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October 14, 2009
Exclusive: Oval Office Watch – Wednesday, October 14
Now Obama Wants to Ban Sport Fishing: Obama may enjoy fishing but he won't let you, the American Sportfishing Association reported. HERE.
O-bel Prize a joke - Obama could win the Kentucky Derby, too
Howie Carr, BostonHerald.com
Either the Red Sox win this afternoon at Fenway or they go home for the winter. There’s only one man who can absolutely guarantee this must-win game.
Now pitching for the Red Sox: Barack Hussein Nobel Obama, the southpaw who wants to get both of his paws on your wallet.
So what if he’s 48 and has never played the game? He’ll get the “W” - that’s the lesson of this Nobel Peace Prize nonsense. He can throw the ball in the dirt in front of home plate - strike one! He can toss it over the catcher’s head - strike two! He can roll it to the plate like he’s back in that Pennsylvania bowling alley - Yer out!
It’ll be a perfect perfect game: 81 pitches, 81 strikes, at least if the home-plate umpire knows what’s good for him, if he doesn’t want to be called a . . . well, you know what Barack’s Kool-Aid-swilling cheerleaders call anybody who dares say the emperor has no clothes. Read article.
We've Figured Him Out
Ben Stein, Spectator.org
Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed?
Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths:
The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.
Big mistake? Read article.
A Vain President, or a Weak One?
Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard.com
George Will suggested last week that President Obama's self-referential speech on behalf of Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics may lead to his being known as the "vain" president. Maybe, but worse things have been said about a president and probably will be if Obama declines to send substantially more troops to Afghanistan and rejuvenate his counterinsurgency strategy. He'll be called a "weak" president. And the label will stick.
A weak president is vulnerable, politically and otherwise. In Jimmy Carter's case, being seen as weak in dealing with Iran and the Soviets was a major factor in his defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980. Americans don't like pushovers, especially pushover presidents. Obama is at risk of becoming a pushover.
Afghanistan is his test. Public support for the war has fallen sharply this year, especially among Democrats. And Obama's liberal base is pushing him to rebuff General Stanley McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan, and scale back the war effort. Reversing course on a critical issue of national security because of domestic politics--that's an act of pure weakness.
At the same time, Obama will create another problem for himself should he spurn McChrystal's request for up to 60,000 additional troops to carry out the very strategy the president adopted in March and reaffirmed as recently as August. Rejection will alienate the uniformed military, and they are more popular than the president. When the Pentagon is hostile territory, the president suffers. Read article.
The Nobel Fiasco Might Cause Big Problems
John LeBoutillier, Capitol Hill Coffee House.com
The absurd decision to award an un-deserving President Obama the Nobel Prize for Peace made a mockery of a once-prestigious award. We can live with that. And we can tolerate the disappointment of those who actually deserved the award: brave dissidents in Vietnam and China who risk their lives standing up to oppressive dictatorships. We can not however see an already off-track, floundering and indecisive President Obama emboldened by yet another injection of egomania because of this award.
The key here is how Mr. Obama will now see himself. If he shares the view that this was really an award to Mr. Anti-Bush, then he will keep things in perspective. He will then see that this was given to the successor to Bush - no matter who it was provided he/she was a total break from Bush. A normal person would just chuckle - and admit to himself and those close to him, “It’s nice. But I didn’t do anything to deserve this. I might not even accept it - because I didn’t earn it.”
But - and this is where we have to worry - he takes this prize and adds it to other recent gifts like TIME MAGAZINE’s Man of the Year award and two Pulitzers for the audio versions of his books and falls even more in love with himself then we will all pay for it.
If Obama reads this award as further proof that he is different or better or - his favorite term - transformative as opposed to other leaders then that will reinforce what we have already learned about him: on foreign and defense policy he is blindly naïve (pulling missiles out of Eastern Europe without getting anything in return from Putin), vacillating (his inability to get a plan in place for Afghanistan), and a poor manager (announcing the closing of Gitmo without having a plan in place to replace it with another facility).
After nine months of his Presidency, Obama has not been transformative at all. He has not changed policy on either Iraq or Afghanistan. But he has managed to infuriate the senior ranks of the Pentagon because of his dismissive, casual handling of Afghanistan. Read article.
Half-Speed Ahead and Unsteady as She Goes
Paul Greenberg, JWR.com
What do you think it's like just now to be a GI somewhere at the end of the earth, say in mountainous Nuristan in eastern Afghanistan, and see the latest video of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid addressing the press outside the White House, just having left still another strategy session on this endless war?
