Views on the News
January 9, 2010
Views
on the News*
Obama has suddenly become very sensitive to polls and
sinking approval ratings, fearing that Americans have finally woken up to his
vapid words and leftist agenda. Last January, Democrats were streaming into
Washington eager to celebrate not just the inauguration of Barack Obama as
president, but also their party's ascendancy from coast to coast. "Yes, we can," a triumphant Obama trumpeted,
and the country seemed to cheer in agreement. Now, the country seems to be yelling back,
"No, you
can't," and putting the Democrats on the defensive heading into
next fall's elections. People are
starting to feel promises were not fulfilled and we did not see a huge shift in
values that would favor the Democrats in the long term, so Party plans to build
a durable political majority are stalling.
On December 26th Rasmussen’s daily tracking had Obama’s approval
at a new low of 44%, with a disapproval figure of 56%. Democrats have started attacking Rasmussen
Reports polls that reflect a different, far worse appraisal of Obama’s
popularity and a host of other issues, claiming a flawed polling model focusing
only on voters. A Real Clear Politics
compilation of other pollsters is not that different showing Obama with an
average approval figure of 49.5% and disapproval of 45.1%. More damning is the end of year daily
Presidential Tracking Poll shows that 24% of the
nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that
Barack Obama is performing his role as President while 42%
Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential
Approval Index rating of -18%. Only 32% of voters are even somewhat
confident that their representatives in Congress are actually representing
their best interests, which explains why 58% of U.S. voters now say Congress is
doing a poor job. 50% of Americans
believe the country will still be in recession at the end of 2010. New data shows that 47% of voters think states
should have the right to opt-out of whatever health care plan Congress adopts
while 40% disagree. 78% say it’s at
least somewhat likely that the proposed health care reform legislation will
cost more than projected. Only 32% of
U.S. voters say the country is heading in the right direction, while 62%
believe the nation is heading down the wrong track. The biggest 2009
trend expected to continue in 2010 is the President’s popularity will continue
to sink and his legislative agenda popularity will sink even faster.
(“Low favorables: Dems rip Rasmussen” by
Alex Isenstadt dated January 2, 2010 published by Politico at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/31047.html
“Riding high a year ago, Democrats now fear
disaster ahead” by Steven Thomma and David Lightman dated January 6, 2010 published by McClatchy Washington
Bureau at http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/81804.html
)
Few
things focus the attention of politicians as much as approaching elections and
Democrats are aware that spending and deficits are big reasons Republicans have
a nine-point lead on the Rasmussen Poll's generic ballot. Independents are particularly
important to this administration since they were the key swing voting block. They are
sensitive about deficits, spending and taxes, whose growth they see adversely
affecting jobs and the economy and give Obama only a 21% approval on handling
the deficit. Discretionary domestic
spending now stands at $536 billion, up nearly 24% from President George W.
Bush's last full year budget in fiscal 2008 of $433.6 billion. That's a huge spending surge, even for a
profligate liberal like Obama, and the $102 billion spending increase doesn't
even count the $787 billion stimulus package, of which $534 billion remains
unspent. Now that the banks are
repaying, with interest and dividends, the $240 billion the Bush administration
lent them, the Obama administration is considering recycling those dollars into
new spending on "green"
technology and more “stimulus,”
despite provisions Congress wrote into the law creating the Troubled Asset
Relief Program that requires that repaid TARP funds be used exclusively for
deficit reduction. Meanwhile, defense
spending is being flattened, rising 3.6% while nondefense discretionary
spending climbs 12%. There are also
those pesky entitlements which have grown to 66% of the budget, up from 29% in
1965. Serious budgeters understand
spending cannot be brought under control unless these mandatory outlays are
part of the mix. One idea on Capitol
Hill is to create a commission to provide Republican cover for Democrat tax
increases and a permanent increase in the size of the federal government. At the beginning
of his term, Americans believed Obama would follow through on his campaign
promises about "cutting wasteful
spending" and going "through
the federal budget, line-by-line, ending programs that we don't need" and
putting "an end to the run-away spending the record deficits." After a year of
living in Obama’s fiscal fantasy world, Americans realize they have a record
deficit-setting, budget-busting spender on their hands, so voters are now
reading the fine print on all that Obama proposes and as they do, his
credibility, already badly damaged, suffers.
