The Obama Administration is replete with elitists and academicians with little real-world practical experiences. Their biases are theoretical and ideological versus empirical and historical.
The results?
The most severe, protracted and painful economic “Recession” since the Great Depression. The actual situation is far more severe than most are aware because both the federal government and the news media have suppressed much of the damning information.
What the Obama Administration is doing to combat our disastrous economic milieu is the antithesis of what would actually work. In other words, they are exacerbating and needlessly prolonging the agony rather than curing it, just like the errors perpetrated by the Franklin Roosevelt presidency. Even worse, if Obama was a student of history, he should learn from these mistakes.
But he is not learning nor does he show substantive concern … except when it comes to playing golf and taking a multitude of vacations.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and head of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers, must be fired or resign.
And, of course, Obama must also be removed from office.
Fire the Job Killers
by Newt Gingrich 09/01/2010
On Monday we will celebrate Labor Day, a holiday to commemorate and give thanks for the contributions of the American worker to our nation’s strength and prosperity.
This year’s holiday is a particularly opportune time to reflect upon that message.
America’s unemployment rate stands at a stubborn 9.5%. If you include those who are underemployed (working part-time but seeking full-time work) that number is closer to 18.4%.
Last week, the Labor Department revised second quarter economic growth down from 2.4% to 1.6%.
Sales of existing homes are at the lowest level since 1995.
The small business confidence survey is at the lowest level since the survey began in 2003.
Overall, it has been 31 months since the recession started and the economy is still losing jobs.
This Labor Day, ask yourself: If America’s strength is indeed a product of the strength of the American worker, what does it tell us about America’s prospects when so many Americans are not working?
In other words, can America work if Americans aren’t working?
John Boehner was right: Geithner and Summers Must Go
Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner called on President Obama to ask for the resignations of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council.
John Boehner is exactly right. While President Obama cannot be blamed for causing the recession, it was the actions of his administration (and his accomplices in the Democratic Congress) which have artificially extended the length of this recession and caused more pain for the American people.
John Boehner has good standing to lead the charge for a change in direction in our economic policies.
In addition to being a small business owner himself, John was the fourth ranked conference chair when I was Speaker of the House from 1995-1998. Two weeks ago, in this newsletter, we reviewed the record on job creation of the Gingrich Congress versus the Pelosi Congress. By controlling spending and cutting taxes under the Gingrich Congress, job creation soared while the budget was balanced, leading to over $600 billion of federal debt being paid. John remembers these principles well.
In the speech, Boehner rightly targeted the out-of-control spending, a tax code that is too complicated and has become a tool for special interests, and big “government run amok” as some of the chief culprits behind our prolonged recession.
The big government stimulus bill, the tax increases of the health bill, the plan to let the 2003 tax cuts expire, and the massive growth of government under the Obama Administration are all actions directly attributable to this administration which have killed jobs.
President Obama must be willing to hold his administration officials accountable.
The Worst Decision of All?
A few weeks ago in this newsletter, I cited a study by Robert Barro which estimated that without the extension of unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, the unemployment rate would be 6.8% instead of 9.5%.
Barro had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week that echoed Leader Boehner’s call for the President to replace his economic team, and outlining why the Obama Administration’s policies are directly responsible for the unnatural long life of this recession.
In the piece, Barro points out that the extension of unemployment insurance to 99 weeks was unprecedented compared to previous extensions during economic downturns, which averaged around 40 weeks. For instance, during the 1982 recession, the unemployment rate was even higher—10.8%. Yet, we did not have anything close to a 99-week extension for unemployment benefits.
Borro notes that during the 1982 recession, the peak mean duration of unemployment was 21.2 weeks and the share of long-term unemployment (those unemployed more than 26 weeks) was 24.5%. Contrast those figures with those of the current recession, where mean duration of unemployment last month stood at 35.2 weeks and the share of long term unemployment was 46.2%.
Borro writes, “The dramatic expansion of unemployment-insurance eligibility to 99 weeks is almost surely the culprit.”
This decision, too, lies squarely on the back of the Obama Administration.
It is even more embarrassing considering that Larry Summers had previously written that welfare payments and unemployment insurance are a significant cause of long-term unemployment.
Geithner and Summers must go.
“Our fresh start needs to begin now”
As Boehner said in his speech:
“Now, this is no substitute for a referendum on the president’s job killing agenda. That question will be put before the American people in due time. But we do not have the luxury of waiting months for the president to pick scapegoats for his failing stimulus policies. We’ve tried 19 months of government-as-community organizer. It hasn’t worked. Our fresh start needs to begin now.”
Even Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello has called for Geithner and Summers to be fired.
There could be no stronger signal from President Obama that his economic policies have not worked and that it is time for a change in direction than by replacing his economic team to get new ideas and new perspectives into the Oval Office.
Mr. President, Geithner and Summers must go.
Consider it a Labor Day gift to the American people.
The arrogant, incompetent, ideologically perverted and anti-American Obama Administration had submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Commission in which it detailed its concern with the purported “civil rights violations” of Arizona SB 1070 (see Obama Administration Submits Report to the UN Claiming Arizona’s Immigration Law SB 1070 Violates Civil Rights). In the process and not unexpected whatsoever given his track record, Obama never had the courtesy to notify Arizona Governor Jan Brewer of this action.
One more egregious and inexcusable action (or inaction) by the United State’s worst “president?”
AZ Governor Learned News of Obama’s UN Human Rights Report on Internet
The delays in deciding upon and constructing a Post 9/11 Memorial are inexcusable. Even more outrageous is the spinelessness of countless politicians and bureaucrats in not legally making it a National Historic Landmark and allowing a trojan horse leviathan of a mosque to be built nearby.
Americans are overwhelmingly and vehemently against this mosque being constructed which purportedly is being financed by supporters of terrorism and will represent the subjugation and defeat of the West by Islam.
And why isn't "president?" Obama weighing in on this issue in support of America, for the symbolic preservation of liberties and freedoms and for remembrance and honor of the 3000 victims who tragically were murdered by Islamic terrorists?
The following time-line video produced by RightChange.com delineates from the beginning of the oil spill, Obama’s unalloyed ineptitude, narcissism, hedonism, dismissive attitude and absence of any leadership capabilities.
Clearly, we need a change in our government starting in November by voting out the Democrats and regaining control of a government “of the people, for the people and by the people.”
If we fail in this endeavor, we will lose our country!
Oblivious to historical equivalents, benighted and belligerent, Obama and Congressional Democrats fervently continue to pursue and implement disastrous policies on the American public which will have apocalyptic effects on our country.
It seems to be an unimaginable possibility to have so many incompetent, arrogant and uninformed people in one place. Unfortunately, they are the ones passing and imposing irresponsible and reckless legislation.
The Last Refuge Of The Incompetent
Investors Business Daily 07/01/2010
Unemployment checks, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday with a straight face, create jobs "faster than almost any other initiative you can name." AP
Leadership: With their own economic policies in complete disarray, Democrats have turned to a tried-and-true tactic: Blame the opposition for your failure. It may be too late — their incompetence is starting to show.
Recent events, along with the continued bleeding of the U.S. economy and Wall Street, underscore the desperation of the party in power to escape responsibility for its failures.
Case in point: The president, speaking in Wisconsin on Wednesday, lashed out at Republicans: "We already tried the other side's ideas. We already know where their theories led us. And now we have a choice as a nation."
We must have missed the Democrats' attempt to enact broad-based tax cuts, for instance, to boost the economy like they did each time they've been tried in the past. Truth is, "the other side's ideas" have been studiously ignored in our financial crisis and recession.
Unemployment remains close to 9.7% and, based on even White House estimates, is unlikely to improve much. Vice President Joe Biden himself has noted that, under current Democratic policies, "there's no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession."
Of course, he too blames the GOP, though his party has controlled Congress since 2006 and its earlier policies, such as the Community Reinvestment Act and the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were responsible for the 2007-08 financial meltdown.
Democrats like to style themselves as the party of the little guy. But small businesses are going bankrupt in droves while unemployment among black males is averaging 16.3% — well above last year's 14.8%. In March, 1.8 million African-American men were without work — the most on record.
Now we see signs the economy's improvement may soon stall — and perhaps even slide backwards. On Thursday, we learned that June auto sales dropped 4.3% while May pending home sales plunged 30%. Consumer confidence has fallen sharply, and financial markets are in a tailspin.
Also this week, the Congressional Budget Office reported that federal debt by year-end will soar to 62% of GDP — highest since World War II, when the U.S. went deeply into the red and killed off the private economy in order to beat the Nazis.
Worse, the CBO said debt will hit 87% of GDP by 2020, rise above its record peak of 109% by 2025 and hit a stunning — and financially ruinous — 185% by 2035.
CBO chief Doug Elmendorf told the White House's deficit commission this week that those rising levels of debt, fueled by uncontrolled federal spending, might lead to "higher interest rates, more foreign borrowing, less private investment and lower income growth, if not a full-blown fiscal crisis."
While there's been modest job growth this year, business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable warn that government policies of higher taxes and big spending will squeeze future private-business sales.
Without private-sector growth, there will be no recovery and no sustained rebound in job creation. Compassion for the little guy comes from understanding this very simple point — not from pointing fingers and mouthing vacuous economic platitudes.
The fact is, $700 billion in TARP bailouts, $862 billion in economic "stimulus," $70 billion in auto industry aid, $1.2 trillion in Fed money-printing and $146 billion spent on bailing out insolvent government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have done nothing to restore our economy's vigor.
This is among the most incompetent series of economic policy moves in U.S. history — all the more unforgivable because similar Keynesian pump-priming was tried during the Great Depression and in the 1970s, failing miserably each time.
On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said unemployment checks create "jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name."
We are not making this up. This is what passes for economic wisdom in the Democratic Party.
The current mess is a result of policies in place now — not those put in place years ago. Watching this nightmare unfold, and then listening to our leaders blame the opposition, is getting more grotesque by the day.
Millions of misguided voters found Obama to be quite articulate and disarming before the Presidential elections. Who knew that these “skills” would be applied in a widespread manner such as in arms negotiations and national defense? In case you missed it, Obama is effectively unilaterally disarming the United States and exposing us to a future apocalypse by mandating reductions, removal and/or cancellations of defensive and offensive weaponry.
Such actions are suicidal, indefensible and irresponsible. As discussed in the following article, Obama’s thorough disarming of our country will make us infinitely more vulnerable not just to Russia or China but also to North Korea, Iran, small belligerent nations and terrorists groups.
In our opinion, if Obama sets these actions in motion, Congress with public pressure should investigate the possibility of grounds for impeachment.
Dropping The Shield
Investors Business Daily 06/30/2010
National Security: The administration is ready to sign a treaty stripping us of our ability to defend ourselves against enemy nuclear missiles, including Iran's and North Korea's. In space, no one can hear you surrender.
On Monday, the ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, part of the U.S. missile defense shield, successfully shot down a ballistic missile launched from a ship's deck off Kauai, Hawaii. The test simulated an Iranian SCUD launched from the deck of a ship off the U.S. coast, which, if armed with a nuke, could devastate the American heartland.
