posted November 05, 2010 03:03 PM            

What is there about that you don't understand?

Yes, voters wanted health insurance costs and health care costs fixed. But that didn't mean they were opting for a government take over of the entire health care and health insurance sector of the economy at a cost of trillions of dollars.

Yes, voters wanted the economy cranked back up. But that didn't mean they wanted a trillion dollars of pork ladled out to city, county, state governments and employee unions.

They also don't appreciate O'Bomber sticking his Socialist nose in every corner of their private lives.

The causes for demoscat and O'Bomber election losses are clear...for those who have their eyes open.

I do hope congressional demoscats continue denying the obvious and continuing to push the O'Bomber Socialist agenda.

posted November 18, 2010 11:42 AM            

By trading authenticity for inexperience, hypnotized voters accepted Barack Obama's glitzy platitudes and fell hard for his rhetoric hook, line, and sinker -- emphasis on sinker. However, "hope and change" prevail, because after electing a guy who showed up out of nowhere dragging his trusty teleprompter, Democrats are awakening from their dreamlike state of pure political intoxication.

Democrats guzzled Kool-aid, willingly donned balloon hats, and did the Obama wave in unison at the inauguration on the National Mall. Now, two years later, the high has worn off, and like a group of shocked Milli Vanilli fans, Democrats are finding out that Barry can't keep time with the music, let alone lip-sync the words to "Blame it on the Rain."

Experience tells us that nothing remediates an ignorant choice faster than admitting stupidity and joining the ranks of those who told you so. Thus, some of Obama's biggest defenders are now morphing into his harshest critics. The same Democrats who wept uncontrollably on Election Day are now attempting to salvage sullied reputations with revelatory admissions embedded in helpful counsel.

In fact, in anticipation of a bloodbath, many from the president's own party opted to disembark from the Obama Express prior to Election Day. Immediately afterward, Obama left a referendum-wreck at the side of the road and shoved off for Asia, hoping to distract the world from the casualties strewn all over the American political landscape. It didn't work. In fact, Obama's Asian adventure shed further light on the man with the teleprompter's ineptitude, inexperience, and growing inability to be taken seriously both at home and abroad.

As a result, voices from both the left and the right of the Democratic Party have stepped forward to offer unsolicited guidance. Coming from two extreme sources are admissions that while Barack Obama may talk a good game, when it comes to delivering on promises made on the back of soaring discourse, the embodiment of "Yes We Can" hasn't and, in all probability, can't.

Three of the more diametrically opposed pundits offering suggestions are the thoughtful and rational Doug Schoen and the always intellectually honest Pat Cadell. The other is Michael Moore, the bloated socialist/millionaire Cuban-health-clinic-enthusiast in a baseball cap.

Recently, on the smarmy and infuriating "Real Time with Bill Maher" show, Michael Moore expressed his view that "being able to vote for Barack Obama" was "certainly one of the best days [he] had in the last decade." Moore did not explain why pulling the lever for Barack was the highlight of a decade, or what prompted him to do so. Evidently, Michael lives a very dull life because, except for partisanship or first-black-president guilt, there's no logical explanation of why any rational person would choose to vote for Barack Obama.

However, a glimmer of prudence did emerge on "Real Time" when Moore, after expressing gratitude to Obama for providing one good day out of 3,650, offered him a suggestion: "With all due respect...please take off your pink tutu because it's time to put on the boxing gloves and go fighting for the people."

Contrary to the rest of the idiocy verbalized on the liberal panel -- including comments from Maher about estate tax incentives to "kill grandma" and liberal director Nora Ephron, whose political opinions are in worse shape than her aging neck, lamenting conservative opposition to millionaires paying higher taxes -- Moore's comment was quite telling.

Couched in a suggestion, Moore unintentionally admitted that liberals voted for a guy in a pink tutu. Moore's statement indicated that up until that point, Obama voters hadn't noticed the tulle ballet skirt obscured by the podium. Such an admission is more a reflection on liberal voters than on the president. Did no one, including Michael Moore, bother to investigate anything other than the image Obama projected from the neck up? If it were physically possible, could it be that even the corpulent Michael Moore was buoyed by something other than common sense?

Moore's observation indicated that although the president is expert at verbal pirouettes, the hero of the people is proving ill equipped to deliver on the left's dream of a "piece of the pie" in the sky of Shangri-La. No wonder liberals are peeved. It must be humiliating for a leftist über-intellectual/University of Michigan-Flint dropout like Michael Moore to realize that on his most memorable day to date, he was handily duped by a guy in pink tights.

While Michael Moore suggests putting on "boxing gloves" and entering the ring for "hand-to-hand" combat-based solutions, Cadell and Schoen suggest the opposite. The two trusted Democrats pollsters now confess, "Indeed, we were among those millions of Democrats, Republicans and independents who were genuinely moved by [Obama's] rhetoric and purpose." However, Pat and Doug now present Obama with quite a different solution: Retain the tutu, skip the boxing gloves, and forget about running again in 2012.

In a Washington Post op-ed piece entitled "One and done: To be a great president, Obama should not seek reelection in 2012," Cadell and Schoen suggest that Obama act out of character, "[s]eize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and ... galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made ... putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones. To that end, [Cadell and Schoen] believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012."

Michael Moore is predictable. However, the measured, sane, and patriotic Doug's and Pat's emphatic proposition raises the question: How were two rational, clear-thinking men hoodwinked into voting for a charlatan like Obama in the first place?

Schoen's and Cadell's article suggests that Obama has neither taken the "high ground" nor -- beyond smoke machines and Styrofoam ionic columns -- succeeded in retaining the imagination of the nation. Moreover, the strategists insinuate that by running for president in the first place, the only thing neophyte Obama managed to accomplish was the detrimental placement of "personal and political interest" ahead of national welfare.

Schoen and Cadell cite Obama's disingenuous statement to Diane Sawyer: "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." From the looks of things, neither is likely. Nonetheless, Pat and Doug honestly believe that Obama "now has a chance to deliver on that idea," which poses yet another question, this time for the pollsters: Why would Obama, who failed to deliver anything thus far, suddenly exhibit the ability, let alone the wherewithal, to begin now?

Moore beckons to the more radical Obama to come forth, and Schoen and Cadell plead with the president to agree to step off the stage, tutu and all. A ditzy Michael Moore viewing the president as a flitty ballerina while respected Democrat pollsters recommend that the former messiah's answer to the nation's woes be to throw in the teleprompter and return to Chicago provides Obama with little political sanctuary.

posted December 07, 2010 09:49 AM            

To hear the sick puppy's explanation, it wasn't about his policies but rather, the election loss was caused by his...O'Bomber's failure to properly explain why American voters should be on their knees kissing his feet for all the good things he did for them.

This explanation in spite of O'Bomber being on television every single day touting all his goodness and light.

John and Suzy Q. Public aren't buying it for a second. Only the O'Bomber Kool-Aid drinkers are buying it...and there's a hell of a lot fewer O'Bomber Kool-Aid drinkers these days.

Most Americans are marking the days off their calendars until November 6th, 2012.

December 07, 2010
Obama's Blind Spot
By Janice Shaw Crouse

Despite the Democratic Party's 2010 election "shellacking," President Obama recently asserted that the election had nothing to do with ideology. He said, "It would be unwise to assume [that American voters] prefer one way of thinking over another." This attitude is consistent with the president's previous actions and statements. He still doesn't understand that the public is outraged at what Victor Davis Hanson, in National Review, called his "EU-socialist agenda." The people's anger stems from Obama's so-called solutions, radical political appointees, and his health care reform program that threatens to bankrupt the nation, not -- as he famously contends -- from him not delivering "change" as fast as he promised. In fact, Obama views the election primarily as a message to Republicans to be more bipartisan and cooperative; to date, he has never acknowledged that voters repudiated his policies and the direction in which he wants to take the country.

However, John Podhoretz points out in his Commentary article, "The Liberal Crisis," that "[m]ore than 750 elected Democrats (or positions held by elected Democrats) from the House to the Senate to governors' mansions to state legislatures were ousted from office in the largest and deepest partisan rout in American history." He adds, "You have to go back 37 national elections to find a larger number of Republicans in the House. You have to go back 82 years to find as many Republicans in state legislatures."

