Views on the News
June
12, 2010
Views on the News*
The current President of the United States, acting in a way that
would make Nero proud, continues to fiddle while not only the United States
burns, but the rest of the world begins to spin out of control, and he
continues to delude himself on his self worth and importance. The
economy and the financial future of the country are in shambles. The oil spill in the Gulf was allowed to
spread with no plan, central authority, or leadership in place to prevent its
destruction of the Gulf coast. American
weakness and lack of resolve has sent a signal and emboldened our enemies to
press their hegemonic strategy throughout the globe and to attack our allies,
such as Israel. The country is in this
position because all President Obama wants to do, and is capable of doing, is
half his job. In the United Kingdom and
many other countries with a parliamentary system, there is a distinction
between the head of state and the head of the government. In some countries, such as Denmark, Spain, and
the United Kingdom, the monarch, either a king or queen, is considered the head
of state, and with that office goes all the trappings
of royalty. The mundane responsibility
of running the government falls to the elected parliament and their chosen Prime
Minister. Of the world's major
democracies, only the United States merges both functions into the office of President. Barack Obama views himself as the head of
state only, and he has no concept of what leadership is, and thus, he cannot be
bothered with the day-to-day responsibility of governance. He is, in his narcissistic world, above all
that; therefore, he delegates the writing of the Stimulus, health care, and
other major bills to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid; appoints czars with power to
spend and set policy; prefers to let others, who can be conveniently blamed, solve the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; and
continues to castigate the previous administration for all manner of ills, as
certainly no one as preordained as he to rule could ever be truly responsible
for any failure. As head of state,
President Obama can concentrate on golf, state dinners, White House receptions,
travels overseas, backslapping other politicians and world leaders. He can be
breathlessly addressed as Mr. President by a fawning media and star-struck
citizens. Above all, he can fly to
wherever he chooses and have the Secret Service and police part the sea of
humanity as he passes through. Obama's
responsibilities as the head of government having been assigned to others, who
in many cases are not answerable to the American people, has created untold
chaos in Congress and apprehension and fear among the citizenry as reflected in
the lack of job creation and polling on major legislative issues. The Presidency of the United States to Obama
is nothing more than a stage on which he, in his convoluted sense of destiny,
can act as head of state for the world. He
is much too busy enjoying the trappings of royalty, despite his oft-declared
disdain for that class, to be bothered about the dismal long-term future of the
United States if the left-wing policies of his government are enacted. It
appears that President Obama also believes, as the "titular" world
head of state, that he can, by sheer force of his will, charm, persuasive
power, and denigration of his country, convince the most brutal of global
adversaries to live in peace. The rest of the world has begun to see through Obama's
unrestrained self-absorption and is slowly but surely beginning to reflect the
reality and danger of Obama's incompetence and unrestrained vanity.
(“The Man Who Would Be King”
by Steve McCann dated June 10, 2010 published by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/the_man_who_would_be_king.html
)
President Obama is caught in the wickedest of political binds:
the hypocrisy trap – saying one thing and doing another! Obama
says he's sick and tired of the Washington blame game, but still can't resist
doling out piles of blame himself. His
compulsive, reflexive finger-pointing at Republicans, George W. Bush and vague
villains on the right is not only unbecoming, it also reinforces the gathering
public verdict that Obama is a weakling.
Victims do not make good leaders.
