Ben Feller, Associated Press.com

 

The unrelenting global troubles confronting Barack Obama are about to converge on him all at once, providing a stern test of leadership for a first-year president who has pledged to "change the world."

 

In a span of four days, Obama will plunge into the politics of the United Nations and host a summit in Pittsburgh on the world's wobbling economy. The international stage is coming to him, and no one standing on it with him will have higher stakes.

 

Obama is under pressure to push along stalled Mideast peace, prove the United States is serious about climate change and rally allies against the nuclear threats of Iran and North Korea. Restless leaders in Europe and elsewhere are pressing Obama to reform risky U.S. financial behavior and get Congress on board.

 

He also bears the load of two inherited wars that now bear his imprint — the one he's winding down in Iraq and the one that's widening in Afghanistan. Eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Obama must hold together international will as he tries to keep Afghanistan from becoming an al-Qaida launching pad again.

 

The talks have the potential to be galvanizing moments or opportunities lost.

 

"Leadership is not just telling people what you want, as the Bush administration discovered. Leadership is getting people to do what you need them to do," said Jon Alterman, a senior fellow in Middle East policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former State Department official in President George W. Bush's first term. Read article.

 

Did America betray us? Or it was just Obama?

Atlas Shrugs.Typad.com

 

Apparently, even the Poles know what's happening here............I just received this missive (unsolicited) from Michael Wisniewski, director of the Europa 21 Foundation. The English is a bit awkward, but his message is crystal clear. I have not corrected it -- it remains unedited.

 

View from Poland

 

It was the worst what American government was able to do.

 

This decision was announced on 17th September, when Poland was commemorating the 70th anniversary of soviet invasion. Day, when Soviet Union allied with Nazis and stabbed our country in the back. This was effect of Nazi- Soviet Pact that was signed on 28th August in Moscow. After this day all dreams about resisting against Hitler perished - two evil empires combined their powers to destroy our freedom and sovereignty.

 

At the same day, 70 years later, Obama bowed to Kremlin. It was something that created really great turmoil in all Poland. What is worse - people here feel that they were betrayed. It's not only about the anti-missile shield. It's about polish attitude towards USA. United States were seen as the great defender of freedom and democracy all around the world. United States support Israel against Ahmadinejad's threats.

 

After 9/11 Poles expressed solidarity with USA without any hesitation. Despite the fact that we were risking alienation from some of our European partners. And after we joined US-led coalition against terrorism, we were verbally attacked by Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Shroeder - leaders of two major European powers. But our position was clear and firm - we would stay with USA and fight against common enemies - enemies who attacked our ally and the whole free world. No other country had so special status in Poland - almost 80% Poles sympathized with US. Read article.

Charles Krauthammer, RCP.com

 

You lie? No. Barack Obama doesn't lie. He's too subtle for that. He . . . well, you judge.

 

Herewith three examples within a single speech -- the now-famous Obama-Wilson "you lie" address to Congress on health care -- of Obama's relationship with truth.

 

(1) "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future," he solemnly pledged. "I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future. Period."

 

Wonderful. The president seems serious, veto-ready, determined to hold the line. Until, notes Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, you get to Obama's very next sentence: "And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."

 

This apparent strengthening of the pledge brilliantly and deceptively undermines it. What Obama suggests is that his plan will require mandatory spending cuts if the current rosy projections prove false. But there's absolutely nothing automatic about such cuts. Every Congress is sovereign. Nothing enacted today will force a future Congress or a future president to make any cuts in any spending, mandatory or not.

 

Just look at the supposedly automatic Medicare cuts contained in the Sustainable Growth Rate formula enacted to constrain out-of-control Medicare spending. Every year since 2003, Congress has waived the cuts.

 

Mankiw puts the Obama bait-and-switch in plain language. "Translation: I promise to fix the problem. And if I do not fix the problem now, I will fix it later, or some future president will, after I am long gone. I promise he will. Absolutely, positively, I am committed to that future president fixing the problem. You can count on it. Would I lie to you?"

 

(2) And then there's the famous contretemps about health insurance for illegal immigrants. Obama said they would not be insured. Well, all four committee-passed bills in Congress allow illegal immigrants to take part in the proposed Health Insurance Exchange.

 

But more important, the problem is that laws are not self-enforcing. If they were, we'd have no illegal immigrants because, as I understand it, it's illegal to enter the United States illegally. We have laws against burglary, too. But we also provide for cops and jails on the assumption that most burglars don't voluntarily turn themselves in.

