Edmund Burke once described:
In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; [In America] they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.
King Obama
Charlie Cooke has a great column today making a very similar point to what I had intended to start the G-File with: Obama's not a dictator; he's a king. And when I say he's a king, I don't mean the dictatorial kind of an absolute monarchy. I mean he's like the king in a parliamentary democracy where the prime minister has all of the power and the monarch is supposed to mug for postcards and inspire elementary-school children. He's less Longshanks and more King Ralph. At least whenever he's expected to take responsibility, he becomes a figurehead who gives voice to the public's outrage over the problems he himself created. "Nobody is angrier," Obama routinely insists, about the crap people should be angry at him about. As Charlie puts it, "Obama is less Julius Caesar than he is a tribune of the plebs -- an Oprahfied avatar that has been custom-designed both to indulge and guide the public sentiment like so many Bill Clintons feeling your pain."
He's always changing costumes to play the role that political necessity requires of him, which means he has more wardrobe changes than a Vegas drag queen's one-"woman" tribute to Cher.
Always Running for a Job He Already Has
The only thing Barack Obama knows how to do is be Barack Obama. He thinks that's his job, like a king whose only real responsibility is to be kingly. The problem is that the one person (who matters, at least) who doesn't understand this is Barack Obama. As he once said, Obama believes his own bull***t. Charlie offers some good examples of Obama's own Olympian self-regard. For instance:
"I think I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters," Obama told him. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director."
Though I immediately thought of this bit from New York magazine:
Emanuel's ad-hocracy, meanwhile, didn't faze Obama. The president's friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett sometimes pointed out that not only had he never managed an operation, he'd never really had a nine-to-five job in his life. Obama didn't know what he didn't know, yet his self-confidence was so stratospheric that once, in the context of thinking about Emanuel's replacement, he remarked in all seriousness, "You know, I'd make a good chief of staff."
Those overhearing the comment somehow managed to suppress their laughter.
Obviously, Obama always has a healthy ego, in the same way Godzilla had a healthy physique and the sun has a healthy mass. But part of the problem stems from the fact that he cannot see the difference between campaigning and governing. That would be bad enough, if it were not for the fact that Obama seems to think that he ran his campaign. As I noted the other day in the Corner, here's Obama's response to the charge that Sarah Palin had more executive experience than he did:
Barack Obama: Well, you know, my understanding is that, uh, Governor Palin's town of Wasilly [sic] has, uh, 50 employees, uh, uh, we've got 2,500, uh, in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. Uh, uh, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. Uh, so I think that, uh, our ability to manage large systems, uh, and to, uh, execute, uh, I think has been made clear over the last couple of years. Uh, and certainly, in terms of, uh, the legislation that I've passed just dealing with this issue post-Katrina, uh, of how we handle emergency management. The fact that, uh, many of my recommendations were adopted and are being put in place, uh, as we speak indicates the extent to which we can provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect.
The remarkable thing about this is that there's no real executive experience in his explication of his executive experience. Yes, the candidate can fire people from the campaign. But being the candidate and being the campaign manager are as different as being the lead singer for Spinal Tap and being the band's manager. On the campaign trail, Obama's job was to "be Barack Obama," to sound smart and charismatic and rev up the crowds. He's still playing that part rather than fulfilling the job description.
And no one will tell him. That's why, I suspect, when he went to check on the progress of the site's development he had no idea how to ask questions that would get at the reality of the situation. Bureaucrats, apparatchiks, and contractors blow smoke. That's what they do. Obama has no idea how to cut through the smoke. He thinks being president involves constantly going out and giving speeches to crowds that love him about how hard he's working rather than actually, you know, working. It's all very meta. He's playing president Obama because he doesn't know how to be president Obama. I think that when he went out on Monday and did his infomercial schtick in the Rose Garden -- Operators are standing by! It's not just a website; it's a floorwax! etc. -- he honestly thought he was fixing the problem. Well, I've done my part!
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As our unwritten content sharing agreement continues, WSJ and 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner Bret Stephens chose the same golf photo I posted a couple of months ago in this thread to illustrate the (lack of) seriousness of this President. http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1718.msg74738#msg74738
Stephens today:
The Unbearable Lightness of Obama
The president didn't know the NSA was spying on world leaders, but he's found time for at least 146 rounds of golf.
By Bret Stephens Oct. 28, 2013
Is there a method to President Obama's style of leadership, his methods of decision-making, his habits of attention, oversight and follow-through? In recent months I've been keeping a file of stories that might suggest an answer. See what you think.
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"President Barack Obama went nearly five years without knowing his own spies were bugging the phones of world leaders. Officials said the NSA has so many eavesdropping operations under way that it wouldn't have been practical to brief him on all of them.
"They added that the president was briefed on and approved of broader intelligence-collection 'priorities,' but that those below him make decisions about specific targets."
—The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 28, 2013
(http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AR427_glovie_D_20131028155754.jpg)
One of at least 146 rounds of golf this president has played. ASSOCIATED PRESS
"HealthCare.gov is the highest-profile experiment yet in the Obama administration's effort to modernize government by using technology, with the site intended to become a user-friendly pathway to new health insurance options for millions of uninsured Americans.
"'This was the president's signature project and no one with the right technology experience was in charge,' said Bob Kocher, a former White House aide who helped draft the law."
—The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 28, 2013
"Tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have grown sharply in recent months. President Barack Obama authorized the CIA to provide limited arms to carefully vetted Syrian rebels, but it took months for the program to commence. . . .
"One Western diplomat described Saudi Arabia as eager to be a military partner in what was to have been the U.S.-led military strikes on Syria. As part of that, the Saudis asked to be given the list of military targets for the proposed strikes. The Saudis indicated they never got the information, the diplomat said."
—The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 21, 2013
"Besides the Syrian government's gains, there was mounting evidence that Mr. Assad's troops had repeatedly used chemical weapons against civilians.
"Even as the debate about arming the rebels took on a new urgency, Mr. Obama rarely voiced strong opinions during senior staff meetings. But current and former officials said his body language was telling: he often appeared impatient and disengaged while listening to the debate, sometimes scrolling through messages on his BlackBerry BB.T +1.05% or slouching and chewing gum."
— New York Times, NYT +1.70% Oct. 22, 2013
"On Saturday, as the shutdown drama played out on Capitol Hill, President Obama played golf at Fort Belvoir in Virginia."
— Washington Post, WPO +0.94% Sept. 28, 2013
"For French President François Hollande, it seemed like the perfect response: a lightning-quick strike on Syria to punish the government for an alleged chemical weapons attack.
"But with President Obama's surprise decision to ask Congress for a go-ahead on military action, Hollande has found himself embroiled in political controversy abroad and at home. Instead of vaunting Hollande as a warrior charging off to do battle, critics say he now looks more like a sidekick who was left in the lurch by his American ally."
—Washington Post, Sept. 6, 2013
"The essence of Eisenhower's hidden hand, of course, is that there was real work going on that people didn't know at the time. If that's true now, then Obama really is emulating Ike. If, on the other hand, he's simply doing nothing or very little, that would be passivity, not hidden-hand leadership."
—Eisenhower biographer Jim Newton, quoted in New York Times, July 15, 2013
"In polo shirt, shorts and sandals, President Obama headed to the golf course Friday morning with a couple of old friends, then flew to Camp David for a long weekend. Secretary of State John Kerry was relaxing at his vacation home in Nantucket.
"Aides said both men were updated as increasingly bloody clashes left dozens dead in Egypt, but from outward appearances they gave little sense that the Obama administration viewed the broader crisis in Cairo with great alarm."
—New York Times, July 5, 2013
"The president had a truly disturbing habit of funneling major foreign-policy decisions through a small cabal of relatively inexperienced White House advisors whose turf was strictly politics. Their primary concern was how any action in Afghanistan or the Middle East would play on the nightly news, or which talking point it would give Republicans."
— Vali Nasr, "The Dispensable Nation," April 2013
"Mr. Obama's reluctance to put American forces on the ground during the fight, and his decision to keep America's diplomatic and C.I.A. presence minimal in post-Qaddafi Libya, may have helped lead the United States to miss signals and get caught unaware in the attack on the American mission in Benghazi. Military forces were too far from Libya's shores during the Sept. 11 attack to intervene."
—New York Times, Nov. 17, 2012
"For the people who go out, on to the edge, to represent our country, we believe that if we get in trouble, they're coming to get us, that our back is covered. To hear that it's not, that's a terrible, terrible experience."
— Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya, on "60 Minutes," Oct. 27, 2013
***
Call Mr. Obama's style indifferent, aloof (glib?) or irresponsible, but a president who governs like this reaps the whirlwind—if not for himself, then for his country.
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Working separately, WSJ online editor James Taranto compiled a list of recent headlines regarding the attentiveness of this President, if you believe ANY of these...
"Obama 'Unaware on Investments"--headline, Albany (Ga.) Herald, March 8, 2007
"Obama 'Unaware of Illegal Aunt' "--headline, BBC website, Nov. 1, 2008
"Obama Unaware of Tea Party Protests"--headline, Examiner.com, April 15, 2009
"Obama Unaware of Backroom Deal, White House Says"--headline, Dallas Morning News website, June 4, 2010
"Blago Judge: Obama Unaware of Seat Exchange Bid"--headline, Associated Press, May 16, 2011
"Sebelius: Obama Unaware of ACA Website Glitches Before Launch"--headline, CaliforniaHealthline.org, Oct. 23,
2013
"Obama Reportedly Unaware NSA Spied on 35 World Leaders"--headline, ABCNews.com, Oct. 28
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They don't have a headline for it, but wasn't he also unaware of a planned, sophisticated terror attack on the Benghazi compound all the way up to the election?
No question he was aware that putt should have broken right in the previous photo. We know what he looks like when he puts his full attention into it.
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http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/29/21222195-obama-administration-knew-millions-could-not-keep-their-health-insurance
Obama administration knew millions could not keep their health insurance
By Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye, NBC News
President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.
Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC News that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”
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Obamacare supporter Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune:
" that’s one of those political lies, you know." [ If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance.]
"He said it repeatedly in a political campaign that he won, so that’s what a political lie is all about, right?"
HH: Do you think he’s telling us the truth, or is he lying again about not knowing that Merkel’s calls were being tapped?
CP: "Now there’s a lie"
"either they lied, or they were too ignorant."
http://www.hughhewitt.com/chicago-tribune-columnist-obamas-health-care-promise-lied/
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" the administration expected 51% of all employer plans to be terminated as a result of Obamacare"
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/11/lies-of-obamacare-documented.php
Posted on November 1, 2013 by John Hinderaker, Powerline
Lies of Obamacare, Documented
Over the last day or two, the major breaking story has really been a throwback: in 2010, the Obama administration promulgated rules governing what plans that pre-existed Obamacare would be “grandfathered” under that statute, and allowed to continue. In the context of announcing its rules, the administration predicted that because of their restrictiveness, many millions of Americans would lose their existing insurance coverage, whether they liked it or not. Further, it has been widely reported (as by CNN, here) that Republicans tried to reverse the administration’s “grandfather” rules so that those who liked their insurance would be allowed to keep it, but Senate Democrats voted them down.
Given the lies with which Obamacare was promoted–”If you like your health care plan, you can keep it”–this is of course a blockbuster story. So I spent some time today tracking down the original sources to verify it.
The Obamacare statute provided that plans pre-existing the law would be allowed to continue, but left the details to future administrative action. That came on June 17, 2010, when the Obama administration–specifically, the Departments of the Treasury, Labor and Health and Human Services–promulgated “Interim Final Rules for Group Health Plans and Health Insurance Coverage Relating to Status as a Grandfathered Health Plan Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” You can read the rules here; scroll down to Part II.
The basic idea underlying the rules is that if the pre-existing plans remained unchanged, they could continue. If, however, there was any significant change in coverages, co-pays, and so on, then the plan would become subject to all of the requirements of Obamacare (even grandfathered plans are subject to a number of Obamacare requirements). The problem is that the health insurance market is constantly changing, and it is typical for plans to change, to some degree, from year to year. So the administration looked at historical data to estimate how many employer-sponsored and individual plans would likely lose their grandfather status once Obamacare was implemented. The administration’s methodology can certainly be questioned, but the results were as has been reported. This chart sums them up; click to enlarge:
(http://www.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2013/11/FederalRegister092.jpg)
The Obama administration projected low-end, mid-range and high-end estimates for how many plans would be terminated, in total and broken down between large and smaller employers. The bottom line is that the administration expected 51% of all employer plans to be terminated as a result of Obamacare. That is the mid-range estimate; the high-end estimate was 69%. So as of 2010, the Obama administration planned that most Americans with employer-sponsored health care plans would lose them, whether they liked those plans or not.
As for individual, as opposed to group plans, the Obama administration said that data were insufficient to predict how many would lose grandfather status, but in any given year the percentage of such policies losing such status would “exceed[] the 40 percent to 67 percent range.”
Those numbers starkly contradict Obama’s “if you like your insurance, you can keep it” assurances. But it is worth noting that the percentage of pre-Obamacare plans that would terminate within the first few years after the law was enacted isn’t the main point. The administration never intended to allow any American to keep a non-Obamacare insurance policy for any length of time. In the Federal Register, the administration candidly acknowledged:
The collective decisions of plan sponsors and issuers over time can be viewed as a one-way sorting process in which these parties decide whether, and when, to relinquish status as a grandfathered health plan.
The administration was prepared to be patient as the “one-way sorting process” ran its course, and all Americans lost the plans they had, whether they liked them or not.
That brings us to September 29, 2010, when Senate Republicans brought to the floor a resolution that would have disapproved of, and reversed, the administrative rules that the Obama administration promulgated on June 17. Wyoming’s Mike Enzi sponsored the resolution; the debate that followed is here. Enzi introduced his resolution:
Mr. President, the resolution we are debating today is about keeping a promise. The authors of the new health care law promised the American people that if they liked their current health insurance, they could keep it. On at least 47 separate occasions, President Obama promised: “If you like what you have, you can keep it.”
Unfortunately, the Obama administration has broken that promise. Earlier this year, the administration published a regulation that will fundamentally change the health insurance plans of millions of Americans. The reality of this new regulation is, if you like what you have, you can’t keep it. The new regulation implemented the grandfathered health plan section of the new health care law. It specified how existing health plans could avoid the most onerous new rules and redtape included in the 2,700 pages of the new health care law. …
Unfortunately, the regulation writers at the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services broke all those promises. The regulation is crystal clear. Most businesses–the administration estimates between 39 and 69 percent–will not be able to keep the coverage they have.
Under the new regulation, once a business loses grandfathered status, they will have to comply with all of the new mandates in the law. This means these businesses will have to change their current plans and purchase more expensive ones that meet all of the new Federal minimum requirements. For the 80 percent of small businesses that will lose their grandfathered status because of this regulation, the net result is clear: They will pay more for their health insurance.
Does this give you a sense of deja vu, or what? The baleful consequences of Obamacare that we are now seeing–there are many more to come–were known and foreseen in 2010. The Democrats voted down the Republicans’ effort to preserve the health care plans that Americans already like on a party-line vote. The Democrats knew that Obama had been lying through his teeth, and they voted unanimously to sustain his lies.
Did the Democrats have a theory? Sure. They argued that if a health care plan changes significantly, then it isn’t the plan you originally bought. And it is common in a variety of contexts for something that is grandfathered to lose that status if it is changed significantly. But there are several problems with the Democrats’ theory: First, it was entirely different from the assurances Obama gave the American people. You may like your insurance perfectly well after a modest change; you may like it better. But that is irrelevant: if the Obama administration thinks your coverage has changed materially, you lose it. Period. Second, it isn’t true that plans lose their grandfathered status only if they are changed in a major way. For example, if there is any increase in the co-insurance rate, no matter how small, the plan terminates.
Even more significant is the fact that under the administration’s regulations, the plan may stay exactly the same, but if one insurance carrier replaces another, the plan loses its grandfathered status and terminates. The effect of this provision is to eliminate competition and make it less attractive, over time, to maintain pre-existing plans. The Republicans read several letters from business groups into the record, at least one of which pointed out the importance of this provision.
Finally, it should be noted that John McCain, now the bete noire of some activists, weighed in powerfully against the administration’s Obamacare rules. Among other things, he pointed out that they do not apply to unions. They can negotiate changes in the pre-Obamacare plans that cover their members without having them terminate. This is one of the weird features of gangster government: the administration passes terrible laws, and then excuses its friends from complying with them. Let’s turn the floor over to McCain:
Mr. ENZI: According to the administration, in small businesses, 80 percent of the people–unless this [Republican resolution] is passed–will lose the insurance they have and like, and in all businesses 69 percent will. Those are not my numbers; those are the administration’s numbers.
Mr. McCAIN: But isn’t it also true that is the case for small business and people and entrepreneurs all over America except the unions? Isn’t that true? Isn’t this a carve-out again, part of this sleaze that went into putting this bill together, part of the “Cornhusker kickback,” the “Louisiana purchase,” the buying of PhRMA–all that went into this–the “negotiations” that were going to take place on C-SPAN that the President said during the Presidential campaign that went from one sweetheart deal cut to another. Part of one of those sweetheart deals was the unions are exempt; is that correct?
Mr. ENZI. That is correct.
So it’s the usual toxic stew of lies, corruption and incompetence that we have come to expect from Barack Obama. But one last point should not go unmentioned: where has the press been in all of this? As of 2010, it was blindingly obvious–was baldly stated by the Obama administration itself–that under Obamacare, far from being permitted to keep your health care coverage if you like it, most Americans’ policies would speedily be terminated, and all would soon cease to exist. Given the dozens of misrepresentations by Barack Obama and other members of his administration, and given the entirely dishonest basis on which Obamacare was rammed through the Democratic Congress without a single Republican vote, and given that Republicans’ warnings were indisputably coming true–was there not a news story here? How can it be that three more years went by before our one-party media thought to mention what happened back in 2010? One can only imagine how the 2012 election might have been different if the electorate had understood that Obamacare was sold on a scaffold of lies.
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The so-called big lie was really just a mixup in pronouns.
President Obama said:
"If you like your health plan, you can keep it." "Period."
The truth, he should have said:
"If I like your health plan, you can keep it."
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Snake oil salesman in chief now denying what he said to over 300 million people captured on videotape at least 29 times:
“What we said was you could keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law was passed,” he told Obamacare’s political beneficiaries and contractors.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/05/obama-denies-you-can-keep-it-videotaped-promises/#ixzz2jmRBPjC4
"...we’ve got to make sure that we’re getting them the right information,” he said.
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"Well, I'm not a crook." - Richard Nixon, April 3, 1974
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/us/politics/14mother.html?_r=2&
The White House on Wednesday declined to challenge an account in a new book that suggests that President Obama, in his campaign to overhaul American health care, mischaracterized a central anecdote about his mother’s deathbed dispute with her insurance company.
During his presidential campaign and subsequent battle over a health care law, Mr. Obama quieted crowds with the story of his mother’s fight with her insurer over whether her cancer was a pre-existing condition that disqualified her from coverage.
In offering the story as an argument for ending pre-existing condition exclusions by health insurers, the president left the clear impression that his mother’s fight was over health benefits for medical expenses.
But in “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” author Janny Scott quotes from correspondence from the president’s mother to assert that the 1995 dispute concerned a Cigna disability insurance policy and that her actual health insurer had apparently reimbursed most of her medical expenses without argument.
In her book, published in May by Riverhead Books, Ms. Scott writes that Mr. Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, had an employer-provided health insurance policy that paid her hospital bills directly, leaving her “to pay only the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which, she said, came to several hundred dollars a month.”
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At least 34 times: If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it. Period.
It was false before he said it - 34 times.
Then there was the lie about the lie.
“Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.”
Peter Wehner writing at Commentary: the most brazenly mendacious claim an American president has told since Bill Clinton’s finger-wagging insistence that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
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Jay Leno has a 34 second coverage of the lie about the lie:
http://www.libertynews.com/2013/10/hilarious-34-second-video-late-night-comic-jay-leno-attacks-obamas-blatant-obamacare-lies/
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The lie about the lie did not fly so they moved right on to the 'apology'.
Has anyone actually tried to read or listened to this 'apology'?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/11/obamas-lying-apology.php
(Chuck Todd- Pres Obama 24 min. interview)
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"I regret very much that what we intended to do, which was to make sure that everybody is moving into better plans because they want them as opposed to because they are forced into it, but we weren’t as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place, and I want to do everything we can to make sure that people are finding themselves in a good position, in a better position than they were in before this law happened. And I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me and we’ve got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and that we’re going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this."
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Just for the record, what is a sincere apology? You regret what you said or did. You would do it differently if you had the chance to go back. You would do everything in your power to make it right now.
Instead he says it's a 'small percentage of folks' (95 million Americans), 'most of these folks will be better off with a new plan' (twice the price). We did it the best way possible. You will be better off. No real regrets. Until the next apology, much more sincere - if you can believe that!
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Deceitful, naive, inexperienced President does not know the 'law of holes'. When you are in one, stop digging.
President Obama in his 'apology': ‘We’re talking about 5 percent of the population.’
Really?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/11/08/fact-checking-the-presidents-kind-of-sort-of-apology-for-obamacare-driven-insurance-cancellations/
But that’s not true.
As I noted last week, in 2010, the Obama administration estimated that 93 million Americans would be unable to keep their prior health coverage under the narrow grandfathering provisions issued by the administration in June 2010. My colleague Chris Conover estimates that the number is 129 million. And we are here only talking about disruptions to private health plans, and not counting the law’s $716 billion in cuts to Medicare.
The level of disruption in the employer-sponsored market will be less than that in the individual market, where people shop for coverage on their own. But the President is most certainly violating his “like your plan” pledge in the employer-sponsored market, too. For example, employer-sponsored insurance will now have to cover costly, federally-dictated benefits that they did not have to cover before, rendering many plans illegal. Excise taxes on premiums, drugs, and medical devices will drive premiums upward. And the so-called “Cadillac tax” on high-value insurance plans—a meritorious idea—will force a massive restructuring of many coverage arrangements.
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I am patiently waiting for our watchdog media to question what else was he lying about? Perhaps everything economic, for starters?
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"‘We’re talking about 5 percent of the population.’"
If Clinton said this he would respond that he was talking about the total *World* "population". Hence no lie. No big deal.
Next.
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http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303789604579196021629414470?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
A Noble Lie?
Why ObamaCare is worse than just a case of pathological altruism.
By James Taranto
November 13, 2013
This column has been following with amusement the various equivocations and rationalizations supporters of ObamaCare have offered to avoid acknowledging plainly that Barack Obama's central premise--"If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it"--was an out-and-out fraud. "Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that" is how a New York Times editorial put it last week. The Times's news side seems to have settled on "incorrect promise."
But if the Times editors are in the market for talent, they ought to find out who wrote Sunday's editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This thing is a masterpiece:
First of all, this is a problem of the president's own making. He did repeatedly say that if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it. He was three words short of the truth. All he had to add was "in most cases."
It's unlikely that this extra frankness would have hurt the political effort to sell the legislation. People understand that not everybody can be left unaffected by such a sweeping change, and Mr. Obama should have been careful not to embellish the assurance.
Was it a lie? He should have known the facts. By definition, a lie is a deliberate misstating of the truth; it is not simply something that was wrongly stated with good intentions, in this case perhaps, to make the complicated simple for public consumption. Those who believe the worst of this president will conclude that he lied; those who do not will be more charitable.
This is savory for multiple reasons. For one, adding a weaselly phrase like "in most cases" does not constitute "extra frankness." Quite the opposite: It turns a shining promise into a foggy assurance with no clear meaning. Imagine if Obama tried that with his wedding vows:
Jeremiah Wright: Will you, Barack, take Michelle to be your wife, to love, honor and cherish, forsaking all others, in sickness and in health, as long as you both shall live?
Obama: Yeah, most likely.
The Post-Gazette's claim that "it is unlikely" such equivocation "would have hurt the political effort to sell the legislation" is supportable only if one assumes the enactment of ObamaCare was not the close-run thing it seemed at the time--in other words, that Harry Reid would have been able to command 60 votes and Nancy Pelosi 218 even without whatever political cover the fraudulent promise provided the Democratic members of their respective chambers. If that is true, however, then the entire "political effort to sell the legislation" was a sham: The fix was in, and Congress was prepared to act with complete disregard for public opinion.
Now for the best part: "By definition, a lie is a deliberate misstating of the truth; it is not simply something that was wrongly stated with good intentions, in this case perhaps, to make the complicated simple for public consumption."
This is a bit of a head-scratcher. The Wall Street Journal established a week earlier that the pledge was the result of careful deliberation between "White House policy advisers" concerned about accuracy and "political aides," who prevailed because, as the Journal paraphrased a comment from an unnamed former official, "in the midst of a hard-fought political debate 'if you like your plan, you can probably keep it' isn't a salable point."
So this was a deliberate misstating of the truth. By raising the possibility of "good intentions," the Post-Gazette editorialists seem to be suggesting that it was a sort of noble lie. "The furor of the supposed great lie is an embarrassment to Mr. Obama," they concede in conclusion, "but it obscures the larger and more important truth that the Affordable Care Act remains good policy."
That evaluation seems increasingly delusional with every passing hour, but let's stipulate for the sake of argument that ObamaCare was a well-intended policy: that Obama pushed for it out of a sincere desire to help people. That would make its failure an example of what the scholar Barbara Oakley calls pathological altruism.
That seems to us, however, to give Obama too much credit. For one thing, it takes more than altruistic motives to justify lying. Suppose one could establish that Bernie Madoff sincerely wanted to make his clients wealthier. Would that mitigate his guilt for defrauding them?
Further, good intentions are not the same as pure intentions. People often have altruistic and selfish motives for the same action. Even if we assume Obama honestly wanted to help people and made his fraudulent promise in pursuit of that goal, it would be silly to deny he also made it in pursuit of his own aggrandizement--of the approbation that comes with a "legacy" of substantial "achievement."
Of course, that's not working out so well for him now. Whether or not this is a case of pathological altruism, it definitely is pathological narcissism.
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/11/obama-lee-myungbak-korea-black-belt.html
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Fouad Ajami: When the Obama Magic Died
There were no economic or cultural bonds among his coalition. He was all things to all people. Charisma ruled.
By Fouad Ajami
Nov. 14, 2013 6:59 p.m. ET
The current troubles of the Obama presidency can be read back into its beginnings. Rule by personal charisma has met its proper fate. The spell has been broken, and the magician stands exposed. We need no pollsters to tell us of the loss of faith in Mr. Obama's policies—and, more significantly, in the man himself. Charisma is like that. Crowds come together and they project their needs onto an imagined redeemer. The redeemer leaves the crowd to its imagination: For as long as the charismatic moment lasts—a year, an era—the redeemer is above and beyond judgment. He glides through crises, he knits together groups of varied, often clashing, interests. Always there is that magical moment, and its beauty, as a reference point.
Mr. Obama gave voice to this sentiment in a speech on Nov. 6 in Dallas: "Sometimes I worry because everybody had such a fun experience in '08, at least that's how it seemed in retrospect. And, 'yes we can,' and the slogans and the posters, et cetera, sometimes I worry that people forget change in this country has always been hard." It's a pity we can't stay in that moment, says the redeemer: The fault lies in the country itself—everywhere, that is, except in the magician's performance.
Forgive the personal reference, but from the very beginning of Mr. Obama's astonishing rise, I felt that I was witnessing something old and familiar. My advantage owed nothing to any mastery of American political history. I was guided by my immersion in the political history of the Arab world and of a life studying Third World societies.
In 2008, seeing the Obama crowds in Portland, Denver and St. Louis spurred memories of the spectacles that had attended the rise and fall of Arab political pretenders. I had lived through the era of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser. He had emerged from a military cabal to become a demigod, immune to judgment. His followers clung to him even as he led the Arabs to a catastrophic military defeat in the Six Day War of 1967. He issued a kind of apology for his performance. But his reign was never about policies and performance. It was about political magic.
In trying to grapple with, and write about, the Obama phenomenon, I found guidance in a book of breathtaking erudition, "Crowds and Power" (1962) by the Nobel laureate Elias Canetti. (MARC: I have this book-- it is very interesting) Born in Bulgaria in 1905 and educated in Vienna and Britain, Canetti was unmatched in his understanding of the passions, and the delusions, of crowds. The crowd is a "mysterious and universal phenomenon," he writes. It forms where there was nothing before. There comes a moment when "all who belong to the crowd get rid of their difference and feel equal." Density gives the illusion of equality, a blessed moment when "no one is greater or better than another." But the crowd also has a presentiment of its own disintegration, a time when those who belong to the crowd "creep back under their private burdens."
Five years on, we can still recall how the Obama coalition was formed. There were the African-Americans justifiably proud of one of their own. There were upper-class white professionals who were drawn to the candidate's "cool." There were Latinos swayed by the promise of immigration reform. The white working class in the Rust Belt was the last bloc to embrace Mr. Obama—he wasn't one of them, but they put their reservations aside during an economic storm and voted for the redistributive state and its protections. There were no economic or cultural bonds among this coalition. There was the new leader, all things to all people.
A nemesis awaited the promise of this new presidency: Mr. Obama would turn out to be among the most polarizing of American leaders. No, it wasn't his race, as Harry Reid would contend, that stirred up the opposition to him. It was his exalted views of himself, and his mission. The sharp lines were sharp between those who raised his banners and those who objected to his policies.
America holds presidential elections, we know. But Mr. Obama took his victory as a plebiscite on his reading of the American social contract. A president who constantly reminded his critics that he had won at the ballot box was bound to deepen the opposition of his critics.
A leader who set out to remake the health-care system in the country, a sixth of the national economy, on a razor-thin majority with no support whatsoever from the opposition party, misunderstood the nature of democratic politics. An election victory is the beginning of things, not the culmination. With Air Force One and the other prerogatives of office come the need for compromise, and for the disputations of democracy. A president who sought consensus would have never left his agenda on Capitol Hill in the hands of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
Mr. Obama has shown scant regard for precedent in American history. To him, and to the coterie around him, his presidency was a radical discontinuity in American politics. There is no evidence in the record that Mr. Obama read, with discernment and appreciation, of the ordeal and struggles of his predecessors. At best there was a willful reading of that history. Early on, he was Abraham Lincoln resurrected (the new president, who hailed from Illinois, took the oath of office on the Lincoln Bible). He had been sworn in during an economic crisis, and thus he was FDR restored to the White House. He was stylish with two young children, so the Kennedy precedent was on offer.
In the oddest of twists, Mr. Obama claimed that his foreign policy was in the mold of Dwight Eisenhower's . But Eisenhower knew war and peace, and the foreign world held him in high regard.
During his first campaign, Mr. Obama had paid tribute to Ronald Reagan as a "transformational" president and hinted that he aspired to a presidency of that kind. But the Reagan presidency was about America, and never about Ronald Reagan. Reagan was never a scold or a narcissist. He stood in awe of America, and of its capacity for renewal. There was forgiveness in Reagan, right alongside the belief in the things that mattered about America—free people charting their own path.
If Barack Obama seems like a man alone, with nervous Democrats up for re-election next year running for cover, and away from him, this was the world he made. No advisers of stature can question his policies; the price of access in the Obama court is quiescence before the leader's will. The imperial presidency is in full bloom.
There are no stars in the Obama cabinet today, men and women of independent stature and outlook. It was after a walk on the White House grounds with his chief of staff, Denis McDonough, that Mr. Obama called off the attacks on the Syrian regime that he had threatened. If he had taken that walk with Henry Kissinger or George Shultz, one of those skilled statesmen might have explained to him the consequences of so abject a retreat. But Mr. Obama needs no sage advice, he rules through political handlers.
Valerie Jarrett, the president's most trusted, probably most powerful, aide, once said in admiration that Mr. Obama has been bored his whole life. The implication was that he is above things, a man alone, and anointed. Perhaps this moment—a presidency coming apart, the incompetent social engineering of an entire health-care system—will now claim Mr. Obama's attention.
— Mr. Ajami, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, is the author, most recently, of "The Syrian Rebellion" ( Hoover Press, 2012).
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Moving on from healthcare lies, Benghazi lies, IRS targeting lies, fast and furious lies, and lies about his failed economic policies, President Obama aimed his weekly address at energy production - that he opposes!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/16/us-usa-obama-energy-idUSBRE9AF09R20131116
"In his weekly radio address, Obama noted that for the first time in nearly two decades, the United States is producing more oil than it purchases from other countries and is seeing more jobs created in the energy sector."
If we really want energy production here at home, how about approving a pipeline? Who opposes that?
I'm starting to lose respect for the guy.
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As long as Dems can keep offering 51% of voters more Christmas or Hannukah gifts the issue of honesty is only a secondary issue.
I guess the Republicans will have to convince 51% that they are the one's paying for the gifts. Not receiving them. It is sad this is what it has come down to.
Hillary is going to use the "women's" angle like a battering ram.
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CBS News: 61% Now Oppose Health Law, Obama Approval Falls to 37%
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57613067/poll-obamacare-support-obama-approval-sink-to-new-lows/
I don't get what the 37% can be thinking.
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They aren't.
CBS News: 61% Now Oppose Health Law, Obama Approval Falls to 37%
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57613067/poll-obamacare-support-obama-approval-sink-to-new-lows/
I don't get what the 37% can be thinking.
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:lol: :lol: :lol:
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The Goldberg File
By Jonah Goldberg
November 22, 2013
Dear Reader (and all conservatives everywhere who apparently are still to blame for a Communist assassin in Dallas 50 years ago today),
I am growing increasingly fascinated by the world-historic craptacular face plant that is HealthCare.gov. You would think it would be the opposite. You'd think that after a month of near-constant argle-bargle and foofaraw it would lose its appeal. But it's more like watching Anchorman over and over again; every time you find something to reward the effort.
An article in Time magazine in June -- June! -- reported that Denis McDonough, the president's chief of staff, spent "two hours a day" on Obamacare implementation.
Let that sink in.
Two hours a day. In the time-based economy of the White House, that's an unfathomable fortune. Taking out my temporal currency converter, that's equivalent to getting a sit down with Don Corleone on his daughter's wedding day for an entire afternoon. It's like Kathryn Lopez getting a papal visit that lasts the entire week of Easter. It'd be like me going on a road trip with Rupert Murdoch and Joss Whedon in which we taste-test every baseball-park hotdog in the United States. In short, that is what students of the inside-the-Beltway space-time continuum call "some serious quality time."
And yet, somehow, McDonough was caught off guard by the extent of HealthCare.gov's craptacularity? How is that possible? It's like going to Tokyo on a fact-finding trip and reporting back that the air quality is surprisingly poor but otherwise everything is fine -- without mentioning the three-day donnybrook between Godzilla and the Smog Monster.
Direct Information?
But even if that was an exaggeration, and McDonough wasn't spending two hours a day every day dealing with the nitty-gritty of Obamacare, it's still hard to get my head around the idea that he was totally in the dark about the problems. And if he wasn't in the dark one can only assume that the president wasn't either. The central job of any chief of staff is to control the flow of information to the president. And yet president Obama says, "I was not informed directly that the website would not be working, as the way it was supposed to."
I've been trying to think through what that means. Did McDonough stage an inscrutably Ibsenesque puppet show about the site's troubles? Maybe they played a game of telephone in the Oval Office which began with McDonough whispering in Valerie Jarrett's ear, "The website isn't going to work by October 1," but by the time the phrase worked its way around the horn, Jay Carney whispered with his school-girl giggle, "I will have cabbage in my trousers this Wednesday." Sure, everyone laughed when Obama repeated, "I will have cabbage in my trousers this Wednesday," so maybe McDonough just didn't have it in him to ruin the good time by telling him what the original phrase was? Or maybe something else is going on?
I know my Schadenfreudarama piece was a bit on the Gonzo side (which is where I will sit at the wedding when Gonzo and Camilla finally tie the knot), but I was quite serious when I was talking about President Obama's hubris. Hubris doesn't just mean overweening pride or self-confidence. It's when arrogant people believe the rules don't apply to them. And I don't mean that in the hypocritical sense. Hubris isn't hypocrisy. Aristocrats who insist the peasants must never rip off their mattress tags but think it's fine for the nobility to slumber deep in the comfort of a tag-free mattress may be hypocrites, but that's not hubris. (And since that was an incredibly dumb sentence . . . ) Nor is it hubris when liberals insist the little people shouldn't have guns, or cars, or use planes, or eat fatty food, because only the elite can be trusted to make those kinds of choices for themselves.
Hubris, at least in part, is when you think the rules of the universe really don't apply to you. Hubris is when you think you are anointed by God, Providence, the Matrix, or your own inner spark of awesomeness to the point where you think you can get out of any knotty situation just because you're you. Playing the odds is for little people.
I remember when I first looked up the word -- I was reading one of the Dune books (Shai Hulud! I loved those books). One of Frank Herbert's big ideas was the inherent tension between hubris and revelation. Take it from a guy named Jonah, it takes a lot of self-confidence and certainty to be a prophet. "Yes, hello people of Ninevah. God sent me. What? No, I don't have any paperwork on that. But you're going to have to stop all of this tomfoolery. Right now. I'm serious you guys."
In literature there are countless examples of hubris. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Dr. F thinks he can play God. In Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, a different Dr. F thinks he can make a deal with the devil and not pay a price. In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Oedipus thinks he can go swimming less than a half hour after eating ("I think you need to reread that one" -- The Couch).
But I think the best example of the kind of hubris I have in mind can be found in the scene from The Other Guys where Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson think they're such super-terrific badasses they can leap from a rooftop and they'll be okay if they simply "aim for the bushes."
Which is to say there's a very fine line between self-confidence and stupid. This is a lesson most cocky children learn when they think they can take off their pants without removing their shoes first. But apparently for some people it's the sort of lesson one has to learn by taking over one sixth of the U.S. economy.
Unknown Unknowns
I know a lot of people made fun of Don Rumsfeld -- though I never really understood why -- but his saying about "unknown unknowns" is really one of the most profound and pithy distillations of a core insight to human existence we've seen in a long time.
(I can think of only two recent competitors off the top of my head right now. The first is Arthur Brooks's insight about the importance of "earned success." The other is Charles Murray's summation of what is wrong with the meritocratic elite in this country: They refuse to "preach what they practice." But those are topics for another day.)
Rumsfeld captured both the Socratic insight that a wise man knows he always has more to learn and the Chestertonian paradox of the fence. If you don't know about Chesterton's fence after years of reading this "news"letter I haven't been doing my job ("I've been meaning to ask about that. What exactly do you do?" -- The Couch).
The money quote:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
Obama's Fences
The question -- which really isn't a question -- of Obama's narcissism is one of the most masticated morsels of pundit cud in the op-ed feed trough. There's no need to revisit it here. Suffice it to say, Obama thinks he's kind of a big deal.
But while the psychological term for Obama's stunning self-regard may indeed be "narcissism" I think it's really hubris, specifically the kind of hubris that comes with the blinding conviction that there are no unknown unknowns that a man of his abilities can't handle. A messianic figure doesn't need to sweat the small stuff, because messiahs by definition are immune to the small stuff.
There are now scores of quotes and anecdotes about how Obama has said to aides and allies something like "don't worry about the politics . . . I'll handle the politics." Remember when that Arkansas congressman rightly feared that the passage of Obamacare would trigger a replay of the 1994 shellacking of Democrats? Obama responded that the big difference between '94 and 2010 was "you've got me." When he was looking for a new chief of staff, he remarked that he'd make a great chief of staff. During one of the budget battles he said everything would be easier if he could do it all by himself. He's whined that Chinese autocrats have a much easier time. A couple weeks ago, Obama said that he'd fix the website himself except "I don't write code."
Right. Because if Obama knew Fortran or C++ he'd just be able to roll up his sleeves and bang that thing out. He's just that good. Remember he's a better speechwriter than his speechwriters, better policy guy than his policy guy, yada yada yada. He can cook twelve-minute brownies in seven minutes, bitches.
By the way, my favorite recent example of Obama's stunning ego-centrism came in this Fresh Air interview a friend forwarded me. Terry Gross interviewed the hosts of Key & Peele. Here's the relevant bit:
GROSS: Jordan, when you met President Obama, which I know you did, did you get some insights into how to perform him?
PEELE: I would say so, yeah. I think I walked out of there a little bit more confident with my impression, and I actually did it for him at one point. He says, you know, I do a pretty good me myself . . .
If I had my postmodern-narcissism-irony Geiger counter in the room when that happened it would explode like a phaser set to overload.
Valerie Jarrett's power is reportedly derived from the fact that she knows how Obama ticks and knows how to tell him the things he wants -- needs! -- to hear. So consider this infamous insight:
I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He's been bored to death his whole life. He's just too talented to do what ordinary people do.
I've met some of the smartest people in America, literally. I don't for a moment claim to be one of them, but I've been in the room with a bunch of them. Truly brilliant people aren't bored like that. They find ways to challenge themselves.
No, Obama's problem is that the only thing that really engages his full attention is . . . Barack Obama. That's why his books are about -- wait for it -- Barack Obama. When it came to his political career he was willing to do the legwork, because it was about advancing him. He loves campaigning but is bored with governing because campaigning is about him and governing is, by definition, about other people. And other people aren't interesting -- unless of course they are the ones we've been waiting for, i.e. the ones who love Barack Obama.
Back to the Website
Obama says he wasn't "directly informed" about the website's problems. But Jay Carney revealed the president was briefed in March about the McKinsey report. He was told of the "red flags," he just wasn't told how serious those red flags were. As brother Geraghty writes:
Now . . . think about it. If you're President Obama, this is your baby. This is your legacy. Draw a parallel to anything big and important that you've done in your life in the past: a big project at work, a home improvement project, writing a book, planning a wedding. This is vitally important, surpassed only by the needs of your family and your own health.
Suddenly someone informs you that something might be going wrong with this hugely important project.
Even if that person says, "don't worry, we're handling it," . . . aren't you a little concerned at that point? It doesn't trigger a bit of worry? Don't you follow up? If they say, "eh, look, it's technical," doesn't your intense concern about the project's success get you to drill down, and get into the weeds?
How do you shrug off something like that? I know the president is a busy man with a full schedule -- I can hear you chuckling about playing golf from here -- but don't you think he would have asked about those potential problems in subsequent meetings about Obamacare? Wouldn't that have nagged at him?
You'd think, yeah. But here's the thing: Obama's like the dog from the Far Side cartoon. You can talk about red flags and broken data hubs all day long and all he'll hear is "blah blah blah blah Obama blah blah blah." Having never run anything, he doesn't even know how to ask questions that any half-way decent manager would ask when it's clear the staff is screwing the pooch. It's not even clear he can tell when the staff is screwing the pooch, even when a naked staffer is standing in front of him with an extremely discomfited canine.
The Arrogance of Liberalism
This isn't just about the man, it's about his ideology. Liberalism has no respect for fences it doesn't understand. No appreciation for the law of unintended consequences. Obama doesn't have the imagination to worry about serious unknown unknowns, never mind known unknowns. When he was campaigning for the stimulus, he'd talk endlessly about "shovel-ready jobs," making it sound like only idiots and fools questioned the existence of such things. Six months later, he was the one who discovered shovel-ready jobs weren't shovel ready. Just this month he discovered that buying health insurance is complicated.
It's like the "you can keep your plan, period" lie. It's impossible to know if he really truly knew it was a lie, or if he thought it was sort of true. The important point is that he's so intellectually incurious he didn't take the time to figure it out. Days before the website went live he was still promising it would work perfectly.
And that's where the hubris comes in. No matter what the circumstance, no matter the potential downside, no matter how loudly God is laughing at his plans, Obama ignorantly strides on in his giant hamster sphere of epistemic closure, thinking that whatever happens he'll be okay, because, "you've got me" as if that will make all the difference. And it never does.
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The President's main income is book royalties. No surprise to anyone reading the forum, but terrorist Bill Ayers wrote this Barack Obama 'autobiography' and now freely and publicly admits it.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/11/jack-cashill-vindicated-bill-ayers-book-promotion-event-announces/
(http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ayers-book-dreams.jpg)
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“The problem is that I’m president of the United States; I’m not emperor,”
“We underestimated the complexities of building a website,”
“The private sector is doing fine,”
"OK, on the website, I was not informed directly that the website would not be working the way it was supposed to. Had I been informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, ‘Boy, this is going to be great.’ I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, ‘This is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity’ a week before the website opens if I thought that it wasn’t going to work. So clearly, we and I did not have enough awareness about the problems in the website."
[Wait: Were you informed indirectly?]
“We live in the greatest nation in the history of the world,” “I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it.”
“If I had a son he’d look like Trayvon.”
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them,”
“Those jobs weren’t as shovel-ready as I thought,”
He either means to say what he does, or doesn't mean to. Pick one.
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2013/11/22/stupid-stuff-my-president-says-n1751311/page/full
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http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2013/12/03/low-information-leadership/
"...the Obama White House isn’t organized. It’s just full of chatter. Meetings don’t begin on time, there’s no agenda, the list of those invited seems to expand and contract at somebody’s whim. There is a tendency to speak of how a problem will look and how its appearance should be handled, as opposed to what the problem is and should be done about it. "
...
"...when you apply this to the ObamaCare debacle, suddenly it seems to make sense. The White House is so unformed and chaotic that they probably didn’t ignore the problem, they probably held a million meetings on it. People probably said things like, “We’re experiencing some technological challenges but we’re sure we’ll be up by October,” and other people said, “Yes, it’s important we launch strong,” and others said, “The Republicans will have a field day if we’re not.” And then everyone went to their next meeting. And no one did anything. And the president went off and made speeches."
...
"If they thought he wasn’t very bright, they might give him some leeway on that question. [Lying, not knowing etc.] But they think he’s really smart. So they think he knew. And deliberately misled."
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http://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2013/12/05/just-kidding-obama-actually-stayed-with-his-illegal-immigrant-uncle-n1758210?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm
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To the above in the thread, yes, the man who lied about his mom who it turns out had full coverage in her battle with cancer, lied about not knowing his uncle. He in fact lived with him, but - "his staff got it wrong".
The fault with Obama's big governmenthealthcare trainwreck is not with his leadership, but the fault of big government:
"we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly. . . . The White House is just a tiny part of what is a huge, widespread organization with increasingly complex tasks in a complex world."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304096104579242452346401592
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The President landed a much needed break from the downward spiraling news cycle with the death of his pretend mentor, Nelson Mandela:
But isn't Mandela truly the anti- or opposite of Obama? On the non-stop coverage I noted the word patience. 28 years in prison suffering for his cause, and most deserving of leadership when his time finally came. In leadership, he was known for healing, compromising, forgiving, and coming together with his former captors.
In contrast is the guy from choomgang and Ivy League affirmative action college subsidies, who never suffered but gave a speech, "Harry, I have a gift", won the Nobel prize before appointing his staff, refused to negotiate with political foes, didn't want or need a single vote of the opposition, shut down the government to avoid negotiating on his signature failure. The ends always justify means; he praised Lincoln, emulated Nixon. Ideology means everything, his word means nothing. His legacy, well we will see, but appears to be the discrediting of his own policies and the bringing together, strengthening and the vindicating of his opponents. It took this president until his second sentence eulogizing Nelson Mandela to start in with the word "I".
“I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela’s life," Obama said. "Like so many around the globe, I cannot imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set." He added: "So long as I live, I will do whatever I can to learn from him."
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“I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela’s life," Obama said. "Like so many around the globe, I cannot imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set." He added: "So long as I live, I will do whatever I can to learn from him."
Obama really has no class whatsoever.
Clinton is the same way with something like "Obama got the big things right. He gets the easy things wrong". or something like that.
I don't know who is more narcissistic or self serving. It really is a tie.
One difference is Clinton just wants to be loved. Obama (already loves himself) is an angry man on a vengeance vendetta.
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http://minx.cc/?post=345514
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My numerous complaints notwithstanding, President Obama decision to invite George and Laura Bush with the Obamas and Hillary to the Mandela services on Air Force One appears to be a classy move IMHO.
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Curious, is he bowing to 'President' Castro, or just trying to adjust for the height difference?
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BbH156PCIAAtsoB.jpg)
A little less enthusiasm and eye contact during a Boehner handshake:
(http://www.nmnewsandviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Obama-Boehner-Cantor-shake-hands.jpg)
Speaking of knowing friend from foe, if anyone has any photos of President Obama at the Maggie Thatcher services, please post.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/10/obama-caught-snapping-selfie-at-mandela-memorial/
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(http://www.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2013/12/You-Can-Keep-copy.jpg)
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See the NY Times pdf of the original article. He could see the "goodness in humanity" by the turnout and enthusiasm at SAM, Students Against Militarism Thursday night. SAM had 15 members, none of which controlled the arsenal of the Soviet Union then or Iran today. I am curious if Bill Ayers wrote this too.
(Now he refuses to stop nuclear proliferation to dictators and terrorists.)
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/nytint/docs/obama-s-1983-college-magazine-article/original.pdf
ARA sponsored events---(Arms Race Alternatives)
BREAKINGTHE WAR MENTALITY Sundial. March 10, 1983
By Harack Obama our hearts. and taking continual, tangi- on the nuclear threat-reveals a deep
Most students at Columbia do not ble ~teps to prevent war, becomes a di- resevoir ofconcern. "I think students on
have first hand knowledge of war_ Mili- fficult task. this campus like to think of themselves
tary violence has been a vicarious ex- Two groups on campus, Anns Race as sophisticated, and don't appreciate
perience, channeled into our minds Alternatives (ARA) and Students small vision, So they tend to come out
through television, film, and print. Ag-ainst Militarism (SAM), work within more for the events; they do not want to
The more sensitive ~lmong us these mental limits to foster awareness just fold leaflets."
struggle to extrapolate experiences of and practical action neces::-ary to coun- Mark Bigelow, a graduate intern
war from our everyday experience, dis- ter the growing threat of war. Though from Union Theological Seminary who
cussing the latest mortality statistics the emphasis of the two p:roups differ. works with Don to keep ARA running
from Guatemala, sensitizing ourselves they share an aversion to current gov- smoothly, agrees. "It seems that stu-
to our parents' wartime memories, or ernment policy. These groups, visualiz- dents here are fairly aware of the nucle-
incorporating into our framework ofreˇ ing the possibilities of destruction and ar problem, and it makes for an underly-
ality as depicted by a Mailer or a Cop- g-rasping the-tendencies of distorted na- ing frustration. We try to talk to that
pola. But the taste of war-the sounds tional priorities, are throwing their frustration." Consequently. the thrust of
and chill, the dead bodies-are remote weight into shifting America off the ARA is towards generating dialogue
and far removed. We know that wars dead-end track. which will give people a rational handle
have OlX.'WTed, will occur, are occWTing, "Most people my age remember on this controversial subject. this inc-
but bringing such experience down into well the air-raid drills in school, under ludes bringing speakers like Daniel
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"BREAKINGTHE WAR MENTALITY"
It is really incredible how these geniuses @ Columbia discovered and understood that war is bad. They like the Brockster are just too infatuated with themselves. The "I am better than you" theme just drips from this incredibly boring drivel.
So this guy wrote this worthless piece. Yet no one ever remembers him? It sounds like to me he was not simply lurking introvertedly in the shadows.
And this was 1983. What does this clown think the anti-war protesters kids of the 60's were all about. Each generation of academic know it all's it seems is so freakin' narcisstic that they think they are wiser than anyone before.
Like the ancient Greek saying that wisdom is wasted on youth.
Like I said "young and dumb".
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/16/washington-post-releases-10-biggest-pinocchios-of-the-year-guess-how-many-belong-to-obama/
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ-mG2POqvU
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http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/prez-article-1.1559989
If you like your Prez . . .
A very bad year for Mr. Obama
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, December 29, 2013
President Obama’s second inaugural conveyed a hunger to lead.
“We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect,” he said. “We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years and 40 years and 400 years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.”
Only 11 months later, a term that began with heady pledges and apparent momentum is in wreckage. Confidence in Obama has sunk like a cinder block hurled into the East River.
The embarrassing showing centers on his bungled implementation of Obamacare, raising doubts about its very viability, and extends to disastrous international zigs and zags that have sapped U.S. credibility among allies and foes. Call it the very worst year of this presidency.
Over and again in 2009, Obama promised: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
Meaning: Efforts to extend coverage to the 40 million or 50 million Americans without plans would not disrupt life for the vast majority one bit.
They are 11 words that will go down in history most charitably as reckless spin, far more likely as a brazen lie, because this year, 4 million Americans got cancellation notices out of the blue.
Example: Deborah Persico, a 58-year-old, self-employed lawyer and two-time Obama voter who supported the health-care law, then found her policy cancelled, and only far more expensive policies available on new exchanges.
She told PBS’s “Newshour” that a new plan would cost her $5,000 more a year.
Why? Persico’s explanation: “The representative told me to look in the booklet that they had sent me, and I looked in the booklet. And in that booklet is a list of services that the ACA covers. Well, I have every one of those services, except maternity coverage and pediatric care.
“Now, I am 58 years old. The chance of me having a child at this age is zero. So, you know, I ask the President, why do I have to pay an additional $5,000 a year for maternity coverage that I will never, ever need?”
And that was just one piece of a nightmare rollout. HealthCare.gov, the engine that makes the new law work by letting the uninsured shop for plans, had just about the most screwed-up debut of any website in the history of the Internet. State exchanges were little better.
The Obama administration projected a half-million signups in the month of October alone. The President is now likely to celebrate jumping over that bar by year’s end, with fears that no matter how well the website eventually works, the broad public may not buy what Obama is selling.
Little wonder popular support for Obamacare ended the year at just 35%. Sixty-two percent of the American people now oppose a law that, especially in the early years, was supposed to deliver great benefits at low costs.
Adding salt to the wound: Obama has little to offer for the slow-motion crisis of joblessness that continues to squander human potential.
A 7% unemployment rate and monthly job creation now in excess of 200,000 conceals a labor participation rate — meaning, the percentage of working-age Americans who are an active part of the workforce — of just 63%. That’s near a generational low.
Obama can explain the problem. He can excoriate Republicans. But he cannot actually do anything to change the reality on the ground, and that is the ultimate measure of a President.
There are times when a President’s global stature buoys his standing at home. Not now.
As a civil war raged in Syria, fueled by the blistering brutality of Bashar Assad’s regime, Obama has looked worse than disinterested. He has seemed indecisive, if not bamboozled.
In 2012, the President had laid down a famous “red line” on chemical weapons. If they were used, there would be serious consequences. Read: American military consequences.
They were used. Women and children were killed as if they were insects. The commander-in-chief hemmed. He hawed. He punted to Congress, which balked. The Russians rushed in with a plan to dismantle the chemical weapons program; it may or may not work.
To this day, the Syrian murderer keeps killing his people.
On Iran, we’ve seen a similarly deflating pattern. The President has repeatedly promised that a nuclear-armed Tehran regime, which would fund terrorism with impunity and threaten Israel profoundly, is unthinkable.
Yet after punishing sanctions were at last bringing the regime to heel, Obama blinked and buckled — lifting some of them in exchange for the hollow promise of a six-month enrichment freeze.
Not least, but last, the administration failed a test with implications both at home and abroad:
After a thief of American secrets made off with thousands upon thousands of classified documents, Obama could not seem to credibly explain the surveillance powers the U.S. has wielded for years.
In a technologically complex landscape in which Islamist terrorists are plotting to kill, it is necessary for the nation to maintain an elaborate and sophisticated foreign intelligence apparatus.
But the President has acted haltingly as, month after month, the leaks have revealed the unimagined powers and practices of the National Security Agency. His potent powers of persuasion failed him, and us.
(more at link)
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Falluja now lost, where did the plan go??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBfXbidebWw
"In ending the war we must act with more wisdom than we started with."
“That's why my plan would maintain forces in the region to target all al Qaeda within Iraq.”
So what happened to Obama’s “plan?” Where are the “forces in the region” ready to “target all al Qaeda within Iraq? Those aren’t very serious questions, as everyone knows Obama was just lying.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/01/as-iraq-slides-downhill-what-happened-to-obamas-plan.php
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Falluja now lost, where did the plan go??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBfXbidebWw
"In ending the war we must act with more wisdom than we started with."
“That's why my plan would maintain forces in the region to target all al Qaeda within Iraq.”
So what happened to Obama’s “plan?” Where are the “forces in the region” ready to “target all al Qaeda within Iraq? Those aren’t very serious questions, as everyone knows Obama was just lying.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/01/as-iraq-slides-downhill-what-happened-to-obamas-plan.php
Do we know it's al qaeda and not a spontaneous demonstration caused by a YouTube video?
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/robert-gates-former-defense-secretary-offers-harsh-critique-of-obamas-leadership-in-duty/2014/01/07/6a6915b2-77cb-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html
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second post:
Vladimir Putin said -- off the record:
"Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon…. the pigeon knocks over all the pieces, shits on the board and then struts around like it won the game."
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http://www.westernjournalism.com/passenger-releases-video-crash-killed-fuddy/
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http://www.americasfreedomfighters.com/2014/01/11/breaking-obama-college-records-released-financial-aid-as-a-foreigner/
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/occidental.asp
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It is good to have false claims debunked. Still there are quite a few other questions about his education that weren't asked or answered.
The birth certificate question was always a non-starter. His mom was a US citizen from Kansas. Couldn't she give birth anywhere in the world and her viable fetus becomes a citizen? It was the way they dodged the question that led people to think something else was there.
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President Obama has asserted this repeatedly:
“The climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago.”
Today Senator Jeff Sessions asked EPA Director Gina McCarthy a simple question:
Is the claim that President Obama has made repeatedly, that the Earth has warmed more than predicted by the models over the last ten years, true? Amazingly, she refuses to answer:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKZj-PR2Egg#t=12[/youtube]
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/01/is-obama-a-liar-epa-administrator-cant-say.php
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2014/01/21/
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The pains that the administration has gone to differentiate between core al Qaeda and all of these splinter groups:
It's not only an excuse, a way to explain his way out of why he has failed on all these issues; it's also a demonstration, a shocking demonstration of his strategic shallowness. You know, it's the example of, you know, it's not the Lakers. The whole strategy of al Qaeda as explained by al-Zawahiri and Obama bin laden was to establish regional and local insurgencies to attack the Arab states who they saw as acting in the interest of the infidels, starting with Saudi Arabia. The whole idea was local insurgencies with a global perspective. I think Obama still to this day after half a decade doesn't understand at all who we are and who he is up against in the war on terror.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/01/20/krauthammer_obamas_al_qaeda_comments_a_shocking_demonstration_of_his_strategic_shallowness.html
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2014/01/22/Michelle-Obama-Chooses-Jane-Fonda-as-role-model
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2014/01/22/Michelle-Obama-Chooses-Jane-Fonda-as-role-model
Anyone shocked to read this?
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/barack_hussein_soebarkah.html
A fresh angle here, one I have not seen before. Perhaps I read with emotion more than logic, but I am intrigued , , ,
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/barack_hussein_soebarkah.html
A fresh angle here, one I have not seen before. Perhaps I read with emotion more than logic, but I am intrigued , , ,
Interesting. The key thing is the opaque nature of a sitting president's personal history. If only the press acted as watchdogs rather than propagandists/praetorian guards...
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Reliability unknown:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/01/making-the-rounds-barry-soetoros-columbia-university-school-id/
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http://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2014/01/26/obamas-ambassador-to-norway-fumbles-basic-questions-about-norway-n1783543
Norway is one of the most prosperous countries in the world. One might think we would send someone there there as our Ambassador who knows quite a bit and wants to learn more. Instead the President picked a Greek American, bumbling bundler. Norway is not impressed. http://www.thelocal.no/20140123/next-us-ambassador
The President, who has pissed off allies far greater than Norway, could not care less.
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Tomorrow we talk about infrastructure and shovel ready jobs while wait and wait and wait for this Choom-gang victim to sort out the merits of an energy pipeline.
Charles Krauthammer wrote a good piece on this last week:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369312/keystone-cop-out-charles-krauthammer
Obama should give Canada an answer, already.
See Forbes also with:
Five Reasons Obama May Cave On The Keystone Pipeline
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/01/23/five-reasons-obama-may-cave-on-the-keystone-pipeline/?ss=business%3Aenergy
1) The U.S. Midterm elections
2) Dissent in the ranks
3) Canada upping the ante
4) Growing dangers of rail
5) Jobs
Details and analysis at the link.
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OTOH Warren Buffet's railroad play would not do well , , ,
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Bret Stephens (WSJ) today, Updatuing a story about government-mandated absolute equality, begins with:
The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. - Kurt Vonnegut, 1961
Stephens goes on to describe America under the equality policies that President Obama will describe tonight.
"Happily, none of this harmed the economy in the slightest. Higher minimum wages have "no discernible effect on employment" ( Schmitt, 2013). High marginal tax rates have no effect on productivity and business creation (Piketty-Saez, 2011). "
...
"the average height of NBA players for the 2007-08 season was just under 6 feet 7 inches. The average American male is 5 feet 9 inches. Patently unequal, patently unfair. ... demanded that the NBA establish an average-height rule that would require each team to offset taller players with shorter ones."
...
"More controversial was the Grassley-Gowdy De-Ivy Act of 2018, requiring all four-year colleges, public or private, to accept students by lottery."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304691904579346523830566300?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
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The empty suit gave an empty speech, widely called "forgettable". It didn't inspire a lot of comment on the board.
I was disappointed that he didn't use the speech as an opportunity to announce approval of the Keystone pipeline. That would be reaching to the middle. It would constructed largely with union construction jobs. Republicans would have applauded. Democrats use oil and gas. Elite liberals like to jet around. Public safety would be enhanced. He probably has to approve it at some point. Maybe he would have energized a second look at his other proposals.
Instead it was just the anti-constitutional rhetoric, if I can't do this with congress, I will do it alone. By 'year of action' he is referring to actions that kill more jobs and make energy less affordable to young people, blacks, Hispanics, women and children.
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I inherited this and I inherited that economic problem from the previous administration, he keeps saying http://www.democrats.org/issues/economy_and_job_creation, yet the White House's own website says the last economic expansion ended exactly as Democrats including Senator Obama took majority control of congress.
www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/04/12/president-obama-s-record-results-and-agenda-income-inequality
"the last economic expansion ended in 2007".
How about taking SOME responsibility for that!
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Mainstream media trying to toughen up for when Republicans take the White House.:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/01/28/fact-checking-the-2014-state-of-the-union-address/
“The more than eight million new jobs our businesses have created over the past four years.”
- the number of jobs in the economy still is about 1.2 million lower than when the recession began in December 2007
“A manufacturing sector that’s adding jobs for the first time since the 1990s.”
- the number of manufacturing jobs is still 500,000 fewer than when Obama took office
“Our deficits — cut by more than half.”
- The 2009 figure... reflects the impact of decisions, such as the $800 billion stimulus bill, enacted early in the president’s term. The United States still has a deficit higher than it was in nominal terms and as a percentage of gross domestic product than it was in 2008 and a debt much greater as a percentage of the overall economy than it was prior to the recession.
“Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled.”
- Close readers of the president’s speeches might have noticed an interesting shift in the president’s rhetoric. Just in December the president gave a speech on economic mobility in which he three times asserted that it was “declining” in the United States. But earlier this month, renowned economists Raj Chetty, Emmanuel Saez and colleagues published a paper based on tens of millions of tax records showing that upward mobility had not changed significantly over time. The rate essentially is the same now as it was 20 years ago.
“Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment.”
- when such differences are accounted for, much of the hourly wage gap dwindled, to about 5 cents on the dollar.
“More than nine million Americans have signed up for private health insurance or Medicaid coverage.”
- no one really knows how many of the 6.3 million are in this expansion pool — or whether they are simply renewing or would have qualified for Medicaid before the new law. Indeed, the number also includes people joining Medicaid in states that chose not accept the expansion. The private insurance numbers — about 3 million — are also open to question. The troubled federal exchange counts people as enrolled if an individual has selected a plan, but it does not know if a person enrolled and paid a premium because that part of the system has yet to be built.
Fact checking Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers in her response:
“Last month, more Americans stopped looking for a job than found one. Too many people are falling further and further behind because, right now, the president’s policies are making people’s lives harder.”
- [True] but the decline in the labor participation rate started well before Obama.
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http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/nonie-darwish/all-the-presidents-women/
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http://www.examiner.com/article/viewers-say-obama-stoned-during-olympics-interview-with-bob-costas
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looking at the picture posted he appears to have Bell's palsy.
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"From Wisconsin to Kansas, student athletes, in particular, are complaining the 850-calorie lunch limit embodied in nacho plates containing eight tortilla chips just doesn’t provide enough food for their growing, hard-working bodies."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/2/michelle-obamas-school-lunch-program-leaves-childr/
Calories in each rib eye state dinner with the Marxists from France: 2500 calories. 2800 assuming 2 glasses of red wine.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/11/2500-calorie-state-dinner-set-frances-hollande/
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Pres to link California drought to climate change
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/14/obama-to-link-california-drought-to-climate-change/?intcmp=latestnews
Breitbart links drought trip to golf:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/14/Golf-Not-Drought-is-Bringing-Obama-to-California
Biden: Be Optimistic on State of the Nation ‘In Spite of Who’s President’
http://m.cnsnews.com/news/article/eric-scheiner/biden-be-optimistic-state-nation-spite-who-s-president
While we debate income inequality, Michelle flaunts $12,000 dress:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/02/14/the-irony-of-michelle-obamas-10000-dress-n1795008
The cost of her dress is more than the average household income worldwide.
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No he is not a radical in sheep's clothing. :roll: Just political grandstanding by right wing nuts. (heavy on the sarcasm)
And we keep hearing what a nice guy he is. If I hear O'Reilly say one more time he doesn't doubt Obama's good intentions..... :roll:
I keep thinking how is someone who is a serial liar, serial deceiver, bully, a nice guy. Oh but he cares about the po' is always the response. It is his goals that matter not how he gets there.
****The Soul of the Obama Administration
Mona Charen
By Mona Charen February 14, 2014 3:00 AM
Few have ever heard the name Debo Adegbile. He's President Barack Obama's nominee to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department.
A few months ago, his nomination would have been a non-starter — there is more than a whiff of radicalism in his past. But we are in a new world. Sen. Harry Reid is now absolute monarch of the Senate. Republicans are largely irrelevant. They cannot offer amendments to legislation. They cannot filibuster. I suppose they can write letters to the editor, and march outside the chamber wearing sandwich boards.
Before the Reid invocation of the "nuclear option" eliminating the filibuster, Adegbile would have been considered too controversial. But now, the administration can have its head on nominations.
Adegbile is a passionate advocate for racial quotas in hiring and university admissions, and also urges that employers not be permitted to do background checks on potential hires — presumably because more African-Americans have criminal records than other applicants. He has encouraged the president to nominate judges who recognize that "ratified treaties" are the law of land. Well, no argument there, but he goes further. Adegbile wants judges who will decree that "customary international law" is the law of the United States as well, asking for God only knows what mischief. Who would decide what "customary international law" is? By what authority would it be imposed on Americans? Investor's Business Daily reports that Adegbile supports George Soros's campaign to create a new "progressive" constitution. If that doesn't make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, you're not paying attention.
It was Adegbile's role in the case of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal that incurred the wrath of Justice Department employees though. The union representing FBI agents, which rarely expresses itself on nominations, along with the Fraternal Order of Police and other law enforcement groups, have written to Attorney General Eric Holder to protest Adegbile's nomination. Carl Rowan Jr., a former deputy U.S. marshal, FBI special agent and chief of police, wrote: "He isn't the first questionable nomination made by a president who ... seems drawn to those with radical backgrounds, but this one is an open slap in the face to everyone in law enforcement."
Abu-Jamal has long been a poster boy for the radical left in America. His fine speaking voice (he had been a radio host), long dreadlocks, Muslim moniker (he was born Wesley Cook), radical memberships (in the Black Panthers and black liberation group MOVE), and admiration of Mao Zedong made him irresistible to the Ed Asners, Jonathan Kozolses, National Lawyers Guilds, Michael Moores and NPRs of the world. But until this administration, most mainstream liberals would have steered clear.
Adegbile revealed a great deal about himself by choosing to have the NAACP Legal Defense Fund join the campaign to defend Abu-Jamal. There are many miscarriages of justice that cry out for redress, but Abu-Jamal's 1981 conviction for killing 25-year-old Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner is one of the most litigated in American jurisprudence. The verdict was reviewed or allowed to stand by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court, among others, over the course of more than 30 years.
On Dec. 9, 1981, at about 4 a.m., Faulkner pulled over a driver named William Cook (Abu-Jamal's brother) for driving the wrong way on a one-way street. Cook threw a punch at Faulkner, who then hit Cook with his flashlight. At that point, four eyewitnesses said that Abu-Jamal, who had been across the street, fired at Faulkner hitting him in the back. Though wounded, Faulkner fired back at Abu-Jamal, hitting him in the chest, before falling onto his back. Abu-Jamal approached the wounded officer and holding his gun 18 inches in front of Faulkner's face, fired the shots that killed him.
Ballistics confirmed that the bullets that killed Faulkner were from Abu-Jamal's gun, found with him at the scene.
Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death, but decades of litigation and agitation on his behalf delayed the sentence. He has claimed ineffective assistance of counsel (though at one point he represented himself), racism by the judge, racism in jury selection — the usual gamut. In 2011, prosecutors announced that they would no longer pursue the death penalty.
Every defendant deserves a defense, of course. But Abu-Jamal has had a celebrity lineup of lefty lawyers. That Adegbile wanted to join their ranks is a sign of his sympathies. That Obama believes Adegbile can get confirmed by the neutered Senate is a sign of the times.
To find out more about Mona Charen and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2014 CREATORS.COM
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Please post this in the US Sovereignty thread as well. TIA.
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Foreign policy neophyte Barack Obama once again made a bone-headed pronouncement about world affairs, this time addressing the violence in Ukraine. "[W]e're going to be watching closely and we expect the Ukrainian government to show restraint, to not resort to violence in dealing with peaceful protesters," he said Wednesday. "We've also said we expect peaceful protesters to remain peaceful." He added, "[T]here will be consequences if people step over the line." Unfortunately, everyone knows that Obama speaks loudly and forgets his stick, especially when the nation in question is in any way associated with Russia's Vladimir Putin, which Ukraine's government is. Just like his "red line" with Syria, this latest warning is huff and bluster that will only weaken U.S. standing in the world.
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Blacks are disproportionately shooting themselves in gangs, born out of wedlock, unemployed etc. So what does this guy tie his program for men of color? To Travon Martin.
*****Obama launches ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ to help young minority men
Liz Goodwin, Yahoo News
By Liz Goodwin, Yahoo News 3 hours ago Yahoo News
President Barack Obama greets Father's Day luncheon guests including members of Youth Guidance’s Becoming a Man (B.A.M.) program, in the State Dining Room of the White House, June 14, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
President Obama will announce a $200 million commitment from nine foundations Thursday afternoon to bolster the lives of young men and boys of color.
Obama launches effort to help minority men Associated Press
Obama embraces a lifelong cause: Helping minority boys succeed Yahoo News
Tavis Smiley Poses 10 Questions About Obama White House Initiative For Young Men Of Color, 'My Brother's Keeper' Huffington Post
Civil rights leaders and Obama meet at White House Associated Press
[$$] Presidential Power Undergoing a Transformation The Wall Street Journal
The funding is part of a larger initiative from the White House to bring private businesses, non-profits and local governments together to intervene in key moments in the lives of young black and Hispanic men to ensure they stay in school and eventually train for and get good jobs.
As Yahoo News first reported, the cause will be a major focus of Obama’s—and the first lady’s—even after he leaves office. "I think it’s something that's deeply personal to the president and first lady,” said Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president and the Obamas’ closest friend from Chicago. “I’m sure their commitment to this initiative will be a lifelong commitment. This is not something they simply want to do while he’s in office — it will continue.”
The president personally ordered his senior staff to come up with this new “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative in the wake of the shooting of Florida teen Trayvon Martin two years ago. Obama—who was criticized by civil rights leaders for avoiding race-based initiatives and conversations while in office—was deeply moved by Martin’s death, and tasked his staff with creating a holistic, research-based approach to helping young minority boys succeed and avoid violence.
The president will create a new inter-agency “My Brother’s Keeper Task Force” headed up by Broderick Johnson, the cabinet secretary and assistant to the president. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Attorney General Eric Holder, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and other senior officials will be personally involved in “My Brother’s Keeper,” according to Jarrett.
Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City who started and funded an initiative in the city aimed at young black men, will join the president for the 3:45 p.m. announcement of the program at the White House Thursday, along with business leaders including former NBA star Magic Johnson. The White House initiative is in part modeled on Bloomberg’s, and seeks to intervene in the lives of boys at key points: by providing pre-kindergarten education, lifting third-grade reading proficiency, leading schools away from “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies that kick misbehaving students out of school, and convincing businesses to train and hire young men of color.
It’s still unclear just how broad the initiative will be, beyond the $200 million non-profit investment. Jarrett told reporters Wednesday that the White House is still signing on private businesses, and does not have a final number for how much they have committed to “My Brother’s Keeper.” The White House hopes corporations will pledge to mentor and hire young minority men.
