Views on the News
June
19, 2010
Views on the News*
Aristotle wrote in Book V of
"The Politics, "When one begins with an initial error, it is
inevitable that one should end badly," and most everything Obama thought
before he took office has proven to be false.
Almost 17 months into his Presidency,
things are going badly for Obama on multiple fronts. He entered office with, and has governed based
on, several initial errors:
· Obama entered office believing that when it came to international
relations, opposition to America was largely based on the personality and
policies of his predecessor. Stalemates and conflicts were caused by the
inflexibility and confrontational approach of George W. Bush. Obama's extended
hand has been met with clenched fists. His global American apology tour has
been met with disdain. Iran particularly has become more intransigent, more
aggressive, and more brutal since Obama was sworn in as president. We have no
progress to show for his efforts. Quite the opposite. Obama is viewed as
irresolute and unreliable by our enemies (including Iran, Syria, Venezuela,
Cuba and North Korea), by our competitors (like Russia and China) and by our
allies (like Israel, Brazil, Honduras, Poland, the Czech Republic, Georgia,
India, the United Kingdom and even Afghanistan). Today America is in a more
feeble position and our relations with allies and adversaries are generally in
worse shape than they were pre-Obama Presidency.
· Barack Obama assumed office in the aftermath of the near-collapse
of our financial system. The debt and deficit skyrocketed to record post-World
War II levels. But rather than addressing this fiscal crisis, Obama used it to
push through a sweeping liberal domestic agenda, most especially the federal
government's unprecedented involvement in our health care system. What they did instead was compound the
crisis. Obama's agenda has made our fiscal situation significantly worse, with
the debt estimated to double in five years and triple in 10 years.
· Another false assumption is that Obama's election marked a
significant ideological shift within the electorate. The President and his
aides believed the public wanted the federal government to increase its size,
cost and reach. Obama and his team thought that in the aftermath of his
election and in light of the circumstances he faced, trust in government would
increase. Actually, trust in government was fairly low when Obama took office, and
his attempt to create a new progressive era has eroded it further. Today the
public's trust in government is near an all-time low.
· Barack Obama was the least experienced and least prepared chief
executive in our lifetime. Yet he began his presidency having made extravagant
promises, even by the standards of a political campaign. Obama looks impotent
on everything from closing Guantánamo Bay to the oil spill in the Gulf of
Mexico, from stopping Iran's march toward nuclear weapons to solving the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During the Obama era, America is more, not less,
polarized. The partisan divide is growing rather than receding. Millions of
jobs have been lost rather than added. Unemployment has gone up rather than
down. The country is becoming more conservative, not more liberal. And the
Democratic Party is running away from Obama's agenda rather than embracing it.
The man who campaign aides referred
to as the "Black Jesus" is
not only imperfect, he at times looks overwhelmed and overmatched, and there is
now talk about a failed presidency, a Carter
redux and a political massacre for Democrats in
November.
(“Obama and ‘Initial error’ on Diplomacy,
Domestic Issues, and Expectation” by Peter Wehner
dated June 10, 2010 published by Politics Daily at http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/10/obama-and-initial-error-on-diplomacy-domestic-issues-and-exp/
)
President Obama continues a cycle of deceit and prevarication,
but the question is: to whom is he lying and is there anyone who still believes
what he says? On June 5th, The
Bureau of Labor Statistics released the employment numbers for May, and Obama
quickly articulated, “the economy is
getting stronger…the private sector hiring is growing, too.”
·
Jobs are lie number one: although there were 431,000 new jobs added in May, 411,000 were
for temporary Census Bureau employees while there were only 41,000 legitimate private
sector jobs created. The economy needs to create 100,000 private sector jobs
per month to maintain pace with current population growth, but the country has surpassed
100,000 private sector jobs once in 17 months, and the economic indicators paint
a bleak picture. Compounding this misdirection is that the Census Bureau has
been accused of hiring and firing employees to drive up the jobs numbers.
·
The health care reform bill is lie number two: the CBO
Director released his Health Costs and the Federal Budget, annulling the
misrepresentations Obama provided the country while claiming that the health
care reform bill would reduce costs, insure more people, and save the
government money, all without reading a single word of the bill, and being
utterly ignorant of its contents. With unsustainable spending, three results
will occur, according to the CBO: 1) Those with health insurance will have less
money available for other needs; 2) It will be harder for the uninsured to buy
insurance; 3) Government spending on Medicare and Medicaid will break federal
and state budgets.