(“Obama’s Fiscal Fantasy World” by Karl
Rove dated January 6, 2010 published by The Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704842604574642212271767466.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
)
President Obama is a victim of his upbringing and training
which causes him to see America through leftist glasses which is the only
explanation that makes sense on his destructive legislative agenda. Asked
by Oprah to grade his own performance during the first year of his presidency,
Barack Obama did not hesitate to pat himself on the back: "a good, solid B-plus." The conservatives are genuinely puzzled by
the president's blithe confidence. His
performance can be judged as nothing short of calamitous only if he is seen as
honestly trying to be true to his presidential oath of office "to protect and defend the Constitution of
the United States." Barack Obama is a lifelong radical, and his
ideology compels him to see the world through a revolutionary prism. Based on Obama’s standards, he has indeed
earned a solid grade for the first year of his presidency. Let's try to evaluate Obama's performance
from the leftist perspective. He has
piled up trillions in new spending, saddling the generations to come with a
crushing debt burden. While the
Keynesian prescription of spending one's way out of the recession has been
widely discredited, it is still gospel on the left. Obama has done nothing to help business, the
only reliable job-generator, while bemoaning high unemployment and putting vast
swathes of the U.S. economy under direct government control. For the left, capitalism is the ultimate
enemy, its destruction by any means necessary the Holy Grail. Wealth must be taken away from the greedy
plutocrats and redistributed to the "rightful owners" -- the
poor. From their viewpoint,
nationalizing everything in sight is the only solution to America's problems --
the only true path to secular salvation.
Regrettably, it cannot be done in one fell swoop; the resistance is too
stiff. So the ultimate goal will have to
be reached step by painful step, and Obama deserves plaudits for his initial
efforts. When two-thirds of the U.S.
auto industry, for years encumbered by unreasonable union demands, finally went
belly up, President Obama put GM and Chrysler under direct government
control. Big Labor is one of the
president's most important and valuable allies deserving a handsome payoff, so
he gave a piece of the action to the UAW in spite of its prominent role in
steering both auto companies into the ditch.
The president has been trying to convert the country's energy sector to
the "green" creed, which is
sure to take the wrecking ball to the American way of life and dramatically
reduce our standard of living. Pushing
the cap-and-trade legislation, Obama is doing his part. The same goes for the crown jewel of Obama's
agenda: health care reform designed to give the government absolute control
over one-sixth of the U.S. economy.
Admittedly, Obama could not get everything he wanted, but even partial
success would be a stupendous achievement, giving him hope to build on it in
the fullness of time. Obama's
diplomacy essentially boils down to preening like a peacock on the world
stage. Endlessly apologizing for America
and appeasing her enemies looks like a joke -- but only to his critics. Obama appeases tyrants of all stripes and
consistently tries to ingratiate himself with the Muslim ummah
-- only to lose everyone's respect and turn himself into the butt of
jokes. But it only looks like a foreign
policy disaster to his enemies on the right.
As far as the progressives are concerned, bowing down to the third-world
despots is exactly the right and proper thing to do. Summing up, from the viewpoint of the
progressives, while arguably deserving an "A" for effort and audacity, Obama's actual performance, even
though not as good as it could be, certainly merits the grade he generously
awarded himself: "a good, solid
B-plus." From the conservative perspective Obama has been an outright
failure and will continue to undermine the American economy and prestige and
power abroad.
