Views on the News
June
26, 2010
Views on the News*
President Obama has run into the unavoidable force known
as “reality,” and he is suffering by
comparison to his words and actions. Obama’s election was based on
the promise of a new mature and pragmatic leadership, but leadership has been
the element missing from Obama’s administration for a year and a half. Leadership has been missing from the
Democratic party for at least a decade. Obama’s
relationship with America, like many a young marriage, is growing sour. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the
magic has drained away. Even among his
most ardent supporters, there now exists a certain
frustration and disillusionment not necessarily in the execution of his duties,
but in his inability to seize moments, chart a course and navigate the choppy
waters of public opinion. What’s left
for many is a big plume of disappointment and sadness lurking just beneath the
surface. The stimulus did very little to help the
economy, and unemployment is stubbornly high. A majority of Americans still hate ObamaCare, and Obama’s endorsed candidates have performed
about as well as a BP well cap. Obama continuously relies on
the contrived and what has been a heartless, teleprompter Presidency since the
inaugural. Once
the marriage was official, reality set in and Obama tried to lower
expectations. The question began to
emerge whether Obama was an “empty suit” only “one speech deep” before a hard leftist philosophy is revealed. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey
found 62% of people think the country is on the wrong track. The Rasmussen daily tracking poll shows that
27% of voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his
role as President, while 40% Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential
Approval Index rating of -13. A Gallup report
stated that Obama’s “first-year ratings
were the most polarized for a President in Gallup history.” It’s too early to declare the Obama Presidency
a failure, but it’s not too early to
ask, if this is the best Obama has, how it can end up being anything else?
(“Slickness
won’t save sinking Obama” by Michael Graham dated June 17, 2010 published
by Boston Herald at http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view/20100617slickness_wont_save_sinking_obama_his_luster_liquidating/
“The Thrill
Is Gone” by Charles M. Blow dated June 18, 2010 published by The New York
Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/opinion/19blow.html?ref=opinion
“Leaderless”
by B.J. Bethel dated June 21, 2010 published by Front Page Magazine at http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/21/leaderless/
)
Obama blew the response to the
Gulf oil spill and is doing everything in his power to rewrite history to
obscure his abysmal response. The White House can start
issuing more statements, the president can visit the region every week, and he
can finally decide whose behind to kick. The attached
articles below document Obama’s slow,
misguided, PR-driven response on a day-by-day basis, showing what happened each
day in the Gulf and what Obama did that day.
One disturbing trait that has emerged is that no one is in charge and no
one knows what the goal is. To this day
the sum total of Obama's efforts has been speech making, finger pointing and
visiting the affected area, which looks good politically, but doesn't really
accomplish anything, and, of course, appointing commissions to study the
matter. Meanwhile the disaster that need
not have been a disaster has been exploited for political purposes: to take
shots at the Bush administration; to promote job killing cap and trade
legislation; and to threaten criminal prosecution of BP executives. For years we have heard big government
Democrats like Obama pride themselves on being the protectors of the people
through heavy regulations. Yet, all the
federal regulations and bureaucracy did not stop the oil spill. In fact, the federal government actually
helped to cause the spill to occur by not enforcing its own standards and
inspections, and then allowed that spill to explode into an environmental
disaster by doing nothing to resolve the spill.
With each passing day, the perception that the President has been
hesitant, ineffective and unwilling to cut through bureaucratic red tape to
fight the spill has grown. And now after nearly two months
of failure, the company and the Coast Guard have no further plans to plug the Macondo oil well leaking into the Gulf. Instead, the goal is merely to contain the
leak until a relief well comes online, a process that could take months. Meanwhile the announced moratorium on deep
water drilling has been overruled, since it was arbitrary and would cost the
Gulf Coast in excess of 50,00 much needed jobs.
The President and his staff are frantically trying a "do-over," hoping that if Obama can
just appear angry enough, or in charge enough, or concerned enough, America
will forget how badly he flubbed his original response. Something even Obama
can't do is go back and change his original response, because he was wrong; he blew it; and he can never, never get
those first days and weeks back.
