The Cognitive Dissonance of His Glibness

[DougMacG]

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

Is this true?!?
 ===================
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)

[DougMacG]

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?

[ccp]

"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.

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.

[ccp]

***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.

[Crafty_Dog]

What is the URL of the birth certificate on the White House site?

[bigdog]

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

[Crafty_Dog]

I can't see it clearly enough.  Is his race listed as "African American"?

[G M]

I can't see it clearly enough.  Is his race listed as "African American"?

African

[Crafty_Dog]

No idea as to the trustworthiness of this site

http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2012/01/georgia-judge-malihi-denies-obamas.html

[JDN]

http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2012/01/georgia-judge-malihi-denies-obamas.html

Shouldn't this be in the humor section?   

[Crafty_Dog]

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.
.
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

[DougMacG]

"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?

[DougMacG]

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. 
------------
'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
----------------
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.)
------------
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

[ccp]

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/

[DougMacG]

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/

[DougMacG]

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).

[DougMacG]

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?

[DougMacG]

"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
--------------
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.
--------------
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.
--------------

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

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...?

[G M]

**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

[ccp]

"The Obama Farewell Speech of 2012"

I wouldn't put it past him to pull a "Cleveland" in 2016.

[Crafty_Dog]

I am embarassed to say that I need an explanation of the reference 

[DougMacG]

Cleveland I think was the 22nd and 24th President.  Obama may also want to take a little break.

[DougMacG]

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.

[DougMacG]

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

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"
--
IN GOD WE TRUST

[DougMacG]

"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.

[ccp]

"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.

[bigdog]

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.

[DougMacG]

"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.

[DougMacG]

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/

[ccp]

"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.

[DougMacG]

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?

[G M]

What are his real views right now on public policy?

The end of America. By whatever means he can accomplish it.

[G M]

**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."

[G M]

**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."

[G M]

**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."

[G M]

**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."

[DougMacG]

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!?

[G M]

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).

[G M]

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.

[DougMacG]

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?

[G M]

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.

[ccp]

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/

 

[DougMacG]

And THIS is what he does best?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=erYpXzE9Pxs#!

[G M]

Captures him perfectly!

[ccp]

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

"Yo, Ben, I got your back bro." 

[G M]

And THIS is what he does best?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=erYpXzE9Pxs#!

JDN is very, very proud of him.

[Crafty_Dog]

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).