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November 14, 2009
Exclusive: Oval Office Watch – Saturday, November 14
The Wall separates Reagan from Obama - HERE.
Fatal reluctance to see evil - GO HERE.
Were They Duped Or Were They Stupid?
Bruce Bialosky, Townhall.com
In the 2008 presidential election, young adults voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. This voting pattern has generated much discussion and no small amount of head scratching, principally because the main consequence of these young adults’ electoral choice appears to be a huge tax on them. Ultimately, the question becomes: Were they duped or were they stupid?
In the 2008 presidential election, young adults voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. This voting pattern has generated much discussion and no small amount of head scratching, principally because the main consequence of these young adults’ electoral choice appears to be a huge tax on them. Ultimately, the question becomes: Were they duped or were they stupid?
In late 1999, I went to Washington, DC, for a political forum that included all the Republican presidential contenders. Each candidate made a presentation followed by questions and answers. My question was for Senator John McCain. A significant element of Mr. McCain’s political platform was campaign finance reform. His proposal was similar to what eventually became the McCain-Feingold Act passed in 2001, which limited the amounts that individuals and entities could contribute to campaigns.
I had the first question: “Mr. McCain, I have a deep respect for you as an American and Senator, but could you please explain why you are proposing a law that appears to be contrary to Republican principles?”
This question deeply upset the Senator. He turned to the moderator and mumbled “And when did I stop beating my wife?” As I edged my way back to my seat, Mr. McCain followed me down the stage giving me an earful about how the youth of America was not voting, and that the reason they were not voting was because the campaign financing system in our country was broken and corrupt. Read article.
Unfortunately, Failure Is an Option: Barack Obama faces a choice in Afghanistan. The safe middle ground may be the most treacherous.
Lawrence B. Lindsey & Reuel Marc Gerecht, Weekly Standard.com
One of the standard accoutrements of the decision making process in the West Wing is the three-option "decision memorandum." The memo itself is drafted by the national security adviser, the National Economic Council director, or the assistant to the president for domestic policy, depending on the issue. It then goes through "clearance" to make sure it is acceptable to each of the president's key advisers. Typically, these advisers cluster around a consensus approach, but there are outliers; some favor doing a bit more than the consensus, some a bit less. Hence, three options: Option A is the "go all out" plan or "do too much" approach; Option C is the "don't do it" or "do too little" approach; while Option B is the safe consensus that the bulk of the staff prefers, and the one the president usually picks.
Given the leaks coming out of the White House on Afghanistan, decision making in the Obama administration appears little different from that under other presidents. Aides even talk on the record about "doing the middle option," and sympathetic outsiders like Richard Haas, head of the Council on Foreign Relations, write opinion pieces extolling the virtues of some moderate approach. "Afghanistan is important, but not that important" is a reasonable paraphrase of Haas's argument.
Picking the proverbial Option B is a standard result of most models of organizational behavior, and the White House is no exception. Read article.
An option for public: less government, more choice
Jeff Jacoby, Boston.com
“My guiding principle is and always has been that consumers do better when there is choice and competition.’’ So said President Obama in his address to Congress on health care, making an argument for a government-run “public option’’ to sell health insurance that many Democrats have echoed.
In 34 states, Obama noted, three-fourths of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. “Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down.’’ But add a public option “administered by the government just like Medicaid or Medicare,’’ he said, and competition would revive.
No, it wouldn’t.
A government-run health insurer would radically tilt the health-insurance playing field. It would amount to a new entitlement program, able to undercut the price of private insurance by squeezing hospitals and doctors, reimbursing them at below-market rates. “Just like Medicaid and Medicare,’’ which also underpay medical providers, the public option would force hospitals and doctors to charge private insurers more. Insurers would be compelled to raise their premiums, eventually losing millions of customers to the government plan. Read article.