The simulated Scud was launched from the deck of the decommissioned 603-foot amphibious assault ship Tripoli. U.S. Army soldiers of the 6th Air Defense Artillery Brigade from Fort Bliss, Texas, successfully intercepted it with a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor.
Missile defense, the dream of President Reagan, is a successful reality. With a layered system of ground-based, long-range interceptors, the sea-based Aegis system and theater systems such as the Patriot and THAAD, we can defend against — rather than just avenge — a ballistic missile attack.
Yet our disarmer in chief, President Obama, stands ready to strip us naked before our enemies by signing a treaty designed to demilitarize space. Since interceptors such as THAAD are designed to hit their targets on the edge of space and can be modified to kill satellites, such a treaty would effectively ban their use.
Almost simultaneously on Monday, the Obama administration unveiled a new space policy that reverses the Bush administration policy of unrestricted access to and operations in space. The Bush policy, released in August 2006, said it "rejects any limitations on the fundamental right of the United States to operate in and acquire data from space." We had a right to defend ourselves.
That right will be surrendered unilaterally by a new space policy under which the U.S. will "consider proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies."
Such fairness is in the eyes of the beholder, and this administration does not have a good track record of enhancing the national security of the United States. For example, it has cut the number of ground-based interceptors planned for Alaska and Hawaii, both within range of North Korea's Taepodong-2.
It has also betrayed our Polish and Czech allies by scrapping plans for a similar system in Europe. And it has scrapped tested and ready systems like the Air Force's Airborne Laser (ABL), a modified Boeing 747-F that can be deployed anywhere in the world, loitering off an enemy's coast to destroy its missiles in their vulnerable boost phase. And it's reusable.
These "proposals and concepts" could come soon in the form of the PAROS (prevention of arms race in space) treaty. Like the nuclear freeze once proposed at the height of the Cold War, these Munich clones are designed not to prevent war, but to disarm America.
Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, among others, would like to see us unilaterally give up our ability to render their huge investments in nuclear missiles irrelevant.
A simple Iranian Scud missile, with a nuclear warhead, could be fired from an inconspicuous freighter in international waters off our coast and detonated high above the U.S. It would wreak near total devastation on America's technological, electrical and transportation infrastructure. The ship could then be scuttled, taking the identity of the attacker with it.
If a hostile power detonated a nuclear weapon high over the U.S., generating an electro-magnetic pulse that would fry virtually every circuit and electronic device in the country, America and its economy could be sent back a century or more.
Iran has practiced launching and detonating Scuds in midflight from ships in the Caspian Sea. Iran has also tested high-altitude explosions of its Shahab-3 ballistic missile, a test consistent with an EMP attack.
Surrendering missile defense through such a treaty amounts to more unilateral disarmament in the face of dangerous and hostile enemies. The president wants us to rally around a white flag.
The United States is headed by among its most inept, internationally scorned, ridiculed and disrespected Presidents ever (Jimmy Carter, an Obama advisor, is the competition for this “honor”). He is universally seen as a feckless amateur without leadership skills and a zero intimidation factor.
The anti-Reagan.
Add this to his far-felt pacifist beliefs and throw in a far left political appointee with little practical experience and the physiognomy of a school board member to serve as an arms negotiator with the ruthless Russians under Putin … and this spells a disaster in the making.
A sheep negotiating with wolves.
We are not safe while Obama remains our President!
The consequences of his ineptitude, lack of leadership and common sense, his destructive pacifism and quixotic ideologies are real existential threats to our country.
Missing Defense
Investors Business Daily 06/18/2010
Undersecretary of state for international security and arms control Ellen Tauscher
National Security: There seems to be only one thing White House arms negotiators want more than a reduction in U.S. nuclear weapons — a reduction in U.S. missile defenses to protect us from such weapons.
The Washington Times' Bill Gertz reports that U.S. diplomats are secretly negotiating with Russia to link nuclear arms reduction to limits on our anti-missile defenses.
As Gertz points out, "Pro-arms-control officials within the administration dislike missile defenses, viewing them as an impediment to offensive arms agreements."
Ellen Tauscher, the undersecretary of state for international security and arms control, has been talking to Moscow's deputy foreign minister, Sergei Rybakov, and that in and of itself should generate fears.
Tauscher's qualifications for her current job amount to little beyond her experience as a Democratic Party fundraiser and seven terms as a San Francisco congresswoman with a reputation, according to the media at least, as a centrist, but a voting record that shows her to be an unalloyed liberal.
Tauscher let it be known when she left the House for the State Department last year that her priority was to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the world.
If that requires giving away the store on missile defense, it's worth it in the worldview of an administration that was sure an extended hand would lead Iran to end its nuclear program.
Deputy Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty negotiator Frank Rose less than a month ago said at a London conference that the Obama administration was seeking a deal on missile defense "cooperation" via the Tauscher-Rybakov negotiations.
As quoted by Gertz, Rose said, "The door to tangible, mutually beneficial missile defense cooperation with the United States, and potentially with NATO, is wide open."
President Obama has already abandoned the Czechs and the Poles on missile defense against Russian aggression under the rule of former KGB operative Vladimir Putin.
Are we now going to leave ourselves defenseless too?
It's worth remembering the crucial role that a commitment to missile defense played in the demise of the Soviet empire.
Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky noted that President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, and the realization that Moscow didn't have the resources to compete with it, made Mikhail Gorbachev's advisers "finally accept demands for internal reform."
As British historian Andrew Roberts notes in his "History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900," Reagan himself would call strategic missile defense "the single most important reason, on the United States' side, for the historic breakthroughs that were to occur" in the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Yet the Obama administration's attitude is like that of the liberal internationalists of the 1980s, described by Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in his autobiography: "The idea that any country might try to defend itself against the nuclear weapons of another country was not only revolutionary, it was sacrilegious."
As Roberts notes, detentists at the time "alternately (and contradictorily) denounced" missile defense "as expensively unworkable and strategically destabilizing."
The decades since have proved that missile defense is fantastically workable. The only thing that will stop free people from defending themselves against nuclear missiles is leaders deluded by notions of utopianism and appeasement.
Thanks to Obama's dereliction of duty, lack of leadership, boundless incompetence and priorities placed elsewhere (on HIMSELF), pristine and white sand beaches on the Gulf coast are becoming saturated with oil and unusable.
Remember these photos in November at election time!
Obama’s dereliction of duty regarding expeditiously and appropriately responding to the Gulf oil spill is now being compensated for by strong-arm threats from him and other Administration officials. The American public, including much of his fawning liberal support base, find these to be offensive, unwarranted and not constructive. They are repulsed by his initial actions of sending lawyers through Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate legal infractions rather than marshalling clean-up and stop-up crews.
His most recent response was to form a committee filled with his appointees to deal with the spill two months after it occurred. And who are the members of it? Oil industry experts? Individuals with maritime expertise?
Of course not! They are bureaucrats, environmentalist and political insiders – Obama ideologues. There is no real world experience related to this scenario but that is not the least bit surprising with this arrogant, corrupt, incompetent and ideologically rigid and radical administration.
And these are just a few of the infinite reasons that Obama’s support continues to plummet even among his previously most ardent supports.
Obama's thuggery is useless in fighting spill
Michael Barone June 20, 2010
Thuggery is unattractive. Ineffective thuggery even more so. Which may be one reason so many Americans have been reacting negatively to the response of Barack Obama and his administration to BP's Gulf oil spill.
Take Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's remark that he would keep his "boot on the neck" of BP, which brings to mind George Orwell's definition of totalitarianism as "a boot stamping on a human face -- forever." Except that Salazar's boot hasn't gotten much in the way of results yet.
Or consider Obama's undoubtedly carefully considered statement to Matt Lauer that he was consulting with experts "so I know whose ass to kick." Attacking others is a standard campaign tactic when you're in political trouble, and certainly BP, which appears to have taken unwise shortcuts in the Gulf, is an attractive target.
But you don't always win arguments that way. The Obama White House gleefully took on Dick Cheney on the issue of terrorist interrogations. It turned out that more Americans agreed with Cheney's stand, despite his low poll numbers, than Obama's.
Then there is Obama's decision to impose a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf. This penalizes companies with better safety records than BP's and will result in many advanced drilling rigs being sent to offshore oil fields abroad.
The justification offered was an Interior Department report supposedly "peer reviewed" by "experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering." But it turned out the drafts the experts saw didn't include any recommendation for a moratorium. Eight of the cited experts have said they oppose the moratorium as more economically devastating than the oil spill and "counterproductive" to safety.
This was blatant dishonesty by the administration, on an Orwellian scale. In defense of a policy that has all the earmarks of mindless panic, that penalizes firms and individuals guilty of no wrongdoing and that will worsen rather than improve our energy situation. Ineffective thuggery.
And what about the decision not to waive the Jones Act, which bars foreign-flag vessels from coming to the aid of the Gulf cleanup? The Bush administration promptly waived it after Katrina in 2005. The Obama administration hasn't and claims unconvincingly that, gee, there aren't really any foreign vessels that could help.
The more plausible explanation is that this is a sop to the maritime unions, part of the union movement that gave Obama and other Democrats $400 million in the 2008 campaign cycle. It's the Chicago way: Dance with the girl that brung ya.
Or the decision to deny Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's proposal to deploy barges to skim oil from the Gulf's surface. Can't do that until we see if they've got enough life preservers and fire equipment. That inspired blogger Rand Simberg to write a blog post he dated June 1, 1940: "The evacuation of British and French troops from the besieged French city of Dunkirk was halted today, over concerns that many of the private vessels that had been deployed for the task were unsafe for troop transport."
Finally, the $20 billion escrow fund that Obama pried out of the BP treasury at the White House when he talked for the first time, 57 days after the rig exploded, with BP Chairman Tony Hayward. It's pleasing to think that those injured by BP will be paid off speedily, but House Republican Joe Barton had a point, though an impolitic one, when he called this a "shakedown."
For there already are laws in place that insure that BP will be held responsible for damages and the company has said it will comply.
So what we have is government transferring property from one party, an admittedly unattractive one, to others, not based on pre-existing laws but on decisions by one man, pay czar Kenneth Feinberg.
Feinberg gets good reviews from everyone. But the Constitution does not command "no person . . . shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law except by the decision of a person as wise and capable as Kenneth Feinberg." The Framers stopped at "due process of law."
Obama doesn't. "If he sees any impropriety in politicians ordering executives about, upstaging the courts and threatening confiscation, he has not said so," write the editors of the Economist, who then suggest that markets see Obama as "an American version of Vladimir Putin." Except that Putin is an effective thug.
In a scathing editorial by a liberal regarding Obama’s abysmal international reputation based on the magnitude and clarity of Obama’s ineptitude, inexperience, lack of sophistication, and narcissism, Mort Zuckerman writes:
America right now appears to be unreliable to traditional friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies. One renowned Asian leader stated recently at a private dinner in the United States, "We in Asia are convinced that Obama is not strong enough to confront his opponents, but we fear that he is not strong enough to support his friends."
This unprecedented and consensus view portends extremely for the United States as a country as well as for international stability and constructive resolution of conflicts and issues.