·
Lie number three is: whether the White House and Barack Obama broke the federal
election law trying to affect the outcome of a federal election. The evolution
of Obama’s lie: When directly confronted about Sestak’s
statement that the Obama administration offered him a job for dropping out of
the campaign against Arlen Specter, the first official response by Obama was
emphatic and absolute denial; That evolved into “an official response shortly
on the Sestak issue;” That evolved into Obama
admitting offering Sestak a position to “avoid a
decisive Senate primary” against Specter. It is customary for newly elected Presidents
to reward select supporters with jobs in the administration, sans
qualifications, for their efforts behind helping them get elected, which is the
largest contributor to the political Peter Principle that plagues this country,
but is legal. What is not legal, and is a violation of federal law, is to offer
someone a job in the administration for future benefits to the President, or to
circumvent the integrity of the Democratic election process by denying the
voting public the right to vote on all candidates.
Our President has a disturbing habit of believing that when he
asserts something to be true, that Americans are not allowed to question him on
the veracity. Congressman Darrell
Issa asked Eric Holder’s Justice Department to
appoint a Special Counsel to investigate these allegations. Eric Holder told Issa
that the Justice Department will not appoint a Special Counsel to investigate
the Obama administration. Obama’s ace in the
hole is Eric Holder as Attorney General, which is akin to having Al Capone’s
accountant audit his books for irregularities, and report the findings to Elliot
Ness, so this administration’s crisis of
trust will continue to hemorrhage.
(“Another Week, another Throng of
Lies by Barack Obama” by Jim Byrd dated June 12, 2010 published by The Land
of the Free at http://www.thelandofthefree.net/conservativeopinion/2010/06/12/another-week-another-throng-of-lies-by-barack-obama/
)
The federal government's handling of
the disaster gets a worse grade in polling than did the government's response
five years ago to Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans, because like
President Bush then, President Obama now is criticized as having been slow to
respond to a national crisis. Two months into the ongoing
Gulf oil disaster, Obama is still playing the political blame game instead of
seeking a solution to the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history. His famous coolness doesn't naturally translate into
the empathy and anger liberals feel is part of the de rigueur
feel-your-pain emoting necessary for a disaster, especially one associated with
a left-wing villain like an oil company.
Obama only knows how to blame this whole mess is Bush's fault. Remember that all the regulatory decisions
came on Obama's watch and that his administration had plenty of warnings about
the cozy relationship between regulators and oil firms and had time to clean it
up. Of course, no one yet knows for sure
what was the cause of the explosion toppling the rig and
setting off the spill. Thousands
upon thousands of wells have been drilled in the Gulf without a previous major
spill, hardly evidence of systemic failure by regulators. Rather than projecting anger by searching for
BP asses to kick and concentrating on a technical challenge he can't control,
Obama should focus on what government can do. He should be exhibiting calm, cool competence
by daily displaying how the federal government is organizing and carrying out
the massive cleanup operation this disaster demands. Instead there have been 17 countries, with experience in
dealing with such spills, who have offered to send needed ships and oil-removal
equipment into the area, and have been spurned by Obama. The President has failed to waive the Jones
Act for foreign ships, who want to assist in the cleanup efforts. The question is whether the Obama
administration is so absorbed by its blame-game strategy that it does not see
the need to immediately respond to such offers at a time when it can help
reduce the size and scope of the oil-damaged shorelines, beaches, marshes and
wildlife. The only assistance Obama has
sought has been from the Center for American Progress, an ultra-liberal think
tank that has maintained close ties to the White House and is led by former
Clinton White House aide John Podesta, who has no
experience is this kind of crisis. The
other question is whether the Obama administration is intentionally scaling
back clean-up efforts in the gulf in an attempt to maximize the damage so
Democrats in Congress will have an excuse to take effective control over yet
another major sector of our economy and impose crippling and draconian new
taxes on the American people? It
turns out that the administration-ordered moratorium on deep-water drilling was
based on political considerations, not the advice of National Academy of
Engineering experts. Obama followed that action,
not by sending in an armada of ships and equipment to combat the spreading oil,
but by sending his Attorney General and a team of government lawyers to
Louisiana with threats of lawsuits. Obama
has 26 separate federal agencies involved, who do not
coordinate and confuse administration decision-making. Apparently Obama thinks there is not enough
bureaucracy, so he named a oil spill czar to help Thad Allen, who used to be
the on-site focal point, who was appointed by Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano and assists Energy Secretary Steven Chu,
environmental czar Carol Browner, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the rest
of his self-declared "all hands on
deck" gaggle. He also appointed
the "National Commission on the BP Deepwater
Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling," tasked with providing
recommendations on how we can prevent and mitigate the impact of any future
spills that result from offshore drilling.