Even if Republicans were responsible for every evil attributed to them
by Democrats, why bang on about it after 17 months in office? The only answer is self-preservation, which is
an unattractive trait in someone who's supposed to be leader. Do as I say, not as I do. That tripped America's hair-trigger hypocrisy
alarm. Until now, Obama has avoided the
hypocrisy trap by doing little and talking carefully. Most of what he's said contains more
rhetorical escape hatches than a magician's box. Obama may be coming in short on his promises
on Iraq, Gitmo, Wall Street and a host of other
issues -- to the howling discontent of the liberals who got him elected -- but
he can still offer earnest assurances that he's reinventing America, only it's
taking longer than he expected. The President
is facing frustrated liberals who see George W. Bush's wars still being fought,
Gitmo open for business and Wall Street getting off
the hook. Environmentalists fume that he
authorized more offshore drilling without checking to see if federal regulators
were doing their jobs. Fiscal
conservatives who divined a streak of moderation in Obama's rhetoric feel like
fools after watching him take a $9 trillion detour on his way to fiscal
responsibility. Pragmatists have turned
their backs on the President after finding that the last, best argument that
Democrats made in 2008, Obama's competency under pressure, was actually
decision-making paralysis masquerading as coolness. Polls show that Americans have noticed as his
overall approval ratings has only dropped a little during the oil disaster in
the Gulf of Mexico, we've seen a telling drop in the number of Americans who
think Obama relates to them and their concerns.
Obama's preacher's cadence and promise of a better tomorrow now
reinforces his image as a talker and not a doer. When he contradicts himself on partisanship
and blame gaming, Obama gives off the scent of hypocrisy, the sweetest flower
that blooms in the cynic's garden. It's one thing to be seen as passive, but it's
worse to be seen as someone who will say anything to get what he wants, and
then be caught in lies!
(“Obama falls headfirst into the
hypocrisy trap” by Chris Stirewalt dated June 10,
2010 published by The Washington Examiner at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obama-falls-head-first-into-the-hypocrisy-trap-95980699.html
)
During the first year of Barack Obama's Presidency, most
conservatives were livid at the smug absurdities of the progressive Left, who,
like naïve children, believed that (even in politics) it is all right to say
one thing and then walk across the street and say the opposite. We
were shocked that not everyone shared our outrage, but now conservatives are
less incredulous since they are beginning to see how liberals think. Experience with liberal tactics has taught us
that simultaneously claiming two mutually exclusive positions does not represent
sloppy thinking at all, but rather a skillful Orwellian method of gaining
support for bad policies. This is the
way the Left does business. A recent
example of this audacious use of contradiction involves the health insurance
"mandate." This controversial provision of the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act requires people to get health insurance or
pay a fine. In September of 2009, during
his tireless stumping for health care "reform,"
President Obama took the position that the mandate does not constitute a tax
increase on those affected. Remember
that Obama also promised during his campaign that "[n]o family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax
increase." Inconveniently, shortly
after the health care bill was passed into law in March of 2010, the Thomas
More Law Center (TMLC) sued the federal government over the constitutionality
of the new law. The lawsuit names Barack Hussein Obama, in his capacity as
President of the United States, as one of the defendants. The Complaint alleges that the
law's mandate requiring people to either buy health insurance or pay a fine is
unconstitutional. The Department of
Justice, speaking on behalf of President Obama and the other defendants in his
administration, recently filed its Response. Among other arguments, the defendants assert:
"The Minimum Coverage Provision Is
Constitutional as an Exercise of the Power to Tax and Spend to Provide for the
General Welfare." In
short, the mandate is constitutional because it constitutes a federal tax. The most interesting story is that most
Americans are not surprised by new examples of blatant political deceit. Whether we favor it or not, leftist
doublethink has become accepted reality. If America's collective
conscience has been eroded by the continuous flow of glib deception, we should
shock ourselves back to outrage by pondering the qualitative difference of the
untruths now perpetrated on citizens. The
new left harbors no embarrassment of retraction, no recognition that the
opposite statement also has meaning. In
this way, our President can tell the American people that a tax is "absolutely" not a new federal tax
and then state in a federal court document that the tax is valid precisely
because it is a new federal tax. The
offering of bald-faced contradictions by national leaders, and the adulating
acceptance of these lies by the population at large, is a hallmark of
repressive third-world regimes. We cannot allow the power-driven contradictions of the left
to trump logic itself, because this will speed our decline toward equivalency
with the most politically backward regimes in the world where lying is a daily
occurrence.