And some of the foundations that are involved in the effort were already planning on making investments in young minority men before the White House got involved. Robert Ross, the CEO of the California Endowment non-profit, said his organization had already pledged $50 million over seven years for its “sons and brothers” program, which aims to reduce school absences and suspensions among young black children, and boost their third grade reading proficiency levels.
But Ross said that having the president involved in the issue will be “a huge injection of rocket fuel” for the cause. The president’s use of the bully pulpit could be a game-changer for Ross and others who work in this space, he said.
Ross met with the president and other foundation leaders last November to talk about the plan. Obama told them that he was personally inspired by Martin’s death to improve the lives of young men of color.
“There really was something spiritual and personal for him about what is happening to young men in this country, and he really wanted to do something real about it,” Ross said. “I certainly felt energized by that.”
Young black men persistently lag behind other groups in high school graduation rates and employment, and, as White House officials point out, they are six times more likely than their white peers to be murdered.
"My Brother's Keeper" is one part of Obama's larger plan to tackle issues facing the African American community in his second term, the president told civil rights leaders in a meeting last week. Obama will also push Congress to restore the part of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court last term and to pass a law banning racial profiling by law enforcement. The Justice Department is also pushing through criminal justice reforms without Congress' help, such as urging prosecutors not to use mandatory minimums against non-violent drug offenders and encouraging prisoners sentenced under old, racially discriminatory crack laws to apply for a new clemency program.
“I think he’s committed to being more aggressive,”
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There is this archaic social mechanism from long ago that actually was very effective in socializing young males into productive members of society.
It's called heterosexual marriage. It actually involved a man and a woman in a socially and legally recognized monogamous pair bond. The male actually resided in the home and took part in raising the offspring to adulthood.
Then again, there is no opportunity for graft and government jobs for democrat connected rent seekers, so never mind...
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JFK: "The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeYgLLahHv8#t=46
Barack Obama: “This has been a secret project we’ve been working on for a long time." Private researchers working with the Pentagon, classified, maybe, not really, ha ha.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77pnVFLkUjM
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"a secret project"
What is the secret? We know the military is building robots and suits for infantry to be like Robocop.
He is as good a comedian as he is President.
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War and economic turmoil around the globe is interesting. Meanwhile the Pres and First Lady enjoy their 3rd vacation of the new year on the taxpayer dime with a little R&R in the Florida sunshine.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2577025/Beaming-President-Michelle-smiles-returning-weekend-getaway-luxury-Florida-Keys-resort-2-500-night-wouldnt-be.html
The fact of the matter is what the president is doing this weekend in Florida is essentially what the president would be doing if he stayed back at the White House,' Earnest told reporters traveling with Obama. (golf)
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Freedom's just another word for nothing left to - delay.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/03/12/george_will_on_bobby_mcgee_presidency_freedom_is_another_word_for_nothing_left_to_delay.html
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(http://danieljmitchell.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/obama-campaign-poster.jpg)
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We Won't Do What No One Wants
"We are not going to be getting into a military excursion in Ukraine," Barack Obama proclaimed this week in an interview, a sentiment echoed during a second questionnaire: "Obviously, you know, we do not need to trigger an actual war with Russia." Hot Air's Ed Morrissey notes the curious element of these remarks: "No one wants it [war], no one would approve it, and for a couple of really good reasons -- we have no national interest in who governs Crimea, and an attempt to start a war there would make Dieppe look well-considered. It's in the Russian’s back yard. So why bother saying it at all?" Because, Morrissey continues, "Obama has an annoying habit of attempting to present his critics' arguments in his own fantasy reductio ad absurdum constructs that end up bearing no resemblance to the actual criticisms, all to paint himself as the voice of centrist reason." Obama's straw man doesn't change the fact that, especially when it comes to foreign policy, he's just an empty suit.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIMnIh10po0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nirnIV5pfs
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While I was on vacation I heard that President Vladimir Putin Russia re-drew their boundaries outward and U.S. President Barack Obama released his NCAA bracket picks.
President Obama promised that he would have flexibility after his reelection. He is exercising his newly discovered flexibility in the same way he did before his reelection:
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2014/03-overflow/20140322_obama.jpg
Pres Obama at the wheel of a golf cart today at @AndrewsAirForce. (Radio pool photo by Wm McDonald @TalkRadioNews) pic.twitter.com/Zv9hjDjEzT
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) March 22, 2014
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They didn't see a competence problem during Cash for Clunkers, Solyndra, Russian reset, the Queen sent Obama speech videos - in American video format?! Norwegian ambassador who doesn't know the capital? Susan Rice promoted? Fast and Furious??!!
If we had a competent media people might know whether or not thew administration was competent.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/03/26/president-obama-got-elected-on-competency-now-people-are-starting-to-wonder/
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They didn't see a competence problem during Cash for Clunkers, Solyndra, Russian reset, the Queen sent Obama speech videos - in American video format?! Norwegian ambassador who doesn't know the capital? Susan Rice promoted? Fast and Furious??!!
If we had a competent media people might know whether or not thew administration was competent.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/03/26/president-obama-got-elected-on-competency-now-people-are-starting-to-wonder/
It's not a matter of a competent media, it's a matter of having a corrupted media.
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The Dissing of the President
The world is treating Obama like another failed American leader.
By Bret Stephens
March 31, 2014 7:36 p.m. ET
I've never liked the word diss—not as a verb, much less as a noun. But watching the Obama administration get the diss treatment the world over, week-in, week-out, I'm beginning to see its uses.
Diss: On Sunday, Bloomberg reported that Hasan Rouhani named Hamid Aboutalebi to serve as the ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Rouhani is the Iranian president the West keeps insisting is a "moderate," mounting evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Mr. Aboutalebi was one of the students who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
Here's the kicker: The State Department—the very institution whose diplomats were held hostage and brutalized for 444 days—will have to approve his visa to come to New York. Considering how desperate John Kerry is not to spoil the nuclear mood music with Tehran, the department probably will.
Diss: On Friday, Vladimir Putin called President Obama to discuss a resolution to the crisis in Ukraine. The Russian president "drew Barack Obama's attention to continued rampage of extremists who are committing acts of intimidation towards peaceful residents," according to the Kremlin, which, as in Soviet days, no longer bothers distinguishing diplomatic communiqués from crass propaganda.
Enlarge Image
President Jimmy Carter, announcing an agreement to release Americans held hostage in Iran on Jan. 19, 1981. Associated Press
Mr. Kerry was immediately dispatched to Paris to meet with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart. Mr. Lavrov—who knows a one-for-me, one-for-you, one-for-me deal when he sees it—is hinting that Russia will graciously not invade Ukraine provided Washington and Moscow shove "constitutional reforms" favorable to the Kremlin down Kiev's throat. And regarding the invasion that brought the crisis about: "Mr. Kerry on Sunday didn't mention Crimea during his remarks," reports The Wall Street Journal, "giving the impression that the U.S. has largely given up reversing the region's absorption into Russia."
Diss: "If your image is feebleness, it doesn't pay in the world," Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's defense minister, said last month at Tel Aviv University. "At some stage, the United States entered into negotiations with them [the Iranians], and unhappily, when it comes to negotiating at a Persian bazaar, the Iranians were better."
The administration later demanded an apology from Mr. Ya'alon, which he dutifully delivered. But this isn't the first time he's dissed the administration. In January, he called Mr. Kerry"obsessive and messianic," adding that "the only thing that can save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us alone."
Diss: "It seems to me that some kind of joker wrote the U.S. president's order :-)". That was what Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted after learning last month that the Obama administration had sanctioned him for his role in the invasion of Ukraine.
Gotta love the ":-)".
Diss: In March, Iranian Gen. Masoud Jazayeri offered his view of Mr. Obama's threat to use military force against Iran if negotiations fail. "The low-IQ U.S. President and his country's Secretary of State John Kerry speak of the effectiveness of 'the U.S. options on the table' on Iran while this phrase is mocked at and has become a joke among the Iranian nation, especially the children."
Diss: In late December, Mr. Obama warned Congress that he would veto legislation to impose new sanctions on Iran if the Islamic Republic violated its nuclear commitments. It was essential, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, to do nothing that "will undermine our efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution."
A few weeks later, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif laid a wreath at the tomb of Imad Mughniyeh, mastermind of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1985 hijacking of TWA 847 and countless other acts of international terrorism. Apparently Mr. Zarif didn't much fear undermining efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution.
Diss: In December, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, under fire for a corruption scandal, unleashed a media campaign to impugn U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone as a member of a dark conspiracy to destabilize the government in Ankara. This is the same Mr. Erdogan whose regime Mr. Ricciardone praised for "great development in democratic structure." It's also the same Mr. Erdogan about whom Mr. Obama once said he had formed "bonds of trust."
Diss: "Rather than challenging the Syrian and Iranian governments, some of our Western partners have refused to take much-needed action against them," warned Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.K. late last year. "The foreign policy choices being made in some Western capitals risk the stability of the region and, potentially, the security of the whole Arab world. This means the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has no choice but to become more assertive in international affairs."
This would have been a diss were it whispered in the corridor of a foreign chancellery. The ambassador published it as an op-ed in the New York Times. NYT +0.70%
All this in just the past four months. And all so reminiscent of the contempt the world showed for Jimmy Carter in the waning days of his failed presidency. The trouble for us is that the current presidency has more than 1,000 days to go.
I was wrong about diss. It's a fine word. It means diss-respect. And connotes diss-may. And diss-honor. And diss-aster.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
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http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/04/obamas-illegal-alien-auntie-onyango-dies-at-61/
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I heard that new Health Secretary has private sector experience. Turns out it was giving money away at private foundations.
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A graduate of Harvard University and Oxford University as well as a former Rhodes Scholar, Burwell also was President Bill Clinton’s deputy chief of staff. Before joining the Clinton White House she was chief of staff to then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
After leaving Washington, Burwell worked in philanthropy. She ran the global development program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In January, 2012 she was named president of the Wal-Mart Foundation, which gave $959 million in cash and in-kind contributions worldwide in 2011, according to its website. She held the job until Obama chose her for OMB in March, 2013.
Her White House connections are deep. National Security Adviser Susan Rice helped introduce Burwell to her husband, lawyer Stephen Burwell, with whom she has two children. The two women first met as Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan was a dormitory mate at Harvard.
When Obama nominated Burwell last year as his budget director, she went before the Senate as Obama and Republicans were squaring off in another battle: raising the federal debt limit and dealing with the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. She was confirmed on a 96-0 vote.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-11/burwell-has-track-record-winning-senate-confirmation.html
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Clinton administration memories from an Obama cabinet appointee.
Don't get me wrong, Sylvia Mathews Burwell is a Rhodes Scholar level trash sorter. And we believe her about what she decided was important and not important in what they found, took, hid and discarded from Vince Foster's office - the day that he died.
http://freebeacon.com/blog/obamas-new-hhs-secretary-proved-her-loyalty-by-clinton-by-digging-through-a-dead-mans-trash/
http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/after-sebelius-vince-fosters-trash-lady/
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/26/us/no-intention-to-question-first-lady.html
Members questioned Sylvia Mathews, a former White House aide, in laborious detail about what she had found in Mr. Foster's garbage on the night he died. Other than a few routine documents, the garbage contained nothing that shed light on Mr. Foster's thinking, said Ms. Mathews, who is now chief of staff at the Treasury Department.
Republicans on the committee found it significant, however, that Ms. Mathews had also managed to retrieve a special bag of garbage containing classified and sensitive papers that was usually destroyed by the Secret Service. The contents of that bag were never examined by anyone to see if Mr. Foster had left anything in it that might shed light on his state of mind.
Ms. Mathews said that she got the bag from the Secret Service and began looking briefly through it, when she discovered that it contained all of the classified garbage from the West Wing. Concerned about a possible security breach, she sought Mr. Nussbaum's opinion about whether to continue looking through it. She said she was told by Mr. Nussbaum that since Mr. Foster did not have a classified garbage bin in his office, it was doubtful that there would be anything from Mr. Foster in the bag. Therefore, she said, Mr. Nussbaum told her to return the bag unexamined to the Secret Service to be disposed.
The White House said after the hearing that a Secret Service agent on detail that evening said Mr. Nussbaum had been mistaken and that in fact there had been a special classified garbage bin, or "burn bag," in Mr. Foster's office. But the agent also said Mr. Foster's classified bin had never been emptied into the bag that Ms. Mathews had retrieved.
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Republicans will not be able to go after new HHS Secretary (former trash sorter) Sylvia Mathews Burwell politically, on substance, because she is young, female and attractive.
Really?
(http://media.townhall.com/townhall/reu/ha/2014/101/9bb6bf63-b08b-487c-b41b-41a7155bc454.jpg)
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Lurch in drag?
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The plot keeps thickening on Rhodes Scholar, level trash inspector Sylvia Burwell:
"The agency Burwell heads, the Office of Management and Budget, is responsible for the president’s budget. But OMB also has another, lesser-known responsibility: fact-checking presidential speeches. Every proposed presidential utterance is scrubbed for accuracy by OMB."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-let-hhs-nominee-sylvia-burwell-explain-obamacare-lie/2014/04/14/4f0b67c6-c3dd-11e3-b574-f8748871856a_story.html
Let HHS nominee Sylvia Burwell explain Obamacare lie:
“if you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan.”
Burwell was OMB director when Obama declared on Sept. 26, 2013: “Now, let’s start with the fact that even before the Affordable Care Act fully takes effect, about 85 percent of Americans already have health insurance — either through their job, or through Medicare, or through the individual market. So if you’re one of these folks, it’s reasonable that you might worry whether health-care reform is going to create changes that are a problem for you — especially when you’re bombarded with all sorts of fear-mongering. So the first thing you need to know is this: If you already have health care, you don’t have to do anything.”
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"Burwell should explain to Congress and the American people how her office allowed blatant falsehoods to get into presidential speeches, including whether political aides overruled career policy advisers who warned that the president’s claims were untrue." - Marc Thiessen, Washington Post
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Lurch in drag?
The photo did remind me of those quizzes where you guess which of these beautiful women used to be men.
With Sec. Kerry, is he Lurch, or is he Mr. Ed - the talking horse. :wink:
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I did not know that about OMB and fact checking.
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Baraq's Jay Carney would seem to be immune from OMB fact checking , , , speaking of which , , , http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/04/12/magazine-reveals-jay-carneys-kitchen-decorated-with-soviet-era-propaganda-posters-112076
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In the first sentence of this clip, the Pres. swerved into a point I have long been trying to make, that their economic record goes back to:
"ever since we've been in public office"
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/04/16/obama_we_sometimes_sound_like_a_broken_record_on_the_economy.html
And the country's policy direction has been ever since they've been in power. This goes back "6, 7, 8 years...", as he alludes.
The Obama / Leftist / Democratic / Government-centric economic record goes back to the day that Democrats took control of congress, Nov 2006 / Jan 2007, back when unemployment was 4.6% and workforce participation was millions ahead of where we are now. These policies have brought on epic failure, besides crash, putting our economy on what looks like a permanently slower growth path with fewer and fewer people participating. He didn't inherit the crash only from Bush; he inherited the collapse from himself, a congress led by Pelosi-Reid-Obama-Biden and Hillary. That is when the political control arrow switched directions in Washington, not at his inauguration in 2009.
His policy answer now: More of the same!
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Giving credit where credit is due. That with the OBL kill makes at least twice that he has done the right thing. It shows that down deep they know there are such things as bad guys/terrorists/militants plotting and planning to kill us. And we all know that the leftists including a Senator or citizen Obama would be 'up in arms' if these drone killings were carried out by a Republican administration.
From Yemen thread:
Yemen Confirms 55 Militants Killed in Joint Aerial Campaign
________________________________________
Yemen's interior ministry confirmed that 55 al Qaeda linked militants were killed in what a Yemeni official called an "unprecedented" joint aerial campaign between Yemen and the United States in the mountainous Abyan, Shabwa, and Bayda provinces from Saturday to Monday. Air strikes, possibly from U.S. drones, reportedly targeted a training camp as well as several vehicles in the region. Another Yemeni official estimated the number of dead in the 40s. According to the interior ministry, three senior members of al Qaeda were among the fatalities as well as three civilians. Additionally, reports suggest Ibrahim al-Asiri, al Qaeda's chief bomb maker, may have been killed in an ambush over the weekend by U.S. backed special forces. Since the weekend's strikes, gunmen have killed four senior security officers, according to Yemeni officials.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/04/22/the-insiders-the-presidents-cynical-keystone-xl-strategy/
Washington Post: The president’s cynical Keystone XL strategy BY ED ROGERS April 22
On Friday, the State Department quietly released a notification that the Keystone XL pipeline decision is being delayed yet again. The president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, Terry O’Sullivan, called the delay “another gutless move” by the administration. We could also dismiss the announcement as just more of the usual dithering from this White House. I don’t think the delay is gutless or dithering, but a more sinister, cynical ploy by this administration to manipulate two groups into continuing to support vulnerable Democrats in an attempt to keep the Senate in 2014.
By appearing to have not made a decision, President Obama keeps the money pouring in from those on the fringe left — like billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer – who want the Democrats to swear allegiance to their global warming agenda. And at the same time, the delay — not outright denial — deceptively makes voters in key states like Louisiana believe there is still some hope that the pipeline will come to life. In Louisiana, voters think that if they reelect Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who touts her ability to influence the president on such things, the pipeline will become a reality.
One side or the other is being played for a fool. But given what we know about the weakness of the president’s second-term agenda, and the fact that he could have approved the pipeline already if he wanted to, one would have to bet Keystone XL has no chance of being approved after the 2014 elections. There is nothing new about government officials manipulating announcements of planned projects and the like to suit their political objectives. But Obama’s manipulation has reached a peak. Neither side that he is playing will win. (more at link)
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Passed along to me by an internet acquaintance with a proclivity for conspiracies; nonetheless the footage beginning at 0520 is quite curious , , ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaYbZwW0HnY#t=11
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http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-biden-vacation-tab-reaches-40-million-2.9-million-alone-for-two-obama-2014-golf-outings/article/2547892
Obama-Biden vacation tab reaches $40 million --- $2.9 million alone for two Obama 2014 golf outings
I don't know what the right amount to spend is but these purveyors of income inequality rage are unrestrained and unapologetic.
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Looking at a couple of news stories gone by, I wonder how much air support in Benghazi the $3 million spent on Presidential golf outings might have bought...
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The side by side comparison of the pictures is really creepy. They are nearly identical in appearance.
Did his mother know this guy before he was born? I am not clear.
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Could be a photoshop thing, the website is completely unknown to me.
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good point
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After 5 years of history's weakest recovery, Pres. Obama says we are better off now than at the very lowest point in the geconomic collapse caused by the takeover of Washington power from Republicans to the new congress of Pelosi-Reid-Obama-Biden-and Hillary. I agree, we are better off now and will be even better off yet when the last of far leftists leaves their position of power.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/fundraising/206591-obama-americans-better-off-under-his-presidency
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Fast and Furious, I heard it on the news
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJCiEIw513I
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/wh-clarifies-obama-told-cnn-espanol-march-he-heard-about-fast-and-furious-news
Spying on Allies, Learned about it in the news
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304470504579162110180138036
IRS Scandal, Heard it on the news
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDfmUK833hc#t=185
Pres. had no idea DOJ seized AP reporter's phone records
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-doj-ap-phones-2013-5
Other than press reports, we had no knowledge...
VA Scandal, I heard it on the news
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US2eSbNSlE4
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2013/11/02/5-things-the-obama-administration-had-no-idea-the-obama-administration-was-doing-n1734940/page/full
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Government has gotten so big that the liberals in charge can't even find all the pieces.
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Excellent collection of URLs! Makes the case simply and pithily-- very good!
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Investors Business Daily says today that Pres. Obama is campaigning for himself to be UN Secretary General - which I think could put him directly at odds with US President Marco Rubio on world issues. If succe3ssful in his campaign, maybe he could win a Nobel Peace Prize, lol.
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/052814-702509-obama-campaigns-at-west-point-to-be-united-nations-secretary-general.htm
Obama's Bid For U.N. Secretary-General Has Begun
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" Obama is campaigning for himself to be UN Secretary General"
Yup. Fits his megalomania. Fits his one world government goal. With him at top. THIS is his true colors.
" which I think could put him directly at odds with US President Marco Rubio on world issues"
Not only that but it puts him at odds with US interests. He is giving our country away.
Was anyone else really offended by seeing this guy, standing in front of a sea of troops along with a giant American flag wearing a replica WW2 bomber jacket to deflect from the VA scandal?
To think that this guy, the son of an American hating Communist, a pre hippy hippy who disliked America, spent his whole life hanging wth American hating radicals would have the nerve to stand there in a bomber jacket. When Bush did it we knew he loved America. When Reagan did it with the flag we knew he loved America. When Bush senior would do that we knew he WAS a WW2 hero pilot.
When this guy does it we know he is a lying fraud. WW2 vets would and should be rolling in their graves or in their nursing homes taking massive heartburn meds.
This fraud standing their like this while he does everything he can get away with giving the country away. He mocks this country.
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"When Bush did it we knew he loved America." Also, he actually flew fighter jets.
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Putin is frightened:
http://news.yahoo.com/video/fitness-expert-breaks-down-president-141039080.html
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Paraphrasing Glibness logic:
It is okay to negotiate with terrorists because "the war is over". This what nations do at the end of wars.
But of course this war isn't over. No one won. No one lost. We just quit. It was part of a larger war which is most certainly not over, whether you call it the war on terror or the war waged against us by Islamo-fascist Terror Jihad.
If we leave, no one will target our troops in Afghanistan ever again. Good grief, how far and wide do they have to look across the globe to find a target as high in value as PFC Deserter? They could take one American anywhere in the world and demand any number of terror combatants released from Guantanamo anytime they want to.
The only leverage Obama has left is that he was going to release them all anyway.
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Keeping up with our leader while the world is engulfed in flames:
Last weekend: Middle East burns while Barack Obama played his 175th and 176th (18 hole) rounds of golf as president.
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1534.msg81734#msg81734
This week: Mr. Obama's world this week consisted of flying to the University of California-Irvine to give a speech about a) himself (check the text if you doubt it) and b) climate change. On Wednesday he was in New York City for a midtown fundraiser, an LGBT fundraiser and a third, $32,000 per person fundraiser at the home of Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:online.wsj.com/articles/the-high-price-of-obama-fatigue-1403139022
Meanwhile they are working "around the clock" on a response for Iraq and of course are "focused like a laser" on jobs while the black youth not employed rate remains at 61.4%: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/youth.nr0.htm
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"The temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago."
"We also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated 5 or 10 years ago."
Sen Jeff Sessions asked 4 former EPA Directors if any of them agree with these statements. If you do raise your hand.
You must see them look at each other with hands down in the video at approximately the 2:00 minute mark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsNY4uKXXL8
The record will reflect that no one raised their hand.
Media issue, please show (on that thread) where any mainstream outlet ran this exposed lie, that is the foundation for his economics, front and center to the partially duped American people.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/381296/supreme-court-rules-unanimously-against-obama-12th-and-13th-time-2012-john-fund
Supreme Court Rules Unanimously Against Obama for 12th and 13th Time Since 2012
By John Fund National Review
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Nice to see the Glibster visit the Twin Cities this week,
meeting with a lowly "average" citizen,
"frustrated with the economy"
who turned out to be a past paid Democratic "field organizer"!
http://www.torontosun.com/2014/06/26/obama-aims-for-day-in-the-life-of-minneapolis-woman,
He came to warn us about the immediate threat of CO2 and global warming
while consuming 53 thousand gallons of jet fuel per day
and leaving Air Force One on at the airport, idling during the entire visit,
as it always is.
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/04/22/earth-day-ends-obamas-53300-gallon-trip
He made a surprise stop at a popular saturated fat factory, The Grand Avenue Creamery
for over-priced ice cream in a trendy location,
holding up capital city traffic,
and enjoyed a "Juicy Lucy" saturated fat burger and fries,
with the ordinary folk,
while his wife's administration works to take the same pleasures out of meals for school children.
http://www.twincities.com/politics/ci_26040450/obama-bites-into-signature-jucy-lucy-burger-at
Too Big to Jail http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/12/16/is-president-obama-too-big-to-jail/
My proposal is to impeach him after the 2016 election,
with a successor already chosen,
leaving no time on the clock
for blubbering Joe to ever be sworn in
for the highest office in the land.
(http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site569/2014/0627/20140627__6-26ObamaCone.jpg)
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Doug,
Which do you think is heavier. The ice cream cone or the dumbells he uses when he "works" out?
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Very funny ccp! I think if not for working out with the mini dumb bells he wouldn't be able to handle the giant single scoop ice cream come with such ease.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2014/07/02/obama-george-w-bush-quinnipiac-poll-reagan-clinton/11985837/
"In a new Quinnipiac University Poll, 33% named Obama the worst president since World War II"
Not as widely reported is that Ronald Reagan was named far and away the best President since WWII.
"Ronald Reagan topped the poll as the best president since World War II, with 35%. He is followed by presidents Bill Clinton (18%) and John F. Kennedy (15%)."
So we keep choosing Republican candidates and Democrat Presidents that are the antithesis of Reagan...
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That is why Dems can only win by bribing their chosen groups based on them being victims. That is also why they have to open the borders and bribe new floods of people.
Disgusting or not it is working. Hillary is about to continue the trend with this men vs women thing.
Did you see the article about Pepsi's CEO lamenting how women cannot still "have it all". As though choosing between motherhood, wifehood, and a career is a tragedy, or a conscious effort to suppress women.
Don't men have to choose between a career, fatherhood, and husbanhood?
I have cousins, the wife works a professional career and the husband stays home and is a Dad and husband. The kids seem wonderful and as far as I know happy.
So Ms CEO of Pepsi:
I congratulate you on your truly astonishing accomplishments. But I don't feel sorry for you. You have no gripe.
We will never hear this from Billary.
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The Daydream and the Nightmare
Obama isn't doing his job. He's waiting for history to recognize his greatness.
By
Peggy Noonan
July 3, 2014 4:59 p.m. ET
I don't know if we sufficiently understand how weird and strange, how historically unparalleled, this presidency has become. We've got a sitting president who was just judged in a major poll to be the worst since World War II. The worst president in 70 years! Quinnipiac University's respondents also said, by 54% to 44%, that the Obama administration is not competent to run the government. A Zogby Analytics survey asked if respondents are proud or ashamed of the president. Those under 50 were proud, while those over 50, who have of course the longest experienced sense of American history, were ashamed.
We all know the reasons behind the numbers. The scandals that suggest poor stewardship and, in the case of the IRS, destructive political mischief. The president's signature legislation, which popularly bears his name and contains within it the heart of his political meaning, continues to wreak havoc in marketplaces and to be unpopular with the public. He is incapable of working with Congress, the worst at this crucial aspect of the job since Jimmy Carter, though Mr. Carter at least could work with the Mideast and produced the Camp David Accords. Mr. Obama has no regard for Republicans and doesn't like to be with Democrats. Internationally, small states that have traditionally been the locus of trouble (the Mideast) are producing more of it, while large states that have been more stable in their actions (Russia, China) are newly, starkly aggressive.
That's a long way of saying nothing's working.
Which I'm sure you've noticed.
Enlarge Image
Martin Kozlowski
But I'm not sure people are noticing the sheer strangeness of how the president is responding to the lack of success around him. He once seemed a serious man. He wrote books, lectured on the Constitution. Now he seems unserious, frivolous, shallow. He hangs with celebrities, plays golf. His references to Congress are merely sarcastic: "So sue me." "They don't do anything except block me. And call me names. It can't be that much fun."
In a truly stunning piece in early June, Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein interviewed many around the president and reported a general feeling that events have left him—well, changed. He is "taking fuller advantage of the perquisites of office," such as hosting "star-studded dinners that sometimes go on well past midnight." He travels, leaving the White House more in the first half of 2014 than any other time of his presidency except his re-election year. He enjoys talking to athletes and celebrities, not grubby politicians, even members of his own party. He is above it all. On his state trip to Italy in the spring, he asked to spend time with "interesting Italians." They were wealthy, famous. The dinner went for four hours. The next morning his staff were briefing him for a "60 Minutes" interview about Ukraine and health care. "One aide paraphrased Obama's response: 'Just last night I was talking about life and art, big interesting things, and now we're back to the minuscule things on politics.'''
Minuscule? Politics is his job.
When the crisis in Ukraine escalated in March, White House aides wondered if Mr. Obama should cancel a planned weekend golf getaway in Florida. He went. At the "lush Ocean Reef Club," he reportedly told his dinner companions: "I needed this. I needed the golf. I needed to laugh. I needed to spend time with friends."
You get the impression his needs are pretty important in his hierarchy of concerns.
***
This is a president with 2½ years to go who shows every sign of running out the clock. Normally in a game you run out the clock when you're winning. He's running it out when he's losing.
All this is weird, unprecedented. The president shows no sign—none—of being overwhelmingly concerned and anxious at his predicaments or challenges. Every president before him would have been. They'd be questioning what they're doing wrong, changing tack. They'd be ordering frantic aides to meet and come up with what to change, how to change it, how to find common ground not only with Congress but with the electorate.
Instead he seems disinterested, disengaged almost to the point of disembodied. He is fatalistic, passive, minimalist. He talks about hitting "singles" and "doubles" in foreign policy.
"The world seems to disappoint him," says The New Yorker's liberal and sympathetic editor, David Remnick.
What kind of illusions do you have to have about the world to be disappointed when it, and its players, act aggressively or foolishly? Presidents aren't supposed to have those illusions, and they're not supposed to check out psychologically when their illusions are shattered.
***
Barack Obama doesn't seem to care about his unpopularity, or the decisions he's made that have not turned out well. He doesn't seem concerned. A guess at the reason: He thinks he is right about his essential policies. He is steering the world toward not relying on America. He is steering America toward greater dependence on and allegiance to government. He is creating a more federally controlled, Washington-centric nation that is run and organized by progressives. He thinks he's done his work, set America on a leftward course, and though his poll numbers are down now, history will look back on him and see him as heroic, realistic, using his phone and pen each day in spite of unprecedented resistance. He is Lincoln, scorned in his time but loved by history.
He thinks he is in line with the arc of history, that America, for all its stops and starts, for all the recent Supreme Court rulings, has embarked in the long term on governmental and cultural progressivism. Thus in time history will have the wisdom to look back and see him for what he really was: the great one who took every sling and arrow, who endured rising unpopularity, the first black president and the only one made to suffer like this.
That's what he's doing by running out the clock: He's waiting for history to get its act together and see his true size.
He's like someone who's constantly running the movie "Lincoln" in his head. It made a great impression on him, that movie. He told Time magazine, and Mr. Remnick, how much it struck him. President Lincoln of course had been badly abused in his time. Now his greatness is universally acknowledged. But if Mr. Obama read more of Lincoln, he might notice Lincoln's modesty, his plain ways, his willingness every day to work and negotiate with all who opposed him, from radical abolitionists who thought him too slow to supporters of a negotiated peace who thought him too martial. Lincoln showed respect for others. Those who loved him and worked for him thought he showed too much. He was witty and comical but not frivolous and never shallow. He didn't say, "So sue me." He never gave up trying to reach agreement and resolution.
It is weird to have a president who has given up. So many young journalists diligently covering this White House, especially those for whom it is their first, think what they're seeing is normal.
It is not. It is unprecedented and deeply strange. And, because the world is watching and calculating, unbelievably dangerous.
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Interesting take.
"The president shows no sign—none—of being overwhelmingly concerned and anxious at his predicaments or challenges. Every president before him would have been. They'd be questioning what they're doing wrong, changing tack."
Absolutely true as far as I can remember. Carter would sit around and write weighted pros and con lists when trying to make decisions.
Is the narcissists ego finally shattered to where he "checks out", or he is the personality disorder I suspect he is and he just thinks the world is too stupid for him?
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America and the world have greatly disappointed him.
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"America and the world have greatly disappointed him"
'he asked to spend time with "interesting Italians." '
"He enjoys talking to athletes and celebrities"
What about the "folks"?
Even Hillary is desperately seeking safety - as far away from him as she can (not too far). He can't stand it. She is too dumb for him too.
The risk it all comes crashing down with him worrying what number club to use while on the course with Lebron and Jayz.
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OTOH maybe this IS the plan.
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"OTOH maybe this IS the plan"
Many including myself think this is VERY possible.
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It was not the plan to lose the super-majority in the House. It was not the plan to lose the House for a decade. It was not the plan to lose the Senate. It was even fathomable to them that his popularity/approval could drop below 60%, 50%, 40%, and still dropping.
This man likes the title and perks and is willing to do fundraising and appearances, but does not want to do the any of the difficult work required to be an good leader.
We are lucky he turned out to be mostly ineffective at leading us in the wrong direction.
A really sharp and well organized opposition should have brought his numbers down to these levels 6 years ago.
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So rare to admit it these days, especially for the media...
and "Finally, Obamacare has become synonymous with boondoggle."
http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/editorial/gazette-opinion/gazette-opinion-obama-earned-the-low-ratings/article_f7f51100-0eb8-5726-922f-b1bf460fcf87.html#.U7wU2UplLOU.email
Obama earned the low ratings
Sometimes, you have to admit you're wrong.
And, we were wrong.
We said that things couldn't get much worse after the sub par presidency of George W. Bush.
But, President Barack Obama's administration has us yearning for the good ol' days when we were at least winning battles in Iraq.
The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal polls show that Americans are giving Obama lower marks than in 2006 when Iraq was going poorly for Bush and a tepid response to Hurricane Katrina sunk Bush's ratings.
It's not that popularity polling should be the final or even best measure of a president. There is that old saw that points out there's a difference between doing what is right and what is popular.
For us, though, it's the number of bungled or blown policies in the Obama administration which lead us to believe Obama has earned every bit of an abysmal approval rating.
Let's recap some of the mistakes:
- Maybe the worst and most widespread invasion of privacy occurred when the Obama administration continued a controversial National Security Agency program of spying on millions of citizens culling their phone records to intercepting online information. The administration has done nearly nothing to safeguard civil liberties or put in safeguards to protect our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.
- The Obama administration has continued to ratchet down on emissions from coal-fired power plants while giving consumers little new innovation to replace the power supply. Meanwhile, Obama continues to thwart other energy projects that might be helpful to the economy, like the Keystone XL pipeline. The war on carbon might not be so bad if indeed it was being counterbalanced by true innovation.
- Iraq was an inherited quagmire from the Bush administration. But six years later, Obama has to own the current situation which, as this is being written, looks perilously close to civil war and a complete breakdown of government in Iraq. If that were to happen, the sacrifice of thousands of Americans' lives would be cheapened, if not in vain. His handling the situation seems uncertain and we can't help but wonder if the same type of inaction will lead to a civil war similar to Syria's?
- The Bowe Bergdahl situation is an example of right instinct, completely wrong handling of a prisoner exchange. The Obama administration should be lauded for not wanting to leave any American solider behind. But, surprising Congress, trading possible terrorists and not doing enough to vet the background of Bergdahl had the net effect of looking incompetent. What should have been an easy public relations victory for bringing a lost soldier home turned into a public relations nightmare, and continued to erode public confidence, leading some to wonder if Obama's team can't even get something as important as bringing home a captive soldier correct, what can it be successful at?
- The VA scandal showed that wait times for veterans access to health care was so bad that some veterans actually died before they could get the medical care they were entitled to. While the VA system was not invented by the Obama administration, after six years of management, it's clear that problems were not be corrected quickly enough and that our nation was not living up to the promise it made to take care of soldiers. The most recent debacle led to the sacking of retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, but it was another black eye for the administration which appeared to look incompetent when it comes to taking care of wounded, or in-need veterans.
- Speaking of health care, Obama had also pledged that his administration would embrace new stem cell technology, and part of the hope and change we heard so much about would happen as lives improved through medical innovation. But as his presidency has continued, we see little evidence that Obama is pushing for new cures, science or solutions when it comes to medical problems.
- For years now, reports by watchdog organizations and journalists that have shown despite Obama's promises of being more transparent, his administration has actually cracked down on journalists, spied on citizens and retaliated against those who leak information to the press. In fact, the Obama administration has become so opaque and difficult that it has earned the reputation of being far worse than Nixon, the disgraced president whose terrible clampdown of information led to federal law being changed for more transparency.
- Finally, Obamacare has become synonymous with boondoggle. To be fair, there has not been enough time to judge whether the comprehensive health care reform program works, but one thing is certain: The public presentation and roll-out of the program was so riddled with technical glitches and problems, it greatly undermined the public's confidence in the system.
These are all signs — none of them definitive on their own, necessarily. However, when taken in completely, these demonstrate a disturbing trend of incompetence and failure. It's not just that Americans are in a sour mood about national politics. That's probably part of it. Instead, Obama has become another in a line of presidents long on rhetoric and hopelessly short on action.
Obama's hope and change have left liberals and conservatives alike hoping for real change, not just more lofty rhetoric.
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GM, you are our point man for assessing this sort of thing-- tin foil or smoke?
http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/does-the-cia-director-have-obamas-fraudulent-records
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GM, you are our point man for assessing this sort of thing-- tin foil or smoke?
http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/does-the-cia-director-have-obamas-fraudulent-records
I'd require additional and more validated corroboration of these claims made by the site. Having said that, Obama has a lot of missing documents if one was vetting him.
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The amount and nature of the missing and suppressed documentation about the man's past is deeply disconcerting.
And now that he has the job, apparently it bores him. Here's this from today's Pravda On The Hudson:
At Dinner Tables, a Restless Obama Finds an Intellectual Escape
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
JULY 14, 2014
WASHINGTON — President Obama had just disembarked from Air Force One and was still on the tarmac in Rome when he turned to his host, John R. Phillips, the American ambassador to Italy, with an unexpected request: How about a dinner party tomorrow night?
Over the next 24 hours, the startled Mr. Phillips and his wife, the former Obama aide Linda Douglass, scrambled to gather some of Italy’s intellettuali.
The architect Renzo Piano flew in from Genoa. The particle physicist Fabiola Gianotti arrived from Geneva. John Elkann, the chairman of Fiat and an owner of the Italian soccer club Juventus, came, too, as did his sister, Ginevra, a film director. Over a 2006 Brunello, grilled rib-eye and three pasta dishes — cacio e pepe, all’arrabbiata and Bolognese — at Villa Taverna, the 15th-century manor that serves as the ambassador’s residence, the group talked until close to midnight about “the importance of understanding science, the future of the universe, how sports brings people together, and many other things,” Ms. Douglass said.
In a summer when the president is traveling across the country meeting with ordinary Americans under highly choreographed conditions, the Rome dinner shows another side of Mr. Obama. As one of an increasing number of late-night dinners in his second term, it offers a glimpse into a president who prefers intellectuals to politicians, and into the rarefied company Mr. Obama may keep after he leaves the White House.
Sometimes stretching into the small hours of the morning, the dinners reflect a restless president weary of the obligations of the White House and less concerned about the appearance of partying with the rich and celebrated. Freewheeling, with conversation touching on art, architecture and literature, the gatherings are a world away from the stilted meals Mr. Obama had last year with Senate Republican leaders at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington.
As Mr. Obama once said about the Senate Republican leader from Kentucky: “Some folks still don’t think I spend enough time with Congress. ‘Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?’ they ask. Really? Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?”
Valerie Jarrett, the White House senior adviser, who has been asked by the president to organize some of the dinners, was more diplomatic. The president, she told reporters recently, “could talk to the same people all day long, every day, and so he has to make a deliberate effort to expand that.”
“It keeps life interesting,” she added. “It keeps him fresh. It gives him new ideas to think about.”
Bill Clinton was a social animal as president, as he and Hillary Rodham Clinton kept up a steady round of parties. For Mr. Obama, the late-night gatherings are a new development. Although dinner at 6:30 with his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters has long been sacrosanct, the president recently said that as Malia, 16, and Sasha, 13, grew up and went out more with friends, he was freer to fill his own social calendar. He joked soon after his re-election that he was getting “lonely in this big house,” and that he might soon be calling around for company.
One Saturday night in May, Mr. Obama was up well past midnight at the White House for a dinner that included Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker, and his wife, Julie; Anne Wojcicki, the chief executive and a co-founder of the personal genome testing company 23andMe, who brought her sister, Susan, the chief executive of YouTube; and Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund manager and Democratic donor. Mrs. Obama was also there, but she was not on the trip to Rome. The dinner there was first reported by Politico.
Previous dinners at the White House have drawn varied celebrities, including Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, Morgan Freeman and Bono. Many of the guests — including the Smiths and Mr. Freeman, as well as Anne Wojcicki — have been financial supporters of Mr. Obama’s campaigns.
In Rome in March, Mr. Piano said, the president seemed happy to talk about something other than politics and current events. “I think he was refreshed to sit down in a beautiful place, with good food, and talking with serenity about important things,” Mr. Piano said. He recalled that Mr. Obama, who once had dreams of becoming an architect, had many questions about Mr. Piano’s work.
“It was a real curiosity of a real man who was trying to explore how things happen,” Mr. Piano said.
The dinners often carry over into Mr. Obama’s day job — and his fund-raising. At a White House meeting on working families last month, Mr. Obama included Ms. Wojcicki — who has two young children with her husband, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, from whom she is separated — in a discussion of workplace policies with other chief executives. Less than two weeks before, Ms. Wojcicki hosted a technology forum and fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee at her home in California, which was attended by Mr. Obama and 25 guests who paid $34,200 each.
In Paris last month, Mr. Obama went to another dinner, or rather a second dinner in one evening. After he dined officially with President François Hollande at Le Chiberta, a Michelin-starred restaurant off the Champs-Élysées, he joined friends at the nearby Restaurant Helen for more than two hours. The group included Laurent Delanney, a friend from Mr. Obama’s college days who is the European chief executive of the ATP World Tour, the professional tennis organization, as well as Ms. Jarrett and Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser. Mrs. Obama was not on the Paris trip.
Guests at the dinners are typically supporters of the president and sympathetic to his political views, but not always. At the dinner in Rome, one guest was Italo Zanzi, the American-born chief executive of A. S. Roma, another top Italian soccer team. Mr. Zanzi was a Republican candidate for Congress in his native New York in 2006, and in 2008 he contributed to the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain of Arizona, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival.
During his own campaign, Mr. Zanzi highlighted his opposition to legislation granting citizenship to illegal immigrants, and he advocated random checks by the police to deport those without legal status.
If there was any tension at the dinner, it was not obvious. Ms. Douglass said Mr. Obama had laughed as Mr. Zanzi and Mr. Elkann, of the Juventus soccer club, ribbed each other about their sports rivalry.
“Clearly enough, he was happy to stay, and he spent a long time,” Mr. Piano said of the president. There was no talk of politics, he said, but Mr. Obama seemed to enjoy the back-and-forth. “He is a curious man, and even the president of America is sometimes struggling to explore, to understand, to search.”
In Paris, the president was up again until nearly midnight enjoying, among other things, Drappier Champagne.
“Bonsoir,” Mr. Obama said as he entered the small Restaurant Helen, according to Frédéric Pescatori, an investment manager who was dining next to the president’s party. Mr. Pescatori added that the president “seemed quite relaxed and glad to be with friends, without stress.”
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Hey, everything is going so well, he deserves a little break!
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"Let them eat cake" fits to this president with regards how he contrasts himself to the "folks".
The man is not a socialist. He is a king.
I would also replace 'cake' with lettuce and spinach and that would fit him perfectly.
His conceit, arrogance, self love, megalomania is so far off the charts one would have to add a separate page to draw the line high enough for him.
I might add I know of no great insight, no great thought, no great idea, no great plan, strategy, or discovery he has ever dreamt of. He is just the front man. All show and pomp. Not stupid by any means. But no great thinker.
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The Tranquility of President Obama's Mind
Originally published at CNN.com
When new White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that President Obama had "substantially improved the tranquility of the international community" many observers reacted with disbelief.
When the President refused to go to the border to see the crisis of young people flooding into the United States because "he's not interested in photo ops," lesser mortals noted he had played pool with Governor Hickenlooper, dropped by a brewery to have a beer, and shook hands with a man wearing a horse head mask.
When he went to Delaware and opened with only a few sentences about the shooting down of a Malaysian Airliner in Ukraine before joking about Joe Biden and going back to his prepared text on infrastructure, real Americans thought he had failed to take seriously an international disaster and mass murder. They were even less impressed when he had lunch at the Charcoal Pit and ordered burgers and fries (not a photo op, of course).
With ISIS causing the collapse of Iraq and continued violence in Syria, the Syrian dictatorship consolidating its power, the Iranians failing to take steps to end their nuclear weapons program and Hamas firing more than a thousand missiles at Israel, the President and his team have moved decisively to brief the New York Times on his passion for late night intellectual dinners exploring physics, architecture, and questions far more profound than the fate of the Middle East.
It is as though the more dangerous the world becomes the more Obama hides in a fantasy world of avoiding the responsibilities of the presidency by using the office to surround himself with court jesters who distract him in an enlightened and noble way from the growing failures of his policies and the rapidly expanding threats to the civilized world.
Finally, as Vladimir Putin continues to flex his muscles and expand his policies there is a psychologically bizarre pattern of the President's staff referring to Obama as "the Bear.”
The President refers to himself when he asserts that "the Bear is loose." Of course with a President who last week used “I”, “my” or “mine” 207 times in one speech, we can expect him to refer to himself but the concept is beyond bizarre. The White House staff, thinking somehow that this was clever, promptly turned the phrase into a Twitter hashtag, “#TheBearIsLoose”.
Obama's idea of a loose bear is an unplanned walk to a Starbucks near the White House. Putin's idea of a loose bear is stealing Crimea. Obama's idea of risk-taking is shooting pool with a Democratic Governor. Putin's idea of risk-taking is handing out anti-aircraft missiles to separatists in Ukraine. Putin’s actions remind us of a time when America was threatened by a real metaphorical bear, as a 1984 Reagan campaign ad referred to the Soviet Union.
The very self-image of Obama as a bear is so delusional that it brings into question the degree to which he is simply out of touch with reality.
Which brings us back to the Josh Earnest quote about tranquility in the international community.
What Josh Earnest is channeling is Obama's personal tranquility.
From his perch in the amazingly Obama-centric world in which our president lives, look again at what the rest of us think of as serious problems.
Have any of the thousand-plus Hamas missiles been aimed at Obama? No. That is why Obama is tranquil.
Have any of the thousands who are crossing the border tried to move into the White House? No. That is why Obama is tranquil.
Is ISIS an immediate threat to the United States that is likely to blow up the next golf course the President is playing at? No. That is why Obama is tranquil.
If you can reduce your presidency to a Starbucks visit, a man with a horse head mask, shooting pool and visiting Joe Biden's burger joint for lunch you can have a very successful presidency as you have defined it, even if the real world is disintegrating.
The President’s detachment from reality is fast infecting the rest of his party. How else can we explain fellow Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stating this week that “the border is secure”?
This "tranquility" line was a Freudian slip by the President's spokesman that reveals the deep gap between reality and the Obama White House.
President Obama is rapidly becoming the weakest president since James Buchanan failed to stop the drift toward Civil War. Self-delusion and a rich fantasy life are dangerous in a president. They often lead to disasters that are unimaginable until they happen. That is what we have to worry about for the next two years until he leaves public office for a private fantasy land.
Your Friend,
Newt
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"President Obama is rapidly becoming the weakest president since James Buchanan failed to stop the drift toward Civil War"
I disagree with this statement. How can he be the "weakest President" yet have done so much to damage this country. Thanks to him we have embarked on the first platform to full socialized single payer health care (United Kingdom as the role model), open borders, military draw down, increased centralized power of the executive branch and all the agencies it runs forcing through a widely political agenda, the strangulation of industries he wants to abolish, the fascist mix of companies that support him and he thus returns the favors by granting them preferential treatment and government money, the abuse and getting away with using agencies to target political enemies, the near infliction of carbon tax that will devastate the economy raise prices and hurt the energy industry, the increased transfer of wealth, the explosion in entitlement spending, and more.
Newt, You got it wrong. This is hardly the stuff of a "weak" President. In these ways he has become one of the most powerful Presidents in our time.
What he is; is the most anti-American President the most damaging President, the most imperial President, the most cynical, the most divisive, the most ideological one we have ever seen.
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The flaw in Newt's piece is that he assumes Obama wants America to be America, that he wants America to succeed.
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"The flaw in Newt's piece is that he assumes Obama wants America to be America, that he wants America to succeed"
There is something about establishment Republicans, of which Newt is one, that they either will not or cannot accept this proposition. They keep proclaiming he is weak or incompetent or well intentioned but just plain wrong. But reasons or reason unclear to me they are unwilling to speak the real truth.
And to me, that says the establishment Right is weak.
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http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/22/latest-obama-claim-i-dont-learn-anything-news/
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I prefer to defeat the governing philosophy instead of finding flaws in the humans at the top, but lying to us, talking out of both sides of the mouth, misrepresenting everything, along with cronyism and corruption all seem to be an essential component of the governing philosophy. Someone needs to expose it.
This is from a blog called Dan from Squirrel Hill (Pittsburgh). Nothing particularly new here, just a very nice job of compilation and sourcing. Links and full explanations are included for every item. http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/
1) Carried out military interventionism in Libya without Congressional approval
In June 2011, U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said that Obama had violated the Constitution when he launched military operations in Libya without Congressional approval.
In April 2014, Ralph Nader said that Obama should be impeached for his actions in Libya.
2) Gave a no-bid contract to Halliburton cronies – just like Bush did
In May 2010, it was reported that the Obama administration had selected KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, for a no-bid contract worth as much as $568 million through 2011, just hours after the Justice Department had said it would pursue a lawsuit accusing the Houston-based company of using kickbacks to get foreign contracts.
Don’t be fooled by the words “former subsidiary.” These are the same Halliburton cronies that Bush gave a no-bid contract to.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/13/obamas-mounting-hypocrisy/
3) Has an administration full of lobbyists, after promising he wouldn’t have any
On November 15, 2007, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Obama said that lobbyists
“… will not work in my White House.”
However, by February 2010, he had more than 40 lobbyists working in his administration. A list of them can be seen here.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-makes-a-mockery-of-his-own-lobbyist-ban/article/17568
...
5) Broke his promise to close Guantanamo Bay ...
Oops, the list is now 780. (link is above)
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"He is saying to a lot of immigrants and other groups, you can differ with conservatives on one issue (or two or three) and still vote conservative to move the country (state) in a better direction. Certainly Reagan did that in his day with a wide range of voters"
Yes Reagan granted amnesty to millions. That backfired and the vast majority vote for the other party. Indeed I doubt anyone thinks Reagan could possibly win California now.
Obama is not a weak President. He is a very strong President. He is done everything he said he would. Socialized medicine. Towards the eventual universal single payer. A powerful EPA with expanding regulations. Putting coal out of business. Almost the carbon tax. Higher taxes. Blame the rich while taking all their money in taxes and payoffs.
He is changing the electorate as fast as he can. Turning us into a one party country like Reagan's state is now.
He is downsizing the military, retreating from foreign involvement. Withdrawn support from Israel as much he can while most Jews will support him anyway.
Need I go on.
The only weak ones are the Republicans. They can't even get their message straight. Most of their leaders are fumbling around.
Obama has indeed in affect checked out. Why? He is not disengaged. His work is done. He has put America on his and his liberal backers trajectory. Now just sit back and tell the Republicans 'f' 'y', play golf, hobnob with the beautiful and interesting people, travel all over seeing the sites, eat all the world's best food and enjoy.
He 'f' us over pretty good if you asked me.
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Yes Obama accomplished those things and ccp has been right all along about him wanting to make as many as possible dependent on the government for cynical political purposes and flood the country with millions of new Democrats to ensure the future. Must also point out though that he lost the House, will lose the Senate, is losing the media, lost public support, lost world peace, and is proving to history that liberalism is a failed economic idea.
He is a very strong failure.
Where is that reset button?
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"Must also point out though that he lost the House, will lose the Senate"
I dunno about the last part. Just today Dick Morris on his radio show said the Republicans are not a lock on winning the Senate. They need six. Four states the Senate seats appear they will shift from Dem to Rep, but two more are tossups and two are looking like they are going to stay Democrat including Landrieu AGIAN!
"losing the media, lost public support"
Doug, I don't see him losing media at all. As for public support I don't see that either. Push comes to shove people will vote their wallets and he is buying off plenty of "folks". You know the little boring people he is so fond of referring to. :-P
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"Doug, I don't see him losing media at all. As for public support I don't see that either."
The media is still liberal, but he has let them down with his undeniable failures. I should have said that he has lost a step with them, not lost them. They would still vote for him.
(http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/gallup-daily-obama-job-approval.aspx)
He is upside down in Gallup daily job approval by 11 points, 41% qpproval, 52% disapproval. At his Hyde Park speech height his approval was roughly 70% compared to 20% disapproval, a 50% spread and a 61% swing, just by us getting to know him and seeing the results of his policies.
As an aside, Hillary was and is a clone of the guy (without the charisma) who was up by 50 points and is now down by 11 points with ties to him that run all the way from Hillarycare to Libya to the Russian reset button. Who would like to be the Obama clone to run next??
People hate Obamacare, the world is going to hell, and the economy is in decline. Median household is down something like 35% since liberalism won over America. Biased headlines and spin don't make that go away.
Conservatism needs to capture the disillusioned people who dabbled with liberalism and lost. African-American voters would be a good place to start - how are liberal policies working out for you? Who will give gays more liberty and rights, the people who brought you gay marriage or the people that would give you all your liberties including property rights and keeping the fruits of your labor? Young voters, how is that Obama thing and all the liberalism they taught you in school working out for you? Have you ever heard about rebelling against institutional authority? My parents had a great basement but at some point its better out there on your own.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/30/humanitarian-interventionists-silent-on-isiss-medieval-brutality/
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Why would anybody trust the US again? We abandoned Iraqis who helped us just like we abandoned the Kurds and just like we abandoned S. Vietnamese who helped us.
Shimon Peres on CNN saying he trusts Obama and Kerry? Oh common! Give me a break.
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Why would anybody trust the US again? We abandoned Iraqis who helped us just like we abandoned the Kurds and just like we abandoned S. Vietnamese who helped us.
Shimon Peres on CNN saying he trusts Obama and Kerry? Oh common! Give me a break.
Add to that Polish Foreign Minister saying alliance with US is worse than no alliance because of any false sense of security [that comes from our leader's lips moving].
The answer: Make promises carefully and keep them. Then repeat for a half century or so until people begin to believe us. Same goes for enforcing our borders, embracing free trade and free markets, backing up the dollar, etc.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eliot-cohen-obama-does-not-accept-war-for-what-it-is/2014/07/31/8f27346e-1830-11e4-9e3b-7f2f110c6265_story.html
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"Doug, I don't see him losing the media at all. " - ccp recently
I owe you an example or two of that. Here is Dana Milbank, a leftist caricature of a MSM columnist from my point of view, writing almost identical words to what we have saying here for years.
My post, this thread, June 19, 2014: "Keeping up with our leader while the world is engulfed in flames: Middle East burns while Barack Obama played his 175th and 176th (18 hole) rounds of golf as president."
Dana Milbank, Washington Post, August 12, 2014: "Obama vacations as the world burns"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-obama-vacations-as-the-world-burns/2014/08/11/58755e5e-21a5-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html
"Obama responded [to Hillary Clinton's criticisms] with not one but two rounds of golf. As the criticism became public, Obama was doggedly sticking with his plans to go on vacation — a decision that, if not in the category of stupid stuff, could fit under the heading of “tone deafness.” ... after returning from the beach, ... He freshened up at his 8,100-square-foot vacation home... Criticism from Clinton. War with the Islamic State. Trouble with Maliki. It’s enough to make a man hook his drive into the sand trap."
(http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/97168e21-68df-43b3-b044-e776288910c1_zps67b25c7f.jpg)
"President Barack Obama follows through on a swing while golfing at Farm Neck Golf Club as golfing partner former NFL player Ahmad Rashad, right, sits in a cart."
I played tennis with Rashad at his home during his last year with the Vikings. Ahmad is such an amazingly nice guy in private and off-camera that Pres. Obama could very easily believe that he likes him.
Apparently Michelle is happy to have him out of the house.
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Doug,
Perhaps this is also an example of what Rush was speaking about today that the MSM is starting to drop blanket support of their chosen one now that they can start supporting the next chosen one -> Hillary.
Forget about the world burning. What about what he did to us here at home.
Again I don't see him as tone deaf. He has accomplished much of what he wanted. Redistribute wealth, mess up our health care, close to granting amnesty to 20 million illegals (Marc Levin points out that the official number has been 11 million now for 15 years when we all can easily see them all around us. And what about their kids - people it is far more than 11 mill), destroyed the coal industry, kept down the oil and gas as best he could, rewarded all those who bribed him, punished all the rest of us, did what he could to hurt Jews in Israel, promote Muslims even the Jihadists, increase racial divide not decrease it. His heart goes out to the black shot in Missouri. What about the business owners whose stores were trashed. I suppose his son could have looked like the kid who died but not those who looted the stores. Not a "f" peep about that.
This is what he was and is about from day one. Didn't we all see this coming? No surprise. He did what he planned to do all along. He doesn't care about America. Never did. So time to play golf.
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President Obama walked into a local bank in Martha's Vineyard to cash a check. He was surrounded by Secret Service agents. As he approached the cashier he said, "Good morning Ma’am, could you please cash this check for me?”
Cashier:
“It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please show me your ID?”
Obama:
“Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me as I didn’t think there was any need to. I am President Barack Obama, the President of the United States of AMERICA!”
Cashier:
“Yes sir, I know who you are, but with all the regulations and monitoring of the banks because of 9/11, impostors, forgers, money laundering, and bad mortgage underwriting not to mention requirements of the Dodd/Frank legislation, etc., I must insist on seeing ID.”
Obama:
“Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am.”
Cashier:
“I am sorry Mr. President but these are the bank rules and I must follow them.”
Obama:
“I am urging you, please, to cash this check.”
Cashier:
“Look Mr. President, here is an example of what we can do. One day, Tiger Woods came into one of our bank branches without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods he pulled out his putter and made a beautiful shot across the bank into a coffee cup. With that shot we knew him to be Tiger Woods and cashed his check.”
“Another time, Andre Agassi came into the same place without ID. He pulled out his tennis racquet and made a fabulous shot where as the tennis ball landed in a coffee cup. With that shot we cashed his check.
So, Mr. President, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you, as the President of the United States?”
Obama:
Obama stands there thinking, and thinking, and finally says, “Honestly, my mind is a total blank…there is nothing that comes to my mind. I can’t think of a single thing. I have absolutely no idea what to do and I don’t have a clue.”
Cashier:
“Will that be large or small bills, Mr. President?
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Alone Again, Naturally
Maureen Dowd
AUG. 19, 2014
WASHINGTON — Affectations can be dangerous, as Gertrude Stein said.
When Barack Obama first ran for president, he theatrically cast himself as the man alone on the stage. From his address in Berlin to his acceptance speech in Chicago, he eschewed ornaments and other politicians, conveying the sense that he was above the grubby political scene, unearthly and apart.
He began “Dreams From My Father” with a description of his time living on the Upper East Side while he was a student at Columbia, savoring his lone-wolf existence. He was, he wrote, “prone to see other people as unnecessary distractions.” When neighbors began to “cross the border into familiarity, I would soon find reason to excuse myself. I had grown too comfortable in my solitude, the safest place I knew.”
His only “kindred spirit” was a silent old man who lived alone in the apartment next door. Obama carried groceries for him but never asked his name. When the old man died, Obama briefly regretted not knowing his name, then swiftly regretted his regret.
But what started as an affectation has turned into an affliction.
A front-page article in The Times by Carl Hulse, Jeremy Peters and Michael Shear chronicled how the president’s disdain for politics has alienated many of his most stalwart Democratic supporters on Capitol Hill.
His bored-bird-in-a-gilded-cage attitude, the article said, “has left him with few loyalists to effectively manage the issues erupting abroad and at home and could imperil his efforts to leave a legacy in his final stretch in office.”
Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, an early Obama backer, noted that “for him, eating his spinach is schmoozing with elected officials.”
First the president couldn’t work with Republicans because they were too obdurate. Then he tried to chase down reporters with subpoenas. Now he finds members of his own party an unnecessary distraction.
His circle keeps getting more inner. He golfs with aides and jocks, and he spent his one evening back in Washington from Martha’s Vineyard at a nearly five-hour dinner at the home of a nutritional adviser and former White House assistant chef, Sam Kass.
The president who was elected because he was a hot commodity is now a wet blanket.
The extraordinary candidate turns out to be the most ordinary of men, frittering away precious time on the links. Unlike L.B.J., who devoured problems as though he were being chased by demons, Obama’s main galvanizing impulse was to get himself elected.
Almost everything else — from an all-out push on gun control after the Newtown massacre to going to see firsthand the Hispanic children thronging at the border to using his special status to defuse racial tensions in Ferguson — just seems like too much trouble.
The 2004 speech that vaulted Obama into the White House soon after he breezed into town turned out to be wrong. He misdescribed the country he wanted to lead. There is a liberal America and a conservative America. And the red-blue divide has only gotten worse in the last six years.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
The man whose singular qualification was as a uniter turns out to be singularly unequipped to operate in a polarized environment.
His boosters argue that we spurned his gift of healing, so healing is the one thing that must not be expected of him. We ingrates won’t let him be the redeemer he could have been.
Continue reading the main story
Recent Comments
Liberty Apples
6 minutes ago
Am I missing something? Is there a lost paragraph? Not a word about Hillary.
Charlie Ratigan
6 minutes ago
And so, the alchemist, Valerie Jarrett, sees the gold she created return to lead.
mancuroc
9 minutes ago
Slow day/month/year, Maureen?
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As Ezra Klein wrote in Vox: “If Obama’s speeches aren’t as dramatic as they used to be, this is why: the White House believes a presidential speech on a politically charged topic is as likely to make things worse as to make things better.”
He concluded: “There probably won’t be another Race Speech because the White House doesn’t believe there can be another Race Speech. For Obama, the cost of becoming president was sacrificing the unique gift that made him president.”
So The One who got elected as the most exciting politician in American history is The One from whom we must never again expect excitement?
Do White House officials fear that Fox News could somehow get worse to them?
Sure, the president has enemies. Sure, there are racists out there. Sure, he’s going to get criticized for politicizing something. But as F.D.R. said of his moneyed foes, “I welcome their hatred.”
Why should the president neutralize himself? Why doesn’t he do something bold and thrilling? Get his hands dirty? Stop going to Beverly Hills to raise money and go to St. Louis to raise consciousness? Talk to someone besides Valerie Jarrett?
The Constitution was premised on a system full of factions and polarization. If you’re a fastidious pol who deigns to heal and deal only in a holistic, romantic, unified utopia, the Oval Office is the wrong job for you. The sad part is that this is an ugly, confusing and frightening time at home and abroad, and the country needs its president to illuminate and lead, not sink into some petulant expression of his aloofness, where he regards himself as a party of his own and a victim of petty, needy, bickering egomaniacs.
Once Obama thought his isolation was splendid. But it turned out to be unsplendid.
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http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/08/26/world-turned-upside-down-former-progressive-british-author-explains-how-obama-is-aiding-the-enemies-of-the-west/
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http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/16/9-quotes-from-obamas-2011-remarks-on-the-end-of-the-war-in-iraq-that-show-his-total-lack-of-foresight/
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Not the most reliable of sources. Any confirmation out there?
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http://www.tpnn.com/2014/08/28/woah-obama-pushes-unilateral-policy-changes-to-let-hawaii-secede-from-union/
WOAH! Obama Pushes to Let Hawaii Secede from Union
August 28, 2014 By Greg Campbell
Apparently seething with authoritarian hubris, President Obama is seeking to wave his magic “pen and a phone” once more to undo legislatively-passed laws and set the stage for allowing Hawaii to secede as a state.
For decades, the State of Hawaii has vied for the right to return to being a sovereign kingdom. The chain of islands has a fascinating and rich history as a kingdom, but was adopted as a state in 1959. Multiple attempts by Hawaiian lawmakers to return Hawaii to a kingdom have failed and in recent years, Former Senator Daniel Inouye and Senator Daniel Akaka, Democrats senators from Hawaii, have pushed the Native Hawaiian Recognition Act- an act that would restore Hawaii to a kingdom run by ethnically native Hawaiians.
As one might expect, Congress has routinely defeated this legislation. A 2007 DOJ statement to the Senate highlighted the absurdity of the proposed law and noted,
“Moreover, S. 310 effectively seeks to undo the political bargain through which Hawaii secured its admission into the Union in 1959. On November 7, 1950, all citizens of the Hawaiian Territory – including native Hawaiians – voted to seek admission to the United States. See, e.g., Pub. L. No. 86-3, 73 Stat. 4. By a decisive 2-1 margin, native Hawaiians themselves voted for statehood, thus voluntarily and democratically relinquishing any residual sovereignty to the United States.”
Obama, who grew up in Hawaii (amongst many other places), appears sympathetic to this plight and his Department of the Interior has issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to overrule the will of Congress.
What the notice proposes is enacting a “government-to-government relationship between the United State and the Native Hawaiian community,” allowing the government of Hawaii to run as a kingdom dominated by a racial hierarchy, with native Hawaiians being in charge.
Obama’s crusade, however, is fraught with legal complications. Aside from the obvious fact that such decisions are not the domain of the president, but rather the legislative body, Obama’s actions would likely violate 15th Amendment protections as well as establish a precedent that states can secede in the pursuit of instituting a government centered on racial hierarchy- an obvious violation of innumerable tenets of our government and society.
In late May, TPNN reported:
The policy proposal, an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, states:
“The Secretary of the Interior is considering whether to propose an administrative rule that would facilitate the reestablishment of a government-to-government relationship with the Native Hawaiian community.”
The document claims that the goal is “to more effectively implement the special political and trust relationship that Congress has established between that [Hawaiian] community and the United States.”
What this does is essentially create a two-tier system based on race in Hawaii. It will afford separate taxes and law enforcement to one race and another set of policies will govern another race.
Since then, the Department of the Interior has endured a barrage of push-back from legislators and other assorted bureaucrats who have maintained that not only is this a terrible idea, but one that is inherently unconstitutional. Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress, not the president, has the authority to recognize tribes.
In fact, Obama’s head of Indian Affairs at the Interior Department, Assistant Secretary Kevin K. Washburn, testified before a House subcommittee that this administration did not “have the authority to recognize Native Hawaiians.” Washburn claimed that “we would need legislation to be able to proceed down that road.”
Still, despite having no Constitutional authority, the Obama administration is continuing to push the policy change that could have far-reaching effects. It is unclear if even the Congress has the authority to allow such policies; it is, however, certain that the executive branch possesses no such powers.
While it is far from certain that Hawaii will be granted the right to secede, what such policy shifts are aimed at is creating a wider divide between races and unapologetically implementing a racial hierarchy with native Hawaiians at the top.
At a time when the most divisive president in history pretends to be interested in equality and egalitarian beliefs, it’s nauseating to see his administration stoke the flames of racial prejudice and seek to codify racial supremacy in law.
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Without digging into this, I recall there is something to this but not to the degree stated in the article.
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"The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers..."
- Barack Obama, September 19th, 2001, in the Hyde Park Herald
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/21/making-it?currentPage=all
"We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."
http://hpherald.com (Archives)
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http://online.wsj.com/articles/bret-stephens-obamas-curious-rage-1409610734?tesla=y
GLOBAL VIEW
Obama's Curious Rage
Calm when it comes to Putin, ISIS and Hamas, but furious with Israel.
By BRET STEPHENS
Sept. 1, 2014 6:32 p.m. ET
Barack Obama "has become 'enraged' at the Israeli government, both for its actions and for its treatment of his chief diplomat, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. " So reports the Jerusalem Post, based on the testimony of Martin Indyk, until recently a special Middle East envoy for the president. The war in Gaza, Mr. Indyk adds, has had "a very negative impact" on Jerusalem's relations with Washington.
Think about this. Enraged. Not "alarmed" or "concerned" or "irritated" or even "angered." Anger is a feeling. Rage is a frenzy. Anger passes. Rage feeds on itself. Anger is specific. Rage is obsessional, neurotic.
And Mr. Obama—No Drama Obama, the president who prides himself on his cool, a man whose emotional detachment is said to explain his intellectual strength—is enraged. With Israel. Which has just been hit by several thousand unguided rockets and 30-odd terror tunnels, a 50-day war, the forced closure of its one major airport, accusations of "genocide" by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, anti-Semitic protests throughout Europe, general condemnation across the world. This is the country that is the object of the president's rage.
Think about this some more. In the summer in which Mr. Obama became "enraged" with Israel, Islamic State terrorists seized Mosul and massacred Shiite soldiers in open pits, Russian separatists shot down a civilian jetliner, Hamas executed 18 "collaborators" in broad daylight, Bashar Assad's forces in Syria came close to encircling Aleppo with the aim of starving the city into submission, a brave American journalist had his throat slit on YouTube by a British jihadist, Russian troops openly invaded Ukraine, and Chinese jets harassed U.S. surveillance planes over international waters.
Mr. Obama or his administration responded to these events with varying degrees of concern, censure and indignation. But rage?
Here, for instance, is the president in early August, talking to the New York Times's Tom Friedman about Russia and Ukraine:
"Finding an off-ramp for [ Vladimir Putin ] becomes more challenging. Having said that I think it is still possible for us, because of the effective organization that we have done with the Europeans around Ukraine, and the genuine bite that the sanctions have had on the Russian economy, for us to arrive at a fair accommodation in which Ukrainian sovereignty and independence is still recognized but there is also recognition that Ukraine does have historic ties to Russia, the majority of their trade goes to Russia, huge portions of the population are Russian speaking, and so they are not going to be severed from Russia. And if we do that a deal should be possible."
This isn't even condemnation. It's an apology. For Mr. Putin. Benjamin Netanyahu should be so lucky.
Now think about what, specifically, has enraged the president about Israel's behavior. "Its actions and its treatment of his chief diplomat."
Actions? Hamas began firing rockets at Israel in June, thereby breaking the cease-fire it had agreed to at the end of the last war, in November 2012. The latest war began in earnest on July 7 when Hamas fired some 80 rockets at Israel. "No country can accept rocket fire aimed at civilians," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the next day, "and we support Israel's right to defend itself against these vicious attacks."
On July 15 Israel accepted the terms of a cease-fire crafted by Egypt. Hamas violated it by firing 50 rockets at Israel. On July 17 Israel accepted a five-hour humanitarian cease-fire. Hamas violated it again. On July 20 Israel allowed a two-hour medical window in the neighborhood of Shujaiyeh. Hamas violated it. On July 26 Hamas announced a daylong cease-fire. It then broke its own cease-fire. On July 28 Israel agreed to a cease-fire for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The rocket attacks continued. On Aug. 1 Israel accepted a 72-hour cease-fire proposed by the U.S. Hamasviolated it within 90 minutes. On Aug. 5 Israel agreed to Egypt's terms for another three-day cease-fire. Hamas violated it several hours before it was set to expire, after Israel announced it would agree to an extension.
If Hamas had honored any of these cease-fires it could have saved Palestinian lives. It didn't. Mr. Obama is enraged—but not with Hamas.
As for Israel's supposed ill-treatment of Mr. Kerry, the president should read Ben Birnbaum's and Amir Tibon's account of his secretary's Mideast misadventures in the July 20 issue of the New Republic. It's a portrait of a diplomat with the skills and style, but not the success, of Inspector Clouseau. Mr. Obama might also read Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit's assessment of Mr. Kerry's diplomacy: "The Obama administration," he wrote in July, "proved once again that it is the best friend of its enemies, and the biggest enemy of its friends."
Both Haaretz and the New Republic are left-wing publications, sympathetic to Mr. Obama's intentions, if not his methods.
Still, the president is enraged. At Israel. What a guy.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
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Who could have foreseen that Obama would be anti-Israel?
He wore a kippa at AIPAC, I'm told.
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Imagine NATO without the US...
http://thehill.com/policy/international/216656-obama-absent-for-start-of-nato-meeting
“We call on Russia to end its illegal and self-declared annexation of Crimea,” Rasmussen said. [NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen] “We call on Russia to pull back its troops from Ukraine” and stop the flow of arms to separatists. Rasmussen said the gathering of the leaders should telegraph a "clear message" to Ukraine that NATO stands with the nation and supports its reforms.
President Obama was nowhere to be found during the beginning of a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine commission in Wales on Thursday.
Obama was "noticeably absent" from the start of the meeting, according to a White House pool report
He had more pressing matters.
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http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/09/06/its-official-president-obama-is-the-best-economic-president-in-modern-times/
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http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/09/06/its-official-president-obama-is-the-best-economic-president-in-modern-times/
Epic stupid. Does this really need to be taken seriously?
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Of course not. Duh. :lol: :lol: :lol:
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From reversing the rising of the oceans and ending the racial divide in America to eliminating the schism between Sunni and Shia that has been fueling so much of the violence in the Middles East, this President has a very high opinion of his governing and diplomatic skills!