World Sees Obama as Incompetent and Amateur The president is well-intentioned but can't walk the walk on the world stage
Mortimer B. Zuckerman June 18, 2010
President Obama came into office as the heir to a great foreign policy legacy enjoyed by every recent U.S. president. Why? Because the United States stands on top of the power ladder, not necessarily as the dominant power, but certainly as the leading one. As such we are the sole nation capable of exercising global leadership on a whole range of international issues from security, trade, and climate to counterterrorism. We also benefit from the fact that most countries distrust the United States far less than they distrust one another, so we uniquely have the power to build coalitions. As a result, most of the world still looks to Washington for help in their region and protection against potential regional threats.
Yet, the Iraq war lingers; Afghanistan continues to be immersed in an endless cycle of tribalism, corruption, and Islamist resurgence; Guantánamo remains open; Iran sees how North Korea toys with Obama and continues its programs to develop nuclear weapons and missiles; Cuba spurns America's offers of a greater opening; and the Palestinians and Israelis find that it is U.S. policy positions that defer serious negotiations, the direct opposite of what the Obama administration hoped for.
The reviews of Obama's performance have been disappointing. He has seemed uncomfortable in the role of leading other nations, and often seems to suggest there is nothing special about America's role in the world. The global community was puzzled over the pictures of Obama bowing to some of the world's leaders and surprised by his gratuitous criticisms of and apologies for America's foreign policy under the previous administration of George W. Bush. One Middle East authority, Fouad Ajami, pointed out that Obama seems unaware that it is bad form and even a great moral lapse to speak ill of one's own tribe while in the lands of others.
Even in Britain, for decades our closest ally, the talk in the press—supported by polls—is about the end of the "special relationship" with America. French President Nicolas Sarkozy openly criticized Obama for months, including a direct attack on his policies at the United Nations. Sarkozy cited the need to recognize the real world, not the virtual world, a clear reference to Obama's speech on nuclear weapons. When the French president is seen as tougher than the American president, you have to know that something is awry. Vladimir Putin of Russia has publicly scorned a number of Obama's visions. Relations with the Chinese leadership got off to a bad start with the president's poorly-organized visit to China, where his hosts treated him disdainfully and prevented him from speaking to a national television audience of the Chinese people. The Chinese behavior was unprecedented when compared to visits by other U.S. presidents.
Obama's policy on Afghanistan—supporting a surge in troops, but setting a date next year when they will begin to withdraw—not only gave a mixed signal, but provided an incentive for the Taliban just to wait us out. The withdrawal part of the policy was meant to satisfy a domestic constituency, but succeeded in upsetting all of our allies in the region. Further anxiety was provoked by Obama's severe public criticism of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his coterie of family and friends for their lackluster leadership, followed by a reversal of sorts regarding the same leaders.
Obama clearly wishes to do good and means well. But he is one of those people who believe that the world was born with the word and exists by means of persuasion, such that there is no person or country that you cannot, by means of logical and moral argument, bring around to your side. He speaks as a teacher, as someone imparting values and generalities appropriate for a Sunday morning sermon, not as a tough-minded leader. He urges that things "must be done" and "should be done" and that "it is time" to do them. As the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Les Gelb, put it, there is "the impression that Obama might confuse speeches with policy." Another journalist put it differently when he described Obama as an "NPR [National Public Radio] president who gives wonderful speeches." In other words, he talks the talk but doesn't know how to walk the walk. The Obama presidency has so far been characterized by a well-intentioned but excessive belief in the power of rhetoric with too little appreciation of reality and loyalty.
In his Cairo speech about America and the Muslim world, Obama managed to sway Arab public opinion but was unable to budge any Arab leader. Even the king of Saudi Arabia, a country that depends on America for its survival, reacted with disappointment and dismay. Obama's meeting with the king was widely described as a disaster. This is but one example of an absence of the personal chemistry that characterized the relationships that Presidents Clinton and Bush had with world leaders. This is a serious matter because foreign policy entails an understanding of the personal and political circumstances of the leaders as well as the cultural and historical factors of the countries we deal with.
Les Gelb wrote of Obama, "He is so self-confident that he believes he can make decisions on the most complicated of issues after only hours of discussion." Strategic decisions go well beyond being smart, which Obama certainly is. They must be based on experience that discerns what works, what doesn't—and why. This requires experienced staffing, which Obama and his top appointees simply do not seem to have. Or as one Middle East commentator put it, "There are always two chess games going on. One is on the top of the table, the other is below the table. The latter is the one that counts, but the Americans don't know how to play that game."
Recent U.S. attempts to introduce more meaningful sanctions against Iran produced a U.N. resolution that is way less than the "crippling" sanctions the administration promised. The United States even failed to achieve the political benefit of a unanimous Security Council vote. Turkey, the Muslim anchor of NATO for almost 60 years, and Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, voted against our resolution. Could it be that these long-standing U.S. allies, who gave cover to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's nuclear ambitions, have decided that there is no cost in lining up with America's most serious enemies and no gain in lining up with this administration?
The end result is that a critical mass of influential people in world affairs who once held high hopes for the president have begun to wonder whether they misjudged the man. They are no longer dazzled by his rock star personality and there is a sense that there is something amateurish and even incompetent about how Obama is managing U.S. power. For example, Obama has asserted that America is not at war with the Muslim world. The problem is that parts of the Muslim world are at war with America and the West. Obama feels, fairly enough, that America must be contrite in its dealings with the Muslim world. But he has failed to address the religious intolerance, failing economies, tribalism, and gender apartheid that together contribute to jihadist extremism. This was startling and clear when he chose not to publicly support the Iranians who went to the streets in opposition to their oppressive government, based on a judgment that our support might be counterproductive. Yet, he reaches out instead to the likes of Bashar Assad of Syria, Iran's agent in the Arab world, sending our ambassador back to Syria even as it continues to rearm Hezbollah in Lebanon and expands its role in the Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance.
The underlying issue is that the Arab world has different estimates on how to deal with an aggressive, expansionist Iran. The Arabs believe you do not deal with Iran with the open hand of a handshake but with the clenched fist of power. Arab leaders fear an Iran proceeding full steam with its nuclear weapons program on top of its programs to develop intermediate-range ballistic missiles. All the while centrifuges keep spinning in Iran, and Arab leaders ask whether Iran will be emboldened by what they interpret as American weakness and faltering willpower. They did not see Obama or his administration as understanding the region, where naiveté is interpreted as a weakness of character, as amateurism, and as proof of the absence of the tough stuff of which leaders are made. (That's why many Arab leaders were appalled at the decision to have a civilian trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York. After 9/11, many of them had engaged in secret counterterrorism activities under the umbrella of an American promise that these activities would never be made public; now they feared that this would be the exact consequence of an open trial.)
America right now appears to be unreliable to traditional friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies. One renowned Asian leader stated recently at a private dinner in the United States, "We in Asia are convinced that Obama is not strong enough to confront his opponents, but we fear that he is not strong enough to support his friends."
The United States for 60 years has met its responsibilities as the leader and the defender of the democracies of the free world. We have policed the sea lanes, protected the air and space domains, countered terrorism, responded to genocide, and been the bulwark against rogue states engaging in aggression. The world now senses, in the context of the erosion of America's economic power and the pressures of our budget deficits, that we will compress our commitments. But the world needs the vision, idealism, and strong leadership that America brings to international affairs. This can be done and must be done. But we are the only ones who can do it.
Citizens of the states along the Gulf coast have lost patience waiting for federal government help in addressing the consequences of the BP oil spill. They have painfully witnessed Obama's egregious ineptness, cavalier and detached attitude, and absence of leadership and common sense and realize that they must take charge themselves. Obama has failed them miserably.
We noted in Danger In Our Own Land, how the federal government States has essentially ceded southern Arizona to Mexico due to the rampant, uncontrolled violence associated with the drug trafficking and human smuggling. Because of the abdication of its Constitutional responsibility to secure the borders of the United States by Obama and Congress, Americans are faced with such a dire situation.
Of course, the violence and crime doesn’t end here. It is then dispersed all across the country so that this is not just a local problem for Arizona.
In order to begin to better protect itself and its citizens, Arizona passed S.B. 1070 which deals with the illegal immigration but not directly with border security. Arrogantly, duplicitously and irresponsibility and with prevarication, Obama will challenge the Constitutionality of the law – that is, file a lawsuit against Arizona.
He won’t send the military or national guard to actively protect the borders.
He refuses to take constructive steps to create a barrier at the border. In fact, he terminated the ongoing building of a fence along the border which had been effective.
No, Obama will destructively deal with the issue and increase the vulnerability of Arizonans and Americans in general.
Wouldn’t it be nice if he was forced to live in these areas for a few week period of time.?
We actually then may get two major problems solved…
Five Federal Lands in Arizona Have Travel Warnings in Place
Joshua Rhett Miller FOXNews.com June 18, 2010
Imagine the federal government closing a section of the Lincoln Memorial because it was under the control of Mexican drug lords and bands of illegal immigrants.
That scenario is playing out as reality in southern Arizona, where parts of five federal lands -- including two designated national monuments -- continue to post travel warnings or be outright closed to Americans who own the land because of the dangers of "human and drug trafficking" along the Mexican border.
Roughly 3,500 acres of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge -- about 3 percent of the 118,000-acre park -- have been closed since Oct. 6, 2006, when U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials acknowledged a marked increase in violence along a tract of land that extends north from the border for roughly three-quarters of a mile. Federal officials say they have no plans to reopen the area.
Elsewhere, at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which shares a 32-mile stretch of the border with Mexico, visitors are warned on a federally-run website that some areas are not accessible by anyone.
"Due to our proximity to the International Boundary with Mexico, some areas near the border are closed for construction and visitor safety concerns," the website reads.
On another page titled "Border Concerns," the website warns that visitors should be aware that "drug smuggling routes" pass through the park.
"If you see any activity which looks illegal, suspicious, or out of place, please do not intervene," the website reads. "Note your location. Call 911 or report it to a ranger as quickly as possible. Each year hundreds of people travel north through the park seeking to enter the United States."
Visitors are also warned to be mindful of illegal immigrants within Ironwood Forest National Monument, a 129,000-acre federal parkland in the Sonoran Desert.
"All suspected illegal activities should be reported to [the Bureau of Land Management] or local law enforcement authorities," Ironwood Forest's website reads. "Visitors should stay safe by avoiding contact with persons exhibiting suspicious behavior or engaged in dangerous activities. Drive with caution and look for fast-moving vehicles and pedestrians on back roads."
Dennis Godfrey, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management's Arizona office, said roughly a dozen signs were posted earlier this month along the Sonoran Desert National Monument advising that travel in the area is not recommended due to "active drug and human" smuggling. The signs are not far from where a Pinal County deputy was shot and killed during a confrontation with marijuana smugglers in April and the fatal shooting of two men suspected to be drug smugglers.
"It is a corridor for smugglers of all types," Godfrey told FoxNews.com.
Similar signs have been posted at the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and the Coronado National Forest, which covers nearly 1.8 million acres in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
Estimates of exactly how many acres of federal land are closed due to safety concerns near the border were not immediately available, but at least one lawmaker told FoxNews.com that the policy of "ceding" federal land to drug and human trafficking is unacceptable.