 

When Republicans proposed requiring proof of citizenship, the Democrats twice voted that down in committee. Indeed, after Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" shout-out, the Senate Finance Committee revisited the language of its bill to prevent illegal immigrants from getting any federal benefits. Why would the Finance Committee fix a nonexistent problem?

 

(3) Obama said he would largely solve the insoluble cost problem of Obamacare by eliminating "hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud" from Medicare.

 

That's not a lie. That's not even deception. That's just an insult to our intelligence. Waste, fraud and abuse -- Meg Greenfield once called this phrase "the dread big three" -- as the all-purpose piggy bank for budget savings has been a joke since Jimmy Carter first used it in 1977. Read article.

 

Jonah Goldberg, Townhall.com

 

Of all the poisonous, ugly and intellectually vapid controversies ginned up in my lifetime, the current breakout of St. Vitus' Dance over the "racist" opposition to Barack Obama may be the most egregious.

 

Al Sharpton tells CNN's Larry King that decent and racially sensitive Americans shouldn't let a small minority make health care into a "racial issue."

 

Someone in the control room surely yelled, "Cue the laugh track!"

 

In case you don't get the joke, this entire "debate" over whether opposition to Obama's health care reform is racist is totally, completely and in every way conceivable an invention of the left.

 

Oh, sure, there are some racists who oppose Obama. Shocking news, that.

 

And, yes, a tiny, tiny fraction of the signs at the Tea Party protests last weekend were racially insensitive. But if that's how we're going to score, then opposition to the Iraq war is anti-Semitic. After all, I saw a bunch of signs at antiwar protests that said bigoted things about Jews.

 

Meanwhile, no significant conservative politician, pundit or intellectual has said that they object to Obama's agenda because he's black. Read article.

Lee Boyland, NMJ.us

 

Candidate Barack Hussein Obama promised "Change", and spouted a campaign's slogan pledging, "Change we can believe in." Tired of Washington politics, a majority of American voters went to the polls and voted for that Change. Sadly for the nation, that Change was undefined. Now the nation is learning the folly of electing a president and congressmen on the basis of an undefined catch slogan.

 

The Democratic Party now assumes they have a blank check to impose their will on the American voter. Too late we are finding out what that promised "Change" really is. Obama has certainly lived up to his pledge, and I for one can hardly believe the Changes in domestic and foreign policy he has made—some of which include: making unwarranted apologies to the world, especially our enemies, for (supposed) past misdeeds; breaking our strong bonds with Israel (in effect throwing Israel under the bus); and his latest fiasco in agreeing to meet one on one with North Korea and Iran. Now Hugo Chavez has announced his intention to have the nuclear option. Talking sure does get results.

 

Less than a year into his first term in office, Obama has reshaped the face of presidency, not in the imperialistic caricature used to demean George Bush, but rather to make himself the first true Imperial President since Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR, however, won WWII, while Obama piddles in Afghanistan.

 

Yes my friends, if actions speak louder than words, then have no doubt, Obama is the real deal—a real imperial president: one who cannot be criticized; one who is above being questioned; in short, a president who is, as the assistant managing editor of Newsweek, Evan Thomas, told Chris Matthews, "standing above the country, above the world, he's sort of God."

 

That said, I'm having serious concerns that he may be the first president not to require reelection? Don't laugh—Obama's actions speak louder than his honeyed words. While you and I the American voters sit helplessly watching, Obama has casually done things that would have undoubtedly brought about Ronald Regan's or even Abraham Lincoln's impeachment. Read article.

Sultan Knish.Blogspot.com

 

The American people gave Obama a lot of credibility points to start with, partly because of his optimistic can do rhetoric and because of the historical aspect of the election. The former probably weighed more heavily than the latter because Americans love to hear from a man who vows to tackle and beat tough problems. On and on they listened to promises of massive job creation, only to see job losses pile up. They might have been more understanding if Obama had actually looked like he was trying to create jobs, instead of mainly working to protect the jobs of his supporters at the cost of spending huge sums of taxpayer money.

 

With ObamaCare, the administration was out of credibility chips, yet like a gambler in Vegas tossing away his last dime, somehow thought the free ride would never end. But with no real credibility left, the combined opposition and concerns quickly threw up a wall that the Obama Administration and its media allies proved unable to steamroll. The missing factor again was credibility. And the longer the debate dragged on, the less credibility chips Obama had left until he was playing well in negative numbers territory.