(“Obama’s Progressive Goose and Our
Conservative Gander” by Victor Volsky dated
January 8, 2010 published by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/obamas_progressive_goose_and_o.html
)
This Democrat
Congress will be
remembered for two efforts that will damage the economy for years to come:
government health care "reform" and the $787 billion stimulus plan. The
federal deficit ballooned to $1.4 trillion and national debt increased to over
$12 trillion in 2009. The binge of
deficit spending is all but guaranteed to be the excuse for coming tax hikes
that will have to hit a far wider swath of Americans than those fabled rich Obama
promised to target. The Democrats'
health care plan already includes numerous and onerous tax increases. The deceptively named stimulus plan contained
a decade's worth of pent-up Democratic spending wishes on everything from $50
million in National Endowment for the Arts grants to $500 million for "leading edge biofuel projects." The twin disasters of government health care
"reform" and the "stimulus" tend to blot out some of
the other sins of last year's congressional session, but here are 11 more
reasons to remember this Congress less than fondly:
·
shredding
the Constitution by failing to stand up to the Obama administration's power
grab in appointing a record number of policy czars;
·
failing
to protect the public from terrorism by punting the reauthorization of the
Patriot Act until next year;
·
damaging
the economy and costing us jobs by leaving the U.S.-Korea and U.S.-Colombia
Free Trade Agreements in limbo;
·
further
crippling the U.S. auto industry by interfering with General Motors Corp.'s and
Chrysler's reorganization plans;
·
boosting
funds for international "family
planning" (i.e. lots of abortions) by $100 million after President
Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy;
·
hurting
D.C. children by suffocating the District's Voucher program, which is slowly
dying as no more students are allowed to join;
·
undermining
faith in democracy by refusing to hear their constituents' fears at town hall
meetings in August;
·
slashing
the Congressional Budget Office's credibility by gaming the timing to force the
CBO to proclaim that Democratic plans to expand spending will lower the
deficit;
·
gumming
up the courts with a "hate crimes"
law that will force judges, prosecutors and juries to search criminals' minds
for unauthorized thoughts, but won't put criminals in jail any faster;
·
socializing
yet one more aspect of the U.S. economy by taking over the school loan
business; and
·
making the rest of
their failures that much more appalling by raising their own Congressional budgets
in the midst of a recession when everybody else has to cut theirs.
This Congress will
go down in history for the damage it has done to America with wild deficit
spending and the takeover of one seventh of the U.S. economy. Unless and until the
Democrat majority is thrown out of office, this Congress’s disastrous policies
will prove to be only the beginning of their perfidy on Capitol Hill and on the
American people.
(“Congress horribilis” dated January 4, 2010
published by The Washington Times at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/04/congress-horribilis/
)
Now that America has elected a bi-racial President, we should not be surprised that racial politics are guiding many policies and practices in this Administration. Obama promised us unity and clearly implied that he would govern in a color-blind way, but this promise, like so many others, has quickly been broken. The administration and Congress have passed policies clearly based on favoritism. They have further appointed, approved, and empowered key officials who have displayed a strong desire to benefit African-Americans over the interests of all Americans. There are two ways this agenda has been promoted: steps that have a disparate impact in favor of African-Americans, and those that are designed to specifically favor African-Americans (disparate treatment). Disparate impacts are outcomes that benefit African-Americans because they are compose a higher proportion of a particular group. These include:
· efforts to gut the workfare requirement that was the signature achievement of Bill Clinton in the area of welfare reform;
· giving a blank check to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Authority to expand home "ownership" among lower-income people and income redistribution on a massive scale; and
· health care "reform" despite all the polls showing that most Americans are happy with their own medical care and do not want the intrusion of government, the massive deficits, and the tax increases that will come with such "reform."
Because African-Americans make up a high proportion of the
disadvantaged, they will disproportionally benefit and this is an agenda at
work. Barack Obama revealed this
strategy when he said: “If we have a
program, for example, of universal health care, that
will disproportionately affect people of color, because they're
disproportionately uninsured.” Obama
expressed support for reparations (retracted during the campaign) and expressed
frustration that the Constitution and the Warren Court presented roadblocks to
redistributing wealth to blacks. The
Senate health care reform bill has been ginned up with a raft of provisions
that will send money flowing to medical schools that offer preferential
admissions to underrepresented minorities (read: quotas that exclude Asians)
and that are geared towards sending doctors and nurses to "vulnerable
populations" in "underserved
areas" or "populations
experiencing health disparities." Six federal agencies must create an "Office of Minority Health." ObamaCare institutionalizes racial discrimination to such an extent
that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was compelled to send letters to the
president and congressional leaders warning about the "racially discriminatory provisions"
in the Senate's health care bill. Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice
Department shields the new Black Panther Party from punishment for intimidating
voters during last year's campaign, suddenly dropping three of the four charges
in a layup of a case and penalizing the final one with a laughable tickle on
the wrist. Then Holder stonewalls
Congressmen and the Civil Rights Commission, who want to get to the bottom of
this miscarriage of justice. Meanwhile
Justice has ruled that ACORN is eligible for federal aid, despite all the
scandals surrounding the group. There
was a reason this White House broke all precedents when it sought to bring the
census operations under its own control. Funny numbers are a White House specialty --
especially when they are under the control of Chicago politicians who can
manipulate the process to benefit one group over another. Sampling and estimating, rather than an actual
enumeration, for example, has the prospect of greatly enhancing the counting of
minorities (at the expense of accuracy).