(“Obama golfs while Gulf burns”
by Mike Riggs dated May 28, 2010 published by The Daily Caller at http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/28/what-obama-has-been-doing-while-the-gulf-coast-dies/
“Obama during oil spill – golf, parties, photo-ops… and
more golf!” by Kevin Krusty dated May 28,
2010 published by PolitiPage at http://politipage.com/2010/05/28/obamas-days/
“Disaster in the Gulf: 61 Days and Counting…”
dated June 16, 2010 published by Fox News at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/28/disaster-gulf-days-counting/
“How Do You
Spell Response?” by Carol Peracchio dated June
19, 2010 published by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/how_do_you_spell_response.html
“What the
Gulf Oil Leak Tells Us” by Steven D. Laib dated
June 20, 2010 published by Intellectual Conservative at http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/06/20/what-the-gulf-oil-leak-tells-us/
“A Big
Government Disaster” by Christopher Merola dated
June 21, 2010 published by Town Hall at )
Obama has reiterated his false belief that moving from carbon-based fuel
to renewables will create American jobs, heal the
climate, put more distance between us and geopolitically unstable regions and
punish those nasty oil companies while saving our shrimp and seagulls… but unfortunately
none of it is true. The
President’s beloved (if doomed) “cap-and-tax”
legislation would: do little or nothing to alter global climate trends, reward
oil companies like BP that backed the bill from the start, destroy jobs by
increasing the cost gap with coal-powered China and India, introduce new
environmental hazards like huge windmills chopping up birds by the thousands
and, as it raises the price of domestic drilling, give the Middle East a lovely
gift. The “cap-and-tax” bill that the House passed last summer aims to force
Americans to reduce those dreaded carbon emissions by 83% in less than four
decades -- to the same per-capita level as 1867. Yet even under the Al Gore-approved
climate-science models, the bill would do nothing to stop global warming. The bill is 1,000-plus pages of rules,
regulations, handouts, subsidies and whatever else House leaders deemed
necessary. The central point is clear
enough: the bill simply drives up the price of fossil-fuel based energy so high
that the nation will have to somehow get along with only 17% of the gasoline
and fossil-fuel-powered electricity that it uses today. Don't ask how much it will cost, because no
one really knows, since you can't put a price on something that has yet to be
defined. Neither bill (neither the
House-like Kerry-Lieberman tome, nor the Senate climate-change lite)
would do anything measurable about climate change. This legislation will push even more of our
industry into migrating to China, India and other nations that have no
intention of reducing emissions by making energy more expensive. Bottom line: This legislation won't lower
global temperatures -- but merely make life more expensive. This legislation will
force you to buy things you don't want, like much more expensive cars, and to
use energy sources you'd normally bypass, like ethanol, solar and windmills,
and all have to be massively subsidized, with your tax dollars, to compete with
today's mix of coal, gasoline and natural gas.
(“Obama tilts
at windmills” by Kyle Smith dated June 20, 2010 published by New York Post
at http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_tilts_at_windmills_YQ4UT5HeL5bUD1VUP6LanJ
“Bam’s climate Rx: All pain, no gain” by
Patrick J. Michaels dated June 21, 2010 published by New York Post at http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/bam_climate_rx_all_pain_no_gain_rrEOObpwCeZkI43QmmKH4O
)
The 1974 Budget and Impoundment Act requires Congress to
pass a budget resolution by May 15 of each year, but this year is different
because Congressional Democrats aren’t simply delaying, they’re deliberately
refusing to offer a budget until after the November elections. Congressional
Democrats are simply choosing to ignore the law. In
the short term, failing to pass a budget resolution almost guarantees even more
irresponsible spending. A budget
resolution sets spending targets for congressional committees and makes it
procedurally more difficult for members of Congress (in either house) to
increase spending, but budgetary chaos means more spending. House
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said passing a budget
"isn't possible" without
the input from Obama’s appointed deficit commission, which isn’t scheduled to
give a report until December, conveniently after the November elections. It’s win-win for Congressional Democrats:
Moderates get to avoid a tough vote and liberals get to spend more. The long-term problems are worse, since when
Congress does not pass a budget resolution before the election, Democrats will
push one through during the lame-duck session before a new Congress is sworn
in. Democrats will be able to ratchet up
discretionary spending, and these increased levels of spending will be the
fallback levels in the event that future spending disputes require Congress to
revert to continuing budget resolutions. If ensuring budgetary chaos and
locking in higher levels of discretionary spending isn’t depressing enough,
there’s always the prospect of a genuine debt crisis. Virtually everyone agrees that the current
level of federal spending is unsustainable, but the Obama administration has
shown no interest in cutting spending. Indeed,
President Obama wrote to European leaders ahead of the upcoming G-20 summit in
Toronto and warned that their austerity measures—including spending cuts—could
slow our recovery, and even raised the possibility of still greater U.S.
government spending. When debt and deficits get so out of
control, Democrats create a crisis so they can create a solution which includes
even bigger government and increased spending.