(“When a Tax Is Not a Tax” by
Lawrence E. Harkenrider dated June 5, 2010 published
by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/when_a_tax_is_not_a_tax.html
)
Ever since late President Lyndon B. Johnson imposed his “Great Society” program on America in
mid-60s, bad things have been happening to our country. His
“Civil Rights” initiative brought the
curses of multiculturalism and diversity on our heads. His “War
on Poverty” led to unprecedented growth of the population of America’s poor. His “Immigration
Reform” opened the flood gate for tens of millions of imported poor from
cultures incompatible with ours and of diverse ethnicities, which opening
turned upside-down the pre-1960 America’s demographic balance. The IQ tests were banned because blacks and
some other minorities were doing badly on them. Then the academic standards were watered down
for the same reason. Then, in order to
make the holders of university degrees “look
like the rest of America”, a double standard for college admissions and
graduation was introduced, first in some Ivy League schools, and later in the
rest of the academia. But that wasn’t
nearly enough for “Liberals” in order
for them to prove their fallacious mantra that “equal opportunity” translates onto equal outcomes. So they kept dismantling time-proven,
merit-based selection criteria one after another, replacing them with those
based on political “necessities”,
like the “need” of diversity and “social justice”, and relentlessly
pushing for more and more. Guess what,
the effects of this collective insanity started to show up. The competitiveness of American economy worsens.
The national debt reached staggering 13
trillion dollars. The foreclosures and
bankruptcies are up. The unemployment is
at firm 10%, and the only sector that is growing today is the public sector
(government jobs) that by and large does not produce any wealth and relies on
taxation and steady supply of freshly printed money. The value of dollar, not surprisingly, is
nose-diving. American students, once our
source of pride and future technological progress and economic growth, lag in
terms of academic achievements. One of
the few major indices, in addition to government spending and national debt,
that keeps going up is the level of taxation of those hard-working Americans
who produce more than they consume. As
the economy gets global, with multinational corporations eradicating national
borders, the engineered diversity trend has metastasized to other Western
countries. It can only be surprising to
a brainwashed moron or indoctrinated “Liberal”
(or a combination thereof) that the disastrous program initiated by Johnson in
mid-1960s derailed, little by little, train America
from its fast track towards bright future. Just like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico,
this net damage will not just go away. Its
persistence follows a simple budget law: if you keep depleting the checking
account more than the total of all deposits made, you will be left with a zero
balance, eventually, no matter what clever accounting tricks you try. The bottom line is that virtually none of the
grave crises that are threatening the well-being and the survival of this
nation today would have become so severe if it weren’t for what Johnson had
started and the “Liberals” have
continued. He was the chief engineer of
the “Great Society” failed experiment
that turned into a great disaster with lasting consequences, despite the
unprecedented scientific and technological progress that the digital revolution
has brought about. Johnson was the worst President in modern history of the U.S.
and his ideas are still decimating America’s wealth and might.
(“’Liberal’ Disaster” by Mark
Andrew Dwyer dated June 4, 2010 published by American Daily at http://americandaily.com/index.php/article/3645
)
Unemployment is crushing families and stifling the prospects of
young people, but President Obama’s seems oddly out of touch, “This (May jobs) report is a sign that our
economy is getting stronger by the day.” The
jobs report for May was grim showing the private sector created just 41,000
jobs in May, a dismal performance. The
government hired 411,000 workers to help with the census, but those jobs are
temporary and will vanish in a few months. The economy is sick, and all efforts to revive
it that do not directly confront the staggering levels of joblessness are
doomed. Even the meager job growth in
the private sector last month was composed mostly of temporary work. The May jobs report is a perfect distillation
of Obamanomics, with its emphasis on short-term help
to the economy, the “stimulus”
package, the “cash-for-clunkers”
program, etc., that is as sustainable as a sugar high. More than 15 million Americans are out of
work, and nearly half have been jobless for six months or longer. An NBC/Wall Street Journal survey
showed that the share of individuals rating “the deficit and government spending” as the top priority for the
federal government to address has jumped since January to 20%, second only to
job creation and economic growth. According
to Gallup, “federal government debt”
now ties with terrorism for the top spot in perceived threats to our future
well-being. It is not just about the
actual dollars, it is a metaphor for wasted money and lack of discipline and
long-term economic decline. There
appears to be no plan to get us out of this fix. The Congressional Budget Office has just
confirmed that President Obama's proposed economic recovery package will
actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing. Meanwhile drastic cuts in government spending
would only compound the crisis. State
and local governments, for example, are shedding workers as we speak. Policy makers have acted as if they are unaware
of the magnitude of this crisis. If, in
the event we have that extremely strong level of growth from here on out, we
would still not get down to pre-recession unemployment rates until January
2015. For all the money that has been
spent so far, the Obama administration and Congress have not made the kinds of
investments that would put large numbers of Americans back to work and lead to
robust economic growth. Bold and effective leadership would have put us on this road
to a sustainable future, but instead, we’re approaching a dead end with Obama
leadership.