The president pretends not to notice the harsh realities of election 2010; he chooses, instead, to interpret the colossal rebuke of his administration's policies as a communication problem that produced a "misunderstanding" of what he has "accomplished" in his first two years in office. The bottom line is that the president's blind spot keeps him from seeing what those outside his administration find obvious: The majority of the American public views his liberal progressive agenda, radical presidential appointments, and newly minted czars as far out of the nation's political mainstream. People are especially angry at the health care reform package that only Obama and his sycophants in the media wanted and that nobody read or fully understood. A large segment of the public also blames the president for the devastating effects that his policies -- the stimulus plan and the bailouts -- have had on the nation's economy. In short, the Tea Party movement and town hall meetings reflect and embody a groundswell of grassroots opposition to the "wrong direction" that the president, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid have taken the nation.

Clearly, most people got the message: The public objects to having an ideology so far removed from middle-American thinking and policy proposals -- which attendees at town hall meeting after town hall meeting expressly rejected -- jammed down its throat, and the people fear for the future of America. Peter Heck, in American Thinker, argues that there is an electoral divide in the nation that clearly delineates the left from the right in terms of political philosophy and positions on contemporary issues. That electoral divide was exacerbated by Obama's policies and what the media called his "rhetorical brilliance" -- which the public saw as condescension and elitism. The angle of Obama's head as he read the ever-present teleprompter and his patronizing tone have contributed to the public's perception of him as someone who is very much out of touch with America. It didn't help that the president lamely continued to "blame Bush" a whole two years into his presidency.

The man who repeatedly called for bipartisanship and a post-racial society presided over an administration that excluded the GOP from health care negotiations, viewed members of the other party as the enemy, and flat-out told Republicans that their place was at the back of the bus. No wonder the nation is divided. But the division is not equal; the maps showing the divide are stunning in pinpointing largely the bi-coastal, big-city areas of the nation that are "blue," in contrast to the vast flyover country that is "red." In other words, mainstream middle-America solidly opposes the leftist takeover of the nation, and these Americans do not "blame Bush." Instead, they blame the two-year runaway train wreck that is Obama's "EU-Socialist agenda."

It is past time for the Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate to understand how soundly the American public rejected their vision for "hope and change." The fact that they continue to blindly rush forward is evidence of how clueless they are as to the public's desires and attendant and political realities. What voters had in mind in 2008 was that the first African-American president might profitably go to work on the pitiful performance of public schools, the future-destroying budget deficits, the bloated and inefficient federal bureaucracy, the bloated entitlement programs that are feeding poverty, and the mind-boggling red-tape/regulations that are choking entrepreneurs. But that is not what the top three Democrats see as top priorities, then or now. So they continue plunging ahead, pursuing the same destructive agenda, completely blind to the ramifications of the midterm elections.

Perhaps Peter Heck is right that 2010 shows that the last two years have "jolted awake a generation of apathetic and passive citizens just in time to save the republic." Certainly, he is right in his claim that public apathy has been "inexcusable." With the continuation of the Obama administration's obstructionism and the progressive left (Pelosi and the lame-stream media)'s blind advocacy of radical policies, it is impossible to misconstrue the president's motivating vision and his divisive use of "class warfare" rhetoric. Americans are getting a sharper and sharper focus on the differences between Obama's America and the America they want for their families and their children's children.

posted December 12, 2010 08:27 AM            

From the beginning of the week to the end, the president made crystal-clear to anyone who paid attention that he was over his head in this position and that he was startlingly disengaged in all but the most trivial of ceremonial matters.

Obama's agents hammered out a proposed tax deal in which he seemed to play no significant role and which totally undercut his promise to end tax cuts for the rich. That redistributive, economically ridiculous position is one of the few things on which he has not heretofore been a slippery, tilting-at-straw-men con man. It is perfectly consistent with some 1930s view of capitalism in which there are starving, dispossessed Okies at one end of the economic spectrum and top-hatted, morning-coated fat plutocrats on the other.

Still, since all of Obama's other tricks to jolt the economy and cease its free-fall have failed, someone (possibly Larry Summers) apparently caught his ear and suggested to this economic illiterate that ending the Bush tax cuts would only force a quicker death spiral.

His ambiguous efforts to sell the deal to the equally radical economic illiterates in this party naturally didn't go well in either the Senate, where his party will soon hold a slimmer majority, or the House, where the Republicans won 63 seats and virtually the entire moderate wing of the party was wiped out of office. Revealing that he hasn't the slightest clue about negotiating, Obama made a laughable claim comparing his political opponents to hostage takers: "It's tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers unless the hostage gets harmed," President Obama said at his Tuesday press conference."

Here's the thing: the dynamics of hostage-taking always involve the threat of harm to the hostage, Mr. President. This means that you would always cave in to their demands if you cared enough for the hostage.

Worse, the comment ignores the fact that until Ted Kennedy died, Obama's party controlled Congress with a filibuster-proof majority, and the White House could have steamrolled through any tax provision it wanted. The decision to let the tax issue ride suddenly put them in an unfavorable bargaining position -- though certainly it didn't rise to "hostage taking." It's called losing the hearts and minds of the voters.

Obama's petulant comments all week were directed, however, at more than the Republicans. He was also hostile to the far left in his party, the very folks who brought him into power.

Someone in the White House must not be drinking what Obama and Reid and Pelosi. Someone must recognize that the power dynamics have in fact shifted, that Obama's attacks are not helpful to the administration or to the passage of any tax bill before the lame duck session ends and Democrats' leverage diminishes even further. For by Friday, Obama handed Bill Clinton the baton in an absolutely stunning press conference in which Obama left minutes after it began, saying:

Here's what I'll say, is I've been keeping the first lady waiting for about half an hour, so I'm going to take off. [...] You're in good hands.

If the picture of Michelle barefoot and walking on hot bricks while her husband and the Indonesian dignitary walked on the carpet told us a great deal about how carelessly organized the presidential visit to Indonesia was, this picture speaks to us about how unserious and unqualified Obama is for the highest office in the land.

Obama called the former president in to make the case he was unable to make himself and then left to party.

James Taranto noted that Bill Clinton was an odd endorser of the proposed tax rates:

I was at the 2004 Democratic Convention, where I watched Bill Clinton deliver a very effective, though completely wrongheaded, attack on the Bush tax rates. Today I turn on the TV to see Bill Clinton holding a White House news conference to endorse those same tax rates. It's great to see him come around, even if his return to the presidential podium runs counter to the spirit of the 22nd Amendment. [h/t: Daily Caller]

It's as if it shocks Obama that his promise to stop the rising of the waters and to heal the sick and feed the poor doesn't seem enough. People want to see results, and the only results they are seeing is the destruction of centuries' worth of sound legal doctrine (the bailouts) and economic structures (our health care system) and national wealth (trillions wasted to no end except to pay off Obama's friends).

Or is it that having stepped out of the chattering classes into a position of responsibility, Obama is being forced -- too late -- to realize that all his beliefs and those of the left are just so much unicorn scat -- unworkable, unrealistic nonsense? If that's so, no wonder he seems disquieted. He surely isn't able to see where to go since being exiled from wonderland, where he was the one we were waiting for, to reality, where he seems unable to carry out his responsibilities and retain his allies and support.

In fact, Obama's spokesman Gibbs did point his finger at Congress and said they should have taken up the issue before November, as Obama urged them to, but the truth is that,having rammed through the unpopular ObamaCare law, both the congressional leadership and the administration caved to the Blue Dogs' pleas that the tax issue be put in order for them to have any hope of reelection. The left-wingers who lost that battle are now in no mood to cede to the White House's begging for more "compromise." And when all is said and done, the White House failure to communicate the deal with the congressional Democrats before announcing it publicly revealed a striking ignorance of Washington protocol and rubbed salt in their wounds.

Whether the proposal is good or bad remains murky as new provisions are added, and the numbers remain unclear. Here are the latest legislative documents I can find, in case you care to make up your own mind.