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/obama-goes-on-meet-the-press-reality-fails-to-intrude.php
http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/president-barack-obamas-full-interview-nbcs-chuck-todd-n197616
Assuming he can actually do all these things, I'm thinking about supporting him for a third term.
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/about-those-lightweight-team-obama-spokespersons.php
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/about-those-lightweight-team-obama-spokespersons.php
(From the article)
about Benghazi, “Dude, this was like two years ago."
As suggested, maybe we aren't his targeted demographic.
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A week ago he didn't have a
clue strategy. Tonight he has it all. What changed? Domestic politics driving foreign policy.
This is really a stupid question, but will he admit in any way that he was wrong? Wrong on Iraq. Wrong on Egypt. Wrong to say al Qaeda is on the run. Wrong on Syria. Wrong on Libya and Benghazi. Wrong on the Mexican border. Wrong on Russia and Ukraine. Wrong to call terrorists and beheaders JV. If this were a serious speech and a serious change of policy, making right what was previously wrong would be the starting point. It isn't.
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The Humbling of a President
In the war with ISIS, the U.S. needs genuine presidential leadership, not a utility infielder playing everyone else's position.
By Daniel Henninger
Sept. 10, 2014 7:12 p.m. ET
Let us note briefly the commanding irony of Barack Obama delivering—hours before 9/11—the anti-terrorism speech that history required of his predecessor after September 11, 2001. There is one thing to say: If we are lucky, President Obama will hand off to his successor a terrorist enemy as diminished as the one George Bush, David Petraeus and many others left him.
If we're lucky.
There is a story about Mr. Obama relevant to the war, battle or whatever he declared Wednesday evening against the Islamic State, aka ISIS. It is found in his former campaign manager David Plouffe's account of the 2008 election, "The Audacity to Win."
Mr. Plouffe writes that during an earlier election race, Mr. Obama had a "hard time allowing his campaign staff to take more responsibility." To which Barack Obama answered: "I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I'll hire to do it." Audacity indeed.
In a 2008 New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza, Mr. Obama is quoted telling another aide: "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors." Also, "I think I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters."
And here we are.
In the days before Mr. Obama's ISIS address to the nation, news accounts cataloged his now-embarrassing statements about terrorism's decline on his watch—the terrorists are JV teams, the tide of war is receding and all that.
Set aside that Mr. Obama outputted this viewpoint even as Nigeria's homicidal Boko Haram kidnapped 275 schoolgirls, an act that appalled and galvanized the world into "Bring Back Our Girls." No matter. Boko Haram slaughtered on, unabated.
Some of these gaffes came in offhand comments, but others were embedded in formal speeches from the presidential pen, such as the definitive Obama statement on terrorism last May at the National Defense University: "So that's the current threat—lethal yet less-capable al Qaeda affiliates." A year later, ISIS seized one-third of Iraq inside a week.
Worse than misstatements have been the misdecisions on policy: the erased red line in Syria, the unattainable reset with Vladimir Putin's brainwashed Russia, the nuclear deal with the ruling shadows in Iran. The first two bad calls have pitched significant regions of the world into crises of virtually unmanageable complexity.
What we now know is that Mr. Obama is not even close to being his own best Secretary of State, his own best Secretary of Defense, his own best national security adviser or his own best CIA director.
The question is: Does he know it?
Can a humbling experience of such startling proportions have sunk in? It had better. What the U.S. needs if it is to prevail in the battle Mr. Obama put forth Wednesday is the genuine article of presidential leadership. What the U.S. does not need in the Oval Office is a utility infielder playing everyone else's position. We are competing against global terrorism's heaviest hitters, who have established state seizure as a strategic goal.
If Mr. Obama still thinks he's better than Susan Rice, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel and John Brennan, then he and the nation supporting his anti-ISIS effort are being poorly served. He should fire them all and bring in people who know more about fighting terrorists than he does. Barack Obama admires Abraham Lincoln. Act like him. Appoint the best people and let them win it.
Winning would also require a president willing to confront the political correctness that has undermined the U.S.'s battle against terror.
No more sophistry about whether a Benghazi qualifies as terrorism. After the videotaped beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, is anyone still lying awake at night worrying that their iPhone number is among millions of others in the National Security Agency's data mines?
Closing Gitmo goes on the backburner. "Boots on the ground"—kill that too. It has become code for boots going nowhere, as Mr. Obama's airpower-only campaign made clear Wednesday evening.
It has taken 13 years to this day, September 11, for the reality of global Islamic terrorism to finally sink in—here in the U.S. and everywhere else, including the ever-equivocal capitals of the Middle East.
In the years after 9/11 came London, Madrid, the Boston Marathon, multiple failed attempts to bomb New York City, Mumbai, Kenya, Boko Haram, the re-rocketing of Tel Aviv, Christian holy places destroyed, thousands of Arabs blown up in the act of daily life. That's the short list. ISIS is just the tip of the world's unstable iceberg. We're all living on the Titanic.
Now a reluctant progressive president goes to war without admitting it is war. It's even money at best that he or the Left will stay the course if the going gets tough beyond Iraq's borders.
A final irony. In that National Defense speech, Mr. Obama defended the drone killing in Yemen of the American-born jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki: "His citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a SWAT team."
If Barack Obama would put a plaque with those words on his Oval Office desk, the world's innocents may have a shot at defeating the world's snipers. A long shot.
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Yes more vocal critics on the Left as well as the Right of his foreign policy (now the damage is done), but I wouldn't rest till the case is won that his domestic policy is even MORE of a disaster, knowing full well the benefits crowd will never leave him or their beloved paymasters - The Democrat Party.
And by '16 we will have 20 million new voters the vast majority who are Democrats to deal with. Texas is next on their hit list.
Did you see that 1 out of 3 public school students in California are either illegal or cannot speak English. For God's sake there are 40 million people there. I remember when the population of the entire US was only around 150 million. This is nuts. How are all these people helping the economy? Explain that to me Fuckerberg?
All wealthy "liberals* should be taxed at a rate of 90%.
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Transcript, video:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/10/statement-president-isil-1
It was a stump speech billed as a foreign policy speech. It was a speech about Middle East war and peace and Israel was not mentioned. Homegrown terrorism was not addressed, nor was ISIS and their sympathizers coming in across our porous southern border. Nor was any conjugation of the verb to deter, deterrent, deterrence. What war was won, BTW, with air power alone? Not mentioned. No mention of the on-the-ground surge working or anything else learned previously in this fight. But we did get a shout-out to the Dems running for their troubled reelection about job creation and health of the auto industry!
ISIL (Islamic State) is not Islamic. Just like the Muslim Brotherhood is secular. Good to know!
Deeper thoughts from a previous speech:
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Distinguished Members...
I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. ...
We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of depravation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that - for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth. - Pres. Obama accepting Nobel Peace Prize Dec 10, 2009
While you were dithering, they were arming, financing, recruiting, organizing, taking over cities, regions and countries, raping, enslaving and beheading, Mr. President. Welcome belatedly to the fight.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2014/09/11/question-for-the-state-department-isnt-obama-waging-preemptive-war-in-iraq-now/
Obama going into Iraq, knowing there are no weapons of mass destruction!
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Saudi Arabia has an extensive border with Syria.
This link is still up at WhiteHouse.Gov at this writing:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/10/background-conference-call-presidents-address-nation#.VBH-xrMzc7I.twitter
Background Conference Call on the President's Address to the Nation
...
ISIL has been I think a galvanizing threat around the Sunni partners in the region. They view it as an existential threat to them. Saudi Arabia has an extensive border with Syria. ...
Please show us that border!
(http://www.mappery.com/maps/Syria-Guide-Map.jpg)
http://washingtonexaminer.com/in-the-best-of-hands-senior-obama-official-makes-terrible-geography-error/article/2553262
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'The Man From Nowhere'
What does Barack Obama believe in?
BY PEGGY NOONAN
Friday, December 15, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST We are getting very excited. Barack Obama is brilliant, eloquent and fresh.
He is "exciting" (David Brooks), "charming" (Bob Schieffer), "my favorite guy" (Oprah Winfrey), has "charisma" (Donna Brazile), and should run now for president (George Will). Our political and media establishments, on the rebound from bad history, are sounding like Marlene Dietrich in her little top hat. Falling in luff again, vot am I to do, vot am I to do, kont hellllllp eet.
Well, down from your tippy toes, establishment.
He is obviously planning to run. This week he was in New Hampshire--rapturous reviews, sold-out fund-raisers--and before that, Iowa.
His second book is his second best seller and the biggest-selling nonfiction title in the nation. The intro he taped for "Monday Night Football"--in an Aaron Sorkin-like setting of gleaming desk and important lighting--showed he is an actor who can absorb the script and knows by nature what a camera is.
This is a compliment. All the great presidents of the media age, FDR, JFK and Reagan, were great actors of the presidency. (The one non-great president who was their equal in this, Bill Clinton, proved that acting is not enough.)
He has obvious appeal. I asked a Young Democrat college student why he liked him. After all, I said, he has little experience. That's part of what I like, he said. "He's not an insider, he's not just a D.C. politician."
He is uncompromised by a past, it is true. He is also unburdened by a record, unworn by achievement, unwearied by long labors.
What does he believe? What does he stand for? This is, after all, the central question. When it is pointed out that he has had almost--almost--two years in the U.S. Senate, and before that was an obscure state legislator in Illinois, his supporters compare him to Lincoln. But Lincoln had become a national voice on the great issue of the day, slavery. He rose with a reason. Sen. Obama's rise is not about a stand or an issue or a question; it is about Sen. Obama. People project their hopes on him, he says.
He's exactly right. Just so we all know it's projection.
He doesn't have an issue, he has a thousand issues, which is the same as having none, in the sense that a speech about everything is a speech about nothing. And on those issues he seems not so much to be guided by philosophy as by impulses, sentiments. From "The Audacity of Hope," his latest book:
"- ur democracy might work a bit better if we recognized that all of us possess values that are worthy of respect." "I value good manners." When not attempting to elevate the bromidic to the profound, he lapses into the language of political consultants--"our message," "wedge issues," "moral language." Ronald Reagan had "a durable narrative." Parts of the book, the best parts, are warm, anecdotal, human. But much of it pretends to a seriousness that is not borne out. When speaking of the political past he presents false balance and faux fairness. (Reagan, again, despite his "John Wayne, Father Knows Best pose, his policy by anecdote and his gratuitous assaults on the poor" had an "appeal" Sen. Obama "understood." Ronnie would be so pleased.)
The world is difficult now, unlike those days when America enjoyed "the near unanimity forged by the Cold War, and the Soviet threat." Near unanimity?
This is rewriting the past in a way that suggests a deep innocence of history, or a slippery approach to the facts.
Sen. Obama spent his short lifetime breathing in the common liberal/leftist wisdom, which he exhales at length. This is not something new--it's something old in a new package. And it is something that wins you what he has, a series of 100% ratings from left-liberal interest groups.
He is, clearly, a warm-blooded political animal, an eager connector, a man of intelligence and a writer whose observations suggest the possibility of an independence of spirit. Also a certain unknowability. Which may account for some of his popularity.
But again, what does he believe? From reading his book, I would say he believes in his destiny. He believes in his charisma. He has the confidence of the anointed. He has faith in the magic of the man who meets his moment.
He also believes in the power of good nature, the need for compromise, and the possibility of comprehensive, multitiered, sensible solutions achieved through good-faith negotiations. But mostly it seems to be about him, his sense of destiny, and his appreciation of his own particular gifts. Which leaves me thinking Oh dear, we have been here before. It's not as if we haven't already had a few of the destiny boys. It's not as if we don't have a few more in the wings.
It seems to me that our political history has been marked the past 10 years by lurches, reactions and swerves, and I wonder if historians will see the era that started in the mid-'90s as The Long Freakout. First the Clinton era left more than half the country appalled--deeply appalled, and ashamed--by its series of political, financial and personal scandals. I doubt the Democratic Party will ever fully understand the damage done in those days.
In reaction the Republican Party lurched in its presidential decision toward a relatively untested (five years in the governor's office, before that very
little) man whom party professionals chose, essentially, because "He can win" and the base endorsed because he seemed the opposite of Bill Clinton.
The 2000 election was a national trauma, and I'm not sure Republicans fully understand what it did to half the Democrats in the country to think the election was stolen, or finagled, or arranged by unseen powers. Then 9/11.
Now we have had six years of high drama and deep division, and again a new savior seems to beckon, one who is so clearly Not Bush.
We'll see what Sen. Obama has, what he is, what he becomes. But right now he seems part of a pattern of lurches and swerves--the man from nowhere, of whom little is known, who will bring us out of the mess. His sudden rise and wild popularity seem more symptom than solution. And I wonder if historians will call this chapter in their future histories of the modern era not "A Decision Is Made" but "The Freakout Continues."
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Well Charles doesn't go far enough. Of course Obama is a narcissist. But he also has a *narcissistic personality disorder*. "Megalomania" is descriptive of this guy.
*****Charles Krauthammer: Barack Obama ‘narcissist’
By LUCY MCCALMONT | 9/15/14 5:38 PM EDT
Conservative columnist — and former psychiatrist — Charles Krauthammer took time Monday for presidential couch analysis, saying the President Barack Obama is not manic, but rather a narcissist, who “talks like the emperor, Napoleon.”
“So I decided when I left psychiatry never to use my authority. But let me just say as a layman, without invoking any expertise, Obama is clearly a narcissist in the non-scientific use of the word. He is so self-involved, you see it from his rise,” Krauthammer said Monday on the Hugh Hewitt Show, according to a transcript.
Pointing to what Krauthammer called the “theater” of Obama’s 2008 campaign, he continued to slam and assess the president’s personality.
“I think he’s extremely self-involved. He sees himself in very world historical terms, which means A) because he’s an amateur, he doesn’t know very much, and B) because he’s a narcissist, he doesn’t listen,” Krauthammer said.
The conservative emphasized that he doesn’t like to use is authority on psychiatric analyses, “because you really can’t do it at a distance,” but nevertheless offered up a take on Obama.
“My specialty when I was a psychiatrist was bipolar disease. And I wrote some papers on manic disease. He’s not manic, and I don’t think he’s depressed,” Krauthammer said.
He also noted that Obama’s speeches often refer to himself, which Krauthammer suggested Obama has done more than his White House predecessors.
(Full 2014 election results)
“This is a guy, you look at every one of his speeches, even the way he introduces high officials – I’d like to introduce my secretary of state. He once referred to ‘my intelligence community’. And in one speech, I no longer remember it, ‘my military’. For God’s sake, he talks like the emperor, Napoleon,” Krauthammer said.
He continued, “He does have this sense of this all being a drama about him, and everybody else is just sort of part of the stage.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/charles-krauthammer-barack-obama-narcissist-110975.html#ixzz3DULc9g4s
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And anyone who calls him that is racist. Never ends does it?
*****POLITICS 09.18.14
Why the Right Thinks Obama’s a Narcissist—and Why They’re Wrong
Now some on the right think Obama says ‘I’ too much. In fact, he doesn’t. But what does it mean that they can’t stand to hear him say it?
Charles Krauthammer has told Fox News that President Obama is a narcissist. And he should know, because once he was a psychologist.
His evidence? Obama apparently says “I” too much. He’s all into himself instead of the country he’s supposed to be running. “Count the number of times he uses ‘I’ in any speech, and compare that to any other president,” limns Doctor Krauthammer. “Remember when he announced the killing of Bin Laden? That speech I believe had 29 references to ‘I’—on my command, I ordered, as Commander-in-Chief I was then told, I this.”
But as linguist Mark Liberman notes at Language Log, the president used the word “I” exactly 10 times in that speech. Meanwhile, when Ronald Reagan made a speech in an analogous situation about Lebanon and Grenada, he used “I” exactly, um, 29 times. Yet to Krauthammer, who coined the term “Reagan Doctrine,” the Gipper was what a president is supposed to be. Why can’t Obama refer to himself as much as Reagan?
Kruathammer isn’t alone in bridling at our president’s referring to himself in public addresses. George Will has complained about this too, and yet the whole notion is complete BS. A useful example: Conservative writer Howard Portnoy claimed Obama was “I”-ing up the place ungraciously during his debates with Mitt Romney. In fact, in the first debate, Romney said “I” 227 times to Obama’s 122; in the second, 260 to Obama’s 176; and in the third, 198 times to Obama’s 108.
Clearly, it isn’t that Obama refers to himself to any notable degree. It’s that these pundits rankle inwardly when they hear the man saying “I”—because they deeply dislike him. Their innards seethe to see him expressing confidence, or otherwise reminding them that he, and not Mitt Romney, is the leader of the country. They want him down. They wish he’d go away. It’s ugly.
But no. I’m not going to go where one would expect at this point.
You know: I am to intone that these pundits think of Obama as an “uppity Negro.” And there’d be a gut-level appeal in taking that tack, especially since here and there someone like me has felt subject to that same evaluation. But self-gratification is not analysis. To give in to it too easily here would be sloppy.
After all, I’m usually the one saying people cry racism too easily, and I mean it. I have often written that people who glibly call opposition to Obama race-based forget how bitterly opposed much of the same crowd was to Bill Clinton. They also need to think about whether there really wouldn’t be a Tea Party if John Edwards—showy, a little brittle, and populist—was president. What’s the slam-dunk argument that Republicans wouldn’t deeply despise a President Edwards?
So, to check myself, I will propose that maybe these same pundits would be equally irritated to hear a President Edwards coolly making frequent references to his big bad self in speeches. Maybe Edwards’ politics and policies would make them bristle at his confidence as well.
I’m open to the possibility that their bias against Obama isn’t racial. I’m even open to the possibility that race isn’t even meaningfully “a part of it,” especially since what most people really mean by “it plays a part” is that it is the main part and the only one worth discussing. That’s smug and hasty. I will refrain from going there—although, I must say, I am fighting a powerful gut feeling.
One thing I know is that these pundits’ revulsion at the president’s confidence is, itself, revolting. It is not a sign of a healthy political discourse when smart, influential people feel vomitous to see someone with different views on policy than theirs expressing themselves with confidence and honesty.
Put it this way: the data are in and have been for years now, courtesy especially of my pals at Language Log. Scientific analysis demonstrates not a whit of linguistic narcissism in Barack Obama. Anybody who listens to our president and thinks he’s saying “I” too much is, quite simply, deeply biased against the man.
I’ll leave it to others to parse out the degree to which you-know-what “plays a part” in that bias (those put off by my not understanding that it “must” be racial please review my points about Clinton and Edwards).
A basic fact will remain: The bias, whatever its components, is nauseating.
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/too-cool-for-school-obamas-latte-salute.php
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http://reason.com/archives/2014/09/24/6-ways-obama-contradicts-himself-in-wagi
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He missed 58% of his Daily Intelligence Briefings. Can't even vote present anymore.
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He missed 58% of his Daily Intelligence Briefings. Can't even vote present anymore.
Bet he made 100% of his tee times.
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Obama: Born-Again Idiot
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On October 2, 2014
The quintessential question of Watergate was “what did the President know and when did he know it?” Obamagate, the vast scandal that encompasses an entire presidency, offers a preemptive answer.
Obama didn’t know anything and he never knew it. At least not until, like smuggling weapons to druglords, bugging journalists, IRSing his political enemies and killing vets, his right hand found out about what his left hand was doing from the morning paper.
After skipping 58% of his daily intelligence briefings in Term 1 and 59% of them in Term 2, he went on 60 Minutes and blamed intelligence agencies for being caught by surprise by ISIS. The intelligence had been there all along, but Obama wasn’t just missing his 3 AM phone calls — he was also skipping the 3 PM phone calls while golfing with the CEO of Comcast, friendly hedge fund managers and assorted lobbyists.
When the media, in the person of loyalist New Yorker editor David Remnick, tried to do its newfound duty by briefing him on the ISIS takeover of an Iraqi city, Obama snarked back by calling ISIS a jayvee team. Snark had proven to be an effective national security strategy for him before when he won a presidential debate by dismissing Mitt Romney’s concerns about national security with lines like, “The 80s called, they want their foreign policy back” and “We also have fewer horses and bayonets.”
The media cheered the spectacle of a real life version of a Saturday Night Live or a Daily Show skit while licking its lips at the thought of a President Stewart or Colbert ruling through pre-scripted quips. And the problem was solved until ISIS took over much of Iraq. The ISIS version of a snappy comeback was to call Obama “a White House slave” and a “mule” which sounds really racist and doesn’t translate well.
What the ISIS standup act lacked in comic timing, it made up for by besieging Baghdad, bringing back slavery and taking selfies with severed heads. Between his golf games and vacations, Obama finally penciled in a war, declaring, “The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.”
And it only took him 6 years to figure that out. Talk about an intelligence failure.
Obama botched his own disastrous ObamaCare program turning it into an even more expensive mess than it already was. Once again he claimed that he only found out about the problem from the media. Just like he found out that his VA turnaround was killing more vets than Al Qaeda was from that same media.
Let’s take Obama at his word for a moment and assume that he really is a clueless dilettante who doesn’t know anything about anything until it appears in bold type on the front page of the New York Times. But then what exactly does he do besides give speeches at fundraisers, golf, vacation and blame Congress for not passing some gimmick bill that even his own party loyalists wouldn’t touch in an attempt to divert attention from the latest disaster he only found out about through the media?
He tried to force amnesty through Congress and instead caused a border crisis. After blowing a billion dollars on a contractor with a top family friend executive, the ObamaCare website went 404. His stimulus funds went into the trash. His Green Energy recipients went into bankruptcy court. He’s still claiming credit for fixing unemployment by convincing the unemployed to drop out of the economy.
And now he’s stuck being a third-rate Bush, bombing Iraq while trying to explain that the Al Qaeda he’s bombing now is not the Al Qaeda he claimed to have defeated when he was running for reelection.
There’s no doubt that he did a great deal for the left by stewarding an expansion of the regulatory bureaucracy and scoring lots of points in the culture war, but he could have managed to achieve the former by sticking to his old career of filing frivolous lawsuits and pulled off the latter by becoming one of Jon Stewart’s Comedy Central second bananas before graduating to his own spinoff show.
No one needed him in the White House. If the Democratic Party was that desperate to dodge every gaffe, scandal and criticism with cries of racism, it could have gotten some other black guy. There are twenty million of them. And any one of them would have done a better job and played a lot less golf.
And now after running for office as the “Smartest guy in the room,” the Nobel Prize winner has chosen to become a born-again idiot.
With his wartime latte salutes and his post-war announcement golf games, Obama is aiming to be seen as an amiable incompetent idiot to preserve his likability rating. But that’s only half-true. There is nothing amiable about his incompetence or his idiocy.
The roots of both can be found in his arrogance.
Obama claimed, “I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters… I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors … I’m a better political director than my political director.” It went without saying that he also understood legislating better than Congress and the Constitution better than the Supreme Court. He understood website programming better than the programmers which is why the ObamaCare website testing and redesigns happened inside the government.
He even insisted that he was a better ISIS Jihadist than the actual Jihadists, offering his advice as “an adviser to ISIS” to a coterie of big media types. And yet if ISIS ever did make him its Caliph, it would be reduced to two guys hiding in a kebab shack in Yemen before the month was out.
Obama can do everything better than everyone else, which is why he can never get anything right. He assumed that he would rule as a genius surrounded by incompetent idiots. And he was half right.
The HHS and VA secretaries were purged over failures of leadership that came from the top down. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton resigned half a year after Benghazi. The Attorney General stepped down after a U.S. District Court judge began applying serious pressure over Fast and Furious docs.
If we begin listing the top generals, defense and security officials who were forced out to cover up for Obama’s failures at all things military, we would be here all day.
Having thrown everyone else under the bus, Obama is gently climbing under it for a short nap. Then he’ll be back to change the subject from his latest failure to a proposal that is doomed to become a failure while urging Americans not to be cynical about all his past failures.
The left never understood that its policy failures come from its bad intentions. It’s incompetent because it’s malicious.
Obama is blaming the intelligence officials for not giving him the briefings on ISIS that he wouldn’t attend. But he knew all about ISIS. He chose not to listen to avoid exactly what is happening now.
As a born again idiot, Obama maintains a layer of plausible deniability over his incompetence. But it’s an ignorance of choice. He chooses not to contemplate the consequences of his actions and instead uses the media as a warning system to tell him that the latest crisis has penetrated the liberal bubble.
The left chooses not to know what it doesn’t want to know. It chose not to know what the USSR was doing. It chose not to know what ISIS was up.
It chooses not to know because then it would have to do something.
Obama didn’t want to do anything about ISIS. He didn’t want to do anything about the VA. He didn’t want to acknowledge knowing anything about the IRS targeting and he didn’t care about how well or how badly the ObamaCare website would work until he realized its impact on his approval ratings.
His incompetence and ignorance are expressions of his contempt. His policies implode because he never bothered to understand how they would impact real people.
He chooses not to know, because he chose not to care.
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Yet when the ONE who is deluded into thinking he is history's *Greatest One* was told by Debbie Wasserman Schultz at a White House reception line that she balanced the DNCs budget and erased its' debt his response was, "Debbie I know I am the President".
Yet on all these other important matters it is always someone else's fault.
It all just goes to highlight the real character of this man and his movement.
Only recently, that he was safely re elected and the Democrat Mob has its' next one in line do we hear any blowback from the media.
After years of the MSM covering for this man, only now.
And as we speak he continues his onslaught through executive privilege along with all his agencies working from a political agenda increasing their power.
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I don't need to read his book. I already know what it says and nothing in this much that we have discussed on this board for many years:
****Dick Morris: Obama Has Plan Behind His Perceived 'Incompetence'
Saturday, 27 Sep 2014 01:58 PM
By Sandy Fitzgerald
Many people think President Barack Obama is either incompetent to be in office or that he may be anti-American, veteran political analyst Dick Morris says, but there is something more in play — the president wants to turn the United States into a one-party nation.
"He wants to consolidate power so the country can never again elect someone other than a liberal Democrat, said Morris, speaking with Townhall Finance's Michael Schaus, on Saturday.
Morris, who co-authored the recently released book "Power Grab: Obama's Dangerous Plan for a One-Party Nation," with his wife Eileen McGann, said that while many presidents want to keep their parties in office, they persuade the public legitimately, not by the "underhanded, illegal" means Obama uses.
For example, said Morris, there are many who believe the president erred when he advertised to Central America that people coming to the United States would receive amnesty, but "he intended" for the overcrowding of illegal migrants at the border this year.
"He wanted to attract illegal immigrants to the United States to bolster party strength," Morris said Saturday.
Further, he insisted that Obama is building toward a one-party nation through changing election laws, including banning voter identifications and requiring states to keep the deceased and people who have moved away on their voter rolls for four years. Doing so encourages voter fraud, he said.
The problems with the economy are another way Obama is pushing for a one-party nation, said Morris.
Wealthier people tend to be Republicans, he said, while lower-income Americans tend to vote Democrat.
"That's why he's let the economy get to the low point," said Morris. "Three million fewer people are now working full time."
And the issue "isn't that he's stupid; it's not that he's incompetent," said Morris. "He wants to change us from a nation of wage earners to a nation of welfare recipients."
Morris pointed out that there are some millions more people now collecting welfare benefits, Medicaid and food stamps than there were when Obama took office.
When Obama took office, said Morris, one-fourth of the country was on welfare; now, it's one-third.
Such actions, said Morris, "are all deliberate policies to make this a one-party nation."
The Obama administration is also taking action to intimidate Republican supporters and contributors as part of the plan, Morris told Schaus.
This includes using the Environmental Protection Agency to hinder manufacturers and the Internal Revenue Service to target conservative groups.
"This is all part of a plan, a scheme to transform the United States into something like Japan and Mexico," Morris said.
Morris continued that Attorney General Eric Holder resigned on Friday just in time so that Obama can get a replacement "who can cover up what he has done in Justice."
Obama, said Morris, knows there will be a Republican majority in the Senate after the November midterms, and he wants to replace Holder before that happens.
"He knows he will lose the Senate," said Morris. "He will get a Republican majority who won't confirm anyone who will be dishonest in the coverup."
That is because Obama's plan for a single-party government is centered in the Attorney General's office, said Morris, including wiretapping, stopping the voter ID law, and more.
But he doesn't believe Obama wants to turn the United States into a socialist country, but instead to "set up decades of dominance by Democrats by making it impossible to have a two-party system.
Meanwhile, he doesn't believe presumptive Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has the same "socialist views" as the president, but still, "she will do everything she can to perpetuate this one-party America."*****
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http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/196891/
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The Blood on Obama's Hands
David Horowitz - October 20, 2014
When conservatives consider the casualties of Obama’s national security policies, their attention is drawn quite naturally to Benghazi. In this shameful episode, the Obama Administration sacrificed an ambassador and three American heroes to protect a deceptive presidential campaign message in which Obama claimed that the war against al-Qaeda was over and won (“Osama bin Laden is dead, and al-Qaeda is on the run”). The facts are these: Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American heroes were sent into an al-Qaeda stomping ground that the British and other diplomatic consulates had already evacuated; they were denied the security they had requested; they were then left to die during a seven hour fire fight when their compound was attacked, and finally betrayed in death, when Obama and his representatives lied to the world about what had taken place and when he failed to bring their killers to justice as he had mendaciously promised he would.
Benghazi can be seen as the collateral damage caused by presidential lies – and worse – presidential denial that there is in fact a war that Islamists have declared on America. Instead Obama insists – in the official language he authorized and that is still in place – that America’s responses to acts of Islamic terror should be described as “overseas contingency operations.” If Islamic murders and beheadings take place in the homeland, Obama calls them “workplace violence.” Benghazi is also the most shameful presidential abandonment of Americans in the field in our history – a disgrace compounded when Obama justified his trade of five Taliban Generals for one American deserter by saying Americans don’t leave their countrymen on the battlefield, which is precisely what he did in Benghazi. All of which justifies the conservative focus on this terrible event.
But the casualties of Obama’s reign in Benghazi are dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands of deaths his policies have led to in Syria and Iraq, and the millions of Iraqis, Syrians and Lybians that those same policies have caused to flee their homes and become homeless in Turkey, Tunisia and other places of refuge. Obama’s legacy is defined by his ideological aversion to American power, his rule as the most anti-military president in our history, and his deeds as an “anti-war” activist, opposed to the “war on terror” because he believes that America’s (and Israel’s) policies are the cause of terrorism and the hatred that Islamic fanatics direct against our country.
Because of his ideological opposition to American power, Obama deliberately and openly surrendered America’s gains in Iraq, which had been won through the sacrifice of thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of American casualties. By deliberately handing over America’s massive military base in Iraq – a country that borders Syria, Afghanistan and Iran – Obama turned that country over to the terrorists and Iran, as his generals and intelligence chief and secretary of defense warned it would. Obama disregarded the warnings from his national security advisers – as no other American president would have – because he regarded America rather than the terrorists as the threat. In abandoning Iraq and deliberately losing the peace, he betrayed every American and every Iraqi who gave their lives to keep Iraq out of the hands of the terrorists and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Obama’s stubborn refusal to use America’s military might – ground forces backed by air power – when Assad crossed the “red line” Obama had drawn in Syria created a second power vacuum that the terrorists filled, thus leading to the emergence of ISIS or ISIL – the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant. Defenders of Obama will claim that the American public would not have supported a military intervention in Syria even if Obama had ordered one. But why is that? It is because for eleven years, beginning with their assault on “Bush’s war” in Iraq, the Democrats have sabotaged the war on terror, claiming that America’s use of power for anything but “humanitarian” purposes is illegitimate, dangerous and the root cause of the terrorist problem.
Because it was “humanitarian” Obama felt justified in conducting an unauthorized, illegal intervention in Libya to overthrow an anti-al Qaeda dictator, saying it was to prevent an invisible threat to civilians there. The result? Al-Qaeda is now a dominant force in Libya, and 1.8 million Libyans – a third of the population – have fled to Tunisia. Another brutal Obama legacy. Yet, how firm is Obama’s commitment to humanitarian interventions? In Iraq he stood by while more than half a million Christians were either slaughtered or driven into exile by ISIS murderers on their mission to cleanse the earth of infidels. This was the oldest Christian community in the world, going back to the time of Christ, and Obama let it be systematically destroyed before bad press and pressure from his own party caused him to intervene to save Yazvidis and a Christian remnant trapped on a mountain top.
The Obama presidency has been an unmitigated disaster for Iraqis, Syrians, and Libyans. Now that ISIS is in control of territory the size of a state, has access to hundreds of millions of petrol dollars and advanced U.S. ordnance, not to mention chemical weapons that Saddam left behind, it is an impending disaster for the American homeland as well.
David Horowitz is the author of the recently published book Take No Prisoners: The Battle Plan For Defeating the Left (Regnery 2014)
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Here is the POTUS response:
"There’s an example of a brother just embarrassing me for no reason, just for no reason whatsoever.”
Could anyone imagine if the guy wasn't a "brother"?
This may have been just a foolish attempt at a joke.
But there is something deeper here. The personality disorder comes out. As though he questions why he is not liked or loved. In his mind he can't understand it. It must all be racism or politics.
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I allowed myself to get suckered into clicking on that girlfriend meme. There's nothing there as far as I can tell. 30 seconds of my life I won't ever get back.
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We are safe.. Dah Bamster is on top of the situation. Another photo op including the naïve nurse who should have been castigating Dah Bamster for not keeping the guy who infected her out of the US like we should be doing.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/26/all-hands-on-deck-white-house-convenes-27-person-ebola-meeting/
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We are safe.. Dah Bamster is on top of the situation. Another photo op including the naïve nurse who should have been castigating Dah Bamster for not keeping the guy who infected her out of the US like we should be doing.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/26/all-hands-on-deck-white-house-convenes-27-person-ebola-meeting/
Six years into the Obama mess, with people dying, SNL is finding some humor in the bumbling iincompetence of this administration:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/10/26/snls_obama_ebola_one_of_my_greatest_accomplishments.html
SNL's PRESIDENT OBAMA: As you know, just two days ago another American, this time a doctor in New York was diagnosed with Ebola. Now, some people want to criticize the way our administration has handled this crisis, and it's true we made a few mistakes early on. But, I assure you, it was nowhere near as bad as how we handled the ISIS situation. I mean, our various Secret Service mishaps, or the scandals of the IRS and NSA. And I don't know if you guys remember, but the Obamacare website had some pretty serious problems too. In fact, if you look at all the stuff that's happened in my second term, this whole Ebola thing is probably one of my greatest accomplishments.
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I am looking (and looking) for a liberal, progressive or leftist arguments that are not false or made of straw.
Making a straw argument is the only attempt they make at truth. Here's one from The One:
"The economy is better now than when I took office."
http://nypost.com/2014/10/03/we-are-better-off-than-when-i-took-office-obama/
http://www.ibtimes.com/obama-us-economy-better-every-measure-2008-1698701
The economy was in free fall when Obama took office, largely because of policies he and his party pushed from the majorities in the Senate and Congress. He approved of the policies that sunk us, and he approved of the emergency measures taken before he took office. The question is not, are things better now than they were at rock bottom. The question is, are things as good as they should be? Are we better off now than we would be if his opponents were in charge these last 6 years? The answer is no. His opponents favor mostly pro-growth policies and he did everything you could to kill off economic growth - unapologetically. He can tell us to suck it up, but don't tell us we're better off. Better off that what? Than if we had even worse policies? these last 6 years? What policies could have slowed the economy more than Obama's?
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“...This huge influx [of immigrants added to the labor force every year] ... threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net.” - Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope, 2006
http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/16/shock-flashback-obama-says-illegal-immigration-hurts-blue-collar-americans-strains-welfare-video/?advD=1248%2C657950
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/11/surprise-obama-once-knew-law-of-supply-and-demand-applies-to-immigration.php
Who knew??
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“...This huge influx [of immigrants added to the labor force every year] ... threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net.” - Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope, 2006
http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/16/shock-flashback-obama-says-illegal-immigration-hurts-blue-collar-americans-strains-welfare-video/?advD=1248%2C657950
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/11/surprise-obama-once-knew-law-of-supply-and-demand-applies-to-immigration.php
Who knew??
So, if one knew that,and their intent was to Cloward-Piven the U.S., they would do what exactly?
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“...This huge influx [of immigrants added to the labor force every year] ... threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net.” - Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope, 2006
http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/16/shock-flashback-obama-says-illegal-immigration-hurts-blue-collar-americans-strains-welfare-video/?advD=1248%2C657950
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/11/surprise-obama-once-knew-law-of-supply-and-demand-applies-to-immigration.php
Who knew??
So, if one knew that,and their intent was to Cloward-Piven the U.S., they would do what exactly?
If he was trying to shrink the workforce, stop startups, stall the economy and put as many people as possible on an assistance dependency track at every phase of their life (witness "Life of Julia"), what would he do differently? Absolutely nothing!
Obama knew the influx of Hispanics hurts economic opportunity for American Blacks (see paragraph at the link before the one quoted) and he still won 98% of blacks on reelection promising open blorders.
Is this intentional or are they stupid or ignorant. Both. I actually think a lot of the ivory tower academics, even in economics, appear ignorant of basic forces in economics in their writing and policies.
Liberals and leftists know they are giving up growth with their anti-growth policies but they think what is left of the economy will have no choice but to produce and fund the programs and freebies they desire. (And The Dual Mission Fed will print the rest!) To them, getting their side reelected indefinitely is a far bigger win than peace or economic success.
But it is not the intent of Obama and the politicians that is crucial. It is the intent of the Obama and his Democratic voter that matters. They don't like Republicans but they also don't like what they are seeing behind their own curtain. At some point the results of leftist over-reach government speak for themselves. Now we see a good number of these people become what the experts call "persuadable".
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Hagel leaving under pressure
Hagel was picked for his anti-war Republican credentials. Also because he was considered a bit of a boob that wouldn't interfere with the White House could control the Defense Dept. We will learn more as this unfolds.
Slow response to ISIS, Ebola.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/us/hagel-said-to-be-stepping-down-as-defense-chief-under-pressure.html
Wasn't up to the job
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2847413/Defense-Secretary-Chuck-Hagel-resigning-role.html
How do you spell Scapegoat?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/how-do-you-spell-scapegoat-h-g-e-l_819819.html
Meanwhile, in a Shift, Obama Extends U.S. Role in Afghan Combat
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/us/politics/in-secret-obama-extends-us-role-in-afghan-combat.html
Surrender isn't turning out to be the best peace strategy.
The Obama learning curve (or lack thereof) has been so painful to so many people on so many fronts.
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(The people of Louisiana already know Mary Landrieu votes with him 97% of the time.)
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/12/in-louisiana-its-bill-cassidy-against-barack-obama.php
It's 2 minutes. Watch the video!
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Superb! Please post in Rants and/or Rule of Law as well!
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Obama Goes To Hospital For Sore Throat
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President Barack Obama went to a hospital on Saturday after complaining about a sore throat, the White House announced.
According to the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, Dr. Jackson, the president’s physician, recommended he go to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington for diagnostic tests.
"According to Dr. Jackson, the test is a matter of convenience for the President, not a matter of urgency," the White House said.
The trip was unscheduled. The press pool, journalists who typically follow the president, had initially been dismissed for the day.
UPDATE: The White House released the following statement from Ronny L. Jackson, the president's physician, noting that Obama's symptoms were "consistent with soft tissue inflammation related to acid reflux."
This morning, an ear, nose and throat specialist from Fort Belvoir Medical Center conducted a fiber optic exam, under my supervision, of the President’s throat based on symptoms of sore throat over the past couple weeks. The exam revealed soft tissue swelling in the posterior throat and I, in consultation with the specialist, determined that further evaluation with a routine CT scan was prudent. The CT scan was conducted this afternoon purely as a matter of convenience for the President’s schedule. The CT scan was normal. The President’s symptoms are consistent with soft tissue inflammation related to acid reflux and will be treated accordingly.
ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
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Michelle O already used her target story for a different purpose. She told Letterman the lady asked to help because she was tall, not because she was black. She was giddy about not being recognized, not a victim of a non-existent racial stereotype.
But can you imagine if she had been mistaken for someone common who WORKED for a living? OMG!
And her husband, voted twice by the American people to be Commander in Chief and leader of the free world, was mistaken for a valet car-parker because of his race!
I didn't know it was racial disparaging to associate blackness with working for a living. This is good news, but not backed up in Obama administration (un)employment data. In fact, Barack Obama has never parked cars and Michelle Obama has never worked in a Target store. They are lifelong, liberal elites.
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http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2014/12/19/mrs-obamas-tall-tales-of-racialized-victimhood-n1933873/page/full
From overjoyed Regular Mom to Oppressed Martyr, can Mrs. Obama's shopping fable get any more absurd?
Mrs. Obama, perpetual victim, hopped from Princeton to Harvard to prestigious law firms, cushy nonprofit gigs, an exclusive Hyde Park manse and a crony corporate board appointment before landing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
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Racism is tough!
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Thomas Sowell today, (Famous people caught reading the forum??):
"Now that Barack Obama is ruling by decree, he seems more like a king than a president. Maybe it is time we change the way we address him. "Your Majesty" may be a little too much, but perhaps "Your Royal Glibness" might be appropriate."
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell123014.php3#etijXTP4TP8HK3XJ.99
Crafty was ahead of the game on this one!
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This story no longer operative since the Sony hack is now considered an inside job. Nonetheless, we should not let President Obama's empty pledge to North Korea go by. He offered that the US we will make a "proportional" response for the cyber attack on an American company. (Sony is American?) http://www.statesville.com/news/us/ap/obama-pledges-proportional-response-to-sony-hack/article_ec0137a9-7b02-53be-b57f-67eba16248b8.html
A little while back I posted in the Foreign Policy thread the concept of "disproportional response" for discussion.
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1864.550 It seems that applies here. I alleged that liberals don't accept that concept and the Royal Glibness has proven me right. No response and proportional response are the only options considered. Anything else would be provocative, or needlessly escalating in their view.
Imagine if the penalty for getting caught in an armed bank robbery was to merely give back the money taken in the one occurrence. That would be the proportional response and it would have absolutely no deterrent effect. Instead we order restitution of the money plus perhaps 15 years imprisonment.
If the penalty isn't greater than the crime, what is the deterrent?
In this case, perhaps it is moot. The President didn't know North Korea does not have internet service. Still, he exposed his naivete on foreign policy options, IMHO.
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Gallop has it 48 approve 48 % disapprove Obama.
That's it folks. No mandate for Republicans. Socialism is in. Done deal.
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Well, it is not like the Reps have been making a case for Freedom , , ,
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http://www.investigativeproject.org/4721/will-we-ever-learn-obama-white-house-cant-admit
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But than expects all of Europe to come see HIM in DC next month at his convenience for a politically correct powwow on his terms and to show case HIM.
Why does he embarrass me? He more than anyone meets the stereotype of the snobby American:
Obama to hold global security summit on Feb 18
PARIS, 12 hours, 42 minutes ago
US President Barack Obama will invite allies to a February 18 security summit in Washington to try and prevent violent extremism, US Attorney General Eric Holder said on Sunday after meeting his European counterparts in Paris.
The gathering of justice and interior chiefs came as France mourned 17 victims of Islamist gunmen this week in the worst assault on its homeland security in decades.
"We will bring together all of our allies to discuss ways in which we can counteract this violent extremism that exists around the world," Holder told reporters.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after the meeting that European interior ministers had agreed to boost cooperation in an effort to thwart further jihadist attacks.
"We all agree that we need to put in place better control on certain passengers, on the basis of objective criteria and with respect for fundamental liberties and without disrupting cross-border travel," he said.
He said Europe needed urgent progress in establishing a European Passenger Name Record database, which would facilitate the exchange of data about passengers between member states.
"We are convinced of the need for such a tool, to follow those who travel to terrorist operating theatres or who return from there," he said, adding that this database would also be useful in the fight against other serious crimes.
Cazeneuve said the Internet needs to remain a space for free expression, but that Europe should fight against abusive use of the web to spread hate speech, anti-Semitic messages and the recruiting vulnerable young people for violence.
"We need to work more closely with Internet companies to guarantee the reporting and if possible removal of all content that amounts to an apology of terrorism or calls for violence and hatred," he said.
Cazeneuve said EU interior and justice ministers planned to meet soon to discuss further action. A European source said the meeting could take place next week in Brussels. - Reuters
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" "We need to work more closely with Internet companies to guarantee the reporting and if possible removal of all content that amounts to an apology of terrorism or calls for violence and hatred," he said."
I'm thinking this needs to be rather closely discussed. Which would be a good thread for this?
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" "We need to work more closely with Internet companies to guarantee the reporting and if possible removal of all content that amounts to an apology of terrorism or calls for violence and hatred," he said."
I'm thinking this needs to be rather closely discussed. Which would be a good thread for this?
China is on the cutting edge of this.
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I thought this would be better under the thread way forward for the Repubs but could not post as thread not used in long time:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_STATE_OF_UNION_GOP_RESPONSE_TEXT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-01-20-22-28-22
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Liar In Chief
Posted By David Horowitz On January 21, 2015
Obama’s State of the Union addresses remind me of nothing so much as the Orwellian speeches of brazen tyrants disjoined from reality and (unlike Obama) untethered from the corrective reporting of a free press. And this one was no different: Our economy is booming, our country is at peace, our enemies are disarmed, our union is strong. For icing on this fruitcake there are particular gems like this: “Since I’ve been President, we’ve worked responsibly to cut the population of Gitmo in half.” Which is why one out of every three Gitmo releases results in the return of a terrorist to the battlefield to kill more Americans. Which is why – for my health of mind – I stopped watching Obama’s speeches live many years ago and now just read them afterwards. This year while the great fabricator was testing the nation’s credulity, I watched a terrific hockey game in which the hits were real and I could relax while I believed my lying eyes.
His smugness also treated his audience to wretched admonitions to practice a better politics: “A better politics is one where we spend less time drowning in dark money for ads that pull us into the gutter” – like, for example, the campaign ad in which he accused his presidential rival, Mitt Romney, of murdering a cancer patient. What I took away from this speech, like the previous ones I’ve had the pleasure of skipping, is that our president is both a deceitful man and a dangerous one. Not of ordinary dimensions mind you, but of dimensions that should make one fear for our country so long as he is in the White House and so long as Democrats and progressives continue to support him.
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This guy brings lying as a President to a new level.
Clinton fudged all the time using legal like twistings of words and when he would shift positions (such as on welfare) he had not. Or like the era of "big government is over" which it certainly wasn't. Yet this guy is really a soft tyrant.
It is astounding. But half the country either is with him or doesn't care as long as they get the goodies.
Or get even with the white man.
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"Obama is offended that congress invited Netanyahu without his approval, not unlike Obama's prior unilateral invitation to S.Korea's leadership to address congress. Meanwhile, the excuse is not to affect Israel's upcoming election, but Kerry is visiting Nigeria just prior to their election on Feb. 14, and now Obama's 2012 field campaign manager and team are in Israel. Can we presume they're there for political purposes? Regardless of what I personally support, I don't like hypocrisy of this sort."
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=30271
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/john-boehner-benjamin-netanyahu-114554.html
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http://www.caintv.com/from-heritage-106-budget-cuts
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http://pamelageller.com/2015/02/obamas-meeting-with-muslim-leaders-included-president-of-hamas-tied-isna-other-islamic-supremacists-and-subversives.html/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/10/axelrod-obama-lied-about-his-opposition-to-gay-marriage-in-2008/
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Ex-imam: Islamic State “animated entirely by Islam. The manner in which they kill – prescribed and outlined in the Koran.”
FEBRUARY 10, 2015 10:52 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER
Obama, Kerry, Biden, David Cameron and the rest — they couldn’t be lying to us, could they? Inconceivable!
“Ex-Muslim Imam Pens Open Letter, Giving Obama A History Lesson About Islam,” Mad World News, February 9, 2015:
President Barack Obama sparked outrage when he compared medieval Christian wars to modern-day Islamic terrorism at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday. He spouted that terrorist groups like ISIS “professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it,” chastising the opposition from getting on “our high horse” when “people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ” during the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition.
Dr. Mark Christian, founder of Global Faith Institute, knows Islamic history too well, being an apostate from the Muslim faith himself. Having experienced the true nature of Islam firsthand as a devout Imam, Dr. Christian penned a fiery open letter to the American leader, which he graciously provided to Mad World News, that includes a blunt history lesson in the unchanging goal of ancient Islam:
President Obama… I realize you thought you were brave and courageous when you defamed Christianity by equating the Crusades and the Inquisition with the present-day barbarism of Islam, but I wonder if your “courage” goes so far as to blame Muslims for the Islamic conquests? Do you have the guts to tell them that in the name of Allah, they invaded nations, practiced ethnic and cultural cleansing, going so far as to erase the very history of conquered lands. Can you tell them that they changed languages and names, enslaved millions and killed an unknowable number of innocent souls simply because they worshiped God, and not “Allah?”. I think not. You know Christians will bow their heads and pray for you whereas Muslims will simply take your head and celebrate.
ISIS is not animated by the usual “reaction to oppression” narrative the Left trots out as an excuse for every instance of horrible behavior, whether that behavior is rioting in Ferguson, Missouri or the systematic slaughter of all those opposed to your ideology.
ISIS is animated entirely by Islam. The manner in which they kill – prescribed and outlined in the Koran. The way they make war – prescribed and outlined in the Koran. The way they treat prisoners – also prescribed and outlined in the Koran.
ISIS does nothing that Mohammed didn’t first do 14 centuries ago.
You see, the problem isn’t a “radical interpretation of Islam,” the problem is the belief in Islam that Mohammed was the “perfect man,” and as such, worthy of emulation in all things.
Until Islam can recognize that their “perfect man” wasn’t perfect, and both did and ordered horrible things to be done – certainly things that have no place in a modern world – then there will always be an ISIS. There will always be those who dedicate their lives to imitating the man who spawned the greatest killing machine in known history…Islam.
Mike Konrad, the pen name of a colleague at American Thinker, has done the math for us in a remarkably cogent piece that deserved far more attention than it received when first published in early 2014.
The President drew a moral equivalence argument at this year’s National Prayer Breakfast between the predation of Islam and the actions of Christians during the Crusades and the Inquisition. The President is not uneducated. He is surely aware of the speciousness of that argument, yet still proffered it as a back-handed justification of the profane brutality of ISIS and other Islamic supremacist groups.
When we think of genocide, the names that spring to mind are Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Of course Mao and his utopian fantasies deserve a place alongside the other luminaries of human devastation; millions suffered and died because of these men.
But, when one looks a bit deeper we discover that when it comes to dealing death, the aforementioned dictators are mere peddlers compared to Islam. People forget that the Islamic conquests began 400 years before the Crusades, which were largely a response to Islamic aggression.
Beginning in the year 1000 and lasting for another 500 years, Islam attempted to depopulate India. They did a remarkably good job of it, as the overall population of the Indian subcontinent (despite very high birthrates) dropped by an estimated 80 million in that period.
Don’t forget that Islam has always been a leader in the trafficking of humans – from the slave trade to present-day prostitution – Muslims have excelled in the sale of their fellows.
Just under 30 million slaves from Africa were held in the Middle East and considering the death rate of slaves in transport (an estimated 80%!) Arab Muslim traders would’ve needed more than a 100 million to have provided the number of slaves we know survived.
While Christianity is forever maligned for forced conversions and bad behavior in Africa, in truth, Muslims performed these atrocities on a scale many orders of magnitude greater, and continued to do so for more than a thousand years.
Of course, we shan’t forget the Islamic slaughter in Sudan, the methodical murder and sexual slavery ongoing in Nigeria or the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by Muslim Turks at the turn of the 20th century.
When Mohammed began his spread of Islam, most of North Africa and all of Europe was Christian. Where are they now? According to the Catholic Education Resource Center, there are no remaining communities of Christians that can trace their roots back to antiquity. Over the span of centuries, this number adds up to millions more dead, at the hands of Islam.
According to Mr. Konrad,
“Possibly one-third to one-half or more of all those killed by war or slavery in history can be traced to Islam.”
The totals boggle the mind. By a conservative estimate, Islam is directly responsible for a quarter of a BILLION dead. Indirectly, hundreds of millions more.
To quote Mr. Konrad,
“Unlike the 20th-century totalitarians whose killing fury consumed themselves, reducing their longevity, Islam paces itself. In the end, though slower, Islam has killed and tortured far more than any other creed – religious or secular. Unlike secular tyranny, Islam, by virtue of its polygamy and sexual predation, reproduces itself and increases.”
Other tyrannies are furious infections, which burn hot, but are soon overcome. Islam is a slow terminal cancer, which metastasizes, and takes over. It never retreats. Its methods are more insidious, often imperceptible at first, driven by demographics. Like cancer, excision may be the only cure.
Mohammed is the “perfect man” of Islam, and as such is the role model for every Muslim. Looking at the horrors perpetrated by Mohammed, it becomes crystal clear that the more devout the Muslim, the more depraved and regressive their behavior.
There is no justification, no moral equivalence to be drawn between the behavior of Christians a thousand years ago, and the behavior of Muslims today. The more salient point is that while the predation of Christianity died away, the worst of Islamic practices are on the rise.
So Mr. President, please focus your attention toward a real problem – Islamic supremacism – the rest of us have the Crusades and the Inquisition under control.
Dr. Christian’s anger is righteous and warranted, and if elected leaders in the U.S. do not heed his word, America will become another conquest of an Islamic Caliphate revived.
Because of Muhammad’s example, Muslims have justifiably wiped out 270 million non-Muslims in their endeavors to establish the world Islamic government their prophet viciously commands.
ISIS is more than an Ottoman army reborn; it is the last attempt at bringing about the apocalyptic rule written in the Quran, which, like all communistic regimes, comes at the price of millions of innocent lives. In fact, it’s as if ISIS’s every decision is made by carefully consulting the Quran and Hadith beforehand, cautiously avoiding straying from the path of Islam. Never before has Islam been so successful in jihad than to force Western nations to bow to Sharia law, and that has been and is the goal of Islam’s political ideology since the time of Muhammad. If the greatest Christian nation on earth cannot even call it by name, there is little chance of preventing it from infiltrating our homeland.
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BO's Blinding Islamophilia
The REAL National Security Threat
By Mark Alexander • February 11, 2015
"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war." --George Washington (1793)
Islamophile: One who is so enchanted by Islam as to be under the influence of its tenets.
In 2009, I noted that Barack Hussein Obama's remarkably brief White House bio began with this fallacious assertion: "His story is the American story -- values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family..." And you can make up the rest.
Amazingly, his BIG Lie bio page has not been altered since then.
So, in an effort to better understand who Obama really is, and where his religious alliances fall, let's briefly review.
Barack was conceived to unwed parents, Ann Dunham and his Kenyan father, BHO senior, both atheists. They were later married and then divorced. When Obama was four, his mother remarried, this time to an Indonesian Muslim, Lolo Soetoro. In his 1995 memoir "Dreams from My Father," Obama wrote that Soetoro subscribed to "a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths."
At the age of 10, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, who might best be described as agnostic. There, he would fall under the spell of an avowed Marxist, Frank Marshall Davis.
As a young adult and budding "community organizer," Obama was taken under wing by a radical black supremacist pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who married Barack and his wife, Michelle, baptized their children and stewarded BO's "faith" for 20 years. For those two decades, Obama also developed close associations with many other leftist radicals, including Michael Pfleger, William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Khalid al-Mansour, Rashid Khalidi, Bob Creamer, Edward Said, Roberto Unger and others.
That is the real Barack Obama bio, and those are his "values from the heartland." Further, while he self-identifies as "Christian" rather than Muslim, that claim may be as deceptive as his bio.
With that in mind, in this seventh year of Obama's seemingly limitless foreign and domestic policy failures, despite the ominous and impending threats from resurgent al-Qa'ida terrorist networks, the Islamic State, and clear evidence that Islamist Jihadis are targeting the USA, Obama never mentioned al-Qa'ida or Islam in his 2015 SOTU address three weeks ago.
Nor did Obama mention Islam when referencing the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris in early January, except to insist again that Islam is the "Religion of Peace."
British journalist Douglas Kear Murray, an expert on Islam, asserts that many Muslims today subscribe to "a creed of Islamic fascism -- a malignant fundamentalism, woken from the dark ages to assault us here and now." He notes, "The claim that Islam is a religion of peace is a nicety invented by Western politicians so as either not to offend their Muslim populations or simply lie to themselves that everything might yet turn out fine. In fact, since its beginning Islam has been pretty violent."
More recently, Obama dismissed the subsequent slaughter of Jews in Paris as an act committed by "a bunch of violent vicious zealots who ... randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli." Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest demonstrated a heroic display of verbal contortionism in endeavoring to explain Obama's assertion that the attack was random. Those "violent vicious zealots" were Islamists, and there was nothing "random" about terrorists targeting a kosher Jewish deli.
Last week, Obama used a Christian forum, the National Prayer Breakfast, to sanctimoniously denigrate Christians. The theme for this year's event was "Remembering the Armenian Genocide of 1915," when more than a million Christians were murdered by Muslims. That notwithstanding, he claimed Christians and Muslims are equal partners in murder and mayhem: "Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place -- remember that the Crusades and the Inquisition committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ." He added, "Slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."
Really? For the record, Obama has ordered drone strikes against Islamic targets that have killed more Muslims in six years than were killed during three centuries of the Spanish Inquisition. (Look it up!) And the Crusades were, arguably, undertaken in the name of "the church," not Jesus Christ. As Islamic scholar and historian Bernard Lewis notes, "The Crusades could more accurately be described as a limited, belated and, in the last analysis, ineffectual response to the jihad -- a failed attempt to recover by a Christian holy war what had been lost to a Muslim holy war."
Clearly, there is nothing in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that advocates or could even be loosely construed to advocate violence against non-Christians. However, there is plenty in the Quran and the Hadith (the teachings of Muhammad) advocating death to infidels. As Franklin Graham reminds us, "Jesus taught peace, love and forgiveness. He came to give his life for the sins of mankind, not to take life."
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the child in Indian immigrants, rebutted Obama's assertion, saying, "It was nice of the President to give us a history lesson at the Prayer breakfast. Today, however, the issue right in front of his nose, in the here and now, is the terrorism of Radical Islam. ... The Medieval Christian threat is under control, Mr. President. Please deal with the Radical Islamic threat today."
As to Obama's reference to slavery, the abolitionist movement to end chattel slavery in the United States 150 years ago was led by white and black Christian men and women, as was the movement to end segregation 50 years ago. Christians of yore were at the forefront of these sweeping changes, while Muslims today are at the forefront of murderous global Jihad.
This metastasizing Islamic threat advocates for a "master race," much as did Adolf Hitler prior to World War II. However, rather than a world dominated by Aryans, Islamists seek a worldwide caliphate of Islamists, or "Jihadistan." And on the subject of percentages, some have suggested that because only 10 percent of Muslims are extremists we need not worry. However, in 1940 only seven percent of Germans belonged to the National Socialist German Workers Party. How did that work out?
Notably, the 2014 Global Slavery Index reports that of the more than 29 million humans held today in captive slavery -- defined as "the possession and control of a person in such a way as to significantly deprive that person of his or her individual liberty, with the intent of exploiting that person through their use, management, profit, transfer or disposal" -- more than 18 million are being held in Islamic countries, primarily (and ironically) in Africa.
Indeed, ISIL has institutionalized slavery in the Middle East.
In an interview this week, Obama delusionally insisted that concern about [Islamic] terrorism is simply media-driven hype: "If it bleeds it leads, right? ... It's all about ratings."
When asked why Obama would posit such a ludicrous assertion, my favorite psychiatrist, Charles Krauthammer, said flatly, "Because he believes it. ... If he was just being cynical as a way to dismiss this because of the failure of his policies, that would be one thing. I think he believes this. ... This is what is so terrifying about the man who is commander in chief of a country, essentially a civilization, under attack."
Krauthammer added, "For the last six years Obama has acted as if the biggest threat American security [in the Middle East] is the Israeli government."
Curiously, at the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama asserted, "We are summoned to push back against those who would distort our religion for their nihilistic ends." Whose religion was he referencing?
Perhaps the answer is found in Obama's many words of praise for Islam since 2009:
"I will stand with [Muslims] should the political winds shift in an ugly direction. ... The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. ... We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world -- including in my own country. ... As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. ... Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. ... Islam has always been part of America. ... We will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities. ... These [Ramadan] rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings. ... America and Islam ... share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. ... America is not and will never be at war with Islam. ... Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism -- it is an important part of promoting peace. ... So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. ... In ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation and education. ... Throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality. ... That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. ... Islam has always been a part of America’s story."
So, why does Obama refuse to mention Islam in connection with worldwide Islamic Jihad that is at our doorstep?
I believe it is because he is, first and foremost, an Islamophile, and thus he has what is almost a pathological blindness to the threat posed by Jihad.
On the other hand, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former Defense Intelligence Agency director, has been very clear in his assessment of our enemy: "You cannot defeat an enemy you do not admit exists. ... There are many sincere people in our government who frankly are paralyzed by this complexity. ... [They] accept a defensive posture, reasoning that passivity is less likely to provoke our enemies. ... A strong defense is the best deterrent. ... The dangers to the U.S. do not arise from the arrogance of American power, but from unpreparedness or an excessive unwillingness to fight when fighting is necessary. I think there is confusion about what it is that we are facing. It's not just what has been defined as 40,000 fighters in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, it's also a large [radicalized segment of Muslims] who or threatening our very way of life. ... We really don't have an effective strategy that is coherent, that actually addresses the wider problem. ... I think what the American public is looking for is ... moral and intellectual courage and clarity, and not a sense of passivity and confusion."
Flynn's assessment follows that of the Director of National Intelligence, Lt. Gen. James Clapper, who, in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said a year ago, "Al-Qa'ida is morphing and franchising itself ... in Yemen, Somalia, in North Africa, in Syria ... and what’s going on there … is very, very worrisome. ... Looking back over my more than half a century in intelligence, I have not experienced a time when we’ve been beset by more crises and threats around the globe.”
Even one of the Democratic Party's most liberal members, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, insisted, "The presence of terrorist groups including those formerly affiliated with al-Qa'ida and others, has spread over the past year. In fact terrorism is at an all-time high worldwide."
And this week, Congress provided the Army an end-run around Obama's classifying Nidal Hasan’s murderous attack at Fort Hood as “workplace violence.” Instead, it is now classified as an act of terrorism and Hasan’s victims will now receive Purple Hearts.
But Obama can't bring himself to call it what it is.
In fact, he insisted this week that climate change is a far greater threat, but noted it's "happening [on] such a broad scale and [is] such a complex system, it’s a hard story for the media to tell on a day-to-day basis."
Fact is, bloody Islamist attacks are also "happening on a broad scale" and on a "day-to-day basis" -- and are getting closer to home every day. The murder of American relief worker Kayla Mueller, as confirmed yesterday, is yet another example of the evil we are confronting.
So, let me script this one for Obama so at his next stump speech he gets it right: "We are at war with radical Islamic terrorists. Violent global jihad poses an immense existential threat to the civilized world, particularly since Iran is, or already has, the capacity to hand its asymmetric surrogates a nuclear weapon."
Pro Deo et Constitutione -- Libertas aut Mors
Semper Fortis Vigilate Paratus et Fidelis
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When something is just cynical politics it doesn't have the same meaning:
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/public-safety-heroes-medal-valor-white-house-article-1.2112253
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Another political move and nothing more. He has never wanted Congress approval before. Even gives a SOTU address in front of them insulting them with veto threats repeatedly. Now he asks for their cover to look strong on terrorism. And yet 45% will vote for him again and again and again if he could run for another election:
http://nypost.com/2015/02/11/obamas-resolution/
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Another political move and nothing more. He has never wanted Congress approval before. Even gives a SOTU address in front of them insulting them with veto threats repeatedly. Now he asks for their cover to look strong on terrorism. And yet 45% will vote for him again and again and again if he could run for another election:
http://nypost.com/2015/02/11/obamas-resolution/
Sad, but true, that a request to congress to approve use of military force against a major threat in the world is a political move. Where was that in Libya, Yemen, etc. It would appear at this point the intent is more to tie the hands of his successor than to defeat the rapists, beheaders and barbarians attacking western civilization around the globe.
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Let's keep this on the "Strategy" thread.
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Credit to Dan from Squirrel Hill (Pittsburgh, PA)
980 well sourced examples of Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc.
https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/
Kind of a long post. The number keeps on growing.
1) Carried out military interventionism in Libya without Congressional approval
In June 2011, U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said that Obama had violated the Constitution when he launched military operations in Libya without Congressional approval.
In April 2014, Ralph Nader said that Obama should be impeached for his actions in Libya.
...
980) Illegally gave 982,000 work permits to illegal aliens and other foreign nationals who were not legally qualified for admission
During Obama’s first six years as President, he illegally gave 982,000 work permits to illegal aliens and other foreign nationals who were not legally qualified for admission.
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I wouldn't dismiss this out of hand. The NE has been the first to break stories the MSM ignore. I would be far more surprised to learn he is not messing around than vice a versa. I know it is his "private life":
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/world-exclusive-obama-divorce-bombshell
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That is more than a year old, and its' prediction remains unfulfilled.
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Sorry but I don't believe Gallup polls:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx
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For a labor strike? Another for Japanese internment camps? Now the guy is making political statements when designating national monuments?
Gotta love this guy's statements at the end:
"Bill Dvorak, who has owned a rafting and fishing outfitting business in the area along the Arkansas River since 1984, said presidential action is the most practical way to protect people's right to boat, fish, hunt and hike in the area.
"With the current Congress, it seems like nothing gets done," Dvorak said."
As though Republicans have been keeping this guy from hunting fishing and boating. (Why was this moron even quoted in this?)
*********The White House said Obama will be in his hometown Thursday to announce the Pullman National Monument.
The neighborhood on the city's South Side was built by industrialist George Pullman in the 19th century for workers to manufacture luxurious railroad sleeping cars. The neighborhood was crucial in the African-American labor movement.
Obama also is expected to announce designation of Honouliuli National Monument in Hawaii, the site of an internment camp where Japanese-American citizens and prisoners of war were held during World War II; as well as Browns Canyon National Monument in Colorado, a 21,000-acre site along the Arkansas River popular for whitewater rafting.
The White House said the three new monuments "help tell the story of significant events in American history and protect unique natural resources for the benefit of all Americans."
The three sites will bring to 16 the number of national monuments Obama has created under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which grants presidents broad authority to protect historic or ecologically significant sites without congressional approval.
Some Republicans have complained that Obama has abused his authority, and they renewed their complaints over the new designations, especially the Colorado site, the largest in size by far among the three new monuments.
Obama should "cut it out," said Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo. "He is not king. No more acting like King Barack."
Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., said he was outraged by what he called "a top-down, big-government land grab by the president that disenfranchises the concerned citizens in the Browns Canyon region" in central Colorado, about 140 miles southwest of Denver.
Designating Browns Canyon as a national monument could have a devastating effect on grazing rights and water rights in the area, Lamborn said.
The 203-acre Pullman site includes factories and buildings associated with the Pullman Palace Car Company, which was founded in 1867 and employed thousands of workers to construct and provide service on railroad cars. While the company employed a mostly white workforce to manufacture railroad passenger cars, it also hired former slaves to serve as porters, waiters and maids on its iconic sleeping cars.
View gallery FILE - In this Aug. 22, 2014 file photo, the Pullman … FILE - In this Aug. 22, 2014 file photo, the Pullman neighborhood’s ornate brick homes that were bui …The railroad industry — and Pullman in particular — was one of the largest employers of African-Americans in the United States by the early 1900s. Pullman workers played a major role in the rise of the black middle class and, through a historic labor agreement won by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, they helped launch the civil rights movement of the 20th Century, the White House said.
The president's visit falls days before the city's mayoral election, where Mayor Rahm Emanuel is seeking a second term. Emanuel is a former White House chief of staff under Obama.
Illinois' two senators, Democrat Richard Durbin and Republican Mark Kirk, hailed the Pullman designation.
"As Chicago's first national park, Pullman's 135 years of civil rights and industrial history will be protected and enjoyed for generations to come," Kirk said in a statement. "This new national park will breathe new economic life into this community, bringing up to 30,000 visitors and more than $40 million each year."
Outdoors and wildlife groups hailed the Browns Canyon designation, which they said would allow future generations to enjoy its spectacular landscapes, world-class whitewater rafting, hunting and fishing.
View gallery FILE - In this Aug. 22, 2014 file photo, Matthew Swalek, … FILE - In this Aug. 22, 2014 file photo, Matthew Swalek, left, and Tyler Belisle hang out on the sto …Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper asked Obama to designate Browns Canyon as a monument after efforts by Bennet and former Democratic Sen. Mark Udall to protect the land failed in Congress.
"Coloradans have been very clear they wanted this protection, along with assurances that existing uses will be protected. We're glad the administration heard those voices and provided those assurances," Bennet said in a statement.
Bill Dvorak, who has owned a rafting and fishing outfitting business in the area along the Arkansas River since 1984, said presidential action is the most practical way to protect people's right to boat, fish, hunt and hike in the area.
"With the current Congress, it seems like nothing gets done," Dvorak said.
Associated Press writer Colleen Slevin in Denver contributed to this report.*********
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(http://1-ps.googleusercontent.com/xk/3g7-M_6SHODJZQ7Hi-qpGp3vAZ/www.powerlineblog.com/i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2015/02/Jobless-Jihadi-copy.jpg,qresize=540,P2C383.pagespeed.ce.Um1zfzBmWOWi_evqKrVO.jpg)
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http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines-2015/eerie-post-from-2008-barak-hussein-obama-is-a-shiite-muslim
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Does Obama Love America or Islam?
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On February 23, 2015 @ frontpagemag.com
Walk into a store and you’ll see piles of red and pink in the Clearance box. Everything from heart-shaped cards and boxes of chocolate candy to plastic flowers and teddy bears clutching plush red hearts will be 50 percent off because Valentine’s Day comes but once a year. And Valentine’s Day is over.
Obama’s love for America also comes but once a year. He tosses it into a speech in the Midwest when his poll numbers are down and then it goes into the clearance box where you can buy his love and his patriotism for 50 percent off. And it’s still expensive at the price because the heart-shaped box is empty.
Greeting card sentiments come easily to the man who will say anything. Obama promised to eliminate income tax for seniors making less than $50,000, vowed transparent open government and promised that you could keep your doctor. His words were empty promises.
Love, of a person or of a country, is not judged by what we say. It is judged by what we do.
Every politician with ambition claims to love America. Most only love themselves. Some love other things. No one can know what is it in Obama’s heart, which is why the media’s shrill demands that Scott Walker affirm Obama’s love for America are silly and cynical, but we can certainly follow his passions.
We show our passions in the things that we really care about. We all have our duties and obligations. Obama’s obligations include delivering speeches praising America, occasionally placing his hand on his heart during the pledge of allegiance (when he can find it) and badly saluting soldiers with a latte cup.
But are these the things he loves and cares about?
We can follow Obama’s passions the way that an adulterer’s trail to his mistress can be followed no matter how many cards or stuffed bears he gives to his wife.
What are the things that Obama is passionate about?
In his first days in office, he signed a number of executive orders. Of his first five orders, three involved Muslim terrorists captured and held in Gitmo. His third executive order was about the “humane” treatment of terrorists. His fourth executive order sought to close Gitmo. Like the man who can’t wait to get away from his wife so he can call his mistress, Obama made his priorities clear from the start.
It took Obama a month to set up the Economic Recovery Advisory Board. It took him two days to set up a Special Interagency Task Force on Detainee Disposition to free Gitmo terrorists.
Obama prioritized helping Muslim terrorists over the economic recovery. Why? Because that was a subject he was passionate about.
People will always prioritize what they are passionate about over what they aren’t. It’s easy to look at a mission shift and see the choice that has been made.
For example, is Obama passionate about space exploration? He told the head of NASA that his “foremost” priority was making Muslims feel good about themselves.
Obama is more passionate about Muslim self-esteem than he is about visiting other planets.
Is he passionate about god and religion? That depends on which god and which religion.
Obama left out “Under God” when reciting the Gettysburg Address. The DNC’s platform initially left out “God” and booed the reinsertion. Obama’s invocation at his inauguration also dropped “Under God”.
However Obama cheerfully recited “Allahu Akbar”, the opening of the Islamic supremacist call to prayer, and called it “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.” He had a man jailed for making a YouTube video attacking Mohammed and blamed him for Muslim acts of terror against America.
Obama’s religious beliefs, such as they are, remain locked in his head. But there is only one religion that he is passionate enough to protect by imprisoning those who blaspheme against it.
He may botch salutes and the pledge of allegiance, but he has retained the ability to chant “Allahu Akbar” with a “first-rate accent”.
He may think that the “good book” says “don’t throw stones in glass houses”, but he accurately quotes the Koran. The things that we remember are the ones that we really care about.
Obama has an obligation to reference the Gettysburg Address, to wait out the pledge of allegiance and to praise America. He has no obligation to quote the Koran or chant “Allahu Akbar”. These are things that he does because he wants to do them. They are the things that he is actually passionate about.
Does he love them more than he loves America? No one can know what is in another person’s heart.