"This is one of those things that the Department of Interior does not want to publicize," said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, ranking Republican on the House Parks and Public Lands Subcommittee. "These bad actors are now being channeled into federal lands along the border because it's so easy to make that access. The situation is getting worse on federal lands and will only get worse until we make some proactive activity to change the status quo."
"Frankly," Bishop continued, "the status quo is failing. We are failing to control our borders."
Bishop, who has introduced legislation that would remove environmental restrictions the Department of Interior imposes on U.S. Border Patrol agents, questioned the message sent by federal authorities by closing off part of the Buenos Aires Refuge.
"That is a ludicrous message," he said. "That policy in unacceptable. That strikes of running a policy of appeasement to drug cartels instead of fighting back. Someone has to say that not one inch of American property will be given to the bad guys and not one death is acceptable."
George Soros is the ideological soul mate of Obama and has helped him directly and indirectly over the years. The multibillionaire, through MoveOn.org and many other groups including the SEIU, has supported Obama's far-left efforts and his campaigns over the years. So the question is,then: Has Obama's ostensibly inept and delayed responses on the Gulf oil spill disaster been somewhat intentional in order to reward his benefactor Soros?
This surely can't be excluded and is not inconsistent with his other actions/inactions and ideologies.
Obama Boss George Soros Ready To Profit From Oil Disaster
June 14, 2010
Perhaps this is why drilling in Alaska is off the table– it would actually keep America safe and strong and won’t make Obama Boss George Soros even richer than he is now.
Interestingly, it seems the more trouble we have, the better it is for Soros. Last year, Soros noted he was “having a very good crisis” having bet against the United States and profiting from her economic downturn.
Now we learn Soros is set to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Gulf oil catastrophe. With Obama’s ‘moratorium’ and the Obama Admin’s general hostility to drilling, it’s reported many oil companies have already looked into with Brazil regarding a move those shores. And what is Soros principally invested in right now? Petrobras, the Brazilian state oil company.
Obama’s Boss Sees Silver Lining in BP Spill
Reuters is reporting that Brazil stands to benefit from the BP oil spill catastrophe as the US moratorium makes more rigs available for other countries.
Even as an ecological catastrophe makes the future of U.S. offshore drilling less certain, Brazil is plowing ahead with a $220 billion five-year plan to tap oil fields even deeper than BP’s ill-fated Gulf well, which is still leaking crude.
It’s estimated that thirty five rigs are now sitting idle in the Gulf of Mexico. Brazil is already getting inquiries from companies wanting to move their rigs there. Brazil’s state oil company, Petrobras already produces about a fourth of the world’s deep water oil…
The shortage of rigs could help Brazil become a major oil exporter.
What an amazing stroke of good fortune for Obama’s boss, unrepentant Nazi collaborator, George Soros! Soros is also invested in offshore oil drilling in Brazil, assisted by the American taxpayers.
Soros Fund Management, LLC holds a stake in Petrobras of approximately $900 million as of December 31, 2009.
George Soros’ principal investments are in oil; one in particular is Petrobras, the Brazilian-owned company. This happens to be the largest investment in the Soros portfolio at the present time.
Soros also owns quite a lot of real estate in Brazil. Soros’ Adecoagro, which invests in renewable energy, owns or leases about 840,000 acres of farmland in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay growing coffee, soybeans and other commodities. Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Bunge Ltd. Are also expanding into ethanol in Brazil.
When you get to boss the president around, you never have to let a good crisis go to waste.
UPDATE: Dan in comments reminded me of the $2 billion loan deal Obama made to Brazil last year, furthering the connection between Obama, our tax dollars, and Soros’ business. here’s the WSJ’s take on the matter on August 18, 2009
Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling
Too bad it’s not in U.S. waters.
You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.
The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a “preliminary commitment” letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.
It is becoming increasingly clear even to the more ardent supporters of Obama, that he is not what they thought he was. When "tingle up my leg" rabidly liberal Obama deifier, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, expresses extreme disappointment and profuse criticism, you know Obama's support is becoming tenuous.
Obama's utter ineptness and bungling of the BP oil spill crisis has been the final straw for many liberals and progressives who were vocal supporters. For the majority of Americans who want to turn the country around, his free falling support provides hope for a critical change of government (to Republicans) in November with the elections.
The Mortal Politician
Cal Thomas June 10, 2010
There is a scene in the film "Superman II" where the Man of Steel chooses to give up his powers and become mortal for Lois Lane, the woman he loves.
A major part of President Obama's attraction, especially to the many young people who voted for him, was his supposed difference from other politicians. To those naive worshippers, he seemed so above it all, a super-apolitical man.
The president's declining poll numbers reveal the disillusionment that has begun to sink in among the politically unsophisticated. They are starting to realize that not only is this president not above politics, but that he, in fact, practices the lowest form of the profession known as Chicago-style politics.
In a commencement speech to graduating seniors at Kalamazoo Central High School, the president exhorted, "Don't make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes, but for your failures as well. ... It's the easiest thing in the world to start looking around for someone to blame."
Wise words. Too bad the president doesn't practice what he preached to the graduates.
In remarks last November when he visited Norfolk, Va., the president said, "When I showed up after Inauguration, they had left a big mess on the floor. So I got a mop and I started cleaning up their mess." In fact, he has been spreading the mess around, causing a bigger mess.
In March, the president said, "By any measure, my administration inherited a fiscal disaster."
Repeatedly to the point of denying his own shortcomings, the president has blamed the Bush administration for virtually every problem that has confronted him. Seeking to explain the Massachusetts Senate victory of Scott Brown, the president told ABC News last January, "People are angry and they are frustrated not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."
Even the BP oil spill, which he says is his responsibility, isn't really, you see. Earlier this month, the president said, "When Interior Secretary Ken Salazar took office ... he found a Minerals and Management Services agency that had been plagued by corruption for years."
The president has blamed the Bush administration for a $1.3 trillion deficit, though his administration and a liberal Democrat Congress that keeps spending and borrowing money we don't have, created much of it.
The president's decline in popularity goes beyond blame. He also does not tell the truth. Recall during the debate over government health care his repeated assurances that if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it. But Politico reports, "Part of the health care overhaul due to kick in this September could strip more than 1 million people of their insurance coverage, violating a key goal of President Barack Obama's reforms."
And Politico continued, "Employer groups say the ban could essentially wipe out a niche insurance market that many part-time workers and retail and restaurant employees have come to rely on."
And, "Depending on how strictly the administration implements the provision, the ban could in effect outlaw the plans or make them so restrictive that insurance companies would raise rates to the point they become unaffordable."
Critics of Obama's health reform law predicted exactly that, but the president accused them of misleading the public. Who is misleading whom?
There is a point in every presidency when the public discerns when a president is succeeding, or whether he is in over his head and is failing. That point is rapidly approaching for President Obama. It is not good for the country to have a failing president, especially this early in his term, but that is a conclusion being reached by more than conservative talk show hosts. It is one now increasingly shared by a disappointed public.
The world is facing an unprecedented number of apocalyptic threats on several fronts, the most notable being Iran. Many nations are saber rattling and forming pernicious alliances with bellicose nations, often as a consequence of the perceived precipitous demise of the United States’ international prestige and influence resultant from Obama’s reckless and ideologically naïve behavior and comments, absence of any shred of leadership or credibility, ineptness, detachment and lack of resoluteness and common sense.
This is a critical juncture in time that calls for an experienced, sensible, effective and resolute leader of this country. Yes, it would be great to have a Reagan, a Lincoln or even a Churchill. Unfortunately, this country has as its President a man who compares unfavorably even to Jimmy Carter (which previously would have been thought to have been an impossibility) and one who exudes a sentiment of hatred/dislike for America.
He is an unpatriotic Neville Chamberlain with far less to offer. And we know what happened subsequently in WW II.
As a consequence, the United States, Israel and much of the rest of the world will be facing serious existential threats, terrorist attacks and/or wars and catastrophic loss of life.
From Here To Extermination
Investors Business Daily 06/11/2010
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gestures after a news conference in Shanghai, China, at which he dismissed a new U.N. resolution against his... View Enlarged Image
Iran: The new sanctions, already watery before being watered down some more, have been enacted. What do we do now?
Apparently just wait for them not to work.
If insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then the United Nations Security Council, led by the U.S., is conducting a policy against Iran that is dangerously deranged.
Of course, the member states know this fourth round of economic sanctions won't stop Iran's march toward nuclear weapons, any more than the first three have. Indeed, ending Tehran's nuclear program is not why President Obama made a point of getting this ineffectual nonsolution in place. But figuring out the rationality behind why he did isn't easy.
Was it so the president could campaign that "by working with other nations multilaterally, we enacted measures against Iran that are tougher than anything the Bush administration put in place"? (A harder wrist slap is still a wrist slap.)
Was it in the belief that it would force the Iranians into talks — and once the president gets talking to them he'll be able to work his magic, the way he did on American voters?
Or was it just to "do something" in the slim hope it would get Americans to devote less attention to the chilling prospect of nuclear-armed jihadists?
Now that these latest feeble sanctions have passed, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Foggy Bottom's smarter-than-thou diplomats are busy patting themselves on the back, what is left of our Iran policy? What do we do now, as Tehran thumbs its nose at us and continues inexorably toward nuclear status?
We apparently wait. Some anti-nuclear terrorism policy that is.
There are goose-bumpy reports in the press of U.S.-backed covert operations to throw technical monkey wrenches into the development of an Iranian bomb. Considering the CIA's track record, we'd be safer expecting Superman or Spider-Man to appear in the nick of time to save the day.
After all, the spy agency was dumbstruck in May 1998, when India conducted a nuclear test explosion.
"The warning bell never rang," according to Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Tim Weiner in his history of the CIA, "Legacy of Ashes." "The test revealed a failure of espionage, a failure to read photographs, a failure to comprehend reports, a failure to think, and a failure to see." India's adversary, Pakistan, almost instantly followed up with its own nuclear test.
So don't count on James Bond either.
Both the Obama and Bush administrations have squandered their opportunities to solve this singularly dangerous dilemma.
There were years during which we knew Tehran was headed toward nukes, and all the time we could have been explicitly supporting Iranian freedom fighters — millions of Muslims who want an end to rule by the ayatollahs.
We could have been sending student organizers, religious leaders and labor organizations resources — everything from computer communications equipment to cash — so they could rally the populace, disseminate news about government oppression and stage massive strikes. And publicly give them our moral support.
Last year, for example, President Obama had the perfect chance to support the people of Iran, as multitudes risked their lives in mass protests against the questionable re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But being just a few months into his presidency, Obama refused; it would have undermined his offer of direct talks with Ahmadinejad.
But those talks never happened.
With the proper groundwork laid over years, those demonstrations of 12 months ago could have been the catalyst to end the Islamist revolution launched by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. And under a new popular government, we might not even have to worry about Iran's pursuit of nuclear power, or at least worry less.
As the Weekly Standard reports, the Obama administration this week will apparently endorse a United Nations probe of Israel's conduct in the Gaza flotilla incident.
Since Israel may end up being the ones to prevent a nuclear Iran, this may be an even better definition of insanity: rewarding your worst enemy as he plans to kill you, while abusing your best friend who's in a position to save you.