Legislative Documents for the Obama Tax Compromise Bill

•Senate Bill
•Senate Bill Summary
•Republican Staff Summary
•Joint Committee on Taxation Revenue Estimate

The economy is not all that Obama and his administration are demonstrably failing at. WikiLeaks is severely undercutting our diplomatic service, and yet our response is weak. Eric Holder still hasn't made any moves to get Assange extradited from the U.K., where extradition is easier than it will be from Sweden, and he's had since July, when the document dump began, to think up something. Instead, the president had him fly overseas in a failed attempt to get the World Cup held in the U.S. This mirrors the great expense and effort Obama put in his failed attempt to get Chicago named the venue for the Olympics.

What's the theme here? No bread and no circuses?

Like Max Boot, I recognize that there are problems with the antique and really unworkable espionage act, but like him, I wonder

... if those barriers are insuperable, why hasn't the administration proposed legislation to Congress that would allow the prosecution of cyber-vandals like Assange? Given the diplomatic damage that WikiLeaks continues to cause, the administration's inaction so far signals a dangerous ineffectuality that will come back to haunt the U.S. We can't rely on the Swedish courts to lock up Assange for rape - not when the apparent facts of the case appear to be as bizarre as they are. (For a rundown, see this Daily Mail article.)

posted December 12, 2010 08:53 AM            

Obama's Moral Universe
By Philip Klein on 12.10.10 @ 6:13AM

This week, the president found himself in a familiar spot -- starring in a morality play of his own making.

At every point in his life as he tells it, Obama has been a noble soul making his way through an ignoble world. He gave up the prospect of a high-paying job following college to work as a community organizer, rejected the top law firms to become a civil rights lawyer, and rose in the state senate as a reformer in the corrupt swamp of Illinois politics.

His campaign for the presidency was no different. He wasn’t just running against the record of George W. Bush -- every Democratic candidate was at the time -- but against the cynicism and divisiveness of the political process. In that sense, his inexperience wasn’t a problem, but evidence of his purity.

“They say I need to be seasoned; they say I need to be stewed,” he was fond of saying in his early stump speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire. “They say, ‘We need to boil all the hope out of him -- like us -- and then he’ll be ready.’”

Obama found perfect foils in Hillary Clinton and John McCain, both representatives of the old style of politics, both infected by Washington, both too consumed with tactics and process to appreciate what could be possible with just a little bit of hope.

In the early weeks of his presidency, Obama was the savior figure selling his economic stimulus package, which he said would “save or create” four million jobs. He warned that if Congress didn’t pass his preferred legislation, “this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”

Obama got his $862 billion stimulus package, but as the months wore on, unemployment soared into the double-digits and there was no real way to prove to an increasingly skeptical public that it had created millions of jobs. By this fall, Democrats’ prospects in the impending midterm elections were looking grim, so Obama’s new spin was that he was taking a political hit to do what was best for the American people.

“[W]hen I reflect back on the last two years, I do think that given how much stuff was coming at us, we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right,” he explained to the New York Times. “There is probably a perverse pride in my administration -- and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top -- that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular.”

That brings us to this week. Finding himself with diminished political standing following his party’s overwhelming defeat in the Congressional elections, Obama cut a deal with Republicans to extend the Bush tax rates for two years for all income levels.

Upon winning the Iowa caucuses in 2008, Obama declared that “the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington.” Yet this Tuesday, he unleashed a furious assault on Republicans who he had just negotiated with, blasting them as “hostage takers” who he was “itching for a fight” with on “a wide range of issues.”

Yet he had to concede this time, he said, because “I don’t make judgments based on what the conventional wisdom is at any given time. I make my judgments based on what I think is right for the country and for the American people right now.

His displeasure didn’t end with Republicans. In fact, he reserved his harshest criticisms for his fellow liberals who attacked the compromise. Obama lashed out at those on the left who were ungrateful for the passage of national health care merely because it didn’t contain their cherished “public option,” a government-run plan to be offered within newly created government-run insurance exchanges.

“If that’s the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let’s face it, we will never get anything done,” he said. “People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are, and in the meantime, the American people are still seeing themselves not able to get health insurance because of preexisting conditions or not being able to pay their bills because their unemployment insurance ran out.”

In the midst of Obama’s rift with his core supporters, it’s illuminating to remember his primary against Hillary Clinton. With very few policy disagreements, their battle came down to Hillary portraying herself as experienced enough to know how the real world worked, and Obama inspiring his fans to imagine a better one. Yet in his press conference, Obama had morphed into the role of Hillary, scolding his base for having unrealistic expectations.

One can imagine candidate Obama charging that President Obama was too small-minded -- that with the right attitude and proper approach, Democrats could have had a public option and that they could have ended tax cuts for the rich.

A lot has changed since Obama’s candidacy, but one thing that has remained the same is that Obama himself -- whether he’s urging people to expect more or schooling them on why they should be happy with less -- is always the righteous one.

“An artist creates his own moral universe,” a character quips in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway. So, too, does our president.
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/12/10/obamas-moral-universe

posted December 27, 2010 08:56 AM            

I'm not one to believe for a second that O'Bomber is doing what he thinks is best...certainly not best for the United States or our citizens.

His actions so far, fall into the category of deliberate attack and sabotage of America's economy, the private sector, American values, the Rule of Law and the Constitution.

O'Bomber is coming off as a power mad Marxist Stalinist dictator wannabee but that Reign or Rule against the best interests and safety of the nation and our citizens and without our consent is coming to an end in a few days when the new Congress is sworn in.

O'Bomber is everything I said he would be when he was candidate O'Bomber...and none of it is good. You, in defense of O'Bomber's so called good intentions, are still drinking the Kool-Aid.

December 27, 2010
Obama Destined to Be a Footnote in Presidential History
By Rusty Weiss

Barack Obama has set a course that will leave his legacy as no more than a footnote in American presidential history. For all of the bluster and glory, for all of the pomp and circumstance, and yes, for all of the anticipated hope and the promised change, the whirlwind of hype and expectation surrounding the president a mere two years earlier has virtually dissolved.

He was the man destined to save this country from his predecessor's failures. He was the man who would end the war in Iraq, finish the war in Afghanistan, and shut down the prison at Guantánamo Bay. He was the man charged with rescuing the faltering American economy. He was the man who would usher in a post-racial era in an allegedly inherently racist American society. And he was the man who had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based not on tangible accomplishment, but simply upon these very expectations.

On all of these accounts, President Obama has been a striking failure.

He has not saved this country from the Bush-era failures; rather, he has done the impossible in making Americans pine for the days that Bush was in office, with Obama's job approval rating recently falling below that of the former president.

Obama did not end the war in Iraq; he merely claimed credit for a deal negotiated under the Bush administration. The Status of Forces Agreement, signed by U.S. and Iraqi officials on November 16, 2008, already laid the groundwork for an end to combat missions in Iraq.

He has not brought an end to the war in Afghanistan, instead emulating a military strategy that was a basis for success in Iraq, the surge. What was once heavily criticized by President Obama as a failed strategy has since been hailed as a path to victory in a war that recently sparked Bush-like protests from the antiwar crowd.

Obama has failed to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, an alleged symbol of American tyranny and torture, and a top priority of Obama during his campaign. Shortly after his inauguration, executive orders were issued for the closure of the prison within a year. The thinking was that such a facility was not "consistent with our values and our ideals." Gitmo remains open nearly two years later, an apparent admission that the president is not consistent with his own values and ideals.

He has failed in every manner to resuscitate the stumbling economy. The unemployment rate has continued its upward trend under Obama, going from 7.7% in January of 2009 to the current rate of 9.8%. Meanwhile, attempts to convince the American people of the success of the stimulus bill were manufactured in deceitful ways despite clear signs of turbulence in the economy. Personal incomes continue to trend downward, as does private-sector job creation, and the national deficit is projected to balloon to a staggering $1.5 trillion in 2011.

Obama's election has been anything but post-racial, with heightened racial rhetoric and actions coming from the administration itself. Setbacks for the post-racial presidency include the firing and subsequent apology to a black official, Shirley Sherrod, at the Agriculture Department; the president himself, without knowing the facts of the case, labeling police as having "acted stupidly" following the arrest of a black Harvard professor; and the Justice Department's dismissal of voter intimidation charges against members of the New Black Panther Party during the 2008 elections.