 

Obama's worst sin in the health care hard sell was playing the American people for suckers. Had he given real estimates of ObamaCare's costs, admitted that middle class tax hikes would be necessary to pay for it, that medicare recipients would suffer, that people might not be able to keep their doctors and that some rationing would be involved-- support for ObamaCare would probably be better than it is today.

 

Instead Obama not only lied, but he lied about things that anyone who has actually had health insurance or can do simple math could see were not true. And that more than anything else torpedoed ObamaCare, because it was a failure of credibility that made Obama seem either completely incompetent or a pathological liar. For now incompetent appears to be the opinion du jour, but that can quickly change if Obama continues lying so indefensibly that even an AP fact check can't help but after a few embarrassed coughs, determine that Obama is just wrong. Read article.

 

Michael Calderone & Mike Allen, Politico.com

 

The right-wing media’s single-minded focus on a handful of targets over the past months and its success in pushing those stories into the mainstream have underscored the sharp divide between traditional news organizations and the bloggers and talk show hosts aggressively pursuing an ideological agenda on-line and on TV and radio.

 

 From birthers to tea parties to town halls and ACORN, the scandal-plagued anti-poverty group — not to mention President Obama’s speech last week to school children and the background of former White House aide Van Jones — issues initially dismissed or missed entirely by the national media have burst, if only fleetingly, onto the national agenda after relentless coverage on Fox News, talk radio and in the blogosphere.

 

“If it wasn’t for Fox or talk radio, we’d be done as a republic,” Glenn Beck declared Tuesday morning on “Fox & Friends.” Beck, who’s aggressively pushed the Van Jones and ACORN stories, told the morning show hosts that he plans to devote his hour-long, top-rated 5 p.m. show to new undercover tapes of ACORN employees.

 

Last week, Big Government, a site run by conservative Andrew Breitbart, showed videos of undercover stings in three ACORN offices, where journalists posing as pimps and prostitutes were instructed by employees on how to skirt legal restrictions on housing. The tapes got big play on The Drudge Report—where Breitbart has worked—and right-leaning news outlets and commentary shows. But only after the Senate voted to cut off federal funding to ACORN on Monday did the story get more attention in the mainstream media. Read article.

 

Thomas Sowell

 

Many years ago, as a small child, I was told one of those old-fashioned fables for children. It was about a dog with a bone in his mouth, who was walking on a log across a stream.

 

The dog looked down into the water and saw his reflection. He thought it was another dog with a bone in his mouth — and it seemed to him that the other dog’s bone was bigger than his. He decided that he was going to take the other dog’s bone away and opened his mouth to attack. The result was that his own bone fell into the water and was lost.

 

At the time, I didn’t like that story and wished they hadn’t told it to me. But the passing years and decades have made me realize how important that story was, because it wasn’t really about dogs.

 

Today, the president of the United States is telling us that he is going to help us take that other dog’s bone away — and the end result is likely to be very much like what it was in that children’s fable.

 

Whether we are supposed to take that bone away from the doctors, the hospitals, the pharmaceutical companies, or the insurance companies, the net result is likely to be the same — most of us will end up with worse medical care than we have available today. We will have opened our mouth and dropped a very big bone into the water. Read article.

Heritage.org

 

Last Monday the Senate voted 83 to 7 to strip funding for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) from this year’s housing and transportation appropriation bill. The move came after upstart website BigGovernment.com posted videos showing ACORN employees in multiple cities across the country conspiring to help under cover reporters avoid taxes for criminal enterprises.

 

Despite the swiftness with which the Senate acted, this is hardly the first time ACORN has been accused of illegality. Last fall when ACORN was investigated for vote fraud in a dozen states, the New York Times reported that an internal ACORN legal memo raised “questions about whether the web of relationships among its 174 affiliates may have led to violations of federal laws.”

 

The Times reporter who wrote that story, Stephanie Strom wanted to pursue the story further, but she was discouraged by her superiors at the Times and gave up after blistering phone conversation with then-candidate Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Strom revealed in an email: “I’m calling a halt to my efforts. I just had two unpleasant calls with the Obama campaign, wherein the spokesman was screaming and yelling and cursing me, calling me a rightwing nut and a conspiracy theorist and everything else.” Explaining why she wanted to pursue the story further in another email Strom wrote:

 

The real story to all this is how these myriad entities allow them to shuffle money around so much that no one really knows what’s getting spent on what — and for the charities like the housing orgs, that’s a problem. Charitable money cannot be spent on political activities. It’s a big no-no that can cost charitable organizations their exemptions.