The magnitude of the violence associated with the uncontrolled drug smuggling and illegal immigration is so great in southern Arizona that the federal government is now warning American citizens to avoid these areas because of the danger. In effect, we have lost control of part of our own country because the federal government has abdicated its responsibility to protect the border, and by doing so, protecting Americans.
The cynical, divisive, irresponsible and condescending comments expressed and lies told by Obama regarding the new Arizona illegal immigration law, the security of our borders and the “rights” of these aliens as compared to the rights of American citizens further adds to ther overwhelming evidence of his lack of fitness and competence to be President and the emergent need to seek his removal from office after the November elections.
Unfortunately, Obama's international perception and assessment as a weak, feckless buffoon translates into real and dangerous consequences for the United States, the balance of power including good versus evil, and potentially the lives of tens or even hundreds of millions of people.
The following editorial describes the deleterious effects that Obama’s aggressive remarks and rebukes toward Israel have had on that country. These, by themselves, are supremely important. However, if you look at the big picture, the damage that Obama has engendered by his lack of leadership and executive experience, his naiveté and disingenuous ideologies, and ill-advised commentaries, apologies and rebukes is incalculable.
In America, he has unleashed divisiveness and racism (ie. - incendiary comments on Arizona’s illegal immigration legislation with countless cities and organizations now attacking or boycotting Arizona- also pitting one state against another; his countenancing of Helen Thomas’ anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rants setting a poor example; dropping prosecution of the New Black Panther Party in the Philadelphia voter intimidation case; maintaining strong associations with black racists such as Cornel West, Henry Jones, Louis Farrakhan, Jay-Z, etc.)
Internationally, by denigrating America and apologizing for it, insulting and /or decreasing support and protection for our long-time allies (Great Britain, Israel, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Honduras, etc.), remaining silent in the defense of freedom and democracy (ignoring the Iranian people uprising against the theocratic repressive Islamic regime), talking loudly but carrying a very tiny stick (none to useless threats to Iran; loser in nuclear talks to Russia/Putin) and denying Islamic terrorist we are unquestionably witnessing the expected consequences.
Our enemies are emboldened and that spells death and disaster. There has been an explosion of terrorism attempts (fortunately they have thus far failed) in this country since he took office. Iran is progressing unimpeded in its quest for nuclear weapons which it will use – and which will precipitate a conflagration of unparalleled proportions. Turkey and other countries see a green light to be aggressive to Israel. Venezuela is saber rattling even more and upsetting the stability in South America.
And the list goes on.
Obama is not fit to be President. He must be removed from office to protect our country and the world!
Open Season On The Jewish State
Investors Business Daily 06/08/2010
In its latest slight, the White House temporarily withdrew an invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following Israel's killing of nine.
Israel: Of all the ironies of the Obama presidency, the strangest is now unfolding: The election to purge American racism somehow lowered the bar for anti-Semitism.
The 89-year-old Helen Thomas had been roosting in the front row of the White House press briefing room for decades. Yet her ugly feelings that Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and return "home" to Poland or Germany or America — or wherever it is the Jews belong — took this long to bubble up out of the cauldron of her gut in proximity to a camera.
The now ex-doyenne of the White House Press Corps was long known as no friend of the Jewish state, but somehow the intentional chill that the Obama administration has engineered in U.S.-Israeli relations has reduced the caution regarding attacking the state of Israel, and undoubtedly helped set her off.
It's almost like people sensing that the brawny big brother, America, has grown tired of going to the trouble of escorting his persecuted little brother, Israel, through the neighborhood. And all that long-suppressed resentment is beginning to burst out now that the protector is not on hand.
"Israel is finally getting its comeuppance" seems to be the perception of many of the critics of the Middle East's only democracy, save for U.S.-liberated Iraq.
In wondering how someone in public life, who was in her 20s when the Nazis were slaughtering millions of Jews in Germany and Poland, could act like the caricature of a bigot from an earlier era, it's impossible not to consider the disintegration over the past 16 months of our relationship with our staunchest Mideast ally.
The latest slight was the temporary withdrawal of an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come to the White House after Israeli forces killed nine aboard a Turkish-backed flotilla trying to break an Israeli blockade of Gaza last week.
It turns out, according to reports, that the administration's rejection of Israeli intelligence reports and consequent refusal to provide advanced weapons led to Netanyahu refusing to authorize the use of tear gas and other anti-riot measures. After Israeli commandos were soon outmatched by Turkish personnel, live fire was ordered by the Israeli naval commander.
The White House demand that Israel "exercise extreme caution and restraint," as a diplomat told WorldTribune.com, apparently ended up costing lives. Would this "Freedom Flotilla" have even attempted to break an Israeli blockade if Israel still had our strong backing? And would Iran be threatening to use its Revolutionary Guards to help smash the blockade with a naval escort?
Would the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency be placing Israel's nuclear weapons power status on its governing board's agenda this month for the first time in nearly two decades if the American-Israeli relationship wasn't deteriorating?
Would the likes of bush-league diplomatic players such as Turkey and Brazil be coming out of the woodwork with a deal to threaten even the tepid sanctions against an Islamofascist regime in Iran that will soon be able to launch a nuclear warhead against Israel?
A good case could be made that little or none of this would be happening if the U.S. had not let it be known, in various ways, that it wasn't going to be supporting Israel the way it used to.
With photos circulating of the president hugging Helen Thomas in the press room, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs scrambled to condemn her remarks as "offensive and reprehensible." And then the president followed with a personal condemnation.
But distancing itself from Thomas' bigotry doesn't allow the president to escape blame. Like former President Jimmy Carter, who used the flotilla incident to accuse Israel of "besieging Gaza" and claim that because of Israel, "the people of Gaza remain isolated and deprived of their basic human rights," this administration believes Israel should be blamed for defending itself from terrorism.
In fact, the Jewish state, surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies, should be lauded for its restraint over the decades, not subject to further persecution.
Obama has unequivocally displayed a criminal dereliction of his duty as President to appropriately address and assist in the BP oil disaster. As detailed below, he was informed within the first 24 hrs. of the magnitude of the spill and the potential extent of the environmental damage.
What were his responses?
Very little, initially. It took him close to 2 weeks even to visit the area. None of the government’s contingency plans were implemented early one. In fact, his most forceful response within the first several weeks has been to assign Attorney General Holder the task of looking into criminal charges and sending attorneys to the area.
We are betting that these lawyers can actually plug the hole – using all the paper they will generate in their documenting the legal liabilities and constructing a case against BP! May be they can also add the waste produced from Obama’s myriad White House galas during this period of time into the hole.
Even more criminally and just more evidence of why he should be impeached/removed from office:
In this seven week period of time, he has yet to directly talk to the CEO of BP, Tony Hayward. Unbelievably, it was beneath him to talk to the head of this multibillion dollar company in order to strategize and work together for a solution. Obama’s response as to why he hasn’t called the CEO was that words don’t mean anything, action does.
Ironically, Mr. Pretender President, it is YOUR WORDS THAT DON’T MEAN ANYTHING.
YOUR ACTIONS CLEARLY REVEAL WHAT AND WHO YOU ARE.
INCOMPETENT, ARROGANT, NARCISSISTIC, RACIST, HEDONISTIC and ANTI-AMERICAN
AND …
UNFIT TO BE PRESIDENT!
Butt Stops Here
Investors Business Daily 06/08/2010
Leadership: The president says he went to the Gulf to find out whose derriere to kick. After he gets his foot out of his own mouth, perhaps he can talk to us about that Coast Guard memo.
Scapegoating has become a hallmark of this administration. Certainly BP was responsible for the safe operation and maintenance of Deepwater Horizon. But after an accident in federal waters the federal government, which has a plan to save the entire planet from greenhouse gases, had no plan to save the Gulf from a single gushing well, with the possible exception of finger-pointing. In this administration, "BP" stands for "buck-passing."
In an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer on Tuesday, President Obama said: "I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf. A month ago, I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain. ... We talk to these folks because they potentially had the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."
The talking heads were talking about the Gulf in the two weeks it took the president to make his first appearance there. But Fox News and talk radio had no fire booms to instantly deploy — booms the government was supposed to have, according to a 1994 plan.
The president who has said he would not rest until the hole was plugged has had time to entertain celebrities from Bono to Paul McCartney, get in a few rounds of golf, attend concerts and fundraisers, and even yuk it up at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. He did not have time, apparently, to expedite Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's request for additional sand berm construction.
The president was quick, however, to send Attorney General Eric Holder to the Gulf to threaten BP oil executives with prosecution. On April 29, Jindal declared a state of emergency and begged federal officials for permission to build a network of sand berms to protect Louisiana marshes and beaches. A month later Jindal got permission to build 2% of the berms requested.
British Petroleum has been accused of lying about or at least of not knowing the true extent of the disaster. But documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity shed new light on what the president knew, and when.
Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has released documents indicating that on April 21, less than 24 hours after the BP rig exploded, the administration knew the magnitude of the disaster we were facing in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Potential environmental threat is 700,000 gallons of diesel on board the Deepwater Horizon and estimated potential of 8,000 barrels per day of crude oil, if the well were to completely blow out," the Coast Guard logged in the immediate aftermath.
Documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show that within 72 hours, President Obama and his administration knew the BP spill could exceed the environmental damage caused by the Exxon Valdez running aground off Alaska in 1989.
"Americans have a right to be enraged by the spill, by top government officials caught off-guard and by the facts the White House omitted in explaining what it knew and when it knew it," said Issa.
They also have a right to be outraged by an administration that places blame instead of sharing it, and by a president who has time for commencements and fundraisers while passing the buck to a commission.
Obama’s has acted more like a hedonistic, narcissistic banana republic dictator who can do as he pleases and answers to virtually nobody rather than the President of the United States. Except for Fox, some talk radio and bloggers, the news media has deemed his sybaritic indulgences as deserved and off limits for coverage. He is their man, come hell or high (or oily) water.
The extent of his abuse of power and profligacy of taxpayers’ money, particularly in a recession, are egregious and inexcusable. He is partying like there is no tomorrow while tens of millions of Americans are suffering and there are numerous critical events that need scrupulous attention.
Not even mentioned in the following article are the countless rounds of golf he has played since taking office.
Obama has made it quite clear that pleasure takes precedence over his responsibilities as President of our country.
Like:
Playing rounds of golf in Hawaii and not wanting to be interrupted rather than obtaining appropriate information and taking charge regarding the Muslim terrorist psychiatrist killings at Fort Hood in Texas.
Or not visiting the Gulf region for nearly two weeks after the BP oil disaster.
Not even mentioning, never mind even visiting, the calamitous “500 year” floods in Nashville.
This list goes on ad infinitum. Yet he still puts on obscenely and inexcusably expensive events at the White House or spends time trying to aggrandize his personal image and power while feeding his pathological narcissism and unsated hedonism.
To paraphrase the famous saying about Nero: “Obama is fiddling while America burns.” (And he was an arrogant narcissist as well.)
And the last of the Caesars...
Obama Wastes Millions of Taxpayer Dollars on Personal Entertainment
President and First Lady are partying like rock royalty
Fred Dardick Monday, June 7, 2010
The same hypocrite who says our energy costs must “necessarily skyrocket” to fund his political ambition, is giving Marie Antoinette a run for her money when it comes to spending national treasure on personal luxuries.