Worse, Obama has been governing by putting policy over process, inviting unprecedented backroom deals for health care reform...and now, apparently, tax compromise solutions.

With both sides of the aisle enraged by the process, the recent tax compromise is simply the nail in the coffin. Obama himself once declared that "[a] good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it." Complaints from both sides of the aisle indeed indicate that everyone recognizes this -- as a bad compromise.

And unlike former President Bill Clinton's shift to the center during his tenure, Obama's backroom successes and polarizing failures will only result in a perpetual downturn in his approval rating. His recent ceding of the podium to Clinton seems to indicate an acceptance of this fate.

The president has gone from being "a big f'n deal" to eliciting utter contempt and disrespect for the highest office in the land. His liberal colleagues angrily mutter, "F the president."

posted February 04, 2011 08:17 AM            

He's everything I always said he is and he's proving it day by day.

Now, O'Bomber is once again showing his lawless side. He thinks he's not subject to the law or court decisions.

A Federal Judge has just issued an order for the US to pay the legal expenses of a plaintiff who sued the US over O'Bomber's refusal to reopen the Gulf to offshore drilling. Sadly, those legal expenses will be paid out of US taxpayer money.

Too bad this judge didn't find the Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar in contempt personally..and issue fines of $100,000 per day until Salazar complies with his Federal Court ruling.

Perhaps that's needed to send the message to O'Bomber that he's not and his administration is not...above the law.

U.S. in Contempt Over Gulf Drill Ban, Judge Rules
By Laurel Brubaker Calkins - Feb 3, 2011 2:53 PM ET

The Obama Administration acted in contempt by continuing its deepwater-drilling moratorium after the policy was struck down, a New Orleans judge ruled.

Interior Department regulators acted with “determined disregard” by lifting and reinstituting a series of policy changes that restricted offshore drilling, following the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, U.S. District Judge, Martin Feldman of New Orleans ruled yesterday.

[b[“Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,” Feldman said in the ruling.

“Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium, and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt,” Feldman said.[/b]

President Barack Obama’s administration first halted offshore exploration in waters deeper than 500 feet in May, after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off the Louisiana coast led to a subsea blowout of a BP Plc well that spewed more than 4.1 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Overly Broad

Feldman overturned the initial ban as overly broad on June 22, after the offshore-drilling industry and Gulf Coast political and business leaders challenged it. U.S. Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar said later that day that he would “issue a new order in the coming days that eliminates any doubt that a moratorium is needed, appropriate, and within our authorities.”

In July, Salazar instituted a second drilling moratorium that was also challenged by an industry lawsuit claiming the ban was harming the Gulf Coast economy, which is heavily dependent on deepwater drilling activities. That ban was rescinded in October, before Feldman could rule on its validity.

Feldman later ruled that enhanced drilling safety rules Salazar imposed to permit companies to resume offshore exploration violated federal law, and he struck down those as well. Opponents of those rules complained to Feldman that regulators were continuing to block the resumption of drilling after Feldman’s rulings.

Wyn Hornbuckle, a Justice Department spokesman, said the government is reviewing yesterday’s ruling. He declined to comment further.

Informal Moratorium

The Offshore Marine Service Association, a group representing offshore service vessels and shipyards, urged the president to end what it called an informal moratorium on offshore drilling.

“President Obama claims to have lifted the Gulf moratorium, yet not a single deepwater permit has been issued in nine months,” Jim Adams, the association’s president, said in a release after the ruling. “As a result, thousands of workers are out of jobs, Americans are paying more for gasoline and heating oil, and our nation is becoming even more dependent on unstable nations for our energy needs.”

Feldman also ordered the government to pay the legal fees of Hornbeck Offshore Services LLC, which filed the initial lawsuit. The company had described the fees as “significant.”

Hornbeck “was put to considerable expense, after Judge Feldman issued the injunction, contending with the government’s litigation posturing and defiance of the court’s order,” Sam Giberga, the company’s general counsel, said today in an e-mail.

“The government was not at liberty to impose its own will after the court struck down the policy,” Giberga said. “The government, like any citizen, had to obey the ruling, even if it didn’t like it.”

posted February 04, 2011 01:56 PM            

The purpose of the US Federal Courts is to rule on matters within their jurisdiction which are brought before them. The duty of those who are brought before the Courts is to obey their rulings..OR..appeal to a higher Court.

O'Bomber has done neither.

posted February 04, 2011 06:02 PM            

Of course it comes back to O'Bomber. Just who in the hell do you think Kenneth Salazar
works for? Just who in the hell do you think issues the orders Salazar marches to?

You have your head so far up your butt you wouldn't know what "legislate from the bench" means.

That Federal Judge followed the law in making his ruling. It's been noticed O'Bomber didn't appeal his ruling to a higher court.

posted February 04, 2011 06:46 PM            

quote:

---

Of course it comes back to O'Bomber. Just who in the hell do you think Kenneth Salazar
works for? Just who in the hell do you think issues the orders Salazar marches to?

---

Salazar works for the Obama administration. I've never disputed this. This doesn't make Salazar Obama, though, and posting Salazar's issue in a thread about Obama is misleading at best.

quote:

---

You have your head so far up your butt you wouldn't know what "legislate from the bench" means.

---

Hmmm...you think overturning an Executive moratorium isn't legislating from the bench? Do you know what a moratorium is, and why they want it?

quote:

---

That Federal Judge followed the law in making his ruling.

---

That Federal judge followed HIS interpretation of the law in making his ruling.

quote:

---

It's been noticed O'Bomber didn't appeal his ruling to a higher court.

---

The Interior Department isn't set up to administrate/regulate off shore drilling at present. At least not under the parameters that the studying commission has come up with. This is what I was saying when I talked about you completely avoiding ALL the other news regarding offshore drilling. The administration has plans, and is working on this situation. The fact is, this judge just doesn't believe the government is compelling in it's reason for the moratorium. That's a matter of opinion as far as I can tell. The only good news is that the judge can't find anything to justify compelling the Interior Department to move faster, which is probably why there hasn't been an appeal.

posted February 04, 2011 10:14 PM            

That commission you're so in love with acoustic has no authority to legislate or make any rules of the road for oil companies to follow.

It's a "commission", not an agency of the federal government. Get it?

The judge on the other hand has real authority to exercise the written law and see to it that the Executive branch doesn't act in an arbitrary manner in exercising the authority the Constitution assigns to the Executive Branch...which is exactly what O'Bomber has done and in defiance of a Federal Court Order.

posted February 05, 2011 02:19 AM            

The judge has the authority to do what he's done, yes. However, what he's done is a matter of interpretation as I've said, and further the judge is unable to compel the administration to grant license to these people.

posted March 08, 2011 10:04 AM            

He's a Sick, Sick, Sick Man...yes he is, yes he is, yes he is!

March 08, 2011
Obama's Edifice Complex
By Ed Lasky

Barack Obama proclaimed on the eve of his primary triumph in 2008 that future generations would look back and remember:

"this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal...this was the time we came together to remake this great nation."

With echoes of Genesis, the world was on the verge of becoming not only his stage but also his dominion. Little did we realize that his grandiosity was not just a celebratory outburst but the articulation in sound-bite form of his plan to truly remake our country. Those words may also be his political epitaph, as his plans run aground on the rock shore of reality.

His election was given a boost by the precipitous slide in the stock market and the economy before the election in 2008. He truly did not let this "crisis go to waste." Congress was swamped with Democrats and they gave Barack Obama a platinum American Express card to go wild. We have yet to see a President -- with the possible exception of FDR -- who was as determined to create as many monuments to his own presidency as the man who now holds the reins of power in the Oval Office.

Barack Obama has an edifice complex, not of buildings but of government programs, and after he has finished leaving his mark, we will paying the price for decades to come.

Barack Obama was determined to remake health care and be the one president to bring universal health care to all Americans -- a feat that his primary opponent and her husband failed in accomplishing. He never minded the term ObamaCare when it became the nickname for the unwieldy and Orwellian Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (only when its popularity plummeted did his Democratic allies object to the use of "ObamaCare").