BP mistakes make them clearly responsible for the
oil leak in the Gulf and are responsible for plugging the hole, but Obama and
his gaggle of federal bureaucrats are clearly responsible for the cleanup and
the inept results so far!
(“Spill puts Obama on slippery
slope” by Steve Huntley dated June 11, 2010 published by Chicago Sun Times
at http://www.suntimes.com/news/huntley/2380658,CST-EDT-HUNT11.article
“Mr. President, Just Fix, Don’t
Finger-Point” by Donald Lambro dated June 15,
2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/DonaldLambro/2010/06/15/mr_president,_just_fix,_dont_finger-point
“Stuck on Stupid: Obama’s Czar
Fetish” by Michelle Malkin dated June 16, 2010
published by Human Events at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37517
“Jones Act Complicates Messy
Situation for Obama” by Robert B. Bluey dated June
17, 2010 published by Human Events at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37541
“Could the Obama Administration be
Blocking Gulf Clean-up Efforts Intentionally” by
Floyd and Mary Beth Brown dated June 18, 2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/FloydandMaryBethBrown/2010/06/18/could_the_obama_administration_be_blocking_gulf_clean-up_efforts_intentionally
)
Contrary to the Mainstream Media template, Obama’s socialist
policies have elongated the recession into a multi-year “Great Recession” anchored
by an overwhelming debt load. The average recession since
World War II has been 10 months and the previously longest since then has been
16 months. Now, 30 months after
the recession officially began in December 2007, unemployment remains stuck at
nearly 10%, and the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official
scorekeeper on the matter, says it can't yet determine that the recession is
over. Barack Obama and the
Democrat-controlled Congress have lost its ability to create the millions of
jobs that will be needed to keep pace with the yearly flood of new job-seekers
entering the workforce. The reason,
economists and other critics say, is the administration’s anti-capitalist,
anti-free enterprise, anti-free market policies that are impeding investment
and venture capital formation, punishing U.S. businesses with higher taxes and
new mandates like ObamaCare, “cap-and-tax” energy fees and draconian financial regulations
coupled with threats to let the Bush tax cuts expire that are already having a
preemptive job-killing effect on payrolls and economic growth. At the
same time America's public debt recently exceeded 13 trillion, which is more
than 90% of the country's GDP. Public
debts of more than 60% of GDP are considered unhealthy and debts above 90% of
GDP cause severe disruptions in the country's financial framework and the economy
at large. According to the Obama
administration, America's public debt will exceed 100% of GDP in the next
fiscal year. History shows that most
countries whose debt exceeds this mark are rarely able to control it and this
level of indebtedness usually leads to currency debasement. Debts of more than 100% of GDP were almost
always contracted as a result of extraordinary one-time expenditures, usually
war. America's debt, on the other hand,
is a result of decades of structural deficits. This means that we have grown accustomed to
spending more than we can afford. If we
want to solve our debt problem, we must slash spending and start running
surpluses. The problem is that it may
prove impossible to break the spending habit.
Every proposal for a reduction is met with hysteria from some special
interest, and then amplified by the media. Many people thought Barack Obama would save
America from its troubles, but unfortunately, they were wrong. When it comes to America's finances, the President
is doing exactly the wrong thing. We are
headed toward an abyss, and instead of braking, he has slammed down the
accelerator. The President, however,
does not seem to realize that one cannot borrow his way out of debt. No one can defy the laws of finance forever,
and when the day of reckoning finally arrives, the dollar will collapse. This level of debt doesn’t even begin to
cover the real indebtedness of American governments at the federal, state, and
local levels, because governments don’t count up their liabilities the same way
businesses do. Beyond the official
federal debt, there is another $2.5 trillion or so in state and local debt,
according to Federal Reserve figures. In
addition with a handful of exceptions, practically every state’s pension fund
is poised to run out of money in the coming decades. A federal bailout is almost inevitable, which
means that those $3 Trillion of state obligations will probably end up on the
national balance sheet in one form or another.