While much of the country is struggling to pay their bills, the President and First Lady are partying like rock royalty. The collection of talent that has made the pilgrimage to the White House to entertain Obama and friends is nothing less than amazing: Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Tony Bennet, Paul Simon, Marc Anthony, Herbie Hancock, Martina McBride, Queen Latifah, The Foo Fighters, Faith Hill, and recently foot-in-mouth Paul McCartney to name a few.
This has the makings to be the greatest ongoing concert series ever to be seen on this Earth just to entertain one man … all paid for by the American taxpayer.
Let Them Eat Cake
How much does this world-class entertainment cost? Assuming the artists themselves forgo appearance fees, I highly doubt Paul Simon would perform with just a karaoke machine as backup.
Professional equipment needs to be brought in - sound engineers, stages, lights, etc… Even small scale performances by these artists can be very expensive.
Add booze, food, security, invitations, social secretaries, wait staff, and hangers on to the tab and the price for one of these events could easily top $75K. With over 27 concerts hosted thus far, the total cost to taxpayers is in the millions of dollars.
The executive branch does not provide detailed information regarding entertainment expenses, however, it has been estimated the Obamas spent at least $10 million on “drunken White House parties” in 2009 alone.
The Audacity of Food Stamps
Considering the country is at war and a record 40 million Americans rely on food stamps to eat, Obama should show some class and skip the expensive partying.
Whether it’s the world’s greatest concert series, multi-million dollar date night in New York or taxpayer funded shopping in Europe for the First Lady, the Obamas are exposing themselves as nothing more than greedy, self-serving politicians.
While the President and First Lady insist the rest of us endure economic hardship for the greater good, they are living like a king and queen on our dime.
In a very cogent way, Peter Ferrara analyzes “everything Obama” and predicts with greater certainty that without a drastic change in his general course, Obama not only will be just a one term President, but will be forced to resign short of the quadrennial term. This would bring great jubilation to all of us who feel somewhat helpless watching him and his cronies corruptly deconstruct and destroy our country from within.
The flip side of this is that there will be more (expected) damage to come prior to this occurring.
The Coming Resignation of Barack Obama
By Peter Ferrara on 6.2.10
Months ago, I predicted in this column that President Obama would so discredit himself in office that he wouldn't even be on the ballot in 2012, let alone have a prayer of being reelected. Like President Johnson in 1968, who had won a much bigger victory four years previously than Obama did in 2008, President Obama will be so politically defunct by 2012 that he won't even try to run for reelection.
I am now ready to predict that President Obama will not even make it that far. I predict that he will resign in discredited disgrace before the fall of 2012. Like my previous prediction, that is based not just on where we are now, but where we are going under his misleadership.
Is the President Above the Law?
Watergate was supposed to have established that Presidents are not above the law. If that is so, President Obama may have to resign for breaking the law in the Sestak affair.
Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) is now the Democrat nominee for the Senate seat held far too long by Arlen Specter. President Obama induced Specter to switch parties and give the Democrats their very temporary, 60 vote, filibuster-proof majority, in return for endorsing him for reelection and promising him no opposition in the Democrat primary. But Sestak had already announced that he was running for the seat, and he refused to get out. Two week ago, Sestak defeated the unprincipled, opportunistic Specter for the Democrat nomination, continuing the perfect string of everyone who Obama endorses and campaigns for going down to defeat.
For months now, Sestak has publicly claimed that President Obama tried to keep his promise to Specter by offering him a high-ranking administration appointment if he would get out of the race. The rumor is that Sestak, formerly an Admiral, was offered appointment as Secretary of the Navy. The problem is that a federal statute explicitly provides that it is a federal felony, punishable by up to one year in prison, to attempt to bribe a candidate with a federal job, or anything of value, to influence an election.
As Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has indicated, the White House is now engaged in a coverup that is only making matters worse. Former President Bill Clinton is now claiming that he carried the offer to Sestak of an appointment to an unpaid position on a Presidential Advisory Board in return for dropping out of the race. But that story is not plausible because as a sitting member of Congress he could not have legally served on such a Presidential Board. So is the White House now lying to the American people about the matter?
Moreover, indirectly offering the job through former President Clinton still violates the statute, as does the offer of an unpaid position. That is why Issa, Mark Levin, and others are saying that what the White House is publicly admitting still amounts to a federal crime, which is an impeachable offense. Democrats are going to have to decide if they really believe that presidents are not above the law. Presently, one reason to vote Republican for president is that Republican presidents are subject to the rule of law, but Democrat presidents are not.
Misfeasance or Malfeasance?
But the Sestak affair is just the early breeze of the gathering political storm that threatens to envelop President Obama. A mysterious explosion over six weeks ago in a deep sea oil well a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico continues to gush oil to this day, heading for Gulf beaches and fisheries. The White House says the President held a meeting on it in the Oval Office on Day One. But we have not heard a word on what was done in that meeting 44 days ago, other than develop political talking points.
Democrat talking head Kirsten Powers, writing in the New York Post on May 27, explained what should have been done: "Turns out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration back in 1994 drafted plans for responding to a major Gulf oil spill, a response called 'In Situ Burn.'…The idea was to use barriers called 'fire booms' to collect and contain the spill at sea -- and then burn it off." Powers cites former federal oil spill response coordinator Ron Gourget as believing "this could have captured 95 percent of the oil from the spill." But, Powers writes, "the Administration's chief response so far was to send out Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to do his best impersonation of a totalitarian thug, proclaiming that the government would 'have its boot on the throat of BP.'"
It is too late for the fire boom plan now, with the oil spreading across the Gulf. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal quickly developed another plan to build temporary sand barrier islands off the coasts to absorb the oil and protect fragile wetlands and fisheries. The law requires federal approval for such activity. But perhaps because Jindal is a Republican, the hyperpartisan Obama Administration has failed to even respond to his proposal first made a month ago, except to say that it is studying the idea, while the oil starts to wash ashore.
What President Obama has done instead is to suspend all offshore drilling in the Arctic, at least until the causes and solutions to the Gulf spill are discovered. No applications for drilling permits in the Arctic will even be considered now until 2011. Drilling scheduled to begin this summer under already issued Alaskan leases has also been halted.
Investor’s Business Daily explains how this punishes the American people, saying on May 28, "Alaska's Chukchi Sea holds more oil and gas than anyone thought – 1,600 trillion cubic feet of undeveloped natural gas, or 30% of the world's supply, and 83 billion barrels of undeveloped oil, 4% of estimated global resources. You can be sure the Russians won't be as reluctant." Nor will the Cubans and their Chinese partners expected to drill in the Gulf of Mexico off of Florida's coasts as well, just as the Brits and others have not been reluctant to drill in the stormy North Sea.
Moreover, President Obama has already begun to use the crisis to renew his political push for federal cap and tax legislation that will cripple the economy with arbitrary, unnecessary, soaring, energy cost increases. Does he plan to hold any future drilling hostage to passage of this legislation?
In the response to Hurricane Katrina, federal law specifically provided that the then Democrat Governor of Louisiana and Mayor of New Orleans were in charge. The federal and FEMA role was to "support…state and local assistance efforts" with the necessary, primarily financial resources. Nevertheless, in the days after the hurricane, President Bush's federal government was the only functioning authority, as the Coast Guard rescued 30,000 people off of rooftops. Hundreds of school buses that could have been used to whisk those people out of harm's way were left ruined under water due to Mayor Nagin's inaction in response to federal hurricane warnings. The partisan Governor acted only to deny and delay President Bush's control over the state's national guard for political reasons.
But the Gulf oil spill emanates from federal waters, which means President Obama is directly in charge, not state and local officials. And his derelictions are losing his own supporters. Democrat Powers writes, "If he promised us anything, Obama promised us competence. Instead, we've gotten the Keystone Cops." As Peggy Noonan said of the Democrats in last weekend's Wall Street Journal, "In time -- after the 2010 elections go badly -- they are going to start to peel off. The political operative James Carville, the most vocal and influential of the President's Gulf critics, signaled to Democrats this week that they can start to peel off. He did it through the passion of his denunciations." Therein lies the beginning of the end.
That end will be greatly accelerated if any email, document, or other serious evidence turns up indicating that President Obama or his cronies delayed the federal response in any way because they thought the spreading spill would advance their political agenda. Or if any evidence arises that Obama failed to respond to Jindal for partisan political reasons.
Geometric Downward Spiral
Moreover, all of this is just what's happening now. What leads me to predict President Obama's early political demise are his numerous, enormous vulnerabilities to further adverse developments, threatening a geometrically accelerating downward spiral, for him politically, and for America substantively.
Now and for the next six months, we will be enjoying the high point of the Obama economy, the tippy top of the Obamanomics, Keynesian, roller coaster. If Art Laffer's Coming Crash of 2011 arrives next year, or if the economy just dips into another downturn, President Obama no longer enjoys the political base to survive it. With African Americans suffering Depression-level unemployment for over a year now, even that most solid of all political bases will weaken and waver in the face of a renewed downturn.
Under the President's leadership, Congressional Democrats continue to pile more and more taxes on the investment necessary to create jobs and prosperity, "the most punitive tax rates on investment income since the late 1970s," as The Wall Street Journal reported on May 27. Even before Obama and the New Left takeover of Washington, the top 1% of taxpayers were already paying more in income taxes than the bottom 95% combined, as the Tax Foundation has accurately reported based on official IRS data. But this is not enough for the Obamunistas, who are justifying still higher taxes saying the rich must pay their "fair share," sort of like the last of the Romanov family had to pay their fair share.
This punitive tax piracy is already starting to cause capital flight from the U.S., which will accelerate into an outright capital jail break from America next year. That will only hasten a renewed downturn, cripple job creation, and restore rising unemployment. The American people will not endure mismanagement of the now two-year-old financial crisis into an extended depression.
Moreover, with the federal deficit already at a record smashing $1.6 trillion this year, a renewed recession next year will only cause it to soar further. How long can that go on before we arrive at Greece, where the markets refuse to buy the bonds necessary to finance the deficit, at least without soaring interest rates, which would only cause further economic decline.
Meanwhile, the Fed has long been busily creating new economic bubbles with its overly extended easy money and zero interest rate policies. Monetary policies so loose that they should be considered pornographic are creating new vulnerabilities for the President, which will arise as sudden surprises involving new dollar, interest rate or inflation scares. When the Fed finally decides it must pull back, it has laid the foundation for the bubbles to burst again, further inspiring economic downturn. Gold is already higher than the S&P 500. That is a blaring warning sign of trouble ahead.
Another blind spot for the President is energy policy itself. Those opposed to further offshore drilling need to end their hypocrisy and stop using the remaining oil and gas still available to the rest of us. Cap and tax is one of the biggest economic and political blunders in history just waiting to happen, a greater potential party builder for the Republicans than Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt combined. The American people for once will be unified in coming together to get Democrats out of office so that the obvious, huge, fat, unnecessary, cap and tax cost sitting on top of the American economy can be removed. As the price of gas climbs over $4 a gallon due to that and to President Obama's anti-production policies, the public riot demanding immediate change in leadership will surprise establishment Washington.
