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November 19, 2009
Exclusive: Oval Office Watch – Thursday, November 19
CBS Poll: Obama's Approval Rating Slips to 53% HERE.
Afghanistan: The Failure to Plan Is "The Plan" - GO HERE.
Better Off Red? SEE HERE.
Ethics Watchdog Seeks Records on White House Officials, Failed Olympics Bid Read about it HERE.
A Preview of Obama's Future Speeches SEE HERE.
Obama Bows and the Nation Cringes
Wes Pruden, Ruthfully Yours.com
A little traveling, like a little learning, can be a dangerous thing. Barack Obama on the loose in a foreign land is enough to frighten protocol officers and embarrass the rest of us.
He went off to Asia to tell the Chinese a thing or two about world trade, to prepare the world for a treaty to make the sun change its spots, and of course to pay his respects to assorted heads of state, with particular attention to any royal head (perhaps even including Miss Universe) who crosses his path.
So far it’s a memorable trip. He established a new precedent for how American presidents should pay obeisance to kings, emperors, monarchs, sovereigns and assorted other authentic man-made masters of the universe. He stopped just this side of the full grovel to the emperor of Japan, risking a painful genuflection if his forehead had hit the floor with a nasty bump, which it almost did. No president before him so abused custom, traditions, protocol (and the country he represents). Several Internet sites published a rogue’s gallery showing how other national leaders – the prime ministers of Israel, India, Slovenia, South Korea, Russia and Dick Cheney among them – have greeted Emperor Akihito with a friendly handshake and an ever-so-slight but respectful nod (and sometimes not even that).
Now we know why Mr. Obama stunned everyone with an earlier similar bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, only the bow to the Japanese emperor was far more flamboyant, a sign of a really deep sense of inferiority. He was only practicing his bow in Riyadh. Sometimes rituals are learned with difficulty. It took Bill Clinton months to learn how to return a military salute worthy of a commander in chief; like any draft dodger, he kept poking a thumb in his eye until he finally got it. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, seems right at home now giving a wow of a bow. This is not the way an American president impresses evildoers that he’s strong, tough and decisive, that America is not to be trifled with. Read article.
Has Obama Peaked? Yes, He Has
Steven Stark, RCP.com
To listen to some pundits, Barack Obama's public image began taking a serious beating when the off-year election returns came in a week ago. Or maybe it was the undeserved Nobel Prize, his approach to the war in Afghanistan, or when he revved up his pursuit of national health-care reform.
But the pundits, as usual, are wrong. In reality, Obama peaked the night he was elected.
That astonishing evening was both a blessing and a curse for our 44th president. As the first African-American elected to the Oval Office, Obama made the history books in indelible fashion, generating an uplifting sense of national pride and renewal along the way.
That alone is more than many presidents accomplish in a lifetime. But that achievement- if that's what you want to call it - came a very long year ago, before he was even president. The 10 months since he took the oath of office have been a letdown, even to most of his supporters. Read article.
Obama's Show Trials: If military commissions are unjust, why is he still using them? If not, why aren't they good enough for KSM?
James Taranto, Online WSJ.com
Attorney General Eric Holder announced this morning that he's going to import five unlawful enemy combatants, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, to New York--our town. The plan, as the Washington Post reports, is to put them on trial in a civilian court. Prosecutors are "likely to seek the death penalty," the Post notes. But not all the terrorists at Guantanamo are coming to New York:
Administration officials say they expect that up to 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo Bay will ultimately be tried in either federal court or military commissions--possibly including federal courts in the District [of Columbia] or Alexandria [Va.]. Approximately 90 others have been cleared for repatriation or resettlement in a third country, according to an administration official.
That leaves up to 75 individuals remaining at Guantanamo who could continue to be held under the laws of war because they are deemed too dangerous to release, but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary issues and limits on the use of classified material.
Holder also said Friday that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of orchestrating the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 when it was docked in a port in Yemen, and four other detainees will be tried by a military commission. Officials have said military commissions for detainees will be located within the United States, not at Guantanamo, although no location has yet been officially designated.
So here's a question: What happens if KSM is acquitted? An administration cheerleader called Steve Benen suggests that this is a silly question, because prosecuting him will be a cakewalk. Read article.