The debt numbers start to get really hairy when you add in liabilities
under Social Security and Medicare, when you account for the present value of
those future payments in the same way that businesses have to account for the
obligations they incur. Start with the
entitlements and those numbers get run-for-the-hills ugly in a hurry: a
combined $106 trillion in liabilities for Social Security and Medicare. Depending on how you account for it, another
half a trillion or so in liabilities related to the government’s guarantee of
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and securities supported under the bailouts. When you add up all
the liabilities, the U.S. is really facing debt
of $130 trillion or so, or just under ten times the official national debt,
and not only unsustainable, but catastrophic!
(“America’s Predicament” by Vasko Kohlmayer dated June 10,
2010 published by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/americas_predicament.html
“Great Depression Ghosts Haunt Dem
Prospects” by David Paul Kuhn dated June 11, 2010 published by Real Clear
Politics at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/06/13/great_depression_ghosts_haunt_dem_prospects_obama_double_dip_midterm_105931.html
“The Other National Debt” by
Kevin Williamson dated June 14, 2010 published by National Review Online at http://article.nationalreview.com/436123/the-other-national-debt/kevin-williamson
“Obama’s ‘Killing Great American
Jobs’ Machine” by Donald Lambro dated June 17,
2010 published by Human Events at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37531
)
President Obama and his allies kicked off an unusual, and
perhaps unprecedented, taxpayer-subsidized political campaign this week to sell
to the public a legislative program and cover revelations on the already signed
bill. Internal
administration documents reveal that up to 51% of employers may have to
relinquish their current health care coverage because of ObamaCare,
after Obama promised repeatedly that people could keep their current coverage. Obama
claimed his plan would reduce the deficit and claimed the arguments of his
critics were not “anchored in reality.” A greater percentage of seniors enrolled in
Medicare, the 25% participating in Medicare Advantage, will see their benefits
cut because the White House ultimately wants to kill the program for
ideological reasons. Seniors are about
to learn that if they like their plan, they can’t keep it. The president’s interest in the doughnut hole
also suggests the PR campaign is willfully overlooking and exacerbating a much
greater threat, Medicare’s $38 trillion unfunded liabilities. Borrowing from future generations and foreign
governments to pay for rebate checks represents the kind of perverse short-term
decision making that has brought our nation to the edge of a fiscal black hole.
At best, throwing rebate checks at
Medicare is an exercise in futility that will postpone real reform. The President made a number of other claims
that weren’t anchored in reality, such as his claim that his plan will reduce
the deficit. When real-world accounting
is applied to health care spending and necessary expenses like the doctor fix
are included, all of the so-called savings evaporate. Even the Congressional Budget Office, which
the White House cites as its authoritative source, has contradicted the White
House. This new PR campaign has nothing
to do with improving the health of Americans and everything to do with
improving the job security of politicians who voted for this bill against the
wishes of their constituents. Turning
federal agencies into de facto direct mail and political advertising branches
of the Democratic political establishment will refill the swamp and remind
voters why they loathe Washington. The
American people have studied this law more intently than the politicians and
unelected staff who wrote it. They have
made decisions based on information, not misinformation. The latest tracking poll from the nonpartisan
health care think tank the Kaiser Family Foundation shows just 29% of Americans
think they would be "better off"
under the Affordable Care Act, compared to 42% who believed that in November. The Obama campaign’s
rhetoric of victimization is not a comeback at Republicans but an insult to the
millions of Americans who did their homework and made good faith, informed
judgments about a bill that fixed the wrong problem.