(“A Very Deep Hole” by Bob
Herbert dated June 7, 2010 published by The New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/opinion/08herbert.html?scp=1&sq=bob%20herbert%20deep%20hole&st=cse
“The U.S. Is Not Too Big To
Fail” by William Galston
dated June 9, 2010 published by The New Republic at http://www.tnr.com/blog/william-galston/75390/the-us-not-too-big-fail
“Obama and Economics:
Intellectually Clueless” by Larry elder dated June 10, 2010 published by
Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/LarryElder/2010/06/10/obama_and_economics_intellectually_clueless
)
The ecological and political catastrophe of the April 21st
oil rig explosion and oil spill has exposed a breathtaking level of
incompetence, political opportunism, and mendacity at the heart of the Obama
administration. Barack Obama has done more to expand government than any President since
Lyndon B. Johnson, but the Gulf oil crisis is testing his ability to master the
federal bureaucracy in a way no other crisis has, with decidedly mixed results.
The first President since John F.
Kennedy to take office without executive branch experience, Obama has struggled
for the past month to find the right balance between micro- and
macro-management as the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico has
grown into an environmental cataclysm and political disaster. The Obama
White House has a history of blaming its sub-par handling of a situation on
communications, but not this time since the White House has yet to establish a
coherent structure for the response. On April 24th,
Obama and his senior aides were warned that the spill could exceed the in
environmental damage caused by the Exxon Valdez wreck in 1989. Despite these warnings, over the next two
months Obama delivered commencement speeches, attended two days of media
events, attended three days of Democratic fundraisers, campaigned for six days,
vacationed for six days, attended six sport events, hosted basketball and
football teams at the White House, and played seven days of golf. This administration seems more focused on
headlines than real action. Two weeks
passed before he could be bothered to go to Louisiana. On April 29th, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindahl declared a state of emergency as the oil spill
covered 600 square miles and was only 16 miles from the coast. Jindahl begged
federal officials for permission to build a massive network of sand berms to contain damage to beaches. Washington responded a month later but
permission was only granted to build 2 percent of the berms
requested. Finally, as the thick black
crude and natural gas continued to erupt into the Gulf waters and public
exasperation with BP's futile attempts to stop it piled up one after another,
Obama dispatched Attorney General Eric Holder to Louisiana to proclaim that
"we will prosecute to the fullest
extent of the law anyone who has violated the law." Shortly afterward, Obama blasted BP for "lawyering up" in response to the
government's threats. Does he think only
terrorists have Miranda rights? His top
priority is not to stop the spill, but to shift blame away from himself and to
forever tar his opponents with responsibility for a catastrophe made far worse
by his own spectacular mismanagement. George W. Bush
was condemned due to the fact that federal aid did not arrive in New Orleans
for three whole days after Hurricane Katrina struck. It has been six weeks since the Deepwater
Horizon blowout, and we've seen Obama frowning, sticking his fingers into the
sand, saying he's frustrated, and telling us a heartwarming story about his
daughter. The right government response
is to work with BP to figure out a way to stop the leak, minimize the damage, and
begin the massive cleanup, rather than focusing on assigning blame. However the sum total of accomplishment by
Barack Obama, his administration, his party, and his bureaucracy, in facing his
first major domestic crisis is a lot of talk and very little visible action or
results. Most of the past month and a
half has been spent playing catchup on the equipment
front, and we have not yet seen the end of it.
