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November 2, 2009
Exclusive: Oval Office Watch – Monday, November 2
President Obama’s weekly address HERE
Twelve months on, the star falls back to earth - Read the UK Independent's assessment HERE.
The Inevitable Debacle - SEE HERE.
Thomas Sowell: Dismantling America: Part II - GO HERE.
Valerie Jarrett announced the other day that “we’re going to speak truth to power.”
Who’s Valerie Jarrett? CLICK HERE.
'Soft Power' Means Doing Nothing
Sultan Knish, Ruthfully Yours.com
When Barack Obama completed his long march on the White House, liberal pundits promised us that he would completely transform US foreign policy from the dark days of the Bush Administration through soft power. Now thanks to all that squelching soft power we have gone from a foreign policy in which few liked us but we could get things done unilaterally… to a foreign policy in which everyone supposedly likes us but are actually less willing to help the new multilateral us, and as a result what we are left with is a foreign policy approach that can’t get anything done at all anymore.
Anyone observing Obama’s months of waffling on Afghanistan and Iran (the waffle clearly being an obvious example of soft power) can’t help but conclude that soft power is just a fancy way of saying indecisive. An excuse for endlessly exploring ways to win over others to our point of view, leading to an endless chain of meetings in which nothing actually gets done. Soft power is a committee’s way of making more committees, a boost for foreign aid and a chance to spend countless lives and dollars trying to fight wars the way that everyone else would like us to fight them. Which is either not at all, or wearing bright blue helmets and paying off insurgents who turn out to be playing both sides.
The Bush Administration tried soft power over and over again, only to find that old fashioned hard power is what actually gets things done. Anyone who remembers Colin Powell making his pitiful rounds at the UN remembers that. And it’s no real surprise, because while soft power may be helpful for soliciting handshakes, long term alliances are sustained by at least one of the partners demonstrating his ability to carry his own weight, act forcefully and punish betrayals of the alliance. Even Barack Obama who has championed soft power toward Iran and the Taliban, flipped over to the old fashioned kind of power when it came to FOX News. Of course all it took to make Obama abandon the mantra of soft power was for him to confront a situation that unlike Iran and the War on Terror, he considered to be a genuine crisis… a cable news network not beholden to his agenda.
Soft power is perfectly fine if you’re running for office while trying to be as non-threatening as possible. But real leadership requires making the hard decisions no one else will, and you can only pass the buck so often to the Pentagon or Joe Biden’s office, before it becomes clear that you don’t have a foreign policy, above and beyond simultaneously running for office in every country in the world. Read article.
Obama is Overreaching
Jay Ambrose, RCP.com
So there is President Barack Obama, giving a speech to a bunch of Democrats, and he is saying "y'all" do this and "y'all" should consider that, and pretty soon I am asking myself, how did he become habituated to saying "y'all?" In his youth in Indonesia and Hawaii? From his Kansas grandparents? At Harvard Law School?
Mind you, I don't think there's anything wrong with the expression, which means "you all" and is perfectly grammatical as long as you're using it in the plural. I say it all the time -- could not quit if I wanted to -- but that's because I grew up in Kentucky where I would hear it constantly. It's natural with me. With Obama, it comes across as an affectation in striking contrast to his more common, professorial way of talking in interviews or the high drama we get in some of his speeches.
What we have in his "y'all" talk is an exaggerated, loosey-goosey folksiness meant to suggest he's at war with the elite instead of one of them. He's hardly the first politician to do this kind of thing. Remember how Hillary Clinton would sometimes talk in a fake Southern accent during the 2008 Democratic primaries as she attempted to bond with certain groups? The thing is, it's phony, and Saint Obama is not supposed to be phony, but something new and different and fresh.
Here, after all, is the guy who was going to find the middle, moderate way on issues, who was going to be bipartisan, whose administration would be utterly transparent, who would never kowtow to special interests, who would never mislead the public and who would be utterly, wholly accountable for his actions. As short a period as he has been in office, he has managed to betray all the above. Read article.
