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January 6, 2010
Exclusive – Oval Office Watch – Wednesday, January 6
Obama’s first year yields few results in drive for bipartisanship - HERE.
A Humpty-Dumpty View of the World - SEE HERE.
The Left's Permanent War on the War on Terrorism - SEE HERE.
Our Nation Created, Our Nation Destroyed - GO HERE.
Clueless
Linda Chavez, Townhall.com
Clueless. It’s the word that best describes the Obama administration’s first year in office. They’ve proven themselves clueless about creating jobs; clueless about handling growing nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea; and now, most devastatingly, clueless about protecting Americans from terrorist attacks on our own soil. And with nearly one year under the belts, they can’t keep blaming the Bush administration for everything that goes awry.
It is hard to imagine a more incompetent handling of the thwarted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. jetliner. First, the commander in chief was too busy enjoying his vacation in Hawaii to do much more than issue platitudinous assurances that he was "actively monitoring" the incident, while dispersing White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to the weekend talk shows to downplay the significance of the event.
When the news media began uncovering evidence that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was exactly who he claimed to be when taken into custody -- a terrorist tied to an al-Qaida network in Yemen -- the administration began backtracking on its earlier statements that the incident was not part of a larger terrorist plot and that "the system worked." But it took the president three days to appear before the American public to insist on a thorough investigation. By that time, everyone knew that the would-be suicide bomber’s own father had alerted U.S. intelligence officials of his son’s threat to American security. But the warnings didn’t keep Abdulmutallab off a jetliner headed to the United States.
Even the words the president used in his press conference Dec. 28 suggest how clueless he is. He described Abdulmutallab as a "passenger (who) allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device," repeatedly referring to Abdulmutallab in his comments as a "suspect." These are the weasel words we use when talking about ordinary criminals, which is no accident. The Obama administration’s anti-terrorism philosophy is to treat terrorist attacks like criminal actions, not acts of war. Read article.
Obama's failed freshman year - America hasn't been this weak since the Carter years.
Editorial, Washington Times.com
President Obama's freshman-year foreign policy was the worst in living memory. At the dawn of 2010, the United States finds itself noticeably weaker in international affairs than it was when Mr. Obama took office, and there are no signs of improvement in the year ahead.
Mr. Obama was elected with almost no national security experience, but he counted on two principle sources of leverage on the world stage: his personal charisma and the fact that he was not George W. Bush. The year began with much swagger and self-assurance, but the result was a foreign policy with the naive enthusiasm of someone who once may have taken a graduate seminar in international relations.
Mr. Obama's first-week pledge to close the detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year set the tone for 2009. It was a victory of symbolism over substance that proved to be more difficult to implement than he expected, and Mr. Obama soon found that it was easier to make lofty promises than to deliver prudent policies. Read article.
Obama's Year of Living Blamelessly
Abe Greenwald, CommentaryMagazine.com
Here’s a prediction: Obama will find that he’s gone to the Blame Bush well one too many times. With the Christmas Day fiasco something has “become clear,” alright. But it’s not the failings of George W. Bush. James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation notes, “Since 2001, there have been 28 failed terrorist attacks against the United States. That averages out to about three foiled attempts per year. That was until this year.
This year there were six failed attempts that make 2009 a banner year — the most in one year.” Unprecedented, as Obama likes to say. A historic first, as his supporters are fond of putting it. Well, you might say, that doesn’t mean that the Obama administration has necessarily opened us up to more attacks, right? Isn’t it fair to say that it has stopped more attacks? Not exactly. Here are further groundbreaking results from Obama’s first year as buck-passer in chief:
In November of 2008, Bret Stephens observed in the Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Obama will get, and deserves, a period of political grace. Let's say a year. After that, it will become increasingly difficult to attribute whatever mistakes he makes to the legacy of his predecessor. American liberalism, such as it is, is finally being put to the test that fate has denied it these last many decades. Succeed or fail, this time there can be no excuses.”
Here’s a suggested New Year’s resolution for President Obama: start reading the Journal. Read article.
Tough first year hits Obama's ratings hard
Kara Rowland, WashingtonTimes.com
The curtain is coming down on a tough first year for President Obama, whose poll numbers have dropped dramatically in the face of rising unemployment, a slipping legislative agenda and painful decisions on health care, the economy and the war in Afghanistan.
His support has faltered on all those key issues - and from both ends of the spectrum. Opponents blame him for expanding the size of government while some in his Democratic base accuse him of not pushing hard enough for his agenda.
As Mr. Obama leads his party into next year's congressional elections, pollsters say, his overall approval rating - down to an average of 48 percent from 67 percent in January, according to Pollster.com's aggregate of several national polls - likely will be tied to the unemployment rate, which hovers at 10 percent. Read article.