There are married couples who have lived together for decades only to discover that the love of their life had been cheating on them all along. And who is to say that the adulterer doesn’t love? We can’t pass a final verdict on his feelings. But we can know his faithlessness by his deeds.
We can say of him and of Obama that they broke faith with the covenant that they had entered into. We can say that they betrayed those who trusted them, lied to them, used and abused them, and then feigned outrage when their actions were questioned.
Can the media’s furious talking heads denouncing Giuliani deny that Obama lied to Americans? Can they deny that he harmed them? Can they deny that he refused to take responsibility for his actions?
The facts are clear. Only the interpretation is in doubt. And the interpretation is what we are debating.
Does Obama lie to Americans because he loves them? Does he weaken America abroad because he loves it? And if Obama loves America, what does he love about it and how does he show that love? Does he love the Constitution? If he did, he wouldn’t constantly violate it. Does he love Americans? Which Americans? The ones whose health plans he took away for ObamaCare or the ones whose jobs he took away to legalize illegal aliens? The ones whose votes and wishes he ignores and snidely mocks?
Is it the Americans who no longer believe in the future under his rule that he loves? Is it the unemployed Americans he loves? Is it the Americans he jailed under his new laws and regulations that he loves?
If Obama loves Americans, then it’s a clear case of hurting the ones you love.
And if Obama doesn’t love Americans, what America does he love; the rock band or the Walt Whitman poem, the town America in the Netherlands or the Neil Diamond song?
Questioning Obama’s love for America is alleged to be unacceptable gutter politics, but accusing his critics of being racists is a standard debating tactic for those same outraged media talking heads.
It wasn’t gutter politics when Obama claimed that the national debt under Bush was “unpatriotic”. Is Obama at least as “unpatriotic” for increasing the debt by 70 percent? Is it possible that his spending spree proves that he doesn’t love America? Or is indebting our children the way that he shows his love?
Can we question the patriotism of a man who frees terrorists or only of a man who locks them up?
Is asking whether Obama loves America an unacceptable question because the answer is obvious or because it isn’t?
Obama will go on making speeches in which he claims to love America while making the country poorer, more dangerous and weaker. He will also go on making speeches praising Islam while increasing the power, influence and wealth of Muslims in America and around the world.
As the clearance box after Valentine’s Day shows, anyone can buy a card or a teddy bear. It’s the actions that count. It’s not what we say that shows love. It’s what we do that shows what we truly care about.
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http://spectator.org/articles/61849/here%E2%80%99s-guy-rudy-talking-about-frank-marshall-davis-communist-party-no-47544
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Nixon was impeached for this. (yes I know his WH tapes were voluntary on his part) but does not this smack of a cover up in the same way?
Is this not astonishing? If the media will not protect us from tyranny no one will:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/16/white-house-foia-regulations-deleted/24844253/
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What Obama has been permitted to get away with by our press today makes what Nixon did look like shoplifting a 5-cent gumball.
It's breathtaking that our press has VOLUNTARILY become "state-run media" as Rush Limbaugh refers to them.
This isn't going to have a pretty ending. I don't believe the Founders ever conceived of such a treasonous press.
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The Question of Obama’s Allegiances
Posted By David Meir-Levi On March 20, 2015 @ frontpagemag.com
Since before his first term, our President’s words and deeds regarding the Middle East, Jihad, and the Israel-Arab conflict have been confusing.
At first some thought him an incompetent amateur, especially regarding his heavy-handed “reset” of America’s relationship with the Muslim world and with Russia. But many of our presidents have made errors at the onset and then later matured into office.
Then he seemed to be merely a self-absorbed ego-centric narcissist, especially regarding his proclivity for golf vacations during crises. But most of our presidents seem to have been able to separate their personal predilections from their role as leader of the free world.
Then some opined that he was blinded by political correctness, especially regarding his ex-cathedra pronouncements about not implying any connection between Islam and terrorism. But many seemed to think that his concern for the well-being of our Muslim-American citizens, and for the otherwise globally besmirched reputation of supposedly peace-loving Islam, was an appropriate and necessary position in order to uphold American values of tolerance and protection for minorities.
Then he appeared to be simply ignorant of the historical realities of Islam’s commitment to global jihad “…until there is no worship except for Allah,” or perhaps too easily swayed by the gaggle of advisors who surround him. But here one must stop and ask the obvious question: How ignorant about Islam could he be, having himself grown up as a Muslim in a majority-Muslim country?
And one must also note that it was he who selected those advisors.
Nearly a dozen of his appointees to important and even critical government posts are people with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. In addition there is Huma Abedin, a very close confidant to Hillary Clinton, and her connections to the Muslim Brotherhood are well documented. And then there is Valerie Jarrett, “Obama’s Rasputin” (who is neither Iranian nor Muslim, but seems to hold unconscionable sway over the Obama White House and may be the real brains behind Obama’s current policy toward Iran). How deeply have they penetrated, what secrets do they know, how badly has our country’s security been compromised?
And he appointed them. No “guilt by association” here.
The confusion regarding our President’s lax and accommodating attitude and policy toward individuals, terrorist organizations and governments that are unequivocally aligned with our nation’s enemies, some of which have declared war on us, can be dispelled if we analyze his behavior over the last two years.
During the “Arab Spring” he promptly abandoned Hosni Mubarak, a long-time American ally. Then he supported Mohammed Morsi who became President of Egypt in 2012, even though Morsi represented the Muslim Brotherhood, which supports Hamas and other Arab anti-American and anti-Israel terror organizations, and which has as its eternal mission the subjugation of all non-Muslim nations and peoples to Islam, via jihad. He then did his best to undermine Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, who took over from Morsi in a wildly popular coup, even though el-Sisi quickly proved himself the enemy of the Brotherhood and of the Al-Qaeda and of the ISIS forces that had ensconced themselves in the Sinai Peninsula.
He retreated repeatedly from his “red lines” in Syria, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians and facilitating the extension of Iranian hegemony from Iraq to Syria and the Mediterranean Sea, thus bringing into Iran’s cross-hairs the countries of North Africa, Israel, Turkey, Eastern Europe and even the eastern flank of Western Europe.
As quickly as he abandoned Mubarak in Egypt, he abandoned the Yemeni government to a Houthi victory. The Houthi are supported by Iran, whose victory in Yemen means the extension of Iranian control to both sides of the Persian Gulf, the waterway through which half of the world’s oil flows.
In July, 2014, during Israel’s defensive operation against Hamas, Obama telephoned Netanyahu to announce that he wanted an unconditional “humanitarian” cease-fire that would lead to a permanent one. The terms of such a cease-fire would include opening Gaza’s borders with Egypt and Israel and ending Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza coast. Such terms would allow Hamas to quickly rebuild its arsenal, starting with $47 million dollars of US financial support, purchase more missiles from North Korea, and import more building materials to reconstruct its tunnels. In short, Obama sided openly, intentionally, willfully, and forcefully with Hamas, against Israel, and against America’s long-time Sunni Arab allies – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Such an agreement means that Hamas wins big-time; and Israel, America’s ally, loses.
This past February, our President openly supported Qatar despite Qatar’s long history of supporting Hamas with arms and money, hosting al-Jazeera, and recently supplying arms to ISIS terrorists in Libya. But John Kerry said that he was aware of Qatar’s history, so Obama must also be aware, and chooses to support Qatar anyway. That is a choice in favor of America’s enemies.
And our President has made a similar choice in his prolonged negotiations with Iran, even as the Ayatollahs crossed one after another of Obama’s “red lines” and announced repeatedly their intention to develop their nuclear capacities and their missile delivery system. Rather than preventing Iran’s quest for deployable nuclear arms, Obama has facilitated it.
And now he is further facilitating Iran’s ascension to regional hegemony and nuclear power by ignoring Iran’s backing of the Assad regime, Hezbollah, and the growing number of Iranian generals and military experts who are operating in the Golan Heights along the border with Israel. That is another choice in favors our allies’ enemy.
Finally, his recently proposed strategy to combat global Jihad’s threat to Western Civilization offers the last and perhaps most important insight into what Obama is really doing. A full-jihadist-employment program that will bring “Hope and Change” to the world’s worst psychopathic murderers, even as they extend their hegemony over Libya which they promise will be their launching pad for their invasion of the rest of Western Europe, is not his “..lamest attempt at some sort of strategy.” It is not his “entry into the twilight zone.” Rather it is an overt statement of his true ideology, an ideology of which he gave only an obscure hint in a speech last year in which he warned us all that America must be careful to always be “…on the right side of history…” when it comes to our dealings with the Muslim world; but in Muslim parlance the right side of history is Allah’s side.
His is an ideology that requires that he whitewash the most horrific manifestations of Islamofascism, explain them away, excuse, or deny their very existence in order to direct our attention away from the dire existential threat that they pose. But whitewashing evil is complicity with evil, and complicity with evil is evil. How can our Commander-in-Chief, the leader of the Western World, the single most powerful person on the planet, collude so openly with those who are working so furiously to obliterate us?
He cannot be so naïve or so ignorant that he does not know that ISIS is indeed an Islamic terrorist organization, that Islamic terrorism arises not from unemployment but from Islamic ideology, and that an Iran armed with nuclear warheads and a 2,500-kilometer missile delivery system poses a threat to the entire world: a threat that has already begun to spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East which could end in “mutually assured destruction,” the threat of which reined in the world’s nuclear powers during the Cold War but seems irrelevant to the Armageddon mentality of the Ayatollahs. And if he is neither naïve nor ignorant about the dangers to our country and to the world that his policy toward Islamic fascism has helped to create, then why does he support those who pose that threat?
Caroline Glick came the closest to connecting the dots to their terrifying but undeniable conclusion when she opined that Obama may be acting out of anti-Semitism, or perhaps even out of sympathy for Islamic fascism. But “acting out of sympathy” does not quite connect us to that final dot. Sympathy alone is inadequate to explain his facilitating, enabling, obfuscating, whitewashing, and congenially interacting with Islamofascist extremists. There can be only one explanation for his otherwise unexplainable series of decisions and statements that have supported or even facilitated Islamic fascism’s expansion.
What other explanation can there be other than that he wants the Jihadists to win?
What other explanation can there be but that he actually wants Iran to achieve nuclear capacity, to surround Sunni Islam in the Fertile Crescent, to reign as a supreme regional hegemon, armed with atomic weapons, controlling the Straits of Hormuz, and equipped to fulfill the jihadist dream of obliterating Israel and annihilating another 6,000,000 Jews?
What other explanation can there be but that he does not merely sympathize with Islamic fascism, but that he is at one with the ideologically driven psychotic murderers who seek to destroy all of western civilization and replace it with the 7th century barbarism that they call “true Islam”?
What other explanation can there be but that our president is fighting on the side of our enemies, and that he is, therefore, committing treason?
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As plausible as it is bold.
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The award might be satire, but the rest is factual.
http://redstatements.co/google-announces-its-2015-employee-of-the-year-barack-obama/
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One of Obama's Harvard professors likened the president's climate change policies to 'burning the Constitution'
"EPA is attempting an unconstitutional trifecta: usurping the prerogatives of the States, Congress and the Federal Courts — all at once," Tribe insisted. "Burning the Constitution should not become part of our national energy policy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/us/laurence-tribe-fights-climate-case-against-star-pupil-from-harvard-president-obama.html?_r=1
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Some real interesting nuggets in that Google piece , , , :x
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Some real interesting nuggets in that Google piece , , , :x
Posting in more detail. Do we go from this - to Clinton Corp where everything is for sale including the Lincoln bedroom?
[The award might be satire, but the rest is factual.]
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Google Announces It’s 2015 Employee of the Year…Barack Obama
march 29, 2015
After months of searching, Google has finally been able to definitively honor the employee that has done the most for them. He’s a middle level executive with few skills and less ambition, but still, he has contributed more to the wealth of Google than any other employee they have. Even though he is next to worthless for nearly 315 million Americans, he has always delivered for Google and Google has always delivered for him
In 2008 and 2012, Google gave Obama more money than anyone but Microsoft. When the Obamacare exchange was attacked by gremlins and goblins, it was Google that stepped forward and rid the website of the pests. Google’s CEO was very active in Obama’s reelection campaign and was even at Obama’s headquarters on election day, helping to get out the vote. David Plouffe, one of Obama’s closest election advisers said:
“On Election Night [Schmidt] was in our boiler room in Chicago.”
Plouffe went on to tell about other help Schmidt gave them saying:
{Schmidt} “helped recruit talent, choose technology and coach the campaign manager, Jim Messina, on the finer points of leading a large organization.”
The relationship hasn’t been all one sided. Unlike his Nobel prize and the presidency, Obama has actually earned this. In 2012 career employees of the FTC wanted to bring Google up on abusive business practices and other infractions of federal law, when suddenly the word came down that the FTC was dropping the investigation over the objections of the investigators, who had gathered evidence against Google. The FTC decided that owning 67% of the market share and 83% of the mobile share was not a monopoly….much.
Obama’s White House entertained Google executives and lobbyists a total of 230 times, or about once a week. And what were they pressing for? Net neutrality, aided by groups funded by George Soros and the Ford Foundation, to the tune of 196 million dollars. Title II was added to the net neutrality regulations at the request of Google, who knew that the ISP’s would need to be classified as a public utility in order to get it to stand up.
Just days before the regulations were announced, Google read the regulations (No copies were provided to congress, but Google got one) and found 15 pages that they didn’t like, so they had to wait until the FTC removed the pages Google found inconvenient. Google now stands to make tens of billions in new revenue every year thanks to net neutrality.
Lest you think this ends the unholy partnership, you’re wrong. As the undisputed king of internet searches, Google has decided to jury rig their search in order to benefit democrats, whom they will need to make sure net neutrality holds up in the future. They have come up with a plan to try to insure democrats win the 2016 election. They are developing and will soon put into practice a new system for deciding which articles appear first in the searches.
The new criteria is truth. And guess who decides what the truth is? Google.
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“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance. . . .”
(Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776) Wrong thread? )
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:evil: :evil: :evil:
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A Tale of Two Crooks and the IRS
By Robin Smith
With her roots in Roman mythology, Lady Justice represents morality and virtue through three symbols. First, she holds a set of scales in her left hand, to weigh evidence with reason and in light of the law. Second, she wields a double-edged sword in her right hand, representing the remedy impartially provided after the facts are laid bare before her. And third, she wears a blindfold, signifying that the law must be applied with objectivity and equality.
Yet too often politicians seek to lift this blindfold, wanting to redefine justice based on the year’s election cycle or to subvert it through delays, denials and tactics that advance their agenda.
Let’s examine two cases in which the Internal Revenue Service has been used as a tool for political revenge and harassment, and how they reflect an assault on justice that should offend all.
Consider the identical approaches of Richard Nixon and Barack Obama. One a Republican and the other a Democrat, both illustrate power’s ability to corrupt to the extreme, instituting a false democracy where disagreement and disloyalty are silenced by heavy-handed tactics.
Nixon’s legacy as the 37th president is often defined by his impeachment. Posterity's view of Obama is still being penned, but both will be remembered for their unconstitutional misuse of government and for the tenured bureaucrats who willingly complied.
In the Articles of Impeachment adopted by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 1974, most remember Article I, which declared Nixon “impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors” committed surrounding the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972.
The charges leveled by Congress state, “Subsequent thereto, Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation of such illegal entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.”
The break-in and burglary were indeed illegal and brought disgrace to the office of the president. But the obstruction, delays and attempts to conceal the covert activities all demonstrated an egregiously deliberate abuse of the power afforded the president of the United States.
Yet those same Articles of Impeachment issue a second damning charge, accusing Nixon of “using the powers of the office of President of the United States … in violation of his constitutional oath.” Nixon “repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies."
Specifically, Nixon, “acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service” information of citizens he had on his “enemies list” who he deemed politically dangerous to his ambitions.
Today’s ongoing IRS scandal involves conservative political groups whose applications for tax-exempt status were deliberately slowed. This similar flagrant abuse of authority commenced during Obama’s first term, helping him win a second, and it features the Nixonian ingredients of willing participants who delay, obstruct and lie to protect the crimes against innocent citizens.
Last week, Mary Howard, the head Freedom of Information Act officer at the IRS, testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that the agency set up a secret “special project team” comprised of “hundreds of attorneys,” including the IRS Chief Counsel (one of only two politically appointed positions at the IRS by the president himself). She said her “understanding was that it started soon after the request came from Congress and other investigators asking for documents around this whole issue,” which she surmised meant around spring 2013.
Not only were law-abiding citizens targeted by an agency of the U.S. government for their political and religious views, but Obama's henchmen implemented a plan to cover up this activity and delay information from getting into the hands of investigators. Key to this malfeasance is IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins — appointed by Obama — whose office has been directly connected in this harassment and abuse, which includes illegal requests and access to donor information.
Ironically, this unquestionable presidential corruption — the same as the misuse of power that ended in impeachment for Nixon — now leaves Republicans in fear of the political consequences for seeking justice. Democrats simply protect themselves through vindictive attacks and accusations of racism.
There was a day when the law was equally applied regardless of partisan stripe. And history has shown that both Republicans and Democrats can pursue justice for the honor and sake of our nation and Constitution. It's only a matter of time before future generations declare Obama and his administration as lawless, dishonorable deceivers of the American public, corrupt for the sake of ambition and political power.
Justice may be blind, but she’s not stupid.
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Good article but it is not just his glibness guilty of all the above. It is the majority of the Democrat party machine and the 40% of the electorate that moves in tandem with this corrupt mafia like organization that is guilty.
They are all co conspirators.
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“This type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries"
Behring Anders Breivik killed 75, 2011, Norway
Mohammed Merah killed 7, 2012, France
Genildo Ferreira de França killed 14, 1997, Brazil
Michael Robert Ryan killed 16, 1987, UK
Eric Borel killed 15, 1995, France
Friedrich Leibacher killed 14, 2001,Switzerland
Christian Dornier killed 14, 1989, France
Ljubiša Bogdanović killed 13, 2013, Serbia
Derrick Bird killed 12, 2010, UK
Robert Steinhäuser killed 16, 2002, Germany
Tim Kretschmer killled 15, 2009, Germany
Wellington Menezes de Oliveira killed 12, 2011, Brazil
Bai Ningyang killed 12, 2006, China
Juhani Matti Saari killed 10, 2008, Finland
Huanming Wu killed 9, 2010, China
Ahmed Ibragimov killed 41, 1999, Russia
Ami Popper killed 7, 1990, Israel
Antoní Blažka killed 6, 2013, Czech Republic
http://www.powerlineblog.com/?layout=blog
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http://www.dineshdsouza.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/MichelleObamaThesis.pdf
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OBAMA WHINES GOP IS MEAN, FORGETS HE ACCUSED THEM OF TREASON
Poor Obama. Why is everyone being so mean to him?
July 27, 2015 Daniel Greenfield
Ladies and Gentlemen, it's time for another round of America's hottest game show, "Poor Obama".
Poor Obama. Why is everyone being so mean to him? No seriously, Obama would like to know.
“We’ve had a sitting senator call John Kerry ‘Pontius Pilate.’ We’ve had a sitting senator who also happens to be running for president suggest that I’m the leading state sponsor of terrorism,” Obama said, referring to Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas, respectively. “These are leaders in the Republican Party.”
Republican leaders are “shocked,” Obama said, when tycoon Donald Trump, who’s leading the GOP field in polls, questions the heroism of Republican Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “Yet that arises out of a culture where those kinds of outrageous attacks have become far too commonplace and get circulated nonstop through the Internet and talk radio and news outlets,” the president said.
But, the president said, when he is attacked, the people who were outraged on McCain’s behalf “are pretty quiet.”
Attacks circulated non-stop through the internet?
Like the time Obama's allies circulated the trending hashtag #47Traitors directed at Senate Republicans opposed to the Iran sellout?
That hashtag was promoted by obscure online outlets like the New York Times.
And how did Obama respond to it? By charging them with treason and accusing them of "wanting to make common cause with the hard-liners in Iran"
Obama can hypocritically whine about talk radio all he wants, but this is the guy with a history of telling his supporters things like “argue with [people], get in their faces” and “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”.
You can't accuse Republicans of treason and then whine when you get called a state sponsor of terrorism for feeding $140 billion to a state sponsor of terrorism. The former is a disgusting lie. The latter is a fact.
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Quit trashing Obama's accomplishments. He has done more than any other President before him. Here is a list of his impressive accomplishments:
1. First President to be photographed smoking a joint.
2. First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.
3. First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.
4. First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.
5. First President to violate the War Powers Act.
6. First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
7. First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.
8. First President to spend a trillion dollars on "shovel-ready" jobs when there was no such thing as "shovel-ready" jobs.
9. First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
10. First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.
11. First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.
12. First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
13. First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (Chrysler) to resign.
14. First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.
15. First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian nation.
16. First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
17. First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
18. First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.
19. First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.
20. First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
21. First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.
22. First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal).
23. First President to fire an inspector general of AmeriCorps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
24. First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.
25. First President to surround himself with radical left wing anarchists.
26. First President to golf more than 150 separate times in his five years in office.
27. First President to hide his birth, medical, educational and travel records.
28. First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
29. First President to go on multiple "global apology tours" and concurrent "insult our friends" tours.
30. First President to go on over 17 lavish vacations, in addition to date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayers.
31. First President to have personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
32. First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.
33. First President to fly in a personal trainer from Chicago at least once a week at taxpayer expense.
34. First President to repeat the Quran and tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.
35. First President to side with a foreign nation over one of the American 50 states (Mexico vs Arizona).
36. First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance because they "volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences."
37. Then he was the First President to tell the members of the military that THEY were UNPATRIOTIC for balking at the last suggestion.
I feel much better now. I had been under the impression he hadn't been doing ANYTHING... Such an accomplished individual... in the eyes of the ignorant maybe.!.
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this is pure racism about the first Black President.
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If you think the American people can't be trusted with guns, but Iran can be trusted with nuclear weapons, you might be Buraq Hussein Obama.
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:evil: :evil: :evil:
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Gallup approval rating ~ 49%; Absolutely depressing.
:cry:
If one figures a net of 50 million foreign born people in the US and 80% of them are Democrats then a good 10 % of this is them.
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First this from Iran thread, Obama: Rockets Will Fall On Tel Aviv if Congress Kills Deal
Good grief. If Iranian rockets fall on Tel Aviv it will be because they believe this President doesn't stand behind Israel.
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I noticed this too, a new low for the President. But really he is insulting Iranian hardliners by comparing with a group he despises more.
Krauthammer: Obama Comparing Republicans to Iranian Hardliners "A New Low For The President"
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It's vintage Obama, the demonization of his opponent, the lumping them together with people chanting death to America, I must say is a new low for the president considering. Which is saying a lot considering how he does demonize the opposition. But what is even worse here is how delusional he is. He is pretending that those who chant death to America are some kind of KKK fringe in Iran. The people leading the chant of the Revolutionary Guard, the army, the parliamentary leaders and of course -- as he always calls them, Obama always does -- the Supreme Leader himself in a speech he made just a few days after the signing of the agreement the chants break out death to America, death to Israel and the Ayatollah said may Allah hear your prayers.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/08/05/krauthammer_obama_comparing_republicans_to_iranian_hardliners_a_new_low_for_the_president.html
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Well I heard Levin yesterday bash Obama's straw man argument that the choice is either this deal or war. I agree with his premise that this is flawed but not for the reason he suggests. It is flawed because there is simply no other way to stop Iran from getting nukes other than military action. If it is obvious to me than it is obvious to the military and it is obvious they have concluded the strategy of containment has the best risk benefit analysis unless it IS just the strategy of history's greatest man.
WE should have bombed years ago. Too late? I dunno.
But back to Levin's argument. It is not the choice between war and peace that is the issue it is the choice between Iran going nuclear or not.
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My mom, who is intrigued with Trump, tells me his solution was to bomb their oil fields.
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"My mom, who is intrigued with Trump, tells me his solution was to bomb their oil fields."
Crafty, I thought you mom is a liberal Democrat? She likes Trump? :-o 8-)
Bombing their oil industry IS an interesting new thought.
Or we can just vote for Jeb and continue to speak about sanctions, verification, statesmanship and the rest, and I must add the all important "the military option is not off the table" all the while Iran proceeds with their military nuclear program.
BTW I still think Schumer will not cross the party line, ie: Bamster. He has never done so if my memory serves me correctly.
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I heard Ben Carson yesterday morning suggest we confiscate the oil fields now held by ISIS as well. Ayn Rand long ago said that one of the most foolish mistakes we made as a nation was developing the oil fields in the Middle East, and then handing them over to the people that lived there.
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My mom's views move around a bit but overall she is on the right side of things.
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"My mom's views move around a bit but overall she is on the right side of things."
Could it have been your grandmother I was thinking of? I recall you posting in the past someone in your family who was a Democrat in NY.
Not important.
My mother too I think would have been intrigued by Trump's ideas though I am not sure about his personality.
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My mom used to be a liberal Dem many years ago, so that may be what you are thinking of.
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http://www.erickontheradio.com/2015/08/youd-have-thought-me-a-conspiracy-theorist/
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http://www.erickontheradio.com/2015/08/youd-have-thought-me-a-conspiracy-theorist/
Important stuff in there. It's time to take off the kid gloves and tear down the popularity of this guy on the basis of his policies.
Rush L was talking about the clamor for an apology from Trump and said this:
" if anybody owes anybody an apology -- I'm dead serious about this -- it's Barack Obama and the Democrat Party for what they are doing and have done to this country. I mean, there are real things of action taking place that are genuinely transformative and destructive. "
When is Pres. Barack Obama going to apologize to America? Never, of course. That doesn't mean the demands for an apology shouldn't keep increasing until the day he leaves office and beyond.
Letting him off the hook for what he has done will lead to electing more of the same or worse in the future.
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http://www.erickontheradio.com/2015/08/youd-have-thought-me-a-conspiracy-theorist/
Important stuff in there. It's time to take off the kid gloves and tear down the popularity of this guy on the basis of his policies.
Rush L was talking about the clamor for an apology from Trump and said this:
" if anybody owes anybody an apology -- I'm dead serious about this -- it's Barack Obama and the Democrat Party for what they are doing and have done to this country. I mean, there are real things of action taking place that are genuinely transformative and destructive. "
When is Pres. Barack Obama going to apologize to America? Never, of course. That doesn't mean the demands for an apology shouldn't keep increasing until the day he leaves office and beyond.
Letting him off the hook for what he has done will lead to electing more of the same or worse in the future.
It isn't Barrack that owes an apology. It's everyone that supports him and that should be forcefully driven into exile, and I'm definitely saying that unapologetically. That applies to Republicans as well, who have their own series of shenanigans to lay claim to.
The faster this all hits bottom, the better. Both parties and their supporters are criminal.
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By the way, far from being one to complain and not offer a solution;
The Democrats are all fatally flawed inasmuch as they depend on the government tit and though they say they don't, they are just as inclined to push their moral codes onto others (try hunting a lion or giraffe and posting pictures of it), whilst crying about religious ethics being thrust upon them.
The Conservatives cater to the ridiculously rich and are far from the patriots they believe themselves to be, because they have no problem sending jobs abroad.
Neither believe in freedom, not really.
Anarchy is freedom... it is a perfect state of chaos where everything is responsible for itself or dies. It's perfect.
The closer we can get to that, to the individual being responsible for the individual, the greater degree of freedom we will enjoy. The problem is that people don't really want freedom. They want safety and riches. When rich, they want to be richer and lazier.
Nature was never designed for that.
Get rid of both parties, impose term limits and free association, negate 95% of the laws on the books, arm yourselves and get rid of the police. Let foreign armies invade and kill them (if everyone is armed, it shouldn't be an issue.... not even Russia or the States can hammer a few mujahideen - The Bear Went Over the Mountain type of deal), and go back to the way things used to be before politics evolved. The Hammurabi was arguably the worlds first great mistake in that, it sought to control where control is not possible. Everything since then has been based on irresponsibility or a lie.
Most people couldn't hack it.
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Valerie Jarrett, we hate the carried interest loophole - except when we save ourselves hundreds of thousands in taxes.
http://freebeacon.com/politics/valerie-jarrett-saved-200k-on-real-estate-deal-using-tax-loophole-she-opposes/
Fair to me to use the existing tax code, but imagine their attacks if it was a Republican doing it.
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http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/11/flashback-obama-promises-no-vacations-for-himself-as-president-video/
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Two key determinants of the 2016 Presidential elections are a) the approval of the President and b) the perception of the performance of the economy coming into the election. Both are currently tanking for the President.
For 6 1/2 years we have heard that the performance of the stock market somehow proves the economy is healthy and that Americans mostly approve of this President. Whoops. Down goes the market (http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/21/all-three-major-indexes-are-having-worst-week-since-2011.html) and in a separate matter it looks like the President is again 10 points underwater in job (dis)approval in the last 4 major polls.
Gallup 8/20 - 8/22 42 Approve, 53 Disapprove. Net: -11
Rasmussen 8/18 - 8/20 44 54 -10
Reuters/Ipsos 8/15 - 8/19 43 52 -9
The Economist 8/15 - 8/17 43 53 -10
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html
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Wait until tomorrow.
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"Wait until tomorrow"
Today it will be we need "Hillary" to save us.
Bad news too; he returned from vacation so he can screw us even more.
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"Wait until tomorrow"
Today it will be we need "Hillary" to save us.
Bad news too; he returned from vacation so he can screw us even more.
Hillary will put the national debt on a server and....
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:lol: :lol: :cry:
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THIS MAY BE OBAMA'S DUMBEST GUN CONTROL ARGUMENT YET
August 27, 2015 Daniel Greenfield
And that's saying something.
Obama is determined to fight his gun control Jihad and attempted to exploit the racist murder of two white reporters by pushing his own political agenda in the dumbest way possible.
“It breaks my heart every time you read about or hear about these kinds of incidents,” Obama said. “What we know, is that the number of people who die from gun-related incidents around this country dwarfs any deaths that happen through terrorism.”
Since the set of people killed by guns includes terrorist attacks, this is a stupid and meaningless thing to say.
Obama could have equally said that more people are murdered than are murdered by terrorists. Or that more people died in wars than in WW2.
The various statistical attempts to minimize 9/11 that the left has been pushing all these years (more people die in car accidents in a year, etc) are obnoxious enough, but this is really aimed at liberals so stupid they have trouble walking upright.
Since gun-related incidents include suicides, Obama is giving us the incredible news that the total number of ways in which people are killed by guns is greater than any specific way they can be killed by guns.
Also the total number of ways in which people can die is greater than any specific way people can die, including gun-related incidents, therefore we shouldn't take them seriously, because despite Obama's Ivy League education, he has no concept of logical reasoning.
I'm not clear on the number of people who have been killed by carbon dioxide, but Obama has been turning the country upside down and destroying jobs even faster than usual fighting it. But if it kills fewer people than all the other gases combined, including it, we don't need to worry about it.
That's Obama logic. It's close enough for government work. Unfortunately.
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/comic/short-sale-2/
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2015/09/20-reasons-why-it-is-completely.html
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OBAMA THROWS CHRISTIAN REFUGEES TO LIONS
While America prepares to take in tens of thousands of Muslims, Obama is deporting Christians back to ISIS on a technicality.
September 28, 2015
Raymond Ibrahim
202106
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.
The fate of those Iraqi Christians who had fled from the Islamic State only to be incarcerated in the United States has finally been decided by the Obama administration: they are to be thrown back to the lions, where they will likely be persecuted if not slaughtered like so many Iraqi Christians before them.
Fifteen of the 27 Iraqi Christians that have been held at a detention center in Otay Mesa, California, for approximately six months, are set to be deported in the coming weeks. Some have already been deported and others are being charged with immigration fraud.
Many of the Iraqi Christian community in San Diego—including U.S. citizen family members vouching for the refugees—had hopes that they would eventually be released. Mark Arabo, a spokesman for the Chaldean community, had argued that “They’ve escaped hell [IS]. Let’s allow them to reunite with their families.” One of the detained women had begged to see her ailing mother before she died. The mother died before they could reunite, and now the daughter is to be deported, possibly back to the hell of the Islamic State.
Why are Christian minorities, who are the most to suffer from the chaos engulfing the Middle East, the least wanted in the United States?
The answer is that the Obama administration defines refugees as people “persecuted by their government.” In other words, the only “real” refugees are those made so due to the actions of Bashar Assad. As for those who are being raped, slaughtered, and enslaved based on their religious identity by so-called “rebel” forces fighting Assad—including the Islamic State—their status as refugees is evidently considered dubious at best.
As Abraham H. Miller argues in “No room in America for Christian refugees”: “What difference does it make which army imperils the lives of innocent Christians? Christians are still be[ing] slaughtered for being Christian, and their government is incapable of protecting them. Does some group have to come along—as Jewish groups did during the Holocaust—and sardonically guarantee that these are real human beings?”
In fact, from the start of Western meddling in the Mideast in the context of the “Arab Spring,” Christians were demonized for being supportive of secular strongmen like Assad. In a June 4, 2012 article discussing the turmoil in Egypt and Syria, the Independent’s Robert Fisk scoffed at how the Egyptian presidential candidate “Ahmed Shafiq, the Mubarak loyalist, [and rival to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi] has the support of the Christian Copts, and Assad has the support of the Syrian Christians. The Christians support the dictators. Not much of a line, is it?”
More than three years later, the Western-supported “Arab Spring” proved an abysmal failure and the same Christian minorities that Fisk took to task were, as expected, persecuted in ways unprecedented in the modern era.
Even without defining refugees as people “persecuted by their government,” the Obama administration never seems to miss an opportunity to display its bias for Muslims against Christians. The U.S. State Dept. is in the habit ofinviting scores of Muslim representatives but denying visas to solitary Christian representatives.
While habitually ignoring the slaughter of Nigerian Christians at the hands of Boko Haram, the administration called for the “human rights” of the jihadi murderers. And when persecuted Copts planned on joining the anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution, Obama said no. Then there is the fact that every Arab nation the Obama administration has meddled in—especially, Libya and Syria—has seen a dramatic nosedive in the human rights of Christian minorities.
The Obama administration’s bias is evident even regarding the Iraqi Christians’ illegal crossing of the U.S.-Mexico border, the occasion on which they were arrested. WND correctly observes: “At the same time the Obama administration [is] deporting Christians, it has over the years allowed in hundreds of Muslim migrants from Africa and the Middle East who crossed the Southern border the same way the Chaldeans did.”
Meanwhile, as the Obama administration nitpicks at the definition of refugee and uses it against severely persecuted Christian minorities, it turns out that four out of five migrants—or 80 percent—are not even from Syria.
And while Christian minorities pose little threat to the United States—indeed, they actually bring benefits to U.S. security—Muslims all around the U.S. are supporting the Islamic State and Muslim clerics are relying on the refugee influx to conquer Western nations, in the Islamic tradition of Hijra, or jihad by emigration.
As Koran 4:100 puts it: “And whoever emigrates for the cause of Allah will find on the earth many locations and abundance. And whoever leaves his home as an emigrant to Allah and His Messenger and then death overtakes him—his reward has already become incumbent upon Allah.”
In Islamic usage, the “cause of Allah” is synonymous with jihad to empower and enforce Allah’s laws on earth, or Sharia. In this context, immigrating into Western lands is a win-win for Muslims: if they die in the process somehow, paradise is theirs; if they don’t, the “locations and abundance” of the West are theirs.
All the while, true Christian refugees, fleeing the same hostile Muslim forces being allowed to enter Europe and America by the thousands, are thrown back to the lions by the Obama administration.
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Pulitzer Prize winner Bret Stephens has an article today pointing out that the President who likes to talk about teachable moments is completely unteachable on foreign policy. (He is unteachable on economics too)
Excerpts:
"Recall that it wasn’t long ago that Mr. Obama took a sunnier view of world affairs. The tide of war wasreceding. Al Qaeda was on a path to defeat. ISIS was “a jayvee team” in “Lakers uniforms.” Iraq was an Obama administration success story. Bashar Assad’s days werenumbered. The Arab Spring was a rejoinder to, rather than an opportunity for, Islamist violence. The intervention in Libya was vindication for the “lead from behind” approach to intervention. The reset with Russia was a success, a position he maintained as late as September 2013. In Latin America, the “trend lines are good.”
...
It’s a remarkable record of prediction. One hundred percent wrong.
...
", the U.S. can relax because History is on our side, and the arc of history bends toward justice. Why waste your energies to fulfill a destiny that is already inevitable? And why get in the way of your adversary’s certain doom?
It’s easy to accept this view of life if you owe your accelerated good fortune to a superficial charm and understanding of the way the world works. It’s also easier to lecture than to learn, to preach than to act. History will remember Barack Obama as the president who conducted foreign policy less as a principled exercise in the application of American power than as an extended attempt to justify the evasion of it.
From Aleppo to Donetsk to Kunduz, people are living with the consequences of that evasion."
Bret Stephens, WSJ.com
-----------------------------------
Translation:
Aleppo is Syrian city under siege by ISIS.
Donetsk is a Soviet Russian controlled region of Ukraine.
Kunduz is a 300,000 population city in Afghanistan that fell Monday to the Taliban under Obama's retreat.
All happened while our President assured us that things were on the right track.
It is time to call out this President (and his former Secretary) on their abysmal record of failure. His job approval from honest people should be zero.
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Yes they will!
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-customers-will-accept-paying-more-for-higher-minimum-wage/article/2573643?custom_click=rss
It would be fun to submit this paper to Econ professors for grading with the name President Obama removed from it anbd see who gives it a passing grade.
I thought that a government mandated minimum wage on private businesses was a just intended to force the presumed rich, greedy businesses to pay what they could easily afford to pay out of their wrongful profits. Now proponents admit it is a tax on consumption. Of course it is! It is a tax on employment too. You don't pay the minimum wage tax if you can automate instead and eliminate the job. ANd you don't pay it if you close your doors instead.
Tax it and you will get less of it, Econ 101. Less consumption, less employment, hiring, fewer businesses and fewer and fewer people getting and holding the so-called raise - more pay for the same level of work.
Of course it isn't a raise anyway, for anyone, if you have to pay more for everything you buy with it - even if you still had your job.
In that case under liberal-think (oxymoron), simply raise minimum wage again to afford the new, higher prices, and raise all other wages too to keep pace (and get less of them too!) and raise prices again, and repeat and repeat and repeat...
Back to the 70s...
(Bernie Sanders wants a top tax rate of 90% in Obama's third term and Hillary wants Executive power to shut down Congressional inquiries.)
And they say its Republicans who want to take us back in time.
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Pulitzer Prize winner Bret Stephens has an article today pointing out that the President who likes to talk about teachable moments is completely unteachable on foreign policy. (He is unteachable on economics too)
Excerpts:
"Recall that it wasn’t long ago that Mr. Obama took a sunnier view of world affairs. The tide of war wasreceding. Al Qaeda was on a path to defeat. ISIS was “a jayvee team” in “Lakers uniforms.” Iraq was an Obama administration success story. Bashar Assad’s days werenumbered. The Arab Spring was a rejoinder to, rather than an opportunity for, Islamist violence. The intervention in Libya was vindication for the “lead from behind” approach to intervention. The reset with Russia was a success, a position he maintained as late as September 2013. In Latin America, the “trend lines are good.”
...
It’s a remarkable record of prediction. One hundred percent wrong.
...
", the U.S. can relax because History is on our side, and the arc of history bends toward justice. Why waste your energies to fulfill a destiny that is already inevitable? And why get in the way of your adversary’s certain doom?
It’s easy to accept this view of life if you owe your accelerated good fortune to a superficial charm and understanding of the way the world works. It’s also easier to lecture than to learn, to preach than to act. History will remember Barack Obama as the president who conducted foreign policy less as a principled exercise in the application of American power than as an extended attempt to justify the evasion of it.
From Aleppo to Donetsk to Kunduz, people are living with the consequences of that evasion."
Bret Stephens, WSJ.com
-----------------------------------
Translation:
Aleppo is Syrian city under siege by ISIS.
Donetsk is a Soviet Russian controlled region of Ukraine.
Kunduz is a 300,000 population city in Afghanistan that fell Monday to the Taliban under Obama's retreat.
All happened while our President assured us that things were on the right track.
It is time to call out this President (and his former Secretary) on their abysmal record of failure. His job approval from honest people should be zero.
His life as an affirmative action baby failed to prepare him for a world that didn't have white guilt.
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http://allindiaroundup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Know-How-Ahmed-Mohammeds-Clock-Works-And-Pictures.png
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http://allindiaroundup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Know-How-Ahmed-Mohammeds-Clock-Works-And-Pictures.png
Only the special kind of stupid found in our pResident and his cultists. It was a 70's era Radio Shack clock pulled from it's case and moved to a pencil case.
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This kid's father certainly has done well for himself in America. Yet he is so insulted. Big deal. Of course the left jumps on this arrest like it is important.
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This kid's father certainly has done well for himself in America. Yet he is so insulted. Big deal. Of course the left jumps on this arrest like it is important.
It was a CAIR psyop, and the lefty lemmings fell into place like the useful idiots they are.
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GM says "It was a CAIR psyop, and the lefty lemmings fell into place like the useful idiots they are"
Agree. The lefty lemmings are actively complicit and happy to portray Americans as bigoted so they can continue to import future Democrats into this county.
I forgot to post this about the old man who is playing it up for all it's worth. Obviously he is a wheeling and dealing opportunist:
Muslims now playing the race card.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Elhassan_Mohamed
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http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/09/hoax-exposed-muslim-student-ahmed-mohameds-briefcase-clock-is-1970s-digital-alarm-clock/
Unless he rode the short bus to school, young Haji knew that prying the guts out of an old clock and moving it to the pencil box doesn't meet the definition of invention.
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http://joemiller.us/2013/06/obamas-columbia-30th-anniversary-and-no-classmate-remembers-seeing-him/#Jfq8S71kCcwcr3m2.99
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http://joemiller.us/2013/06/obamas-columbia-30th-anniversary-and-no-classmate-remembers-seeing-him/#Jfq8S71kCcwcr3m2.99
Ah, if only he were a republican, then the media might have vetted him.
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Interesting CD. I think anyone would agree that it is nothing short of ASTONISHING that no one from that class can remember him in any way though he is now the President.
Very strange indeed.
Does this guy remember any Muslim students? It seems the only one or two people that seem to remember him but are for the most part staying mum are Muslim roommates.
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what Obama says:
******New York Post
The FBI & Hillary’s e-mails: A Lois Lerner precedent?
By Post Editorial Board
October 26, 2015 | 2:11pm
The FBI & Hillary’s e-mails: A Lois Lerner precedent?
The fix was in: Lois Lerner will walk away scot-free.
On Friday, the Justice Department closed its two-year investigation into the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status and decided to charge . . . no one.
This, when Lerner admitted the IRS had singled out righty groups, but blamed the “absolutely inappropriate” actions on “front-line people” — that is, lower-level folks. And then refused to answer more questions by pleading the Fifth.
Questions about, say, her orders to hold up applications from any outfit with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in its name.
In a letter Friday, Justice told Congress: “We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.”
In other words, exactly what President Obama ordered up — er, predicted. Back when the “investigation” had barely started, Obama told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly there wasn’t “even a smidgen of corruption” in the case. On “The Daily Show,” he explained that the “real scandal” is that the IRS lacks the budget to do more audits.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a member of the House Oversight Committee, notes: “Here’s a lady who systematically and for a sustained period of time targeted people for exercising their most fundamental rights, their First Amendment free-speech rights. … The chief investigator, the chief lawyer assigned to the Justice Department to evaluate this, was Barbara Bosserman — a maxed-out contributor to the president’s campaign.”
“So it shouldn’t be any surprise the Justice Department said there’s nothing wrong here. But the American people know that there is.”
Wondering what the FBI probe will conclude about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private account and server for all her State Department e-mails? Well, Obama already told CBS’s Steve Kroft that it didn’t make for a “national security problem. . . I can tell you that this is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”
If the Lois Lerner case is any precedent, the FBI might as well wrap up its Clinton probe right now.
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http://louderwithcrowder.com/dear-president-obama-can-you-finally-admit-it-now-clock-boy-punkd-you/
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/359792.php
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R6bldKdVNY
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/11/13/the-insiders-what-obamas-futile-quest-for-a-legacy-means-for-the-2016-campaign/
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The attacks in Paris are "a setback"
"I haven't seen anyone with a plan"
- Read the forum, Mr. President.
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John Kerry said: We are all Pah-reee-zhans now.
Should have said: We are all Israelis now.
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John Kerry said: We are all Pah-reee-zhans now.
Should have said: We are all Israelis now.
Only right wing Americans feel an alliance with Israel. This president and his administration are waging a Cold War against Israel.
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Regarding reluctance to settle Syrian refugees in the US:
Are we haters? No. We are managing risk, like everyone does and like the President should be doing.
- A point made by Glenn Beck on radio today.
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https://www.commentarymagazine.com/politics-ideas/barack-obama-bitter-graceless/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWKSsxfjBH8
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More from Gallup:
--44 percent approved of Obama’s handling of the economy, and 54 disapproved.
--44 percent approved of Obama’s handling of healthcare policy and 54 percent disapproved.
--37 percent approved of Obama’s handling of foreign affairs and 59 percent disapproved.
--30 percent approved of Obama's handling of ISIS and 64 percent disapproved.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/186647/approval-obama-handling-economy-healthcare.aspx?g_source=Politics&g_medium=newsfeed&g_campaign=tiles
Upside down by 10 points on domestic issues. Upside down by 22 points or more on foreign policy.
Glad I'm not running for Obama's 3rd term. Isn't Obama's foreign (and domestic) policy also Hillary's?
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To crossword puzzle players around the world,
'ISIL' and 'ISIS' may start showing up in crossword puzzles under the following clue:
4 letter word for 'Obama legacy'.
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C-SPAN is now asking the question............is Obama Muslim? Personally, with all of the Obama "gaffes" suggesting that he was Muslim, his willing appeasement of Muslim fanatics, his statements that he would support Muslims over the US, I have held the low information voter opinion that he is in fact Muslim.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/11/c-span-asks-question-did-president-obama-just-admit-he-was-muslim-video/ (http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/11/c-span-asks-question-did-president-obama-just-admit-he-was-muslim-video/)
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:-o :-o :-o
In a related vein , , , http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/09/flashback-jeremiah-wright-i-made-it-comfortable-for-obama-to-accept-christianity-without-having-to-renounce-islam-video-report/
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Gallows humor I suppose, but funny in a way that Assad will outlast Obama.
In fairness, Iran's nuclear program outlasted Bush-Cheney.
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http://news.yahoo.com/obama-us-not-relent-islamic-state-campaign-080929228--politics.html#
"ISIS cannot strike a mortal blow" against the U.S.(still the J_V team), and he warned [against] overreacting to the Paris attacks
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http://news.yahoo.com/obama-us-not-relent-islamic-state-campaign-080929228--politics.html#
"ISIS cannot strike a mortal blow" against the U.S.(still the J_V team), and he warned [against] overreacting to the Paris attacks
ISIS can't because Obama is.
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Except for Yogi Berra and Willie Mays all these awards can be tied to some liberal agenda. No surprise. Any Republican celebrities?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3331587/Obama-recognizes-17-nations-highest-civilian-award.html
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Obama Has Just Begun
How much damage can he do in his last year in office?
By Victor Davis Hanson — November 24, 2015
Insidiously and inadvertently, Barack Obama is alienating the people and moving the country to the right. If he keeps it up, by 2017 it will be a reactionary nation. But, counterintuitive as it seems, that is fine with Obama: Après nous le déluge.
By sheer force of his personality, Obama has managed to lose the Democratic Senate and House. State legislatures and governorships are now predominantly Republican. Obama’s own favorable ratings rarely top 45 percent. In his mind, great men, whether Socrates or Jesus, were never appreciated in their time. So it is not surprising that he is not, as he presses full speed ahead.
Obama certainly has doubled down going into his last year, most recently insisting on letting in more refugees from the Middle East, at a time when the children of Middle Eastern immigrants and contemporary migrants are terrorizing Europe. What remaining unpopular executive acts might anger his opponents the most? Close down Guantanamo, let thousands more refugees into the United States, free thousands more felons, snub another ally, flatter another enemy, weigh in on another interracial melodrama, extend amnesty to another million illegal aliens, make global warming laws by fiat, expand Obamacare, unilaterally impose gun control? In lieu of achievement, is the Obama theory to become relevant or noteworthy by offending the public and goading political enemies?
An Obama press conference is now a summation of all his old damn-you clichés — the fantasy strawman arguments; the caricatures of the evil Republican bogeymen; the demagogic litany of the sick, the innocent, and the old at the mercy of his callous opponents; the affected accentuation (e.g., Talîban; Pakîstan, Îslám, Latînos, etc.) that so many autodidacts parade in lieu of learning foreign languages; the make-no-mistake-about-it and let-me-be-clear empty emphatics; the flashing temper tantrums; the mangled sports metaphors; the factual gaffes; and the monotonous I, me, my, and mine first-person-pronoun exhaustion. What Obama cannot do in fact, he believes he can still accomplish through invective and derision.
In the 2016 election campaigns, most Democratic candidates in swing states will have distanced themselves from the last eight years. Otherwise, they would have to run on the patently false premise that American health care is more affordable and more comprehensive today than it was in 2009; that workforce participation is booming; that scandals are a thing of the past; that the debt has been addressed; that Obama has proved a healer who brought the country together; that immigration at last is ordered, legal, and logical; that the law has never been more respected and honored; that racial relations are calmer than ever; that the campuses are quiet; that the so-called war on terror is now over and won with al-Qaeda and ISIS contained or on the run; that U.S. prestige aboard has never been higher; that our allies appreciate our help and our enemies fear our wrath; that Iran will now not go nuclear; that Israel is secure and assured of our support; and that, thanks to American action, Egypt is stable, Libya is ascendant, Iraq is still consensual, and the Middle East in general is at last quiet after the tumultuous years of George W. Bush.
The hordes of young male migrants abandoning the Middle East for the West are merely analogous to past waves of immigrants and should be uniformly welcome. For Obama, there is no connection between them and his slashing of American involvement in the Middle East — much less any sense of responsibility that his own actions helped produce the crisis he now fobs off on others.
If an American president saw fit to attack fellow Americans from abroad, and lecture them on their illiberality, there are better places from which to take such a low road than from Turkey, the embryo of 20th-century genocide, and a country whose soccer crowds were recently shouting, “Allahu akbar!” during what was supposed to be a moment of silence offered to the Paris dead. Surely an American president might suggest that such grassroots religious triumphalism about mass death is much more reprehensible behavior than are his own fellow citizens’ demands to vet the backgrounds of refugees.
If you suggested to Obama that, in his search for a contrarian legacy, he should do something to stop the slaughter in the Middle East and be careful about letting in more unexamined refugees, in answer, he would be more likely to do less than nothing abroad and vastly expand the influx of migrants. Getting under his critics’ skin is about all that is left of a failed presidency.
Many of our observers still do not quite grasp that Obama will end his presidency by seeking to get his opponents’ goat — and that his resentment will lead to some strange things said and done.
Few foresaw this critical element of the Obama character. The tiny number of prescient pundits who warned what the Obama years would entail were not the supposedly sober and judicious establishment voices, who in fact seemed to be caught up in the hope-and-change euphoria and missed entirely Obama’s petulance and pique: the Evan Thomases (“he’s sort of god”), or the David Brookses (“and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” “It is easy to sketch out a scenario in which [Obama] could be a great president.”), or the Chris Matthewses (“the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”), or the Michael Beschlosses (“Uh. I would say it’s probably — he’s probably the smartest guy ever to become President.”), or the Chris Buckleys (“He has exhibited throughout a ‘first-class temperament,’ pace Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man”), or the Kathleen Parkers (“ . . . with solemn prayers that Obama will govern as the centrist, pragmatic leader he is capable of being”), or the Peggy Noonans (“He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief.”).
In truth, it was the loud, sometimes shrill, and caricatured voices of talk radio, the so-called crazy Republican House members, and the grassroots loudmouths of what would become the Tea Party who had Obama’s number. They warned early on that Barack Obama’s record was that of a petulant extremist, that his writing presaged that he would borrow and spend like no other president, that his past associations gave warning that he would use his community-organizing skills cynically to divide Americans along racial lines, that nothing in his past had ever suggested anything other than radicalism and an ease with divisive speech, that his votes as a state legislator and as a U.S. senator suggested that he had an instinctual dislike of the entrepreneur and the self-made businessman, and that his past rhetoric advised that he would ignore settled law and instead would rule by fiat — that he would render immigration law null and void, that he would diminish the profile of America abroad, and that he would do all this because he was an ideologue, with no history of bipartisanship but a lot of animus toward his critics, and one who saw no ethical or practical reason to appreciate the more than 60 years of America’s postwar global leadership and the world that it had built. Again, the despised right-wingers were right and the more moderate establishment quite wrong.
Abroad, from Obama’s post-Paris speeches, it is clear that he is now bored with and irritated by the War on Terror. He seems to have believed either that Islamist global terror was a minor distraction with no potential for real harm other than to bring right-wingers in backlash fashion out of the woodwork, or that it was an understandably radical manifestation of what was otherwise a legitimate complaint of Islam against the Western-dominated global system — thus requiring contextualization rather than mindless opposition.
A lot of ambitious and dangerous powers are watching Obama assume a fetal position, and may well as a consequence act foolishly and recklessly this next year. Not only Russia, China, and North Korea, but also Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, ISIS, and assorted rogue states may take chances in the next 14 months that they would otherwise never have entertained (given that America is innately strong and they are mostly in comparison far weaker) — on the premise that such adventurism offers tangible advantages without likely negative consequences and that the chance for such opportunities will not present itself again for decades to come.
At home, Obama feels liberated now that he is free from further elections. He thinks he has a legitimate right to be a bit vindictive and vent his own frustrations and pique, heretofore repressed over the last seven years because of the exigencies of Democratic electioneering. Obama can now vent and strike back at his opponents, caricaturing them from abroad, questioning their patriotism, slandering them for sport, and trying to figure out which emblematic executive orders and extra-legal bureaucratic directives will most infuriate them and repay them for their supposed culpability for his failed vero possumus presidency.
The more contrarian he becomes, and the more he opposes the wishes of the vast majority of the American people, all the more Obama envisions himself speaking truth to power and becoming iconic of something rather than the reality that he is becoming proof of nothing.
Hold on. We haven’t seen anything yet.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals.
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Giving the President credit where credit is due. He presided over 0.0 degrees global warming for his entire two terms. An amazing environmental record! Warming growth was held even lower than economic growth.
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Unfortunately that is both funny , , , and not.
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Obama Says a New [Global] Tax Is 'The Most Elegant Way' to Stop Climate Change
Classic externality, "put a price on it." "This is a classic market failure"
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/obama-says-new-tax-most-elegant-way-stop-climate-change
"If you open up an Econ 101 textbook, it will say the market's very good about determining prices and allocating capital towards its most productive use, except there's certain externalities, there's certain things that the market just doesn't count, it doesn't price, at least not on its own. Clean air is an example; clean water -- or the converse, dirty water, dirty air. In this case, the carbons that are being sent up that, ah -- originally we didn't have the science to fully understand, we do now. And if that's the case, if you put a price on it, then the entire market would respond."
Meanwhile the attendees of the conference, unfamiliar with teleceonferencing and smartphone app 'Vidku', emitted 600,000,000 pounds of CO2 in the effort to dine with each other at various taxpayers expense.
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/the-paris-talks-could-produce-300000-tons-of-co2-hope-theyre-worth-it/
Do people here agree with the President?
Is it a scientific fact that CO2 is a pollutant, that 400 CO2 parts per million atmosphere is "dirty air?
Is it an economic certainty that one half degree of warming and none over the last 19 years has an economic cost to it?
Do we know this tax will solve this 'problem'? What is the history of the UN handling large amounts of money, has anyone ever heard of oil for food, IPCC, etc.?
http://www.cfr.org/iraq/iraq-oil-food-scandal/p7631
"...nearly half of the 4,500 participating companies of paying kickbacks and illegal surcharges to win lucrative contracts..."
If we are going to have global government, could we please have a global constitution limiting their power!
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Pres. Obama talking about climate change in year 7 let slip the theme of his economy policy:
I'm optimistic," he said. "I think we're going to solve it. I think the issue is just going to be the pace and how much damage is done before we are able to fully apply the brakes."
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/01/europe/france-paris-cop21-climate-change-conference/index.html
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Well at least he called it terrorism. Even the Ft. Hood attack he called terrorism. As far as I know that is a first - for him.
I don't know we are "giving in to fear". How about we are "angry".
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/06/obama-lectures-america-islamic-state-not/
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"Well at least he called it terrorism. Even the Ft. Hood attack he called terrorism."
Is the second "terrorism" what you mean to say?
"I don't know we are "giving in to fear". How about we are "angry"."
I was riffing on the very same point last night. I have a similar one about the Sheep Dog and the Sheep analogy.
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http://freebeacon.com/national-security/obama-skipped-62-5-percent-of-intelligence-briefings-this-year/
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http://freebeacon.com/national-security/obama-skipped-62-5-percent-of-intelligence-briefings-this-year/
Those golf games ain't gonna play themselves.
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He said EVERY day for years he is reviewing intelligence. You mean he lied????
Well the news media will get right on this!
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https://www.facebook.com/OfficialRightWingNews/photos/a.401034789956656.90394.389658314427637/1265388520187941/?type=3
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[youtube]-Rn3IDgs_BY[/youtube]
"I'm not aware of any....BUT.....lol .
You get the country you deserve.
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http://i2.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2015/12/Obama-Background-checks.jpg
(http://i2.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2015/12/Obama-Background-checks.jpg)
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https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/tumblr_nzb5jfjpek1r7p8tto1_400.jpg?w=500
(https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/tumblr_nzb5jfjpek1r7p8tto1_400.jpg?w=500)
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Pres. Obama after the San Bernardino terrorist massacre: “I am confident we will succeed in this mission because we are on the right side of history.”
“those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history.”
“at every juncture in the situation in Egypt, […] we were on the right side of history.”
“Gaddafi is on the wrong side of history”
March 2014 the inhabitants of the Crimea and Ukraine were glad to learn from the President that “Russia is on the wrong side of history.”
History does not take sides.
Invoking History is a way of avoiding hard truths. It is a hollow phrase because it is supposed to soothe, not arouse, rally or inform. More importantly, it is simply not true. It presumes that the good guys win. Not always—just ask Rwandans, Cambodians, or surviving family members of Mao’s seventy million victims. Furthermore, the bad guys think the same thing, particularly Marxists, who shortly before their doctrines imploded were supremely confident that they knew in which direction History was marching. In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev famously said to Western ambassadors at a reception in Moscow, “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side.” What he said next, depending on which translation you prefer, was “We will bury you.” Less than 35 years later, the Soviet empire collapsed into ruin. It was a useful warning for lazy politicians: Believe too strongly that your country has a destiny guaranteed by History, and you may ensure that it doesn’t have much of a future. A public that hears the phrase has a right to be skeptical—and nervous.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/12/07/history-doesnt-take-sides/
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Gotta love the phony poses Obama does when he is near Putin. You know the looks of consternation or leaning in closely with stern facial expressions for the cameras. Remember the liberal psychologists advising Bill Clinton to have that phony thing he did with his lower lip?
Here is Brock with the same phony lower lip thing:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/obama-visits-san-bernardino-families
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Gotta love the phony poses Obama does when he is near Putin. You know the looks of consternation or leaning in closely with stern facial expressions for the cameras. Remember the liberal psychologists advising Bill Clinton to have that phony thing he did with his lower lip?
Here is Brock with the same phony lower lip thing:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/obama-visits-san-bernardino-families
(http://a1.img.talkingpointsmemo.com/image/upload/c_fill,fl_keep_iptc,g_faces,h_365,w_652/rvbcq6xbpgwnh7skzs8b.jpg)
I wonder what he paid the Clinton's for the right to use that.
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He probably just told Hill that he will use it or she will go to jail.
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https://www.facebook.com/TheKellyFile/videos/1608018366079689/
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I don’t want to speculate who did this or their motive.
We have ISIL contained.
They didn’t mean “death to America” in the way you thought it meant.
I only heard about Hillary Clintons email account when I saw it on the news.
The Taliban is not a terrorist organization
I just heard about Gruber before I came to this press conference.
We have ebola under control.
Clapper gave me wrong Intel. It’s his fault.
I promised to end the war in Iraq and I did.
I never ordered the Taliban swap it was Hagel
Not even a smidgeon of corruption
I only found out about it when I saw it on the news.
We won’t negotiate with terrorists.
I will have the most transparent administration in history.
I have Shovel ready jobs.
The IRS is not targeting anyone.
Benghazi was about a movie.
If I had a son.
I will put an end to the type of politics that "breeds division, conflict and cynicism".
You didn't build that.
I will restore trust in Government.
The cops acted stupidly.
I am not after your guns.
The Public Will Have 5 Days To Look At Every Bill That Lands On My Desk.
It's not my red line it is the worlds red line.
Whistle blowers will be protected.
We got back every dime, that we used to rescue the banks, with interest.
I will close Gitmo.
I am not spying on American citizens.
ObamaCare will be good for America.
You can keep your family doctor.
Premiums will be lowered by $2500.
If you like your plan, you can keep it. Period.
We'll put it on C-Span.
57 states.
Your taxes will not go up unless you make more than 250K a year.
I will cut the deficit in half in 3 1/2 years or this will be a one term proposition.
The recession is over.
I'm not an ideologue.
We will get to the bottom of this.
I will not sign the NDAA bill.
Reverend Wright
Bill Ayers
No lobbyists in my administration.
I'll go through the budget line by line.
Fast And Furious.
I've never met the uncle I used to live with.
"I, Barack Hussein Obama, pledge to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America."
:mrgreen: puff, puff, pass.....
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCFtE9vlWts
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Since most people on this board probably read Breitbart like me, you've all seen this, but this is just too funny to pass up posting. This is one of those "she had sex with me, I did not have sex with her" moments:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/27/obama-ignores-iran-in-speech-on-antisemitism/
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Since most people on this board probably read Breitbart like me, you've all seen this, but this is just too funny to pass up posting. This is one of those "she had sex with me, I did not have sex with her" moments:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/27/obama-ignores-iran-in-speech-on-antisemitism/
ff
Useful idiots need the occasional pat on the head. That is all this was.
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Obama to Texas: up yours!
http://www.texastribune.org/2016/02/01/abbott-and-cuellar-question-dhs-over-cuts-border-s/
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On the bank of the Mississippi River, President-to-be Glibness declared this “as the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal.”
No mention of that declaration in today's NY Times on the record rise in sea levels.
Is it possible that the huge efforts to redistribute wealth resulted in greater income inequality while the most EPA rules in history including the regulation of CO2 as a "pollutant" killed off economic growth while the seas rose even faster?
Yes.
Wouldn't it be great if liberals were right and we could just pass a law or give a speech to end things like mass murder, war and climate change?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/02/a-false-messiah-part-dii.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/science/sea-level-rise-global-warming-climate-change.html?_r=1
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Well, he would just say he was blocked from instituting Cap & Trade, surrendering US sovereignty to the UN etc.
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How Biden killed John Roberts’s nomination in 1992 (to the DC Court of Appeals)
By Marc A. Thiessen February 25, 2016, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-biden-killed-john-robertss-nomination-in-92/2016/02/25/c17841be-dbdf-11e5-81ae-7491b9b9e7df_story.html?postshare=3631456434039221&tid=ss_fb
In 1992, then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden launched a preemptive attack on any nominee President George H.W. Bush named to the Supreme Court, warning that if Bush tapped someone, Biden’s committee “should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination . . . until after the political campaign season is over.”
While Biden did not get the chance to kill a Supreme Court nomination that year, he did kill the nomination of a future chief justice of the Supreme Court — John G. Roberts Jr.
On Jan. 27, 1992, President Bush nominated Roberts to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Roberts was immensely qualified for the job. He had served since 1989 as principal deputy solicitor general of the United States, arguing 39 cases before the Supreme Court, making him one of the country’s most experienced Supreme Court litigators.
But his nomination to the federal bench was dead on arrival at Biden’s Senate Judiciary Committee. Biden refused to even hold a hearing on Roberts’s nomination, much less a vote in committee or on the Senate floor. Roberts’s nomination died in committee and was withdrawn on Oct. 8, 1992. It was only about a decade later that he was re-nominated to the federal bench by President George W. Bush — and we all know the rest of the story.
Roberts was not alone in being denied a hearing or a vote by Biden. According to a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), in 1992 Biden killed the nominations of 32 Bush appointees to the federal bench without giving them so much as a hearing. And that does not count an additional 20 nominations for the federal bench where Biden did not hold hearings that year, which CRS excluded from its count because they reached the Senate “within approximately [four] months before it adjourned.”
So none were cases in which time simply ran out. There was plenty of time to consider the nominations. But Biden refused. Why? According to an article in Texas Lawyer magazine, cited in the CRS report, some of the “nominees reportedly fell victim to presidential election year politics, as Democrats hoped to preserve vacancies in expectation that their presidential candidate would win election.”
That’s not all. In 1988, then-Chairman Biden also killed the nominations of nine candidates for the federal bench appointed by President Ronald Reagan without so much as a hearing. The New York Times reported at the time that “Democrats were determined to bury” some of the nominations because, as one liberal lobbyist told the paper, “the appellate seats were too precious to for us to give up” in a presidential election year.
Biden’s defenders claim that he made his 1992 remarks about killing a Supreme Court nominee in June of an election year, not February. But some of the nominees Biden killed that election year had been nominated as early as January 1991 — 17 months before the presidential election. And some of the nominees he killed in 1998 had been nominated as early as February 1987 — 16 months before voters went to the polls to choose a new president.
Biden’s record of election-year judicial obstruction came to light in 1997, when he tried to force then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms to hold a hearing on the nomination of Massachusetts Gov. William Weld to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico (I was on Helms’s committee staff at the time). When Helms declared Weld’s nomination dead on arrival, Biden and other committee members forced Helms to convene a committee meeting, which they hoped would take up Weld’s nomination. Instead, Helms turned the meeting into a lecture on the “History of Presidential Nominees Not Receiving Confirmation Hearings.” He presented 10 pages of charts prepared by CRS detailing 154 presidential nominations during the previous decade that had been killed without a hearing — including dozens of judicial nominations that Biden had killed.
When challenged by Helms on his record, Biden explained that the nominees in his case were different than Weld’s, because they were nominated in an election year. “When I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee,” he admitted to Helms, “there were a number of judges who were left at the gate who did not in an election year get through.”
His point was that this was normal Senate practice — and he is right. Both parties have a history of killing judicial nominations without a hearing in an election year, particularly in cases where the nomination would shift the balance of the court. The CRS report notes that in 1995 and 1996, when Republicans controlled the Senate, they killed 14 of President Bill Clinton’s nominees to the federal bench without a hearing.
The bottom line is that what Republicans are doing today is far from unprecedented. To the contrary, it is the norm. There is a graveyard filled with judicial appointments killed without a hearing by both Republicans and Democrats in an election year.
Just ask John Roberts.
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Any one think this picture of the "historic" trip will be in the NYTimes
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/21/obama-poses-in-front-of-che-guevara-image-in-cubas-revolution-square/
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Now that his 8 yrs are almost up he finally says that he didn't really believe in American' exceptionalism all along. It was obvious to us. But now he just says it out loud:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BadFTesAPzY
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Now that his 8 yrs are almost up he finally says that he didn't really believe in American' exceptionalism all along. It was obvious to us. But now he just says it out loud:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BadFTesAPzY
Proves us right but quite embarrassing for the country. Argentina has figured this out faster than the Americans.
Does Pres. Dumbsh*t have some examples to offer of where socialism and communism lifted civilizations out of poverty to match what freedom and free enterprise have done??
It is still necessary to challenge this President and his record, label it for what it is, failure, and drive his numbers down. Even though he isn't running again, his record is.
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As I have previously mentioned previously, I feel rather strongly that Infowars is a scurrilous site with occasional validity but on the whole it is not something I wish to see here. Therefore I have taken the liberty of editing the two previous entries to substitute the youtube URL of Obama which the infowars page is quoting.
Thus the actual point remains unchanged, but infowars does not get included here nor does it get clicks via this page.
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"Does Pres. Dumbsh*t have some examples to offer of where socialism and communism lifted civilizations out of poverty to match what freedom and free enterprise have done??"
He is obviously very fond of Cuba. I notice all the big shot celebrities are tripping all over themselves to go there now. Must be a great conversation topic at all the parties for the rich, famous and beautiful.
So what was it like in your trip to Cuba? How is it there? Oh I'll tell you all about it.... blah blah blah
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https://www.facebook.com/Grabien/videos/1018951701512490/
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/instead-of-a-foreign-policy-that-regulates-hubris-obama-demonstrates-his-own/2016/04/04/d6bb3860-fa89-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html?postshare=4691459856390345&tid=ss_tw
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/04/06/obama-to-sit-down-for-exclusive-fox-news-sunday-interview.html
What would we want to ask him if we had a limited amount of time to do so?
The President's agenda for the interview, they say, is to push his Supreme Court nominee - and expose Republicans for not doing their constitutional duty, advice and consent, which has come to mean to hold hearings and take an up or down vote. How would we want that point answered?
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If it were me...
1) This is the slowest recovery in history coming out of one of the worst recessions in history. Why?
2) In the early years of the administration, the economy was George Bush's fault, agreed, but what he did wrong causing the crash was to continue the policy of Democrats, funding GSEs and pushing banks to make bad loans. Agreed?
3) Any regrets over the complete abandonment of Iraq for political reasons after the peace was won at such a great cost and your role in fostering the rise of ISIS?
4) Were any laws broken during Fast and Furious? What department should investigate and prosecute the Department of Justice?
5) Was the IRS targeting scandal, shutting down all conservative groups and helping you get reelected, really any worse than anything Richard Nixon did?
6) Any regrets over saying you can keep your plan, keep your doctor, and save 2500 a year to enact a nearly impossible to repeal federal program that already has done exactly the opposite?
7) At what point were you aware that Hillary Clinton was sending and reeiving classified emails over her unsecure private server? At what point were you aware that she was working through her husband to trade State Department favors for Foundation dollars.
8 ) In ranking the results of different economic systems in terms of how the people benefited who lived under them in the course of human history, is it really communism, capitalism, whatever?
9) Is a world with the USA unilaterally disarmed safer than America having nuclear arms and a strong defense?
10) Can you name 5 to 10 reasons why the American people gave you a no confidence vote in 2010, again in 2014, why there has been a bigger shift from Democratic to Republican elected officials across the nation, up and down the ballot, under your terms, than at any other time in history, and perhaps from that why the US Senate is now giving you a no confidence vote on your Supreme Court pick?
11) Did the oceans' rise begin to fade and did the planet begin to heal under your watch?
12) Is Islam really the religion of peace?
13) Can you think of a way we could make more people around the world US citizens and eligible to vote Democrat here in abstentia, saving them the hassle of having to cross our porous, unattended border to do that?
-----------------------------------------------
Posted previously, Iowahawk took a shot at this back in 2011:
An $8 billion high speed [federally funded] train leaves Chicago for Iowa City at 8:15am at 40mph. Why?
What's the biggest hardship you've ever dealt with in your life? Have you ever had a menial job, changed your own oil, or fixed a toilet?
I let my Mexican drug lord license expire. Am I still eligible for the free machine gun program?
Are you smart enough to create a problem so big that even you could not solve it?
Why isn't your cabinet unionized?
Is there any job you'd be better at than president?
I understand you finally quit smoking. Do they make a patch for spending addicts too? Is this question racist?
Are you in favor of gay marriage for Libyan bombing crews on Boeing planes made in South Carolina?
Would you get tougher with Iran if you knew they were working with Scott Walker? [or Trump or Cruz?]
When your economic advisors hold policy meetings, do they stuff a towel at the bottom of the door?
If we reneg on the debt, where's the best place to hide our stuff from the repo men?
I just voted to increase my sobriety ceiling. Why won't the bartender give me another drink?
When you create jobs, why do always create them for Texas?
If Eric Holder gets indicted in Operation Fast & Furious, should he get a civilian trial?
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/07/questions-so-many-questions.html
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Invited to White House. Of course the crook Alicia Keys also.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/04/18/rapper-rick-rosss-ankle-monitor-goes-off-during-minorty-youth-empowerment-program-at-white-house/
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I read this and think who do we have to thank for all this progress. It is white people of European descent. Everyone else in the world is benefitting from or copying it. No credit cited.
****Obama Hails ‘Most Progressive Era in Human History’
President Barack Obama gives opening remarks at the Hannover Messe industrial trade fair on April 25, 2016 in Hanover, Germany.Adam Berry/Getty Images
by CHARLIE SPIERING25 Apr 2016358
President Barack Obama is again hailing the state of the planet under his administration, as he prepares to hand the White House to his presidential successor in January 2017.
“We are fortunate to be living in the most peaceful, most prosperous, most progressive era in human history,” Obama boasted during a speech in Germany today.
He admitted that his observation was counter to the media narrative that highlighted bad news in the world, but continued to take the long view of his place in human history.