Obama's Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has announced that affirmative
action will be a focus of her department.
Obama created something called the Chief Diversity Officer and the first
person to hold this position is Mark Lloyd, who has spoken publicly of getting
white media executives to "step down"
in favor of minorities. This "new racial
spoils system," is emerging both from the Oval Office and Capitol
Hill. If there is any politician
who knows how to work a spoils system, it is one hailing from the Windy City. We should not be surprised, since Democrats
(and Republicans) always reward the special-interest groups that help elect
them: unions, trial lawyers, teachers, and of course African-Americans. Despite the near-total media silence on this
topic, maybe people are beginning to suspect the worst. Barack Obama's approval rating has plummeted
among white Americans (almost in a free-fall), yet it holds steady among
African-Americans. What we have seen so
far certainly belies Obama's claim that he would unite us or that he was the
symbol of post-racial politics. The
agenda seems to reflect a shift of priorities to bring health care, stimulus
money, housing, jobs, voting power, and a range of other benefits to
African-Americans as African-Americans, not just as
Americans. This administration is on track to be "the most polarizing administration we have seen in matters of
race since the 1920s" and is just more destructive policies that must
be undone when this current group is voted out in 2012!
(“Racial
Spoils in Obama’s America” by George Picard dated January 6, 2010 published
by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/racial_spoils_in_obamas_americ.html
)
In terms of U.S. output contractions, the so-called Great
Recession was not much more severe than the recessions in 1973-75 and 1981-82,
yet recovery from the latest recession has progressed very slowly. We
believe two factors are behind this rather tepid rebound. An obvious one is the severe financial crisis
that precipitated this recession, with many major financial institutions
receiving large bailouts from the federal government. The confidence of bankers and venture
capitalists has been shattered, at least for a while, and it will take time for
them to recover from the financial turmoil of the past couple of years. The household sector also faces a difficult
period of financial retrenchment in the wake of a major collapse in home
prices, overextended debt positions for many, and high unemployment. The second factor is less obvious, but
possibly also of great importance. Liberal
Democrats won a major victory in the 2008 elections, winning the presidency and
large majorities in both the House and Senate. They interpreted this as evidence that a large
majority of Americans want major reforms in the economy, health-care and many
other areas. So in addition to
continuing and extending the Bush-initiated bailout of banks, AIG, General
Motors, Chrysler and other companies, Congress and President Obama signaled
their intentions to introduce major changes in taxes, government spending and
regulations—changes that could radically transform the American economy. The efforts to
transform the economy began with a fiscal stimulus package of nearly $800
billion. While some elements served the
package's stated purpose and helped to soften the recession's impact, the
overall package was not well designed to foster a speedy recovery or set the
stage for long-term growth. In terms of
discouraging a rapid recovery, other government proposals created greater
uncertainty and risk for businesses and investors. These include plans to increase greatly
marginal tax rates for higher incomes. In
addition, discussions at the Copenhagen conference and by the president to
impose high taxes on carbon dioxide emissions must surely discourage
investments in refineries, power plants, factories and other businesses that
are big emitters of greenhouse gases. Congressional
"reforms" of the American
health delivery system have gone through dozens of versions. The separate bills passed by the House and
Senate worry small businesses, in particular. They fear their labor costs will increase
because of mandates to spend much more on health insurance for their employees.
The resulting reluctance of small
businesses to invest, expand and hire harms households as well, because it
slows the creation of new jobs and the growth of labor incomes. In its efforts to combat the financial crisis
and recession, the Fed created over $1 trillion of excess reserves at banks
through various bailout programs and open market operations. When banks draw on these reserves for loans to
businesses and households, there is a potential for the money supply to grow
rapidly, possibly producing a substantial inflation. How hard the Fed will fight inflationary
pressures through open market sales and other actions that raise interest rates
is a significant source of uncertainty about future inflation and about the
potential for monetary policy tightening to choke off the recovery. Even though some of the proposed
anti-business policies might never be implemented, they generate considerable
uncertainty for businesses and households. Faced with a highly uncertain policy
environment, the prudent course is to set aside or delay costly commitments
that are hard to reverse. The result is
reluctance by banks to increase lending—despite their huge excess
reserves—reluctance by businesses to undertake new capital expenditures or
expand work forces, and decisions by households to postpone major purchases. The weak economy is
far and away the most prevalent reason given for why the next few months is
"not a good time" to
expand, but "political climate"
is the next most frequently cited reason, well ahead of borrowing costs and
financing availability.