This was to be his signature achievement -- come hell or high water and through any means, fair and foul. Hence the sorry spectacle that Americans witnessed as politicians twisted and pulled, bribed and threatened to pass a monstrosity that the majority of Americans did not want. But a legacy was at stake and Obama twisted arms (disgracing his office when he threatened one wavering Democrat with the taunt, "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother"), disregarded public polls, trashed Congressional procedures, and all but ignored that piece of parchment that has served for hundreds of years as the foundation of our nation. One-sixth of the economy is now in the hands of bureaucrats and ideologues with barely any real world experience. Reality-based worlds must be for little people. Who cares about the costs? Barack Obama wants bragging rights as large as his healthy ego.

All Hail ObamaCare.

Health-care bragging rights: check.

How else to create a legend? How else to follow the adage ascribed to a fellow Chicagoan, architect Daniel Burnham to "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood".

Obama's blood us stirred alright, with an admixture of adrenalin.

What was next on the horizon as Obama looked across America from the Olympian Heights of the District of Columbia?

Perhaps, those power lines stretching across America may have given him an idea (or maybe it was his guru, David Axelrod, who did major league astroturfing for one of the largest electric utilities in the nation, Exelon). Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse are icons of the America energy industry. Has our President a fatal case of icon-envy? Weren't those Obama posters wallpapering America and his ubiquitous presence on television enough? Does narcissism ever end?

Obama is insatiable when it comes to leaving monuments to his own reign behind. We were warned that he had a bit of the megalomaniac about him years ago.

Barack Obama's zeal to remake the energy industry is akin to a perpetual motion machine. His latest gambit is to impose a clean energy standard throughout America . But his agenda has been clear for years.

He wants to create a green and clean energy industry -- a dream filled with shimmering images of solar farms, windmills, ethanol plants (for now), fleets of electric cars, and bullet rains zipping their ways across America. The problem with dreams is they are often just fantasies with little prospect of coming to fruition.

During an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008, he said, "under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket" and would probably make the coal industry less viable. He may have an aversion to fighting wars but he certainly is committed to a war on coal.

But while Edison relied on free enterprise to bring about a revolution, Obama seeks to kill off free enterprise (and the element carbon while he is at it) and rely on government fiat and loads of taxpayer money.

His obsession was manifest very early in his Presidency: the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Program received $1.7 billion in 2008 and $16.8 billion in 2009-a 1,014 % increase and a sign of big things to come as our modern-day Edison seeks to bring forth an energy revolution. The spendthrift ways are still in full flower: his 2011 budget proposes billions more for clean energy "investments" (while slashing spending for fossil fuel research).

Bu(t) they are expensive, inefficient and wasteful (no wonder Democrats love them -- they sound like government).

Unable to stand on their own, Obama has used every means at his disposal (this is the man who said he would bring a gun to a knife fight) to force his green energy schemes down our collective throats.

President Obama also saw an opportunity to shut down Gulf of Mexico oil drilling in the wake of the BP oil spill ("never let a crisis go to waste") by issuing an executive order banning further drilling. The moratorium was accompanied by a series of safety regulations given to the White House by a panel of experts that would have made a resumption of drilling more difficult. That panel later accused the White House of misleading the public by misrepresenting their views and their report as an endorsement of the moratorium. A federal judge ordered the moratorium lifted. When the Interior Department tried to evade the judge's order by reissuing a moratorium -- albeit one drafted a bit differently -- and imposing other constraints on Gulf drilling, the same judge held the administration in contempt.

The Interior Department has also drastically slowed the issuing of leases of federal land for exploration and the issuing of permits to drill for oil and gas-a de facto moratorium. Recently, the EPA has started looking into the practice of "fracking" a technique used to liberate vast amounts of gas and oil from huge shale formations that underlay much of America. While President Obama sets aside a vast swath of federal lands as a critical habit and thus forecloses energy development, and while the Interior Department slows to a crawl oil drilling permits, the administration speeds wind farm permits.

Obama owes Iowa. Those fine citizens gave his fledgling primary campaign a big boost in 2008. So the ruinous ethanol subsidies continue, despite mounting evidence that these boondoggles are wasteful, based on bad science, harmful to the environment, and damaging to the food supply of the world (40% of the corn crop is fed into the ethanol maw). Even Al Gore admits ethanol programs are a failure and admits he supported them as a way to garner political points.

Solar and wind power are woefully inefficient and pose a myriad of problems (distance from consumers triggering the Not-in-My Backyard syndrome among landowners whose views might be marred by power lines; vast areas needed for solar farms; vast subsidies needed to justify projects; endangerment of animals; possible health effects from proximity to windmills; unreliability of power).

But Obama is determined to remake our landscape. Given that there is no space on Mount Rushmore, why not try for something even more ambitious: planting vast solar farms and Quixote-like giant windmills across our land, all stamped with the "Made by Obama" label. Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" needs to be modernized with the name Obama slipped into the lyrics-so determined is he to outdo FDR's Depression-era post offices (themselves on the way out).

Obama's justifies his plans by touting "green jobs". This is a fiction.

Any green jobs generated come at great cost and are often temporary . A fringe benefit for Obama is that these federally-funded projects often go to union members and are subject to the Davis-Bacon act that requires high wages be paid on federally-funded projects, a subtle method of replenishing the union coffers for the next election cycle (and unions, to no one's surprise, give the vast bulk of their campaign cash to Democrats; they have even boasted of the amounts they spent to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats. Maybe there is one way that recycling works: taxpayer dollars are recycled as political contributions).

As Byron York points out, there has been a lot of flim-flammery regarding how the Obama administration plays fast and loose when it comes to defining "green jobs" (echoes of the elastic definition of "jobs created and saved"). They often kill jobs (see Green Smoke Screen by Bjorn Lomborg) and when they don't kill jobs they often just send them overseas.

But these image projects all too often play the starring role in Democratic Party's Friends and Family Program -- the boondoggles gild the lilly and line the pockets of donors and relatives of the Democratic powers-that-be, including those of Barack Obama. (See this about windmills and the influential Democratic Carnahan family of Missouri; and this about solar panels and former Democratic Congressman Kanjorski; and this about a disastrous 535 million dollar loan guarantee given to Solyndra, whose very viability is being questioned by its auditors but which has a big investor in George Kaiser, a big bundler of campaign cash for Barack Obama; and then there is the sugar granddaddy of the Democratic Party, George Soros, who plans to invest a billion dollars in "green energy"; Al Gore who has a big investment in an electric car company, Fisker Automotive, that has benefited to the tune of $529 million and change of taxpayer dollars; there is a brewing fraternity of journalists who ferret out these clear conflicts of interest -- a growth industry in the era of Obama.

Why stop with the remake of the energy industry? Why not eclipse Henry Ford and remake the car industry? Hence, the federal takeover of two of the once-great American auto companies. Even bankruptcy laws are bent and broken to benefit auto unions at the expense of creditor rights and the law.

Why not use the unprecedented power in the hands of the President to promote electric cars -- let's call them ObamaCars (or at least Democratic allies of Barack Obama cry "unfair").

But again, reality has reared its ugly head. A New York Post editorial was succinct:

One of President Obama's pet projects is the clean-green wonder called the electric car.

Obama burned through $2.4 billion in stimulus money on grants and tax breaks to boost its production, and pledged in January to get "a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015."

That's aiming high. At the rate they're selling today, Obama should hit that benchmark in about 900 years.

GM managed to sell just 281 units of its electric Chevy Volt in February, while Nissan sold a meager 67 Leafs.

No wonder. Their batteries die so quickly -- the Leaf has a 100-mile range -- they're about as reliable and cost-efficient as running a car on AAA batteries.

Conundrum! What should Obama do to get more electric cars on the road?

Maybe he should pass a law mandating citizens to buy electric cars.

For the most part, they have become playthings for the rich who indulge in conspicuous consumption -- helped by our tax dollars and subsidies for purchasing electric cars. But for the rest of us living in the real world (where cold weather kills the batteries that "power" these cars) they are just souped-up Edsels. He is driving the car and the rest of us are in the back seat paying for the ride; and it is a ride that will not end well, probably (to mix Obama's own oft-used metaphor) in the ditch.