“If you had to choose a moment in time to be born, any time in human history, and you didn’t know ahead of time what nationality you were or what gender or what your economic status might be, you’d choose today,” he said confidently.
He cited the growth of democratic government, wealth, health and education around the globe combined with a “global economy” that lifted more people out of poverty. He also cited a more “tolerant” planet of different races and sexual preferences.
“Around the world, we’re more tolerant — with more opportunity for women, and gays and lesbians, as we push back on bigotry and prejudice,” he said.
He admitted that there continues to be suffering in the world, citing economic inequality, slow economic growth, and fears of terrorism.
Obama warned against divisive political rhetoric of politicians in Europe trying to exploit global fears to create an “us vs. them mentality” between Muslims and immigrants.
“If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic, free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress that’s been made over the last several decades, then we can’t expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue,” he said.****
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“We are fortunate to be living in the most peaceful, most prosperous, most progressive era in human history,” Obama boasted during a speech in Germany today.
Good grief. He did everything he knew how to do to screw that up. What a d*ckhead. What brought the prosperity? Free markets, free economies. What brought the peace? Peace through strength. Taking on and defeating evil. What direction is he taking us - the polar opposite. Compare "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall" with being our bower in chief unable to even name, much less call out the enemy for 8 lousy years.
Europe didn't get strong by allowing an invasion of a hostile, non assimilating population. Nor is that what e Pluribus Unum here means, nor did we want the name to be divided states of America.
We went through this with Clinton. They squandered the "peace dividend" handed to them, gutted our intelligence services, allowed threats to grow, and then ripped the next Republican President for getting the intelligence wrong on the ground in Iraq.
As G M has noted and as we had with Paul Volcker and the aftermath of Jimmy Carter, this house of cards is going to fall and they are all set to blame whoever is next.
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Has to be a leftist social justice warrior.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434611/library-congress-obama-nominates
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Has to be a leftist social justice warrior.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434611/library-congress-obama-nominates
Of course. Fundamental change.
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https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2016/05/06/the-men-who-would-be-king/?singlepage=true
Empty suit, vacant soul.
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Of course. Continue to his last second in office doing EVERYTHING he can to make America look bad. He will temper it but in his usual veiled, lecturing way disrespect our nation overseas again. But this is expected when we have as our S of St and President two people who do not believe in country let alone our country. So amazing that people would vote for people who do not even like the country they are to represent. Amazing what bribes can do:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/10/confirmed-obama-will-visit-hiroshima-visit-japan/
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Disgust. He was just down the street from me today. I had just driven past there yesterday.
I am sure the liberal rainbow coalition at Rutgers gave his speech high marks:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/15/obama-rebukes-donald-trumps-wall-rutgers-commencement-speech/
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Obama: By Almost Every Measure, America and World Are Better Than 8 Years Ago
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/cnsnewscom/obama-almost-every-measure-america-and-world-are-better-8-years-ago
I think he means 7 years ago. Why won't he claim better off than 10 years ago, when his side took control of Washington. Our littlefingers won't be able to make that distinction either since he helped Pelosi-Reid-Obama-and Hillary take control of congress and Washington in Nov 2006.
"The good old days weren’t all that good." - Barack Obama 2016.
Really? Well, the Obama years weren't all that good either! 45% of 20-something college grads with college debt working in jobs that don't require their quarter of million dollar degree. Food stamps and disability (payment) epidemics!
If we take away the growth he vehemently opposed such as everything tied to fracking and fossil fuels, how would we score the 0.0% growth of the Obama Presidency?
Candidate Romney just couldn't bring himself to say it, but almost every measure of every indicator in the country or the world, Barack Obama came to Washington and made everything worse, from economic results to world peace to race relations and the way we talk to each other. By the end of the 8 years, we won't know what bathroom to go in or whether we should thank a cop or shoot him.
He came to office opposing his two biggest accomplishments, gay marriage and the individual mandate, all accomplished by lying to the American people.
This won't have any lasting, negative effect, will it?
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@hale_razor
2008 Obama: "Argue w/neighbors, get in their face."
2010 Obama: "Punish our [Republican] enemy"
2016 MSM: GOP rhetoric encourages violence!
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436711/barack-obama-communism-islamism-america-20th-century
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436711/barack-obama-communism-islamism-america-20th-century
Typical leftist.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/nyregion/letters-by-and-about-barack-obamas-father.html?emc=edit_th_20160619&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-bogus-claim-that-obama-skips-his-intelligence-briefings/2012/09/22/100cb63e-04fc-11e2-8102-ebee9c66e190_blog.html
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-bogus-claim-that-obama-skips-his-intelligence-briefings/2012/09/22/100cb63e-04fc-11e2-8102-ebee9c66e190_blog.html
Wapo's "fact checker" has been proven to be a leftist spin machine over and over again.
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Lets see. For Memorial day the first communist President goes to Hiroshima to give an apology just leaving out the words "I am sorry", for July 4 th we now have openly transexuals in the military.
Anyone care to guess what his departing Labor Day gift will be?
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http://time.com/3926839/president-obama-charleston-transcript/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/obama-very-hard-to-untangle-dallas-shooters-motive/article/2003222
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As I mentioned in a previous post everyone on the right should be screaming and demanding Obama and Lynch call the Dallas terror what is was , a HATE crime.
The DOJ should be looking at these hate groups including BLM.
Of course we all know they won't because the double standard is politically correct.
This just exposes Obama for the reverse racist he is.
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http://www.city-journal.org/html/obamas-biggest-failure-14638.html
EYE ON THE NEWS
Obama’s Biggest Failure
The president has substantially set back race relations in the United States.
Steven Malanga
July 9, 2016
Politics and law
When the country elected Barack Obama president in 2008, those of us who disagreed with many of his policy ideas were nonetheless consoled by the fact that his victory illustrated that America had moved well beyond institutional racism. Certainly the fact that Obama had succeeded in both a hard-fought Democratic primary and a general election meant that the country was ready to move past the intense focus on race in our national politics. Boy, were we wrong! Rather than seeing his own victory as a significant advance in American social life, Obama and those he appointed to his administration vigorously put forward the idea that America remains a deeply racist country, and they have redefined racism in the broadest terms possible. It’s not a coincidence, then, that more than seven years into the administration of the nation’s first black president, Americans are more deeply divided on race then they have been in decades. Their own president has fostered the divide.
Several Obama administration initiatives have distorted the national conversation on race. In 2010, for instance, the administration’s education and justice departments launched investigations against school districts around the country for disciplining black students more often, proportionately, than students of other races. A Department of Education study observed that black students were three and a half times more likely to be disciplined. The study alleged that, “everyday educational experience for many students of color violates the principle of equity.” In making its charges, the department ignored compelling data showing that black students were more likely to misbehave in and around school—including crime statistics revealing that blacks were 25 times more likely than their white counterparts to be arrested at schools for serious offenses like battery.
Similarly, the administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, through a policy known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, now is essentially charging wealthier suburban communities like those in Westchester County, New York, with housing discrimination if their populations are not diverse enough for the administration’s taste. Under the new rules, the federal government no longer must prove that these communities are actively engaging in racial discrimination in order to compel them to cast aside local zoning rules and build housing that would attract low-income residents. The mere fact that a town’s population is not diverse suffices for the Obama administration to demand that the community make efforts to transform itself. “HUD’s power grab is based on the mistaken belief that zoning and discrimination are the same,” Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino wrote in 2013.
What’s particularly ironic about this implication of racism in Westchester’s case is that the county voted by nearly a two-to-one margin for Obama in 2012.
The president himself has sadly made significant contributions to the notion that America remains deeply racist with his consistent attacks on the police, even in cases where officers’ actions against black perpetrators have subsequently been demonstrated to have been justified. “Too many young men of color,” the president said in November of 2014, “feel targeted by law enforcement, guilty of walking while black, or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness. We know that, statistically, in everything from enforcing drug policy to applying the death penalty to pulling people over, there are significant racial disparities.” Later, he added that, “Communities of color aren’t just making these problems up. . . . These are real issues.” But the president has launched the charges while ignoring significant facts. As Heather Mac Donald has observed, more than 6,000 blacks die of homicides yearly, the overwhelming majority of which are committed by other blacks in minority neighborhoods. The police are more likely to patrol these neighborhoods because that’s where the crime is. And as the Dallas killings sadly illustrate, cops are far more likely to die at the hands of black perpetrators than black men are to be killed by cops. About 40 percent of all cop killings, in fact, are committed by black males. Data also reveal no significant racial component to police shootings. Black officers are far more likely to fire their guns at black citizens than are white officers.
The Obama administration’s tendency to see discrimination in so many crevices and corners of American life has created a new standard for what constitutes racism, as demonstrated by Minnesota governor Mark Dayton’s remarks in the wake of the tragic shooting of a black man, Philando Castile, by police in suburban Minneapolis last week. Implying that race played a role in the killing of Castile, who was legally licensed to carry a firearm, Dayton said that he doubted the shooting would have occurred if Castile had been white. But while the horrific video, taken by Castile’s girlfriend in the immediate aftermath of his shooting, shows that the officer was highly agitated, and the woman claims that the cop overreacted in firing on Castile, there is nothing in the video that is overly racist, and there is no reason to conclude that the outcome would have been different if Castile had been of another race. In America today, however, when a black man is killed by an officer of another color, that fact alone is prima facie evidence for some people that the killing was racially motivated. (Marc: Apparently she lied, the deceased did NOT have a CCP, and apparently his gun was out)
Perhaps the most damning evidence against the president and his administration is that in the last four years alone, the percentage of Americans who believe racism is on the rise has nearly doubled. That sharp increase has come even amid little evidence that verified incidents of racism are on the rise. Indeed, efforts by the media to document a significant increase in police shootings of minorities have yielded little. New York City data, for instance, show that the number of times that police discharge their weapons every year has been declining for decades. And a close analysis of a Washington Postdatabase on current shootings by police across America, which describes them in detail, reveals that many were justified.
It’s difficult now to ignore the role that President Obama has played in our growing racial divisions. Elected on themes of hope and renewal, his very ascendancy a powerful statement about the country’s racial journey, he chose to use the White House as a vehicle to introduce a new era of racial grievance into our national discourse. Unfortunately, he succeeded in this effort—and failed America.
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https://pjmedia.com/video/remember-when-al-sharpton-said-to-kill-police-officers/?singlepage=true
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpZ0RwtvZmk[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpZ0RwtvZmk
http://www.newsmax.com/US/al-sharpton-obama-white-house/2015/02/27/id/627298/
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2014/04/10/301458435/obama-and-al-sharpton-an-odd-couple-who-make-political-sense
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http://9502-presscdn-0-95.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/erdogan-obama-450x250.jpg
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The outrageousness of this lecture from the "one" is just beyond the pale. After he just let Hillary off the hook and promoted her as being the most qualified one for office. Every Republican should be pounding the pavement and in force and unison calling this guy on this. But no they won't.
The MSM certainly will not:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/president-obama-trump-classified-briefings-000000199.html
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Of all the colossal failures of the Glibness Presidency, this will go down as one of their worst moments, getting caught paying cash to Iran for hostages. An unmarked plane brought money while the hostages were told their plane would not take off until the other plane came in.
The explanation was that this goes back to 1979, it's their money, but no one asks why four previous Presidents neglected to settle it. And if it was so urgent and important to this President or to America, why was it not done before the second half of year eight of his administration and timed during a hostage release?
It is against federal law to pay money for hostages so the administration must deny it, but this was something to see from both Obama and his spokesman. They said of the Clintons, they lie with such ease. One might say of these clown they do it without a care that everyone knows just how obvious the lie is. The media can pass on their explanation. It was a completely different staff working on completely different issues. Just what we want to hear, two teams have no knowledge or coordination, no common person above them seeing the big picture, just technocrats working on mundane issues. They just happened to have the exact same timing with the exact same sponsor of terror, same airfield(?), landing one plane with unmarked money and sending home hostages in another like a relay race hand off. Quid. pro. quo.
Iran probably made the IED that killed young Khan in 2004. Why didn't we pay Iran then? Are they any less our enemy now? Based on what? Wishful [Glib] thinking?
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http://weaponsman.com/?p=33946
Two Priorities of the Government
Priority 1: Supporting Jihadis
Euro-blockThem, and terrorists, hostage takers and terror sponsors everywhere.
That’s the economical explanation for the President and State Department’s decision to ship $400 million in cash, in Euros and Swiss Francs, to Iran. Officially, say the signed-up-to-lie-for-their-country weasels at State, there is “no linkage” between this ransom and the four Americans that Iran released with all due speed after unloading the pallets of cash, which are already being used to fund new global terror attacks. It’s just a matter of purest happenstance! (One gets the impression that if one of them pulled a trigger, he’d be amazed that it produced a gunshot. But as none of them will ever pull a trigger — they hire, and abandon, people for that — we’ll never know). As the WSJ put it:
The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran…
And certainly the ransoming of the existing hostages had no linkage to the Iranians’ subsequent decision to take two more US Citizen hostages.
That view wasn’t unanimous, even in this gang:
Senior Justice Department officials objected to sending a plane loaded with cash to Tehran at the same time that Iran released four imprisoned Americans, but their objections were overruled by the State Department
Eli Lake says that’ll really teach Iran. Specifically, that hostage-taking pays.
But who will call it a ransom? Not the reporters who act as the typing pool for Ben Rhodes, van driver turned national security adviser.
In addition to the secret delivery of $400 million, the Iranians received seven Iranians, a mix of convicted criminals and convicted spies held in US prisons.
The four released Americans are Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian; Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine; Christian pastor Saeed Abedini; and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, whose case had not been publicized before the release.
State Department designated liar John Kirby, who must have been a real prize as a naval officer, says it wasn’t ransom.
However, the Journal says U.S. officials acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible.
But American hostage Saeed Abedini said he and the others were held hostage quite literally until the ransom arrived. Told they were going to be held 20 minutes, the hostages were held on a plane overnight, until the money arrived and checked out. Only then could their jet depart.
I ask them why you don’t let us go…. And he said we are waiting for another plane so if that plane doesn’t come we never let us go.
And it’s already produced more hostage taking:
Since the cash was airlifted, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has arrested two more Iranian-Americans. Tehran also has detained dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K. in recent months.
What Iran wants, Iran gets, at least out of this Axis of Weakness in Washington.
To steal a gag from the mighty Horwitz brothers (and Larry Feinberg): Hasan Ben Sober. Remember him?
Further on Priority 1: of the 14 Muslim-Americans to have perished in the unending war cycle in the Middle East, funny how the one the Democrats and the press single out is the one who father is a Moslem Brotherhood immigration lawyer, dedicated to the imposition of the terror of Sharia worldwide.
Yes, Trump is a loudmouth boor. If you didn’t know that before he ever ran for anything, where have you been… under a rock? But Khizr Khan is an actual enemy. His son was not; the men who served with him praise him highly. But it’s interesting that the one guy they find is from the same anti-American jihad crew that gave us the other presidential candidate’s girlfriend Close Personal Assistant (NTTAWWT).
By the way, more Americans have been killed by American Moslems in our own uniform, than American Moslems have died honorably serving. So for any given American Moslem, what’s his flag? The odds say it’s about 60/40, the black flag of jihad over the stars and stripes.
Priority 1, Part 3: 10,000 Syrians Will be Here by 1 September
In this goal, to bring in 10,000 rapefugees direct from Syria, the President has the help of most Republicans, including the top men in the House and Senate, Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Chinless Mitch McConnell. Some 8,000 of them are already here, 2,359 of them arriving in July. They are almost all Sunni Moslems, the sect that supports ISIL. (Christian and Yazidi minorities seem to have been screened out in preference to Moslems). If August matches July, the number of rapefugees will blow through the President’s initial demand for 10,000.
It’s a generally used rule of thumb, taught in various special operations and intelligence courses, that about one in ten war refugees is an active enemy, either recruited by the enemy already or ready to voluntarily do his bidding. Syrian refugees have committed several high-profile murders in Europe lately.
Secretary of State John Kerry says you shouldn’t believe your lying eyes. “We are very comfortable that we are bringing people in who will be a great plus to our country.” Of course, he’s the guy who tried to cut his own deal with North Vietnam in 1971.
Priority 2: Easing the Path of Criminals
jailbreakWe’ve just had another record-setting release of criminals. Mostly, they seem to be released because the President believes that they were just being picked on because of their race. The 214 felons, including 67 lifers, are already out. ABC News has an inadvertently funny report:
Almost all the prisoners were serving time for nonviolent crimes related to cocaine, methamphetamine or other drugs, although a few were charged with firearms violations related to their drug activities.
Depends on how you define “a few,” cupcake. The lifers were almost all felons in possession; of the others, about 25% of them had a firearms charge, and others had prior violent crimes, although this time they didn’t shoot anybody.
Example:
One of the inmates, Dicky Joe Jackson of Texas, was given a life sentence in 1996 for methamphetamine violations and for being a felon with an unlicensed gun.
That means he was a minimum of a two-time loser. What public good is served by releasing him?
All told, Obama has commuted 562 sentences during his presidency — more than the past nine presidents combined, the White House said. Almost 200 of those who have benefited were serving life sentences.
Two hundred lifers. Imagine the crimes they will commit before they go back again. Heather McDonald did a quick scan for “firearm” in the lucky-felon list:
…a search of the commutation database comes up with 156 hits for “firearms” (some of those hits are multiple counts for the same offender). Wilson Henderson, of Hollywood, Fla., for example, was convicted of “use of a firearm during a drug trafficking crime,” according to the Justice Department press release. Kenneth Evans, of Fort Worth, Texas, was convicted of “use and carry firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime and aiding and abetting.” Mark Anthony Clark, of Rockford, Ill., was convicted of “possession of a firearm by a felon/fugitive from justice and aiding and abetting,” as well as of conspiracy to distribute 100 grams of meth.
Many of the commuttees possessed stolen firearms or firearms with their serial numbers obliterated. Some were in violation of National Firearms Registration, which can mean possession of a federally prohibited weapon, such as a machine gun, silencer, or sawed-off shotgun. We don’t know how many guns the offenders actually had; a commuttee during a previous batch of commutations had 40.
Nor does the Justice Department’s press release disclose the actual incidence of firearm possession by these federal convicts. Gun possession can be used to increase a federal sentence under the federal sentencing guidelines without a prosecutor’s actually bringing a formal charge. A gun charge can also be plea-bargained away.
Interesting how the advocates of gun control don’t advocate it against actual criminals.
Back to the ABC infotainment story:
“All of the individuals receiving commutation today — incarcerated under outdated and unduly harsh sentencing laws — embody the president’s belief that ‘America is a nation of second chances,'” White House counsel Neil Eggleston wrote in a blog post.
Second chances to rob, assault, rape and kill. Thank you Mr President! It’s a safe bet than none of these nogoodniks will be dossing down in Counselor Eggleston’s neighborhood. You wouldn’t be soft on crime like that, if you didn’t have a lot of human-victim-tamping-material between you and the recipients of your mercies.
And wait! There’s more.
“We are not done yet,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said. “We expect that many more men and women will be given a second chance through the clemency initiative.”
Second chance? To rob, assault, rape and kill. And they’ll be using ’em.
One last note from this “diversity”-obsessed administration (and media). The criminals cut loose:
…represent a diverse cross-section of America geographically.
Just “geographically,” huh? It what characteristics might the set of rewarded criminals not have a wide range of variation?
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http://radaronline.com/photos/malia-obama-smoking-pot-claims-lollapalooza-twerking-video/photo/1329712/
Clinton email to Malia:
"hint" " just say you didn't inhale"
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I get the humor of it all, but let's not go after the non-adult children please.
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http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/11/flashback-obama-promises-no-vacations-for-himself-as-president-video/
Ah, the dawn of the hope and change era. Good times, my friends, good times...
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After 8 years of bashing the US suddenly now that we are in a change election the WH expresses patriotism:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/josh-earnest-colin-kaepernick-000000910.html
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to consistently travel the world and while overseas make disparaging comments about many Americans. What a disgrace. Yet no peep from the MSM.
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/07/obama-stressed-americans-typically-turn-racism/
Remember when the LEFT mocked the book 'Bell Curve' as being racist?
Well here is Bamster the Great the man of humanity saying this:
"“Because we have people that came from everywhere, we have people of all different types for every sport,” he said. “So we have really tall people to play basketball or to swim. We have little people for gymnastics. Right? We have, genetically, for whatever sport, we have people who fit the sport, right?”
So where is the outrage now? We know the answer. Whisper. It is ok because a LEFTY is saying it.
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by making proclamations about how great America is while
for 8 yrs he has
criticized out allies AND the country he is supposed to represent, and sucks up to our enemies. And the Left with its head screwed on backwards just loves this:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439898/barack-obama-asia-enemies-friends
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He is "proud to be an American". Why does this ring hollow to me? Maybe because for 8 years we have witnessed him demonstrating just the opposite? :-( Anyone think an election coming up with his girl struggling has anything to do with this? :roll:
http://gothamist.com/2016/09/19/obama_chelsea_nj_bombings.php
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obama's last UN address (until he is elected Head of UN)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/obama-swan-song-global-stage-final-un-speech-081337116--politics.html
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Obama owes Blacks not the other way around the megalomaniac narcissist thinks:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440326/black-voters-barack-obama-failure]
Maybe Trump could memorize this speech, ask permission to use with proper reference and use the rationale behind it when this topic comes up.
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Obama owes Blacks not the other way around the megalomaniac narcissist thinks:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440326/black-voters-barack-obama-failure]
Maybe Trump could memorize this speech, ask permission to use with proper reference and use the rationale behind it when this topic comes up.
I think the smart move, would be to point out just how much HRC and Obama have worked together, how long they've been in power, and point out the status of Democrats in places like Detroit, Chicago, and every other major Democratic stronghold, and just how much their policies have failed them, quoting them frequently, and pointing out the gaping holes in the ship.
I know I would.
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http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/30/obamas-eulogy-shimon-peres-maybe-see-story/
Being lied to constantly begets cynicism. :|
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https://patriotpost.us/posts/45141
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To coordinate how to manipulate enforcement of the law in a way that was politically best for him as per Ed Klein. This certainly is consistent with everything we know about Obama and hsitory:
http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/10/04/author-ed-klein-ag-lynch-had-secret-meetings-white-house-about-email-probe
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That may well be true but is too thinly sourced/supported for me to spread further.
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https://www.hotgas.net/2016/10/video-obama-talks-bout-pussy/
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He has long history of lying when it is in his political interest. So how can anyone reliably believe a serial liar?
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cia-prepping-possible-cyber-strike-against-russia-n666636
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Please post in Intel Matters and Cyberwar as well. Thank you.
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http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bamster
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Now they know exactly how many of us felt for 8 years of this guy. God forbid anyone disagree with a lib:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/white-house-staff-obama_us_5824a8d1e4b01019814db520
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Now they know exactly how many of us felt for 8 years of this guy. God forbid anyone disagree with a lib:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/white-house-staff-obama_us_5824a8d1e4b01019814db520
Thinking about it, it doesn't strike anyone as odd, that Obama goes from being vitriolic towards Trump, to buddy-buddy in less than one week?
Edit: Michelle Obama deleted everything regarding Hillary Clinton from both her twitter and facebook accounts, about two weeks ago... something like that.
Her last facebook post is from February of 2013.
You're the wife of the man inhabiting the whitehouse, and you have nothing to post for almost four years? That's amazing.
We all know that Obama and Hillary exchanged emails on her private server.
Obama, while he can pardon Hillary (if she is charged and convicted before he leaves), cannot párdon himself... so he's in a pickle.
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Brock's repsonse to the protests: stoke and encourage by his silence more racial unrest and division. He is as just as much a racist as anyone we have had in the office:
Trump adviser urges Obama, Clinton to speak out on protests
Published November 11, 2016 FoxNews.com
Anti-Trump demonstrators take to the streets in many cities
Never autoplay videos
Donald Trump’s campaign manager took to Twitter Thursday to call on President Obama or Hillary Clinton to speak out against calls for political violence, as unruly post-election protests broke out for the second night in a row in cities across the country.
Police in Portland, Ore. declared that a once peaceful protest was a riot after demonstrators were seen attacking drivers and committing acts of vandalism during their march against Trump’s election Thursday night.
Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, flagged an interview with a woman from a separate protest the night before in Los Angeles. The anti-Trump protester called for people to “fight back,” warning, “There will be casualties on both sides. There will be, because people have to die to make a change in this world.”
Conway tweeted:
Follow
Kellyanne Conway ✔ @KellyannePolls
Not cool. @POTUS or Hillary should address. 'People Have to Die': Anti-Trump Protester Calls For Violence on CNN http://www.mediaite.com/tv/people-have-to-die-anti-trump-protester-calls-for-violence-on-cnn/ …
8:35 AM - 10 Nov 2016
Photo published for 'People Have to Die': Anti-Trump Protester Calls For Violence on CNN
'People Have to Die': Anti-Trump Protester Calls For Violence on CNN
During the massive anti-Donald Trump protests held in California the day after Election Day, one woman CNN spoke to called for violence and death as a means to enact political change.
mediaite.com
9,059 9,059 Retweets 11,438 11,438 likes
The president-elect himself has given mixed messages about his views on the unrest.
On Thursday, he blasted “professional protesters” and accused the media of fanning the flames.
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!
9:19 PM - 10 Nov 2016
69,351 69,351 Retweets 223,592 223,592 likes
By Friday morning, Trump took a different approach.
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud!
6:14 AM - 11 Nov 2016
54,644 54,644 Retweets 205,327 205,327 likes
Whether the protests are building or dying down remains to be seen.
Portland police said at least 29 people were arrested in the riot Thursday night. According to KPTV, one driver had her windshield smashed and someone painted “Capitalism kills” on a nearby convenience store. Police declared the protest a riot at around 8:30 pm. A riot is a Class C felony in Oregon.
The state Department of Transportation briefly shut down Interstate 5 between the Marquan Bridge and the Fremont Bridge due to the demonstration. Parts of Interstate 84 were also temporarily closed.
Protesters in Portland’s Pearl District were breaking windows of several businesses and some were arming themselves with rocks from a construction site, police said.
KPTV reported that the groups Don’t Shoot Portland and Black Lives Matter combined in Portland to become Portland’s Resistance. The founder told the station that “Trump is going to be our president. We need to save our city and hopefully allow people to come here to be a city where there is hope."
Anti-Trump demonstrations erupted across the U.S. for the second straight night, from Portland to Chicago to New York and parts in between.
In New York City, a large group of demonstrators once again gathered outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue Thursday night. They chanted angry slogans and waved banners baring anti-Trump messages.
While Obama and Clinton have not directly addressed the protests, both have called for unity.
Graphiq
Obama met with Trump at the White House on Thursday and once again vowed to help with an orderly transition.
“The peaceful transfer of power is one of the hallmarks of our democracy,” Obama said on Wednesday, reminding Americans “we’re actually all on the same team.”
Clinton, in her concession speech, said: “We must accept this result, and then look to the future. ... Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, asked Thursday about the protests, said the president believes the right to free speech should be protected.
He added, “It is a right that should be exercised without violence. And there are people who are disappointed in the outcome. And the president's message in the Rose Garden was it's not surprising that people are disappointed in the outcome, but it's important for us to remember, a day or two after the election, that we're Democrats and Republicans, but we're Americans and patriots first.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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One suspects we will not have this problem with Trump , , ,
https://drlillianglassbodylanguageblog.wordpress.com/tag/obama-bowing-to-gov-christie/
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I would totally disagree with the part of Obama's Presidency being scandal free , but
a lot of good points.
I find it interesting that while he mentions other former Presidents in the article by way of comparison the megalomaniac, he leaves out Reagan. Not sure why but this does not seem to me an oversight.
http://www.newsmax.com/ConradBlack/donald-trump-media-bias/2016/11/22/id/760228/
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Perhaps Conrad Black who states Brock's administration was devoid of scandal should read a fellow NR writer's piece. And Mr. McCarthy doesn't even get into the IRS and other scandals that seem to be covered up in the MSM hooplah :
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442411/jeff-sessions-attorney-general-nomination-justice-department-should-enforce-law
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Please post in Rule of Law as well.ti
TIA.
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I would totally disagree with the part of Obama's Presidency being scandal free
Mr. McCarthy doesn't even get into the IRS and other scandals that seem to be covered up in the MSM hooplah...
.@POTUS: "I'm extremely proud of the fact that over 8 years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations."
5:12 PM - 20 Nov 2016
http://www.dailywire.com/news/10982/obama-says-hes-had-scandal-free-administration-aaron-bandler
Scandal free? Good grief! 1) Fast and Furious comes to mind first. Both 2) IRS targeting and 3) Benghazi helped push him over the edge for reelection. 4) Plane loads of cash to the world's number one sponsor of terror for hostages. 5) Hillary's email scandal was in his administration, and he was one of her unsecured pen pals. 6) EPA poisoned a Colorado River, denied the extent of it by 2 million gallons. 7) How about the passing of Obamacare with a series of bald faced lies? 8) Shovel ready projects. 9) Cash for Clunkers, removed Ford trucks off the roads right before gas went to $2 and replaced them with small Hondas and Toyotas - to help our economy! 10) Flying a separate plane to Martha's vineyard - for the dog, 11) Flying Michelle and Barack in separate planes to Hawaii, Michelle and her entourage to Madrid, 12) 300 rounds of golf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9m3GyDh6M8
This link has several more:
http://www.dailywire.com/news/10982/obama-says-hes-had-scandal-free-administration-aaron-bandler
Also:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430153/fast-furious-obama-first-scandal
http://thehill.com/policy/finhttp://thehill.com/policy/finance/282307-irs-targeted-426-groups-reportance/282307-irs-targeted-426-groups-report
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According to VDH Brock called this song his favorite of the year:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442535/democratic-party-hypocrisy-racism-sexism-homophobia
KENDRICK LAMAR For Free? lyrics
[Intro]
I don't know why you trying to go big, you ain't shit
Walking around like you God's gift to Earth, you ain't shit
You ain't even buy me no outfit for the fourth
I need that Brazilian, wavy, twenty eight inch, you playin'
I shouldn't be fuckin' with you anyway, I need a baller ass nigga, boss ass nigga
You'se a off brand ass nigga, everybody know it, your homies know it, everybody fuckin' know, don't call me no more
You won't know, you gonna lose on the good shit
My other nigga is on, you off
What the fuck is really going on?
[Verse]
This shit ain't free
You lookin' at me like it ain't a receipt
Like I never made end's meet, eatin' your leftovers and raw meat
This shit ain't free
Livin' in captivity raised my cap salary
Celery, tellin' me green is all I need
Evidently all I seen was spam and raw sardines
This shit ain't free
I mean baby
You really think we could make a baby named Mercedes without a Mercedes Benz and twenty four inch rims, five percent tint, and air conditioning vents
Hell fuckin' naw
This shit ain't free
I need forty acres and a mule
Not a forty ounce and a pitbull
Bullshit, matador, [?], had the door knockin', whose that?
Genital's best friend
This shit ain't free
Pity the fool that made the pretty in you prosper
Fuck you and [?] lips kept me up nauseous, kept me up watchin'
Pornos and poverty, apology? No
Watch you [?] it while people less fortunate, like myself
Every do has it's day, now doggy style shall help
This shit ain't free
Matter fact it need interest, matter fact it's nine inches
Matter fact see our friendship based on business
[?], more pension, your pinchin', my consensus
Been relentless, fuck forgiveness, fuck your feelings
Fuck your sources, all distortion, if you fuck it's more abortion
More divorce court and portion
My [?] endorsement left me dormant
Dusted, doomed, disgusted, forced with [?]
You think is [?], porcelain pipes pressure, bust 'em twice
[?] is deaf, a state of decapitated the horseman
Oh America, you bad fucked the picked cotton that made you rich
Now my shit ain't free
[Outro]
I'mma get my Uncle Sam to fuck you up
You ain't no king
Suggest correctionsEmbed on website
Songwriters: KENDRICK LAMAR, ROSE MCKINNEY, TERRACE MARTIN.
Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
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Can't really say goodbye to the Glibness without asking ... who the hell is Julia and why am I paying for her whole life?
https://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/escape-from-the-life-of-julia/
http://humanevents.com/2012/05/03/who-the-hell-is-julia-and-why-am-i-paying-for-her-whole-life/
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Can't really say goodbye to the Glibness without asking ... who the hell is Julia and why am I paying for her whole life?
https://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/escape-from-the-life-of-julia/
http://humanevents.com/2012/05/03/who-the-hell-is-julia-and-why-am-i-paying-for-her-whole-life/
Some people work for a living, others vote for a living. The dems love to create government dependency as it's vote farming. Buy votes with other people's money!
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It is indisputable says AlexROD that there is an undercurrent racial hatred of Brock. Of course , it is never that he is a global socialist and not someone fond of America which is a first for a US prez. It is as always because he is "black".
I don't suppose the One's himself turning everything into a racial issue has nothing to do with anything because he is as always right and anyone else wrong:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-opens-up-about-racism-he-faced-in-office_us_5849457de4b0d0aa037f5848
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/12/07/obama-urges-soldiers-to-question-trumps-authority-criticize-our-president/
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"A Sh*tbird to the End"
I cannot think of any more outrageous bunch of statements from a POTUS
Unfortunately this will not be the end of Brock.
We have to wait and see. If Trump is successful then that will be the best response to Brock who will just then look like a bitter version of Jimmy Carter.
The megalomaniac will have no insight till the bitter end. He is not capable.
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After posting the Breitbart link on my FB I was challenged with the actual content of the speech.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/12/06/remarks-president-administrations-approach-counterterrorism
Read it for yourself and tell me if you think the headline is honest. I don't. :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x
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After posting the Breitbart link on my FB I was challenged with the actual content of the speech.
"Read it for yourself and tell me if you think the headline is honest. I don't."
Which headline are you talking about CD?
I am tired of this from the Bamster:
"The whole objective of these terrorists is to scare us into changing the nature of who we are and our democracy. And the fact is, people and nations do not make good decisions when they are driven by fear. "
I really don't need a pompous lecture on telling me "who I , as an American, am".
And stop the "Fear" smear. We want to defend ourselves OK? soon to be ex commander in chief.
And this: "Good afternoon, everybody. I was just told that was going to be the last "Hail to the Chief" on the road, and it got me kind of sentimental. "
Yeah, I bet you are sad you won't be the big guy on campus soon . (not soon enough for me)
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Let's take this over to the Media thread.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/trump-obama-approval-rating/510194/?utm_source=msn
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Re-exp[eriencing Obama's tone here summarizes the career of the ignorant, arrogant, Ivy League snob from Occupy White House who wasted 8 years of this country's history we will never get back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1409sXBleg
Before that, the US under Obama reneged on a promise to its allies and canceled missile defense for Eastern Europe.
Right while he was saying that, RUssia successfully hacked the Obama White House.
After he said that, Russia "annexed" Crimea and threatened Ukraine.
And now he thinks Russia changed the outcom of an American election on his watch?
I'm old enough to remember when we held Presidents accountable for what happened under their watch.
Also watch the demeanor of Romney, playing by the rules and politely taking the abuse. Lesson from that, Trump won and Obama lost. Trump for all his bizarre facial expressions and interruptions would not have sat there and taken that.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Obama: Governor Romney, I'm glad that you recognize that Al Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaida; you said Russia, in the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years.
But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.
You say that you're not interested in duplicating what happened in Iraq. But just a few weeks ago, you said you think we should have more troops in Iraq right now. And the -- the challenge we have -- I know you haven't been in a position to actually execute foreign policy -- but every time you've offered an opinion, you've been wrong. You said we should have gone into Iraq, despite that fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction.
You said that we should still have troops in Iraq to this day. You indicated that we shouldn't be passing nuclear treaties with Russia despite the fact that 71 senators, Democrats and Republicans, voted for it. You said that, first, we should not have a timeline in Afghanistan. Then you said we should. Now you say maybe or it depends, which means not only were you wrong, but you were also confusing in sending mixed messages both to our troops and our allies.
So, what -- what we need to do with respect to the Middle East is strong, steady leadership, not wrong and reckless leadership that is all over the map. And unfortunately, that's the kind of opinions that you've offered throughout this campaign, and it is not a recipe for American strength, or keeping America safe over the long haul.
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Watching Obama today makes our country look weak and foolish.
He sounds groveling.
All of a sudden cyber security has been forced to the front of the news by him and all of his jurno -listers .
Talk about fraudulent news. :roll:
One month will not be soon enough to run him out of town.
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He argues for tougher gun laws and issues 49 pardons for firearms offences. Makes perfect sense.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/12/19/obama-delivers-231-pardons-and-commutations-49-for-firearm-offenses/
A complete ban is a reasonable regulation (DC) and a constitutional right is not an individual right (Heller).
The man we still call Mr. President helped firearms sales more than any other president in US history.
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As President Obama concludes his reign of error, his party is smaller, weaker and ricketier than it has been since at least the 1940s. Behold the tremendous power that Democrats have frittered away -- from January 2009 through the aftermath of Election Day -- thanks to Obama and his ideas:
Democrats surrendered the White House to political neophyte Donald J. Trump.
US Senate seats slipped from 55 to 46, down 16 percent.
US House seats fell from 256 to 194, down 24 percent.
Democrats ran the Senate and House in 2009. Next year, they will control neither.
Governorships slid from 28 to 16, down 43 percent.
State legislatures (both chambers) plunged from 27 to 14, down 48 percent
Trifectas (states with Democrat governors and both legislative chambers) cratered from 17 to 6, down 65 percent.
http://nypost.com/2016/12/25/obamas-legacy-is-a-devastated-democratic-party/
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/12/trump_would_have_beaten_delusional_obama.html
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"his party is smaller, weaker and ricketier than it has been since at least the 1940s."
HI Doug. I wish I could be so celebratory.
These control freaks are not going away. They still have the media, they still have the minorities, academia, hollywood, California most immigrants and foreign born and there endless coalitions of any interest group they can bribe with taxpayer money.
And I am worried about what can happen with Trump. There are twenty ways for disasters and no matter what he will get the blame.
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"his party is smaller, weaker and ricketier than it has been since at least the 1940s."
HI Doug. I wish I could be so celebratory.
These control freaks are not going away. They still have the media, they still have the minorities, academia, hollywood, California most immigrants and foreign born and there endless coalitions of any interest group they can bribe with taxpayer money.
And I am worried about what can happen with Trump. There are twenty ways for disasters and no matter what he will get the blame.
CCP, I agree. I added a couple of Link sources to that post. The point was to show some evidence that Barack Obama might not have defeated Donald Trump in 2016, since he did manage to lose almost everything else for them including Hillary's race.
I wrote a piece for Pat's site called skip the endzone dance that didn't go over very well. My point was, we have accomplished nothing so far. We haven't repealed a single tax, law, program or regulation. We haven't even a plan to to change their 90 plus percent advantage in schools, colleges and media. If we nominate and confirm a Supreme Court Justice that is brilliant, conservative and perfect, it only takes us back to where we were before scalia died, a divided court..
I, too, am worried. This was a pendulum swing, not a conservative shift. If we want a conservative shift, we will have to enact conservative policies and see great results, and even that is not enough. We are still terrible at messaging.
Trump will have to double the growth rate and that is just starting point and a talking point against all that will be thrown at him that allegedly went wrong, like if the rich get richer.
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"The point was to show some evidence that Barack Obama might not have defeated Donald Trump in 2016, since he did manage to lose almost everything else for them including Hillary's race. "
IF Trump did not have such high negatives I think he would have blown Brock and Hillary out of the water.
OTOH if Hillary did also not have such high negs then who knows.
Everything considered I think there was a slight mandate to get rid of Brock and company at least or now.
"I wrote a piece for Pat's site called skip the endzone dance that didn't go over very well"
Where was this? I would like to see .
End zone dance. There is one problem: there is a flag down on the play, but we will have to wait for months or more to see what the call is..... :wink:
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Revise and extend President Obama's accomplishments in decimating the liberal agenda with more big accomplishments:
Obama presided over the sale of 100 million guns in to private citizens in America - by continually threatening to ban them.
Pres. Obama had a hand in reelecting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, advancing peace through strength, by openly opposing his reelection.
Electing Donald Trump, couldn't have done it without him. We will get a wall, a fence and some immigration sanity for the explicit reason that President Obama refused to do it and showed us the ocnsequences.
VP Joe Biden said President Obama's biggest accomplishment was ending the war in Iraq. Surrender equals victory is the name of this thread, cognitive dissonance of the glibness. Maybe our future readiness against ISIS and Islamic extremism will be Obama's biggest achievement, for bringing it out where we can see it.
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IF Trump did not have such high negatives I think he would have blown Brock and Hillary out of the water.
OTOH if Hillary did also not have such high negs then who knows.
Everything considered I think there was a slight mandate to get rid of Brock and company at least or now.
Right, the defects and negatives of the two of them were the stories of the campaign but underlying that was that America very typically changes course after two failed terms. Because Obama approval polls above 50%, his failure was hard to measure, but plenty of other measures tell us America was unimpressed by his Presidency.
"I wrote a piece for Pat's site called skip the endzone dance that didn't go over very well"
Where was this? I would like to see.
It looked a lot like this: http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1736.msg99707#msg99707
http://www.spartareport.com/2016/11/way-forward-no-end-zone-dance-just-work/?yop_poll_tr_id=&yop-poll-nonce-23_yp582dd683773d4=a7b3ba56cc
It got some scathing comments but I stand by every word of it. Like when we took the House, took the Senate, change is possible and might or might not happen. So far none of it has happened. That isn't a slam on anybody, just a reality check on where we are. Surviving the repeal and replace of Obamacare is a big deal. Tax reform. Getting a great nominee on the Supreme Court is a big deal, hasn't happened yet. Staying in power to do a second and third pick is a big deal. We haven't begun...
My previous submissions, they were all posted here first in the proper threads: )
http://www.spartareport.com/2016/06/janet-yellen-fed-banking-monetary-policy/
http://www.spartareport.com/2016/09/fact-checking-hillary/
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(https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/russian-roulette-2-1.jpg)
https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/russian-roulette-2-1.jpg
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https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?p0=263&iso=20170120T00&msg=Time%20left%20until%20Obama%20leaves%20office%22
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I am not sure I agree with the comparison to LBJ and I really get concerned when people on the right make claims that the LEFT is decimated. OK may Repubs have made gains with political positions but I do not see a sea tide change in the national consciousness towards conservatism.
The election could EASILY have gone the other way and we would all be ringing our hands about the demise of the Republican Party and conservatism. Yet the article is a worth while though provoking exercise:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443434/barack-obama-record-lyndon-johnson-failures
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/04/president-obama-awards-himself-distinguished-public-service-medal/
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/04/president-obama-awards-himself-distinguished-public-service-medal/
Well, at least it's as well deserved as his Nobel Peace Prize. :roll:
I guess he couldn't figure out how to award himself the medal of honor.
#DEVALUED_AWARDS
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It's like the celebrities who soak the public for more money giving themselves awards and telling the world how great and brilliant they all are such as the God knows how many music award shows.
Obama can certainly go down in history as the most obnoxious President. He is also planning on being the most obnoxious ex prez that is obvious.
I have to be honest though - I hope Trump doesn't follow suit.
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I've gotten some feedback on the Obama self-award piece by Breitbart.
Apparently this is SOP, even Bush 43 got this award.
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"Apparently this is SOP, even Bush 43 got this award."
Oh.
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http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/imagine-obamas-new-home-have-wall-around-perimeter
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/09/obama-slams-trumps-wall-final-un-speech-paid-75-million-build-mexicos-wall/
Obama jabs at Trump at the UN: "Today, a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself"
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http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/obama-farewell-address/
Like Marc Levin was saying last night there is no need to listen.
We know how the speech will go
I.......(fill in blank) and repeat 50 times
Everything is better...... (fill in the rest)
warning on "hate"
The usual buzz words
"diversity"
"arc of history"
"the notion that" (anything the Republicans believe in)
"who we are" ( we are supposed to be globalists)
and then at end add another 50 or so "I"s
And I might add no need to listen to the MSM fawn all over his speech and their blatant and latent hostility to Trump and anything Republican (except for useful idiots like Graham and McCain)
And for good measure no one should think for one second this guy will go away. We will continue to be lectured till he is dead which will be long after me. If the hope and change is NOT HIS brand then it is wrong .
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We can look back and admit this President brought joy to all Americans. For half the country, when he entered the Oval Office, and for the rest, when he leaves.
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"We can look back and admit this President brought joy to all Americans. For half the country, when he entered the Oval Office, and for the rest, when he leaves."
:-D
For all the country he is remembered as the first Black President.
For one half the country he is remembered less for that than for being the first Marxist President who truly did not like America .
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From my previous post:
"I.......(fill in blank) and repeat 50 times"
This is without question the first time I underestimated him (narcissism) :
http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/10/obama-refers-to-himself-75-times-in-farewell-address/
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Does an award mean much when given to you in this fashion/ And the only one "with distinction" WOW. More self congratulations from the *ONE " to his right hand guy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-biden-presidential-medal-of-freedom_us_5877ea9ee4b0b3c7a7b05958
Pols given the award:
From wikipedia (32 of 46 given out by Clinton and Obama since 1964); Ethel Kennedy - LOL
Politics and government[edit]
Activism
Recipient Year President Notes
Arnold Aronson 1998 Bill Clinton
Roger Nash Baldwin 1981 Ronald Reagan
Oscar Elias Biscet 2007 George W. Bush
Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. 2017 Barack Obama Awarded with Distinction.
James Chaney 2014 Barack Obama Posthumously[16]
César Chávez 1994 Bill Clinton Posthumously
Elouise Cobell 2016 Barack Obama Posthumously[9]
Justin Whitlock Dart, Jr. 1998 Bill Clinton
Evelyn Dubrow 1999 Bill Clinton
Marian Wright Edelman 2000 Bill Clinton [43]
James L. Farmer, Jr. 1998 Bill Clinton
Billy Frank, Jr. 2015 Barack Obama Posthumously[21]
Hector Garcia 1984 Ronald Reagan [44]
Andrew Goodman 2014 Barack Obama Posthumously[16]
Suzan Shown Harjo 2014 Barack Obama [16]
Dorothy Height 1994 Bill Clinton
George G. Higgins 2000 Bill Clinton
Gordon Hirabayashi 2012 Barack Obama Posthumously [26]
Benjamin Hooks 2007 George W. Bush
Dolores Huerta 2012 Barack Obama [26]
Rev. Jesse Jackson 2000 Bill Clinton
Millie Jeffrey 2000 Bill Clinton
Helen Keller 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson
Ethel Kennedy 2014 Barack Obama [16]
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1977 Jimmy Carter Posthumously
Fred Korematsu 1998 Bill Clinton
Mary Lasker 1969 Richard Nixon
Rev. Joseph Lowery 2009 Barack Obama [15]
Sylvia Mendez 2011 Barack Obama [4]
Harvey Milk 2009 Barack Obama Posthumously [15]
Clarence M. Mitchell 1980 Jimmy Carter
Mario G. Obledo 1998 Bill Clinton
Rosa Parks 1996 Bill Clinton
Esther Peterson 1981 Jimmy Carter
Bayard Rustin 2013 Barack Obama Posthumously [29]
Ginetta Sagan 1996 Bill Clinton
Michael Schwerner 2014 Barack Obama Posthumously[16]
Natan Sharansky 2006 George W. Bush
Gloria Steinem 2013 Barack Obama [29]
William C. Velasquez 1995 Bill Clinton Posthumously
Cordy Tindell "C.T." Vivian 2013 Barack Obama [29]
Lech Wałęsa 1989 George H.W. Bush
Roy Wilkins 1967 Lyndon B. Johnson
Minoru Yasui 2015 Barack Obama Posthumously[21]
Andrew Young 1981 Ronald Reagan
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Does an award mean much when given to you in this fashion/ And the only one "with distinction" WOW. More self congratulations from the *ONE " to his right hand guy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-biden-presidential-medal-of-freedom_us_5877ea9ee4b0b3c7a7b05958
Pols given the award:
From wikipedia (32 of 46 given out by Clinton and Obama since 1964); Ethel Kennedy - LOL
Politics and government[edit]
Activism
Recipient Year President Notes
Arnold Aronson 1998 Bill Clinton
Roger Nash Baldwin 1981 Ronald Reagan
Oscar Elias Biscet 2007 George W. Bush
Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. 2017 Barack Obama Awarded with Distinction.
James Chaney 2014 Barack Obama Posthumously[16]
César Chávez 1994 Bill Clinton Posthumously
Elouise Cobell 2016 Barack Obama Posthumously[9]
Justin Whitlock Dart, Jr. 1998 Bill Clinton
Evelyn Dubrow 1999 Bill Clinton
Marian Wright Edelman 2000 Bill Clinton [43]
James L. Farmer, Jr. 1998 Bill Clinton
Billy Frank, Jr. 2015 Barack Obama Posthumously[21]
Hector Garcia 1984 Ronald Reagan [44]
Andrew Goodman 2014 Barack Obama Posthumously[16]
Suzan Shown Harjo 2014 Barack Obama [16]
Dorothy Height 1994 Bill Clinton
George G. Higgins 2000 Bill Clinton
Gordon Hirabayashi 2012 Barack Obama Posthumously [26]
Benjamin Hooks 2007 George W. Bush
Dolores Huerta 2012 Barack Obama [26]
Rev. Jesse Jackson 2000 Bill Clinton
Millie Jeffrey 2000 Bill Clinton
Helen Keller 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson
Ethel Kennedy 2014 Barack Obama [16]
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1977 Jimmy Carter Posthumously
Fred Korematsu 1998 Bill Clinton
Mary Lasker 1969 Richard Nixon
Rev. Joseph Lowery 2009 Barack Obama [15]
Sylvia Mendez 2011 Barack Obama [4]
Harvey Milk 2009 Barack Obama Posthumously [15]
Clarence M. Mitchell 1980 Jimmy Carter
Mario G. Obledo 1998 Bill Clinton
Rosa Parks 1996 Bill Clinton
Esther Peterson 1981 Jimmy Carter
Bayard Rustin 2013 Barack Obama Posthumously [29]
Ginetta Sagan 1996 Bill Clinton
Michael Schwerner 2014 Barack Obama Posthumously[16]
Natan Sharansky 2006 George W. Bush
Gloria Steinem 2013 Barack Obama [29]
William C. Velasquez 1995 Bill Clinton Posthumously
Cordy Tindell "C.T." Vivian 2013 Barack Obama [29]
Lech Wałęsa 1989 George H.W. Bush
Roy Wilkins 1967 Lyndon B. Johnson
Minoru Yasui 2015 Barack Obama Posthumously[21]
Andrew Young 1981 Ronald Reagan
César Chávez 1994 Bill Clinton Posthumously
I'm a big fan of his opposition to illegal aliens. Note that the left has cut this from it's official history, like the Soviets used to trim purged officials from pictures.
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/cesar-chavezs-rabid-opposition-to-illegal-immigration-not-covered-in-new-movie-6643666
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Does an award mean much when given to you in this fashion/ And the only one "with distinction" WOW. More self congratulations from the *ONE " to his right hand guy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-biden-presidential-medal-of-freedom_us_5877ea9ee4b0b3c7a7b05958
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-utiiupTW4NM/WHVDwCxkCSI/AAAAAAAASYA/3Va0e_rFWxABQugxreuKoh1IahGcU4WfQCLcB/s1600/The%2BThing%2BThat%2BWouldn%2527t%2BLeave%2B1.jpg)
He had to give him something after this...
Pols given the award:
From wikipedia (32 of 46 given out by Clinton and Obama since 1964); Ethel Kennedy - LOL
Politics and government[edit]
Activism
Recipient Year President Notes
Arnold Aronson 1998 Bill Clinton
Roger Nash Baldwin 1981 Ronald Reagan
Oscar Elias Biscet 2007 George W. Bush
Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. 2017 Barack Obama Awarded with Distinction.
James Chaney 2014 Barack Obama Posthumously[16]
César Chávez 1994 Bill Clinton Posthumously
Elouise Cobell 2016 Barack Obama Posthumously[9]
Justin Whitlock Dart, Jr. 1998 Bill Clinton
Evelyn Dubrow 1999 Bill Clinton
Marian Wright Edelman 2000 Bill Clinton [43]
James L. Farmer, Jr. 1998 Bill Clinton
Billy Frank, Jr. 2015 Barack Obama Posthumously[21]
Hector Garcia 1984 Ronald Reagan [44]
Andrew Goodman 2014 Barack Obama Posthumously[16]
Suzan Shown Harjo 2014 Barack Obama [16]
Dorothy Height 1994 Bill Clinton
George G. Higgins 2000 Bill Clinton
Gordon Hirabayashi 2012 Barack Obama Posthumously [26]
Benjamin Hooks 2007 George W. Bush
Dolores Huerta 2012 Barack Obama [26]
Rev. Jesse Jackson 2000 Bill Clinton
Millie Jeffrey 2000 Bill Clinton
Helen Keller 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson
Ethel Kennedy 2014 Barack Obama [16]
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1977 Jimmy Carter Posthumously
Fred Korematsu 1998 Bill Clinton
Mary Lasker 1969 Richard Nixon
Rev. Joseph Lowery 2009 Barack Obama [15]
Sylvia Mendez 2011 Barack Obama [4]
Harvey Milk 2009 Barack Obama Posthumously [15]
Clarence M. Mitchell 1980 Jimmy Carter
Mario G. Obledo 1998 Bill Clinton
Rosa Parks 1996 Bill Clinton
Esther Peterson 1981 Jimmy Carter
Bayard Rustin 2013 Barack Obama Posthumously [29]
Ginetta Sagan 1996 Bill Clinton
Michael Schwerner 2014 Barack Obama Posthumously[16]
Natan Sharansky 2006 George W. Bush
Gloria Steinem 2013 Barack Obama [29]
William C. Velasquez 1995 Bill Clinton Posthumously
Cordy Tindell "C.T." Vivian 2013 Barack Obama [29]
Lech Wałęsa 1989 George H.W. Bush
Roy Wilkins 1967 Lyndon B. Johnson
Minoru Yasui 2015 Barack Obama Posthumously[21]
Andrew Young 1981 Ronald Reagan
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"You may have heard that Chavez preached against illegal immigration, but "The Crusades of Cesar Chavez" by Miriam Pawel, a new book released in timely fashion this month by Bloomsbury Press, has the iconic Hispanic hero sounding at times like a typical nativist bigot and acting like a right-wing militia member."
Of course , we can't have our union hero sounding like a typical nativist bigot or right wing jerk - can we?
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WE all know this but unfortunately Obama got away with and will continue to do so till his last second in office
The MSM will not hold him accountable like they did with Nixon. The Republicans should just shut the present investigations down or at least replace the investigators with real objective non partisans.
But I am not holding my breawth:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443845/obama-justice-department-political
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https://static.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/BIDENGREENLANTERN-600x428.jpg
(https://static.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/BIDENGREENLANTERN-600x428.jpg)
Always good for a laugh.
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True to form from someone with a personality disorder is the total lack of any responsibility. It is always someone else's fault:
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/01/15/obama-corrosive-nature-of-talk-radio-fake-news-has-ruined-democracy/
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Nothing says Glibness like when President Obama told Great Britain it "could get in the back of the queue", parenthesis, go to hell, regarding new trade deals while he lost another, after his Netanyahu loss, foreign elections that he tried to interfere with.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/22/barack-obama-brexit-uk-back-of-queue-for-trade-talks
That verbal atrocity went by largely unnoticed but really should go in his top ten gaffe list right along side of 'tell Vladimir I'll have more flexibility after my reelection'.
Even trade-skeptic Donald Trump recognizes the value of relations with our closest ally, the United Kingdom, a nuclear power and ally in almost every war. Front of the queue, says his successor, "I think we’re gonna get something done very quickly".
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-to-meet-uk-prime-minister-may-about-u.s.-u.k.-trade-pact/article/2611932
Guess which one they call immature...
Foreign policy isn't all rocket science (or wishful thinking). Some of it is common sense.
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Nothing says Glibness like when President Obama told Great Britain it "could get in the back of the queue", parenthesis, go to hell, regarding new trade deals while he lost another, after his Netanyahu loss, foreign elections that he tried to interfere with.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/22/barack-obama-brexit-uk-back-of-queue-for-trade-talks
That verbal atrocity went by largely unnoticed but really should go in his top ten gaffe list right along side of 'tell Vladimir I'll have more flexibility after my reelection'.
Even trade-skeptic Donald Trump recognizes the value of relations with our closest ally, the United Kingdom, a nuclear power and ally in almost every war. Front of the queue, says his successor, "I think we’re gonna get something done very quickly".
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-to-meet-uk-prime-minister-may-about-u.s.-u.k.-trade-pact/article/2611932
Guess which one they call immature...
Foreign policy isn't all rocket science (or wishful thinking). Some of it is common sense.
Doing a better job than the affirmative action president isn't a high bar.
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http://www.libertyheadlines.com/bill-ayers-dancing-obamas-pardon-faln-member/?AID=7236
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When Reagan bombed Khadaffi's house aroun '86 no one with a mind would question his motives
But this ? The day he is walking out the door! Oh but he "gave the order several days ago"...
This guy has certainly been one of the most cynical Presidents in my lifetime if not ever:
http://abc7chicago.com/news/b-2-bombers-strike-isis-camps-in-libya/1710009/
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When Reagan bombed Khadaffi's house aroun '86 no one with a mind would question his motives
But this ? The day he is walking out the door! Oh but he "gave the order several days ago"...
This guy has certainly been one of the most cynical Presidents in my lifetime if not ever:
http://abc7chicago.com/news/b-2-bombers-strike-isis-camps-in-libya/1710009/
He fully earned our distrust. Other than that, he should be acting as President and Commander in Chief from the first to the last day of his Presidency.
Maybe the enemy has its guard down in the changeover of power.
What bothers me the most is that he tries to govern the time after his Presidency with new rules especially on the private sector enacted at the very end. All Obama Executive Orders should be rescinded and put back through Congress - where they belong.
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Hi Doug.
"Maybe the enemy has its guard down in the changeover of power."
Like smart criminals, they always have their outs handy don't they?
This is just too coincidental for me.
They must know where all their training camps are by now.
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The way the Left idolizes Obama is like the way they have elevated JFK to sainthood . I think the comparison is a good one.
The Right and most historians (at least the few real objective ones ) will agree he is more like Jimmy Carter then JFK.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444036/barack-obama-legacy-next-jfk
Will Obama remain mostly silent about his successor and political affairs like his predecessors or be making his professorial opinions known often? I suspect the LEFt will be asking for his opinion at every turn. AT least till they find their next "ONE".
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Ever the community organizer. They aren't going away. Branson has Michelle on his island to plot the globalist elite's next moves.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/barack-michelle-obama-pop-havent-191806787.html
http://viconsortium.com/bvi/president-obama-wife-vacationing-british-virgin-islands/
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I guess this thread will continue for as long as I live:
"I am surprised it too him this long to speak out"
"he is psychologically incapable [of keeping his big mouth shut]
http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/obama-already-retirement/
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/01/obama-may-challenge-trump-more-forcefully-in-coming-months-report-says.html?cmpid=prn_msn
PS: Less than 300 to go for this thread to hit 400,000 reads!
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This thread imight be the bestt documentary on the internet for tracking the eight lost years of Obama. I want to make sure we conclude it with the best recaps of what went (right?? and) wrong. Our job as I see it is to fill in the missing gaps of the 'mainstream' coverage. Here is a good, succinct shot at that:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-scandal-free-administration-is-a-myth-1484611574
Mr. Obama has presided over some of the worst scandals of any president in recent decades. Here’s a partial list:
• State Department email. In an effort to evade federal open-records laws, Mr. Obama’s first secretary of state set up a private server, which she used exclusively to conduct official business, including communications with the president and the transmission of classified material. A federal criminal investigation produced no charges, but FBI Director James Comey reported that the secretary and her colleagues “were extremely careless” in handling national secrets.
• Operation Fast and Furious. The Obama Justice Department lost track of thousands of guns it had allowed to pass into the hands of suspected smugglers, in the hope of tracing them to Mexican drug cartels. One of the guns was used in the fatal 2010 shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Congress held then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt when he refused to turn over documents about the operation.
• IRS abuses. Mr. Obama’s Internal Revenue Service did something Richard Nixon only dreamed of doing: It successfully targeted political opponents. The Justice Department then refused to enforce Congress’s contempt citation against the IRS’s Lois Lerner, who refused to answer questions about her agency’s misconduct.
• Benghazi. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed in the attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya. With less than two months to go before the 2012 election, the State Department falsely claimed the attack was not a terrorist attack but a reaction to an anti-Muslim film. Emails from the secretary later showed that she knew the attack was terrorism. Justice Department prosecutors even convinced a magistrate judge to jail the filmmaker.
• Hacking. Mr. Obama presided over the biggest data breach in the federal government’s history, at the Office of Personnel Management. The hack exposed the personnel files of millions of federal employees and may end up being used for everything from identity theft to blackmail and espionage. OPM Director Katherine Archuleta, the president’s former political director, had been warned repeatedly about security deficiencies but took no steps to fix them.
• Veterans Affairs. At least 40 U.S. veterans died waiting for appointments at a Phoenix VA facility, many of whom had been on a secret waiting list—part of an effort to conceal that between 1,400 and 1,600 veterans were forced to wait months for appointments. A 2014 internal VA audit found “57,436 newly enrolled veterans facing a minimum 90-day wait for medical care; 63,869 veterans who enrolled over the past decade requesting an appointment that never happened.” Even Mr. Obama admitted, in a November 2016 press conference, that “it was scandalous what happened”—though minutes earlier he boasted that “we will—knock on wood—leave this administration without significant scandal.”
All of these scandals were accompanied by a lack of transparency so severe that 47 of Mr. Obama’s 73 inspectors general signed an open letter in 2014 decrying the administration’s stonewalling of their investigations.
One reason for Mr. Obama’s penchant for secrecy is his habit of breaking rules—from not informing Congress of the dubious prisoner swap involving Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and the Taliban, to violating restrictions on cash transfers to Iran as part of a hostage-release deal.
The president’s journalistic allies are happily echoing the “scandal-free” myth.
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We have never had an ex president who is actively working to undermine an elected later President, but we new THIS guy was gong to keep trying to shove his opinions down the country's throat one way or another. Yeah right a Constitutional professor:
http://nypost.com/2017/02/11/how-obama-is-scheming-to-sabotage-trumps-presidency/
Don't think for a minute these groups are just bribing White Insiders for information. Bezos , Obama and Soros are likely funding and organizing total eavesdropping on Trump. I bet he can't even go to the BR without this getting out.
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I can't believe he would sell his experience serving the American people for massive, personal financial gain, just kidding.
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/321679-barack-and-michelle-obama-sign-book-deals
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Doug ,
Did you hear Rush's take on it. He believes that someone MUST have fronted the money to insure that no matter what they will be able to claim it was a huge seller.
If Trump can fulfill half of what he hopes Obama's book will not make a dime. I mean I don't recall anyone rushing out to buy a book on Jimmy Carter.
:evil:
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Doug , if interested you can go to the 1.24.57 ish time marker and hear Rushes thoughts on the matter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T06G5xxfw_U
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4271412/Obama-confidante-Valerie-Jarrett-moves-Kaloroma-home.html
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The first communist President and now the first one NOT to leave us alone.
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I think there is something to this idea. There is something very wrong with an ex President using his connections and soon to be fortune to undermine a successor. Yes I know he is now a "private" citizen who has a right to voice his opinion and work for his causes but this to me is beyond that and very disturbing that we may have an ex Prez working hard to bring down a successor that won a free election fair and square:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/03/mark-levin-obama-used-police-state-tactics-undermine-trump/
, , ,
Drawing on sources including the New York Times and the Washington Post, Levin described the case against Obama so far, based on what is already publicly known. The following is an expanded version of that case, including events that Levin did not mention specifically but are important to the overall timeline.
1. June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.
2. July: Russia joke. Wikileaks releases emails from the Democratic National Committee that show an effort to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) from winning the presidential nomination. In a press conference, Donald Trump refers to Hillary Clinton’s own missing emails, joking: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.” That remark becomes the basis for accusations by Clinton and the media that Trump invited further hacking.
3. October: Podesta emails. In October, Wikileaks releases the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, rolling out batches every day until the election, creating new mini-scandals. The Clinton campaign blames Trump and the Russians.
4. October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.
5. January 2017: Buzzfeed/CNN dossier. Buzzfeed releases, and CNN reports, a supposed intelligence “dossier” compiled by a foreign former spy. It purports to show continuous contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, and says that the Russians have compromising information about Trump. None of the allegations can be verified and some are proven false. Several media outlets claim that they had been aware of the dossier for months and that it had been circulating in Washington.
6. January: Obama expands NSA sharing. As Michael Walsh later notes, and as the New York Times reports, the outgoing Obama administration “expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.” The new powers, and reduced protections, could make it easier for intelligence on private citizens to be circulated improperly or leaked.
7. January: Times report. The New York Times reports, on the eve of Inauguration Day, that several agencies — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Treasury Department are monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign suspected of Russian ties. Other news outlets also report the exisentence of “a multiagency working group to coordinate investigations across the government,” though it is unclear how they found out, since the investigations would have been secret and involved classified information.
8. February: Mike Flynn scandal. Reports emerge that the FBI intercepted a conversation in 2016 between future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — then a private citizen — and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The intercept supposedly was part of routine spying on the ambassador, not monitoring of the Trump campaign. The FBI transcripts reportedly show the two discussing Obama’s newly-imposed sanctions on Russia, though Flynn earlier denied discussing them. Sally Yates, whom Trump would later fire as acting Attorney General for insubordination, is involved in the investigation. In the end, Flynn resigns over having misled Vice President Mike Pence (perhaps inadvertently) about the content of the conversation.
9. February: Times claims extensive Russian contacts. The New York Times cites “four current and former American officials” in reporting that the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials. The Trump campaign denies the claims — and the Times admits that there is “no evidence” of coordination between the campaign and the Russians. The White House and some congressional Republicans begin to raise questions about illegal intelligence leaks.
10. March: the Washington Post targets Jeff Sessions. The Washington Post reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had contact twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign — once at a Heritage Foundation event and once at a meeting in Sessions’s Senate office. The Post suggests that the two meetings contradict Sessions’s testimony at his confirmation hearings that he had no contacts with the Russians, though in context (not presented by the Post) it was clear he meant in his capacity as a campaign surrogate, and that he was responding to claims in the “dossier” of ongoing contacts. The New York Times, in covering the story, adds that the Obama White House “rushed to preserve” intelligence related to alleged Russian links with the Trump campaign. By “preserve” it really means “disseminate”: officials spread evidence throughout other government agencies “to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators” and perhaps the media as well.
In summary: the Obama administration sought, and eventually obtained, authorization to eavesdrop on the Trump campaign; continued monitoring the Trump team even when no evidence of wrongdoing was found; then relaxed the NSA rules to allow evidence to be shared widely within the government, virtually ensuring that the information, including the conversations of private citizens, would be leaked to the media.
Levin called the effort a “silent coup” by the Obama administration and demanded that it be investigated.
In addition, Levin castigated Republicans in Congress for focusing their attention on Trump and Attorney General Sessions rather than Obama.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News.
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http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/06/communism-in-jarretts-family/
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/two-months-out-of-office-barack-obama-is-having-a-post-presidency-like-no-other/2017/03/24/6b4d1c05-f4a8-462b-ad7f-664ac35d0c06_story.html?utm_term=.fb8de7765700&wpisrc=nl_&wpmm=1
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The community organizer is NOT GOING anywhere.
He will be a kind in exile . No less.
The only possibility this will not happen is if the Dems get a new fresher spokesperson. So far we don't have a view of anyone else.
Hillary will keep treading water hoping for a respite .
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Despite the IRS destroying the much of the evidence of their crimes JD was still able to find more evidence of IRS targeting political opponents:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/10/documents-confirm-that-obama-irs-improperly-targeted-conservatives/
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Please post in War on Rule of Law as well.
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/11/barack-obama-angela-merkel-plan-globalist-reunion-brandenburg-gate/
Barack :
During that speech, Obama noted that “the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together.” ( me - "global citizenship" ?)
“I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world,” ( I never though of him of proud of the United States. But citizen of the world seems more like it. He is now running for president of the world I think)
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but by Democrat icon so move along. Nothing to it:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/05/04/report-obama-sought-unredacted-nsa-intel-thousands-americans-2016-election/
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but by Democrat icon so move along. Nothing to it:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/05/04/report-obama-sought-unredacted-nsa-intel-thousands-americans-2016-election/
Trump has the authority to declassify this and release it to the public.
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Really too bad that the source here is Breitbart which has a well earned reputation for irresponsible and deceptive reporting-- while sometimes getting things right that others do not. As I have requested previously, let us please go to the primary sources sometimes cited by a Breitbart piece and see if they actually say what B. is citing them for and if so, then use them as the citation instead of B.
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(http://www.truthrevolt.org/sites/default/files/images/walle.jpg)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/president-obama-building-wall-around-010216232.html
President Obama is no fan of President-elect Trump’s plan to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexican border, but he is reportedly building a wall around his new digs in an upscale Washington, D.C., neighborhood in the same general area where the new president’s daughter and her family will reside.
Unlike most presidents and their families, historically, the Obamas are staying in Washington to enable their younger daughter to finish high school there, although pro-Donald Trump author Ed Klein claims that the real purpose is to set up a legacy-protecting shadow government in D.C. for the specific purpose of derailing the Trump train, i.e., thwarting the policies of the incoming Trump presidential administration.
________________________________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/25/barack-obama-draws-crowd-of-tens-of-thousands-in-berlin
Barack Obama received a hero’s welcome when he reunited with Angela Merkel for the first time since leaving office, calling on the audience to engage in democracy and telling the tens of thousands in Berlin: “We can’t hide behind a wall.”
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http://www.theamericanmirror.com/photos-obama-lectures-cant-hide-behind-wall-behind-wall/
Do as I say, not as I do.
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http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/03/obama-meets-with-south-korean-president-to-discuss-trump/
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second post
http://thefederalistpapers.org/us/obama-warns-independence-day-weekend
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second post
http://thefederalistpapers.org/us/obama-warns-independence-day-weekend
Being too patriotic has never been an issue for Obama's fans.
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how cowardly to travel around the world in his usual jet setting mode and dishonoring this country. and this guy will likely live another 30 to 40 yrs doing the same to us.
:x
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how cowardice to travel around the world in his usual jet setting mode and dishonoring this country. and this guy will likely live another 30 to 40 yrs doing the same to us.
:x
He's just butthurt that his failed presidency's only real accomplishment is President Trump.
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To my knowledge this is a first . An admission,of sorts, from an Obamanite: :-o
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/administrations-susan-rice-national-security-adviser-nuclear-weapons/2017/08/10/id/807027/
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I would like Obama to come out and say this young man could be his sone:
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article170340652.html
:-P
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/371650.php
September 19, 2017
ABCNews' Chief Foreign Correspondent Terry Moran: Trump's UN Speech "Bordering on Threat" of a "War Crime"
Ohhh.
Trump told the United Nations that if America is "forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea." In response, Moran freaked out: "The words 'totally destroying' a nation of 25 million people, that borders on the threat of committing a war crime."
Terry Moran was joined in freaking out by his Twitter Bubble Buddies at the SJW National Laughingstock and SJW Atlantic Magazine, who had all sorts of GAINZZZ as far as nervous disorders.
Strangely enough, the media -- get this -- praised Obama's steely toughness and girthy penis when he said the US could use its nuclear arsenal to "destroy" North Korea in 2016.
President Barack Obama delivered a stern warning to North Korea on Tuesday, reminding its "erratic" and "irresponsible" leader that America’s nuclear arsenal could "destroy" his country.
...
Mr Obama gave warning of the possible consequences. "We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals," he told CBS News. "But aside from the humanitarian costs of that, they are right next door to our vital ally, [South] Korea."
I guess it's hard to mount a sustained criticism of a man who's got his dick three and a half deep in your mouth.
Thanks to Jane D'Oh. For the link. Not for all the penis stuff.
BTW, I don't know who came up with "girthy penis" but I think it was a commenter and it's hilarious.
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http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/10/03/michelle-obama-people-dont-trust-politics-gop-men-white/
I feel sorry for her. She has had a tough life.
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ccp:" I feel sorry for her [Michelle Obama]. She has had a tough life."
Very funny. Paid 316k per year as vice president for community and external affairs (community organizer?), like everybody else does. Her title and salary tripled when her husband's importance skyrocketed, like HRC.
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/05/michelle-obamas-salary/
Oppressed like her husband who got into the Ivy League Harvard without publishable grades. I feel sorry for him too. Like Kaepernick, he never really had a chance, half black in such a racist country.
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According to the Chicago Tribune, the Obama library seems more like a playland, than a presidential archive. The facility will house, “a children’s play garden, sledding hill, green spaces for picnics and outdoor gatherings, basketball courts and even a recording studio,” the paper reported.
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According to the Chicago Tribune, the Obama library seems more like a playland, than a presidential archive. The facility will house, “a children’s play garden, sledding hill, green spaces for picnics and outdoor gatherings, basketball courts and even a recording studio,” the paper reported.