Another Failed Presidency
Geoffrey P. Hunt, American Thinker.com
Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.
In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.
George Bush Jr didn't fail so much as he was perceived to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his more conservative allies. Yet George Bush Sr is still perceived as a man of uncommon decency, loyal to the enduring American character of rugged self-determination, free markets, and generosity. George W will eventually be treated more kindly by historians as one whose potential was squashed by his own compromise of conservative principles, in some ways repeating the mistakes of his father, while ignoring many lessons in executive leadership he should have learned at Harvard Business School. Of course George W could never quite overcome being dogged from the outset by half of the nation convinced he was electorally illegitimate -- thus aiding the resurgence of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.
But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on? Read article.
Armageddon Time - When it comes to Iran, the U.S. may be facing a cataclysm.
Peter Robinson, Forbes.com
As the Iranians scramble to produce nuclear weapons, the Obama administration appears too feckless, inexperienced or deluded to stop them.
Already, the administration has committed two errors. Last summer, when millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest their country's corrupt presidential election, it failed to encourage the protesters, merely looking on. "Obama could have said to the Iranian people, 'We support your legitimate concerns over constitutional government,'" Hanson argued. "Instead he was saying, 'Let's wait and see who wins.' It did not look good."
Then last month the Obama administration announced that the U.S. no longer planned to deploy anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. These emplacements, which the Bush administration had promised, would have protected Eastern Europe against long-range missiles from Iran. The Obama administration canceled the anti-missile defenses to please Russia, hoping that Russia would pressure Iran in return. "Russia is never going to help," Hanson said. "Tension in the Gulf would raise oil prices, helping Russia. Anything that causes the United States problems, Putin is for."
What options does the administration still possess? Read article.
Why 1978 was a very bad year
James Carafano, Washington Examiner.com
There is a real possibility that next year the Obama White House may find itself living out the Carter Years -- redux. Obama appears to be resurrecting the Carter formula of speaking out strongly but carrying a small stick. Plans for the Pentagon are awfully reminiscent of Carter's defense program. Likewise, the president's elevation of treaty negotiations and international institutions as the primary instruments for advancing national interests mirror Carter's approach as well.
In fact, Obama has already outdone President Carter, winning a Nobel Prize before rather than after he has done anything. Of course, this merely places additional pressure on the administration to continue relying on the tools (arms control agreements, the United Nations and such) lauded by the Nobel judges.
Sadly, warning signs that others will use the administration's "soft power uber alles" strategy to undermine U.S. interests are already cropping up. And the year is not over yet.
The rhetoric of soft power is inspiring and ever hopeful. But unless the nation seems firmly committed to backing that soft power with some hard muscle, those with no love of America will interpret the rhetoric as the vapid mooings of a nation in retreat.
That interpretation could make 2010 a year of living dangerously.
Interview with Charles Krauthammer - 'What the Obama Administration Pretends Is Realism Is Naïve Nonsense'
Der Spiegel.de
SPIEGEL: General Stanley McCrystal is asking for more troops. Is that really the right strategy?
Krauthammer: General Stanley McCrystal is the world expert on counterterrorism. For five years he ran the most successful counterterrorism operation probably in the history of the world: His guys went after the bad guys in Iraq, they ran special ops, they used the Predators and they killed thousands of jihadists that we don't even know about, it was all under the radar. And now this same general tells Obama that the counterterrorism strategy in Afghanistan will fail, you have to do counterinsurgency, population protection. That would seem an extremely persuasive case that counterterrorism would not work.
SPIEGEL: You famously coined the term "Reagan Doctrine" to describe Ronald Reagan's foreign policy. What is the "Obama Doctrine?"