(“Dereliction
of Duty” by Stephen F. Hayes dated June 28, 2010 published by The Weekly
Standard at http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/dereliction-duty
“A Bad Lie,
At Best” by Jillian Bandes dated June 24, 2010
published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/JillianBandes/2010/06/24/a_bad_lie,_at_best
)
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took over a foreclosed home roughly
every 90 seconds during the first three months of the year and have become two
of the nation’s largest landlords. Before
the housing collapse, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac controlled as much as half of
the nation’s residential mortgage market. Since then, both companies have gone belly up,
and rely on the federal government to keep them alive. So far the tab stands at $145.9 billion, and it grows with every
foreclosure and the Congressional Budget Office predicts that the final bill could reach $389
billion. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
increased American home ownership over the last half-century by persuading
investors to provide money for mortgage loans. The sales pitch amounted to a money-back
guarantee: If borrowers defaulted, the companies promised to repay the investors.
Rather than actually making loans, the
two companies — Fannie Mae older and larger, Freddie Mac created to provide
competition — bought loans from banks and other originators, providing money
for more lending and helping to hold down interest rates. As it turns out, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac increasingly
were channeling money into loans that borrowers could not afford. As defaults mounted, the companies quickly ran
low on money to honor their guarantees. The
federal government, fearing that investors would stop providing money for new
loans, placed the companies in conservatorship and took a 79.9% ownership
stake, adding its own guarantee that investors would
be repaid. The huge and continually
rising cost of that decision has spurred national debate about federal
subsidies for mortgage lending. In the
meantime, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are editing the results of the housing
boom at public expense, removing owners who cannot afford their homes,
reselling the houses at much lower prices and financing mortgage loans for the
new owners. The outsides are weeded and
the insides are scrubbed; stolen appliances are replaced; brackish pools are
refilled. Until the properties are sold,
they must be maintained: contractors mow lawns twice a month during the summer,
and are paid $80 each time; for a monthly grass bill of more than $10 million. All told, the two companies spent more than
$1 billion on upkeep last year. Republicans have repeatedly
attempted to offer amendments to the financial-regulatory system to shut down,
privatize, and spin off Fannie and Freddie, or at least to include the full
cost of their bailouts in the federal budget. Democrats have repeatedly ruled that these
amendments are not germane to the underlying overhaul of the nation’s
financial-regulatory system even though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were central
players in the financial collapse. Prices have plunged, so by the time a home is resold, Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac on average recoup less than 60% of the money the borrower
failed to repay, according to the companies’ financial filings. You might assume the federal money is
all part of a sweeping plan to wind these companies down gradually, until the
private sector can pick up the slack, but in fact, the opposite is occurring. Even as they rely on federal handouts, the
companies are expanding their control of housing markets. Last year, the GSEs financed or backed about
70 percent of single-family mortgage loans. They now hold about $5 trillion in their
investment portfolios. Policymakers
apparently think the best way to handle a company that’s “too big to fail” is
to make it bigger. And there’s no end in
sight. The Obama administration lifted
all caps on how much the companies could drain from federal coffers. Once limited to “only” $200 billion apiece,
they can now borrow endlessly, and they don’t even have to prepare a plan to
pay the “loans” back. The stock market has spoken and the
twin GSEs will soon be delisted, as investors see no end to losses in sight and
the money will never be repaid, so the stock is now trading for less than $1
per share.
(“Cost of
Seizing Fannie and Freddie Surges for Taxpayers” by Binyamin Applebaum dated June 19, 2010 published by The New York
Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/business/20foreclose.html?hp
“Fixing
Fannie and Freddie” by Ed Feulner dated June 22,
2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/EdFeulner/2010/06/22/fixing_fannie_and_freddie
)
It is an understatement to say that ObamaCare
is unpopular, but the more Americans learn, the more they support its repeal. One of ObamaCare’s major selling points
was that nobody would be forced to change their insurance policies or doctors. As Obama’s team drafts the regulations for
implementing this massive government takeover of the healthcare industry, it’s
becoming evident that the President and his supporters misled the American
people. It was recently reported that
1.5 million Americans may lose their health coverage this year due to ObamaCare regulations. Now we’re learning that new regulations may
force tens of millions to lose their employer-provided healthcare plans. That’s because, come 2014, the federal
government is going to dictate what kind of coverage you must have. We were told that the federal mandates would
apply only to policies sold in the new federal healthcare “exchanges.” Polls found that
large majorities of Americans (75%) with health insurance were happy with the
coverage they have now. So Democrats
reassured a nervous public that employer-provided plans would be “grandfathered in” or exempted from the
new requirements. That’s not what the
latest draft regulations from the Department of Health and Human Services
suggest. More than 100 million Americans
are insured through their employer. Its
worst-case assumption is that 80% of small-employers will lose grandfathered
rights by 2013. Which is why the
administration recently announced it will spend $125 million on a campaign to
sell it to them. If you’ve found the
Obama administration’s handling of the oil crisis troubling, its inability to
coordinate private companies and government-run entities, its failure to manage
unexpected events and costs, and its inefficiency in streamlining approval
processes and regulations, then you’re really going to be disturbed by the
coming healthcare disaster.