Books aren't a big thing for many Obama fans.
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ttps://www.spartareport.com/2017/10/barking-news-sgt-bowe-bergdahl-pleads-guilty-to-desertion-and-misbehavior/
Anyone remember how Obama lauded this guy as a hero and had his parents to the WH? :
http://www.dailywire.com/news/22305/breaking-alleged-traitor-hailed-american-hero-ben-shapiro#
Nothing like having an American President laud a deserter as a hero! :x
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ttps://www.spartareport.com/2017/10/barking-news-sgt-bowe-bergdahl-pleads-guilty-to-desertion-and-misbehavior/
Anyone remember how Obama lauded this guy as a hero and had his parents to the WH? :
http://www.dailywire.com/news/22305/breaking-alleged-traitor-hailed-american-hero-ben-shapiro#
Nothing like having an American President laud a deserter as a hero! :x
To Obama, this is heroic.
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What his own book publisher knew all along:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/barack-obama-just-trolled-donald-072937564.html
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How Obama used a 218 yo never enforced distant law to go after Trump. From day one.
Through his underling the same Sally Yates (sound familiar?) DOJ partisan:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-in-trump-russia-probe-was-it-all-about-the-logan-act/article/2642434
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https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-18/obama-s-alternative-facts-on-the-iran-nuclear-deal
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https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-18/obama-s-alternative-facts-on-the-iran-nuclear-deal
It's almost as if he was on their side...
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quote author=G M
It's almost as if he was on their side... [Hezbollah]
-----------------------
I think this was the original breaking story on Politico Sunday:
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/
What real obstruction of justice looks like.
People asking about getting that Nobel 'Peace' prize back:
http://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Did-Obama-block-Hezbollah-drug-investigation-over-Iran-deal-518430
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Interesting overlap to the Awan - DWS story, they were using the same technique for money laundering.
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Circling back on this one for the record
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/06/communism-in-jarretts-family/
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links Obama DIRECTLY to the coverup of Hillary's email felonies:
Read today's John Fund article which points out how FBIs Strnok changed the phrase from "gross negligence " to "extreme carelessness"
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455213/lindsey-graham-media-hazing-questioning-fbi-justice-department
then flash back to Obama using the EXACT same phrase:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-obama-clinton-20160410-story.html
I am not clear who used the phrase first . But this is CLEAR collusion and coordination to mis label her misdeeds to a mistake and not a crime.
Did Strzok take his cue for the "ONe " or did O agree with the word switch and later announce it in a TV interview?
That IS the question.
This clearly links Obamster to the coverup.
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I agree with the question, who told whom to make this non-criminal?
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/24/lawsuit-demands-answers-on-barack-obama-presidenti/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWTJNek1UUTVaalZtTURsayIsInQiOiI0YWphSjNcLzRRU3l6aVNwU0xQRkRld1ZjNnRiMDkrbFljWHc2MnFcL1NGTExjVm4yUE1NdVFMN281dFpyQllYN1o2WnlNZVwvTzRNc3N5MTVcL2xrRlgwR1BNRlFPM1FKNUFyZ2xKRUJURkFZdmViN0d4cGNGREFmQWtUbEVXNHRMWk4ifQ%3D%3D
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/photo-of-obama-louis-farrakhan-to-be-released
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https://www.facebook.com/143574282924433/videos/169234687025059/?hc_ref=ARR0MpAfFbrLG_97nzw_kax3nMdT4KEoJGcWQZM6KugZSy5DUgZpy
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/photo-of-obama-louis-farrakhan-to-be-released
I once found photos of Farraclown and Rev. Wright when Obama first ran. Not long after, I found that the those photos appeared to have been scrubbed from the net. Knowing what we now know about Goolag, it's not a surprise.
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/24/lawsuit-demands-answers-on-barack-obama-presidenti/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWTJNek1UUTVaalZtTURsayIsInQiOiI0YWphSjNcLzRRU3l6aVNwU0xQRkRld1ZjNnRiMDkrbFljWHc2MnFcL1NGTExjVm4yUE1NdVFMN281dFpyQllYN1o2WnlNZVwvTzRNc3N5MTVcL2xrRlgwR1BNRlFPM1FKNUFyZ2xKRUJURkFZdmViN0d4cGNGREFmQWtUbEVXNHRMWk4ifQ%3D%3D
President Obama always had the support of the environmental movement — until he tried to construct his lavish presidential center on sensitive parkland in Chicago’s South Side.
As currently planned, the Obama Presidential Center will take up nearly 20 acres in Jackson Park. The historic public park was originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who also designed New York City’s famed Central Park. Activists have questioned how a private entity, the University of Chicago, was able to include public parkland in its bid for the library.
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"Activists have questioned how a private entity, the University of Chicago, was able to include public parkland in its bid for the library."
I wonder if they will next go the Mall in DC . He definitely deserves a monument right up there with George Abe Tom. :wink:
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUq3BGiVoAAYCLE.jpg)
I wonder if Cheryl Mills (who cleared Vince Foster's office while his body was stiull warm and lost the documents in a car burglary) knew we'd be reading her email to John Podesta convicting (ex) President Obama.
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-15/news/mn-24214_1_white-house
It's scandalous!
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUq3BGiVoAAYCLE.jpg)
I wonder if Cheryl Mills (who cleared Vince Foster's office while his body was stiull warm and lost the documents in a car burglary) knew we'd be reading her email to John Podesta convicting (ex) President Obama.
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-15/news/mn-24214_1_white-house
It's scandalous!
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1519
Pretty good evidence of a conspiracy to violate the above statute.
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"Pretty good evidence of a conspiracy to violate the above statute."
Stupid question I suppose but is it against the law for the left to break the law? I've seen no sign that it is.
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"Stupid question I suppose but is it against the law for the left to break the law? I've seen no sign that it is."
I am praying on my hands and knees that the latest batch of that FBIs agents emails implicate the Great [big criminal] One once and for all.
Of course the MSM will just ignore it completely
as for the Brock Library on public land in Chicago
how ironic the guy who was busy nationalizing land into monuments at break neck speed is now trying to steal public land for his own shrine
:x
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Very important find Doug.
Please post in
*Rule of Law
*Hillbillary Clinton
as well!
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Wednesday, January 31, 2018
From Farrakhan With Love
Posted by Daniel Greenfield
Two years before Barack Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States, he met with the leader of a hate group who had praised Hitler and declared that the Jews, "can't say 'Never Again' to God, because when he puts you in the ovens, you're there forever.”
The previous year, Obama had launched his national profile with a DNC speech proclaiming,
“There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.” And there he was, smiling alongside Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, the largest black separatist organization in the country, whose theology claimed that white people were genetically engineered devils who were due to be destroyed by flying saucers.
Also posing with Farrakhan and Obama were Mustapha Farrakhan, Joshua Farrakhan and Leonard Farrakhan Muhammad, his security chief and son, his other son, and his chief of staff and son-in-law.
Also there was Willie F. Wilson, a Farrakhan ally, who had led a protest against an Asian business by a mob shouting, “F___ the Chinks”. "We forgave Mr. Chan," he told reporters after that incident. "If we didn't forgive him, we would have cut his head off and rolled it down the street.”
Hope and change.
Obama had claimed that he had never heard the racist views of his pastor and mentor, Jeremiah Wright, but he certainly knew who Farrakhan was. Three years later, he would be forced to disavow him in a statement declaring, “I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan.” Then why did he meet with him and pose with him?
The picture proves that Obama didn’t have a problem with Farrakhan’s racist and anti-Semitic views.
The photo of Farrakhan and Obama at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting on Capitol Hill had been kept buried since it was taken in 2005. A CBC staff member in a “panic” quickly set out to keep the photo secret. And the Nation of Islam and the photographer agreed to protect Obama’s political career.
“After the nomination was secured and all the way up until the inauguration; then for eight years after he was president, it was kept under cover,” Askia Muhammad, the photographer, said, “It absolutely would have made a difference.”
The relationship between Barry and Louie was one of the dirtiest secrets of the previous administration. After Obama left office, the Nation of Islam has become more open in discussing that relationship.
During Obama’s final months in office, Farrakhan revealed that the future president had visited him. That would suggest that Farrakhan and Obama had met on two occasions. Possibly more. A top Nation of Islam official had claimed that the two men would frequently “communicate with each other.”
"We supported him when he was a community organizer," Farrakhan said. "My chief of staff, Brother Leonard, knew Barack Obama, and we backed him with money and with the help of the FOI (Fruits of Islam) to get him elected."
Brother Leonard is Leonard Farrakhan Muhammad, his son-in-law and chief of staff, to whom the photographer had turned over the recently revealed photo. Leonard can be seen standing to Obama’s left in the Farrakhan picture.
“The bigger picture is I have a picture of myself and Barack together,” he told congregants. “You never saw it, because I would never put it out to give his enemies what they were looking for to hurt him.”
Possessing the photo also gave the racist hate group leverage over the President of the United States. It is unknown whether the Nation of Islam made use of the picture to obtain favors from the White House. But concealing the picture was one form of support that the racist hate group provided to Obama.
Even without the photo, there were traces of the relationship that caused problems for Obama.
Obama had participated in Farrakhan’s Million Man March. His pastor and mentor, the violently racist Jeremiah Wright, was an admirer of Farrakhan. Obama’s church honored Farrakhan with the Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award. A group photo which included Michelle Obama and Khadijah Farrakhan, the racist leader's wife, had made the rounds. No one had managed to bury that one.
It took almost as much work to get Obama to disavow Farrakhan as it did Wright. During the Democrat debate, he responded to questions about his support from the racist leader with lawyerisms.
"I can't say to somebody that he can't say that he thinks I'm a good guy," he said at one point. And he made sure to call the Nation of Islam leader, Minister Farrakhan.
Obama disavowed Farrakhan, but there were always hedges. And Farrakhan’s later remarks make it clear that the hate group leader accepted the distancing for the greater good of the “big picture”.
During the campaign Obama had claimed, “We’re not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan.” Was that the truth or was it yet another lie?
Obama had never let anti-Semitism and racism get in the way of supporting a political ally. He had embraced Al Sharpton, the bigoted thug who had once bragged, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”
Obama had appeared at Sharpton’s National Action Network, the hate group whose lieutenant had chanted, “Don’t give the Jew a dime” outside Freddy’s Fashion Mart.
The racist arson that followed killed 7 people.
This was what Obama did in the open. The recently revealed photo gives us some idea of what he was doing in the shadows. There is so much about Obama that was kept buried to protect him.
The Farrakhan photo was suppressed by the Nation of Islam to protect his political career. Not until he was out of office did the hate group begin coming clean about its ties to Barack Hussein Obama. The Los Angeles Times still won’t release the infamous Khalidi tape. That’s been part of the consistent pattern of the media whitewashing and censoring damaging information about Obama’s racist connections.
The same thing happened with Rep. Keith Ellison, the DNC Vice Chairman, who had begun his political career with the Nation of Islam and may have spent as much as eleven years with the hate group. The media allowed Ellison to repeatedly lie about his membership and his history of anti-Semitism. He whined, “I had to account for things I had written as a college student,” even though he was documented defending the Nation of Islam’s anti-Semitism when he was a lawyer with four kids.
How deep do Obama’s ties to the Nation of Islam go? We will probably never know.
The media is as incurious about Obama’s radicalism as it is obsessed with comparing Trump to Hitler. It will go on being incurious about Obama posing with a bigot who once crowed, "Here come the Jews. They don't like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that's a good name. Hitler was a very great man."
Hope and change
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/21/barack-obama-used-classified-intelligence-leaks-po/?utm_source=FB-ARB&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=TWT_Chacka_Breaking%20News&utm_content=144117374&utm_term=144117374
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/21/barack-obama-used-classified-intelligence-leaks-po/?utm_source=FB-ARB&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=TWT_Chacka_Breaking%20News&utm_content=144117374&utm_term=144117374
A great and scary article. When a President discloses something, it is no longer classified because he, by definition, has that power. That does not excuse lower officials leaking what has NOT been declassified and the conspiracy all the way up to commit this felony. It does not excuse getting Americans needlessly killed or negating the value of our intelligence and military assets. The article gives a good look into how these people worked the intertwined wheels of Leftist government, media, deep state and power. Nixon and the old Soviets would blush at this; they never had THIS kind of power.
I believe that exposing all of this even after the fact is crucial. If we cannot hold these officials accountable, when does the corrupt media pay a price for their part in the conspiracy to manipulate of the public? Sadly, this doesn't reach or offend any on that side of the political divide. Ends justify means.
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This is another painting by her:
You won't see this in the MSM!
Hat tip to Mike Savage!
Is this vile or what. Says a lot about who Barry chose to paint his picture:
https://michaelsavage.com/2018/02/12/artwork-by-obamas-portrait-artists-kehinde-wiley/
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I'd want to see that better sourced before passing it along , , ,
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I'd want to see that better sourced before passing it along , , ,
http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/12/wiley-painted-beheaded-white-woman/
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Fk!!! :-o :-o :-o
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no one here would have ever dreamed the ONE would find a way to make us all listen to him for the rest of his life (and ours):
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/us/politics/obama-netflix-shows.html
He will likely be the first President who will be around longer then me.
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Uh oh , , ,
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/top-five-obama-administration-officials-used-secret-email-accounts/
Eric Holder = Lew Alcindor = LOL
no sleaze here . :roll:
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34277960?SThisFB
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new platform for O to continue his leftist propaganda :
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2018/05/21/netflix-obamas-enter-into/
no surprise
no one with a brain would think he was just going to go away
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An honest account by a dishonest participant? A fiction writer. Forgive me if I don't want to read it or re-live it.
"This is the closest view of Obama we’re likely to get until he publishes his own memoir." - Ugh!
No mention of Valerie Jarrett? How close to power was he really?
I am just pleased to see the legacy repealed. 8 wasted years, 10 years counting the preceding 2 where Obama et al took majorities in Congress and started our descent.
"More than any modern President, Obama had a keen sense of the limits of American power—and of his own. But it’s hard to build a narrative around actions not taken, disasters possibly averted, hard realities accommodated. The story of what didn’t happen isn’t an easy one to tell."
Gag me.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/18/witnessing-the-obama-presidency-from-start-to-finish
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The World is just too stupid for Obama........ :wink:
He was centuries ahead of his time........ :roll:
Actually Jesus would have taught him what a fool he is if he lived today
So would the Hebrews who came up with the 10 Commandments.
Too much Chooooom... leads to this +> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_complex
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"In 2014, 47 of the nation’s 73 inspectors general signed a letter alleging that Obama had stonewalled their “ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/obama-administration-stonewalled-inspectors-general/
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Funny that they call it Hillary's email scandal. If this happened to a Trump cabinet member, is there any chance it wouldn't be a "Trump scandal" instead of a cabinet member scandal? Especially if Trump was DIRECTLY INVOLVED?! When does former President Obama get formally blamed for ALL the scandals of his administration?
[ https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fish-rot-from-the-head-down.html
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/otto-scharmer/the-fish-rots-from-the-he_b_8208652.html ]
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/14/obama-had-direct-contact-with-clinton-on-private-email-server-ig-report.html
Obama had direct contact with Clinton on private email server: IG report
President Obama was one of a select handful of individuals who had "direct contact" with Hillary Clinton on her private email account, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz indicated in his bombshell report Thursday on the Clinton email probe.
In a footnote, the DOJ watchdog notes that "FBI analysts and Prosecutor 2 told us that former President Barack Obama was one of the 13 individuals with whom Clinton had direct contact using her clintonemail.com account."
The IG report adds that Obama used a pseudonym for his username and that, after intelligence analysts questioned whether Obama's communications contained classified information, it was determined the emails sent and received were not classified.
Obama said in a 2015 interview to CBS News that he learned about it "the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports." [THAT WAS A FALSE STATEMENT from the American President to the American public, "I'm not a crook", "I did not.have.sexual.relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinski."]
Press Secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged shortly after those remarks attracted attention that Obama and Clinton did exchange emails.
"The president, as I think many people expected, did over the course of his first several years in office, trade emails with the secretary of state," he said.
Despite speculation at the time that the president would have noticed Clinton was not using a ".gov" account, Earnest said Obama nevertheless was unaware of Clinton's personal email server and how she was following federal records law.
Elsewhere in the IG report, the IG asked investigators why they made no effort to obtain the personal devices that Clinton’s senior aides were using at the State Department, since those devices were "potential sources of Clinton's ... classified emails" or places where unauthorized classified emails were being stored.
In response, officials on the probe claimed that "the culture of mishandling classified information at the State Department" was so pervasive that it "made the quantity of potential sources of evidence particularly vast" -- a rationale that the IG implied was unconvincing, because investigators could simply have obtained personal devices for a handful of key Clinton aides.
Investigators also claimed the State Department would be the better agency to handle that kind of deep-dive into Clinton's emails. In the end, Horowitz concluded that the issue was a "judgment call" and that there was no evidence improper political considerations influenced investigators' decisions.nd for a question to comment.
There was a scheme to protect Hillary Clinton from being indicted, and to smear and slander then President-elect Donald Trump.
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Above article was published by Fox News; it will only be read by the right. Different headline over at PBS.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/ig-report-clinton-emails-fix-was-in/
though I would have like to see more of the messiah's name in here
we all knew as did most on the right (Rush etc) the fix WOULD be in before it happened ( I shall not say 100% likely in advance but lets say 99%)
when Obama gave his verbal public blessing and then Comey let Clinton off every one knew
so this is just a well respected know attorney stating the obvious
However it is nice to see.
Though Left MSM will ignore 100% and they control 90 % of the news......
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It's not your fault, Mr. President. You didn't push too far. All you did was troll Donald Trump into running for president in the first place, stand by while Ferguson and Baltimore rioted and burned, give Iran billions in exchange for empty promises, allow Russia to establish a beachhead in the Middle East for the first time in half a century, browbeat Israel at every opportunity, ram through Obamacare after Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts, preside over the mass migration of children across the southern border in 2014, expand the DACA amnesty despite saying 22 times you lacked authority to do so, use the permanent structure of government to devastate the Appalachian economy, convince half of America that liberals were ready to take their guns (this wasn't hard to do), have your Education Department issue orders that led to the campus-assault craze and the deterioration of classroom discipline and that, months before a presidential election, mandated trans-bathrooms in schools, have your Justice Department preside over a sloppy (I'm being charitable) investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server that included, at one point, your attorney general secretly meeting with the husband of the subject of the investigation on an airport tarmac, muscle out Joe Biden, who might have won, from the race, and hand the party back to the less-likable half of America's most polarizing and corrupt political couple. Not to mention the eight years of lecturing. Oh, the lecturing.
http://freebeacon.com/columns/the-world-as-it-wasnt/
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"Not to mention the eight years of lecturing. Oh, the lecturing"
He is still at it. trying to convince the crats they need to be more like him, the greatest human being to have ever walked the Earth and who taught us all "who we are".
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Why are we paying him 200 K per year when within two yrs he is worth at least 60 mill.
Why is he even accepting it? I thought a messiah wouldn't do that?
I thought the reason for pensions where to keep Presidents out of poverty . Some died broke I recall.
Now they are all mega millionaires:
http://freebeacon.com/politics/obama-actually-surprised-money/
Of note Trump does not take a salary .
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My thoughts exactly when I heard the messiah speak his words of wisdom while in Africa yesterday or so:
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/obama-speech-south-africa-slams-habits-drove-career/
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when he was president but now protected historic area not protected
when it suits the greatest human being to have ever lived to use as his personal space:
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/08/11/obama-center-breaks-promise-remove-trees-jackson-park/
there is no where else this guy can build his shrine , his temple.......... :x
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Democrats should look long and hard at which voters come out when former President Barack Obama works on get out the vote. One might recall that shortly before the 2010 midterms, the Democrats controlled the Presidency, the House and had a 60 vote super majority in the Senate. When he left they had lost the House, the Senate, and the presidency. Just bad, dumb luck, I suppose.
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Like Hillary's using public events to vent her emotional state of anguish Obama does the same.
The part about him yelling at someone in the audience who is not listening to the great one but is using the cell phone device is most precious:
http://www.theamericanmirror.com/obama-snaps-at-young-rally-attendees-im-talking-to-you-you-pay-attention/
To think of the personal cognitive dissonance the greatest human who ever lived facing someone NOT paying attention to HIM.
:lol:
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But we have seen worse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44kyHOPEZV8
"If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
If you like your plan, you can keep your plan." Again and again, never anything near true.
My plan was banned. Costs went up 400%. I've never seen the same doctor twice since.
Jonathon Gruber, Obamacare designer and strategist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adrdmmh7bMo
"Lack of transparency was a huge political advantage.
Call it the stupidity of the American voter but that was really critical to get it passed.
I'd rather have this law than not."
Obama: It's not a tax. My critics call everything I do a tax.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2lexSwo4rI
Chief Justice John Roberts: Obamacare is a tax. If it wasn't, it would be unconstitutional.
https://www.upi.com/Under-the-US-Supreme-Court-What-Roberts-actually-said-about-healthcare-tax/35241341732600/
Obama: “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”
“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 [VA] facilities”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/19/obamas-biggest-whoppers/?utm_term=.45e61458a5ea
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The greatest human to have ever lived in the darkened auditorium under the spotlight for all to consume the eternal genius's wisdom and insight:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2018/11/21/barack-obama-trashes-americans-again-theyre-confused-blind-filled-with-hate-n2536295
nothing like a narcissist belittling all those who do not agree with perceived truths...............
maybe he can still convince Michelle the great first lady to run yet............
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Today I learned from the greatest human to walk the EArth that a chair is a chair is a chair
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/barack-obama-makes-call-for-bipartisanship_us_5bff0fd0e4b0388c1770fbcc
One thins I will miss about the Bushes is the lack of arrogance , self import, narcissm
unlike this pompous guy
The usual Dem playbook to call from "bipartisanship" when ever they don't control levers of governent
which shifts to shoving all their stuff down our throats every chance they get when they control anything - look at their plans for the Congress.......
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Fonte quoting President Obama: At the United Nations in 2016, Obama outlined a post-sovereigntist vision that was the mirror opposite of Trump’s worldview. Obama told the General Assembly, “We’ve bound our power to international laws and institutions.” He declared that the “promise” of the United Nations could only be realized “if powerful nations like my own accept constraints… . I am convinced that in the long run, giving up freedom of action — not our ability to protect ourselves…but binding ourselves to international rules over the long term — enhances our security.”
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https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/obama-ignored-federal-law-310-million-help-illegal-immigrants/?utm_source=push&utm_medium=westernjournalism&utm_content=2018-12-06&utm_campaign=manualpost
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plans to build in Chicago public park should be tossed out
https://apnews.com/1d045094f74f458dad75bd12183ee67c
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robert_Blakey
Odds the lawsuit WILL be tossed out are 100 to 1 .
The great protector of parks and our environment cannot find another freakin place to build his monument.
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As we approach 2020 and Democrats try to figure out who is their next Obama and hold him out as the savior, the mentor, let's not forget the specifics of all the damage he did.
One of my ad nauseum points of that era is that Obama came to power in Nov 2006 / Jan 2007, not when he was elected President in Nov 2008, inaugurated in Jan 2009. Democrats took congress and as he became frontrunner and nominee, no new Republican domestic policies were possible and the most important of them, tax rate cuts, were on the schedule for repeal. In that time, 51 consecutive months of job growth came to an end and financial collapse was the new reality.
Enter the non-stimulus "stimulus" which was all his, passed by his Pelosi-Reid congress.
Economist Veronique de Rugy studied the impact of this and measured two important observations:
1) The temporary jobs he created cost the taxpayer $286,000 per job taking the Obama numbers at their word, real numbers were far worse.
2) 80% more went to Democrat districts as compared with Republican districts.
http://www.hughhewitt.com/mercatus-institute-economist-veronique-de-rugy-follows-where-the-non-stimulus-stimulus-money-went/
Wise use of funds? Equal protection under the law? Not so much. All steered to help cronies - just like Venezuela.
Result: Slowest recovery in modern history when it should have been the fastest.
Contrast that with Republican "stimulus". Corporate tax reform and individual across the board tax rate cuts apply to all taxpayers, all constituents, all companies and all districts equally.
And THEY think Trump is the corrupt one. If we had a media, they would have ripped the Obama record to shreds. Instead they are waiting in bated breath for The One in all his experience and wisdom to emerge from the clouds to anoint his slightly delayed successor.
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" Instead they are waiting in bated breath for The One in all his experience and wisdom to emerge from the clouds to anoint his slightly delayed successor."
libs fantasies of a Michele "the Great" run for Prez. Then we can get 2 for 1 - again.
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ccp: "libs fantasies of a Michele "the Great" run for Prez. Then we can get 2 for 1 - again."
Yes, Michelle O was the ex first lady I feared most before 2016 and she co-leads in the polls with Joe Biden.
https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/430614-one-fourth-of-democratic-voters-say-theyd-support-michelle
Note that frontrunners are people above politics who sit on the sidelines and face no scrutiny with their lives and their views. Watch the infighting begin when the field gets more crowded. Chris Christy's knockout of Marco Rubio was a preview, also Trump's knockout of Jeb Bush.
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https://www.westernjournal.com/former-oil-president-says-obama-nothing-increased-fuel-production/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=westernjournalism&utm_content=2019-03-17&utm_campaign=manualpost&fbclid=IwAR11RtNVuTmJ_moXT558xHJR88Vdd_WNxKCd4pkDehC6o-klTxl7DyiwYII
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https://www.westernjournal.com/former-oil-president-says-obama-nothing-increased-fuel-production/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=westernjournalism&utm_content=2019-03-17&utm_campaign=manualpost&fbclid=IwAR11RtNVuTmJ_moXT558xHJR88Vdd_WNxKCd4pkDehC6o-klTxl7DyiwYII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEyPkY0Kf-Y
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“That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas — that was me, people.”
as always it is ME , I ME , I ME , I .....
No slickster it was not YOU on oil. YOU were Solyndra.
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https://www.westernjournal.com/former-oil-president-says-obama-nothing-increased-fuel-production/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=westernjournalism&utm_content=2019-03-17&utm_campaign=manualpost&fbclid=IwAR11RtNVuTmJ_moXT558xHJR88Vdd_WNxKCd4pkDehC6o-klTxl7DyiwYII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEyPkY0Kf-Y
First, what a doofus, "can't drill our way to lower oil prices". The only way we can't is if you stop us.
Pre-Obama and post-Obama Democrats have been fighting US energy production for a very long time. Here is Joe Biden opposing oil and pipelines in 1995:
https://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-93/issue-9/in-this-issue/exploration/opening-of-anwr-still-a-hot-issue-in-congress.html
Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del), another sponsor, said ANWR exploration "is simply not worth the risk. The real damage would come from the hundreds of miles of pipelines that would have to be run across the tundra" to produce any oil that is found.
What is the damage that pipelines cause?? What was the damage caused by relying on the Middle East to power America?
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens said any oil fields could be developed without environmental risk, and "My friends tell me (the oil potential) is larger than Prudhoe Bay field."
Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski (a better Murkowski) pointed out that Prudhoe Bay has produced one fourth of the nation's oil the past 16-17 years. "You might not like oil fields," Murkowski said, "but Prudhoe Bay is the finest oil field anywhere, bar none."
Murkowski said, "The only reason this bill (to block leasing) was introduced was to raise money for those environmental groups who oppose ANWR exploration."
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Biden, 1995: To address our immediate problem of oil dependency with drilling that won't yield new oil for a decade (2005) is "short-sighted".
https://votesmart.org/public-statement/84921/statement-by-senator-biden-on-senate-approval-to-drill-in-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge#.XI-gtyhKjIU
I'm glad the fracking engineers in Texas and North Dakota didn't feel that way!
Eight years later Biden votes for the Iraq war the Left contends was "over oil".
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/joe-bidens-history-making-wrong-call/332431/
https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html
The oil we needed was in the US all along and it was the Left and the government hindering its production.
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“That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas — that was me, people.”
as always it is ME , I ME , I ME , I .....
No slickster it was not YOU on oil. YOU were Solyndra.
Exactly! In his own words, "That was me, people." To something he actively fought at every step... Good God. And people wonder where Trump came from. How did we get a President who mis-speaks, over-speaks and makes up stuff that just isn't so. Enough about 2008, they should focus on Trump.
Glibness was the Solyndra President. The food stamp President. The summer of recovery President. The shovel-ready jobs President. The Cash for Clunkers President with economic illiteracy right there with Gerald Ford's Whip Inflation Now campaign. The planeload of cash to Iran President. The sell out to China and North Korea President. The 1980s called and wants their foreign policy back President. The tell Vladimir I will have more flexibility after me reelection President.
Do they really want to re-litigate all that? Bring it on.
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Keeping this thread up to date. No doubt we have not heard the last of this ex-President. His last big act was to help Hillary get elected. Oops. And taking credit for US oil production records: "That was me people."
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/11/28/obama_suddenly_america_is_the_biggest_oil_producer_that_was_me_people.html
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Obama shatters previous record, mentions himself 467 times in one speech in Berlin
American Thinker ^ | April 7, 2019 | Thomas Lifson
Here’s the breakdown of his personal pronoun use (based on a rush transcript of the event): “I” — 312 “Me” — 33 “My” — 43 “I’d” — 9 “I’m” — 61 “Myself” — 9 The former president’s comments began on his favorite topic: himself.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/obama_shatters_previous_record_mentions_himself_467_times_in_one_speech_in_berlin.html
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Enough about me. What do YOU think about me?
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"Obama shatters previous record, mentions himself 467 times in one speech in Berlin"
now that he is no longer the big cheese and to a large degree irrelevant he is descending even deeper pathological need to be the "greatest one" who ever lived
of course we don't hear a peep from the HAVAD (sic) psychiatrists about this. Only about Trump .
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https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/16/politics/michelle-obama-donald-trump/index.html
"We come from a broken family, we are a little unsettled. Sometimes you spend the weekend with divorced dad. That feels like fun but then you get sick. That is what America is going through. We are living with divorced dad."
I missed a part, "ya know, ya know, ya know, ya know, ya know". Maybe that's what makes it funny. In the identity politics world, she should have clarified she was talking about children having to visit divorced white men.
Even the liberals call it a mistake while they admit they see what she is saying.
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https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/16/politics/michelle-obama-donald-trump/index.html
"We come from a broken family, we are a little unsettled. Sometimes you spend the weekend with divorced dad. That feels like fun but then you get sick. That is what America is going through. We are living with divorced dad."
I missed a part, "ya know, ya know, ya know, ya know, ya know". Maybe that's what makes it funny. In the identity politics world, she should have clarified she was talking about children having to visit divorced white men.
Even the liberals call it a mistake while they admit they see what she is saying.
Not everyone gets a great father like Barack had.
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" ."We come from a broken family, we are a little unsettled. Sometimes you spend the weekend with divorced dad. That feels like fun but then you get sick. That is what America is going through. We are living with divorced dad."
look at the demographics children born out of wedlock
so we were all one big happy family when Brock was the prez...............? :-o
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so we were all one big happy family when Brock was the prez...............? :-o
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That's how she sees it. It seemed true, a happy family with a blank canvas for a President - for about a day until they started to govern.
Beyond that she is delusional. They stole a Senate election to get the 60th vote for Obamacare. They deemed it passed when they lost a seat to the Republicans in Massachusetts. They played 'the price is right', cf. "Cornhusker Kickback" to get the Dem vote in Nebraska, now a Republican seat, instead of letting America read and support the bill. They delayed the start date of the law to the second term to make sure they got one. They lost the House, lost the state Houses, used the IRS to stop opponents from organizing and lied about Benghazi to get reelected, lost the Senate and lost the White House. The country was as divided in those years as we are under Trump once they began to govern. Their detractors just weren't quite as deranged. Her shopping trip entourage to Madrid and taking a separate jet to lavish vacations were symptom of their arrogance living in a bubble. Her never-been-proud and divorced dads aren't real parents comments demonstrate she is no more in touch with the people than her husband's brain dead economic comment on capital gains. She couldn't reform the school lunch program without coercion and division, and now it's repealed. Good riddance, ya know.
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Judicial Watch announced that it obtained 44 pages of records from the State Department through court-ordered discovery revealing that the Obama White House was tracking a December 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records concerning then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecure, non-government email system. Months after the Obama White House involvement, the State Department responded to the requestor, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), falsely stating that no such records existed.
Judicial Watch’s discovery is centered upon whether Clinton intentionally attempted to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a non-government email system and whether the State Department acted in bad faith in processing Judicial Watch’s FOIA request for communications from Clinton’s office. U.S District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, as well as E.W. Priestap, to be deposed or answer written questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”
“These documents suggest the Obama White House knew about the Clinton email lies being told to the public at least as early as December 2012,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “A federal court granted Judicial Watch discovery into the Clinton emails because the court wanted answers about a government cover-up of the Clinton emails. And now we have answers because it looks like the Obama White House orchestrated the Clinton email cover-up.”
More from our press release here: http://jwatch.us/oam3mf
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WOW!!!
" Obama White House was tracking a December 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records concerning then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecure, non-government email system. Months after the Obama White House involvement, the State Department responded to the requestor, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), falsely stating that no such records existed."
“These documents suggest the Obama White House knew about the Clinton email lies being told to the public at least as early as December 2012,”
But wait Obamster had no idea this was going on till he saw it revealed on Fox.
Obviously they thought she would get away with it , but then we had wikileaks......and the rest is history
You mean Barack lied? You mean he has not clue about a cover up deal ?
Damn it! If only we had a real journalistic objective media rather than a partisan propaganda megaphone for the Democrat Party.
Just think how this would be all over every single paper and TV and cable news network daily . Instead this is totally ignored and we have 24/7 Trump bashing . Yes the media is the enemy of the people . Yup.
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/barack-obama-envious-of-michelles-memoir-success-throws-her-under-the-bus/
I hope his publisher gets his birth location right this time.
Barack , I promise to buy 5 copies of your book:
if you leave out the words "I" , "me", and "my".
:evil:
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/obama_appointees_in_the_communist_orbit.html
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"Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/obama_appointees_in_the_communist_orbit.html#ixzz5p96BTIvM
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook"
This part I found particularly interesting about an adoring biographer of Clinton and Obama who is on the leftist cable stations frequently:
****David Maraniss, the Washington Post journalist chosen to write Obama’s biography, which covered up Obama’s radical past, was also a red diaper baby. He father was a member of the Communist Party and worked through a cell in Detroit to secretly influence workers through his articles for the Detroit Times.****
On the air one would be introduced to him as though he is some sort of objective observer and chronicaller but nearly every time he speaks he comes out as . partisan .
The above shows where his obvious political bias comes from .
Akin to Carl Bernstein who still lives off his Watergate fame pretending to be a journalist rather then the Dem Party hack he is.
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as long as they are all dead ends streets.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/south-carolina-activist-wants-to-rename-street-after-obama-for-some-reason/
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/8/hollywood-regulars-obamas-ready-to-debut-their-fir/
I can hear/read all the reviews now from the movie critics who are mostly all liberals:
exquisite, groundbreaking , honest, wonderful, surely up for awards , breaks the glass ceilings
and of course the topic is race ................
Just realized reviews already in, and of course gets 94% positive :
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/american_factory
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for the guy who stinks in the morning like everyone else and the one who is ashamed of America:
https://nypost.com/2019/08/22/barack-and-michelle-obama-are-buying-15m-estate-in-marthas-vineyard/
while we must use electric
while we must pay more in taxes
while we had more dictates to conform to.
while the new ministry of propaganda continues the Obama megalomaniac disease :
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/netflix-documentary-american-factory-obama-manifesto/
Sorry Professor Dershowitz . - you are not invited to the new house warming party held by all the beautiful smart educated
elites who can now have their hero to pontificate what is best for the masses.............
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Why would you buy beachfront property when it’s soon going to be submerged because of global warming
for the guy who stinks in the morning like everyone else and the one who is ashamed of America:
https://nypost.com/2019/08/22/barack-and-michelle-obama-are-buying-15m-estate-in-marthas-vineyard/
while we must use electric
while we must pay more in taxes
while we had more dictates to conform to.
while the new ministry of propaganda continues the Obama megalomaniac disease :
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/netflix-documentary-american-factory-obama-manifesto/
Sorry Professor Dershowitz . - you are not invited to the new house warming party held by all the beautiful smart educated
elites who can now have their hero to pontificate what is best for the masses.............
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" .Why would you buy beachfront property when it’s soon going to be submerged because of global warming "
Rush tried to presage the Left's answer to this question :
to be able to enjoy the beachfront before it goes below water. :wink:
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Media is catching up with points already made on the forum. Maybe his scare rhetoric was aimed at driving down the price of his chosen mansion...
https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-what-global-warming-obama-to-buy-marthas-vineyard-mansion-1844248/
During his first address to the United Nations, in 2009, former President Barack Obama warned that “no nation, however large or small, wealthy or poor, can escape the impact of climate change.” He told the General Assembly that “rising sea levels threaten every coastline” and “on shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees.”
However, given the former first couple’s impending purchase of a $14.8 million mansion on Martha’s Vineyard, the Obamas appear to be either impervious to the effects of climate change or guilty of exaggerating its dangers.
-------------------------------------------------
You can ask Ted Kennedy about this, Martha's Vineyard is an island.
(https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/1-1534876435.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=980:*)
A heated infinity pool overlooks the ocean.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/g22791064/barack-obama-marthas-vineyard-vacation-home-sale/
(https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/aerial-view-1510185659.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=980:*)
An aerial view of the 6,967-square-foot home.
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wow
and even its own b ball court . 8-)
I posted this was his third house.
but I was wrong:
this must be his fourth we know about:
Hawaii
DC
Palms Springs
he probably has homes in Brussels and Paris too; Or luxury townhomes ...........
notice he hasn't bought in Kenya.
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Yes and the heated pool will be nice so you don't have to swim in the same wayers as the unwashed.
"private property owners cannot interfere with the public’s right to walk along the submerged lands that lie seaward of the low tide line. With few exceptions, they don’t own that land; the public does."
https://massrealestatelawblog.com/2012/07/20/footprints-in-the-sand-massachusetts-beach-access-law/
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what .
does he also have a spread in Chicago
so he can be close to Bill Ayers and look at the building of his shrine (against the wishes of the locals) , also?
Why stay in a Ritz Carlton when one can simply buy a house whenever one wants to go
I remember when the left gave Reagan grief when he gave a speech in Japan for 2 million.
Obamas make that much every 2 weeks now.
Peak net worth of presidents.
Jefferson must be the one who lost the most because he was serious debt before he died and Congress bought his library to give him some security . (first Pres library so to speak)
Grant of course went broke so Samuel Clemens published his auto biography - I am not sure if this was first book written by a president or not
I am sure he didn't get 50 mill advance though.
And of course now they probably have teams of writers doing the real writing.
Net worth of presidents :
notice they still list Obama as 40 million ; it is more like a 100 million .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_by_net_worth
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Former President Obama is coming back in the news as the heat turns up on the FBI, CIA, FISA-gate issue gets investigated. Also this story. The media failed to get Gen Mattis to turn on President Trump but he did manage to drop a few bombshells on former Pres. Obama:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/act-of-war-mattis-says-obamas-inept-response-to-cafe-milano-bomb-plot-emboldened-iran
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/09/obama-swept-iran-terror-plot-under-the-rug.php
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis has a book coming out in which he is harshly critical of President Obama. Among other things, he recalls his dissent from Obama’s decision to pull troops out of Iraq prematurely, which had nearly-disastrous consequences. But this less well-known story about Iran is also noteworthy:
Mattis says Washington didn’t even inform him when Iran committed an “act of war” on American soil.
Mattis was CENTCOM commander at the time, responsible for our military posture vis-a-vis Iran.
The duty officer at his Tampa, Florida, headquarters on Oct. 11, 2011 told him that the attorney general and FBI director had held a press conference to announce the arrest of two Iranians who had planned a bomb attack on Cafe Milano, a high-end restaurant in Washington that was a favorite of the rich and famous, including Saudi Arabia’s ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir.
As Mattis writes, “Attorney General Eric Holder said the bombing plot was ‘directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government and, specifically, senior members of the Qods Force.’ The Qods were the Special Operations Force of the Revolutionary Guards, reporting to the top of the Iranian government.”
***
“Had the bomb gone off, those in the restaurant and on the street would have been ripped apart, blood rushing down sewer drains. It would have been the worst attack on us since 9/11. I sensed that only Iran’s impression of America’s impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple of miles of the White House,” he writes. “Absent one fundamental mistake — the terrorists had engaged an undercover DEA agent in an attempt to smuggle the bomb — the Iranians would have pulled off this devastating attack. Had that bomb exploded, it would have changed history.”
Within the Obama administration, Mattis argued forcefully that the president needed to inform the public of this act of war and mobilize opinion in favor of strong action against Iran. But his advice went unheeded.
“Washington was not interested in my Zimmermann [telegram] analogy. We treated an act of war as a law enforcement violation, jailing the low-level courier,” Mattis writes.
Mattis later learned why Obama had gone so easy on the mullahs:
“In my view, we had to hold Iran to account and strike back when attacked. But there was a reason for the administration’s restraint. The administration was secretly negotiating with Iran, although I was not privy to the details at the time.”
Those negotiations would lead to the Iran nuclear deal, signed in 2015. Mattis is critical of the agreement, which President Trump withdrew from last year. “In my military judgment, America had undertaken a poorly calculated, long-shot gamble. At the same time, the administration was lecturing our Arab friends that they had to accommodate Iran as if it were a moderate neighbor in the region and not an enemy committed to their destruction,” Mattis writes. “As long as its leaders consider Iran less a nation-state than a revolutionary cause, Iran will remain a terrorist threat potentially more dangerous than Al Qaeda or ISIS.”
It is painful to think how much hilarity the mullahs in Teheran must have enjoyed at the expense of the incompetent President Obama.
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Reminiscing the tactics of Trump's predecessors. What did Biden know and when did he know it? Does he even know it now? Does the MSM?
IRS Targeting - 700 conservative groups were prevented from raising money and participating (against Obama's reelection and policies) by action / inaction of the federal bureaucracy, while the IRS commissioner was visiting the White House 500 times more often than his predecessor.
-----
Page 188 of the report claiming, "both liberal and conservatives groups received the same bad treatment and were targeted by the IRS" story:
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/REPORT%20-%20IRS%20&%20TIGTA%20Mgmt%20Failures%20Related%20to%20501(c)(4)%20(Sept%205%202014,%209-9-14%20update).pdf
"104 conservative groups were asked 1552 questions. 7 liberal groups were asked a total of 33 questions.
100% of liberal group applications were approved."
[100% of conservative groups were denied approval over that time period.]
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/REPORT%20-%20IRS%20&%20TIGTA%20Mgmt%20Failures%20Related%20to%20501(c)(4)%20(Sept%205%202014,%209-9-14%20update).pdf
100% (all) of the 292 groups applying for tax-exempt status whose names contained "tea party", "patriot", or "9/12" were denied tax-exempt status for two years coming into Obama's reelection.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323873904578571363311816922
That's not the same bad treatment for right and left.
-----------------
What is missing from a valid Nazi analogy to the Obama administration is that the government did not then go out and kill them when they submitted opposition group applications.
All of this swept under the rug by even our side. (
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/01/michelle-obama-many-people-around-the-world-feel-like-barack-is-their-president/
That is right Michelle,
you globalist husband was THEIR president.
Not OURS.
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:roll:
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/15/obama-2020-voters-crazy-stuff-071248
translation :
it is ok but just don't say it . pretend like he did for 8 yrs that your a moderate that you compromise
while all the time appoint lib activist judges convert the entire nation to Obamacare on the road to single payer, weaken our military, and executive orders every day, expand identity politics and more
shoving *your crazy stuff* down our throats.
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https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/11/26/barack-obama-2020-democrats-candidates-biden-073025
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he was after the initial good will period not exactly that popular:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html
indeed his numbers are not much better than Trump's
most Americans certainly did not like what he was feeding us that is for sure.
The Blacks would have left him too if he was not the first one.
and he won over two weak candidates McCain and Romney
Like Clinton beat a weak candidate (Dole) his second term.
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WND is not a real weighty source. Nonetheless, some good reminders in here.
https://www.wnd.com/2017/05/25-impeachable-obama-scandals-far-more-serious-than-comey-firing/?fbclid=IwAR1ElmiPAZcjcJfaqUP93mERYAuN_H-FXpuIQfJ5rlA0zOPWPXHmv2QuhoM
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The president who never had a scandal:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/obama_gave_commoncore_contract_to_publisher_got_65_million_book_deal_in_return.html#.Xe5qdRtb5d4.facebook
Obama gave Common Core contract to publisher, got $65-million book deal in return?
By Monica Showalter
As far-left Democrats yell about bribery and high crimes and misdemeanors, let's turn to their own side of the aisle, starting with the once penniless President Obama, who left public office a very, very rich man.
He just bought a Martha's Vineyard mansion for a cool $11.75 million, which is in addition to his Kalorama lookout post, his Chicago home, and possibly a Hawaii spread. At some point, you've made enough...but not him.
Ostensibly, it's mainly the work of his book deals. No bribery there, right?
Well, ahem...
According to Investment Watch (IWB), something doesn't quite look right.
Obama gave Pearson Publishing $350 million to create Commoncore text and Pearson gave Obama a $65 million dollar book deal in return.
...and...
Pearson Publishing was paid for Commoncore but Penguin Random House Publishing did the Obama book deal. But there is commonality with the two:
From Wiki:
Penguin Random House was formed on July 1, 2013, upon the completion of a £2.4 billion transaction between Bertelsmann and Pearson to merge their respective trade publishing companies, Random House and Penguin Group. Bertelsmann and Pearson, the parent companies, owning 53% and 47%, respectively.
In July 2017, Pearson agreed to sell a 22% stake in the business to Bertelsmann, thereby retaining a 25% holding.
That sounds like a classic bribe. You give me this big contract, and I'll kick back some to you at a later date. Chicago Way. The book cash flowed to Obama in 2017. Pearson, incidentally, seemed to lose money anyway, given the public distaste for Obama's federal takeover of education via Common Core, which extended to states cutting the program.
President Trump complained about the apparent quid pro quo last summer.
It's not the first time Obama has done things like this, either. IWB notes that Obama's net neutrality stance benefited Netflix, and surprise, surprise, he got a lucrative deal with Netflix, too.
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https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/3/2/14779892/barack-michelle-obama-65-million-book-deal-penguin-random-house
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which I read is considered very good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Memoirs_of_Ulysses_S._Grant
published by Mark Twain.
Grant widow received $450,000 in 1885 dollars
worth about 30 times that today :
https://www.in2013dollars.com/1860-dollars-in-2017?amount = 13.5 million today
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https://ew.com/article/2008/01/09/obama-jeri-ryan/
Unmentioned in the article is that is was Baraq who had the records leaked.
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https://ew.com/article/2008/01/09/obama-jeri-ryan/
Unmentioned in the article is that is was Baraq who had the records leaked.
Yup. Funny how his grades are still a state secret.
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https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/04/29/rice-pandemic-an-opportunity-to-make-sure-every-american-has-access-the-ballot-by-mail/
and more importantly this:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/04/29/barack-obama-goes-golfing-during-coronavirus-quarantine-n386764
So Sue what do you think of Baraq playing golf (w/o mask ) while 60 K souls were lost?
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...
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/04/29/barack-obama-goes-golfing-during-coronavirus-quarantine-n386764
“Hi everybody, it’s Michelle Obama. Our communities are among the hardest hit by the coronavirus, and we’ve got to do everything we can to keep each other safe,” says the former first lady in the 30-second PSA. “And that means staying home..." (While husband Barack golfs in Virginia.
I guess they aren't staying at THIS home:
Obamas pay close to $12M for Martha’s Vineyard home on nearly 30 acres
(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Frobbreportedit.files.wordpress.com%2F2019%2F08%2Fobama02.jpg%3Fw%3D1000%26h%3D562&f=1&nofb=1)
Who are "Our communities"?? Black inner city, or Martha's Vineyard with the Kennedys et al.
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obama-knew-details-of-wiretapped-flynn-phone-calls-surprising-top-doj-official-new-docs-show
:-P :oops:
The "most honest incorruptible" prez we ever had - sarcasm emphasis.
The only book he stuck to was the 50 million dollar rights deal for his story.
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/crooked-obama-panics-deep-state-reporter-isikoff-releases-leaked-call-former-presidents-fingerprints-attempted-coup-documents-coming/
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cartwright
wait I thought democracy and rule of law at stake
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cartwright
wait I thought democracy and rule of law at stake
We have always been at war with Eastasia!
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'This is what happens when a fake lawyer goes up against a real one.'
-------------------------------------------
Open Memorandum to Barack Obama
by Sidney Powell May 13, 2020 in Media
OPEN MEMORANDUM
To: Barack Hussein Obama
From: Sidney Powell
www.SidneyPowell.com
Date: May 13, 2020
Re: Your Failure to Find Precedent for Flynn Dismissal
Regarding the decision of the Department of Justice to dismiss charges against General Flynn, in your recent call with your alumni, you expressed great concern: “there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.”
Here is some help—if truth and precedent represent your true concern. Your statement is entirely false. However, it does explain the damage to the Rule of Law throughout your administration.
First, General Flynn was not charged with perjury—which requires a material false statement made under oath with intent to deceive.1 A perjury prosecution would have been appropriate and the Rule of Law applied if the Justice Department prosecuted your former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for his multiple lies under oath in an investigation of a leak only he knew he caused.
McCabe lied under oath in fully recorded and transcribed interviews with the Inspector General for the DOJ. He was informed of the purpose of the interview, and he had had the benefit of counsel. He knew he was the leaker. McCabe even lied about lying. He lied to his own agents—which sent them on a “wild-goose-chase”—thereby making his lies “material” and an obstruction of justice. Yet, remarkably, Attorney General Barr declined to prosecute McCabe for these offenses.
Applying the Rule of Law, after declining McCabe’s perjury prosecution, required the Justice Department to dismiss the prosecution of General Flynn who was not warned, not under oath, had no counsel, and whose statements were not only not recorded, but were created as false by FBI agents who falsified the 302.
Second, it would seem your “wingman” Eric Holder is missing a step these days at Covington & Burling LLP. Indelibly marked in his memory (and one might think, yours) should be his Motion to Dismiss the multi-count jury verdict of guilty and the entire case against former United States Senator Ted Stevens. Within weeks of Mr. Holder becoming Attorney General, he moved to dismiss the Stevens prosecution in the interest of justice for the same reasons the Justice Department did against General Flynn—egregious misconduct by prosecutors who hid exculpatory evidence and concocted purported crimes.
As horrifying as the facts of the Stevens case were, they pale in comparison to the targeted setup, framing, and prosecution of a newly elected President’s National Security Advisor and the shocking facts that surround it. This case was an assault on the heart of liberty— our cherished system of self-government, the right of citizens to choose their President, and the hallowed peaceful transition of power.
Third, the inability of anyone in your alumni association to find “anybody who has been charged [with anything] just getting off scot-free” would be laughable were it not so pathetic.
Many of your alum feature prominently in the non-fiction legal thriller published in 2014: Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice. A national best- seller, it focusses on the egregious prosecutorial misconduct of your longest serving White House Counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler; your counter-terrorism advisor Lisa Monaco; Loretta Lynch’s DAG for the Criminal Division Leslie Caldwell; and Mueller protégé Andrew Weissmann. While they worked as federal prosecutors on the Enron Task Force—under the purported supervision of Christopher Wray—they destroyed Arthur Andersen LLP and its 85,000 jobs; sent four Merrill Lynch executives to prison on an indictment that criminalized an innocent business transaction while they hid the evidence that showed those defendants were innocent for six years. Both cases were reversed on appeal for their over-criminalization and misconduct. Indeed, Andersen was reversed by a unanimous Supreme Court.
Fourth, even if your many alumni don’t remember multiple cases that had to be reversed or dismissed for their own misconduct, Judge Emmet Sullivan should remember dismissing the corrupted case against Ted Stevens. Judge Sullivan is the judicial hero of Licensed to Lie. It is that case that caused Judge Sullivan to enter the strong Brady order the Mueller and D.C. career prosecutors violated repeatedly in the Flynn prosecution.
Fifth, there is precedent for guilty pleas being vacated. Your alumni Weissmann and Ruemmler are no strangers to such reversals. At least two guilty pleas they coerced by threats against defendants in Houston had to be thrown out—again for reasons like those here. The defendants “got off scot-free” because—like General Flynn—your alumni had concocted the charges and terrorized the defendants into pleading guilty to “offenses” that were not crimes. Andersen partner David Duncan even testified for the government against Andersen in its trial, but his plea had to be vacated. Enron Broadband defendant Christopher Calger had his plea vacated. There are many others across the country.
Sixth, should further edification be necessary, see Why Innocent People Plead Guilty, written in 2014 by federal Judge Jed Rakoff (a Clinton appointee). Abusive prosecutors force innocent people to plead guilty with painful frequency. The Mueller special counsel operation led by Andrew Weissmann and Weissmann “wannabes” specializes in prosecutorial terrorist tactics repulsive to everything “justice” is supposed to mean. These tactics are designed to intimidate their targets into pleading guilty—while punishing them and their families with the process itself and financial ruin.
Most important, General Flynn was honest with the FBI agents. They knew he was—and briefed that to McCabe and others three different times. At McCabe’s directions, Agent Strzok and McCabe’s “Special Counsel” Lisa Page, altered the 302 to create statements Weissmann, Mueller, Van Grack, and Zainab Ahmad could assert were false. Only the FBI agents lied—and falsified documents. The crimes are theirs alone.
Seventh, the D.C. circuit in which you reside vacated a Section 1001 case for a legal failure much less egregious than those in General Flynn’s case. United States v. Safavian, 528 F.3d 957 (D.C. Cir. 2008). Safavian sought advice from his agency’s ethics board and did not give them all the relevant info. The jury convicted him on the theory it was a 1001 violation to conceal the information from the government ethics board. The court disagreed: “As Safavian argues and as the government agrees, there must be a legal duty to disclose in order for there to be a concealment offense in violation of § 1001(a)(1), yet the government failed to identify a legal disclosure duty except by reference to vague standards of conduct for government employees.” General Flynn did not even know he was the subject of an investigation—and in truth, he was not. The only crimes here were by your alumni in the FBI, White House, intelligence community, and Justice Department.
These are just a few obvious and well-known examples to those paying any attention to criminal justice issues.
Finally, the “leaked” comments from your alumni call further evinces your obsession with destroying a distinguished veteran of the United States Army who has defended the Constitution and this country “from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” with the highest honor for thirty-three years. He and many others will continue to do so.
1As a “constitutional lawyer,” surely you recall that perjury (or false statements) also requires intent to deceive. In Bronston v. United States, 409 U.S. 352 (1973), the Supreme Court reversed a conviction of perjury. In Bronston, the defendant’s answer was a truthful statement, but not directly responsive to the question and ultimately misled federal authorities. The Court determined: “A jury should not be permitted to engage in conjecture whether an unresponsive answer, true and complete on its face, was intended to mislead or divert the examiner; the state of mind of the witness is relevant only to the extent that it bears on whether “he does not believe [his answer] to be true.” To hold otherwise would be to inject a new and confusing element into the adversary testimonial system we know.” Id. at 359. The FBI agents who interviewed General Flynn specifically noted that his answers were true or he believed his answers to be true—completely defeating criminal intent. Furthermore, General Flynn knew and remarked they had transcripts of his conversations.
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o's favorite coverup mode line
and ole suzanna rice's line
what is in the fine print so small no one can read it is they don't specify which book
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o's favorite coverup mode line
and ole suzanna rice's line
what is in the fine print so small no one can read it is they don't specify which book
Yes he said "everything by the book" but didn't tell us the author was Orwell. Alinsky. Goebbels.
Also I never knew "being on the right side of history" was over the cliff.
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THe true legacy no one will ever hear about on MSM:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/obama-administration-scandals-coming-to-light-legacy-in-tatters/
As for O's net worth -> 40 mill and climbing (I thought his netflix deal is 50 mill?); O is # 12 already
few yrs after he left office and rising .
What is interesting is the only two Presidents higher on the list who were not rich prior to their being president are O and Clinton :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_by_net_worth
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1619 Project leader says it's time for reparations:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/24/magazine/reparations-slavery.html
Our first "black" President can plan on paying in. [Our first blackVP too, Kamala Harris.]
https://www.educationviews.org/barack-obamas-ancestors-owned-slaves/
Barack Obama’s Ancestors Owned Slaves
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/mar/04/uselections2008.barackobama
Reitwiesner traced Obama's great-great-great-great-grandfather, George Washington Overall, and found that he owned two slaves in Kentucky: a 15-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man. He also found out that Obama's great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Duvall, also owned a pair of slaves listed in an 1850 census record. They were a 60-year-old man and a 58-year-old woman. In fact, the Duvalls were a wealthy family whose members were descended from a major landowner, Maureen Duvall, whose estate owned at least 18 slaves in the 17th century.
-
https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/24/explosive-new-fbi-notes-confirm-obama-directed-anti-flynn-operation/
What we long suspected is now common knowledge. This was a top down operation done by the most corrupt administration in history.
-
and Stroz noted now point out that Biden was the one to suggest using the Logan Act to be able to continue investigating Flynn EVEN AFTER THE FBI CLEARED HIM
now the prick is running for Prez
and the big full of O will get off scot free as Barr does not want to set precedent and go after former PRez's (if he didn't can anyone imagine what the Dems will do to Trump if they get full power)
and the DNC media of course will simply downplay this with the occasional interview of a DNC DC lawyer interview who will give us bS arguments why this does not matter, is a conspiracy theory
that is in itself "disturbing " ( the conspiracy theory not the crime)
the new LEFT ist term for anything conservative or politically incorrect - disturbing
I can only imagine all the pajama boy and girls losing sleep they are so disturbed
-
https://asalh.org/obama-slave-ancestry-report-misses-mark/
-
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/michelle-obama-admits-affirmative-action-screwed-me-up/
-
while he sits in front of paining of honest Abe for his 60 speech
all I can think of
your no honest O
https://www.yahoo.com/news/obama-trump-is-no-john-wayne-hes-richie-rich-181011561.html
I did not notice when I saw it but
"sponsored " by Pfizer
I only watched it to see Hawley on the second segment. My nephew was on twice for a couple of seconds........
My sister grinning from ear to ear.
-
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/hypocrisy_alert_obama_won_first_election_by_challenging_voter_fraud.html?fbclid=IwAR2zLdnVjJPtovjOCBjxY7R7GSdMisH5ZY1hLPS9wKWAkBEFJPfT__W0sLM
-
(https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/paul_sperry_obama_russia_12-07-2020.jpg)
Glibness back in power? "Scandal free". Really?
-
the political organizer knows how to play dirty
and sit there on camera and calmly deny it and call accusers names
while he pathologically lies better than anyone - except maybe Hillary or Bill
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI2Xtqd4Mts&feature=youtu.be
"Do I wish I had a third term? You know what, if I could make an arrangement umm where I had a stand in, a front man...with an ear piece ... then I could sorta' deliver the lines, I'd be fine with that."
Who.Knew.
-
https://www.yahoo.com/news/barack-obama-says-slavery-reparations-144319279.html
"Mr Obama said: “If you ask me theoretically ‘are reparations justified?’ the answer is yes.
"There’s not much question that the wealth of this country, the power of this country was built in significant part, not exclusively, maybe not even the majority of it, but a large portion of it was built on the backs of slaves."
**maybe** not even the majority of it,
you don't say :wink:
-
No reparations without repatriation.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/barack-obama-says-slavery-reparations-144319279.html
"Mr Obama said: “If you ask me theoretically ‘are reparations justified?’ the answer is yes.
"There’s not much question that the wealth of this country, the power of this country was built in significant part, not exclusively, maybe not even the majority of it, but a large portion of it was built on the backs of slaves."
**maybe** not even the majority of it,
you don't say :wink:
-
the chosen front man:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/barack_obama_race_and_revolution.html
-
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/obama-called-trump-a-corrupt-motherf-er-a-racist-sexist-pig-and-a-f-ing-lunatic-book/ar-BB1gUSlq
F en this F en that
lunatic
true BUT
bottom line
Trump was a far better president than Obama
:wink:
-
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/06/01/barack-obama-joe-biden-finishing-the-job-with-my-former-staff/
lets see if he is around when things crash to take the blame
that won't happen
it will be one excuse after another
-
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/06/01/barack-obama-joe-biden-finishing-the-job-with-my-former-staff/
lets see if he is around when things crash to take the blame
that won't happen
it will be one excuse after another
I never knew whether Barack Obama was the puppet or the puppet master. Still don't.
From the article: "Obama said he hoped Biden’s success would shift the next generation of Americans toward more leftist policies."
- Umm, Obama had personal popularity, but his policies lost the House for the Democrats, lost the Senate, lost the White House, lost Governorships and lost legislatures. Is that what he means by success?
-
Weaponizing the Feral Government against traditional Americans was his big accomplishment. Purging the military of patriots is paying off now.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/06/01/barack-obama-joe-biden-finishing-the-job-with-my-former-staff/
lets see if he is around when things crash to take the blame
that won't happen
it will be one excuse after another
I never knew whether Barack Obama was the puppet or the puppet master. Still don't.
From the article: "Obama said he hoped Biden’s success would shift the next generation of Americans toward more leftist policies."
- Umm, Obama had personal popularity, but his policies lost the House for the Democrats, lost the Senate, lost the White House, lost Governorships and lost legislatures. Is that what he means by success?
-
Apologies-- once again what is the URL for this?
"Purging the military of patriots is paying off now."
-
Apologies-- once again what is the URL for this?
"Purging the military of patriots is paying off now."
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/197-military-officers-purged-by-obama/
https://americandefensenews.com/2021/05/10/pentagons-war-on-maga-bidens-mccarthy-like-purge-of-extremists-led-by-leftist-extremist/
-
THANK YOU.
-
when did obama do the opposite of all of the rest of humanity
and go from 6'1" to 6'2"?
do a quick google search and suddenly 6'2" comes up
so they even make him physically taller !
-
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/how_barack_obama_begot_gwen_berry.html
-
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/08/02/pearl-jam-spielberg-attending-obama-marthas-vineyard-birthday-bash-as-delta-variant-rages/
the great narcissistic snake
and whose wife is ashamed of the racist US
anyone to wear masks when cameras not rolling?
discuss what is best for the world for us......
behind our backs .....
-
https://dnyuz.com/2021/08/04/obama-significantly-scales-back-60th-birthday-party-as-virus-cases-rebound/
Clooney Speilberg Oprah stuck in H wood!
Could have a "zoom" bash
They will have to make it up later - which they will
Maybe Michelle's BD whenever that is.
-
https://www.yahoo.com/news/barack-obama-scales-back-massive-100846964.html
-
https://www.yahoo.com/news/barack-obama-scales-back-massive-100846964.html
Did he really scale it back? His lips moved so I'm tempted to think he's lying.
Maybe he just didn't trust the covid response of the Biden-Obama administration to keep him safe. I don't trust them either.
Too bad, this was the last year to celebrate anything on Martha's Vineyard. It is officially scheduled to fall into the sea in November of 2022.
[Update: AP read my post:
Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket face dire climate change impact, By PHILIP MARCELO 9 minutes ago
https://apnews.com/article/business-climate-environment-and-nature-climate-change-7f95efdc760622e19732b8e910907c22 ]
$15 million of the Obama's hard earned pay down the drain. $1 for each new person he put in poverty.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/7/obamas-rhetoric-on-fighting-poverty-doesnt-match-h/
-
really a shrine like Arc De Triumphe
location established in corruption:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/barack-obamas-tower-of-power/
even NYT reports the *half billion * structure is not a library:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/arts/obama-presidential-center-library-national-archives-and-records-administration.html
I suppose it will have a side profile of his face with chin held up
plastered on the front so everyone can marvel the world's greatest human as they drive by.
Fake autographs can be had for $50 :wink:
-
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/08/07/hollywood-celebrities-descend-on-marthas-vineyard-for-barack-obama-birthday-bash/
Funny nothing really comes up about his party
so did he scale it back
or just have it anyway
and turn away the cameras
and BS us about the "scale back"
did he disinvite 2 or 3 people so he could claim it is "scaled back"
-
https://nypost.com/2021/08/08/dj-posts-pics-of-obamas-birthday-party-before-being-forced-to-delete-them/
-
https://nypost.com/2021/08/08/dj-posts-pics-of-obamas-birthday-party-before-being-forced-to-delete-them/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/pictures-surface-obamas-maskless-birthday-bash
-
https://nypost.com/2021/08/08/dj-posts-pics-of-obamas-birthday-party-before-being-forced-to-delete-them/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/pictures-surface-obamas-maskless-birthday-bash
Reminds me of the old tax adage: Don't mask you. Don't mask me. Mask that man behind the tree.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/04/tax-tree/
I assume they've all had the Trump vaccine. )
-
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/15/obamas-law-school-professor-trashes-birthday-bash-nauseating/#
if we did not have that one and only feed
the whole affair would have been covered up
the great snake would have gotten away with it - again
wait till they get a load of the rest of the American Communist crew when they eventually seize power
wait till the young learn what they are in for.......
-
https://nypost.com/2021/08/16/taliban-leader-was-freed-from-guantanamo-in-2014-swap-by-obama/
Where are the clips of Obama Biden promising us that terrorists released would not re-join the fight?
-
this is for the community
to study me
to help themselves:
a billion dollar whatever you want to call it:
https://spectator.org/the-obamas-break-ground-on-the-nations-ugliest-presidential-library/
-
https://spectator.org/what-did-obama-know-and-when-did-he-know-it-2/
but the MSM ignores
-
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/12/13/obama-coaching-britains-leftist-labour-party-on-how-to-win-power/
I wish we could get more information
on what he does through his soldiers here in the US..........
-
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/barack-obama-house-democrats-midterms/2022/02/11/id/1056510/
"Obama also reportedly said that Democrats would be more compelling if they were pushing what their legislative ideas would do for voters, rather than defending their policies."
what a jack.
we see full well what his/Dems policies have done for us
-
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/07/barack-obama-backs-internet-controls-to-grapple-with-the-demand-for-crazy/
crazy delusions include pretending there was not great fraud and shyster manipulation of '20 election
crazy delusions is telling us people can choose at will to be men or women or anything and every other thing imaginable
crazy is telling us the BLM sham
crazy is telling us how spending trillions and handouts is good for the country
crazy is telling us how smart a deal with Iran is
crazy is telling us how you , the greatest human to walk the Earth has done MORE to foment racism division
on America
crazy is you going around and pretending the division is coming from the Right
crazy is your open borders policy
crazy is pretending MSM is pure integrity
despite conspiracies about Trump
and
I could go on .........
-
Barack Obama Rewrites His Russia History
His claim that he was tough on Putin is contradicted by his eight-year record.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
April 8, 2022 7:02 pm ET
Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has sparked an Olympic sprint of sorts as politicians run away from their abysmal records regarding Vladimir Putin. Few are running faster than former President Barack Obama, who this week tried to rewrite the history of his own Russia policies.
“As somebody who grappled with the incursion into Crimea and the eastern portions of Ukraine, I have been encouraged by the European reaction [this time],” Mr. Obama said at an event in Chicago. “Because in 2014, I often had to drag them kicking and screaming to respond in ways that we would have wanted to see from those of us who describe ourselves as Western democracies.”
As for Mr. Putin, the former U.S. President purports to be surprised by the Russian leader’s brutality. “I don’t know that the person I knew is the same as the person who is now leading this charge. He was always ruthless. You witnessed what he did in Chechnya, he had no qualms about crushing those whom he considered a threat. That’s not new. For him to bet the farm in this way—I would not have necessarily predicted from him five years ago.”
Mr. Obama managed to say all this with a straight face while speaking at an event about “disinformation” in politics.
Start with Mr. Obama’s claim he was a champion of harsher measures against Russia after the invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. His Administration imposed only mild, targeted sanctions on Russia—and then joined with Moscow to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. He refused to sell Javelin antitank weapons to Ukraine. Germany pushed ahead with its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in this era with nary a peep from Washington until the Trump Administration.
Mr. Obama also can’t claim as much ignorance as he does now about Mr. Putin’s intentions and methods at the time. Mr. Putin had risen to power allegedly by bombing apartment buildings in Russia, as U.S. intelligence no doubt knew or highly suspected, and even Mr. Obama concedes Mr. Putin’s 1999 assault on Grozny in Chechnya was “ruthless.”
There also were the 2006 assassinations of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, Mr. Putin’s provocative speech criticizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Munich in 2007, and the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia.
In 2009 Mr. Obama nonetheless dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Geneva to negotiate a “reset” on relations with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. In 2012 Mr. Obama accused Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of hewing to a retrograde 1980s foreign policy for viewing Russia as a threat, while telling Putin henchman Dmitry Medvedev when he thought no one was listening that he’d have more latitude to cut Mr. Putin some slack after the U.S. election.
Some reset. In addition to the Crimea and Donbas invasions, 2014 saw the shoot-down of a Malaysian Airlines flight by Russia-linked forces in eastern Ukraine. Russia’s cluster bombing of Aleppo in Syria followed in 2015-16. Mr. Putin’s suppression of domestic dissent accelerated, and he amped up his rhetoric against NATO and an independent Ukraine. And don’t forget the meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, which Mr. Obama punished with wrist-slap sanctions only after Donald Trump won.
Mr. Obama’s main concession to Russian reality was to lobby NATO allies to increase their annual defense spending to 2% of GDP, although for the most part they ignored him. One can almost understand why they did, since they saw him cozying up to Mr. Putin on Iran while talking down the Russia threat.
***
All of this is relevant now because the Biden Administration is loaded with men and women who worked for Mr. Obama and shared his misjudgments about Russia. The conceit in many quarters on the left is that Mr. Putin has changed, or is deranged, such that his Ukraine invasion couldn’t have been foreseen.
But Mr. Obama’s weakness toward Russia, reinforced by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is one reason Mr. Putin felt he could act with increasing aggressiveness and get away with it. No one should believe Mr. Obama’s varnished Russia history.
-
".Barack Obama Rewrites His Russia History "
the great snake
-
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-blasts-obama-2012-hot-mic-moment-russia-article-1.2989135
Barack Obama Rewrites His Russia History
His claim that he was tough on Putin is contradicted by his eight-year record.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
April 8, 2022 7:02 pm ET
Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has sparked an Olympic sprint of sorts as politicians run away from their abysmal records regarding Vladimir Putin. Few are running faster than former President Barack Obama, who this week tried to rewrite the history of his own Russia policies.
“As somebody who grappled with the incursion into Crimea and the eastern portions of Ukraine, I have been encouraged by the European reaction [this time],” Mr. Obama said at an event in Chicago. “Because in 2014, I often had to drag them kicking and screaming to respond in ways that we would have wanted to see from those of us who describe ourselves as Western democracies.”
As for Mr. Putin, the former U.S. President purports to be surprised by the Russian leader’s brutality. “I don’t know that the person I knew is the same as the person who is now leading this charge. He was always ruthless. You witnessed what he did in Chechnya, he had no qualms about crushing those whom he considered a threat. That’s not new. For him to bet the farm in this way—I would not have necessarily predicted from him five years ago.”
Mr. Obama managed to say all this with a straight face while speaking at an event about “disinformation” in politics.
Start with Mr. Obama’s claim he was a champion of harsher measures against Russia after the invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. His Administration imposed only mild, targeted sanctions on Russia—and then joined with Moscow to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. He refused to sell Javelin antitank weapons to Ukraine. Germany pushed ahead with its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in this era with nary a peep from Washington until the Trump Administration.
Mr. Obama also can’t claim as much ignorance as he does now about Mr. Putin’s intentions and methods at the time. Mr. Putin had risen to power allegedly by bombing apartment buildings in Russia, as U.S. intelligence no doubt knew or highly suspected, and even Mr. Obama concedes Mr. Putin’s 1999 assault on Grozny in Chechnya was “ruthless.”
There also were the 2006 assassinations of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, Mr. Putin’s provocative speech criticizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Munich in 2007, and the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia.
In 2009 Mr. Obama nonetheless dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Geneva to negotiate a “reset” on relations with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. In 2012 Mr. Obama accused Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of hewing to a retrograde 1980s foreign policy for viewing Russia as a threat, while telling Putin henchman Dmitry Medvedev when he thought no one was listening that he’d have more latitude to cut Mr. Putin some slack after the U.S. election.
Some reset. In addition to the Crimea and Donbas invasions, 2014 saw the shoot-down of a Malaysian Airlines flight by Russia-linked forces in eastern Ukraine. Russia’s cluster bombing of Aleppo in Syria followed in 2015-16. Mr. Putin’s suppression of domestic dissent accelerated, and he amped up his rhetoric against NATO and an independent Ukraine. And don’t forget the meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, which Mr. Obama punished with wrist-slap sanctions only after Donald Trump won.
Mr. Obama’s main concession to Russian reality was to lobby NATO allies to increase their annual defense spending to 2% of GDP, although for the most part they ignored him. One can almost understand why they did, since they saw him cozying up to Mr. Putin on Iran while talking down the Russia threat.