Presumed Guilty
Peter Collier, FrontPageMag.com
Chris Wallace gave Jack Reed, Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, an opportunity to defend the decision to give KSM a civilian trial in New York. After enumerating the many injuries this could cause the country, Wallace asked Reed for one advantage Attorney General Holder’s decision might bring. Reed, well known as a talking head for the White House, said that such a trial will “stand as a symbol in the world of something different than what the terrorists represent.”
That this comment comes shortly after the President bowed deeply to the Japanese emperor (an obeisance even more groveling than the one he lied about having offered Saudi King Abdullah this past spring) is, as my former Marxist friends used to say, no accident. This administration is obsessed with American guilt–so ambivalent about our country’s intrinsic meaning that it feels it must invent a new symbolism to convince the rest of the world that we are a good and decent nation. Other countries may be on the fence about whether we’re all that different from the terrorists, the logic of Reed’s comment seemed to suggest, so we must have a show trial to convince them that we are.
But while Reed smugly congratulates the administration for setting up a global civics lesson, KSM must be licking his chops and thanking Allah that nobody listened to him when he demanded to be put to death. Read article.
Obama wants his options changed with the war
Laurie Roth, News With Views.com
Right in the wake of Veteran’s day, we have more liberal stalls from this President. Obama is not only revealing himself to be the typical, leftist liberal but an indecisive, pathetic commander and chief. Now an Obama official has stated another 50 yard line statement from our ‘pause in chief ‘ President. He wants different war options. He doesn’t want to be pushed and apparently doesn’t want to listen to General McCrystal and General Petreaus, both who have shown brilliance, courage and practical wisdom as military leaders regarding the surge that worked in Iraq and now demonstrate great leadership in Afghanistan.
I’m wondering what different options the President wants. Is it the option of evil not existing in the world? Is it the option that Pakistan and Afghanistan aren’t really a hot bed and exporter of international terrorism? Is it the option that there won’t be a cost for the endless lack of leadership and stalls from the President?
Obama shares concern about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a Government that we can’t really count on. Oh….and we can count on Obama?
Well, the longer this President waits, the more troops and civilians that die, the more the Taliban and Al Qaeda are allowed to infiltrate, certainly the more Karzai’s Government could be corrupted and hard to work with. Read article.
The Audacity of Extremism
James Lewis, American Thinker.com
Audacity is supposed to be a talent in great generals -- at least some of them. That's where the phrase comes from: "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!" It's attributed to the Kaiser Friedrich der Grosse, to Georges Danton, (one of the big head-choppers of the French Revolution), and to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Audacity can be effective in warfare, because surprise assaults can break through a Maginot Line. But another word for audacity is "gambling." The price you often have to pay is overreach and defeat. Napoleon's audacity led straight to an historic defeat for Imperial France in Russia. France never recovered -- it's had two straight centuries of military defeats since Napoleon. His invasion of Russia also caused unimaginable suffering, just like Hitler's invasion a century later. Audacity is not necessarily a good thing.
When Obama uses the phrase "The Audacity of Hope," we hope he's talking about peaceful audacity. But we can't be sure -- because Obama and his inner circle are extremists in any reasonable meaning of that word, certainly by the standards of normal American politics. That's why Obama seems so foreign. That is what "radical" means; it's another word for "extremist." These folks love to preen themselves on being radical. Rules for Radicals is their Bible, and it's Obama's manual for "community organizing" -- which looks just like community destruction. Alinsky dedicated Rules for Radicals to Lucifer, because Lucifer is the symbol of destructive extremism. Don't tell me these folks are mainstream Americans. No way.
Obama is running the most extremist administration in American history. It's chockfull of wild-eyed bizarros like Van Jones, Rahm Gawdhelpus, and the whole Chicago Gang. Read article.
The Man Who Despises America
Mark Hyman, Spectator.org
When people who voted for Obama in 2008 -- including registered Democrats -- start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it "in for America," then it's clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion.
The central conviction of Obama's ideology is that America is guilty of limitless moral failures and is the chief architect of the world's ills. Obama has boundless enmity for America, its key institutions, and its longtime allies. Consider these facts.
The 30-years of Obama's post-adolescent life are radical by any measure. First, he grew up listening to the ramblings of committed Communist Frank Marshall Davis. It had such a profound effect on him that he wrote fondly of Davis in his first book. In fact, that book is replete with statement after statement about how the U.S. is deeply flawed. Most Americans believe in American exceptionalism. Not so with Obama.