(“Obamacare PR campaign anchored in spin, not reality”
by Tom Coburn dated June 10, 2010 published by The Washington Examiner at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Sen-Tom-Coburn-Obamacare-PR-campaign-anchored-in-spin-not-reality-96054264.html
“Keep Your Health Plan Under
Overhaul? Probably Not, Gov’t Analysis Concludes”
by David Hogberg and Sean Higgins dated June 11, 2010
published by Investor’s Business Daily at http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/537208/201006111932/Keep-Your-Health-Plan-Under-Overhaul-Probably-Not-Govt-Analysis-Concludes.aspx
)
The 987-page American Power Act (APA) aims to reduce 2005 levels
of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 80% by 2050, the same target that the
House version passed last year, but would kill jobs and protect large
corporations at the expense of the consumer, all for a minimal effect on the
earth’s temperature. Despite promises of consumer
protection, however, the economic effects are the same. The purpose of the bill is to drive energy
prices high enough to reduce consumption. In effect, consumers would be forced to pay
more for less energy. APA attempts to
shield the economic pain from consumers by passing two-thirds of the carbon
permit revenue back to the consumer through energy discounts or direct rebates. Adding to the public’s uncertainty is the
controversy surrounding the validity of global warming concerns. The benefits of the Kerry–Lieberman are
almost nonexistent. According to an
analysis by climatologist Paul C. Knappenberger, the
global temperature reduction from APA would be .077 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050
and 0.200 degrees by 2100. It is
nonsensical to think that the U.S. would benefit by denying itself its least
expensive and most relied upon fuels. The
unfortunate reality is that electric vehicles currently cannot compete, even
with lavish subsidies. APA is a significant tax on energy that would reduce
Americans’ income, destroy jobs, and greatly shrink the economy, and no amount
of protections or rebates would save consumers from skyrocketing energy costs,
and worst of all, there would be little environmental benefit to show for it.
(“American Power Act: Oil Spill
Does Not Justify Wrecking the Economy” by Nicolas D. Loris dated June 8,
2010 published by The Heritage Foundation at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/06/American-Power-Act-Oil-Spill-Does-Not-Justify-Wrecking-the-Economy
)
Americans can not be allowed to believe
the Muslim “agitprop” that seeks to rewrite
history to justify Islamic genocidal aims towards Israel. Israel is a sovereign nation and has been since May 16, 1948, and
its ancient sovereignty dates back to the days of David and Solomon. Arabs who live in Israel are called Israelis
because they are citizens there. They
number more than a million and, while most are Muslim, about nine percent are
Christian. So, while the enemies of
Israel talk exclusively in terms of its Jewish population, they are ignoring a
sizeable number who are Muslims. It need
also be said the Arabs enjoy freedoms that their counterparts in other Middle
Eastern nations do not. Palestinians are
not living in a state of “occupation,”
since they have repeatedly been offered a state of their own, but have refused
it for some six decades and prefer to exist as wards of the United Nations. What is astonishing is the way the Arab
nations surrounding Israel and who have attacked it repeatedly nonetheless
regard Israel as the aggressor. The network of leftists and Islamic
fascists behind the Gaza ambush has been trying to create a media extravaganza
to make Israel look bad before the world for decades. The contrived Turkish-led aid flotilla crisis
was intended to force Israel to lift its arms blockade of Gaza. First there was the “humanitarian” flotilla running the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which
included one ship filled with men who violently resisted the boarding by
Israelis under long established international law regarding blockades. Tons of humanitarian aid is routinely
delivered daily to Gaza after inspection. The inspection is necessary because, since
having withdrawn from Gaza as a gesture of peace in 2005, the area has been
used to launch thousands of rockets. Even
the Egyptians who share a border with Gaza maintain a comparable blockade to
ensure weapons are not smuggled into the Hamas hotbed of hatred for Israel. The blockade was initiated in 2007 and boarding the
ships are perfectly legal and in
full compliance with the Helsinki Principles on the Law of Maritime Neutrality. Arab nations
insisted they were “occupiers” in a
land in which Jews had lived for 3,500 years and called their home despite an
exile that had existed for 2,000 years prior to the reestablishment of Israel. What worries Israelis these days and should
worry Americans as well is the policy of the Obama administration that has
clearly turned against Israel, emboldening its enemies. It shames the history of friendship that has
existed since Israel was reestablished over sixty years ago. It is an invitation for war in the Middle
East, one that has been joined by Turkey, a nation that has abandoned its
history of secular governance in favor of the Islamism that threatens Western
nations in particular and the world in general.
Obama is now trying to use the flotilla
crisis to force concessions from Israel, but instead America needs to assert
its support for Israel, its only Middle East ally.
(“Awaiting Armageddon” by Alan
Caruba dated June 12, 2010 published by American
Daily at http://americandaily.com/index.php/article/3711
“Misinformation About Gaza and the
Flotilla Debacle” by Maurice Ostroff dated June
16, 2010 published by Intellectual Conservative at http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/06/16/misinformation-about-gaza-and-the-flotilla-debacle/
)
* 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:
·
Politics at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/intro/politics.php
·
Responsibilities at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/intro/responsibilities.php
·
Role of Media at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/intro/roleofmedia.php
·
Changing Language at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/intro/changinglanguage.php
David Coughlin
Hawthorne, NY