Is it like being a grunt in Vietnam back in the chaotic Sixties and reading about the Best and Brightest urging another escalation?
Or is it more like being a member of the Chosin Frozen advancing in a different direction, that is, retreating down the Korean Peninsula in what we now call the Forgotten War?
Maybe it's like being a trooper a couple of years ago in Iraq. Remember when everything was falling apart there every day? And all the braid-covered generals were advising a hapless president to keep doing the same futile thing in hopes of achieving a different result?
The word is that the president is now undecided about how decided to be about this war. But the Taliban are decided. That much is clear with every casualty report. Read article.
Who's the Decider?
Howard Galganov, Galganov.com
The LEFT used to take great glee in poking fun at the way George W Bush spoke. And why not, since he was such an easy target?
What made President George W Bush such an easy target is that he says things in ways that are very much out the ordinary from what we are used to by polished politicians.
BUT – Everyone understood what President George W Bush meant.
His friends and allies knew and understood what he said. His political opponents knew and understood what he said. And so did his and America’s many enemies.
One of the clearest statements Bush ever made was: I AM THE DECIDER. Which to me, was akin to Truman’s famous: “The Buck Stops Here”.
For this simple statement that was as clear as crystal, George W Bush was ridiculed and pilloried in the press.
How dumb a thing for a President to say; was the LEFTIST mantra. But, dumb or not, EVERYONE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT IT MEANT.
So, let’s fast-forward to today - Nine months into the Presidency of Lord Obama who is surrounded by everyone who seems to be in charge including the outsiders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, to the insiders Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and Valerie Jarrett.
Ask anyone of them who’s in charge, and they’ll all tell you that Obama is the President, but in their own minds they believe that each one of them is in charge.
Then there are the 36 or more unaccountable Czars, many of whom are of GREAT ILL REPUTE and self admitted LEFTIST America-haters. They’re also in charge.
In the Bush White House though, there was never any question who was in charge and who was the DECIDER. Read article.
Obamacomedy - If it weren't so tragic, it would be hilarious
Dan Kennedy, Townhall.com
The president’s a real comedian. I’m not referring to the performance on Letterman as much as I am at the G20 Summit, where, humorously, he spoke of his determination to prevent and prohibit the “reckless risk-taking” that he asserts brought about the banking crisis and crash of the economy.
What’s hilarious is his omitting any mention of his own reckless risk-taking, on such an epic scale it makes what went on over on Wall Street seem a penny ante poker game. He, the Reckless-Risk-Taker-In-Chief, lecturing anybody about such sin is sillier than John Edwards giving a speech on family values or Al Gigantic-Carbon-Footprint Gore carping about others’ energy consumption.
Let’s see … Ozbama has virtually nationalized the entire mortgage market, killing the private industry and transferring all the risk to taxpayers. He is busily killing the private college lending industry and replacing it with government funded, government run massively expanded, easier to obtain financing – with all the risk moved to taxpayers. As a minor matter, he has also helped himself to controlling ownership of General Motors, AIG, and assorted other businesses, putting hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars at risk. If he gets his way, he will fundamentally transform 1/6th of the U.S. economy having to do with health care.
And that – healthcare “reform” – is the riskiest play of all, based entirely on a wager that he can do what government has never, ever done. Read article.
Cherry-picking Intelligence.........Again!
Tony Blankley, JWR.com
Al-Qaida is becoming the weapons of mass destruction of the Obama administration's war in Afghanistan. Or, to be more precise, it is a reverse WMD. For the George W. Bush administration, the likely presence of WMD in Iraq was a major justification for going to war. For Vice President Joe Biden and some senior Obama White House staff members (we do not know the position of the president yet), the alleged weakness and ineffectiveness of al-Qaida is sufficient justification for ending our major ground troop presence in Afghanistan.
Moreover, just like the discussion of WMD in 2002 and 2003, the current discussion of al-Qaida's capacities in Afghanistan is being carried out with cherry-picked intelligence. And just as Bush's opponents suspected he cited WMD merely as an excuse for starting a war he already had made up his mind to start for different reasons, so it would appear that the assertion of al-Qaida's weakness by the White House might be merely an excuse to justify the political decision that already has been made (by some) to get out of Afghanistan. Read article.
Health Care and the 'Predator State.' It is corporate power, not the government, that we need to worry about.