Adding to all of this are the grave vulnerabilities posed by Iran successfully developing nuclear weapons, and President Obama's foreign policy weaknesses generally, which just invite war. Devilishly pursuing the opposite of every one of Reagan's policies, instead of Peace Through Strength, Obama is inviting War Through Weakness. If Iran launches a bloody attack on Israel, open calls for his resignation will be widespread. If Iran uses a nuclear weapon in that attack, or in any other attack against American interests, the Obama Administration will be over politically.
The President himself has laid the foundation for his biggest political vulnerability of all. He won our votes and the election in 2008 with "the firm pledge" not to raise taxes "in any form" on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. Now he has already backed away from that pledge to the American people by creating a Presidential Deficit Commission, with "everything on the table," including tax increases on working people in direct violation of the pledge. The much discussed Value Added Tax (VAT) could not be a more direct violation of the no tax increase pledge, increasing the prices of everything working families buy.
When the President directly violates the pledge that got him elected by openly endorsing such a tax increase, his resignation will immediately become a central political issue. The above problems and vulnerabilities will come together to increase the pressure for resignation to unbearable levels.
As Peggy Noonan suggested, the key will be the Democrats themselves (though she has never said a word about possible resignation). After suffering grievous losses in this year's elections, they will have limited tolerance for the above described political pressures and chaos. With the very survival of their party at stake, the Democrats will buckle and desert President Obama, joining the calls for his resignation. At that point, with zero prospects for reelection, and unable to govern effectively, he will resign.
Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
There are many parties that own considerable responsibilities regarding the uncontrollable BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico as enumerated below by Charles Krauthammer. Clearly and inexplicably, BP didn’t have any contingency plans that would have been able to deal with disasters such as we are witnessing now. They bear substantial responsibility.
Here are some questions and issues that we must ponder regarding the Federal Government’s role in various levels of this disaster:
1. Once again, the government reveals its utter ineptitude in regulating and overseeing businesses/ industries. In this BP situation, it had just completed its inspection of the rig and deemed it to be safe. Of course, this same government was clueless about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the banking industry, Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme that it had been warned about for years, etc.
2. Why didn’t the Federal government have plans in place to deal with such potential disasters? Clearly, the government is not the answer as we have seen.
3. Obama displayed boundless ineptitude, absence of leadership, abysmal “judgment”, arrogance and demagoguery. He is a rank amateur when it matters in the real world.
4. If it weren’t for unfettered legal issues and radical environmental influences, there would have been no need to drill for oil in 5000 feet of water where there are much greater costs and risks as we are witnessing. Such restrictions led to potentially uncontrollable disasters as evidenced in the Gulf.
5. Why weren’t the appropriate government agencies mobilized immediately? Why did a few of the heads of these agencies go on vacation despite knowing the scope of this disaster?
6. Among the earliest government moves, Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder sent a team of attorneys to the region. Were they going to cap the well?
Once again and in yet another area, the Federal government's inexcusable and embarrassing incompetence is on display. And Liberals state that the government is the answer for all our problems!
It seems to have problems in all that it is asked to do.
Oil spill culprits run deep
Charles Krauthammer 5/27/2010
Here's my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?
Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production.
(President Obama's tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we've had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
So we go deep, ultra deep – to such a technological frontier that no precedent exists for the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
There will always be catastrophic oil spills. You make them as rare as humanly possible, but where would you rather have one: in the Gulf of Mexico, upon which thousands depend for their livelihood, or in the Arctic, where there are practically no people? All spills seriously damage wildlife. That's a given. But why have we pushed the drilling from the barren to the populated, from the remote wilderness to a center of fishing, shipping, tourism and recreation?
Not that the environmentalists are the only ones to blame. Not by far. But it is odd that they've escaped any mention at all.
The other culprits are pretty obvious. It starts with BP, which seems not only to have had an amazing string of perfect-storm engineering lapses but no contingencies to deal with a catastrophic system failure.
However, the railing against BP for its performance since the accident is harder to understand. I attribute no virtue to BP, just self-interest. What possible interest can it have to do anything but cap the well as quickly as possible? Every day that oil is spilled means millions more in losses, cleanup and restitution.
Federal officials who rage against BP would like to deflect attention from their own role in this disaster. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose department's laxity in environmental permitting and safety oversight renders it among the many bearing responsibility, expresses outrage at BP's inability to stop the leak, and even threatens to "push them out of the way."
"To replace them with what?" asked the estimable, admirably candid Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander. No one has the assets and expertise of BP. The federal government can fight wars, conduct a census and hand out billions in earmarks, but it has not a clue how to cap a one-mile-deep, out-of-control oil well.
Obama didn't help much with his finger-pointing Rose Garden speech in which he denounced finger-pointing, then proceeded to blame everyone but himself. Even the grace note of admitting some federal responsibility turned sour when he reflexively added that these problems have been going on "for a decade or more" – translation: Bush did it – while, in contrast, his own interior secretary had worked diligently to solve the problem "from the day he took office."
Really? Why hadn't we heard a thing about this? What about the September 2009 letter from Obama's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration accusing Interior's Minerals Management Service of understating the "risk and impacts" of a major oil spill? When you get a blowout 15 months into your administration, and your own Interior Department had given BP a "categorical" environmental exemption in April 2009, the buck stops.
In the end, speeches will make no difference. If BP can cap the well in time to prevent an absolute calamity in the Gulf, the president will escape politically. If it doesn't – if the gusher isn't stopped before the relief wells are completed in August – it will become Obama's Katrina.
That will be unfair, because Obama is no more responsible for the damage caused by this than Bush was for the damage caused by Katrina. But that's the nature of American politics and its presidential cult of personality: We expect our presidents to play Superman. Helplessness, however undeniable, is no defense.
Moreover, Obama has never been overly modest about his own powers. Two years ago next week, he declared that history will mark his ascent to the presidency as the moment when "our planet began to heal" and "the rise of the oceans began to slow."
Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute, you mustn't be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer distills the incompetence, arrogance and abdication or the Obama Administration’s responsibilities regarding the immigration problem with a video message that even a child can understand. This can be found on the site www.securetheborder.org which we suggest that you visit.
The following is associated with this site:
Arizona Sing-A-Long: Reading Helps You Know What You’re Talking About
While broken borders are not a laughing matter, Washington’s
failure to read Arizona’s immigration law is laughable
PHOENIX –– Two weeks ago, Governor Jan Brewer took President Obama to task for making Arizona’s unsecured borders and illegal immigration crisis a laughing matter. However, since then, Washington’s comedy of errors has grown far worse, with top cabinet officials admitting that they haven’t even read Arizona’s new immigration law. Broken borders are not a laughing matter, but the failure by Obama’s trusted officials to read Arizona’s law before commenting and condemning it is laughable. As a result, SecuretheBorder.org is using a little bit of humor to remind everyone in Washington of the importance of reading. Watch the latest video below:
“Our message is simple: reading helps you know what you’re talking about. That’s why we put Arizona’s immigration law up on www.SecuretheBorder.org,” said campaign spokesman Doug Cole. “Arizona is trying to do the job that the federal government has failed to do, and members of the president’s cabinet condemn it without even reading it. They have time to apologize to China and give President Calderon a standing ovation, but they don’t have the time to read Arizona’s law. Just more examples of how Washington is broken.”
The video features Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Assistant Secretary of State PJ Crowley admitting that they have not read Arizona’s immigration law.
Is his utter incompetence as Attorney General the ultimate result of affirmative action years ago? Or does he represent the political appointment of a consummately incompetent, intellectually challenged, arrogant ideologue with a poor work ethic?
Or all of the above?
The incompetence, arrogance, demagoguery and general chutzpah that Attorney General Eric Holder displays seems to know no bounds. Neither Obama nor most of the press have criticized him on these – an inexcusable and abominable failing of all these parties.
Holder’s latest transgression involves gratuitous and inflammatory comments regarding Arizona’s immigration law which he has attacked. However, when confronted by Rep. Ted Poe, he admitted that he had not read the legislation. His comments were solely based on media stories and what he heard.
We are not talking about a piece of legislation that exceeds two thousand pages as the Obamacare bill does. This is merely 10 pages long and essentially mirrors the federal law.
You mean to tell us that the Attorney General can’t read a simple 10 page document that has been the cynosure of controversy for several weeks? Boycotts such as by California and other organizations are either being threatened or have been enacted. Even dictator Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has insinuated himself in the conflict. This issue is dangerously expanding not dying down.
Is reading 10 pages of crucial and "controversial" legislation too much to ask of the Attorney General of the United States?
We don’t think so. What we do know is that Eric Holder has recklessly abdicated his responsibilities of this post and yet again has shown general fecklessness, partisanship and divisiveness which make him unfit to continue serving in his present capacity.
We once again are calling for his removal from office.
Holder hasn't read Arizona law he criticized
Stephen Dinan May 13, 2010
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who has been critical of Arizona's new immigration law, said Thursday he hasn't yet read the law and is going by what he's read in newspapers or seen on television.
Mr. Holder is conducting a review of the law, at President Obama's request, to see if the federal government should challenge it in court. He said he expects he will read the law by the time his staff briefs him on their conclusions.
"I've just expressed concerns on the basis of what I've heard about the law. But I'm not in a position to say at this point, not having read the law, not having had the chance to interact with people are doing the review, exactly what my position is," Mr. Holder told the House Judiciary Committee.
This weekend Mr. Holder told NBC's "Meet the Press" program that the Arizona law "has the possibility of leading to racial profiling." He had earlier called the law's passage "unfortunate," and questioned whether the law was unconstitutional because it tried to assume powers that may be reserved for the federal government.
Rep. Ted Poe, who had questioned Mr. Holder about the law, wondered how he could have those opinions if he hadn't yet read the legislation.
"It's hard for me to understand how you would have concerns about something being unconstitutional if you haven't even read the law," the Texas Republican told the attorney general.
The Arizona law's backers argue that it doesn't go beyond what federal law already allows, and they say press reports have distorted the legislation. They point to provisions in the law that specifically rule out racial profiling as proof that it can be implemented without conflicting with civil rights.
But critics said giving police the power to stop those they suspect are in the country illegally is bound to lead to profiling.
Mr. Holder said he expects the Justice and Homeland Security departments will finish their review of the Arizona law soon.
The magnitude of the ineptness of our intelligence agencies under Obama has been nothing short of staggering as illustrated by a multitude of recent terrorist events where information and tips were bungled, lost, not acted upon, etc. It's not a stretch of the imagination that we probably would get a more immediate and effective response regarding possible terrorist related activities from a street vendor than from federal agencies.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is firmly standing her ground in support of the state's immigration law and is not intimidated by an arrogant and irresponsible Obama. Furthermore, she has gone on the offensive and directly attacks the "president", his criticisms and inappropriate levity regarding immigration as seen in the following video:
President Obama, No One in Arizona is Laughing
We also recommend that you visit the Facebook site for Stand With Arizona
The incessant left wing attacks on Arizona’s new immigration law are ideologically based emotional rants void of substantive facts. If these demagogues and uninformed parroting protestors availed themselves to examine the law they would note that it is essentially identical to the federal law which the federal government has chosen to largely ignore – for political reasons.