 

That “web of relationships” between poverty advocacy groups like ACORN is the real story here that impacts the American people. ACORN is by far not the only suspect community organizer group. Read article.

 

Melissa Clouthier, Pajamas Media.com

 

President Obama possesses a distressing detachment from both his words and actions. His cool demeanor now seems cold. His movie star nonchalance, calculated. His soaring rhetoric, the words of a pastor who has long since stopped believing them.

 

Yet it is not Obama who has changed. After having had time to watch him make decisions, the world now simply can see and comprehend who he is.

 

During the campaign, those who saw this dissonance in Barack Obama could be dismissed as partisan. His most strident critics were accused of heartless cynicism, or worse — bald racism. As if critics of the man were driven primarily by his skin color or else hated all things Democrat. Senator Obama had the misfortune of being both.

 

Those who disagreed did so because of their “reptilian brain,” said Janeane Garofalo.

 

Barack Obama seemed right. Processing his words through the frontal lobe, they sounded good. Since he wasn’t pressed or questioned, since even Bill O’Reilly seemed beguiled by Barack Obama’s verbal deftness, he rarely had to prove or defend. He was always given enough rhetorical wiggle room. He still is given that room, by the press anyway. But something always felt wrong. It wasn’t a primal reaction to the “other,” like Olbermann and Garafalo like to claim. It was something ethereal, because Senator Obama had no concrete policies or past accomplishments besides community

organizing upon which to stand. His associations aroused some suspicion, but to most they seemed trivial and the press was uninterested. Read article.

Vincent Gioia's Blog.Blogspot.com

 

Many people believe Obama is not the architect of the new socialism driving government policy these days but there is speculation about who is behind the smooth character behind the teleprompter. I don’t know the answer but at the very least it is clear that Obama’s Senior Advisor, David Axelrod, shares mouthpiece honors.

 

We frequently hear Robert Gibbs in his role as Obama press agent explain to the news media what the president means during his speech marathon but comments by Axelrod actually sound like the president speaking.

 

For example:

 

“We’re entering a new season,” senior adviser David Axelrod said in a telephone interview. “It’s time to synthesize and harmonize these strands and get this done. We’re confident that we can do that. But obviously it is a different phase. We’re going to approach it in a different way. The president is going to be very active.”

 

And on health care Axelrod announced in advance of the September 9th speech by Obama that Obama is (falsely) willing to forgo the public option:

 

“We have been saying all along that the most important part of this debate is not the public option, but rather ensuring choice and competition,” an aide said. “There are lots of different ways to get there.”

 

“I’m not going to put a date on any of this,” Axelrod said. “But I think it’s fairly obvious that we’re not in the second inning. We’re not in the fourth inning. We’re in the eighth or ninth inning here, and so there’s not a lot of time to waste.”

 

Aren’t these things what one might expect the president himself to say? Read article.

 

Froma Harrop, Rasmussen Reports.com

 

President Obama was on Wall Street, calling for a new regulatory regime to prevent a financial panic like the one set off a year ago. "We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess that was at the heart of this crisis," he said.

 

But there are doubters. Far from the granite canyons of southern Manhattan comes sharp criticism about the plans for new regulations and, not unrelated, who would do the regulating. The skeptics argue that the too-big-to-fail philosophy that saved the hides of CitiGroup, Bank of America and AIG remains in force and will make another meltdown inevitable.

 

The president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, Thomas Hoenig, turned heads last June when he characterized the lack of action in addressing this fundamental weakness as "regulatory malpractice."

 

And he warned, "If we hesitate to make needed changes, we will perpetuate an oligarchy of interest." In other words, the financial Mr. Bigs will be running everything from their East Coast party circuit.

 

On Wall Street, Obama outlined some fine reforms, but he gave only lip service to ending the assumption that some institutions are too big to fail. He mainly said that stockholders in these financial companies would have to bear the cost of their poor management. Well, stockholders already do. The crisis sent their shares plunging to single digits. (Your writer speaks from sad experience.) The bailout did stop the stock prices from going to zero and enabled a partial recovery of their earlier value, but believe me, the shareholders didn't get away with much. Read article.

 

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