I don’t have time to go into the financial reform bill that was passed by the Senate yesterday, so I just wanted to weigh in briefly with my opinion of the latest Obama Outrage.
This bill is 2,300 pages long and I assume that the same diligence was pursued by Members of both Houses of Congress as was pursued when they were crafting the monstrous Health Care “Reform” Bill that was somewhere between 2,300 and 2,700 pages long….in other words, I assume no one read this bill either.
The bill is nothing more than the “shell” in which multiple new bureaus will be housed. These new government flunkies will have sweeping new powers to further hamstring our financial system. I do recognize that problems existed in our financial system, but adding many new layers of government is not the answer.
Keep in mind that most of the problems we witnessed in the Meltdown of ’08 were the result of the failure of regulators to recognize the excesses and to properly police the system using existing legislation.
As with All Things Obama, the knee-jerk reaction to any problem is 5 or 6 new bureaus, 15-20 new czars, a $ Trillion in new spending, a round of golf, a White House concert that blows another $ million, two staged townhall meetings and then cap all that off with another vacation.
Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.
In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.
To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.
“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”
Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defence circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two governments, they share a mutual loathing of the regime in Tehran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” said one.
The four main targets for any raid on Iran would be the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, the gas storage development at Isfahan and the heavy-water reactor at Arak. Secondary targets include the lightwater reactor at Bushehr, which could produce weapons-grade plutonium when complete.
The targets lie as far as 1,400 miles (2,250km) from Israel; the outer limits of their bombers’ range, even with aerial refuelling. An open corridor across northern Saudi Arabia would significantly shorten the distance. An airstrike would involve multiple waves of bombers, possibly crossing Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Aircraft attacking Bushehr, on the Gulf coast, could swing beneath Kuwait to strike from the southwest.
Passing over Iraq would require at least tacit agreement to the raid from Washington. So far, the Obama Administration has refused to give its approval as it pursues a diplomatic solution to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Military analysts say Israel has held back only because of this failure to secure consensus from America and Arab states. Military analysts doubt that an airstrike alone would be sufficient to knock out the key nuclear facilities, which are heavily fortified and deep underground or within mountains. However, if the latest sanctions prove ineffective the pressure from the Israelis on Washington to approve military action will intensify. Iran vowed to continue enriching uranium after the UN Security Council imposed its toughest sanctions yet in an effort to halt the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme, which Tehran claims is intended for civil energy purposes only. President Ahmadinejad has described the UN resolution as “a used handkerchief, which should be thrown in the dustbin”.
Israeli officials refused to comment yesterday on details for a raid on Iran, which the Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has refused to rule out. Questioned on the option of a Saudi flight path for Israeli bombers, Aharaon Zeevi Farkash, who headed military intelligence until 2006 and has been involved in war games simulating a strike on Iran, said: “I know that Saudi Arabia is even more afraid than Israel of an Iranian nuclear capacity.”
The same hypocrite who says our energy costs must “necessarily skyrocket” to fund his political ambition, is giving Marie Antoinette a run for her money when it comes to spending national treasure on personal luxuries.
While much of the country is struggling to pay their bills, the President and First Lady are partying like rock royalty. The collection of talent that has made the pilgrimage to the White House to entertain Obama and friends is nothing less than amazing: Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Tony Bennet, Paul Simon, Marc Anthony, Herbie Hancock, Martina McBride, Queen Latifah, The Foo Fighters, Faith Hill, and recently foot-in-mouth Paul McCartney to name a few.
This has the makings to be the greatest ongoing concert series ever to be seen on this Earth just to entertain one man … all paid for by the American taxpayer.
Let Them Eat Cake
How much does this world-class entertainment cost? Assuming the artists themselves forgo appearance fees, I highly doubt Paul Simon would perform with just a karaoke machine as backup.
Professional equipment needs to be brought in – sound engineers, stages, lights, etc… Even small scale performances by these artists can be very expensive.
Add booze, food, security, invitations, social secretaries, wait staff, and hangers on to the tab and the price for one of these events could easily top $75K. With over 27 concerts hosted thus far, the total cost to taxpayers is in the millions of dollars.
The executive branch does not provide detailed information regarding entertainment expenses, however, it has been estimated the Obamas spent at least $10 million on “drunken White House parties” in 2009 alone.
Nice. Street language from the POTUS. What a classy guy….and an economics and health care expert, too. How did we ever get so lucky to have this man serve the country in the White House?