***
All of this is relevant now because the Biden Administration is loaded with men and women who worked for Mr. Obama and shared his misjudgments about Russia. The conceit in many quarters on the left is that Mr. Putin has changed, or is deranged, such that his Ukraine invasion couldn’t have been foreseen.
But Mr. Obama’s weakness toward Russia, reinforced by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is one reason Mr. Putin felt he could act with increasing aggressiveness and get away with it. No one should believe Mr. Obama’s varnished Russia history.
-
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/exclusive-read-private-email-obama-sent-former-doc-after-questioned-bidens-cognitive-health
well, Brock
he had every right to give his opinion
on Biden
who was NOT his patient
who is a master of cheap shots himself......
-
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/exclusive-read-private-email-obama-sent-former-doc-after-questioned-bidens-cognitive-health
well, Brock
he had every right to give his opinion
on Biden
who was NOT his patient
who is a master of cheap shots himself......
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2022/07/13/video-biden-getting-lost-confused-leaving-air-force-one-really-n1612525
-
I'll wait for a confirmed version to post elsewhere.
-
https://townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/2022/07/14/barack-obama-still-a-racial-incendiary-n2610229
-
https://www.theepochtimes.com/obamas-brother-endorses-republican-doug-mastriano-in-pennsylvania-governor-race_4770639.html?utm_source=Goodevening&src_src=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2022-10-03&src_cmp=gv-2022-10-03&utm_medium=email&est=YADhJjhE5xpON9tDdEGRrLQM1asPQI%2BPcpTUYr2YpJHpvSQTnqRzvCZ7PaMNa3z2psN3
-
"Obama endorses Rep. candidate for PA Gov"
you had me fooled for a moment there - I was ready to fall off my chair :-D
-
Heh heh.
-
If he was not adored by the Democrat media machine no one would even notice
him:
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/election-2022-obama/2022/10/28/id/1093971/
we remember that he is the one that started this whole mess we are in .
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfSv9DGtv6Y
-
I am not sure I agree
that obama was along with Clinton and Jefferson the 3 smartest presidents
George Washington was very smart
James Madison only wrote most of the Constitution
John Adams
Lincoln
what was obama's gift to America ?
Clinton? taught us how to survive a sex scandal
I am not sure understand what he speaks of that Obama did not talk to anyone
he certainly was involved with the deep state lawyer cabal
signing off and as many judges and executive orders as he could
sure seems to be the government departments were carrying out his orders to me.
-
Agree. I should have added my comment that I posted it because we (well, I) have been following him on Ukraine and Russia, where he seems to be rather good, so I found it interesting to get a sense of his political orientation.
-
https://www.yahoo.com/news/obama-sandy-hook-shooting-newtown-single-darkest-day-of-my-presidency-042614111.html
I guess he forgot about the 10's of thousands being slaughtered by the "JV team" ISIS due to his ineptitude.........
Sandy Hook was the 2nd amendments fault
"they cling to their guns and religion "
***they ***
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRWyVun1QFg&t=11s
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q9r1rulo5k
-
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/obamas-call-police-reform-tyre-nichols-body-camera-footage/
Like Dan Bongino stated in yesterday TV show - we
" DO NOT NEED POLICE REFORM".
No police academy teaches what happened
we need better police officers
not street thugs in blue........
he can't make it a racist wedge issue to now he just has to make a point against police in general
guess what . the reforms are already in
we have the webcams
we have the 5 all arrested indicted or whatever
and the process is rightly under way
case over .
but no
we have. the whole Left wing media mob Democrats and lawyers and BLM types jumping in to make this something it is not
a giant political issue
rather then local crimes .
but the GREAT SNAKE cannot resist his big LEFT mouth here to chime in
-
RUMINT is that the officers involved had gang affiliations in their backgrounds, but that the desperation for bodies in uniforms allowed them to be hired.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/obamas-call-police-reform-tyre-nichols-body-camera-footage/
Like Dan Bongino stated in yesterday TV show - we
" DO NOT NEED POLICE REFORM".
No police academy teaches what happened
we need better police officers
not street thugs in blue........
he can't make it a racist wedge issue to now he just has to make a point against police in general
guess what . the reforms are already in
we have the webcams
we have the 5 all arrested indicted or whatever
and the process is rightly under way
case over .
but no
we have. the whole Left wing media mob Democrats and lawyers and BLM types jumping in to make this something it is not
a giant political issue
rather then local crimes .
but the GREAT SNAKE cannot resist his big LEFT mouth here to chime in
-
How very plausible!
I forget his name, but one of Tucker's regular guests is a middle aged black man and his comment was the whole thing looked to him like a black on black gang fight or something like that. Since hearing that I have found it hard to think of it any other way.
Please do keep an eye out for confirm or deny on that.
The point about being hard up for recruits (i.e. lowering standards) is well worth noting too.
-
to tell moron clapping Australians
the rise of China was Trump's fault and all we need is to put women in all world governments for 2 yrs and all the problems would be solved:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/obama-blames-trump-for-chinas-rise
snaking his way around the world
-
And whose VP was it that grifted with his son as the bag man while allowing China to build psuedo-islands and then militarize them?
-
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/usshowbiz/article-12029893/Michelle-Obama-shocks-Bruce-Springsteen-fans-takes-stage-legendary-rocker.html
I thought the past was shameful
OTOH I am sure Springsteen donates to the DNC and Obamas enough
she could go up there and sing along ....
-
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/usshowbiz/article-12029893/Michelle-Obama-shocks-Bruce-Springsteen-fans-takes-stage-legendary-rocker.html
links
Obama's running for '24?
and Susan Rice resignation ....
-
https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/2012/09/08/fact-check-obama-documents-might-not-have-been-released-they-arent/15855148007/
-
https://amac.us/six-ways-bidens-presidency-is-exposing-the-obama-myth/
-
On Thursday, former President Barack Obama will appear in a primetime interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour to discuss “the state of democracy” in the United States.
both high up on my personal unfavorable list :x
On PBS
and is without fail 100 % DNC propaganda talk
-
I'm so glad republicans defunded PBS/NPR!
On Thursday, former President Barack Obama will appear in a primetime interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour to discuss “the state of democracy” in the United States.
both high up on my personal unfavorable list :x
On PBS
and is without fail 100 % DNC propaganda talk
-
Illusory superiority [and deceit - it is conservatives who won't listen or bend at the knee or compromise ]
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/06/22/obama-fox-news-right-wing-radio-skews-facts-makes-people-fearful-of-each-other/
this applied to both people in the video
-
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2023/06/24/obscene-inequality-barack-obama-blasts-medias-wall-to-wall-coverage-of-missing-sub/
:roll:
if countries would enforce borders this would not happen
plain and simple
this all he has DEI woke etc .....
always the same .
-
The USG knew the sub imploded when it happened. They let the speculation go on to distract from the Biden Crime Family revelations.
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2023/06/24/obscene-inequality-barack-obama-blasts-medias-wall-to-wall-coverage-of-missing-sub/
:roll:
if countries would enforce borders this would not happen
plain and simple
this all he has DEI woke etc .....
always the same .
-
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama
The Obama Factor
A Q&A with historian David Garrow
BY
DAVID SAMUELS
AUGUST 02, 2023
Former President Barack Obama, who turns 62 tomorrow
RICK FRIEDMAN/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
There is a fascinating passage in Rising Star, David Garrow’s comprehensive biography of Barack Obama’s early years, in which the historian examines Obama’s account in Dreams from My Father of his breakup with his longtime Chicago girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager. In Dreams, Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white-identified liberal universalism. As readers, we know that the stakes of this decision would become more than simply personal: The Black American man that Obama wills into being in this scene would go on to marry a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago named Michelle Robinson and, after a meteoric rise, win election as the first Black president of the United States.
Yet what Garrow documented, after tracking down and interviewing Sheila Miyoshi Jager, was an explosive fight over a very different subject. In Jager’s telling, the quarrel that ended the couple’s relationship was not about Obama’s self-identification as a Black man. And the impetus was not a play about the American Black experience, but an exhibit at Chicago’s Spertus Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
At the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spertus Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a Black mayoral aide named Steve Cokely who, in a series of lectures organized by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans. The episode highlighted a deep rift within the city’s power echelons, with some prominent Black officials supporting Cokely and others calling for his firing.
In Jager’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism. While acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a Black identity had created some degree of distance between the couple, she insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Cokely’s comments. It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism.
No doubt, Obama’s evolving race-based self-consciousness did distance him from Jager; in the end, the couple broke up. Yet it is revealing to read Obama’s account of the breakup in Dreams against the very different account that Jager offers. In Obama’s account, he was the particularist, embracing a personal meaning for the Black experience that Jager, the universalist, refused to grant. In Jager’s account, the poles of the argument are nearly, but not quite, reversed: It is Obama who appears to minimize Jewish anxiety about blood libels coming from the Black community. His particularism mattered; hers didn’t. While Obama defined himself as a realist or pragmatist, the episode reads like a textbook evasion of moral responsibility.
Whose version of the story is correct? Who knows. The bridge between the two accounts is Obama’s emerging attachment to Blackness, which required him to fall in love with and marry a Black woman. In Obama’s account, his attachment to Blackness is truthful and noble. In Jager’s account, his claims are instrumental and selfish; he grants particularism to the experience and suffering of his own tribe while denying it to others.
In evaluating the truthfulness of these two competing accounts, it seems worth noting that Jager is something more than a woman scorned by a man who would later become president of the United States. Obama asked her to marry him twice; she refused him both times, before going on to achieve her own high-level professional successes. A student of the great University of Chicago anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, Jager is a professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College whose scholarship on great power politics in Southeast Asia and the U.S.-Korean relationship is known for its factual rigor. In contrast, Dreams from My Father, as Garrow shows throughout Rising Star, is as much a work of dreamy literary fiction as it is an attempt to document Obama’s early life.
Scholarship aside, there is another reason to assume that Jager would be less likely to misremember an incident involving race and antisemitism than Obama. As it turns out, Jager’s paternal grandparents, Hendrik and Geesje Jager, were members of the Dutch resistance, whose role sheltering a Jewish child named Greetje in their home for three years led to their recognition as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. In that context, at least, it seems quite likely that Jager would remember the particulars of a fight with Obama related to antisemitism, and be turned off by his response—while Obama’s version of the fight has the feel of an anecdote positioned, if not invented, to buttress the character arc of the protagonist of his memoir, which positioned him for a career in public life.
Perhaps the most revealing thing about Jager’s account of her fight with Obama, though, is that not one reporter in America bothered to interview her before David Garrow found her, near the end of Obama’s presidency. As Obama’s live-in girlfriend and closest friend during the 1980s, Jager is probably the single most informed and credible source about the inner life of a young man whose election was accompanied by hopes of sweeping, peaceful social change in America—a hope that ended with the election of Donald Trump, or perhaps midway through Obama’s second term, as the president focused on the Iran deal while failing to address the concerns about rampant income inequality, racial inequality, and the growth of a monopoly tech complex that happened on his watch.
The idea that the celebrated journalists who wrote popular biographies of Obama and became enthusiastic members of his personal claque couldn’t locate Jager—or never knew who she was—defies belief. It seems more likely that the character Obama fashioned in Dreams had been defined—by Obama—as being beyond the reach of normal reportorial scrutiny. Indeed, Garrow’s biography of Obama’s early years is filled with such corrections of a historical record that Obama more or less invented himself. Based on years of careful record-searching and patient interviewing, Rising Star highlights a remarkable lack of curiosity on the part of mainstream reporters and institutions about a man who almost instantaneously was treated less like a politician and more like the idol of an inter-elite cult.
Yet when it came out six years ago, Rising Star was mostly ignored; as a result, its most scandalous and perhaps revelatory passages, such as Obama’s long letter to another girlfriend about his fantasies of having sex with men, read today, to people who are more familiar with the Obama myth than the historical record, like partisan bigotry. But David Garrow is hardly a hack whose work can or should be dismissed on partisan grounds. He is among the country’s most credible and celebrated civil rights historians—the author of The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bearing the Cross (which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography) and one of the three historian-consultants who animated the monumental PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize, as well as the author of a landmark history of abortion rights, Liberty and Sexuality.
In part, Garrow’s failure to gain a hearing for his revision of the Obama myth lay in his timing. Rising Star felt like old news the moment it was published in May 2017—as whatever insights the book contained were overtaken by the fury and chaos surrounding the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency. As Trump’s incendiary carnival barker act took center stage, it was hard even for Republicans not to miss the contrast with Obama’s cerebral mannerisms and sedate family life. The idea that Obama was simply another self-obsessed political knife-fighter who played fast and loose with the truth didn’t resonate. In any case, Obama was now a footnote to history—a reminder of kinder, gentler times that the country seemed unlikely to see again anytime soon.
Yet there was also evidence to suggest that the idea Obama was no longer concerned with power or involved with power was itself part of a new set of myths being woven by and around the ex-president. First, the Obamas never left town. Instead, they bought a large brick mansion in the center of Washington’s Kalorama neighborhood—violating a norm governing the transfer of presidential power which has been breached only once in post-Civil War American history, by Woodrow Wilson, who couldn’t physically be moved after suffering a series of debilitating strokes. In the Obamas case, the reason for staying in D.C. was ostensibly that their youngest daughter, Sasha, wanted to finish high school with her class at Sidwell Friends. In June 2019, Sasha went off to college, yet her parents remained in Washington.
By then, it was clear to any informed observer that the Obamas’ continuing presence in the nation’s capital was not purely a personal matter. To an extent that has never been meaningfully reported on, the Obamas served as both the symbolic and practical heads of the Democratic Party shadow government that “resisted” Trump—another phenomenon that defied prior norms. The fact that these were not normal times could be adduced by even a passing glance at the front pages of the country’s daily newspapers, which were filled with claims that the 2016 election had been “stolen” by Russia and that Trump was a Russian agent.
Given the stakes, then, it seemed churlish to object to the Obamas’ quiet family life in Kalorama —or to report on the comings and goings of Democratic political operatives and office-seekers from their mansion, or to the swift substitution of Obama as party leader for Hillary Clinton, who after all was the person who had supposedly been cheated out of the presidency. Why even mention the strangeness of the overall setup, which surely paled next to the raw menace of Donald Trump, who lurched from one crisis to the next while lashing out at his enemies and probably selling out the country to Vladimir Putin?
In a normal country, the exhaustive report issued in April 2019 by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which uncovered no evidence that the 2016 election had been decided by Russian actions, let alone that Trump was a Russian agent, might have been a cue for the Obamas to go home, to Chicago, or Hawaii, or Martha’s Vineyard. The moment of crisis was over. Russiagate turned out to have been a politically motivated hoax, just as Trump had long insisted.
But while the attention of Republicans in Washington turned to questioning the FBI, more careful observers could not fail to notice that the FBI had hardly acted alone. After all, Russiagate had not originated with the Bureau, but with the Clinton campaign, which having failed to get even sympathetic mainstream media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post to bite on its fantastical allegations, was reduced to handing off the story to campaign press apparatchiks like Slate’s Franklin Foer and Mother Jones’ David Corn. The fact that the story only got bigger after Clinton lost the election was due to Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, who in November and December of 2016 helped elevate Russiagate from a failed Clinton campaign ploy to a priority of the American national security apparatus, using a hand-picked team of CIA analysts under his direct control to validate his thesis. If Brennan was the instrument, the person who signed the executive order that turned Brennan’s thesis into a time bomb under Trump’s desk was Barack Obama.
The election of Joe Biden in 2020 gave the Obamas even more reasons to stay in town. The whispers about Biden’s cognitive decline, which began during his bizarre COVID-sheltered basement campaign, were mostly dismissed as partisan attacks on a politician who had always been gaffe-ridden. Yet as President Biden continued to fall off bicycles, misremember basic names and facts, and mix long and increasingly weird passages of Dada-edque nonsense with autobiographical whoppers during his public appearances, it became hard not to wonder how poor the president’s capacities really were and who was actually making decisions in a White House staffed top to bottom with core Obama loyalists. When Obama turned up at the White House, staffers and the press crowded around him, leaving President Biden talking to the drapes—which is not a metaphor but a real thing that happened.
That Obama might enjoy serving as a third-term president in all but name, running the government from his iPhone, was a thought expressed in public by Obama himself, both before and after he left office. “I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony,” he told Steven Colbert in 2015, “I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.” Even with all these clues, the Washington press corps—fresh off their years of broadcasting fantasies about secret communications links between Trump Tower and the Kremlin—seemed unable to imagine, let alone report on, Obama’s role in government.
David Garrow
David Garrow
TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY LLC/ALAMY
Instead, every few months a sanitized report appears on some aspect of the ex-president’s outside public advocacy, presented within limits that are clearly being set by Obama’s political operatives—which conveniently elide the problems that are inherent in having a person with no constitutional role or congressional oversight take an active role in executive decision-making. Near the end of June, for example, Politico ran a long article noting Biden’s cognitive decline, with the coy headline “Is Obama Ready to Reassert Himself?”—as if the ex-president hadn’t been living in the middle of Washington and playing politics since the day he left office. Indeed, in previous weeks Obama had continued his role as central advocate for government censorship of the internet while launching a new campaign against gun ownership, claiming it is historically linked to racism. Surely, the spectacle of an ex-president simultaneously leading campaigns against both the First and Second Amendments might have led even a spectacularly incurious old-school D.C. reporter to file a story on the nuts and bolts of Obama’s political operation and on who was going in and out of his mansion. But the D.C. press was no longer in the business of maintaining transparency. Instead, they had become servants of power, whose job was to broadcast whatever myths helped advance the interests of the powerful.
There is another interpretation of Obama’s post-presidency, of course—one shared by many Republicans and Democrats. In that interpretation, Obama was never the leader of much of anything, neither during the Trump years nor now. Instead, he was focused on buying trophy properties, hanging out with billionaires, and vacationing on private yachts while grifting large checks from marks like Spotify and Netflix—even if his now-stratospheric levels of personal vanity also demanded that every so often he show up President Biden for the sin of occupying his chair in the White House.
In the absence of what was once American journalism, it is hard to know which portrait of Obama’s post-presidency is truer to life: Obama as a celebrity-obsessed would-be billionaire, or as a would-be American Castro, reshaping American society from his basement, in his sweats.
Yet the answer is, I believe, somewhere in David Garrow’s book.
At bottom, Rising Star is a tragic story about a young man who was deeply wounded by the abandonment of both his white mother and his Black father—a wound that gifted him with political genius and at the same time made him the victim of a profound narcissism that first whispered to him in his mid-twenties that he was destined to be president. It is not hard to see how Garrow has come to believe that Obama’s ambition proved to be toxic, both for the man and for the country. But why?
As a human being who was sentient for long stretches of time between 2008 and 2017, I was, in general, a fan of Barack Obama and his presidency. What I could never understand was Obama’s contempt for the idea of American exceptionalism. Even as president, Obama insisted on poking exceptionalists in the eye, saying that he believed in American exceptionalism “just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Why would the president of the United States feel the need to disabuse his countrymen of the idea that they are special?
What made Obama’s rejection of American exceptionalism seem particularly weird to me was his attachment to Abraham Lincoln, whose cadences and economy of language he urged his speechwriters to emulate. As a historian, one might plausibly argue that Lincoln was a saint who saved the Union or a monster who shed rivers of blood—or that he didn’t go far enough. But there is no arguing with Lincoln’s belief in the uniqueness of the American destiny, for which he sent hundreds of thousands of young men to die. Of all men, Abraham Lincoln would have been baffled by an American president who denied that America was exceptional. What did all those people die for, then? And what exactly did Obama think that Lincoln’s speeches were about?
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Obama’s hostility to American exceptionalism also seemed linked to his hostility to Israel, or more specifically to America’s identification with Israel, which finally resulted in his determination during his second term to reach his agreement with Iran—an agreement with the main objective of integrating that country into America’s security architecture in the Middle East, while limiting Israel’s power in the region. Again, why?
The sheer amount of political capital and focus Obama put into achieving the JCPOA during his second term, to the near-exclusion of other goals, suggests that the deal was central to his politics. It also carries more than a whiff of the kind of politics in which the American Empire is seen not just as unexceptional, but also, in some ways, as actively evil. It was a politics born out of the confluence of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, which saw a racist war abroad being used to protect a racist power structure at home. That old alliance of civil rights, anti-imperialism, and identity politics made the Democratic Party that Obama positioned himself to lead—college-educated, corporate-controlled—seem cool, allowing it to use post-1960s radical ideology as a language to sell stuff.
In a passage of Dreams that reeks of neo-liberal poser-ism, Obama recalls, “I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active Black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed necolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.”
But was Obama truly guided by post-1970s dorm-room stoner politics (as Garrow shows, Obama’s best friend at Harvard Law School was a white student named Rob Fisher who is now a senior special counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission, that famed hotbed of punk-rock performance poets and structural feminists), or was he driven by some deeper radicalism?
My own read of Obama has always been that he was a skillful elite-pleaser with a radical streak that did in fact emerge from the anti-imperialist politics of the 1970s, the foundational claim of which was that equality trumps freedom. Which brings us back to Obama’s breakup with Sheila Miyoshi Jager.
I have never seen any evidence that Barack Obama has the slightest personal animus toward Jews as individuals. But from his denial of American exceptionalism, and his sourness toward Israel, going all the way back to Sheila Miyoshi Jager’s account of their breakup, there does seem to be an awareness of the underlying problem posed to his politics by Jews—that is, the problem posed by Jewish group survival and their continuing insistence on Jewish historical particularity.
Progressive theology is built on a mythic hierarchy of group victimhood which has endured throughout time, up until the present day; the injuries that the victims have suffered are so massive, so shocking, and so manifestly unjust that they dwarf the present. Such injuries must be remedied immediately, at nearly any cost. The people who do the work of remedying these injustices, by whatever means, are the heroes of history. Conversely, the sins of the chief oppressors of history, white men, are so dark that nothing short of abject humiliation and capitulation can begin to approach justice.
It goes to say that nothing about the terms of progressive theology is original. It is the theology of Soviet communism, with class struggle replaced by identity politics. In this system, Jews play a unique, double-edged role: They are both an identity group and a Trojan horse through which history can reenter the gates of utopia.
Ghettos were invented for Jews. Concentration camps, too. How can Jews be “privileged white people” if they are clearly among history’s victims? And if Jews aren’t white people, then perhaps lots of other white people are also victims and therefore aren’t “white,” in the theological sense in which that term gains its significance in progressive ideology. Maybe “Black people” aren’t always or primarily Black. Maybe the whole progressive race-based theology is, historically and ideologically speaking, a load of crap. Which is why the Jews are and will remain a problem.
Obama didn’t invent any of this stuff; he was just a wounded kid trying to figure out his own place in the world and get ahead. Still, looking back, it is hard to avoid the sense that Obama himself was exceptional. He was the guy chosen by history to put something in the American goldfish bowl that made all the fish go crazy and eat each other: America’s emerging oligarachy cementing its grip instead of going bust. The rise of monopoly internet platforms. The normalization of government spying on Americans. Race relations going south. Skyrocketing inequality. The rise of Donald Trump. The birth of Russiagate. It all happened with Obama in the White House.
To understand how we wound up here, it therefore seems necessary to start by understanding the man that so many of us refused to see outside of the myth that he created for himself. His problems are now our problems, as much as Donald Trump’s are.
That is why I went to talk to David Garrow.
What follows is a condensed and edited version of two long interviews conducted recently with the historian at his home in Pittsburgh, centering around his 2017 biography of Barack Obama, Rising Star.
MARTIN AND BARACK
David Samuels: At this point, the number of people involved in America’s civil rights struggle and politics you have interviewed must be in the thousands, right?
David Garrow: I would think it’s close to 2,000. The Obama book alone was 1,000-plus.
In general, do you find a large gap between people’s impression of their truthfulness as they speak and the reality of what you find once you start checking?
People remember happy memories very well. They purge painful memories. This is true of everybody in Montgomery, everybody who was active in the boycott. And now the children of the boycott are my age. I got a wonderful email yesterday from Sharon Campbell Waters, whose daddy ran part of the carpool operation, sending me these pictures of Alabama State U, renaming a dorm in honor of Mrs. JoAnn Robinson—the woman who actually started the boycott, whose memoir I got published.
So, everybody remembers December of ‘55 to December of ‘56 very well. Then, in Montgomery, nothing much happens in ‘57, ‘58, ‘59: King’s spending too much time traveling around, the Montgomery Improvement Association isn’t doing much, SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] is sort of stillborn, and various people in the MIA are sniping at each other. Ed Nixon’s really unhappy. Mrs. Parks has to leave and move to Detroit.
I became convinced in the early ’80s that lawyers have the worst memories, which was perhaps overinformed by Burke Marshall, the Kennedy civil rights guy, who once asked me, “Remind me, did Albany happen before Birmingham? Or did Birmingham happen before Albany?” I’m thinking, “Hmm.” E.D. Nixon from Montgomery is the stellar example of people who reimagine a fictional past in which they played more decisive roles than they actually did: Mr. Nixon did not choose King to head the boycott.
If I use the universe of people from the Obama book—and granted that’s a whole lot closer in time—most of the memories there checked out pretty well. But Barack himself is unable to remember or acknowledge where he had shortcomings or failures.
You interviewed Obama when he was in the White House?
I spent eight hours talking with him on three different days. And we didn’t record it, and it’s officially off the record, but some of the stuff he was most energized about was, to me, hilariously inconsequential. Like, insisting that he really had been fluent in Indonesian as a third grader, or that he didn’t tell several Illinois State Senate staffers that he knew Rickey Hendon could kick his butt. There are shared elements in the sensitivities.
What do you see as the connection, if any, between the personal lives of powerful men and their public lives, based on your years of research on Dr. King, and your experience writing about Obama?
I think one can in large part, in King’s case, say these were sort of two separate lives. Because he lived it that way. He lived it as two separate lives.
Might one make the same case about Obama, but in reverse? It seems clear that Obama leads an exemplary, highly controlled private life, consuming exactly seven almonds while watching The Man in the High Castle or Draymond Green highlights on ESPN for stress relief.
Right. Yes.
In fact, I can make the case that Obama’s public life was the amoral part, beginning with the toleration of genocide in Syria and the extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens, and extending to wide-scale illegal surveillance and spying, and his now becoming the spokesperson for gutting the First Amendment in favor of government censorship of large tech platforms.
The defense of the Obama people when you talk to them is he was never touched by scandal, meaning personal scandal. And you’re like, “Well, I’m sure all those people who got gassed to death in Syria or are growing up in American towns with no jobs feel just great about the fact that he never got a blow job in the Oval Office.”
I think a major turning point in his presidency was that whole thing where he and Denis McDonough walk around the White House grounds and he changes his mind about Syria.
I don’t think Denis is a reliable narrator. That’s his chief of staff, and that’s too much of a recognizably made-for-TV moment, a Bob Woodward moment, for me to buy it. Nor does it fit with the strategic architecture that Obama had already committed himself to. Sure, maybe Obama suddenly remembered while taking a walk in the Rose Garden that his big second-term goal was to do a nuclear deal with Iran, and that he had written Khamenei a letter recognizing Syria as an Iranian equity. But I doubt that.
We’ve got these other people who were convinced he was going to do it.
I imagine that part of being effective as president is convincing everyone within your own administration that you are at least conceivably on their side. But there’s no way to bomb Syria—meaning, to bomb Iran—and also convince Iran that he was sincere about reaching a deal. He just let all the bomb Syria talk go on as long as he could to please the hawks, before pulling the rug out from under them. That’s politics.
Barack Obama meets with Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough (right) and speechwriter Ben Rhodes on Air Force One June 4, 2009 on route to Cairo, Egypt
Barack Obama meets with Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough (right) and speechwriter Ben Rhodes on Air Force One June 4, 2009 on route to Cairo, Egypt
PETE SOUZA/THE WHITE HOUSE VIA GETTY IMAGES
I didn’t read anything beyond the simple daily coverage of this during those years, but I always assumed that his discomfort with the Israeli government was, in significant part, just a reaction to Netanyahu and disliking Netanyahu as an individual character.
I once spent two and a half hours alone in a room with Bibi Netanyahu, and they were among the two and a half most excruciatingly boring hours of my life. At one point he was reciting verbatim long passages from Margaret Thatcher’s memoirs. I doubt Barack Obama would have enjoyed that much. Though I do kind of cherish the idea of Bibi and Obama in the same room, each competing in an effort to demonstrate that they are each indeed the most brilliant person on earth. The other big thing they have in common, aside from their belief in their own genius, is that they are both products of the periphery of the American empire.
So, do people shape history? Do individuals matter?
God, yes—for the worse. Millions of people have had their lives messed up because of Vladimir Putin. Would the Nazi regime and the Holocaust have happened without Hitler? No. Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler, those clowns could not have created something. At the same time that I have this bizarre fascination with supremely evil characters like Putin and Hitler, I also have a somewhat parallel fascination with people who have remarkable courage, even though they’re getting almost no support for it. Alexei Navalny, first and foremost. He has some inner strength that exceeds even Doc’s.
Yet Doc [Martin Luther King] always believed that he was not essential, that he was accidental, and that if he hadn’t ended up as him, that Ralph Abernathy or Fred Shuttlesworth or someone else would’ve been him instead.
Do you think that’s true?
Yeah, in the big picture sense. Because if we go back to Montgomery, the boycott would’ve happened without Doc. Would it necessarily have been such a grand success? No.
How essential is the quality and tenor of his speech that night of Dec. 5 at Holt Street? You can argue the inevitability of the boycott; you can also argue, particularly about Holt Street, that that set the tenor for it, that his whole grounding in a biblical doctrine of love gave the entire enterprise its nonviolent, non-hateful quality. But once we get past the success of the boycott period, 12, 13 months, and we go through those fallow three years, the sit-ins would’ve happened, the Freedom Rides certainly happened without Doc. What Fred was doing in Birmingham would’ve happened without Doc.
Doc’s essential nature is, to a significant degree, because the white press elevates him. The press makes him this symbol, and as I say in BTC [Garrow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Bearing the Cross], he realizes this is not really him, that there’s him and there’s this projection.
Let me say one other thing. Doc always 100 percent retained his individual self, even while realizing that there was this press creation. And when he’s wearing that uniform of the black suit, little tie, and he’s being so relentlessly sober whenever he’s in the public eye, that’s not him. That’s him playing the part that he’s been called into.
With Barack, I’m not sure I like the word binary, but with Doc, Doc was very clear about himself and the role. With Barack, there’s an extent of intertwining, there’s an absence of keeping the two selves separate.
But there is a before-and-after moment, which Obama writes about in Dreams and which you document in your book: Obama coming to Chicago, and his conversation with this motel owner when he crosses the state line.
Yes, that is not there when he drives to Chicago. Bob Elia, the motel owner up there, I found him because of Marc Silverman, our wonderful law librarian at Pitt Law. Marc went back in the property records for Sharon, Pennsylvania, and told me who owned the motel where Obama stays, which he writes about in Dreams. And so, I found four phone numbers for Robert Elia—right on that Pennsylvania-Ohio border.
I love your description of talking to Elia on the phone. But the person who actually witnesses this transformation, in which Obama becomes the person we know now, and when he begins to imagine that he has this special destiny—which turns out to be true—is his girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager.
Sheila had a huge impact on me because no one can appreciate the difference between who he was and who he became the way she can.
She was poised at exactly the point of inflection, in a very intimate space, just the two of them sharing this apartment in Chicago. She saw the transformation happen.
Sheila was so mortified when I found those comments she posted on those various Washington Post stories, because she’s even more of an innocent, by a long stretch, than I am. She had no idea that mouthing off when you’re logged in means that anyone can identify who posted this comment.
At some point as president, Barack starts calling Sheila, his girlfriend at the University of Chicago and later a professor at Oberlin—one of his three girlfriends before he marries Michelle and reestablishes a connection with her. I imagine that happened because he knew you had found her in your research for your book. Did he talk to you about that directly?
Yeah.
I assume he was not happy.
Oh no. This is where I don’t necessarily trust my memory, but I think I already knew that from Bob Bauer, Obama’s lawyer, who was my go-between with Barack for months. I could not be more professionally positive about Bob Bauer. He handled an incredibly difficult, bizarre situation superbly.
Why was it bizarre?
It was bizarre to me because—and again, no one’s ever challenged me on this, and as with the Dorothy Cotton thing [Dr. King’s mistress], it was seemingly an odd decision—it was easy and automatic to let Barack read the whole typescript of the first 10 chapters and mark it up, which is what then leads to these long discussions of, “Yes, I was fluent in …” whatever you call it, Indonesian.
Bob is Barack’s lawyer, but he was also coaching me. My clearest memory, and there’s nothing officially off the record with Bob, so I think I can say this, and boy, it’s the clearest thing I remember of all my conversations with Bob. … This is close to a quote: “Whatever you do, don’t ask him about his father.”
From the author of Dreams from My Father, that’s very strange.
He’s not normal—as in not a normal politician or a normal human being.
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S WOMEN
How did you get those three women, Obama’s college and law school girlfriends, to give you Obama’s love letters to them, and what was the most surprising thing you found in them?
With Alex [McNear, Obama’s girlfriend at Occidental College], I think she wanted to have her role known. So when Alex showed me the letters from Barack, she redacted one paragraph in one of them and just said, “It’s about homosexuality.”
And then sometime, right about when Rising Star came out, Alex indirectly sold the original, sold those letters, and they ended up at Emory. So Emory put out a press release saying, “We’ve gotten these rare letters by Barack Obama.” And no mention of this paragraph that was too sensitive. None of the papers mentioned it. Emory didn’t mention it.
So I sent one of my oldest friends, Harvey Klehr—Harvey was the guy going back to 1980 when I was trying to solve who fingered [Dr. King’s close advisor] Stanley Levison, how was it known to the FBI that Stan had been …
A communist.
Yes. So I emailed Harvey, said, “Go to the Emory archives.” He’s spent his whole life at Emory, but they won’t let him take pictures. So Harvey has to sit there with a pencil and copy out the graph where Barack writes to Alex about how he repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.
Now, Genevieve [Cook, Obama’s girlfriend in New York], Genevieve’s just a free spirit. I went to Australia to meet her. And she had had a—let me think about how best to say this—she had a subsequent relationship there in Australia that was troubled, and so she was living in a very low-visibility context. So we drove down and stayed with her and her partner for three days in the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne. And she was keeping a journal during her relationship with Barack, so she had all sorts of stuff.
Sheila, though, it’s unclear.
What became of Alex?
Alex, I haven’t heard from in about two years. There’s a wonderful woman named Margot Mifflin who was part of that whole crowd, who teaches journalism at CUNY. Margot and her husband, they’re sort of the most active of the Oxy [Occidental] crowd.
Now, Alex was living in … I’m not very good on the Hamptons, is Sag Harbor right? Her mother was alive then. I think when she sold the letters to Emory, her excuse was that she needed money to help out with the mother’s medical conditions. I have a very clear memory of Alex being embarrassed about selling the letters.
But I can’t line up chronologically when that was in time related to when Barack starts calling Sheila again.
Do you think that he starts calling her again because he needs to keep her close because she knows too much of his story, and she becomes a wild card if she no longer feels a tie to him?
I think that’s accurate.
How did you find Sheila?
When I start reading about Barack in early ’08, I read Dreams and thought, “This is a crock.” It’s not history. It’s all make-believe. Who knows what the real story is?
And initially for some number of months, I thought I was only going to do a magazine article on Barack’s community-organizing years—nothing more than 8,000 words, or what have you. But it was clear from the campaign journalism that Barack had lived with a graduate student in Hyde Park during those years. But no journalist ever goes to try to locate this former graduate student he lived with, which was weird. Anyone who’s ever been in a university knows you can go find a student directory that’s going to have people’s addresses.
So I sent my research assistant Alix Lerner to do this at Regenstein Library. She pulls off this dusty old student directory from 1987-88. And we not only find Sheila, we find this nice couple who are both at NC State in Raleigh who lived upstairs from them, and who would see them in the laundry room. So there it is, in this student directory: Sheila Miyoshi Jager.
I emailed her. Sheila’s easy to find. She was then a professor at Oberlin. This was sometime in ‘09. And, oh boy, I have a very conscious, extremely strong memory of how much emotional strain I was under as she sending me all of these confessional emails. Oh wow.
Why did you feel it as an emotional strain?
Because it’s clear she’s under incredible stress. I mean, her first email to me was, “I’m so happy that you are the person who’s discovered me.” She had had one or two experiences with the Daily Mail ; somebody had left her a message. And then there was some other woman in that graduate-student circle whose name was also Sheila, who’d gotten a call because somebody had told somebody that they thought his girlfriend was named Sheila. So somebody focuses on this wrong woman, who’s, like, a lawyer in San Francisco.
I mean, one would think that there’d be a journalist in America who would go look at the student directory in the University of Chicago Library in 2008.
Well, you know why there wasn’t one, right?
Yeah. “We’re looking for the Black guy’s white girlfriend.”
I mean, why go through all that trouble to be labeled a racist and lose your job.
Both with that, and with all the unpleasant stuff about Doc that was in the NARA document dump in 2018, I don’t perceive the existence of having a choice.
Barack’s love letters to Alex, if they are actually love letters, are hard to read. Not just because they’re so poorly written, but because of the clear lack of any human interest in the person he’s writing to. The letters are completely performative. She may as well have been a tree or some kind of theater backdrop. Maybe all young men are guilty of this fault, but these examples seem pretty egregious.
It’s pretty clear to me, and this is me putting little pieces together with Alex and with Sheila, but I’m 97 percent convinced that Barack either drafted all those letters in his journal and then made them into letters, or he wrote the letters and then copied them into the journal.
The first time—again, I can say this—the first time I saw him at the White House in the Oval, he’s sitting in that usual chair back at the fireplace. I’m at the right end of that, the couch that’s facing toward Lewinsky territory. And over on the desk, the only thing on the desk is this big pile of all his journals over the years. And he’s arranged it this way on purpose—to show me that he has them, and so he can tell me that I can’t see them. He’s got this big sack, I want to call it a cloth sack or a canvas sack, in the bottom of which are the journals. And then on the top of it is the typescript printout of my manuscript. So he’s carrying them around together.
The letters to and from Sheila. Are we ever going to see them? Not in my lifetime or yours. Certainly not in Barack’s lifetime will those journals see the light of day. I wouldn’t be astonished if he burns them.
Why? What can’t he let anyone see?
He wants people to believe his story. For me to conclude that Dreams from My Father was historical fiction—oh God, did that infuriate him.
I’ve gotten the sense, from my read of him and from people close to him, that the pose of being a writer is actually one that he prefers in many ways to being a politician.
Oh God, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
So why wouldn’t he want his writerliness to be revealed?
He doesn’t want the writerliness challenged. It’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The book [Dreams] is so fictionalized.
What’s wrong with that? At this point in time, only a very naive person would think of memoir as anything other than a literary genre that is cousin to the novel. It’s not history.
It’s so inaccurate, whether about the dynamics among the guys in Hawaii or what’s going on in the community group on the far South Side. And it completely omits women. I’ve always thought that there’d eventually be a feminist critique of Obama because his mother and all the girlfriends—they’re not there. They don’t exist.
I will say, from reading your book, I had the sense that all of those women seemed like they felt betrayed by him. Even the act of giving you his love letters is itself a tremendously aggressive, hostile act. They knew exactly what his response would be. They knew what they had.
With Alex and Genevieve, it was so far in the past. Sheila is a whole different thing.
With Sheila, you could feel the hurt, but with Alex, you could too. The anecdote that obviously came from Alex about running into Barack and Michelle in Boston or New York on a street—
On Madison Avenue. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
There’s a million ways to be like, “Hi, this is Alex. She’s an old friend from school.” And then, your significant other may say later on, “Oh, did you fuck her?” You say, “Oh, no.” Or “Yes.” Or whatever.
But you don’t cross the street.
“I HAVE A DREAM” MEETS DREAMS
So is Barack Obama the prime mover in the transformation of the American society we are living through now? Or was he simply a mannered observer, or a huge narcissist who couldn’t care less about anything outside himself? You wrote the best of the Obama books, you wrote one of the best King books … I understand the mesh of techniques that you use. I am hoping you can help enlighten me.
I’m entirely certain that I understand Doc. I understand Doc far better than I understand Barack because Doc, even though he was so consistently disciplined in public, was otherwise, to people who knew him well, a completely transparent person—in his strengths, his weaknesses, and his failures.
This looms so huge to me, and I work at how to best articulate it: When I first started meeting the King people in September ‘79, I was 26 years old, and I had no ability to appreciate how close in time I was to 1968. It didn’t seem close to me. I can picture the first time I met Dorothy Cotton. I can picture Dorothy’s house, and I don’t want to get off on this, but I should say it: The most profound decision I’ve ever made was to protect Dorothy both in the FBI book and in BTC. Because it was her very clear wish that she didn’t want to be painted or pigeonholed as just Dr. King’s, you know—it’s a word that begins with M.
And I won’t even use that word because a lot of us, not in public, have called Dorothy the real wife. And having known Dorothy and having known Coretta, it was eminently obvious to me why someone as needy of solace as Doc would spend more time with Dorothy.
Thanks to that NARA document dump from the JFK Records Act four years ago now, I know a whole lot more of the details in the understory now than I did in 1986. I’ve always expected someone to challenge me on why I protected Dorothy. But to me, it came very easily. I’ve never doubted myself about it. But back when I first heard about Dolores Evans and Chrystal, way back in ‘85 or so, I didn’t believe it was true. I thought it was very unlikely to be true because I understood that it was mainly coming from Don Newcomb and that Newcomb was an alcoholic. So I wrongly thought it was some guy talking in his liquor.
With Rising Star, without any question, how to deal with Alex and Genevieve and especially with Sheila was the most professionally demanding thing I’ve ever been through.
I remember the first time I was struck by Obama as being a personality who existed outside the normal confines of American politics was when I went out to Denver for his acceptance speech in 2008.
I think Barack in that winter of ‘08, ‘09, realized there was no way that his presidency could actually live up to the expectations. And I think even the fanboy journalists would acknowledge, under a little bit of pressure, that it ended up being an underwhelming, disappointing presidency. It will, in the long run, be seen as a failed presidency because of the international failures.
There was also a moment in The Audacity of Hope, which I wrote about in 2008, of a warning: Whatever happens next is on you people, not me. And I was like, that is, on one hand, a stunningly honest and upfront thing to say. It’s also a complete abandonment or rejection of the responsibility that he should be embracing in this moment.
I wouldn’t even say I was troubled by it. I was baffled by it. What does it mean? Who is this guy, and where is this guy coming from? I went back and re-read “Dreams from my Father,” which I bought when it came out, and I came upon the passage where his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, takes him out into the backyard in Indonesia and teaches him how to fight. And I said, “Wait a minute. I know this scene. Where’s it from?” And then I went back and found the battle royale scene in Invisible Man.
Right, right, right.
And, of course, Ellison’s Invisible Man ends up in a basement by himself, which is how the book begins. But the point of Dreams from My Father is that Obama is going to do the opposite. Instead of ending up in a basement with a bunch of light bulbs and his Louis Armstrong records, he’s going to become the person who will effect large-scale social change here in America. And again, I was like, “What a weirdly writerly thing to do.” This is clearly a highly wrought literary work of self-fashioning by a person who is in dialogue with literary sources. Or, to put it another way: I’m watching this guy make himself up.
It was funny, when I was with Ben Rhodes in the White House, one of the things that Rhodes was at pains to get across to me was that Obama wrote all of his speeches himself. Here’s the legal pad, take a look. I remember thinking, “Well, why would I think otherwise, until right now?”
I mean, of course Obama doesn’t write all his speeches himself. He’s the president of the United States; he’s got a team of seven White House employees who are paid to write speeches for him. But there was obviously a need or an instruction that had been given that Barack Obama was always to be presented as the author of Barack Obama. And by his instruction, the only book that the speechwriters were to consult was the Collected Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, because he was the only other president who deserved to be on the same shelf as Obama.
So the conclusion I’ve come to in time is that that best way to understand Barack Obama is that he is a literary creation of Barack Obama, the writer, who authored the novel of his own life and then proceeded to live out this fictional character that he created for himself on the page. Which is remarkable. So how do you write a biography of a fictional character authored by someone who’s deliberately created and obscured and erased their actual life and replaced that self with a fiction?
How do you write a biography of a fictional character authored by someone who’s deliberately created and obscured and erased their actual life, and replaced that self with a fiction?
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https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama
The whole book’s really good, but the part that was most incredibly compelling to me is that period during which he transforms himself. Those chapters are fantastic and I think will be read forever because they’re as close to an explanation as anyone will ever have, I think, of the terrible, terrible, terrible isolation, the terrible, terrible loneliness, that the young Obama experienced before he reinvented himself as a fictional character in this incredibly American way.
Yes.
Which makes Obama almost the opposite of King, right? King, on a public level, had this incredible moral compass, had this incredible ability to connect empathy to the Bible, to politics, all in one flow of perception, and then mirror that back to people in ways that they recognized and that changed them. They were dealing with a remarkable and transformative leader who changed America.
Then there was the private Dr. King, who had affairs with multiple women and made off-color jokes and drank, and his behavior was hardly in any way a model or exemplary or what we consider moral behavior. Which, in a deeper historical sense, doesn’t matter one bit.
Right. The thing I wanted to highlight was that Doc, from birth up through college, lives in this loving cocoon of not just a family, but this wider community of Ebenezer and Auburn Avenue. He had the most privileged life a Black person could have in America in those years. The first time he really defies daddy is to leave to go to Crozer after he finishes Morehouse. So he’s never had a moment’s doubt about who is he, where is he from, who are his parents, who’s his family. It’s a cocoon.
The contrast to Barack could not be greater. He doesn’t know the daddy. He sort of knows the mother. He’s living with these elderly white people, and he’s being shuttled between Indonesia and Honolulu. And both in high school and at Oxy, and those three years in New York, his friendship network is all these guys like Chandoo Hasan, who are fellow international stateless children.
I think the pairing of King and Obama is an inevitable one for people in the present, at least, to make. Here’s the great civil rights leader who achieves this century-long dream of legal equality, and here’s the first Black-skinned president of the United States. Except, I can also make the argument that the pairing is fundamentally false.
Doc has no choice to be Black. Barack chooses to be Black.
MLK, THE FBI, AND THE PRESS
You uncovered significant new information about the extent of Dr. King’s drinking problem and his womanizing, and even acts of violence against women, which seem to me to be a meaningful addition to what we know about one of the most important figures in American history. Yet, bizarrely, no newspaper or magazine in America would print your findings.
I mean, it was frustrating and bemusing—first with The Guardian, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times. All sorts of people agreed to publish that and then went back on their word. Jodi Kantor at the Times was someone who tried to help me get that piece published. That’s why it got so much consideration at the Times, though the investigative people insisted it was a magazine issue.
I remember there was a female historian who condemned you for publicizing the details of Dr. King’s sex life, which seemed like a strange position for a historian to take.
The only people who were nasty about it were a trio of people whose professional history features a hatred of law enforcement. One of them had written a book about [the Black Panther and convicted murderer] Joanne Chesimard, or somebody like that.
You may have seen me say in print somewhere that there’s a very clear distinction in FBI documents. Something that comes from an electronic intercept is 99.9 percent reliable because they were very good transcriptionists. Where FBI records are bullshit is when it’s coming from human informants. Which is the whole elongated story of Dr. King being quoted as saying, “I am a Marxist.” Well, Morris Childs is telling the FBI what Gus Hall said Lem Harris told him that Stanley Levison told Lem. It’s like fifth-hand.
And the whole relationship between the bureau and the CPUSA was so totally fucked up because Hall and the other CPUSA hierarchy are embezzling significant amounts of money. The Childs were certainly embezzling some themselves. But the bureau is running the CPUSA. The bureau could have shut down CPUSA in about 1958.
Why did you say that the idea that Dr. King had been violent toward women changed your opinion of him? It has been known for a while that Dr. King, outside of the historical role he was called into, let’s say by God, was a flawed man who had issues with drinking and staying faithful to his wife.
Yes. Well, a garbled version of the same story is in my FBI book from 1981. There’d been two DOJ teams of lawyers, one run by a guy named Fred Folsom, and the other run by a guy named Bob Murphy, under Stan Pottinger, who had gone back through all that stuff and had listened to it. So several of the lawyers had told me this story about a woman being treated abusively, but they attached that memory to a story about a Las Vegas prostitute. So that’s what’s in my FBI book, and no one had ever particularly—
Oh, so it’s the same story, then?
It’s the same story, except it’s in Las Vegas with the prostitute, not the women from the Philadelphia Naval Yard at the Willard Hotel, which is the news story that was in the document dump, which I then wrote about.
The real crux of the problem with Doc was the binge drinking. But I’m very uncomfortable about emphasizing the drinking problem, because I fear that it sounds like you’re making some sort of fraternity-house excuse.
President Barack Obama jokes with Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, left, as first lady Michelle Obama looks on at right during the memorial service for former South African president Nelson Mandela at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, South Africa, 2013
President Barack Obama jokes with Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, left, as first lady Michelle Obama looks on at right during the memorial service for former South African president Nelson Mandela at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, South Africa, 2013
AP PHOTO/MATT DUNHAM
I doubt it happens very often that someone, especially a public figure, is sitting there stone-cold sober and decides, “Well, you know what would be a great idea? Why don’t I slap this woman across the face, in front of all these other people.”
I knew back in ‘85, ‘86, that by ‘67, ‘68, he had a drinking problem, because Marian Logan, a wonderful lady, described to me very powerfully, once when she was at 234 Sunset, Doc sitting on the bed drinking from a fifth of vodka, and Coretta seeing this and just not reacting. But that was Coretta’s MO: Don’t process things.
But I think I had assumed that it’s only when things sort of get so much tougher after ‘65 that the drinking really amped up. And, as with that memo from the state liquor agent detailing his interview with the Las Vegas prostitute, it was news to me that the drinking was out of control as of ‘64.
Also, I had been under the impression for years that in addition to Dorothy, there were maybe roughly 12 other women. What the NARA dump indicates is that if you count it all up, it’s about 40 to 45. And there’s clearly a compulsive quality to this.
But again, making the JFK comparison, even in terms of the Willard misbehavior—the woman who was like a White House intern, Mimi Beardsley Alford, whom [JFK] had service Dave Powers in the pool while he watched—there’s no getting around the fact that that was abusive.
Now the FBI is not honest with [Attorney General] Bobby [Kennedy] about that. They keep selling Bobby on Levison, Levison, Levison.
But it’s actually the women that they want.
Oh, yeah. Exactly. But I mean, at the same time, it is Doc’s fault that he’s promised the Kennedys he’ll stop working with Stan. Yet all they do is create Clarence [Jones, King’s lawyer] as an intermediary. And they’re not bright enough to realize that Clarence is tapped too. So it is understandable that RFK and the president think that King is not being honest with them.
On the other hand, neither Burke Marshall nor any of the other guys were told about the Childs brothers. So nobody in DOJ understood how good the FBI’s info was, because the FBI didn’t want to share it. The first person in the U.S. government who, outside the FBI, was ever shown the real importance of the Childs brothers was Senator Frank Church in the 1970s, because they show Frank a photo of Morris with Brezhnev and say, “This is our guy.”
Surveillance in the world of the ’60s was much simpler because it was so much smaller, and the technology was so much more labor-intensive. Running electronic surveillance in 1965 was really expensive and demanding. You had to do an installation, and even if you didn’t officially trespass in the installation, no matter where you’re doing it, it is difficult. And then you’ve got to get a leased line from the pole outside the house back to wherever. You’ve got to have a room. In Atlanta they rent this special apartment at Peachtree Towers. And then you’ve got to staff it 24/7. And with that tap on the SCLC office … I mean, the SCLC office has at least six telephone lines. The vast majority of what they’re getting on that tap is just secretaries talking to their boyfriends or people ordering pizza.
“I saw my proctologist today, and he said …”
And you’re getting stuff on folks’ kids. Most people who read this stuff don’t realize what electronic surveillance really means in terms of how much it picks up. They’ve never thought about it because they’ve never read the raw product.
But that product was rare, is the point that you’re making.
Oh, God. Yeah. Even at the height of Hoover, they’re not running more than 68 wiretaps in the entire effing country—a third of which are on foreign embassies, a third of which are on various mafia guys.
I was doing some research at the library in Maryland, the archives where Hoover’s papers are. I imagine most of the good stuff is located somewhere else, but the remaining contents of Hoover’s safe include letters from each U.S. attorney general, which obviously he made damn sure to procure, saying that they, as the attorney general, speaking for the president, had authorized him to conduct wiretaps. Hoover’s still sitting there in the ’50s and ’60s being like, “I’ve got to cover my ass with the letter from Tom Clark, because I know that the exercise of this kind of power is not sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution.”
Right. Exactly.
Whereas now this is a become a push-button feature of the software that these guys use. They can turn on your iPhone and have every word you speak transcribed by AI, under some phony third-hop FISA warrant rule.
The technology makes it so, so much easier. One of the landmark books, nobody remembers this now, was Jim Bamford’s first book on the NSA. Oh, my God.
So Obama starts out as an eloquent opponent of the Patriot Act, etc., etc. By the end of his presidency, his people are unmasking intercepts of his political opponents every day, and the FBI is spying on Donald Trump.
That’s right.
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS BARACK OBAMA?
What interests you most about Obama today?
The number one thing about Barack this past five years is how completely he’s vanished.
Why is he living in the center of Washington, D.C., then?
Well, how much time is he spending there as opposed to Martha’s Vineyard? I have no idea.
Between July Fourth and Labor Day, sure. The rest of the year, he lives in a large brick mansion in Kalorama. Doesn’t it strike you as weird that he’s an ex-president, he’s comparatively young, and he’s living in the center of Washington, D.C.? The original excuse was that Sasha had to finish school. Then you could say, “Well, the opposition to Trump needs a figure to rally around.” But now Sasha has graduated from USC, Trump is gone, Joe Biden was elected present, but he’s still there.
I never see any mentions of him.
Doesn’t that strike you as odd? I mean, I have heard from more than one source that there are regular meetings at Obama’s house in Kalorama involving top figures in the current White House, with Secret Service and cars outside. I don’t write about it because it’s not my lane.
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Barack Obama - The Real-Life Manchurian Candidate?
https://www.frontpagemag.com/barack-obama-the-real-life-manchurian-candidate/
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/it-definitely-wasnt-baracks-first-time-obamas-crack-fueled-gay-tryst-accuser-speaks-out?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1807
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I saw this too.
The claimant has the most incredible history of being a serial liar.
Almost certainly BS.
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Even after the ex-girlfriend comment, not good judgement by Tucker in running with this guy.
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"not good judgement by Tucker in running with this guy"
Agree
That was my immediate conclusion after I saw the rap sheet on this lifelong serial con man.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faPNpovMeuU
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As pointed out in a piece I posted elsewhere, we know more about Joe the Plumber’s taxes than we do about Obama’s education among numerous other datapoints generally considered worth chasing down when someone runs for President, particularly if the info is negative or disqualifying and the candidate is a Republican. This piece chases down unsavory, un- or under-reported elements where BHO is concerned.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama?fbclid=IwAR2kOwWOIgg4dstPcDUMKXaRTO9xLEMNuxicsSLp3avNsNxl4lndTCpJZV0
The Obama Factor
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The Obama Factor
A Q&A with historian David Garrow
BY
DAVID SAMUELS
AUGUST 02, 2023
Former President Barack Obama, who turns 62 tomorrow
RICK FRIEDMAN/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
There is a fascinating passage in Rising Star, David Garrow’s comprehensive biography of Barack Obama’s early years, in which the historian examines Obama’s account in Dreams from My Father of his breakup with his longtime Chicago girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager. In Dreams, Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white-identified liberal universalism. As readers, we know that the stakes of this decision would become more than simply personal: The Black American man that Obama wills into being in this scene would go on to marry a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago named Michelle Robinson and, after a meteoric rise, win election as the first Black president of the United States.
Yet what Garrow documented, after tracking down and interviewing Sheila Miyoshi Jager, was an explosive fight over a very different subject. In Jager’s telling, the quarrel that ended the couple’s relationship was not about Obama’s self-identification as a Black man. And the impetus was not a play about the American Black experience, but an exhibit at Chicago’s Spertus Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
At the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spertus Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a Black mayoral aide named Steve Cokely who, in a series of lectures organized by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans. The episode highlighted a deep rift within the city’s power echelons, with some prominent Black officials supporting Cokely and others calling for his firing.
In Jager’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism. While acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a Black identity had created some degree of distance between the couple, she insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Cokely’s comments. It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism.
No doubt, Obama’s evolving race-based self-consciousness did distance him from Jager; in the end, the couple broke up. Yet it is revealing to read Obama’s account of the breakup in Dreams against the very different account that Jager offers. In Obama’s account, he was the particularist, embracing a personal meaning for the Black experience that Jager, the universalist, refused to grant. In Jager’s account, the poles of the argument are nearly, but not quite, reversed: It is Obama who appears to minimize Jewish anxiety about blood libels coming from the Black community. His particularism mattered; hers didn’t. While Obama defined himself as a realist or pragmatist, the episode reads like a textbook evasion of moral responsibility.
Whose version of the story is correct? Who knows. The bridge between the two accounts is Obama’s emerging attachment to Blackness, which required him to fall in love with and marry a Black woman. In Obama’s account, his attachment to Blackness is truthful and noble. In Jager’s account, his claims are instrumental and selfish; he grants particularism to the experience and suffering of his own tribe while denying it to others.
In evaluating the truthfulness of these two competing accounts, it seems worth noting that Jager is something more than a woman scorned by a man who would later become president of the United States. Obama asked her to marry him twice; she refused him both times, before going on to achieve her own high-level professional successes. A student of the great University of Chicago anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, Jager is a professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College whose scholarship on great power politics in Southeast Asia and the U.S.-Korean relationship is known for its factual rigor. In contrast, Dreams from My Father, as Garrow shows throughout Rising Star, is as much a work of dreamy literary fiction as it is an attempt to document Obama’s early life.
Scholarship aside, there is another reason to assume that Jager would be less likely to misremember an incident involving race and antisemitism than Obama. As it turns out, Jager’s paternal grandparents, Hendrik and Geesje Jager, were members of the Dutch resistance, whose role sheltering a Jewish child named Greetje in their home for three years led to their recognition as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. In that context, at least, it seems quite likely that Jager would remember the particulars of a fight with Obama related to antisemitism, and be turned off by his response—while Obama’s version of the fight has the feel of an anecdote positioned, if not invented, to buttress the character arc of the protagonist of his memoir, which in turn positioned him for a career in public life.
Perhaps the most revealing thing about Jager’s account of her fight with Obama, though, is that not one reporter in America bothered to interview her before David Garrow found her, near the end of Obama’s presidency. As Obama’s live-in girlfriend and closest friend during the 1980s, Jager is probably the single most informed and credible source about the inner life of a young man whose election was accompanied by hopes of sweeping, peaceful social change in America—a hope that ended with the election of Donald Trump, or perhaps midway through Obama’s second term, as the president focused on the Iran deal while failing to address the concerns about rampant income inequality, racial inequality, and the growth of a monopoly tech complex that happened on his watch.
The idea that the celebrated journalists who wrote popular biographies of Obama and became enthusiastic members of his personal claque couldn’t locate Jager—or never knew who she was—defies belief. It seems more likely that the character Obama fashioned in Dreams had been defined—by Obama—as being beyond the reach of normal reportorial scrutiny. Indeed, Garrow’s biography of Obama’s early years is filled with such corrections of a historical record that Obama more or less invented himself. Based on years of careful record-searching and patient interviewing, Rising Star highlights a remarkable lack of curiosity on the part of mainstream reporters and institutions about a man who almost instantaneously was treated less like a politician and more like the idol of an inter-elite cult.
Yet when it came out six years ago, Rising Star was mostly ignored; as a result, its most scandalous and perhaps revelatory passages, such as Obama’s long letter to another girlfriend about his fantasies of having sex with men, read today, to people who are more familiar with the Obama myth than the historical record, like partisan bigotry. But David Garrow is hardly a hack whose work can or should be dismissed on partisan grounds. He is among the country’s most credible and celebrated civil rights historians—the author of The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bearing the Cross (which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography) and one of the three historian-consultants who animated the monumental PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize, as well as the author of a landmark history of abortion rights, Liberty and Sexuality.
In part, Garrow’s failure to gain a hearing for his revision of the Obama myth lay in his timing. Rising Star felt like old news the moment it was published in May 2017—as whatever insights the book contained were overtaken by the fury and chaos surrounding the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency. As Trump’s incendiary carnival barker act took center stage, it was hard even for Republicans not to miss the contrast with Obama’s cerebral mannerisms and sedate family life. The idea that Obama was simply another self-obsessed political knife-fighter who played fast and loose with the truth didn’t resonate. In any case, Obama was now a footnote to history—a reminder of kinder, gentler times that the country seemed unlikely to see again anytime soon.
Yet there was also evidence to suggest that the idea Obama was no longer concerned with power or involved with power was itself part of a new set of myths being woven by and around the ex-president. First, the Obamas never left town. Instead, they bought a large brick mansion in the center of Washington’s Kalorama neighborhood—violating a norm governing the transfer of presidential power which has been breached only once in post-Civil War American history, by Woodrow Wilson, who couldn’t physically be moved after suffering a series of debilitating strokes. In the Obamas case, the reason for staying in D.C. was ostensibly that their youngest daughter, Sasha, wanted to finish high school with her class at Sidwell Friends. In June 2019, Sasha went off to college, yet her parents remained in Washington.
By then, it was clear to any informed observer that the Obamas’ continuing presence in the nation’s capital was not purely a personal matter. To an extent that has never been meaningfully reported on, the Obamas served as both the symbolic and practical heads of the Democratic Party shadow government that “resisted” Trump—another phenomenon that defied prior norms. The fact that these were not normal times could be adduced by even a passing glance at the front pages of the country’s daily newspapers, which were filled with claims that the 2016 election had been “stolen” by Russia and that Trump was a Russian agent.
Given the stakes, then, it seemed churlish to object to the Obamas’ quiet family life in Kalorama —or to report on the comings and goings of Democratic political operatives and office-seekers from their mansion, or to the swift substitution of Obama as party leader for Hillary Clinton, who after all was the person who had supposedly been cheated out of the presidency. Why even mention the strangeness of the overall setup, which surely paled next to the raw menace of Donald Trump, who lurched from one crisis to the next while lashing out at his enemies and probably selling out the country to Vladimir Putin?
In a normal country, the exhaustive report issued in April 2019 by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which uncovered no evidence that the 2016 election had been decided by Russian actions, let alone that Trump was a Russian agent, might have been a cue for the Obamas to go home, to Chicago, or Hawaii, or Martha’s Vineyard. The moment of crisis was over. Russiagate turned out to have been a politically motivated hoax, just as Trump had long insisted.
But while the attention of Republicans in Washington turned to questioning the FBI, more careful observers could not fail to notice that the FBI had hardly acted alone. After all, Russiagate had not originated with the Bureau, but with the Clinton campaign, which having failed to get even sympathetic mainstream media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post to bite on its fantastical allegations, was reduced to handing off the story to campaign press apparatchiks like Slate’s Franklin Foer and Mother Jones’ David Corn. The fact that the story only got bigger after Clinton lost the election was due to Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, who in November and December of 2016 helped elevate Russiagate from a failed Clinton campaign ploy to a priority of the American national security apparatus, using a hand-picked team of CIA analysts under his direct control to validate his thesis. If Brennan was the instrument, the person who signed the executive order that turned Brennan’s thesis into a time bomb under Trump’s desk was Barack Obama.
The election of Joe Biden in 2020 gave the Obamas even more reasons to stay in town. The whispers about Biden’s cognitive decline, which began during his bizarre COVID-sheltered basement campaign, were mostly dismissed as partisan attacks on a politician who had always been gaffe-ridden. Yet as President Biden continued to fall off bicycles, misremember basic names and facts, and mix long and increasingly weird passages of Dada-edque nonsense with autobiographical whoppers during his public appearances, it became hard not to wonder how poor the president’s capacities really were and who was actually making decisions in a White House staffed top to bottom with core Obama loyalists. When Obama turned up at the White House, staffers and the press crowded around him, leaving President Biden talking to the drapes—which is not a metaphor but a real thing that happened.
That Obama might enjoy serving as a third-term president in all but name, running the government from his iPhone, was a thought expressed in public by Obama himself, both before and after he left office. “I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony,” he told Steven Colbert in 2015, “I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.” Even with all these clues, the Washington press corps—fresh off their years of broadcasting fantasies about secret communications links between Trump Tower and the Kremlin—seemed unable to imagine, let alone report on, Obama’s role in government.
David Garrow
David Garrow
TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY LLC/ALAMY
Instead, every few months a sanitized report appears on some aspect of the ex-president’s outside public advocacy, presented within limits that are clearly being set by Obama’s political operatives—which conveniently elide the problems that are inherent in having a person with no constitutional role or congressional oversight take an active role in executive decision-making. Near the end of June, for example, Politico ran a long article noting Biden’s cognitive decline, with the coy headline “Is Obama Ready to Reassert Himself?”—as if the ex-president hadn’t been living in the middle of Washington and playing politics since the day he left office. Indeed, in previous weeks Obama had continued his role as central advocate for government censorship of the internet while launching a new campaign against gun ownership, claiming it is historically linked to racism. Surely, the spectacle of an ex-president simultaneously leading campaigns against both the First and Second Amendments might have led even a spectacularly incurious old-school D.C. reporter to file a story on the nuts and bolts of Obama’s political operation and on who was going in and out of his mansion. But the D.C. press was no longer in the business of maintaining transparency. Instead, they had become servants of power, whose job was to broadcast whatever myths helped advance the interests of the powerful.
There is another interpretation of Obama’s post-presidency, of course—one shared by many Republicans and Democrats. In that interpretation, Obama was never the leader of much of anything, neither during the Trump years nor now. Instead, he was focused on buying trophy properties, hanging out with billionaires, and vacationing on private yachts while grifting large checks from marks like Spotify and Netflix—even if his now-stratospheric levels of personal vanity also demanded that every so often he show up President Biden for the sin of occupying his chair in the White House.
In the absence of what was once American journalism, it is hard to know which portrait of Obama’s post-presidency is truer to life: Obama as a celebrity-obsessed would-be billionaire, or as a would-be American Castro, reshaping American society from his basement, in his sweats.
Yet the answer is, I believe, somewhere in David Garrow’s book.
At bottom, Rising Star is a tragic story about a young man who was deeply wounded by the abandonment of both his white mother and his Black father—a wound that gifted him with political genius and at the same time made him the victim of a profound narcissism that first whispered to him in his mid-twenties that he was destined to be president. It is not hard to see how Garrow has come to believe that Obama’s ambition proved to be toxic, both for the man and for the country. But why?
As a human being who was sentient for long stretches of time between 2008 and 2017, I was, in general, a fan of Barack Obama and his presidency. What I could never understand was Obama’s contempt for the idea of American exceptionalism. Even as president, Obama insisted on poking exceptionalists in the eye, saying that he believed in American exceptionalism “just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Why would the president of the United States feel the need to disabuse his countrymen of the idea that they are special?
What made Obama’s rejection of American exceptionalism seem particularly weird to me was his attachment to Abraham Lincoln, whose cadences and economy of language he urged his speechwriters to emulate. As a historian, one might plausibly argue that Lincoln was a saint who saved the Union or a monster who shed rivers of blood—or that he didn’t go far enough. But there is no arguing with Lincoln’s belief in the uniqueness of the American destiny, for which he sent hundreds of thousands of young men to die. Of all men, Abraham Lincoln would have been baffled by an American president who denied that America was exceptional. What did all those people die for, then? And what exactly did Obama think that Lincoln’s speeches were about?
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Obama’s hostility to American exceptionalism also seemed linked to his hostility to Israel, or more specifically to America’s identification with Israel, which finally resulted in his determination during his second term to reach his agreement with Iran—an agreement with the main objective of integrating that country into America’s security architecture in the Middle East, while limiting Israel’s power in the region. Again, why?
The sheer amount of political capital and focus Obama put into achieving the JCPOA during his second term, to the near-exclusion of other goals, suggests that the deal was central to his politics. It also carries more than a whiff of the kind of politics in which the American Empire is seen not just as unexceptional, but also, in some ways, as actively evil. It was a politics born out of the confluence of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, which saw a racist war abroad being used to protect a racist power structure at home. That old alliance of civil rights, anti-imperialism, and identity politics made the Democratic Party that Obama positioned himself to lead—college-educated, corporate-controlled—seem cool, allowing it to use post-1960s radical ideology as a language to sell stuff.
In a passage of Dreams that reeks of neo-liberal poser-ism, Obama recalls, “I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active Black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed necolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.”
But was Obama truly guided by post-1970s dorm-room stoner politics (as Garrow shows, Obama’s best friend at Harvard Law School was a white student named Rob Fisher who is now a senior special counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission, that famed hotbed of punk-rock performance poets and structural feminists), or was he driven by some deeper radicalism?
My own read of Obama has always been that he was a skillful elite-pleaser with a radical streak that did in fact emerge from the anti-imperialist politics of the 1970s, the foundational claim of which was that equality trumps freedom. Which brings us back to Obama’s breakup with Sheila Miyoshi Jager.
I have never seen any evidence that Barack Obama has the slightest personal animus toward Jews as individuals. But from his denial of American exceptionalism, and his sourness toward Israel, going all the way back to Sheila Miyoshi Jager’s account of their breakup, there does seem to be an awareness of the underlying problem posed to his politics by Jews—that is, the problem posed by Jewish group survival and their continuing insistence on Jewish historical particularity.
Progressive theology is built on a mythic hierarchy of group victimhood which has endured throughout time, up until the present day; the injuries that the victims have suffered are so massive, so shocking, and so manifestly unjust that they dwarf the present. Such injuries must be remedied immediately, at nearly any cost. The people who do the work of remedying these injustices, by whatever means, are the heroes of history. Conversely, the sins of the chief oppressors of history, white men, are so dark that nothing short of abject humiliation and capitulation can begin to approach justice.
It goes to say that nothing about the terms of progressive theology is original. It is the theology of Soviet communism, with class struggle replaced by identity politics. In this system, Jews play a unique, double-edged role: They are both an identity group and a Trojan horse through which history can reenter the gates of utopia.
Ghettos were invented for Jews. Concentration camps, too. How can Jews be “privileged white people” if they are clearly among history’s victims? And if Jews aren’t white people, then perhaps lots of other white people are also victims and therefore aren’t “white,” in the theological sense in which that term gains its significance in progressive ideology. Maybe “Black people” aren’t always or primarily Black. Maybe the whole progressive race-based theology is, historically and ideologically speaking, a load of crap. Which is why the Jews are and will remain a problem.
Obama didn’t invent any of this stuff; he was just a wounded kid trying to figure out his own place in the world and get ahead. Still, looking back, it is hard to avoid the sense that Obama himself was exceptional. He was the guy chosen by history to put something in the American goldfish bowl that made all the fish go crazy and eat each other: America’s emerging oligarachy cementing its grip instead of going bust. The rise of monopoly internet platforms. The normalization of government spying on Americans. Race relations going south. Skyrocketing inequality. The rise of Donald Trump. The birth of Russiagate. It all happened with Obama in the White House.
To understand how we wound up here, it therefore seems necessary to start by understanding the man that so many of us refused to see outside of the myth that he created for himself. His problems are now our problems, as much as Donald Trump’s are.
That is why I went to talk to David Garrow.
What follows is a condensed and edited version of two long interviews conducted recently with the historian at his home in Pittsburgh, centering around his 2017 biography of Barack Obama, Rising Star.
MARTIN AND BARACK
David Samuels: At this point, the number of people involved in America’s civil rights struggle and politics you have interviewed must be in the thousands, right?
David Garrow: I would think it’s close to 2,000. The Obama book alone was 1,000-plus.
In general, do you find a large gap between people’s impression of their truthfulness as they speak and the reality of what you find once you start checking?
People remember happy memories very well. They purge painful memories. This is true of everybody in Montgomery, everybody who was active in the boycott. And now the children of the boycott are my age. I got a wonderful email yesterday from Sharon Campbell Waters, whose daddy ran part of the carpool operation, sending me these pictures of Alabama State U, renaming a dorm in honor of Mrs. JoAnn Robinson—the woman who actually started the boycott, whose memoir I got published.
So, everybody remembers December of ‘55 to December of ‘56 very well. Then, in Montgomery, nothing much happens in ‘57, ‘58, ‘59: King’s spending too much time traveling around, the Montgomery Improvement Association isn’t doing much, SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] is sort of stillborn, and various people in the MIA are sniping at each other. Ed Nixon’s really unhappy. Mrs. Parks has to leave and move to Detroit.
I became convinced in the early ’80s that lawyers have the worst memories, which was perhaps overinformed by Burke Marshall, the Kennedy civil rights guy, who once asked me, “Remind me, did Albany happen before Birmingham? Or did Birmingham happen before Albany?” I’m thinking, “Hmm.” E.D. Nixon from Montgomery is the stellar example of people who reimagine a fictional past in which they played more decisive roles than they actually did: Mr. Nixon did not choose King to head the boycott.