The Washington Post's Charles Lane calls Obama's passion for electric cars "Obama's Electric Car Cult," for very good reasons: cultists live in a fantasy world of their own making. Young children live in fantasy worlds; not most adults.

Barack Obama‘s Inaugural Address included the call that "the time has come to set aside childish things." Perhaps when he replays that speech to himself he may take those words to heart.

What might be the next big thing on Obama's radar (we know that a Russian bear on the prowl and Islamic extremism are certainly not)? How else could Barack Obama's edifice complex manifest itself?

A trivia question might give us a clue. What do most Americans come across every day that is the legacy of one President? One more clue: think Dwight Eisenhower. Bingo! The highway system was created and promoted by Eisenhower and has outlasted his mortal self. Does Obama want to create a monument to his own Presidency, miles wide and sprawling across the nation for all of us to behold?

Could Obama leave a similar edifice behind --say a high speed rail network costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars? He has been forcefully trying to get this past Congress and past recalcitrant Governors worried about the real-world viability of high-speed rail networks across America

These high speed rail projects would be a disaster. Robert Samuelson of the Washington post writes:

High-speed rail would definitely be big. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has estimated the administration's ultimate goal - bringing high-speed rail to 80 percent of the population - could cost $500 billion over 25 years. For this stupendous sum, there would be scant public benefits. Precisely the opposite. Rail subsidies would threaten funding for more pressing public needs: schools, police, defense.

How can we know this? History, for starters.

Passenger rail service inspires wishful thinking. In 1970, when Congress created Amtrak to preserve intercity passenger trains, the idea was that the system would become profitable and self-sustaining after an initial infusion of federal money. This never happened. Amtrak has swallowed $35 billion in subsidies, and they're increasing by more than $1 billion annually.

Despite the subsidies, Amtrak does not provide low-cost transportation. Longtime critic Randal O'Toole of the Cato Institute recently planned a trip from Washington to New York. Noting that fares on Amtrak's high-speed Acela start at $139 one-way, he decided to take a private bus service. The roundtrip fare: $21.50. Nor does Amtrak do much to relieve congestion, cut oil use, reduce pollution or eliminate greenhouse gases. Its traffic volumes are simply too small to matter....

The reasons passenger rail service doesn't work in America are well-known: Interstate highways shorten many trip times; suburbanization has fragmented destination points; air travel is quicker and more flexible for long distances (if fewer people fly from Denver to Los Angeles and more go to Houston, flight schedules simply adjust). Against history and logic is the imagery of high-speed rail as "green" and a cutting-edge technology.

What's disheartening about the Obama administration's embrace of high-speed rail is that it ignores history, evidence and logic. The case against it is overwhelming. The case in favor rests on fashionable platitudes. High-speed rail is not an "investment in the future"; it's mostly a waste of money.

Even Ray Lahood, Obama's Transportation Secretary, tips the hand of Obama and shows the megalomaniac agenda at work, the edifice complex in its full budget-busting glory.

The Washington Examiner reminds us:

In an October 2010 interview, LaHood denigrated the "traditional people in Congress who like the idea that we continue to build roads and bridges and things like that," as opposed to the "big things" he and Obama support, including enormously expensive high-speed rail, unprofitable low-speed Amtrak, and other forms of government-subsidized mass transit.

In other words, Americans are bitter clingers who grasp onto their wallets for dear life as their pocketbooks are ransacked to build monuments to Obama's own ego. These inflated and ruinously expensive dreams of reengineering America are wreaking havoc on people's views of him.

Why persist in these fantastical exercises of egoism objectified? Where will it all end as Obama's Edifice Complex runs wild? The plans are redolent of other "visionary" agendas -- "Great Leaps Forward" and "Five Year Plans", and such -- produced by command and control leaders of the past; the same plans that produced very little but mass misery and failure.***..think Lenin, Stalin and Mao***

With our nation mired in debt for decades to come and Obama's reputation in tatters. A poem, Ozymandias, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley regarding another ruler with a desire to monumentalize himself and his reign may be prophetic:

posted March 09, 2011 11:10 AM            

I think the House Republicans are going to zero out the taxpayer money which has been supporting these leftist twits for far too long. If NPR can't compete headsup in the radio market of ideas then goodbye and good riddance.

March 08, 2011
NPR exec caught on hidden camera trashing conservatives, sliming Jews
Rick Moran

James O'Keefe, the young filmmaker who brought down ACORN, has caught on tape two people identified as senior executives of NPR bashing conservatives and the tea party and cozying up to people they believe to represent a Muslim organization affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, in hope of scoring a multi-million dollar donation. Matthew Boyle of the Daily Caller has an excellent write-up of the contents of the contents of the recording released by O'Keefe:

"The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian - I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move," declared [Ron] Schiller, who runs NPR's foundation.

In a new video released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe, Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR's director of institutional giving, are seen meeting with two men who, unbeknownst to the NPR executives, are posing as members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group. The men, who identified themselves as Ibrahim Kasaam and Amir Malik from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust, met with Schiller and Liley at Café Milano, a well-known Georgetown restaurant, and explained their desire to give to $5 million to NPR because, "the Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere."

On the tapes, Schiller wastes little time before attacking conservatives. The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been "hijacked by this group." The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, "the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people." Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren't "just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."

The release of the recording comes a day after NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ron) in a talk at the National Press Club challenged anyone for evidence of liberal bias at NPR.

That's not the only difference between the undercover tape and NPR's public positions.

Later in the lunch, Schiller explains that NPR would be better positioned free of federal funding. "Well frankly, it is clear that we would be better off in the long-run without federal funding," he says. "The challenge right now is that if we lost it all together we would have a lot of stations go dark."

When one of O'Keefe's associates asked, "How confident are you, with all the donors that are available, if they should pull the funding right now that you would survive?," Schiller answered this way: "Yes, NPR would definitely survive and most of the stations would survive."

That is precisely the opposite answer Schiller's boss, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation), gave at a press conference Monday in Washington. "We take [federal defunding] very, very seriously," she said. "It would have a profound impact we believe on our ability - of public broadcasting's ability - to deliver news and information."

At the Café Milano lunch, Schiller said he's "very proud of" how NPR fired Juan Williams. "What NPR stood for is non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward telling of the news and our feeling is that if a person expresses his or her opinion, which anyone is entitled to do in a free society, they are compromised as a journalist," he said. "They can no longer fairly report."

With that, Schiller once again directly contradicted NPR's public statements. At her Monday press conference, Vivian Schiller apologized for the way it handled the Williams matter. "We handled the situation badly," she said. "We acted too hastily and we made some mistakes. I made some mistakes

Clearly, it is time to defund public broadcasting.

Update. NPR responds:

"The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept," Davis Rehm said in an e-mail to The Daily Caller. "We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for."

The leader of the House effort to defund NPR responds to Byron York:

I am amazed at the condescension and arrogance that we saw in the sting video," Lamborn told me. "They seem to be viewing themselves as elites living in an ivory tower, and they are obviously out of touch with ordinary Americans."

posted March 14, 2011 09:57 AM            

In addition to examining the roots of Barack Obama's political philosophy, an evaluation of his management style, such as might be undertaken by an independent business consultant, is likewise instructive.

The comparison is apt in that the United States government can be viewed from a business perspective as a service provider. In attempting to analyze problems that exist and evolve the correct remedies, consultants typically begin by observing the way in which management -- especially top management -- leads and interacts with the organization. This would begin with an examination of five key areas.

Management Style

In classic management theory, Barack Obama would have to be described as an abdicative manager.

The abdicative manager evidences a tendency to flee from responsibility and is frequently encountered in situations where he or she never wanted the job in the first place (for instance, a son or daughter who inherits a company) or the individual who discovers that they are incapable of adequate performance. Abdication can be exhibited in a variety of ways, ranging from physically removing oneself through travel (the confusion of movement with action), to obsessing about personal interests or a limited range of controllable subjects.