(“Uncertainty and the Slow Recovery” by
Gary S. Becker, Steven J. Davis and Kevin M. Murphy dated January 3, 2010
published by The Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703278604574624711732528426.html
)
The
$200 billion in federal stimulus cash was supposed to save the states from
fiscal calamity, but the reality is that all that free money has set the states
up for an even bigger mess this year and into the future. For example, the stimulus offered $80
billion for Medicaid to cover health-care costs for unemployed workers and
single workers without kids. But in 2011
most of that extra federal Medicaid money vanishes, and the states will have
one million more people on Medicaid with no money to pay for it. Second, stimulus dollars came with strings
attached that are now causing enormous budget headaches. Many environmental
grants have matching requirements, so to get a federal dollar, states and
cities had to spend a dollar even when they were facing huge deficits. The new
construction projects built with federal funds also have federal Davis-Bacon
wage requirements that raise state building costs to pay inflated union
salaries. So when states should be reducing outlays to match a new normal of lower
revenue collections, federal stimulus rules mean many states will have little
choice but to raise taxes to meet their constitutional balanced budget
requirements. This
is the opposite of what the White House and Congress claimed when they said the
stimulus funds would prevent economically harmful state tax increases. Now Congress wants to pass another $100 billion aid package for
ailing states to sustain the mess the first stimulus helped to create.
(“The States and the Stimulus” dated
January 2, 2010 published by The Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704152804574628633460370644.html
)
The U.S. Senate also passed an $871 billion health care reform bill on Christmas Eve through shady, sweetheart backdoor deals… while you were cutting your Christmas spending because of the recession, Congress charged you and your children's national credit card with another $2 trillion plus. For those who missed the bloated bureaucratic holiday news, President Obama exclaimed that congressional Democrats "scored a big victory for the American people," but, in fact, it was actually our senators who scored big time through political and personal payoffs. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid passed out Christmas bonuses, what I call perpetual pork, gifts that keep on giving, unlike those familiar single hits at the public trough. He initiated a new frontier in pork-barrel politics. His corrupt and creative diversions included giving out Medicaid and Medicare credits like another round of pork projects. Rarely has the corruption of a program been so exposed while it is still awaiting final approval in Congress. The special favors and vote-buying are so gaudy that some of the corrupt deals even have their own names: the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase." In 383 pages of changes to the 2,076 page Senate bill HR. 3590, there are dozens of these types of pork rind provisions for Senators:
· Senator Ben Nelson sold out with a government bribe (“Cornhusker Kickback”) that covers Nebraska's Medicare expansion costs to the tune of $100 million;
· Senator Mary Landrieu bragged about receiving a $300 million increase in Medicaid funding for Louisiana (“Louisiana Purchase”);
· With Obama telling the AARP that he considered Medicare Advantage an example of "wasteful spending," Senator Bill Nelson obtained a sweetheart deal for an exclusion of some 800,000 policyholders all across Florida from cuts to Medicare Advantage;
· Senator Patrick Leahy finagled $600 million in additional Medicaid benefits for Vermont;
· Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad secured additional Medicare payments for their North Dakota rural hospitals;
· Senator Tom Harkin openly confessed putting in an increase in Medicare payments to eight Iowa medium-sized hospitals;
· Senator Max Baucus secured extra Medicare benefits for select Montana residents;
· Senator Bernie Sanders agreed to a $10 billion increase for community health centers;
· Senators Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye will receive a Disproportionate Share Hospital, or DSH, extension for Hawaii;
· Hospitals in Senator Joe Lieberman's home state of Connecticut will have the option to benefit under provisions if it means higher payments;
· Senator John Kerry won deals for more generous federal payments under the Medicaid program for Massachusetts;
· Senator Chris Dodd inserted a $100 million kickback in the bill to construct a new hospital for the University of Connecticut; and
· Senator Roland Burris of Illinois won the super-loser award for claiming credit for the provision in the Reid bill that could eventually provide federal funds again for ACORN!