They toppled Hillary Clinton, crushed John McCain and managed to get the first black man elected president of the United States.
But now a series of recent missteps just keeps getting worse for Barack Obama’s political operation, already under fire from inside the party for losing its golden touch.
The second-guessing of the White House political shop — which is coming in part from top House Democrats — was sparked anew late Wednesday by news that the White House tried and failed to coax another Democratic Senate candidate out of making his race by dangling administration jobs in front of him.
In a possible repeat of the Joe Sestak episode in Pennsylvania, insurgent U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff of Colorado said deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina reached out to him — with a wince-inducing e-mail that is now public — with three possible jobs in September 2009. Obama wanted to keep him out of a race against Sen. Michael Bennet, the White House’s favored candidate.
Taken together, the Sestak and Romanoff cases suggest a White House team that is one part Dick Daley, one part Barney Fife.
They undercut Obama’s reputation on two fronts. Trying to put the fix in to deny Democratic voters the chance to choose for themselves who their Senate nominees should be is hardly consistent with the idea of “Yes, we can” grass-roots empowerment that is central to Obama’s brand.
MEMORANDUM FROM ROBERT F. BAUER, WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL
SUBJECT: Review of Discussions Relating to Congressman Sestak
Recent press reports have reflected questions and speculation about discussions between White House staff and Congressman Joe Sestak in relation to his plans to run for the United States
Senate. Our office has reviewed those discussions and claims made about them, focusing in
particular on the suggestion that government positions may have been improperly offered to the
Congressman to dissuade him from pursuing a Senate candidacy. We have concluded that allegations of improper conduct rest on factual errors and lack a basis in the law.
Secretary of the Navy. It has been suggested that the Administration may have offered Congressman Sestak the position of Secretary of the Navy in the hope that he would accept the offer and abandon a Senate candidacy. This is false. The President announced his intent to nominate Ray Mabus to be Secretary of the Navy on March 26, 2009, over a month before Senator Specter announced that he was becoming a member of the Democratic Party in late April. Mabus was confirmed in May. At no time was Congressman Sestak offered, nor did he seek, the position of Secretary of the Navy.
Uncompensated Advisory Board Options. We found that, as the Congressman has publicly and accurately stated, options for Executive Branch service were raised with him. Efforts were made in June and July of 2009 to determine whether Congressman Sestak would be interested in service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board, which would avoid a divisive Senate primary, allow him to retain his seat in the House, and provide him with an opportunity for additional service to the public in a high-level advisory capacity for which he was highly qualified. The advisory positions discussed with Congressman Sestak, while important to the work of the Administration, would have been uncompensated.
White House staff did not discuss these options with Congressman Sestak. The White House Chief of Staff enlisted the support of former President Clinton who agreed to raise with Congressman Sestak options of service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch
Advisory Board. Congressman Sestak declined the suggested alternatives, remaining committed to his Senate candidacy.
Relationship to Senate Campaign. It has been suggested that discussions of alternatives to the Senate campaign were improperly raised with the Congressman. There was no such impropriety. The Democratic Party leadership had a legitimate interest in averting a divisive primary fight and
a similarly legitimate concern about the Congressman vacating his seat in the House. By virtue of his career in public service, including distinguished military service, Congressman Sestak was viewed to be highly qualified to hold a range of advisory positions in which he could, while
holding his House seat, have additional responsibilities of considerable potential interest to him and value to the Executive Branch.
There have been numerous, reported instances in the past when prior Administrations — both Democratic and Republican, and motivated by the same goals — discussed alternative paths to service for qualified individuals also considering campaigns for public office. Such discussions are fully consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements.
I’d like to compare two press conferences which both indicated the precise moment when a Presidency was clearly over.
President Bush – October 4th, 2005: Taking questions in the Rose Garden, the press repeatedly questioned the White House response to Hurricane Katrina. President Bush replied: “You know, as I said the other day, to the extent that the federal government fell down on the job, I take responsibility”.
President Obama – May 27th, 2010: While giving a rare press conference, President Obama refused to responded to a question that suggested not everything was given a proper White House response. Obama added “We can always do better”.
In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder today, all seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee “urge the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Congressman Joe Sestak’s claim that a White House official offered him a job to induce him to exit the Pennsylvania Senate primary race against Senator Arlen Specter.”
The seven – Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Jon Kyl or Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma – allege that the offer would appear to violate federal criminal laws, including 18 U.S.C. 600, which prohibits promising a government position “as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity” or “in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office.”