Obama's frequent vacations and absences, especially in times of crisis, coupled with his unwillingness to personally invest himself in key initiatives, are demonstrative of this style. An excellent example occurred after passage of the healthcare initiative. Having ceded authority in what would later be described as his key achievement to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he watched as they forced the bill through under a manufactured emergency that precluded lawmakers from having time to read it. He then went on a four-day vacation before signing it.

Team Building and Leadership

If a large organization is to function effectively, it is essential that the management team be composed of individuals who are experienced, capable, and able to function together smoothly in pursuit of stated objectives. To build the team, the top executive names a primary staff or inner circle to select other team members. The confident executive will not hesitate to recruit individuals whose ideas may deviate from his own, as long as they are competent and willing to work with other team members. Having access to multiple, even conflicting, points of view is essential to obtaining a realistic vision of events.

The Obama administration has been singularly ineffective in developing a workable team. The President's inner circle has, for the most part, consisted of Chicago machine politicians. The appointment of numerous Czars, whose functions are neither well-articulated nor understood, has led to confusion on all levels and among the public. The selection mechanism is badly dysfunctional, as illustrated by the choice of self-proclaimed Communist Van Jones as Green Jobs Czar; under-age sex advocate Kevin Jennings as School Safety Czar; and multiple other controversial appointments. Cabinet appointees include Energy Secretary Steven Chu, (like Obama, an advocate of high gas prices); Attorney General Eric Holder, whose advocacy of racial preferences has resulted in serious dissension within the Justice Department; Janet Napolitano, a career politician with no training or experience in security as Secretary of Homeland Security; and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Conflicts between Mrs. Clinton's State Department and the administration, arising over a variety of foreign policy questions, have been painfully obvious.

At a time when the economy is in recession, and unemployment stands at historic highs, it is significant that less than seven percent of Obama's appointees have any private sector experience. The number of administrative officials in high places who have left after two years or less is further evidence of the leadership vacuum.

Strategic Planning

A critical element of executive responsibility, strategic planning sets the mid- to long-term goals of the organization that form the rationale for shorter term and day-to-day activities. In any large business, strategic planning would involve allocation of existing resources, planning the corporate infrastructure, developing timely products and services to assure customer retention and expansion, targeting new opportunities, and phasing out systems no longer efficient or profitable.

Other than placating the far left -- a small and shrinking segment of his "customer" base -- it is difficult to discover any strategic direction in Obama's thinking. Even his so-called singular achievement, ObamaCare, was poorly cobbled together without much direction. On questions including foreign policy, to the war in Afghanistan, trials for terrorists, closing the Guantanamo facility, etc., his actions have been tentative and unpredictable. Energy and environmental policies have clearly damaged not only employment opportunities but the nation's infrastructure in terms of energy independence. Just as he permitted his party to proceed through 2010 without articulating a budget, his continued reluctance to advance any policy with regard to entitlements, leaves the administration - and the country - without a strategy and without a plan.

Crisis Management

The "3:00 a.m. Phone Call" TV commercial, produced by the Clinton campaign, was indeed prescient. That phone has rung numerous times, and it has gone unanswered. The failure to provide even moral encouragement to the demonstrators in Iran, coupled with the more recent waffling on the situations in Egypt and Libya, bespeak a president unsure of his policies and unable to react to events in a timely manner. As the drug wars in Mexico have escalated to critical mass, efforts to strengthen the border have languished. Reactions to real and attempted terrorist attacks on America soil have been met with response that is both tepid and uncertain.

Financial Acumen

Most chief executives spend time with stockholders, analysts, credit sources, and others discussing the financial status of the organization. Where there are problems, the CEO is expected to present a rational turnaround plan detailing the steps to be taken to ensure financial survival.

At a time when the national debt threatens to destabilize the entire economy, Obama's only suggestion has been to engage in further spending. The lack of a cohesive financial policy has resulted in a global loss of faith in the U.S. dollar, possible economic collapse, and a threat of future inflation. In refusing to consider the recommendations of the Budget Task Force he appointed, it is clear that his grasp of finance and economics is less than rudimentary.

Lacking both the relevant education and experience, were he applying for an executive position in any company, he would in all likelihood be quickly rejected. His refusal to divulge school records and grades would also work against him. If the business to which he applied was involved in any form of sensitive or defense work, his past associations with radicals would result in the denial of any security clearance.

From a business standpoint, his lack of performance and organizational skills would demand that any ethical consultant approach the Board of Directors with a very strong recommendation that Mr. Obama be fired. Perhaps in 2012, he will be.

posted March 23, 2011 10:51 AM            

Everything Sarah Palin said about Barack Hussein O'Bomber has come to pass...and in only 2 years!

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening."....

"This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy ... our opponent is against producing it."...

"The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes ... raise payroll taxes ... raise investment income taxes ... raise the death tax ... raise business taxes ... and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."...

"How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up? Or maybe you're trying to keep your job at a plant in Michigan or Ohio ... or create jobs with clean coal from Pennsylvania or West Virginia ... or keep a small farm in the family right here in Minnesota.

How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy? Here's how I look at the choice Americans face in this election."...

"For a season, a gifted speaker can inspire with his words."

posted April 25, 2011 08:41 AM            

The genius of the Constitution is not some person, time, or place. It is a very improbable conjunction of all three. Jefferson and Madison were not the only ones to fear the abuse of power. That idea goes back to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Every family with an alcoholic father or a tyrannical grandmother knows it. In England John Locke and Edmund Burke feared tyranny as much as the American founders, but they never had a chance to build the foundations of a new, independent, great power.

Obama is our first Marxist-Leninist president. He never quite uses those words, but in words and deeds he makes it clear beyond doubt. His two autobiographies all but say it.

I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. ... The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists ... we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism,and patriarchy.

The Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation has also published a careful summary of the public record that leaves no doubt about who Obama is.

Obama wrapped himself in his own lifelong cult. Universities are supposed to be places of open debate and open minds, but Obama knew his own life course from childhood on, and never opened up to anything else.

Marxism-Leninism grew out of Europe's totalitarian and imperialistic tradition. It has nothing but contempt for electoral "bourgeois" government. In the free atmosphere of American life, Marxist campus cults are like little cysts that grow in isolation from the real world. Some of them grow bigger and bigger and finally explode into a billion cancer cells, to enter the bloodstream of American life.

No great power in Europe or Asia has ever managed to keep an American-style constitutional balance for long. After Napoleon, France kept trying different Republics, until de Gaulle created its current constitution, which is now being supplanted by the EU. Britain doesn't have a written constitution, but rather a vaguely defined cloud of principles that is now crumbling under the assault of Political Correctness. Canada was a British colony until 1931, and is turning into a PC corruptocracy like Europe. Latin America inherited a hidalgo style of politics from Spain, arrogant and contemptuous of peasants and merchants. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are just hidalgos of the left, with Fidel inflicting mandatory six-hour television lectures on his suffering people over half a century. That's what hidalgos do; no American president could get away with it, and when Obama tried one long speech after another, people just turned off their TVs. Obama must have been stunned that people were not listening to him like the Cubans were listening to Fidel. What's wrong with these people anyway?

Europe's trading cities, like Venice, Amsterdam, and Hamburg came the closest to long-lasting electoral rule, but they never controlled the hinterlands.

As for classical Athens, often called the source of Western democracy, Plato and Aristotle were slave-holding aristocrats in a time of endless war, treachery, imperial conquest, mob rule, hedonistic excess, genocide, and tyranny. Plato's Republic argues for a hereditary aristocracy as the golden mean between one-man tyranny and mob rule, because Plato saw so many political horrors.

In Europe and Asia, new power classes just kept taking over, century after century. Europe gave birth to the political ideals of the Enlightenment, but was never able to put them into practice. Today's European Union is another gigantic front for an unelected political elite.