And to secure its shady deals so
that no one can avert its actions, Congress has inserted one of the most
unconstitutional sections ever written in a piece of legislation: Section 3403
of Reid's amendment on Page 1,020 reads, "It shall
not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any
bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise
change this subsection." Senator
Orrin Hatch posed to his colleagues, "Who
will pay for these special deals?" "The answer is simple – every
other state in the union." The fact is that the average American citizen
would be thrown in jail for embezzlement and dirty laundering if they were to
conduct their business as Congress does our country. Amazingly, under
pressure, the Democrats are not scaling back on the corruption of this bill.
They're doubling down; they are trying to salvage a corrupt product by adopting
a corrupt process, canceling the traditional conference committee that would
harmonize the House and Senate versions of the bill, in favor of closed-door Democrat
only negotiations to produce an even more complicated and opaque compromise. This is being done in flagrant
violation of a number of President Obama's major campaign promises: to make the
health-care negotiations available to public and specifically to broadcast them
on C-SPAN and to return bi-partisanship to Congress. Those corrupt crime bosses we call Congressmen
have caused enough damage! In November
2010, all 435 House seats will be open for re-election, and one-third of the
Senate seats will be open for re-election as well. The time is now to eject the unconstitutional
corrupt Congressmen, and it's time to let them know what's coming. I agree with TEA Party
leaders, who are delivering bold ultimatums to all congressional candidates in
2010: "Pledge to repeal the health-care reform bill in its entirety – or you
will be booted from office."
(“If the price is right” by Chuck Norris
dated January 3, 2010 published by World Net Daily at http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=120837
“Obama and the Vampire Congress” dated
January 7, 2010 published by Front Page Magazine at http://frontpagemag.com/2010/01/07/obama-and-the-vampire-congress-by-michelle-malkin/
“Culture of Corruption Produces Awful Health
Care Bill” by Robert Tracinski dated January 8,
2010 published by Real Clear Politics at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/01/08/culture_of_corruption_produces_awful_health_care_bill.html
)
Someone needs to wake up President Obama that the Global War on Terror (GWOT) is still very active around the world and the United States remains the number one target of opportunity. The war is hot and deadly around the world: decreasing in Iraq, increasing in Afghanistan, occasional drone strikes in Pakistan and Somalia, and currently quiet in Malaysia and the Philippines. Yemen has put itself on the GWOT radar training future combatants. In 2009 the United States has been attacked twice on American soil: first at Fort Hood and now at the Detroit airport, and five other plots were thwarted before execution. “Connecting the dots” on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , the Christmas bomber, should not have been that tough since intelligence about terror threats rarely comes on such a silver platter:
· his Nigerian banker father went to the U.S. Embassy in Lagos to warn that his son had fallen under "the influence of religious extremists based in Yemen" and was a security risk;
· this came after months of U.S. intelligence intercepts about al Qaeda plans for an attack using a Nigerian man; and
· he paid for his ticket with cash, didn't check any luggage, and didn’t leave any contact information.
We were spared the horrible
consequences of our incompetence, only because of his technical incompetence. Abdulmutallab’s name
went onto the list of 400,000 people who might have
links to terror, but not the list of 14,000 subject to multiple screenings
before boarding an airplane nor the list of 3,400 people who are not permitted
to fly. The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center's "reasonable suspicion"
standard reads: "Reasonable suspicion requires 'articulable'
facts which, taken together with rational inferences, reasonably warrant a
determination that an individual is known or suspected to be or has been
engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to,
terrorism and terrorist activities, and is based on the totality of the
circumstances. Mere guesses or inarticulate 'hunches' are not enough to
constitute reasonable suspicion." This “political correctness” to not tag him as a person of interest raises
questions not only about airline security, but about how we are fighting the
real war we are in.