As Obama flounders around looking for someone’s “ass to kick,” he may want to figure a way out to kick himself, now
that he has admitted it is his own responsibility. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is a twofer: the worst environmental
disaster on record matched with most incompetent response, and all on the watch
of America's “greenest” President.
(“Spill tests Obama management
style” by Glenn Thrush and Carol E. Lee dated June 6, 2010 published by
Politico at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38161.html
“Obama brings Nixonian
twist to oil spill” dated June 7, 2010 published by The Washington Examiner
at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Obama-brings-Nixonian-twist-to-oil-spill-95733059.html
“Obama Fails the Test of Office”
by J.R. Dunn dated June 7, 2010 published by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/obama_fails_the_test_of_office.html
)
Americans have two toxic,
spreading slicks that must be cleaned up: one is in the Gulf where we are
haunted by pictures of a never-ending flow of oil; the other uncapped gusher,
of even more dangerous toxins, is in Washington and flows from a broken pipe
out of the Obama White House. This
toxin is going to be even harder to clean up. While most Americans’ attention is focused on
the oil-spill tragedy unfolding off the shores of Louisiana, back in
Washington, Team Obama is pressing forward, determined not to waste this crisis
and use it to instill fear in Americans and loathing for all oil drilling and
energy independence. Their goal is to
scare Americans into support for 2000+ pages of flawed, and openly corrupt,
Waxman-Markey energy legislation. Here
we go again: vote without reading; pass without understanding! The oil spill in the Gulf is a tragedy and
will harm opportunities in Louisiana and in the town of New Orleans for years
to come. Louisianians
are innovative and creative folks who will find ways to speed the clean up,
discover new and safer technologies for future wells, and they will bounce back
with courage and grit… have no fear. What
Americans should be afraid of is the uncapped gusher in Washington. How soon can we recover from the huge, deficit
spending, wealth destruction, job-killing toxic sludge that just keeps on
spewing out of the Obama White House? Team
Obama has taken a short-term, self-indulgent approach deciding to indulge their
personal ambitions of wealth redistribution at the cost of the futures of
generations of our children. There have been too many “crises”
that were not really “crises;” too
many problems being fixed that were not really problems; and too many leftist
ideas being turned into socialist programs that can not
be paid for in our lifetimes or our children’s lifetimes.
(“Obama and the Gulf: Two Toxic
Gushers” by Lurita Doan dated June 7, 2010
published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/LuritaDoan/2010/06/07/obama_and_the_gulf_two_toxic_gushers
)
Our national debt is soaring, our borders being invaded by illegals and intruders, the unemployment rate
climbing, home foreclosures rising, our coastal shorelines in peril with two
wars waging, while our President has issued a proclamation demonstrating what
really garners his attention: homosexual
rights. First, that more and more of our desperately needed tax dollars
will be spent to promote Obama’s very clear intention to radically alter the
definition of family. While other positions he holds may be vague, his
commitment to radical homosexual rights has been clear. Barack Obama’s
mentor, Communist Frank Marshall Davis was also a sexual anarchist, whose
exploits with his wife and a 13 year old girl among others are chronicled in
his book “Sex Rebel.” More money will be
spent on child-care for children of same sex partners, more to provide them
with employee assistance programs, more money for retired homosexual federal
employees, more for said partners and their children in “evacuation payments,”
extra pay allowances for certain locations, more for travel and relocation
expenses, inclusion in the federal credit union, access to fitness facilities,
long-term care insurance. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
Advisory Committee was established to assist the agency in addressing employee
diversity issues and concerns of sexual orientation in the workforce. The
LGBT Advisory Committee’s primary goals are to ensure equal employment
opportunity, promote effective and equitable participation and enhance
career development opportunities for lesbian, gay , bisexual and transgender
employees of the agency” The Far Left have long been sexual
anarchists. The Weather Underground practiced “Smash Monogamy,” or group
sex. Homosexual writer Michelangelo Signorili
in OUT Magazine in 1994 wrote that “gays should seize marriage not as a way of
adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically
alter an archaic institution.” Don’t look for the borders or the economy
or home sales, or the stock market or any natural disasters to be corrected any
time soon. Sexual
anarchy…chaos….on their way, and our president is not only quite comfortable
with it all, but he is promoting it.