Communism never went away
Dr. Laurie Roth, News With Views.com
We have been battling the same old nightmare that continues to morph into cause after cause and shape after shape. Many of you thought we had beat Communism when Ronald Reagan said “Gentlemen tear down that wall” and Communist Russia disbanded. Sadly, it oozed into other bodies. A lot of you don’t know it but the rope is already tightening around your little necks. Even worse, many of you support your own strangulation because you have bought the enemy’s strategy that makes the murder feel like a massage until it is too late. I see red marks on our necks. We had better wake up.
Communism and Government control today hides behind contrived international emergencies and causes that seduce you in. One of the biggest, most distorted and lied about international emergencies is global warming and its relatives…the greens…. carbon emissions concerns, cap and trade and the push to sign international environmental treaties….ala Copenhagen coming up. There are only 3 things I can honestly say about the environmental movement. LIE! LIE! LIE!
This President and administration know the lies behind all this and they could give a flying piece of rubbish because they also know most of us are too busy to care. We are too busy to research real science and find out this is total fraud. In truth, environmentalists could care less about trees, polar bears and climate. They only care about controlling you, what you eat, drink, buy and sell, while convincing you to give them money. What do you think this nightmare lie of Cap and Trade is about? It is designed to support the unholy trinity of regulation, taxation and litigation as it collects your money. You know, it’s an international emergency so many of you actually feel great about paying in. You are helping to save the troubled planet. Read article.
John Cassidy on ObamaCare
James Taranto, Best of the Web, WSJ.com
The typical argument for ObamaCare is that it will offer better medical care for everyone and cost less to do it, but occasionally a supporter lets the mask slip and reveals the real political motivation. So let's give credit to John Cassidy, part of the left-wing stable at the New Yorker, who wrote last week on its Web site that "it's important to be clear about what the reform amounts to."
Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," he writes. "Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind."
No wonder many Americans are upset. They know they are being lied to about ObamaCare, and they know they are going to be stuck with the bill. Read article.
Obamacare gives $283 million to veterinarians
Don Surber, Blogs.DailyMail.com
Well, now we know how President Obama got so many doctors to sign on to Obamacare; he bought them off.
“If you’re an animal lover and you’re worried that your veterinarian can’t afford his student loans, this bill’s for you. It actually contains a provision that provides student loan forgiveness for, yes, veterinarians. The bill includes $283 million a year for this, and $100 million a year for combating Medicare fraud. The bill won’t let you buy insurance across state lines and does nothing to crack down on lawsuits, but it looks after those who will never treat a single sick human being, insured or not. The bill also has a provision to roll back tax breaks on biofuels, which have no place in a health care debate. Americans who will foot the bill for this budgetary train wreck deserve better. A staggering 5.5 million jobs could be lost if this becomes law,” said Republican Congressman Steven LaTourrette. Read article.
Obama's Mid East Policy Falls Apart as He Continues to Move AGAINST Israel
YidWithLid.Blogspot.com
President Obama's Middle East policy is in ruins. While the US continues to press Israel for a settlement freeze (and a freeze on Jerusalem) his strategy is falling apart piece by piece. He has turned the Israeli populace against him and strengthened the hand of Prime Minister Netanyahu. At the same time he has eroded his own support among American Jews and other US friends of Israel. Which is why he has pressured political hacks such as Congressman Steve Israel to lend their names to the Anti-Israel Group, J-Street.
The Arab League nations answered no to the Presidents request for a peace gesture and the President of the Palestinian Authority has used Obama's settlement pressure as his "out" from re-entering negotiations. Settlement Building didn't start with Netanyahu, but it didn't become a roadblock to negotiations until Obama was elected.
The entire settlement issue was caused by the administration's naiveté. What the President and his advisers perceived as a minor concession, a settlement freeze, was not perceived by Israel as a minor concession. This was a major error by the administration. Their insistence for a freeze and the constant public berating of the Jewish State has turned the Israeli population against Obama, especially the Israeli left who the President would look to for support. Read article.