Unlike the war on crime, or the war on drugs, this is not a metaphorical
war, and there is no presumption of innocence, rather a presumption that he is
a terrorist and did not act alone. The
immediate imperative was not to read him his Miranda rights, but to subject him
to intense and hostile interrogation so that U.S. forces can quickly find, fix,
attack and kill his comrades and camp followers. The first 100% truthful thing that President
Obama said was that “U.S. intelligence had enough
information to uncover the terrorist plot to bomb a Northwest Airlines flight
but failed to piece it all together before the suspect boarded a plane for
Detroit armed with explosives.” Look for Obama to throw Homeland
Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Counter-Terrorism Czar John Brennan,
and/or National Counter-Terrorism Center Director Michael Leiter
under the bus for incompetence to cover his own cluelessness! Bush's premise that Islam would negotiate
with the West was false, but Bush loved America, and he protected America, even
if he refused to see the enemy for who and what it
was. It was no accident that America was
safe for eight years post-9/11, but our security is now being unraveled by a
weak and pro-Islamic president. I fear
the jihadi attacks on America in 2009 were
staggering, and it has only just begun. Maybe now Homeland Security will finally begin profiling for
actual terrorists like El Al Airlines has done successfully for years, and stop
focusing on such dreaded implements of terrorism as nail files and shampoo
bottles!
The nation's most important New Year's resolution is to remove the Marxist majority in Washington and the Republican Party has the best, if not the only chance to unseat the current majority. There can be little doubt that the national sentiment opposes the Marxist policies being imposed by the current majority in Washington. Poll after poll, parade after parade, TEA Party after TEA Party vividly demonstrate the nation's frustration with Obama's "fundamental transformation of America." There are dozens of conservative political parties, each shouting for attention, each working to restore American values, and each being largely ignored by most Republicans, and all Democrats. On their own, none of the conservative parties, including the Republican Party, can remove the Marxist majority in Washington. Working together toward the common goal of changing the current majority, the conservatives cannot fail. Like it or not, the Republican Party is the best tool available to do the job that needs to be done, but it is not sufficiently powered, nor even aimed in the right direction to accomplish the job that must be done. Voters increasingly see the two parties as different and Republicans must seize the opportunity to articulate the difference. In 1994 House Republicans unified behind a clear and written mission statement for the midterm elections called the “Contract With America.” Although this bound only those House members who signed on for those ten stated objectives, Americans connected the Contract with America to Republicans at every level, from state legislative races to big state Senate races. The “Contract With America” dealt primarily with bringing to vote specific popular measures. This year what enrages and infuriates Americans is that the very process of government seems divorced from the will of the people. What Republicans should do in 2010 is to write a very short, very clear and very definite pledge for what the Republican Party will do if given power (aka Contract With America 2010):
· prohibit voting on any bill unless the entire language of the bill has been made public at least thirty days prior to the vote;
· guarantee short, uncluttered congressional bills;
· end all hidden dealings on federal legislation and last-minute amendments;
· disallow adding pork into crevices of vast bills as a means to buy votes;
· repeal all health care legislation passed under Obama;
· Republicans should propose a very short health care reform bill which accomplishes, without political payoffs or backroom deals, many good and popular changes; and
· require a two-thirds majority to pass any federal legislation with earmarks in it.
It will take disgruntled Democrats,
Third Party advocates, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, Free-marketers, TEA
Party marchers, and even formerly apathetic couch-potatoes, all working
together, to take control of the Republican Party, and to run the Marxists out
of town. The
people who want to return America's government to the vision set forth in the
U.S. Constitution must seize control of the Republican Party and transform it
into an unbeatable political power focused on restoring the Constitution, free
markets, private property rights, and individual freedom.
(“Resolved:
remove the Marxist majority” by Henry Lamb dated January 3, 2010 published
by Renew America at http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/lamb/100103
“A
Brief 2010 Republican Midterm Platform” by Bruce Walker dated January 5, 2010
published by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/a_brief_2010_republic_midterm.html
)
* There is so much published each week that unless you search for it, you will miss important breaking news. I try to package the best of this information into my “Views on the News” each Saturday morning. Individual issue updates this week include:
· Bibliography at http://returntocommonsensesite.com/welcome/bibliography.php
· Homeland Security at http://returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/homelandsecurity.php
· Immigration at http://returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/immigration.php
· Defense at http://returntocommonsensesite.com/fp/defense.php
· Terrorism at http://returntocommonsensesite.com/fp/terrorism.php
David Coughlin
Hawthorne, NY