Patriotic Americans would not have listened to the bigoted, anti-Semitic, hate-America rants of a fringe religious leader for 20 seconds let alone for 20 years. Yet, Obama who admitted he attended services at Trinity United Church at least twice a month for two decades called Jeremiah Wright his mentor and his moral sounding board.
Nor would most Americans cultivate a close friendship with an admitted domestic terrorist and his wife whose most notable of lifelong accomplishments were to set off bombs that killed and maimed innocent people. Read article.
The President of Resentment
James Lewis, American Thinker.com
Some people have a government, and some governments have a people, said Ronald Reagan. We are being turned into a nation where the government owns the people. It is the demagogic heirs to the dreadful history of slavery who are now trying to turn the tables; Obama is a slave-master in the making. He looks the part, he acts the part, and behind the scenes, his commissars are making it happen.
Obama has never displayed his bitter, long-harbored resentment toward America quite as obviously as he did after the Fort Hood massacre. The president couldn't figure out how to respond with the dignity befitting his office. Read article.
California’s Nightmare the Future for Other States?
The Foundry, Heritage.org
California ran into trouble when it faced a budget shortfall, legislators couldn’t agree on tax hikes or budget cuts, and voters refused to raise taxes, too. There’s a commonsense solution for that problem: don’t spend more money than you have and save money for a rainy day. Like California, the other states in peril just don’t seem to grasp that simple axiom, and they ignored their economic realities while basing their spending decisions on the flawed assumption that revenue would continue to grow.
If there is one takeaway from the study, it’s this: leaders in state government need to muster the economic willpower to make the tough decisions to put their budgets back on the right track. That means cutting spending and making government smaller.
And the message to Congress, as it contemplates trillions of dollars in new spending? There is not an unlimited supply of revenue, and bad spending decisions can lead to economic disaster. Read article.
EPA Lawyers: Cap-And-Trade 'Fatally Flawed'
IBDEditorials.com
After stifling a report questioning the science behind climate change, the EPA is censoring two of its lawyers for saying the proposed solutions are also problematical. The debate isn't over. It's being suppressed.
In the proud tradition of EPA whistle-blower Alan Carlin, whose leaked study blew the lid off the EPA's hyped and flawed science behind climate change, two EPA lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, have produced a Web video titled "A Huge Mistake." In it they say cap-and-trade in general and the Waxman-Markey bill in particular are the wrong answers anyway.
Williams and Zabel do not deny climate change or its alleged dangers. They are fans of alternative energy and support carbon fees, rebated to energy consumers, to curb emissions. But in two segments of the video they say cap-and-trade is a "big lie" and carbon offsets are a "big rip-off."
Williams states: "Cap-and-trade for climate change has been tried in Europe. It produced harmful volatility in energy prices and few greenhouse gas reductions. It raised energy prices for consumers and raised billions in windfall profits for utilities."
Zabel, who has helped oversee California's cap-and-trade and offset programs for more than two decades, says "carbon offsets won't work because they can't be certified or verified as real additional reductions." Williams says carbon offsets are like "sub-prime mortgages and other clever financial instruments" and similarly "lack integrity." Read article.
More White House Economic Baloney
David Limbaugh.com
Of the many thoughts I had watching President Barack Obama's umpteenth speech on the economy Thursday morning, the most troubling was his refusal to accept responsibility for his disastrous policies.
With unemployment having soared to 10.2 percent, wouldn't it have been reasonable to expect that any Obama speech on the economy would at least acknowledge that his "stimulus" plan didn't come close to achieving the results he promised, starting with his claim that unemployment would peak at 8 percent?
Even a fallible leader would be humbled by this failed performance, but enjoying messianic stature, the expectations bar is rightfully much higher for Obama. Yet instead of showing contrition, he took to the microphone in a surreal, boastful mode, as if calculating that assuming an offensive posture would fool people into ignoring reality.
He bragged about the "bold steps" he had taken "to break the back of this recession." He said he'd prevented "responsible homeowners from losing their homes ... cut taxes for middle-class families ... and created and saved more than a million jobs." But, "We all know that there are limits to what government can and should do, even during such difficult times."
Let's examine his claims. Bold actions to end the recession and "created and saved more than a million jobs"? Well, he has engineered massive spending and debt explosions, but many weren't even calculated to stimulate the economy, especially in the short run. Read article.
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