(“Dangerous Priorities” by Sandy Rios dated June 4, 2010 published by
Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/SandyRios/2010/06/04/dangerous_priorities
)
When Israel rightly stopped a Turkish ship carrying terrorist
supporters from breaking the naval blockade surrounding the Gaza Strip, Obama
responded within hours with criticism of Israel, but without all the facts. This incident was clearly self-defense, but the so-called "activists" aboard the Turkish
flotilla aimed at the Gaza Strip weren't members of Greenpeace , and were
caught on tape lynching Israeli soldiers, and declaring their intention to do
so the day before the incident. The
sponsors of the flotilla, a not-so-obscure "charity" with close ties to Hamas, knew when the boats left
Cyprus bound for Gaza that the Israeli navy would intercept them. The sponsors knew why, too: Hamas has been
trying for months to open new routes for the rockets, arms and ammunition the
Palestinian terrorists intend to fire into Israel to kill Jews. Weeks in advance of the flotilla's launch,
organizers were declaring their intent to break the Gaza blockade, an act aimed
directly at funneling weapons to Hamas, because Israel already sends millions
of tons of aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip. In less than a week, the Obama
administration left Israel hanging out to dry three separate times.
·
First, in the
UN Security Council, the administration succumbed to the rush to criticize
Israel in a statement that greatly intensified international pressure on
Jerusalem.
·
Second, at the
UN Human Rights Council, America, with dissent only by Italy and the
Netherlands, lost a vote to establish an international investigation of the
Gaza incident.
·
Third, at the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference, the U.S. joined the consensus on a
statement condemning Israel (not a party to the treaty) and its nuclear
program, while failing to condemn Iran, an NPT signatory that has been
violating its treaty obligations.
All three cases demonstrate deep-seated
White House weakness and a distinct lack of support for this strategic ally. Even more seriously, a potential fourth example of Obama's increasingly
anti-Israeli policy now arises: the administration's strongly negative position
on Israel's Gaza blockade. Although so
far expressed largely in private, with only nuanced statements being leaked publicly,
the White House is plainly leaning heavily on Israel to weaken the blockade in
potentially fatal ways. What is
exceptional is Obama's swiftness, because he didn't pause for one instant to
consider supporting Israel, but instead jumped in condemnation. He immediately leapt to the "nonpartisan" position, eschewing an
American ally and attempting to placate the anti-Semitic international
community. Now President Obama announced the
U.S. would send $400m of aid to the Palestinian territories following 10 days
of international focus on Gaza, which Israel has blockaded for more than three
years. Obama was
quick to draw moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel, which is just another
indicator of Obama's anti-Semitism.
(“The Presidential Anti-Semite Strikes
Again” by Ben Shapiro dated June 2, 2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/BenShapiro/2010/06/02/the_presidential_anti-semite_strikes_again
“With Friends Like These” by
Suzanne Fields dated June 4, 2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/SuzanneFields/2010/06/04/with_friends_like_these
“Letting Israel hang” by John
Bolton dated June 7, 2010 published by New York Post at http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/letting_israel_hang_F5zJfknQYINIa2q0tBMC1K
“Barack Obama announces $400m aid
package to Gaza and West Bank” by Harriet Sherwood dated June 9, 2010
published by The Guardian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/09/barack-obama-gaza-israel-aid
)
* 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. Updates have been
made this week to the following issue sections:
·
Philosophy at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/intro/philosophy.php
·
Bibliography at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/welcome/bibliography.php
·
Education at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/education.php
·
Defense at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/fp/defense.php
David Coughlin
Hawthorne, NY