(“Obamacare’s Broken
Promises” by Gary Bauer dated June 20, 2010 published by Human Events at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37561
)
Organizations that promote or perform
abortions spent nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money since 2002, according to a
Government Accountability Office. The GAO looked into the expenditures of six organizations and
their affiliates: Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the International
Planned Parenthood Federation, the Population Council, The Guttmacher
Institute, Advocates for Youth, and Sexuality Information and Education Council
of the United States. The report says
these organizations and their affiliates spent $967.1 million in federal funds
for fiscal years 2002-2009. Each of
these organizations promotes or performs abortions. Planned Parenthood Federation of America's (PPFA) audits
show the organization spent just $657.1 million between 2002 and 2008 from
federal government grants and programs, but the abortion behemoth's
own annual reports show that it took in $2.3 billion from government grants and
programs during the same time period. Planned
Parenthood admits to systematically having killed more than 1.8 million
pre-born babies between 2002 and 2008. Planned Parenthood’s 2006-2007 annual report, for example, states
the organization performed 289,750 abortions in 2006 alone—a year it spent $100
million of taxpayer’s money. It
performed 306,310 abortions in 2007, when it spent $97.6 million of federal
funds. In a debate where the primary
focus is a woman’s body and a woman’s right to choose whether or not to carry a
child to his or her delivery, the “other
partner,” the father of the baby, is rarely given consideration, and is
often completely disregarded altogether. The question of abortion is myopically
women-centric, since the decision deeply impacts the dad also. President Obama signed an executive order
prohibiting taxpayer-funded abortions under the new healthcare law, but
continues to fund organizations that perform over 250, 000 abortions each year
at taxpayer expense.
(“Planned
Parenthood’s missing millions” by Rita Diller dated June 18, 2010 published
by The Washington Times at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/18/planned-parenthoods-missing-millions/
“Taxpayers
Spend $1 Billion to Promote Abortion” by Elisabeth Meinecke
dated June 20, 2010 published by Human Events at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37604
“A Women’s
‘Choice’ That Affects Men: Post Abortion Trauma” by Jerry DeBin dated June 20, 2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/JerryDeBin/2010/06/20/a_womans_choice_that_affects_men_post-abortion_trauma
)
Barack Obama came into office as the heir to a great foreign
policy legacy enjoyed by every recent U.S. President, but he has squandered the
reputation that he inherited. The United
States stands on top of the power ladder, not necessarily as the dominant
power, but certainly as the leading one. As such we are the sole nation capable of
exercising global leadership on a whole range of international issues from
security, trade, and climate to counterterrorism. We also benefit from the fact that most
countries distrust the United States far less than they distrust one another,
so we uniquely have the power to build coalitions. As a result, most of the world still looks to
Washington for help in their region and protection against potential regional
threats. Yet, the Iraq war lingers;
Afghanistan continues to be immersed in an endless cycle of tribalism,
corruption, and Islamist resurgence; Guantánamo remains open; Iran sees how
North Korea toys with Obama and continues its programs to develop nuclear
weapons and missiles; Cuba spurns America's offers of a greater opening; and
the Palestinians and Israelis find that it is U.S. policy positions that defer
serious negotiations, the direct opposite of what the Obama administration
hoped for. America right now appears to
be unreliable to traditional friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies.
The United States for 60 years has met
its responsibilities as the leader and the defender of the democracies of the
free world. We have policed the sea
lanes, protected the air and space domains, countered terrorism, responded to
genocide, and been the bulwark against rogue states engaging in aggression. The world now senses, in the context of the
erosion of America's economic power and the pressures of our budget deficits, that
we will compress our commitments. The world needs the
vision, idealism, and strong leadership that America brings to international
affairs, and this must be done and we are the only ones who can do it.
