Brooks Jackson, SF Chronicle.com

 

After nearly 100 days in office, we find that President Obama is sticking to the facts - mostly.

 

Nevertheless, we at FactCheck.org have a mission of "holding politicians accountable," and we have noted that the president has occasionally strayed from the facts - or has spun them. And he has done so generally in ways that put him and his policies in a better light than the facts warrant.

 

For example, facing some heat from critics who complain that the administration's budget figures are too rosy, Obama offered a misleading defense to a national TV audience during his prime-time news conference on March 24. He said, "Our assumptions are perfectly consistent with what Blue Chip forecasters out there are saying." That wasn't true.

 

Obama was referring to the Blue Chip Economic Indicators, a survey of forecasts from 50 private economists. In fact, at the time he spoke, the most recent Blue Chip forecast was far more pessimistic than the administration's budget projections. That's no small matter, because a weaker economic performance will produce even larger federal deficits than the Obama budget already forecasts. Read article.

Jeffrey Lord. Spectator.org

 

Fifty years ago it was the picture heard around the world.

 

The young Vice President of the United States standing up to the bullying Russian tyrant, his right index finger literally poking Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the chest.

 

For the rest of his political career, the photograph -- and the incident that prompted it -- would visually enshrine the world's view of Richard Nixon as the American politician who would quite literally never blink when it came to standing up to America's enemies.

 

In the aftermath of President Barack Obama's timid performance when face-to-face with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez -- who has cast the United States as, among many things, an "imperialist monster" even as he goes about systematically repressing his own people and making alliances with American enemies -- it is worth recalling just what happened when Nixon found himself in a similar situation. Read article.

Thomas Brewton, Capitol Hill Coffee House.com

 

President Obama seems intent upon cramming stifling socialist programs down our throats domestically, while he relies upon pretty-word diplomacy with foreign nations that have vowed to destroy us.

 

Reportedly the President’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel stated that an economic crisis is too good an opportunity to be wasted on economics, when it can be used, as Franklin Roosevelt did in the Depression, to revolutionize the nation’s social and political structure, in effect to amend the Constitution without the bother of submitting amendments in accord with the Constitution’s Article V.

 

This connotes a domestic jackboot approach evident in many recent Federal actions and policy initiatives. For example:

 

Firing General Motors’ CEO and publicly threatening to fire corporate and bank executives who fail to do as the government wishes; refusing to permit banks to repay Federal loans that the Treasury and the Fed compelled them to accept, even when they did not need the loans; in pressuring General Motors to terminate its GMC truck brand; in forcing General Motors and Chrysler to abandon manufacture of the sorts of cars consumers want and to concentrate on manufacture of money-losing “green” cars that only a tiny fraction of the public want. Read article.

 

David Limbaugh, JWR.com

 

Observing the Obama administration's approach so far to the war on terror is somewhat reminiscent, if you'll accept the crude analogy, of watching Panamanian boxing legend Roberto Duran's rematch against American boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard. Duran was within his rights to say "no mas" and quit, but it didn't keep him from losing.

 

But here the analogy breaks down. While Duran could avoid further Leonard blows by quitting, a nation under attack by a warring force cannot prevent further attacks against itself simply by declaring an end to hostilities. Yet that's precisely what the Obama administration appears to be doing in the war on terror, most recently with its outrageously reckless public release of classified Justice Department memos on the legality of CIA interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners. Read article.

 

Victor Davis Hanson, Patriot Post.us

 

President Obama proclaims no more of George Bush's "war on terror," even as he silently keeps most of it in place. The result is as confusing as it soon will be dangerous.

 

In these first 100 days of his presidency, Barack Obama has promised that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility will be closed within a year. He has assured us wiretapping and overseas rendition are under re-examination.

 

The president has also sent envoys to reach out to a hostile Syria and a video expressing past American culpability in hopes of starting afresh with Iran.

 

At various times in interviews and lectures, Obama has reminded the world that the United States alone has dropped an atomic bomb, that it has been unnecessarily provocative to Muslims, that it has a shameful record of slavery and racial discrimination, and that almost everything George Bush did was wrong. Read article.

 

Dr. Forest Lewis, Capitol Hill Coffee House.com

 

Barack Hussein-Obama is so self-absorbed in his own narcissism that he can’t see that many world leaders not only disdain him; they are laughing out loud as soon as he leaves the room!

 

Yes, this is the same man who has convinced himself that he can seduce world leaders with his mellifluous voice, and his smile, the way a playboy can bewitch and mesmerize any unsuspecting woman. But, there is one thing the playboy won’t tell you: Sometimes, “He Gets Played.”

 

The world has heard and seen enough of this “Windbag In A Suit.” And the world has made its assessment. It is being reported that French President, Sarkozy, feels Obama’s thinking on some of the world’s biggest issues is plagiarism at best. According to www.timesonline.com, this web site is reporting that Sarkozy feels obama’s arrogance to recast America as a world leader is, “Unoriginal, Unsubstantial And Overrated.”

 

The Times says Sarkozy while pretending to like Mr. Obama, is highly irritated at him. And that irritation seeps out from behind closed doors at the Elysee Palace, where President Sarkozy says Obama is full of “Hot Air” when he talks about “Freeing The World Of The Menace Of A Nuclear Nightmare.” Read article.