If I use the universe of people from the Obama book—and granted that’s a whole lot closer in time—most of the memories there checked out pretty well. But Barack himself is unable to remember or acknowledge where he had shortcomings or failures.
You interviewed Obama when he was in the White House?
I spent eight hours talking with him on three different days. And we didn’t record it, and it’s officially off the record, but some of the stuff he was most energized about was, to me, hilariously inconsequential. Like, insisting that he really had been fluent in Indonesian as a third grader, or that he didn’t tell several Illinois State Senate staffers that he knew Rickey Hendon could kick his butt. There are shared elements in the sensitivities.
What do you see as the connection, if any, between the personal lives of powerful men and their public lives, based on your years of research on Dr. King, and your experience writing about Obama?
I think one can in large part, in King’s case, say these were sort of two separate lives. Because he lived it that way. He lived it as two separate lives.
Might one make the same case about Obama, but in reverse? It seems clear that Obama leads an exemplary, highly controlled private life, consuming exactly seven almonds while watching The Man in the High Castle or Draymond Green highlights on ESPN for stress relief.
Right. Yes.
In fact, I can make the case that Obama’s public life was the amoral part, beginning with the toleration of genocide in Syria and the extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens, and extending to wide-scale illegal surveillance and spying, and his now becoming the spokesperson for gutting the First Amendment in favor of government censorship of large tech platforms.
The defense of the Obama people when you talk to them is he was never touched by scandal, meaning personal scandal. And you’re like, “Well, I’m sure all those people who got gassed to death in Syria or are growing up in American towns with no jobs feel just great about the fact that he never got a blow job in the Oval Office.”
I think a major turning point in his presidency was that whole thing where he and Denis McDonough walk around the White House grounds and he changes his mind about Syria.
I don’t think Denis is a reliable narrator. That’s his chief of staff, and that’s too much of a recognizably made-for-TV moment, a Bob Woodward moment, for me to buy it. Nor does it fit with the strategic architecture that Obama had already committed himself to. Sure, maybe Obama suddenly remembered while taking a walk in the Rose Garden that his big second-term goal was to do a nuclear deal with Iran, and that he had written Khamenei a letter recognizing Syria as an Iranian equity. But I doubt that.
We’ve got these other people who were convinced he was going to do it.
I imagine that part of being effective as president is convincing everyone within your own administration that you are at least conceivably on their side. But there’s no way to bomb Syria—meaning, to bomb Iran—and also convince Iran that he was sincere about reaching a deal. He just let all the bomb Syria talk go on as long as he could to please the hawks, before pulling the rug out from under them. That’s politics.
Barack Obama meets with Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough (right) and speechwriter Ben Rhodes on Air Force One June 4, 2009 on route to Cairo, Egypt
Barack Obama meets with Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough (right) and speechwriter Ben Rhodes on Air Force One June 4, 2009 on route to Cairo, Egypt
PETE SOUZA/THE WHITE HOUSE VIA GETTY IMAGES
I didn’t read anything beyond the simple daily coverage of this during those years, but I always assumed that his discomfort with the Israeli government was, in significant part, just a reaction to Netanyahu and disliking Netanyahu as an individual character.
I once spent two and a half hours alone in a room with Bibi Netanyahu, and they were among the two and a half most excruciatingly boring hours of my life. At one point he was reciting verbatim long passages from Margaret Thatcher’s memoirs. I doubt Barack Obama would have enjoyed that much. Though I do kind of cherish the idea of Bibi and Obama in the same room, each competing in an effort to demonstrate that they are each indeed the most brilliant person on earth. The other big thing they have in common, aside from their belief in their own genius, is that they are both products of the periphery of the American empire.
So, do people shape history? Do individuals matter?
God, yes—for the worse. Millions of people have had their lives messed up because of Vladimir Putin. Would the Nazi regime and the Holocaust have happened without Hitler? No. Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler, those clowns could not have created something. At the same time that I have this bizarre fascination with supremely evil characters like Putin and Hitler, I also have a somewhat parallel fascination with people who have remarkable courage, even though they’re getting almost no support for it. Alexei Navalny, first and foremost. He has some inner strength that exceeds even Doc’s.
Yet Doc [Martin Luther King] always believed that he was not essential, that he was accidental, and that if he hadn’t ended up as him, that Ralph Abernathy or Fred Shuttlesworth or someone else would’ve been him instead.
Do you think that’s true?
Yeah, in the big picture sense. Because if we go back to Montgomery, the boycott would’ve happened without Doc. Would it necessarily have been such a grand success? No.
How essential is the quality and tenor of his speech that night of Dec. 5 at Holt Street? You can argue the inevitability of the boycott; you can also argue, particularly about Holt Street, that that set the tenor for it, that his whole grounding in a biblical doctrine of love gave the entire enterprise its nonviolent, non-hateful quality. But once we get past the success of the boycott period, 12, 13 months, and we go through those fallow three years, the sit-ins would’ve happened, the Freedom Rides certainly happened without Doc. What Fred was doing in Birmingham would’ve happened without Doc.
Doc’s essential nature is, to a significant degree, because the white press elevates him. The press makes him this symbol, and as I say in BTC [Garrow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Bearing the Cross], he realizes this is not really him, that there’s him and there’s this projection.
Let me say one other thing. Doc always 100 percent retained his individual self, even while realizing that there was this press creation. And when he’s wearing that uniform of the black suit, little tie, and he’s being so relentlessly sober whenever he’s in the public eye, that’s not him. That’s him playing the part that he’s been called into.
With Barack, I’m not sure I like the word binary, but with Doc, Doc was very clear about himself and the role. With Barack, there’s an extent of intertwining, there’s an absence of keeping the two selves separate.
But there is a before-and-after moment, which Obama writes about in Dreams and which you document in your book: Obama coming to Chicago, and his conversation with this motel owner when he crosses the state line.
Yes, that is not there when he drives to Chicago. Bob Elia, the motel owner up there, I found him because of Marc Silverman, our wonderful law librarian at Pitt Law. Marc went back in the property records for Sharon, Pennsylvania, and told me who owned the motel where Obama stays, which he writes about in Dreams. And so, I found four phone numbers for Robert Elia—right on that Pennsylvania-Ohio border.
I love your description of talking to Elia on the phone. But the person who actually witnesses this transformation, in which Obama becomes the person we know now, and when he begins to imagine that he has this special destiny—which turns out to be true—is his girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager.
Sheila had a huge impact on me because no one can appreciate the difference between who he was and who he became the way she can.
She was poised at exactly the point of inflection, in a very intimate space, just the two of them sharing this apartment in Chicago. She saw the transformation happen.
Sheila was so mortified when I found those comments she posted on those various Washington Post stories, because she’s even more of an innocent, by a long stretch, than I am. She had no idea that mouthing off when you’re logged in means that anyone can identify who posted this comment.
At some point as president, Barack starts calling Sheila, his girlfriend at the University of Chicago and later a professor at Oberlin—one of his three girlfriends before he marries Michelle and reestablishes a connection with her. I imagine that happened because he knew you had found her in your research for your book. Did he talk to you about that directly?
Yeah.
I assume he was not happy.
Oh no. This is where I don’t necessarily trust my memory, but I think I already knew that from Bob Bauer, Obama’s lawyer, who was my go-between with Barack for months. I could not be more professionally positive about Bob Bauer. He handled an incredibly difficult, bizarre situation superbly.
Why was it bizarre?
It was bizarre to me because—and again, no one’s ever challenged me on this, and as with the Dorothy Cotton thing [Dr. King’s mistress], it was seemingly an odd decision—it was easy and automatic to let Barack read the whole typescript of the first 10 chapters and mark it up, which is what then leads to these long discussions of, “Yes, I was fluent in …” whatever you call it, Indonesian.
Bob is Barack’s lawyer, but he was also coaching me. My clearest memory, and there’s nothing officially off the record with Bob, so I think I can say this, and boy, it’s the clearest thing I remember of all my conversations with Bob. … This is close to a quote: “Whatever you do, don’t ask him about his father.”
From the author of Dreams from My Father, that’s very strange.
He’s not normal—as in not a normal politician or a normal human being.
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S WOMEN
How did you get those three women, Obama’s college and law school girlfriends, to give you Obama’s love letters to them, and what was the most surprising thing you found in them?
With Alex [McNear, Obama’s girlfriend at Occidental College], I think she wanted to have her role known. So when Alex showed me the letters from Barack, she redacted one paragraph in one of them and just said, “It’s about homosexuality.”
And then sometime, right about when Rising Star came out, Alex indirectly sold the original, sold those letters, and they ended up at Emory. So Emory put out a press release saying, “We’ve gotten these rare letters by Barack Obama.” And no mention of this paragraph that was too sensitive. None of the papers mentioned it. Emory didn’t mention it.
So I sent one of my oldest friends, Harvey Klehr—Harvey was the guy going back to 1980 when I was trying to solve who fingered [Dr. King’s close advisor] Stanley Levison, how was it known to the FBI that Stan had been …
A communist.
Yes. So I emailed Harvey, said, “Go to the Emory archives.” He’s spent his whole life at Emory, but they won’t let him take pictures. So Harvey has to sit there with a pencil and copy out the graf where Barack writes to Alex about how he repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.
Now, Genevieve [Cook, Obama’s girlfriend in New York], Genevieve’s just a free spirit. I went to Australia to meet her. And she had had a—let me think about how best to say this—she had a subsequent relationship there in Australia that was troubled, and so she was living in a very low-visibility context. So we drove down and stayed with her and her partner for three days in the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne. And she was keeping a journal during her relationship with Barack, so she had all sorts of stuff.
Sheila, though, it’s unclear.
What became of Alex?
Alex, I haven’t heard from in about two years. There’s a wonderful woman named Margot Mifflin who was part of that whole crowd, who teaches journalism at CUNY. Margot and her husband, they’re sort of the most active of the Oxy [Occidental] crowd.
Now, Alex was living in … I’m not very good on the Hamptons, is Sag Harbor right? Her mother was alive then. I think when she sold the letters to Emory, her excuse was that she needed money to help out with the mother’s medical conditions. I have a very clear memory of Alex being embarrassed about selling the letters.
But I can’t line up chronologically when that was in time related to when Barack starts calling Sheila again.
Do you think that he starts calling her again because he needs to keep her close because she knows too much of his story, and she becomes a wild card if she no longer feels a tie to him?
I think that’s accurate.
How did you find Sheila?
When I start reading about Barack in early ’08, I read Dreams and thought, “This is a crock.” It’s not history. It’s all make-believe. Who knows what the real story is?
And initially for some number of months, I thought I was only going to do a magazine article on Barack’s community-organizing years—nothing more than 8,000 words, or what have you. But it was clear from the campaign journalism that Barack had lived with a graduate student in Hyde Park during those years. But no journalist ever goes to try to locate this former graduate student he lived with, which was weird. Anyone who’s ever been in a university knows you can go find a student directory that’s going to have people’s addresses.
So I sent my research assistant Alix Lerner to do this at Regenstein Library. She pulls off this dusty old student directory from 1987-88. And we not only find Sheila, we find this nice couple who are both at NC State in Raleigh who lived upstairs from them, and who would see them in the laundry room. So there it is, in this student directory: Sheila Miyoshi Jager.
I emailed her. Sheila’s easy to find. She was then a professor at Oberlin. This was sometime in ‘09. And, oh boy, I have a very conscious, extremely strong memory of how much emotional strain I was under as she sending me all of these confessional emails. Oh wow.
Why did you feel it as an emotional strain?
Because it’s clear she’s under incredible stress. I mean, her first email to me was, “I’m so happy that you are the person who’s discovered me.” She had had one or two experiences with the Daily Mail ; somebody had left her a message. And then there was some other woman in that graduate-student circle whose name was also Sheila, who’d gotten a call because somebody had told somebody that they thought his girlfriend was named Sheila. So somebody focuses on this wrong woman, who’s, like, a lawyer in San Francisco.
I mean, one would think that there’d be a journalist in America who would go look at the student directory in the University of Chicago Library in 2008.
Well, you know why there wasn’t one, right?
Yeah. “We’re looking for the Black guy’s white girlfriend.”
I mean, why go through all that trouble to be labeled a racist and lose your job.
Both with that, and with all the unpleasant stuff about Doc that was in the NARA document dump in 2018, I don’t perceive the existence of having a choice.
Barack’s love letters to Alex, if they are actually love letters, are hard to read. Not just because they’re so poorly written, but because of the clear lack of any human interest in the person he’s writing to. The letters are completely performative. She may as well have been a tree or some kind of theater backdrop. Maybe all young men are guilty of this fault, but these examples seem pretty egregious.
It’s pretty clear to me, and this is me putting little pieces together with Alex and with Sheila, but I’m 97 percent convinced that Barack either drafted all those letters in his journal and then made them into letters, or he wrote the letters and then copied them into the journal.
The first time—again, I can say this—the first time I saw him at the White House in the Oval, he’s sitting in that usual chair back at the fireplace. I’m at the right end of that, the couch that’s facing toward Lewinsky territory. And over on the desk, the only thing on the desk is this big pile of all his journals over the years. And he’s arranged it this way on purpose—to show me that he has them, and so he can tell me that I can’t see them. He’s got this big sack, I want to call it a cloth sack or a canvas sack, in the bottom of which are the journals. And then on the top of it is the typescript printout of my manuscript. So he’s carrying them around together.
The letters to and from Sheila. Are we ever going to see them? Not in my lifetime or yours. Certainly not in Barack’s lifetime will those journals see the light of day. I wouldn’t be astonished if he burns them.
Why? What can’t he let anyone see?
He wants people to believe his story. For me to conclude that Dreams from My Father was historical fiction—oh God, did that infuriate him.
I’ve gotten the sense, from my read of him and from people close to him, that the pose of being a writer is actually one that he prefers in many ways to being a politician.
Oh God, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
So why wouldn’t he want his writerliness to be revealed?
He doesn’t want the writerliness challenged. It’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The book [Dreams] is so fictionalized.
What’s wrong with that? At this point in time, only a very naive person would think of memoir as anything other than a literary genre that is cousin to the novel. It’s not history.
It’s so inaccurate, whether about the dynamics among the guys in Hawaii or what’s going on in the community group on the far South Side. And it completely omits women. I’ve always thought that there’d eventually be a feminist critique of Obama because his mother and all the girlfriends—they’re not there. They don’t exist.
I will say, from reading your book, I had the sense that all of those women seemed like they felt betrayed by him. Even the act of giving you his love letters is itself a tremendously aggressive, hostile act. They knew exactly what his response would be. They knew what they had.
With Alex and Genevieve, it was so far in the past. Sheila is a whole different thing.
With Sheila, you could feel the hurt, but with Alex, you could too. The anecdote that obviously came from Alex about running into Barack and Michelle in Boston or New York on a street—
On Madison Avenue. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
There’s a million ways to be like, “Hi, this is Alex. She’s an old friend from school.” And then, your significant other may say later on, “Oh, did you fuck her?” You say, “Oh, no.” Or “Yes.” Or whatever.
But you don’t cross the street.
“I HAVE A DREAM” MEETS DREAMS
So is Barack Obama the prime mover in the transformation of the American society we are living through now? Or was he simply a mannered observer, or a huge narcissist who couldn’t care less about anything outside himself? You wrote the best of the Obama books, you wrote one of the best King books … I understand the mesh of techniques that you use. I am hoping you can help enlighten me.
I’m entirely certain that I understand Doc. I understand Doc far better than I understand Barack because Doc, even though he was so consistently disciplined in public, was otherwise, to people who knew him well, a completely transparent person—in his strengths, his weaknesses, and his failures.
This looms so huge to me, and I work at how to best articulate it: When I first started meeting the King people in September ‘79, I was 26 years old, and I had no ability to appreciate how close in time I was to 1968. It didn’t seem close to me. I can picture the first time I met Dorothy Cotton. I can picture Dorothy’s house, and I don’t want to get off on this, but I should say it: The most profound decision I’ve ever made was to protect Dorothy both in the FBI book and in BTC. Because it was her very clear wish that she didn’t want to be painted or pigeonholed as just Dr. King’s, you know—it’s a word that begins with M.
And I won’t even use that word because a lot of us, not in public, have called Dorothy the real wife. And having known Dorothy and having known Coretta, it was eminently obvious to me why someone as needy of solace as Doc would spend more time with Dorothy.
Thanks to that NARA document dump from the JFK Records Act four years ago now, I know a whole lot more of the details in the understory now than I did in 1986. I’ve always expected someone to challenge me on why I protected Dorothy. But to me, it came very easily. I’ve never doubted myself about it. But back when I first heard about Dolores Evans and Chrystal, way back in ‘85 or so, I didn’t believe it was true. I thought it was very unlikely to be true because I understood that it was mainly coming from Don Newcomb and that Newcomb was an alcoholic. So I wrongly thought it was some guy talking in his liquor.
With Rising Star, without any question, how to deal with Alex and Genevieve and especially with Sheila was the most professionally demanding thing I’ve ever been through.
I remember the first time I was struck by Obama as being a personality who existed outside the normal confines of American politics was when I went out to Denver for his acceptance speech in 2008.
I think Barack in that winter of ‘08, ‘09, realized there was no way that his presidency could actually live up to the expectations. And I think even the fanboy journalists would acknowledge, under a little bit of pressure, that it ended up being an underwhelming, disappointing presidency. It will, in the long run, be seen as a failed presidency because of the international failures.
There was also a moment in The Audacity of Hope, which I wrote about in 2008, of a warning: Whatever happens next is on you people, not me. And I was like, that is, on one hand, a stunningly honest and upfront thing to say. It’s also a complete abandonment or rejection of the responsibility that he should be embracing in this moment.
I wouldn’t even say I was troubled by it. I was baffled by it. What does it mean? Who is this guy, and where is this guy coming from? I went back and re-read “Dreams from my Father,” which I bought when it came out, and I came upon the passage where his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, takes him out into the backyard in Indonesia and teaches him how to fight. And I said, “Wait a minute. I know this scene. Where’s it from?” And then I went back and found the battle royale scene in Invisible Man.
Right, right, right.
And, of course, Ellison’s Invisible Man ends up in a basement by himself, which is how the book begins. But the point of Dreams from My Father is that Obama is going to do the opposite. Instead of ending up in a basement with a bunch of light bulbs and his Louis Armstrong records, he’s going to become the person who will effect large-scale social change here in America. And again, I was like, “What a weirdly writerly thing to do.” This is clearly a highly wrought literary work of self-fashioning by a person who is in dialogue with literary sources. Or, to put it another way: I’m watching this guy make himself up.
It was funny, when I was with Ben Rhodes in the White House, one of the things that Rhodes was at pains to get across to me was that Obama wrote all of his speeches himself. Here’s the legal pad, take a look. I remember thinking, “Well, why would I think otherwise, until right now?”
I mean, of course Obama doesn’t write all his speeches himself. He’s the president of the United States; he’s got a team of seven White House employees who are paid to write speeches for him. But there was obviously a need or an instruction that had been given that Barack Obama was always to be presented as the author of Barack Obama. And by his instruction, the only book that the speechwriters were to consult was the Collected Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, because he was the only other president who deserved to be on the same shelf as Obama.
So the conclusion I’ve come to in time is that that best way to understand Barack Obama is that he is a literary creation of Barack Obama, the writer, who authored the novel of his own life and then proceeded to live out this fictional character that he created for himself on the page. Which is remarkable. So how do you write a biography of a fictional character authored by someone who’s deliberately created and obscured and erased their actual life and replaced that self with a fiction?
How do you write a biography of a fictional character authored by someone who’s deliberately created and obscured and erased their actual life, and replaced that self with a fiction?
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The whole book’s really good, but the part that was most incredibly compelling to me is that period during which he transforms himself. Those chapters are fantastic and I think will be read forever because they’re as close to an explanation as anyone will ever have, I think, of the terrible, terrible, terrible isolation, the terrible, terrible loneliness, that the young Obama experienced before he reinvented himself as a fictional character in this incredibly American way.
Yes.
Which makes Obama almost the opposite of King, right? King, on a public level, had this incredible moral compass, had this incredible ability to connect empathy to the Bible, to politics, all in one flow of perception, and then mirror that back to people in ways that they recognized and that changed them. They were dealing with a remarkable and transformative leader who changed America.
Then there was the private Dr. King, who had affairs with multiple women and made off-color jokes and drank, and his behavior was hardly in any way a model or exemplary or what we consider moral behavior. Which, in a deeper historical sense, doesn’t matter one bit.
Right. The thing I wanted to highlight was that Doc, from birth up through college, lives in this loving cocoon of not just a family, but this wider community of Ebenezer and Auburn Avenue. He had the most privileged life a Black person could have in America in those years. The first time he really defies daddy is to leave to go to Crozer after he finishes Morehouse. So he’s never had a moment’s doubt about who is he, where is he from, who are his parents, who’s his family. It’s a cocoon.
The contrast to Barack could not be greater. He doesn’t know the daddy. He sort of knows the mother. He’s living with these elderly white people, and he’s being shuttled between Indonesia and Honolulu. And both in high school and at Oxy, and those three years in New York, his friendship network is all these guys like Chandoo Hasan, who are fellow international stateless children.
I think the pairing of King and Obama is an inevitable one for people in the present, at least, to make. Here’s the great civil rights leader who achieves this century-long dream of legal equality, and here’s the first Black-skinned president of the United States. Except, I can also make the argument that the pairing is fundamentally false.
Doc has no choice to be Black. Barack chooses to be Black.
MLK, THE FBI, AND THE PRESS
You uncovered significant new information about the extent of Dr. King’s drinking problem and his womanizing, and even acts of violence against women, which seem to me to be a meaningful addition to what we know about one of the most important figures in American history. Yet, bizarrely, no newspaper or magazine in America would print your findings.
I mean, it was frustrating and bemusing—first with The Guardian, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times. All sorts of people agreed to publish that and then went back on their word. Jodi Kantor at the Times was someone who tried to help me get that piece published. That’s why it got so much consideration at the Times, though the investigative people insisted it was a magazine issue.
I remember there was a female historian who condemned you for publicizing the details of Dr. King’s sex life, which seemed like a strange position for a historian to take.
The only people who were nasty about it were a trio of people whose professional history features a hatred of law enforcement. One of them had written a book about [the Black Panther and convicted murderer] Joanne Chesimard, or somebody like that.
You may have seen me say in print somewhere that there’s a very clear distinction in FBI documents. Something that comes from an electronic intercept is 99.9 percent reliable because they were very good transcriptionists. Where FBI records are bullshit is when it’s coming from human informants. Which is the whole elongated story of Dr. King being quoted as saying, “I am a Marxist.” Well, Morris Childs is telling the FBI what Gus Hall said Lem Harris told him that Stanley Levison told Lem. It’s like fifth-hand.
And the whole relationship between the bureau and the CPUSA was so totally fucked up because Hall and the other CPUSA hierarchy are embezzling significant amounts of money. The Childs were certainly embezzling some themselves. But the bureau is running the CPUSA. The bureau could have shut down CPUSA in about 1958.
Why did you say that the idea that Dr. King had been violent toward women changed your opinion of him? It has been known for a while that Dr. King, outside of the historical role he was called into, let’s say by God, was a flawed man who had issues with drinking and staying faithful to his wife.
Yes. Well, a garbled version of the same story is in my FBI book from 1981. There’d been two DOJ teams of lawyers, one run by a guy named Fred Folsom, and the other run by a guy named Bob Murphy, under Stan Pottinger, who had gone back through all that stuff and had listened to it. So several of the lawyers had told me this story about a woman being treated abusively, but they attached that memory to a story about a Las Vegas prostitute. So that’s what’s in my FBI book, and no one had ever particularly—
Oh, so it’s the same story, then?
It’s the same story, except it’s in Las Vegas with the prostitute, not the women from the Philadelphia Naval Yard at the Willard Hotel, which is the news story that was in the document dump, which I then wrote about.
The real crux of the problem with Doc was the binge drinking. But I’m very uncomfortable about emphasizing the drinking problem, because I fear that it sounds like you’re making some sort of fraternity-house excuse.
President Barack Obama jokes with Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, left, as first lady Michelle Obama looks on at right during the memorial service for former South African president Nelson Mandela at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, South Africa, 2013
President Barack Obama jokes with Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, left, as first lady Michelle Obama looks on at right during the memorial service for former South African president Nelson Mandela at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, South Africa, 2013
AP PHOTO/MATT DUNHAM
I doubt it happens very often that someone, especially a public figure, is sitting there stone-cold sober and decides, “Well, you know what would be a great idea? Why don’t I slap this woman across the face, in front of all these other people.”
I knew back in ‘85, ‘86, that by ‘67, ‘68, he had a drinking problem, because Marian Logan, a wonderful lady, described to me very powerfully, once when she was at 234 Sunset, Doc sitting on the bed drinking from a fifth of vodka, and Coretta seeing this and just not reacting. But that was Coretta’s MO: Don’t process things.
But I think I had assumed that it’s only when things sort of get so much tougher after ‘65 that the drinking really amped up. And, as with that memo from the state liquor agent detailing his interview with the Las Vegas prostitute, it was news to me that the drinking was out of control as of ‘64.
Also, I had been under the impression for years that in addition to Dorothy, there were maybe roughly 12 other women. What the NARA dump indicates is that if you count it all up, it’s about 40 to 45. And there’s clearly a compulsive quality to this.
But again, making the JFK comparison, even in terms of the Willard misbehavior—the woman who was like a White House intern, Mimi Beardsley Alford, whom [JFK] had service Dave Powers in the pool while he watched—there’s no getting around the fact that that was abusive.
Now the FBI is not honest with [Attorney General] Bobby [Kennedy] about that. They keep selling Bobby on Levison, Levison, Levison.
But it’s actually the women that they want.
Oh, yeah. Exactly. But I mean, at the same time, it is Doc’s fault that he’s promised the Kennedys he’ll stop working with Stan. Yet all they do is create Clarence [Jones, King’s lawyer] as an intermediary. And they’re not bright enough to realize that Clarence is tapped too. So it is understandable that RFK and the president think that King is not being honest with them.
On the other hand, neither Burke Marshall nor any of the other guys were told about the Childs brothers. So nobody in DOJ understood how good the FBI’s info was, because the FBI didn’t want to share it. The first person in the U.S. government who, outside the FBI, was ever shown the real importance of the Childs brothers was Senator Frank Church in the 1970s, because they show Frank a photo of Morris with Brezhnev and say, “This is our guy.”
Surveillance in the world of the ’60s was much simpler because it was so much smaller, and the technology was so much more labor-intensive. Running electronic surveillance in 1965 was really expensive and demanding. You had to do an installation, and even if you didn’t officially trespass in the installation, no matter where you’re doing it, it is difficult. And then you’ve got to get a leased line from the pole outside the house back to wherever. You’ve got to have a room. In Atlanta they rent this special apartment at Peachtree Towers. And then you’ve got to staff it 24/7. And with that tap on the SCLC office … I mean, the SCLC office has at least six telephone lines. The vast majority of what they’re getting on that tap is just secretaries talking to their boyfriends or people ordering pizza.
“I saw my proctologist today, and he said …”
And you’re getting stuff on folks’ kids. Most people who read this stuff don’t realize what electronic surveillance really means in terms of how much it picks up. They’ve never thought about it because they’ve never read the raw product.
But that product was rare, is the point that you’re making.
Oh, God. Yeah. Even at the height of Hoover, they’re not running more than 68 wiretaps in the entire effing country—a third of which are on foreign embassies, a third of which are on various mafia guys.
I was doing some research at the library in Maryland, the archives where Hoover’s papers are. I imagine most of the good stuff is located somewhere else, but the remaining contents of Hoover’s safe include letters from each U.S. attorney general, which obviously he made damn sure to procure, saying that they, as the attorney general, speaking for the president, had authorized him to conduct wiretaps. Hoover’s still sitting there in the ’50s and ’60s being like, “I’ve got to cover my ass with the letter from Tom Clark, because I know that the exercise of this kind of power is not sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution.”
Right. Exactly.
Whereas now this is a become a push-button feature of the software that these guys use. They can turn on your iPhone and have every word you speak transcribed by AI, under some phony third-hop FISA warrant rule.
The technology makes it so, so much easier. One of the landmark books, nobody remembers this now, was Jim Bamford’s first book on the NSA. Oh, my God.
So Obama starts out as an eloquent opponent of the Patriot Act, etc., etc. By the end of his presidency, his people are unmasking intercepts of his political opponents every day, and the FBI is spying on Donald Trump.
That’s right.
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS BARACK OBAMA?
What interests you most about Obama today?
The number one thing about Barack this past five years is how completely he’s vanished.
Why is he living in the center of Washington, D.C., then?
Well, how much time is he spending there as opposed to Martha’s Vineyard? I have no idea.
Between July Fourth and Labor Day, sure. The rest of the year, he lives in a large brick mansion in Kalorama. Doesn’t it strike you as weird that he’s an ex-president, he’s comparatively young, and he’s living in the center of Washington, D.C.? The original excuse was that Sasha had to finish school. Then you could say, “Well, the opposition to Trump needs a figure to rally around.” But now Sasha has graduated from USC, Trump is gone, Joe Biden was elected present, but he’s still there.
I never see any mentions of him.
Doesn’t that strike you as odd? I mean, I have heard from more than one source that there are regular meetings at Obama’s house in Kalorama involving top figures in the current White House, with Secret Service and cars outside. I don’t write about it because it’s not my lane. There are over a thousand reporters in Washington, and yet there are zero stakeouts of Obama’s mansion, if only to tell us who is coming and going. But he clearly has his oar in.
I don’t follow the Iranian stuff super, super carefully, but I have been puzzled at the Biden administration’s continuing attachment to the Iran deal.
The easy explanation, of course, is that Joe Biden is not running that part of his administration. Obama is. He doesn’t even have to pick up the phone because all of his people are already inside the White House. They hold the Iran file. Tony Blinken doesn’t.
Rob Malley was the guy on that.
Rob Malley is just one person. Brett McGurk. Dan Shapiro in Israel. Lisa Monaco in Justice. Susan Rice running domestic policy. It’s turtles all the way down. There are obviously large parts of White House policymaking that belong to Barack Obama because they’re staffed by his people, who worked for him and no doubt report back to him. Personnel is policy, as they say in Washington.
Which to me is a very odd and kind of spooky arrangement. Spooky, because it is happening outside the constitutional framework of the U.S. government, and yet somehow it’s been placed off the list of permitted subjects to report on. Which is a pretty good indicator of the extent to which the information we get, and public reactions to that information, is being successfully controlled. How and by whom remain open questions, the quick answer to which is that the American press has become a subset of partisan comms.
I’m going back to something you said 20 minutes ago. From the get-go, I know enough intelligence community stuff that from the first time I saw it, I realized that Christopher Steele’s shit was just complete crap. It was bad corporate intelligence, even. It was nonsensical.
What scared me back then was coming to understand that a new milieu had been created consisting of party operatives, the people in the FBI and the CIA who are carrying out White House policy, and the press. It is all one world now. And that’s something people still seem loathe to admit, even to themselves, in part because it puts them in a state of dissonance with this new kind of controlled consensus that the press maintains, which is obviously garbage. But if you question it, you’re some kind of nut.
As best I understand it, Glenn Simpson personifies that world.
He did five years ago. Now the question becomes, why are they still fixated on Iran after the Iran deal failed, its premises are exploded? And who are “they,” exactly?
Well, for Barack, everything has to be a success. Everything has to be a victory. I mean, I’m not a health policy expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve always thought that the whole Obamacare thing was, in large part, a fraud. It’s a great achievement for the health insurance industry.
For Barack, everything has to be a success. Everything has to be a victory.
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Obama reluctantly started talking about health care because it was Hillary Clinton’s issue in 2008, and then they were like, “Well, you have to have a healthcare plan, because Hillary has her big healthcare plan.” It was like, “All right, fine, I’ll have one too.”
I talked to the former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, who was defense minister when the Iran deal was moving toward completion. And I asked him, “Well, what do you think is motivating this? “ And he said, “Well, Barack Obama’s not a normal politician. He is this strange combination of a college professor and a person who has ideas about his place in history. He decided that this deal was going to be the reason Barack Obama was going to be on Mount Rushmore. And that’s the reason that they could never let go.” I think he was right.
The irony is that the number one legacy of the Obama presidency is going to be the failure to intervene in Syria and the failure to object to Russia taking Crimea and the Donbas.
It’s interesting. I doubt that in the long run, Obama’s foreign-policy failures are going to be seen as the most important part of his legacy. I think future historians are going to look at the Obama presidency and see it as the moment when this new oligarchy merged with the Democratic Party and used the capacities of these new technologies and the power of this new class of people, the oligarchs and their servants, to create a new apparatus of social control. How far they can go with it, what the limits are … you see them trying to test it out every week or so.
So my question is: Is Barack Obama the author of this new machine? Did he create it purposefully? Does it report back to him? Or is it a larger phenomenon that originated partly on his watch, due to whatever combination of personal negligence and disengagement, and his sense that it benefited the Democratic Party or personally benefited him?
He has no interest in building the Democratic Party as an institution. I think that’s obvious. And I don’t think he had any truly deep, meaningful policy commitments other than the need to feel and to be perceived as victorious, as triumphant. I’ve sometimes said to people that I think Barack is actually just as insecure as Trump, but in ways that are not readily perceived by the vast majority of people. I think that’s probably my most basic takeaway.
But it does go back to Dreams being a work of fiction, that the absence of an actual personal story makes him need to compose one. For every time he says, “Oh, I spent years reading the history of the civil rights movement,” I know he read BTC, but I don’t think he read much else. This is someone who … 98 percent of his reading has always been fiction, not history.
Another thing I came away thinking after rereading your book was that I find Barack Obama deeply sympathetic as a person. I identify with him emotionally. Yet there was something about this fictional character that he created actually becoming president that helped precipitate the disaster that we are living through now.
For me, the crux of the issue is how Obama always refused to say the words “America is exceptional.” His famous answer was, “Well, I mean, every nation thinks it’s exceptional. So, yes, America’s exceptional in the same way Greece is exceptional.” What a funny thing for the American president to say. Exceptionalism is the main way that the country has always defined itself, and he’s just casually negated that because it annoys him that Americans make such silly claims. I think that dismissiveness was toxic, because nations, in the end, consist of shared symbols and myths. Debunking those myths, and saying the nation is bad, is a recipe for tribalism and fratricide.
I mean, I find him immensely likable and attractive, up through when he loses the congressional race in 2000. To me, there’s no question that the congressional loss creates, or deepens, or intensifies this hole that needs to be repaired, that needs to be filled.
Michelle’s childhood is a South Side version of Dr. King’s. She knows who she is, she grows up in a close loving family and extended family, and then she ends up marrying a creature from another planet.
You were starting to touch on this earlier. Barack has the ability to identify himself as Black, not just for the vast majority of American white folks, but for the vast majority of American Black folks who have roots like Dr. King’s or Michelle’s. But both groups know that this is not a representative American Black person. It’s something else.
He is an administrator or guide from another planet who has come to bestow his genius upon these benighted people with whom he does not fundamentally identify.
He’s not someone who retains people. Even Valerie [Jarrett] and [David] Axelrod only go back to, like, 2003 with him. There’s no real history. The only person who’s a little bit of a through line is Rob Fisher, who I think is the brightest person I’ve ever met in my life. Rob would argue with him, and the second book, when Barack is trying to get the second book finished during the campaign, Audacity [The Audacity of Hope], Rob at one point tells him that it’s a mess. And Barack is angry. You can’t tell a U.S. senator that his book’s a mess. Rob would disagree with him in intellectual, academic ways, which had been a whole part of their closeness, and Rob put lots of time into Dreams—or into the earlier, right version of Dreams.
Now, Rob and his wife went to the White House a few times. I’ve got all the details on this because I remember Rob describing them to me sitting out on that Truman Balcony. But again, and this is not the usual sort of thing I say, but Barack doesn’t want to be close with people who are his equals. None of the people who are ostensibly his best friends are anywhere close to his equal.
I go back to the first chapter of your book, about these steel workers and all these mills closing down in Chicago and then Obama sort of deciding, “Well, we know here at the Joyce Foundation,” where he was then hanging out, “that nothing can be done to help these people. The solutions are on a national level.” At first I was, like, “Okay, whatever that means.”
But then it struck me in your telling that in fact, the place where he finds a home is not in community organizing. It’s in foundation-land, the place where foundations, foundation executives, very rich people, and politics meet. He was well spoken, Black yet white-coded, a credentialed academic, yet had some street cred because he’d been an organizer for that crucial year plus whatever, the way kids today start an NGO in order to get into Harvard.
So if Obama is the first U.S. president from the periphery of empire, he’s also the first president from the billionaire-foundation-NGO complex, which makes him the perfect mediating figure between the progressive part of the party, the billionaires, and the security state.
If one compares how he gets elected to the [Harvard] Law Review presidency and then how he functions as president of the Law Review to his U.S. presidency election and term in office, at the review, he’s seen as the least ideological figure.
And he’s perfectly comfortable with the incipient, sort of Federalist Society folks like Brad Berenson. And it’s a distant, light-touch management system. He has no investment in what the content of the volume ends up being. He doesn’t write his own note because he’s not that interested in producing a work of student legal scholarship.
Flipping way forward, those first three years in Springfield, he is a very serious state legislator. But once he has the congressional loss, then the purpose of being a state legislator is to rack up paper victories. To credential himself as a candidate. So, the Law Review presidency is like going to Harvard itself; it devolves to being a credentialing enterprise—just like what he’s doing in the state senate in, particularly, 2003, once the Dems take the majority. It’s now a credentialing process rather than an actual, personal investment in the policy substance.
But in the trends, in making himself a U.S. Senate candidate and then a presidential candidate, he loses both his interest in what had been modest but serious policy substance. And similarly, when he first gets to the Senate and he’s making that trip to Ukraine with [Indiana Sen.] Dick Lugar to look at decommissioned Soviet nuclear stuff, I think there is some actual interest and investment there. And Darfur, who the fuck is interested in Darfur? He was.
So, early on in his U.S. Senate time, I think it’s like an echo of Springfield. Some things are meaningful to him, but then he loses interest.
ROE, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, AND THE COURT
You’re looking at the overturning of Roe v. Wade and affirmative action, all in a few months. So if this country’s politics underwent a sea change with the rise of wokeness, now we’re arguably witnessing a sea change or a correction in the opposite direction. Do you think that Martin Luther King Jr. would understand the Supreme Court ending affirmative action in higher education as a tragedy?
No. Doc did not buy into identity politics.
I have this long manuscript from a guy named Ernie Austin that he sent to me in, like, 1981. Ernie was the Appalachian coordinator for the Poor People’s Campaign. The white guy. No one remembers Ernie.
I think that as the scale or depth of affirmative action has gotten greater and greater, worse and worse, the beneficiaries are now so aware of being beneficiaries that it leads them to doubt themselves. And that’s doing harm.
As someone who has been a serious student of this subject for the past 45 years, how consequential is the court’s decision to overturn Roe?
It’s a class issue. That’s the number one thing. Even before Roe, if you were a woman who had your life together and could get yourself to New York, you were fine. If you had the time and the ability to buy yourself a plane ticket to New York City, you were fine. Anybody from the Rio Grande Valley needed to get, past tense, to San Antonio or Austin to get an abortion. And that’s what we’re looking at now, is that it’s a travel challenge, because there’s going to be this whole swath of states—Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas—where folks are going to need to get to New Mexico, Colorado, or Illinois.
Well, that’s certainly a greater geographical challenge than the one that women have previously faced.
Oh God, yes. But again, I mean, the problem with the reproductive rights movement, going all the way back to Mrs. Sanger in the teens and the ’20s, is that the activist population has no connection to the beneficiary population. Because the beneficiary population is generally poverty-class women who have messed-up lives—and, in some circumstances, abusive life situations. But they are working-class or poverty-class people for whom the ability to get out of Pittsburgh, just to use the local geography, to fly out of Pittsburgh, would be a humongous challenge for them. They can take the bus around Pittsburgh, but how do you get to the airport? How do you get a ticket? Where do you go? Do you have an internet connection at home?
And when one knows the clinical literature on abortion demography—and you see this dramatically in Mississippi or Arkansas, Louisiana, or Texas—the women who need abortions are not the women who have time to go protest. The women who need abortions come from, almost without exception, very deprived circumstances. And an unfortunate number of them are what clinicians call “repeaters.” People for whom it’s not the first abortion. That is the number one unspeakable issue on my side of this. And clinicians are very ambivalent about that.
And again, my side has never been forthrightly honest that there is a tremendous biological and emotional difference between a 10-week procedure and an 18-week procedure. There are plenty of clinicians who won’t go past 14 or 16 because it’s traumatic.
The pro-choice movement ought to be putting its resources into building and funding a travel network. I mean, don’t give to Planned Parenthood, give to the local organizations that support travel. Planned Parenthood has all these executives that are getting paid over half a million dollars a year.
Abortion is a weird issue for me. I don’t have any religious strictures about when a fetus becomes a human soul or any of that stuff. I frankly don’t understand Catholic strictures against birth control, except I guess in some kind of Norman Mailer existentialist, man-must-fuck-and-procreate-in-order-to-find-meaning kind of way. On the other hand, there’s something undeniably perverse about a political movement making a woman’s right to kill her fetus at any stage of development a flagship demand. Watching what happened in New York—where it became a matter for a woman and her doctor to decide whether to kill a baby as it was being delivered—it was hard not to feel that something had gone badly wrong on the pro-choice side too. Both the mother and the doctor should be put in prison because they are clearly dangerous to others. They committed murder.
Anyone who’s been a clinician, anyone who knows the clinical literature, who’s not somehow dramatically out of touch, knows that there is just a difference in kind between an 18-, 20-, and 22-week-old [fetus] and one under 12 weeks. I remember when Fran Kissling and Peter Singer organized this thing at Princeton in 2010, where both sides came to talk to each other. Fran Kissling’s been the best person on this for 30 years. I said that if there was going to be a solution on this, one side needed to agree that abortion up through 12 or 14 weeks was okay. And we needed to acknowledge that anything after 14 or 16 weeks had to require some meaningful standards. And, I said, it requires the other side to acknowledge that contraception is different in kind from abortion. And I got hissed.
But the underlying problem here is not unique to abortion. Whichever side is best able to cabin their crazies is going to come out ahead. Now, so far, the Republicans are losing that because their crazies, I think, are more visible.
Yet as totally pro-choice as I am, there’s no getting around the fact that Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Barrett are intellectually superior justices to what the Supreme Court had in 1973.
Can you imagine Obama joining them on the court?
He’d be terrible because he’s too lazy. This is in the book. It goes back to him being Hawaiian. At one point, he says, “I’m fundamentally lazy and it’s because I’m from Hawaii.” That’s close to the actual quote.
Have you ever thought of writing a biography of Clarence Thomas?
Oh, yes. Yes. I have a huge collection of Thomas material.
I have to tell you that after meeting you and thinking about your oeuvre for the past few days, it seems like the natural capstone book for you to write. It will drive everyone on all sides nuts.
That would mean interviewing … oh God, all his former clerks. Oh God. The first piece I wrote about Thomas was a Times Week in Review piece in the Summer of ‘95, after Missouri v. Jenkins came down, explaining that Clarence Thomas is a Black nationalist. And I managed to get that in The New York Times. But that was 1995. Wouldn’t happen now.
Thomas has had a huge impact. And the network of former Clarence Thomas clerks. Oh my God. I mean, [the legal historian] Brad Snyder thinks that Felix Frankfurter generated an army of acolytes. Oh, wow. I mean, Thomas is at least as good.
It’s going to be interesting when someone like [legal historian] Brad Snyder puts Barack Obama and Clarence Thomas next to each other 50 years from now and asks his students, “Which of these two men had more of an impact on shaping the United States?”
Thomas is never going to get five votes to overturn everything going back to Palko. And he’s never gotten a second vote so far. Which shows that the vast majority of people writing about the court don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. They don’t know what Chevron deference is, and they don’t understand that [former Justice Antonin] Scalia was, in large part, the father of Chevron deference, because he’s pro unrestrained executive power. And who have been two of the most pronounced critics of Chevron deference? Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
I mean, the best legal news source is a one-man operation out of eastern Pennsylvania, run by a solo appellate litigator named Howard Bashman. It’s called How Appealing. And he just does it as a hobby; he’s done it as a hobby for 20-plus years. I bet 90 percent or more of federal judges look at it. But the quality of what’s published about the court now on Slate or Vox is just so awful.
Its party-line propaganda.
It’s just complete crap.
The Iran deal bothered you?
I do find the Iran deal offensive and puzzling, yes. I mean, it’s an explicitly antisemitic state.
It’s also a repressive theocracy that has consistently spread chaos and violence beyond its own borders. Yet the entire point of the Iran deal is that it’s a mechanism to allow us to bring this foreign and repugnant thing into the American global security system, to join ourselves to it. Why?
I also found the Cuba thing deeply puzzling and offensive. It’s a fucking dictatorship that imprisons all sorts of truly progressive, creative people.
Again, if you look at this as the revenge of the periphery of empire, these are the key symbolic issues of the periphery. Cuba, Iran. With a subtext of the Iran issue, of course, being diminishing and marginalizing Israel, because the Jews are so fucking annoying.
And, in that sense, there’s only little whispers of Obama’s feelings about Jews and Israel in your book, but those whispers show that you had your own thoughts about it. There’s the visit to the Spertus Institute for the Eichmann exhibit, where he has this big fight with Sheila because he won’t say that there’s anything bad about Steve Cokely, the Chicago alderman who at that time is accusing Jewish doctors of injecting Black babies with AIDS—Obama’s pose being that he’s too sophisticated, and at the same time too politically calculating, to see anything offensive about that. It’s just rhetoric, or an organizing tool, as he says later about Iranian Holocaust denial. You can see why Sheila gets upset.
Oh, God. Yes.
But historically speaking, Jews are not, or were not, a particularly American obsession, except among some morons and leather fetishists on the right. But they are a major obsession on the periphery of the American empire, where envy and fear of the mythic role that Jews supposedly play in Washington, because of Israel, are defining emotions, regardless of the facts.
So how do you talk all this foundation-land, community-organizer shit and then preside over the transformation of the country into a Gilded Age oligarchy? Maybe I just answered my own question: Obama is the Magic Negro of the billionaire industrial complex. And targeting Jews as outsiders and pushing them outside the circle was the way that the Gilded Age oligarchy consolidated itself in America, back then and also now.
Another thing we haven’t touched on at all, and I mean, I’ve certainly said this in the press any number of times in years past, but I’ve always found their need to hang out with celebrities bizarre. Because the people they both were, all the way up through at least 2000, would’ve had no desire to do that. It wouldn’t have crossed their minds to be with Beyoncé and Jay-Z or Richard Branson, or you name it.
Black people in Chicago, everyone, Jerry Wright, Hermene Hartman, they’re not surprised that Barack turned into someone else. But they can’t explain why Michelle turned into someone else. I think this is clear in the book. Michelle, for years, thought that all this talk about “I’m going to be president—”
Was nonsense.
Yeah. She listened to 13 years of that. And then, oh, my fucking God, it happened!
So maybe my husband is Jesus Christ, after all.
Then again, they’re all like that now. Think of the Clintons. The man from Hope. And Hillary, the great defender of children and the poor. And then its like, “Wait a minute. Did they just amass $3 billion in a private foundation, plus a private fortune of $300 or $400 million within three or four years after leaving the White House?” It’s not just the Obamas. The whole system is sick.
I did some research at the Truman Library recently for a screenplay I am writing, and on the way there you drive by Harry Truman’s old house, where he and his wife, Bess, sat on their porch after he was president. They went back there because that was their house.
I remember thinking, imagine telling Harry Truman, “Hey, why don’t you sell that old house and buy three or four huge mansions in Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaii and Washington, D.C., and rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in sweetheart deals with big corporations while you’re vacationing on rich people’s yachts?” He’d probably sock you in the jaw.
Allison [Davis, the head of the Chicago law firm that first employed Obama out of law school] said it to me, or maybe Allison said it to Jodi Kantor, that Barack once said to him that the only two things he wanted were a valet and an airplane.
Everybody, especially white folks, thought that having a Black family in the White House would be cure for the legacy of American racism. Now there’s no question in anybody’s mind that on that score, that scale, the presidency was a total failure. But why are race relations, at least as people perceive them or imagine them, ostensibly well worse today post-Floyd than they were in 2008?
It’s a great question. So many say, “Oh, well, Trump brought his white nationalism and his racism and his birtherism, and he divided people.” Which is true, except the point where race relations in America turned sour wasn’t with George Floyd in 2020; it was with BLM in 2014, and that’s squarely during Obama’s second term—well before anyone is thinking about Donald Trump coming anywhere near the White House. For 20 years before that, things had actually been better.
I think there was something corrosive about Obama’s public disengagement from the race issues that many voters, white and Black, looked to him to solve, or absolve them from. His answer was, don’t put that stuff on me. Put it back on you. Which, again, is a fine answer—except for the fact that he was president of the United States.
I never paid much attention to birtherism for a large chunk of time, but I know I thought that they were making a mistake by not putting the actual birth certificate out there. And I think, in retrospect, there’s no question that it was horrific political malpractice not to put the birth certificate out there ASAP.
Why didn’t they?
Because Barack was so deeply contemptuous. It is comical; it is bizarrely comical to imagine he was born anywhere other than Kapi’olani Hospital.
Birtherism was a classic Trump move because it found a really quick way to encapsulate a feeling that people had, even if the facts weren’t true. The literal accusation—”Oh, he was born in Kenya, and his birth certificate is a fake”—was false, and it made Obama really mad. The word they kept using was racist. But I was like, “Did anyone ever suggest that Jesse Jackson or Lebron James was born anywhere besides the United States?” It was not about racism, I think—at least not primarily. It was about foreignness, un-American-ness. I think that what Obama feared was that showing the birth certificate would make his Hawaiian-Kenyan-Indonesian outsiderness even more plain.
The one time I met him, we talked about rap music at a fundraiser. The thing I was struck by, having spent a bunch of time in Bali, was the way he stood and the way he held his head while he listened. I recognized Indonesia in the tilt of the head and the stillness of his body. It was very familiar. Americans don’t have that kind of pose, or poise.
If we go back to ‘08, initially, there’s all that Black ambivalence about Barack as a presidential candidate, which, in his crude way, Jesse gives voice to. And certainly pre-South Carolina, I think there’s a lot of perception, as there was back in Chicago—I mean, Carol Harwell said this so well: “Barack’s not Black. Barack’s not from here. Barack hasn’t had the experiences my husband had growing up.”
So, I think it’s inescapable that Barack’s success in ‘08 is rooted in white people seeing him as an easy ticket toward racial absolution. It’s a need that white people in this country have. And what we’re still seeing week after week now for these past two or three years, especially with places like the Times and the Post, is that this white need for absolution was not cured by the Obama presidency. I frankly don’t understand it.
I think that it’s culturally and intellectually part of the New England DNA, which Obama—the president of the Harvard Law Review—taps into. To me, the most profound thing that was ever written about the New England Puritans was written by Perry Miller, whose thesis was that the Puritans go to New England with the goal of redeeming old Europe by building a shining city on a hill whose example will put an end to all the wars in Europe. Except, of course, the example of the New England colonies has no impact on Europe whatsoever. Nobody in Prague or Vienna gives a shit about Narragansett.
At which point, the Puritans have to explain why this great vision that they have sacrificed for and died for, having essentially traveled off the map of the civilized world and gone to the 17th-century equivalent of Mars, didn’t quite go as planned. And at that point, you have the American turn into self-absorption and narcissism. The fault is in us, you see. We must turn inwards and scour our souls for sin, because God is punishing us. And this is the link between both the deep narcissism and the redemptive impulse of New Englanders, which I think has been a constant in that region and in its impact on American history ever since.
But we still have, in the present-day world, we have these millions of white folks who are still actively seeking absolution. And I presume that has to be grounded in an inner fear of asking themselves, “Am I unconsciously racist?” That’s never been a part of me.
The protagonists of the grand drama of race in America are the cultural and actual descendants of the Puritans, not Black people—who, as Americans, mainly desire the same things that other Americans do, like safe streets and decent jobs and health care and not to die prematurely from heart disease. White Puritans have more elevated concerns.
Exactly. For them, 200-year-old statues are more important than five-year-old Black children.
I want to go back to something about Barack I’ve mentioned twice now. Barack never had any loyalty toward any of these people. Use John Kennedy as an example. I mean, whatever else we say about Kennedy, he remained intensely loyal to people who went back way before the presidency with him. Kenny O’Donnell, for example. Lem Billings was openly gay at a moment when that was hardly fashionable or acceptable. They all loved and accepted him, quite publicly, because he was Jack’s best friend from prep school, and that continued after Jack was dead. Friendship was everything to them.
That’s because the Kennedys are from somewhere. Their communal and religious ties were real and organic, not some product of some abstract progressive ideology. Honey Fitz was the mayor of Boston. They all went to church every Sunday, or else Rose would beat them.
What do the Obamas and their circle have in common with each other? They are Ivy League people, who ran away from whatever they came from in order to become members of the credentialed elites, whose loyalty is to the system that gives them prestige—or rather, gives prestige to their degrees, of which they are the holders. Once they pair off and reproduce under the seal of Harvard or Yale, they may find it seemly to donate money to an NGO that offers microloans to female entrepreneurs in Pakistan. So why should Obama, the ultimate winner, carry on the charade that he’s part of a community, whatever that means, with these people? He’s happy to go on NPR and talk about meaning or Marilynne Robinson novels or whatever, to make the wine moms identify with him, so he can put one over on them. Just don’t ask him to visit the hospital when you get cancer, because he’ll be hanging out on someone’s yacht, with the other winners.
But in Springfield, there’s a real community of Illinois politicos. There’s a guy named Matt Jones who was very helpful to Barack, who in fact came down with some incredibly rare cancer about two, three years ago. And the person who was the centerpiece of this was a guy who was a Senate judiciary staffer named Pete Baroni, a really wonderful man. So, Pete organized some crowdfunding thing for Matt. And so, you could see everybody in Springfield, Democratic and Republican, had donated to Matt Jones.
And then very early on in COVID, about six, eight weeks into COVID, the woman who was finance director on Barack’s Senate primary run, Claire Serdiuk, up and died at age 50, leaving behind a 4-year-old. And when I went to the GoFundMe page for Claire, you could see everybody who’d worked on the Obama primary campaign, and then Claire went to SEIU [Service Employees International Union], and the folks at SEIU all donated. Anybody whom I’ve interviewed in that situation, I would donate to, always have.
But Barack has no interest in any of that. It’s just not there.
It’s like your question “Why is he at an event with Jay and Bey? Why does he want a private plane?” And the answer is, well, because those are the things that winners get.
But you remain hollow.
They’re all hollow. That’s what the system produces.
David Samuels the Editor of County Highway, a new American magazine in the form of a 19th-century newspaper. He has written cover stories for Harper’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic and other magazines. He is Tablet’s Literary Editor.
#BARACK OBAMA
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2nd post, and another piece compiling an unflattering portrait of BHO:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/09/obamas-fraudulent-legacy-is-being-exposed-and-its-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/?fbclid=IwAR1AEz68DsGALA_OXfqNZscZ6ND2nhC2DyobunJ8L7eaSZaWWlNvJuNTvJk
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Obama’s Fraudulent Legacy Is Being Exposed, And It’s On The Wrong Side Of History
thefederalist.com/2023/08/09/obamas-fraudulent-legacy-is-being-exposed-and-its-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/
August 9, 2023
Barack Obama
Image Credit
U.S. Government/Rawpixel/Public Domain
Politics
By: Mark Hemingway
August 09, 2023
13 min read
Barack Obama’s crumbling public image is more Louis Farrakhan, less MLK.
Author Mark Hemingway profile
Mark Hemingway
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@heminator
Barack Obama is often hailed as one of the greatest orators in modern politics. While he had undeniable gifts in that department, as someone who attended a number of his speeches in person, I never quite understood all the praise. Setting aside his career-making “red states, blue states” speech at the 2004 Democratic convention — a plea for political moderation he spent his time in office repudiating — the only memorable things Obama said were either campaign pablum such as “hope and change,” or remarks that were unintentionally revealing.
In the latter category, my personal favorite remark was this comment about congressional Republicans from 2013: “We’re going to try to do everything we can to create a permission structure for them to be able to do what’s going to be best for the country,” he said.
“Permission structure” is a phrase that’s been used by marketing executives for many years, and was apparently in common usage at the Obama White House. The idea is “based on an understanding that radically changing a deeply held belief and/or entrenched behavior will often challenge a person’s self-identity and perhaps even leave them feeling humiliated about being wrong. … Permission Structures serve as scaffolding for someone to embrace change that they might otherwise reject.”
While there’s more overlap between politics and marketing than anyone would like to admit, the naked use of jargon that comes from the world of consumer manipulation betrays a remarkably egotistical approach to politics. There was no need to address honorable disagreement to Obama’s policies, which were politically extreme and consistently opposed by voters. The White House just needed to create, with the help of a slavish media, narratives that could help people admit they were wrong and come around to his way of thinking.
Ironically enough, I thought of the “permission structure” remark reading David Samuels’ interview in Tablet with Obama biographer David Garrow, which is shaping up to be perhaps the most discussed piece of journalism of the year. That’s because the entire article is a really effective “permission structure” for a lot of Obama voters and moderates to finally admit he’s an entirely overrated, largely failed president who was far more radical than he ever let on. He’s also obsessed with celebrity and not very loyal to the people who helped him along the way.
In other words, he’s pretty much the guy his critics on the right said he was all along.
MLK vs. Obama
To be clear, that’s my gloss on it, and while I don’t think it’s an unfair summation, I wouldn’t want to claim to speak on behalf of Samuels or Garrow. But I think it’s undeniable the article does real damage to Obama’s reputation because the many criticisms in the piece are rooted in factual revelations about Obama’s past and the considered opinion of Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his biography of Martin Luther King Jr. (In addition to decades of work as a civil rights historian, Garrow is a major historian of abortion.) Garrow was considered an important enough scholar that Obama sat for eight hours of interviews with him while he was still president. And it’s clear his opinion of Obama is somewhere between dismissive and contemptuous.
Worse, Garrow’s opinion is all the more devastating to Obama because, throughout the sprawling 16,000-word interview, Garrow keeps reverting back to his extensive knowledge of MLK and making explicit comparisons between the two men to reinforce his unflattering judgments about Obama. At first blush, being compared to MLK would be an impossible standard for almost anyone to be held up to. However, as a historian Garrow is notable for deftly exposing MLK’s considerable character flaws — the degree of MLK’s womanizing and alcoholism are decidedly worse than the public wants to know — while still burnishing his historic accomplishments. It’s clear throughout the interview that Garrow is not so reverential toward MLK he can’t think objectively about him, yet he still considers him a great man.
And in fairness, Obama invited this comparison upon himself. He rode into the White House encouraging supporters to frame his election as the fulfillment of MLK’s legacy, and further invited comparisons by appropriating MLK’s rhetoric.
Speaking of memorable Obama rhetoric, I’d be willing to bet that millions of Americans are under the impression “the arc of history is long and bends toward justice” is an Obama quote rather than an MLK quote (and it appears MLK borrowed it from a 19th-century Unitarian minister). Nonetheless, Obama has used the phrase “arc of history” more than a dozen times since his first presidential campaign.
The “arc of history” soon transmogrified into another oft-used Obama phrase, which was invoked by Obama and his staff many times throughout their triumphal bullying of political opponents for being on “the wrong side of history.” Obama’s abuse of the “right” and “wrong” side of history was so absurd that even The Atlantic took a break from acting as a court stenographer to run an article fretting this language “suggest a tortured, idealistic, and ultimately untenable vision of what history is and how it works.”
It’s just as well people attribute that quote to Obama, because while this progressive and Hegelian understanding of history is perfectly in sync with American liberalism, it’s not exactly compatible with common sense — history is full of injustice that comes out of nowhere and sets righteous causes back quite a ways. King himself eventually recognized this and rejected the sentiment in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
“Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills,” King wrote. “Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively.”
At the same time Obama expressed arrogant certitude about his own role in history, he rejected the aspects of King’s idealism that were actually productive. In 2020, Obama gave an interview to Atlantic editor and Obama superfan Jeffrey Goldberg where he said, “America as an experiment is genuinely important to the world not because of the accidents of history that made us the most powerful nation on Earth, but because America is the first real experiment in building a large, multiethnic, multicultural democracy. And we don’t know yet if that can hold.”
So America is the most powerful nation because of accidents of history — not because of our historically unprecedented founding commitment to human rights and limited government. It’s telling how the arguments about being on the right side of history are casually discarded here, even though they might make sense to use retroactively. As Garrow observes, “What I could never understand was Obama’s contempt for the idea of American exceptionalism. … Why would the president of the United States feel the need to disabuse his countrymen of the idea that they are special?”
Regardless, that’s hardly the most revealing part of that quote. MLK offered Americans “a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Well, I don’t exactly know what Obama’s offering in response to King’s vision of the future is, but it sounds pretty pessimistic to say you’re not sure America can survive as a “multicultural democracy” — especially coming from a guy so famous for having his likeness emblazoned next to the word “HOPE” that the poster has its own Wikipedia entry.
Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect America ever to stamp out racism (or any other sin for that matter), but King’s call to a virtue-based vision of equality was nonetheless deeply taken to heart by most Americans. Otherwise, the fact it took just 40 years for America to go from assassinating civil rights leaders and turning firehoses on peaceful black protesters to electing a black president is just another “historical accident.”
Maybe we still have a long way to go, but the progress made on civil rights in this country is still worth celebrating — and there’s no good evidence we should abandon the belief that progress was made because, in King’s words, “this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” That it’s hard to tell whether America’s first black president believes that racial progress in America is because of, not in spite of, American ideals, well, that isn’t exactly reassuring for ordinary Americans looking to validate the trust they placed in him.
Of course, lots of other black leaders harbored doubts about King’s hopes for the future. Which brings us to the other startling aspect of the interview between Samuels and Garrow, where we move from the abstract realm of character judgments to disturbing historical facts. In Obama’s ballyhooed first memoir, Dreams of My Father, Samuels summarizes his description of the breakup between Obama and Sheila Miyoshi Jager, one of his serious girlfriends before he married Michelle Obama: “In Dreams, Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white-identified liberal universalism.”
But Garrow, who started writing his Obama biography well into Obama’s second term as president, tracked down Jager — now a professor at Oberlin with a formidable academic reputation — and asked her about her relationship with Obama. (That the credulous journalistic establishment was totally incurious about digging into Obama’s inconsistent and self-serving life story is a thread running throughout the interview.) According to her, what really happened was this:
In Jager’s telling, the quarrel that ended the couple’s relationship was not about Obama’s self-identification as a Black man. And the impetus was not a play about the American Black experience, but an exhibit at Chicago’s Spertus Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
At the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spertus Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a Black mayoral aide named Steve Cokely who, in a series of lectures organized by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans. The episode highlighted a deep rift within the city’s power echelons, with some prominent Black officials supporting Cokely and others calling for his firing.
In Jager’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism. While acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a Black identity had created some degree of distance between the couple, she insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Cokely’s comments. It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism.
While it’s hard to land firmly on one side of a he said/she said account of a romantic break-up, Jager has an outstanding reputation; she’s a professor at Oberlin college. She hasn’t been outspoken about Obama on much of anything, much less publicly critical of him. She doesn’t seem bitter about a relationship that ended decades ago, where Obama asked her to marry him twice and she rejected him.
If Jager is to be believed — and I think she is, as the rest of the Samuels-Garrow interview is full of criticism of episodes where Obama has obviously fictionalized aspects of his memoirs and life story — then this just really puts an exclamation point on the narrative established by this landmark interview. Americans thought they were electing a guy who had tacitly, if not explicitly, said he would fulfill Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, a man who, in Garrow’s considered words, “did not buy into identity politics.” Instead, they got a guy invested in defending Louis Farrakhan’s vision of race in America.
Being a president in the mold of King would entail evaluating leadership failures as a matter of the content of your character and judgment. Following Farrakhan would entail blaming… well, it seems hard to believe Obama would embrace antisemitic conspiracies, but certainly there’s ample evidence that Obama and his defenders do dodge accountability by blaming a more socially acceptable villain of shadowy cabals of racists and Republicans. (On the other hand, if Obama is hoping for favorable assessments of his famously antagonistic relationship with Israel, he’s not helped by Jager’s anecdote or the fact that he had his kids baptized at a church run by a guy who even Ta-Nehisi Coates admits spews “crude conspiratorial antisemitism.”)
‘He Loses Interest’
For those of you who may think this is a little too harsh and/or a Manichean take on Obama’s nuanced worldview, I have good news. The interview is also a springboard to debate Obama’s sexuality. And large portions of the interview are also consumed with discussions of whether Obama is a “celebrity-obsessed would-be billionaire, or … a would-be American Castro, reshaping American society.”
Garrow and Samuels’ conclusion on that last dilemma seems to be that the shallow narcissism of the former neuters a lot of the impulses related to the latter. Garrow concedes Obama, who frequently touted his credentials as a law professor, would be a terrible Supreme Court justice because Obama himself admits he’s “fundamentally lazy.” Elsewhere Garrow sums up much of his political career by saying, “Some things are meaningful to him, but then he loses interest.”
Samuels, however, doesn’t have Garrow’s scholarly restraint in describing Obama’s post-presidency. “I remember thinking, imagine telling Harry Truman, ‘Hey, why don’t you sell that old house and buy three or four huge mansions in Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaii and Washington, D.C., and rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in sweetheart deals with big corporations while you’re vacationing on rich people’s yachts?’” Samuels tells Garrow. “He’d probably sock you in the jaw.” (For what it’s worth, the yacht vacations with Bruce Springsteen, Oprah, and Tom Hanks appear pretty nauseating.)
In order to keep the Secret Service at bay, let me say for the record that neither the ghost of Harry Truman nor anyone else should sock Obama in the jaw. But it’s been seven years since the guy was in the White House, and the judgment of history is starting to come in. I think we at least have permission to say he was a bad president.
Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @heminator
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Good to have those for the record, to protect against the Memory Hole. Speaking of which, maybe we should paste the text here?
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Good to have those for the record, to protect against the Memory Hole. Speaking of which, maybe we should paste the text here?
Done.
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https://www.newsweek.com/obama-faces-backlash-over-netflix-film-1851424
judge not by the color of one's skin but the content of their character
with that in mind Obama is a snake
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV4zT-kfc60
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Big surprise, it don’t work as advertised:
Obamacare Insurance—Ten Years On
March 20, 2024
By JOHN C. GOODMAN
Pete Souza / Wikimedia Commons
March 23, 2010
Also published in Forbes Tue. March 19, 2024
March 23rd will mark the 14th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, and it is now ten years since the creation of the Obamacare exchanges.
There are three ways to look at Obamacare today: in terms of (1) what the Obama administration said it was about, (2) what policy wonks thought it was about, and (3) how it really works.
Initially, Obamacare was about insuring the uninsured. Yet the entire enterprise quickly ran into trouble, and Sen. Chuck Schumer publicly announced the reason why.
The uninsured don’t vote, Schumer told the nation and especially members of his own party. Roughly 95 percent of people who vote already have insurance. So, the congressional Democrats were on the verge of spending billions of dollars on people who were unlikely to ever vote for them.
How the Message Changed
It didn’t take long for the message to change. People who were currently insured at work were in danger of losing their coverage because of layoffs, retirement, etc. Without Obamacare, we were told, they would risk being denied coverage because of a preexisting condition.
In addition, President Obama assured everyone they would have access to better insurance than they would otherwise have. Just in case there was any doubt, he and his administration said many times, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”
There was not the slightest hint at the time that the increase in the number insured would almost totally consist of an expansion of Medicaid, or that the private insurance sold to individuals would increasingly come to resemble Medicaid with a high deductible.
On the eve of Obamacare’s passage, virtually the entire argument for Obamacare—on TV, on radio, on social media, in the halls of Congress—was that people with pre-existing conditions should be able to buy insurance for the same premium healthy people pay. The bill had a solution to that problem that took effect almost immediately.
The Obamacare Risk Pools
In the first 3 ½ years of its existence, Obamacare made risk-pool coverage available to any uninsured person who had been denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Called pre-existing condition insurance plans, the coverage resembled a garden-variety Blue Cross plan. The premium was the same premium a healthy person would pay for such insurance. By the time these plans ended, only 135,000 people had enrolled.
Problem solved? For patients, yes. But for at least half a century the intellectual left in the U.S. had been consumed by a desire to completely reform our health care system. For every problem in health care that was being solved by markets, the policy wonks had a nonmarket solution.
Obamacare Complexity
It was no easy task. The individual market was to be completely replaced by a managed competition model—in which there would be no relationship between the premium an enrollee paid and the risk an insurer incurred.
To keep people from gaming the system (by waiting to insure until after they got sick), there was an individual mandate to be insured, with tax penalties for noncompliance. To keep insurers from gaming the system (by avoiding the sick), a host of new regulations applied.
To keep employers from gaming the system (by sending their employees into the individual market), an employer mandate was imposed. Also, employers were threatened with stiff fines if they were caught giving their employees pre-tax dollars to buy insurance on their own.
To keep states from gaming the system (by unloading the low-income population into the Obamacare exchanges), states were required to expand Medicaid.
To control health care costs (which had been rising at twice the rate of growth of national income), a global budget—analogous to similar devices in Britain and Canada—would be imposed on Medicare. A federal panel would make decisions about what medical services were worthwhile, and which ones were not.
Federal funds would be deployed to find out how to practice low-cost, high-quality medicine, and doctors and hospital administrators everywhere would apply the findings.
To keep enrollees in the exchange plans from over-consuming, subsidies would be in the form of a fixed-sum tax credit, with no additional subsidy for those who chose higher-cost health plans. To limit the incentive to over-consume health care under employer plans, a cap was placed on the tax subsidies for employer coverage.
To thwart the incentives of traditional Medicare patients and their doctors to overspend with other people’s money, Medicare doctors were encouraged to form Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). These are poor cousins of Medicare Advantage plans (which presidential candidate Barack Obama had campaigned against), and their creation was literally a stealth privatization of Medicare. This development was so politically sensitive that doctors were forbidden to tell their patients they were in an ACO.
Even with all that, there were still opportunities for people to buy largely unregulated insurance. Short-term health insurance, for example, had traditionally been a way to provide coverage for people moving from home to school, school to work or job to job. It is not regulated by Obamacare, is lightly regulated by most state governments, and sells for about 60 percent of the cost of Obamacare exchange plans.
To discourage that development, Obama issued an executive order that restricted the duration of such plans to three months, with no renewals.
It is probably fair to say that almost no one in Congress fully understood the Affordable Care Act at the time they voted on it. It’s little wonder that Nancy Pelosi said, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
A great deal of what I described above has been dismantled by Congress, by the courts and by presidential executive order. Few mourned their passage.
Through time, the plans sold in the exchanges became less and less attractive, as competition in the face of perverse incentives created a “race to the bottom.” As we entered 2020, premiums had more than doubled and deductibles were up 60 percent—twice what you find in a typical employer plan. As a result, the unsubsidized part of the market was threatening to enter a “death spiral,” where the healthy leave and only the sick with high medical costs remain
To avoid that politically embarrassing outcome, congressional Democrats created a second tier of “enhanced subsidies”—designed to keep higher income people from leaving the exchanges.
How Obamacare Really Works
The pandemic and the accompanying changes in employment and Medicaid enrollment complicate our assessment. But leading up to the pandemic:
There was no increase in the use of health care services over the previous decade, despite spending as much as $100 billion a year in taxpayer money. The number of doctor visits per capital actually went down.
Virtually all of the increase in the number of people insured was in Medicaid.
A small increase in private insurance sold in the exchanges was offset by a small decrease in employer coverage.
Medicaid enrollment does not decrease the use of the emergency room—traffic to the ER increases by 40 percent.
Federal funding formulas have encouraged states to sacrifice care for disabled children for the benefit of able-bodied adults.
Enrollees value Medicaid as little as 20 cents on the dollar.
The insurance sold in the exchanges increasingly looks like Medicaid with a high deductible—and is not accepted by many top-rated doctors and centers of medical excellence.
Four in five people who buy insurance in the exchange pay $10 a month or less, and the insurance is basically free for average-income buyers.
While such insurance may be a welcome freebie for the healthy, the sick face out-of-pocket exposure of $9,100 for an individual or $18,200 for a family —and that is every year!
The Congressional Budget Office finds that billions of dollars spent on pilot programs have not saved any money.
So now we have come full circle. The only positive thing one can say about Obamacare is that it has increased the number of people with health insurance, and that is about the only aspect of Obamacare that the mainstream media focuses on. But for people with costly pre-existing conditions, the options are worse than ever.
JOHN C. GOODMAN is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and President of the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14881
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https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2024/03/27/a-trump-2024-comeback-keeps-obama-up-at-night-n2637040