Thomas Frank, Online WSJ.com
In June 2008, I used this space to call on then-Sen. Barack Obama to add economist James K. Galbraith's book, "The Predator State," to his reading list. As an account of the capture of government by private interests, I thought it would make a far more useful guide to contemporary political economy than the market-glorifying texts that were still in fashion in those days.
I don't know if Mr. Obama ever took my advice.
But Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley apparently did. During a debate last week over two Democratic proposals for a health-care bill featuring a "public option"—a government-run alternative to private health insurance—the senator announced he opposed the idea because, as he put it, "Government is not a fair competitor. . . . It's a predator."
The word "predator" seems to have become something of a Republican talking point. Mr. Grassley's colleague from South Dakota, John Thune, went on the record in July to warn that, when government goes into business, it "becomes not a competitor but a predator."
Have these two august men of the right secretly become fans of Mr. Galbraith, one of our leading liberal economists?
If so, they need to go back over "The Predator State" a second time. Although they have snapped up Mr. Galbraith's catchy title, they have misunderstood his message. Read article.
Half a President
Steve McCann, American Thinker.com
President Obama apparently wants to do only half of his job -- the part that is the most fun. And he's got his eyes on a higher position.
The rest of the world has begun to see through his unrestrained self-absorption. The rejection of the Olympics for Chicago despite his personal intervention, and the published mockery of him by Nicholas Sarkozy are just the tip of the iceberg that is the real consensus of opinion, particularly in Europe.
However President Obama's make-up is such that he will never accept any criticism as being valid when directed toward him, and will instead seek any excuse to explain away what is said or done as being the result of the failings of others.
Notwithstanding the determination of the founding fathers to avoid having a monarch, we now have one, at least in his own mind. Read article.
Putting the Mainstream Media Out of its Misery
Sultan Knish.Blogspot.com
The mainstream media is dying. The Obama campaign may go down as the death blow of a herd of vicious and powerful dinosaurs who once seemed to blot out the sun, but now find themselves headed irreversibly toward extinction. But though the media may have helped lift the crown to the head of Barack the First, they did it at the cost of stripping away their last shreds of credibility. Their coverage of Obama was a running joke even during the campaign. It has only become more absurd since then. And that is only fitting, as the major media corporations choose to perish not as reporters, but as liberal activists, above all else.
For all the pretense and the sneers at the idea that people sitting in their pajamas could do the work of "professional journalists", the roots of the newspapers are in ad circulars and political pamphlets. Of the rise of an activist radical press in America, John Adams said in 1801, "If we had been blessed with common sense, we should not have been overthrown by Philip Freneau, Duane, Callender, Cooper, and Lyon, or their great patron and protector. A group of foreign liars encouraged by a few ambitious native gentlemen have discomfited the education, the talents, the virtues, and the prosperity of the country."
Over 200 years later, it is still open to debate whether Americans have been blessed with enough common sense to hold off the liars. But the great companies of liars who have for so long held sway over the minds of men, the blowdried anchors sitting in their chairs and the puffed up publishers polishing their awards, are going slowly and unwillingly into the lands of memory. The world has passed them by, and no longer does one need a masthead or a radio station to tell others what to think. That ironically is one of the things that the Obama campaign demonstrated, employing viral propaganda to great effect. The rise of Obama is the last great work the ink stained wretches have lent their hand to. The curtain is falling on their wretched show and it is past time to put the mainstream media out of its misery. Read article.
Exit Strategy from the Great Recession
Howard Richman, Raymond Richman, and Jesse Richman, American Thinker.com
In the 1930s, Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt had no exit strategy from the Great Depression, so he blamed it on his Republican predecessor. Roosevelt's policies prolonged the depression until, finally, the start of World War II in Europe caused the increased exports and business investment that pulled us out.
It is becoming increasingly clear that President Obama doesn't have an exit strategy either. Like Roosevelt, he blames his Republican predecessor. He also touts his "recovery" plan, as if it were helping. In a September 20 interview with CNN, he predicted that employment would start increasing this year and that unemployment would start decreasing next year. But there is no indication of increasing employment. In fact our economy lost another 263,000 non-farm jobs in September when unemployment climbed from 9.7% to 9.8%. The economy is not recovering, and no amount of optimism by Obama can paper over that fact. It is becoming more and more clear that President Obama's recovery plan is failing.
But there is no indication of increasing employment. In fact our economy lost another 263,000 non-farm jobs in September when unemployment climbed from 9.7% to 9.8%. The economy is not recovering, and no amount of optimism by Obama can paper over that fact. It is becoming more and more clear that President Obama's recovery plan is failing. Read article.
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