Krauthammer: I would say his vision of the world appears to me to be so naïve that I am not even sure he's able to develop a doctrine. He has a view of the world as regulated by self-enforcing international norms, where the peace is kept by some kind of vague international consensus, something called the international community, which to me is a fiction, acting through obviously inadequate and worthless international agencies. I wouldn't elevate that kind of thinking to a doctrine because I have too much respect for the word doctrine.
SPIEGEL: Are you saying that diplomacy always fails?
Krauthammer: No, foolishness does. Perhaps when he gets nowhere on Iran, nowhere with North Korea, when he gets nothing from the Russians in return for what he did to the Poles and the Czechs, gets nowhere in the Middle East peace talks -- maybe at that point he'll begin to rethink whether the world really runs by international norms, consensus, and sweetness and light, or whether it rests on the foundation of American and Western power that, in the final analysis, guarantees peace. Read article.
Obama Hits Opponents With Chicago Brass Knuckles
Michael Barone, Rasmussen Reports.com
"His father was a great friend of my father." The reference to William Ayers' father was how Mayor Richard M. Daley began his defense of Barack Obama for his association with the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist. Daley's father, of course, was Richard M. Daley, mayor of Chicago from 1955 until his death in 1976. Ayers' father was head of Commonwealth Edison, the Chicago-based utility, from 1964 to 1980.
You bet they were great friends. That's governance, Chicago style. The head of government is friends with the heads of every big business, lobby and union, and together they make decisions on how everyone else will live. Those on the inside get what they want. Those on the outside -- well, they get what the big guys want them to have. That's life in the big city.
It's not the worst way to run a city. I know -- I'm from Detroit, which might be better off if it had mayors named Daley for 41 of the last 54 years. But it's not the optimal way to run a national administration, at least if you've promised to bring in a new era of bipartisanship and mutual respect. Even so, it appears to be the way that Barack Obama, who once aspired to be mayor of Chicago, has decided to run his administration.
We can see that nowhere better than on the health care issue. Read article.
The Chicago Way: The Chamber of Commerce is only the latest target of the Chicago Gang in the White House.
Kimberley A. Strassel, Online WSJ.com
“They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way.” – Jim Malone, "The Untouchables"
When Barack Obama promised to deliver "a new kind of politics" to Washington, most folk didn't picture Rahm Emanuel with a baseball bat. These days, the capital would make David Mamet, who wrote Malone's memorable movie dialogue, proud.
A White House set on kneecapping its opponents isn't, of course, entirely new. (See: Nixon) What is a little novel is the public and bare-knuckle way in which the Obama team is waging these campaigns against the other side.
In recent weeks the Windy City gang added a new name to their list of societal offenders: the Chamber of Commerce. For the cheek of disagreeing with Democrats on climate and financial regulation, it was reported the Oval Office will neuter the business lobby. Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett slammed the outfit as "old school," and warned CEOs they'd be wise to seek better protection.
That was after the president accused the business lobby of false advertising. And that recent black eye for the Chamber (when several companies, all with Democratic ties, quit in a huff)—think that happened on its own? ("Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him! Somebody steals from me, I'm gonna say you stole. Not talk to him for spitting on the sidewalk. Understand!?")
The Chamber can at least take comfort in crowds. Who isn't on the business end of the White House's sawed-off shotgun? First up were Chrysler bondholders who—upon balking at a White House deal that rewarded only unions—were privately threatened and then publicly excoriated by the president.
Next, every pharmaceutical, hospital and insurance executive in the nation was held out as a prime obstacle to health-care nirvana. And that was their reward for cooperating. When Humana warned
customers about cuts to Medicare under "reform," the White House didn't bother to complain. They went straight for the gag order. Read article.