Meanwhile, Arizonans are under assault from these illegals and the Mexican drug and smuggling trade and must protect themselves since the federal government has abdicated its Constitutional responsibility.
Cafferty Blasts Obama and the Dems For the Arizona Law
He asked her, "Your Majesty, how do you run such an efficient government? Are there any tips you can give to me?"
"Well," said the Queen, "the most important thing is to surround yourself with intelligent people."
Obama frowned, and then asked, "But how do I know the people around me are really intelligent?"
The Queen took a sip of tea. "Oh, that's easy; you just ask them to answer an intelligent riddle." The Queen pushed a button on her intercom. "Please send Tony Blair in here, would you?"
Tony Blair walked into the room and said, "Yes, my Queen?"
The Queen smiled and said, "Answer me this please, Tony, your mother and father have a child. It is not your brother and it is not your sister. Who is it?"
Without pausing for a moment, Tony Blair answered, "That would be me."
"Yes! Very good," said the Queen.
Obama went back home to ask Joe Biden, his vice presidential choice the same question. "Joe, answer this for me. Your mother and your father have a child. It's not your brother and it's not your sister. Who is it?"
"I'm not sure," said Biden. "Let me get back to you on that one." He went to his advisors and asked every one, but none could give him an answer. Finally, he ended up in the men's room and recognized Colin Powell's shoes in the next stall.
Biden asked Powell, "Colin, can you answer this for me? Your mother and father have a child and it's not your brother or your sister. Who is it?"
Colin Powell yelled back, "That's easy, it's me!"
Biden smiled, and said, "Thanks!" Then, he went back to speak with Obama. "Say, I did some research and I have the answer to that riddle. It is Colin Powell!"
Obama got up, stomped over to Biden, and angrily yelled into his face, "No! You idiot! It's Tony Blair!"
And now you know one of the major reasons why we are in such a mess right now in America.
IDIOTS in our government running this country (into the ground)!
The vast majority of citizens of Arizona have been fed up with the soaring crime, kidnappings, costs, effects on education and quality of life related to immigration and are strongly behind the State’s new anti-immigration law. As we have indicated previously, their net cost to Arizona including unreimbursed health care, education, welfare, crime and prison and legal fees runs into the billions of dollars which the state doesn’t have. Furthermore, the citizens are tired of providing for the welfare of these illegals including shouldering a massive tax burden.
What we are hearing now are the hollow cries of the liberals and progressives claiming discrimination or worse in Arizona and calling for boycotts. This encourages bad and ILLEGAL behavior. These illegal aliens, a term that liberals avoid because it describes exactly what they are – law breakers, should not be entitled to services, subsidies, etc. just because they are in America. They are citizens of another country, namely Mexico. Let their government pay their expenses … and take them back instead of encouraging the opposite.
Thousands of people annually immigrate to America legally going through a rigorous process. These illegals can do the same.
Since the Federal Government has effectively abdicated its responsibility and by egregiously ignoring this chronic and uncontrolled long standing problem (for decades), Arizona's state government should be praised both for upholding the law and trying to protect its citizens.
Praising Arizona (In Border Battle)
Investors Business Daily 04/26/2010
Immigration: Arizona moves to protect its citizens from a raging border war, and the administration and its activist supporters cry racism. Why is antelope protection more important than protecting American lives?
'We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act," Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said Friday after signing a tough new immigration law giving police more power in dealing with illegal immigration. "But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created a dangerous and unacceptable situation."
Arizona's new law is a reminder that the states formed the federal government and not the other way around. One of the federal government's functions was to provide for the security of the new country against foreign enemies and intruders.
At this, and particularly under this administration, it has failed miserably.
There are 460,000 illegal aliens in Arizona, a number that increases daily, placing an undue burden on the state's schools, hospitals and law enforcement. Arizona has a window seat to an illegal invasion and on the escalating and violent drug war in Mexico that has put American lives and society at risk.
On March 27, the consequences of a porous and unprotected border claimed the life of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz after he radioed his brother that he was checking out someone he believed to be an illegal immigrant.
Incredibly, his murderer escaped to a pronghorn antelope area that the Interior Department of Secretary Ken Salazar had placed off-limits to U.S. Border Patrol agents.
So unserious is the administration about protecting the border that it has allowed a bureaucratic turf battle between Interior and Homeland Security to let 4.3 million acres of wilderness area become a haven and highway for illegal aliens, drug smugglers, human traffickers and potential terrorists.
The new law makes it a state crime to be in Arizona without proof of legal status, and would authorize police to demand documents from those they suspected could be illegal immigrants. It would also make it a crime to transport or hide illegal immigrants.
The police are authorized to act only when "REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES" and clearly states that police "MAY NOT SOLELY CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN" in inquiring about immigration status of a suspect individual.
President Obama calls Arizona's tough new law "irresponsible" and "misguided." But it wouldn't be necessary if the federal government fulfilled its responsibility to secure the border. We are a nation of immigrants — legal immigrants — but we are also a nation of laws that 70% of Arizonans and most Americans want to see enforced.
There may be something else afoot here. "We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters," stated Eliseo Medina, international executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union at a June 2009 Washington conference.
In 2008, Medina noted, "immigrants" and Latinos "voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of three voters that showed up." Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "voting with their feet." The more the merrier?
Americans want the federal government to protect our borders, not endangered species. They want the gaping holes in border protection closed and the National Guard sent to the border. What part of "National Guard" does the administration not understand?
Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County, was grilled by Geraldo Rivera on Fox News about what constituted probable cause under the new law. Arpaio responded: "During the course of the duties of law enforcement, my deputies, if someone doesn't have a license, doesn't speak English, 10 guys stashed in back of a van, I think that's reasonable action or probable cause to take action."
We think so too. It doesn't make sense to protect antelope but not the American people. The first duty of the federal government is to protect the rights, property and lives of U.S. citizens.
The Veterans Administration Hospitals, run by the Federal government, are notoriously horrific on myriad accounts and has been so for years. Negligence, poor patient care, disarray, confusion, bureaucracy are just a few adjectives that can begin to describe the “quality” or lack thereof associated with the VA. And this is just a fraction of the size that Obamacare will be.
So Obama and Congressional Democrats really believe that they can used this along with what has been learned from the Medicare program and the Post Office to provide outstanding care that exceeds what we have now, to more individuals and for less?
Wrong!!
As we have reiterated numerous times, Obamacare is not about healthcare. It is all about government control, power and spreading the wealth around.
Obamacare must rescinded or rendered impotent!
VA Claims Office Takes SNAFU to a New Level
Jana Winter FOXNews.com April 19, 2010
Last month, a decorated Gulf War hero received a letter from the Veterans Affairs Administration that said: We are working on your claim for menstrual disorder. He was surprised -- but not as much as one might think.
Last month, a decorated Gulf War hero received a letter from the Veterans Affairs Administration that said: We are working on your claim for menstrual disorder.
There was just one problem: The claim was submitted for fibromyalgia.
Make that two problems: The claim was submitted by Glenn McBride, a 40-year-old man from Roanoke, Va., who most definitely does not get menstrual cramps.
It's a bad sign when your health insurance provider can’t figure out which gender reaches for the Midol. (Hint: it's the one without the prostate.)
The Department of Veterans Affairs is notorious for bungling health care benefits, and its Roanoke regional office, which handled McBride's claim, has long been considered among the worst.
In September 2009 a surprise inspection found the office was collapsing under the weight of its own bureaucratic incompetence. Literally.
Its filing system — floor-to-ceiling stacks of overfilled file cabinets and loose claims folders — weighed twice as much as the building's structure allowed, threatening the lives of everyone inside. Inspectors also found missing and improperly filed, stored and processed claims, among other problems. The regional office was ordered to overhaul the health care processing center completely.
By last month, six months later, there should have been some improvement. Instead, McBride received a letter that included this perplexing request for additional information:
"On the VA Form 21-4138, Statement in Support of Claim you sent on October 8, 2009, you included menstrual disorder. Please specify what you intended to claim for this condition."
McBride, whose 14 years of Army service included a combat tour with one of the most highly decorated units during Desert Storm -- and did not include any complaints about menstrual cramps, so far as he can recall -- insists this was not just a clerical error. He says it's one more example of the VA ignoring or messing up claims in order to avoid paying benefits.
"If the VA does not actually recognize the request, they do not have to give the award," he said. "Sort of like a perverted form of 'See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil.' Most people just throw up their hands in frustration and walk away at this point. That is the VA's plan."
The VA, asked to comment about McBride's complaint, issued a statement in which it said:
"The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) mission is to be an advocate for Veterans. VA has a responsibility to assist Veterans during the claims process. Part of that duty is to include all possible issues that a Veteran references in his or her initial claim package. VA regrets any confusion that Mr. McBride's claim may have caused. VA Regional Office employees have reached out to Mr. McBride to clarify the confusion, determine the types of issues he wants to claim, and identify any outstanding concerns that he may have."
Jim Strickland, a veterans advocate who writes a regular health care benefits column on VAWatchdog.org and has his own benefits-related Web site, said he wasn't at all surprised to learn of McBride's "menstrual" letter. "There are 57 regional offices and every one is operating in total chaos and in crisis," he said. "Full frontal mass chaos. Every day."
Contacted in the middle of the week, Strickland said he'd already received two e-mails from veterans who were mailed the records of other veterans. And he provided his most ridiculous example of a nonsensical claims letter, one that managed to try to collect debt and to discuss overpaying the same debt -- at the same time.
For Gulf War veterans who fought during a certain time period, certain health conditions are considered presumptive, meaning that such a high percentage of that group has been diagnosed with the condition it's presumed that it was caused by military service, and coverage is automatically granted. Fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition, is a presumptive one for McBride.
Because of his years of experience dealing with the VA, McBride likes to provide as much information as possible when he submits claim forms. (He also gets a signed and time-stamped receipt upon delivery.) When he sent in his claim for fibromyalgia, he typed clearly at the top of the form: "This form is an official request for SERVICE-CONNECTION for FIBROMYALGIA." He included an extract of a VA "fast letter" regarding presumptive conditions — basically providing the VA with its own policy on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. "Menstrual disorder" is included in the VA's list of symptoms.
"The VA just breezed right through the facts and settled on the obscure," McBride said. "The Roanoke office clearly hasn't changed."
Strickland says the problem at the root of letters like McBride's is a bonus structure paid out to VA claims employees.
"The more work, the better the bonus is," he said. "It's strictly volume, not quality driven. There is no accountability whatsoever.
"The art of the Teflon Jacket has been perfected at our VA. They are really totally invulnerable to your criticism."
When the editor of VAWatchdog.org posted an April Fools Day joke -- "VA DOCTOR TRIES TO GIVE PROSTATE EXAM TO WOMAN
VETERAN (April Fool); VA physician: 'Nobody told me the patient was a female. How the hell was I supposed to know that?'" -- McBride sent in his "menstrual" letter.
It was posted on the same site under the heading, "Today's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? award goes to the VA's Roanoke, Virginia Regional Office."
The site's editor describes the award:
"Every now and then we get a story about the VA that just can't be. But, it is! Because, remember, we're not dealing with regular people ... we're dealing with the VA. That's when we throw up our hands and scream at the sky:
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