 

Brent Littlefield , Pajamas Media.com

 

When it comes to ethics, there's a lot of hypocrisy in the Obama administration. In the flurry of news coverage since the historic election of Barack Obama, the American public has been largely shielded from the promises broken in the Obama administration.

 

We have seen pronouncements of new plans for the economy that the president claims fulfill his sweeping promises of change he made to the American people. However, we have seen little coverage of the many issues — on matters of taxation, the size and role of government, his prescriptions for the ailing economy — where Obama’s rhetoric simply doesn’t match the reality of his presidency. Read article.

 

Jennifer Rubin,Pajamas Media.com

 

Get out the bell bottoms and the lava lamps. We are going back to the 1970s. This is not a new fashion craze. It is the new economic and international reality. The good news for Republicans: after the 1970s came Ronald Reagan.

 

On the domestic front we have at least temporarily given up emphasis on free markets and economic expansion. Instead, we are back to expanding government and running up a frightful tab. The debt is piling up, the Fed has the printing press going and the Chinese rightfully concerned we will inflate away our obligations.

 

On energy, regulatory schemes to increase energy prices and thereby decrease energy usage are now in fashion. We aren’t yet rationing gas by the last digit of car license plates, but cap-and-trade legislation and the pronouncement that carbon dioxide is a threat to the planet have a common goal: restrict carbon output and industrial activity. Read article.

 

Lynn Woolley, AIM.org

 

“For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely.”

 

-- Emmanuel Goldstein, defining doublethink in “1984,” George Orwell, 1949.

 

Guess what – there was no terrorist attack on 9/11. There may have been an “attack,” but there were no “terrorists.” If we had “terrorists,” then we would require a “Global War on Terror,” but we don’t because the Obama administration has changed the language. We now have an “Overseas Contingency Operation.” You can almost imagine Winston Lewis, slaving at his post in the “Ministry of Truth” to redact all mentions of the Global War on Terror.

 

Of course, the term “Global War on Terror” left something to be desired since it was really a Global War on Radical Islam. Doesn’t anyone in the political world believe in plain speaking and clear understanding? Not exactly.

 

Mostly they believe in “doublethink,” the Orwellian concept of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. Winston and Julia, the star-crossed lovers in “1984,” refused to allow Big Brother – the government – to think for them. But today, we seem just fine with that. Read article.

 

The Raw Story.com

 

U.S. President Barack Obama Monday asked Congress to back an expansion of an IMF emergency fund by $500 billion in a move designed to expand its reach to big emerging-market nations.

 

Obama also asked lawmakers to approve a U.S. contribution to the fund to $100 billion, as part of the plan to swell International Monetary Fund reserves agreed at this month’s Group of 20 industrial and developing nations summit in London.

 

At the G20 summit, “the Germans did not want an EU effort to bail out the banks,” reported the Asia Times. “They wanted the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bail out a substantial part of the EU financial system instead.

 

The reason was simple: The IMF receives loans from the United States, as well as China and Japan, meaning the Europeans would be joined by others in underwriting the bailout. The United States has signaled it would be willing to contribute $100 billion to the IMF, of which a substantial portion would go to Central Europe. (Of the current loans given by the IMF, roughly 80% have gone to the struggling economies in Central Europe.)” Read article.

 

Joseph Williams, Boston.com

 

Harold Hongju Koh, the Boston-born dean of Yale Law School, has spent part of his academic career analyzing the ways international law can influence a country's domestic laws.

 

Koh casts himself as a pure academic, studying how international norms seep into domestic legal opinions. But during the Bush administration, he was among the many academics who criticized the president for failing to uphold the Geneva Conventions and other treaties.

 

Now, President Obama has nominated Koh, 53, to become the State Department's top lawyer, and Koh is also widely believed to be a leading candidate for the Supreme Court. But as a key Senate committee prepares to take up his nomination later this week, opposition is growing among conservative thinkers, right-wing blogs, and some Republican lawmakers. Read article.

 

JB Williams, Capitol Hill Coffee House.com

 

Clearly, Resident-in-Thief Barack Obama’s ascension from neophyte political nobody with missing birth certificate, a blank resume and college records more Top Secret than CIA interrogation files, was indeed “historic.” Equally clear is the fact that the alleged “political messiah” is a token leader entirely led by others, beginning with the high Chief of America-bashing, Rahm Emanuel, and including great communist “freedom fighters” Castro and Chavez.

 

So, it should come as no surprise that the Resident who passed token tax-cuts and token economic stimulus initiatives, follows up with token “budget cuts” aimed at proving what a serious fiscal conservative he is...and just how ignorant CNN fans are.

 

Obama is calling his entire cabinet together for the first time in his administration, for the purpose of challenging his staff to find $100 million in budget cuts. Whoopee! The $400 token tax credit to his constituents won’t cover even one average car payment or light bill. The trillions in tax-payer “bailout” funds are only driving an already bankrupt Fed even deeper in to unmanageable debt, in an unprecedented effort to “buy-up” the free market economy, not save it.

 

The $400 token tax credit to his constituents won’t cover even one average car payment or light bill. The trillions in tax-payer “bailout” funds are only driving an already bankrupt Fed even deeper in to unmanageable debt, in an unprecedented effort to “buy-up” the free market economy, not save it. Read article.

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