The Mother of All Wars
Bojidar Marinov, American Vision.org
In a very perceptive book about the Soviet communism in its 50th anniversary, Workers’ Paradise Lost (1967), Eugene Lyons points to that obvious and seldom discussed aspect of the Soviet reality:
“From the day the Bolsheviks seized control of a weakened and chaotic nation, there has been in effect a continuous civil war between the dictators and those to whom they dictate. In the first years, as we have seen, the contest was open and military. Since then it has been largely concealed and political, yet quite obvious to those who watched with unblurred eyes; and even bloodier than the military phase. Once we grasp this concept of permanent internal conflict, much about Soviet Russia that seems enigmatic and baffling begins to make sense."
Yes, it surely does make sense. The 70 years of Soviet communism were years of constant war; the regime’s vocabulary from the time of Lenin until the time of Gorbachev never really changed: warfare, sabotage, enemy spies, final death blows, propaganda wars, etc. And it wasn’t just paranoia that inspired that vocabulary: The Soviet government was in a very real war against its own people. And no wonder: Any government committed to violate its citizens’ rights to life, liberty, and property, is necessarily on the war path. No individual will willingly and voluntarily give their life, liberty, and property to a bunch of government bureaucrats. Therefore, war is the necessary means to achieve the dream of submitting a nation to its government.
What Lyons doesn’t mention is that that civil war was not and is not limited to the Communist East. Kings and prime ministers in Europe have always been eager to enslave their subjects, but around the turn of the 20th century the war began in earnest in Europe. It began in earnest in the United States about a decade later, in the 1920s, when the American government started it’s colossal long-term projects of confiscating the nation’s wealth in the hands of its bureaucrats.
The governments have their own standing armies for that war: KGB and the party apparatus under Communism in the East, bureaucrats, tax-collectors, police, regulatory agencies in the West. The actions of our own government in the last few months are very revealing as to the war activity against their own nation. The White House recruitment of informants for “fishy talk” is one example, but many other cases can be cited. The hostility against the “Town Hall Movement” among politicians goes beyond the acceptable personal resentment, and even the President himself sounds more and more like delivering war communiqués in his propaganda for his healthcare plan. No wonder. As I said above, any government committed to violate its citizens’ rights to life, liberty and property will have to be in a war mode. People don’t give in voluntarily. Americans, more than any other nation on the planet, are the most resistant. There is a war going on.
No wonder. As I said above, any government committed to violate its citizens’ rights to life, liberty and property will have to be in a war mode. People don’t give in voluntarily. Americans, more than any other nation on the planet, are the most resistant. There is a war going on. Read article.
Covering for Obama Media Play Vietnam Defeat Song in Afghanistan
Candance Moore, Newsbusters.org
Three weeks after their gushing praise of President Obama's meeting with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the media have taken a cue from the lack of action that followed.
It was a good run while it lasted.
Word from the conflict became more dire almost by the day as Obama's cabinet squabbled. The American media, having sensed Afghanistan could be lost without action, chose to cover for their favorite president and begin the process of mentally preparing the public for defeat.
The Washington Post published a perfect example of the new meme in Howard Kurtz's column on October 23. Kurtz attacked Republicans as "armchair quarterbacks" for their criticism of Obama's stalling and said it was "rich" of Dick Cheney to demand a new plan. As for what that plan might be, Kurtz's Vietnam defeat song sounded all too familiar: Read article.
Fighting the Good Fight
Bill O'Reilly, Townhall.com
President Obama should fire White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and hire me as his top adviser. Don't laugh. I can almost guarantee higher poll numbers for the president if he brings me on board.
The first thing I would do is declare a truce with Fox News. Right now, the president is spending more time launching offensives against FNC than against the Taliban. The American people want Osama bin Laden's head on a stick not Glenn Beck's. What exactly does attacking FNC get the president? Plus, it's hypocritical. Didn't Barack Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize?
Next, I would suggest that the commander-in-chief actually listen to his top general in Afghanistan and his secretary of defense. After listening, the president would immediately send 40,000 more troops to provide additional security in that God-forsaken place. As a trusted adviser, I would remind the president that the United States military is a vital enterprise and deserves a chance to win in Afghanistan. Read article.
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