What Bill Ayers Saw in Barack Obama
Jack Cashill, American Thinker.com
In 1994, while Barack Obama's memoir Dreams From My Father was being polished off, Bill Ayers co-authored an essay whose title befits a former merchant seaman: "Navigating a restless sea: The continuing struggle to achieve a decent education for African American youngsters in Chicago."
In "Navigating," Ayers and his nominal co-author, former New Communist Movement leader Michael Klonsky, offer a detailed analysis of the Chicago school system and a discussion of potential reforms. Curiously, so too does Obama in Dreams.
What makes Obama's educational digression notable is that he had spent only two months working on education issues as a community organizer -- and that seven years earlier, while his mind was admittedly "elsewhere."
Unlike Obama, Bill Ayers has a genuine, career-long interest in education. In the mid-1990s he was sufficiently serious about reform to invest considerable time and energy in his protégé. As shall be seen, the likely reason Ayers did so was because Obama had the ability to address problems that he and Klonsky could not.
It will surprise no one who has followed my research that the analysis offered in Dreams echoes that of "Navigating." It stands to reason. Each was co-authored in the same year by the same person: Bill Ayers, a talented writer and editor, and surely the dominant partner in both efforts.
The clue to understanding the particular value Obama brought to the relationship, however, can be found not in the many points on which Ayers and the Obama of Dreams agree but rather on the one in which they differ. Read article.
Legislating Discrimination: One more reason to oppose Obamacare.
Hans A. von Spakovsky, NRO.com
What’s the worst bill ever seriously considered for passage by the U.S. Congress? Certainly both the House health-reform bill and Sen. Harry Reid’s health bill are leading contenders.
Both proposals are obscenely expensive. Both limit our freedom to choose our families’ health care. And both would legislate racial and other forms of discrimination — making them not only unconstitutional, but immoral, counterproductive, and dangerous.
Within the last three months, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has twice sent letters to the president and the leaders of the House and Senate warning them of discriminatory provisions in both bills. But those warnings have been ignored, and the problems remain.
Take Reid’s bill. It directs the secretary of health and human services to award federal grants worth billions of dollars to educational institutions that train medical-service providers. However, “priority” for federal dollars is to be given only to those institutions offering “preferential” admissions to underrepresented minorities (according to race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, and religion, depending on which section of the bill you look at). Thus, schools will be unable to compete for essential federal funding unless they adopt admission policies that intentionally and deliberately discriminate. It guarantees the institution of racist and sexist quotas sanctioned and encouraged by the federal government in what Linda Chavez of the Center for Equal Opportunity correctly calls “a new racial spoils system.”
The bill also declares that institutions training social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, behavioral pediatricians, psychiatric nurses, and counselors will be ineligible for federal grants unless they discriminate. Read article.
Are we safer than before noon on 1-20-09?
John W. Lillpop, Worth-Reading.com
When former President George W. Bush spoke to terrorists his message was simple and clear: We will hunt you down and kill you!
Period, end of story.
W’s "clenched fist" kept America safe for nearly eight years following the 9.11 attack.
Regrettably, since Barack Obama was sworn is at the 44th U.S. President, the message to terrorists is:
· Unclench your fists and let us talk
· Terrorists will be treated with the same dignity and politically correct manners afforded any American citizen.
Terrorists will be read their Miranda rights, provided with taxpayer-paid legal representation, and will be allowed to broadcast their anti-American, Jihad messages from the great media center that is New York City. Read article.
It's Not the Economy, Stupid! It's National Survival!
David Limbaugh.com
The Washington Post's Dan Balz thinks that "with new priorities, Obama and Democrats can recover in 2010." Sorry, Dan; it's about more than priorities. It's a matter of their worldview.
Balz dutifully cites "the size of the problems President Obama inherited" and "the battles he chose to take on during his first year" as mitigating factors that may lead to the public's understanding and allow Obama an opportunity to hit "the reset button."
Balz says Obama's advisers believe he can "pivot" in the first few months of 2010 and restore his standing with the American people. Balz offers four "elements" that "might allow that to happen": refocus on the economy; move Congress offstage; get serious about the deficit and spending; and avoid overloading the circuits.
Let's briefly examine Balz's analysis -- an analysis that is doubtlessly typical for Beltway media elites.
First, Obama's free-falling approval ratings are not a result of problems he inherited. How long are he and his liberal media shills going to milk this "blame Bush" mantra like a bunch of reprobate school kids? Balz is onto something, however, in citing "the battles he chose to take on during his first year." But he's wrong that it is a mitigating factor. Read article.
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