Europe's suicidal weakness today is its cowardice in the face of radical Islam, and the prosecution of heroic Resistance fighters like Geert Wilders, just for saying what millions of Europeans are thinking. In 1938 Churchill was despised by the political elites, but he was never prosecuted for sounding the alarm about Hitler. In the Libyan mess it looked like Europe might finally be growing up. So far it's getting a D-, mostly for trying hard.
Soon after the American Revolution of 1776, history conducted one of its rare experiments as the French Revolution broke out and quickly fell into bloody anarchy. A decade later Napoleon turned Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité into another egomaniacal empire. That's what Mao Zedong did after the Chinese civil war, Lenin after the Romanoffs, Hitler after the Weimar Republic. Most countries just keep flipping between tyranny and civil war. The Arabs are doing it right in front of our eyes today.

What's new in history is 200 years of peace and stability across 3,000 miles of territory, with only one great breakdown, the American Civil War. Protected by two great oceans and a constitutional balance of powers, millions of people born in the Old World were able to thrive in freedom -- not perfect freedom, which does not exist, but far greater liberty than other major countries.

Obama is our first Napoleonic president whose beliefs are far outside our political tradition. After George Washington was elected, nobody knew how a constitutional president would behave. There was real fear that America had just traded one King George for another. When Washington went home after two terms, there was a palpable sigh of relief and celebration. In the last two and a half centuries only FDR has clung to office more than two terms, and that led to the 22nd Amendment. Washington set the precedent.

Obama acts like a Third World socialist, like his Kenyan father, and his thinking is stunningly rigid. He seems to be woefully ignorant about basic economics, science, and technology, international affairs, and the conventions of American politics. Either that, or he is acting that way as part of his peculiar character disorder. Deliberately violating norms is a way to show contempt for "middleclassness," as Jerry Wright calls it. It's the bourgeois values that Karl Marx hated so much. In psychiatry, deliberate lifelong violations of accepted rules are a sign of "oppositional-defiant personality," closely allied with grandiose narcissism. That describes Obama's lifelong character.

But let's not exaggerate Obama's danger. Politicians come and go. Obama calls Republicans "extremists," "radicals," and "unpatriotic." He's trying to flip the political world upside-down, but the American people know who is really "radical," "extremist," and "unpatriotic." It's not hard to tell. The left is unpatriotic by definition: They simply refuse to believe in "patria," the land of one's fathers and mothers. They are radical transnationalists who pin their faith in some imaginary worldwide command center that will finally solve all human conflict. It will be run by Obama and his kind, of course. This idea is so ancient that it goes back six millennia to Sumer and the Yellow Emperor.

Other politicians in the last 200 years have tried end-runs around the Constitution. The Dixiecrat South was a one-party machine that clung to power for half a century after Reconstruction. Al Capone's Chicago was a one-party machine, backed by threats and violence. Michelle Obama is the daughter of a ward heeler on Southside Chicago. When she told the world that she "had never felt proud of her country," she was just echoing the everyday prattle of her cult. Jesse Jackson is a family friend, and Louis Farrakhan is a big political power in Chicago. They are above criticism, because that's how machine politics works.

Every single imperial ideology in the last two centuries has come from Europe, from Napoleon to Stalin. Obama is not a Jeffersonian democrat. He does not understand or value the European Enlightenment; his roots are in the class war of the 19th century, which has now turned into war of all against all: Women against the men, poor against the rich, blacks against whites, gays against straights. Our media constantly whip up such hatreds, and children learn them in the schools. We have not been able to mount a coherent defense against the leftist divide-and-conquer strategy.

Europe has extreme difficulty with a self-balancing power mechanism like the US Constitution, with the three branches constantly tilting against each other; the States and localities against the Feds; and press monopolies, like today's liberal media, being constantly challenged by new technologies.

Constitutional government is under sustained and vicious assault by the internationalist left. Just read the headlines. It's not a coincidence.

Obama believes in internationalism, with grandiose egos like his own ruling the world. That's what the left is all about, and has been since Karl. Marx is not "progressive" but "retrogressive," because grandiose empires started six millennia ago in the great river valleys of the Old World, where city states amassed the power and ideological beliefs to conquer their neighbors. Obama would be at home in Egypt, Persia, Assyria, Alexander's Greek Empire, Rome, the Inca and Maya empires, Russia, Austro-Hungary, the Soviet Union. They are all pyramid-building empires made up of "soviets" -- councils -- commanded from the top.

The European Union is not an American-style delicately counter-balanced construction, designed to give the people the last word. No, the EU is just another imperial pyramid, and it is systematically disempowering the peoples of Europe.

Americans are the luckiest people in the world, not only because of our material fortune, nor even because of our fundamental decency and good will. We are the luckiest because we can afford to be as dumb as a brick, fail to educate our children, remain blissfully ignorant of the dangers that have killed hundreds of millions of people in the last 50 years, indulge in all the newest drugs, the biggest quantities of alcohol, the widest range of cuisines and tastes, and the usual range of sensual self-indulgence...and we are still protected from doom. So far.

The reason for our astonishing luck can be summarized in a few words. It's the Constitution.

We've been skating on our luck to the point of blind arrogance -- so much that our law schools are teaching their students the "revolutionary" fads of Marxism, explaining how to destroy the legal foundation that is the source of all our good fortune. "Revolution" is celebrated, but "revolution" is just a roll-over of power from one ruling class to another. Even the word "revolution" came from Copernicus's book about the rotation of the earth in the solar system. That kind of turnover of power changes nothing.

Obama really belongs in the post-colonial socialist world, like his father, who also never understood that the land he visited so briefly to father a child, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., represented the biggest revolution in political history. Barack Sr. flew back to Kenya to join Jomo Kenyatta in just another disastrous post-colonial tyranny, one that may have ended in his own death from alcoholism, despair, and two disastrous automobile crashes. Barack Sr. may have dimly apprehended that things were terribly wrong in Kenyatta's post-colonial paradise, as indeed they were. India and China also suffered terribly under post-colonial socialism. They only began to recover when they found a way to give their own talented peoples a modicum of freedom to become productive. They re-discovered their own abilities to thrive without bureaucratic tyranny. Obama Jr. has never figured that out.

The US Constitution is the revolution; the rebellions of the left are just reactionary throwbacks. Whether the liberals like it or not, it's the American Revolution that is radically new, a genuine step toward a different way of living and governing.

The left is not "progressive." On the contrary, it is a reactionary throwback to a tyrannical past.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/04/obama_versus_the_constitution.html

Not only is the left NOT "progressive"; as I stated here repeatedly, it's "Regressive".

One thing further.

posted April 25, 2011 11:33 AM            

quote:

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But let's not exaggerate Obama's danger. Politicians come and go. Obama calls Republicans "extremists," "radicals," and "unpatriotic." He's trying to flip the political world upside-down, but the American people know who is really "radical," "extremist," and "unpatriotic." It's not hard to tell. The left is unpatriotic by definition: They simply refuse to believe in "patria," the land of one's fathers and mothers.

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Oh irony. Obama says this, but we know we said it first about the Left. "Obama's co-opting our line. How dare he!"

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The left is unpatriotic by definition: They simply refuse to believe in "patria," the land of one's fathers and mothers.

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Wouldn't that be Conservatives attacking their own government? How do you justify loving your country when you only believe in it when someone from your party is in power? Flawed logic.

posted April 25, 2011 12:16 PM            

O'Bomber says...what..specifically?

"Wouldn't that be Conservatives attacking their own government"...acoustic

Conservatives are not attacking the US "System" of government. Commenting on the lunacy of O'Bomber's policies and the policies of O'Bomber's congressional comrades is NOT attacking America.

We leave that to the incessant..."I hate America" crowd of which O'Bomber is a part. The Marxist, Leninist, Maoist Socialist Progressive crowd with which O'Bomber and leftist sycophants run.

"It's that same old Conservative philosophy that, "If I believe it, and I write it, it must be true."...acoustic

posted April 25, 2011 01:02 PM            

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Conservatives are not attacking the US "System" of government. Commenting on the lunacy of O'Bomber's policies and the policies of O'Bomber's congressional comrades is NOT attacking America.

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But it WAS when it was people commenting on Bush's administration. How are you not understanding the irony of what you're supposing?

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Now acoustic, haven't I pointed out to you...many times...that it's the leftists who think whatever they can make people believe is..by definition...True! Yes I have, yes I have, yes I have...and over many years.

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