(“World Sees
Obama as Incompetent and Amateur” by Mortimer B. Zuckerman dated June 18,
2010 published by US News & World Report at http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2010/06/18/mort-zuckerman-world-sees-obama-as-incompetent-and-amateur.html
)
Barack Obama may be the first American president to accidentally
carry out an isolationist foreign policy and the uncertainty
of the American trumpet, the indecisiveness of the American hand, and the
modesty of the American goals are freeing the strong and forcing the weak to
prepare to fend for themselves. One impact is the absence of
American deterrence gives hope to anti-Israeli instincts. Iran will start to reassert its claim to oil-rich
southern Iraq, which was the cause of the Iraq–Iran War of the 1980s. Turkey will challenge with military force the
Kurds in northern Iraq for the oil-rich lands around Kirkuk while also using
the opportunity to repress Kurdish moves toward a de facto independent
Kurdistan in what are now parts of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. In the Middle East, all players in the region
are assuming America will not be a long-term player. Next, consider revanchist Russia’s drive to
re-dominate the lands of its old empire.
Once again, it is the weakness or absence of strong American diplomacy
that is the coming hallmark of developments in Russia and its border area. This newly modest American
diplomatic/military stance in Central Asia is causing increased assertiveness
by all the traditional players (India, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, China) along with the increased confidence of the radical
Islamists and drug merchants in the region.
The characteristic aspects of Mr. Obama’s new foreign policy in action
might fairly be described as: (1) a refusal to assert American will; which
leads to (2) the description, but not the attainment by force, of American
objectives; and, thus, (3) acquiescence to the assertion of will by other
nations or forces. Though this may not
be intentional isolationism, it is turning out to be pretty much the same
thing. Each of
these impending international disasters is on its own timeline and they all
point to the same conclusion: a world no longer guided by a powerful, benign
hand, but rather a world that is the target of malignant grabbing hands and
pounding fists.
“Obama
the Isolationist?” by Tony Blankley dated June 23, 2010 published by
National Review Online at http://article.nationalreview.com/436953/obama-the-isolationist/tony-blankley
)
Conservatism's critics often see it as an undifferentiated mass
animated by hostility to "big
government," support for social traditionalism and a deep animosity
toward liberalism, but conservatism is a diverse movement with many
philosophical threads and tensions. Successful conservative
politicians such as Ronald Reagan (and George W. Bush in his first term) kept
the peace among economic, social and big business conservatives while
moderating the movement's public rhetoric. In opposition, conservatives often manage to
bury their differences. The rise of the
Tea Party movement is a throwback to an old form of libertarianism that sees
most of the domestic policies that government has undertaken since the New Deal
as unconstitutional. It typically
perceives the most dangerous threats to freedom as the design of well-educated liberal
elitists out of touch with "American
values." In its extreme
antipathy to the power of the federal government, this movement may prove to be
threatening to both political parties. The
language of the new anti-statists, like the language of the 1950s' right,
regularly harks back to the U.S. Constitution and the Founders in calling
attention to perceived threats to liberty.
A group called Tea Party Patriots
describes itself as "a community
committed to standing together, shoulder to shoulder, to protect our country
and the Constitution upon which we were founded!" Tea Party Nation
says it is "a user-driven group of
like-minded people who desire our God given Individual Freedoms which were
written out by the Founding Fathers."
What's remarkable is the extent to which the Tea Party movement has
displaced the religious right as the dominant voice of conservative militancy. The religious conservatives have not
disappeared, and Sarah Palin, a Tea Party hero, does share their views on
abortion and gay marriage. The social issues have been overshadowed by the broader
anti-government themes pushed by the New Old Right, and the "compassionate conservatism" that
inspires parts of the Christian political movement is not as important with
today’s movement.
(“The Right’s Disturbing New Anti-Statists”
by E.J. Dionne dated June 21, 2010 published by Real Clear Politics at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/06/21/the_disturbing_new_right.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. Updates have been
made this week to the following issue sections:
·
Agriculture at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/agriculture.php
·
Budget at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/budget.php
·
Education at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/education.php
·
Energy at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/energy.php
·
Environment at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/environment.php
·
Family at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/family.php
·
Gun Control at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/guncontrol.php
·
Welfare at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/welfare.php
David Coughlin
Hawthorne, NY