Obama Stands with Dictators and Muslims
Kyle-Anne Shiver, RuthfullyYours.com
With nearly a year in office, we now know without doubt exactly where our own president stands on vital national security matters. He has a track record and has shown his true colors over and over again.
In Honduras, he picked the side of the dictator-wannabe without hesitation. He has used every diplomatic weapon at his disposal to destroy the constitutional democracy in Honduras, even cutting off financial aid and blocking diplomatic visas. He went the full gamut of meddling there and made no bones about it.
He moved to cancel long-planned missile defense shields for Poland and the Czech Republic, alerting Russia that he is not going to put up a fight to preserve freedom in former Soviet bloc countries. He even made a point of denying Berliners his presence on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Our president sends clear signals when it comes to wimping out on the friends of liberty.
With our sister state Israel the only functioning democracy in the Middle East and the only non-Islamic country, Barack Obama and our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have been forceful bullies, demanding up-front, dangerous concessions from Israel, while securing no concessions whatsoever from any of its enemies. While Israel fights for her very existence, President Obama deigns to chit-chat with the Iranian Hitler-act-alike. What signal could be clearer?
President Obama doesn’t want to be seen as “meddling” in the affairs of another nation if that nation is Muslim. Hence his reticence in any verbal support for the protesters in Iran. Yet he meddles both in public and behind the scenes nonstop against Israel.
Now, we come to the terrorist attack at Fort Hood, carried out by a man wearing the uniform of our own team, and the president does not want to “draw conclusions.” What he seems to mean is that he does not want to “draw conclusions” against a Muslim. We now have clear reports that the red flags surrounding Hasan, the Ft Hood terrorist, were so clear that it would take a complete ninny wearing earplugs and blinders not to see them. Read article.
Obama's Foreign Policy: Dangerous Game of Appeasement
Behshad Hastibakhsh, The Conservative Foundry.com
World peace has been the eternal dream of great thinkers since the time of antiquity; it has yet remained an illusion due to conflicting interests of self-interested individuals and states, and the inability of world bodies to enforce international laws. While some world leaders continue to pursue their Wilsonian vision of world peace with reforms of existing and the creation of new international organizations, others are engaged in ideological battles and proxy wars against Western values and civilization. In essence, those who provide financial, logistic and military support to terrorist organizations, such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Al-Qaida affiliated organizations worldwide, are not remotely interested in peace.
Barack Obama’s foreign policy disregards these fundamental principles, as Americans, who in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001 rallied behind their president in the global war against terror, have become weary of counting their dead and wounded veterans. As in the case of many left of center politicians, Barack Obama speaks with an eloquent and convincing voice to people around the world with a populist message of dialogue and negotiation within an international framework. His dovish vision of world peace is far from reach in today’s political landscape where dialogue with terrorist sponsoring states eventually helps terrorists to plan their next major attacks.
In the new era of 24x7 news media, Barack Obama utilizes his eloquence in public speaking and superb communication skills to galvanize the masses with populist themes and moral arguments which often provide the target audience with instant gratification. The problem lies in the fallacy of the argument on how to deal with those who threaten Western values and civilization. Read article.
Counting the Cost
Ed Feulner, Townhall.com
Elections have consequences. But sometimes we have to wait a bit to learn what they are.
Recall Barack Obama’s historic election. He glided into office last year, bringing along an increased Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and a seemingly filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
How did he win? In part by promising to restore fiscal sanity.
“Obama also believes that after eight years of reckless fiscal policies that squandered historic surpluses and added $4 trillion to the deficit, it is vital for candidates to put forward specific ideas on how they will pay for their proposals.” So read the “comprehensive tax plan” posted on www.barackobama.com .
According to that plan, Obama would “reduce the deficit” both today and in the years ahead. Once elected, though, the president sketched out a budget that tripled the present deficit and would create a tide of red ink as far as the eye can see. Read article.
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