Rep. Sestak, D-Penn., who defeated Specter in the primary last week, told Comcast’s Larry Kane in February that the White House had offered him a position in exchange for not challenging Specter. White House senior adviser David Axelrod said on Monday that White House lawyers had looked into it and judged everything “perfectly appropriate.”
CNN’s John King suggested to Axelrod that such a job offer “marches up into the gray area, perhaps into the red area of a felony. It is a felony to induce somebody by offering them a job.”
Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight committee, told CBS News Wednesday that he will call for a special prosecutor to investigate the White House if it does not address Rep. Joe Sestak’s claim that he was offered a federal job in exchange for dropping out of the Pennsylvania Senate primary.
“If the public doesn’t receive a satisfactory answer, the next step would be to call for a special prosecutor, which is well within the statute,” Issa (pictured) told Hotsheet.
The California Republican has been pushing for the White House to provide details of conversations between Sestak and administration officials in the wake of Sestak’s comment during a radio interview last month that he was offered a high-ranking administration job in exchange for dropping his primary challenge against Sen. Arlen Specter.
Asked if that job was secretary of the Navy, Sestak declined to comment. His press secretary told CBS News that the lawmaker stands by his original statement that he was offered the job in exchange for an administration post. Sestak did not drop out of the race.
On March 10th, Issa sent a letter to White House lawyer Robert Bauer asking for details about communications between Sestak and the White House. In the letter, he pointed to statutes he said could have been violated if Sestak was offered a quid pro quo arrangement in which he would be given an administration job in exchange for leaving the race.
Issa said the move may have violated anti-bribery provisions of the federal criminal code as well as prohibitions on government officials interfering in elections and using federal jobs for a political purpose. Violation of each provision is punishable by up to one year in jail.
The White House did not respond to Issa’s letter by its March 18 deadline. Reporters have asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs about the inquiry on six occasions.
Here is a Poll that NPR is running about whether or not the White House is right that FOXNEWS is pretty much the GOP’s mouthpiece. So far (2 PM Central) it’s a landslide in favor of FOXNEWS.
~~John Cronin~~
I’m supporting:
The White House on this one; Fox News isn’t “fair and balanced.” 10% (254,246 votes)
Fox News on this one; it asks questions others don’t and the White House should be able to handle them. 89% (2,324,202 votes)
Neither side. They’re both trying to play this “feud” to their advantage. 1% (33,209 votes)
The British newspaper The Telegraph opines today that Obama may be coming to the end of his road as POTUS.
More and more often words like “desperation,” “in-fighting,” “demoralized” and “fractious” are being used to describe an administration that once held out hope to it’s partisans that it would be able to deliver the long hoped for socialist paradise where life would be easy, our every whim would be government’s command and it could all be paid for by taxing “the rich” who would be thrilled to see their hard earned wealth confiscated. After all, it was such a noble cause, who wouldn’t want to contribute more and more so that the masses could do less and less.
But then reality hit this feckless administration between the eyes. Isn’t it funny how 15,000,000 unemployed Americans, jaw-dropping deficits and the endlessly proferred middle finger salute from the White House to the voters can galvanize public opinion?
With his poll numbers headed south and most of his policies with lopsided, upside down approve/disapprove ratios as well, Obama has demonstrated that he has spent his own political capital almost as fast as he is burning through our money with his ineffective, redistributive policies.
On March 18, we are told that Obama wants to have his “up or down vote” on the shop worn Health Care bill that has been drug through both Houses of Congress for the last year. Whichever way the vote goes, IMHO Obama is done. If it passes, it will be the middle finger to the voters and they will return the sentiment in November. If it fails, it’s ” The Emperor Has No Clothes” and Obama’s opponents in both parties will move in to wrest power from him. Obama has painted himself into the proverbial corner and it doesn’t look like their is any way for him to get out. That being said, I don’t for a moment think we can let our guard down until this administration is politely ushered from the Oval Office back to being private citizens. What a welcome relief that will be!
~~John Cronin~~
A thrashing of the Democrats in the mid-terms would not necessarily be the beginning of the end for Mr Obama: Bill Clinton was re-elected two years after the Republicans swept the House and the Senate in November 1994. But Mr Clinton was an operator in a way Mr Obama patently is not. His lack of experience, his dependence on rhetoric rather than action, his disconnection from the lives of many millions of Americans all handicap him heavily. It is not about whose advice he is taking: it is about him grasping what is wrong with America, and finding the will to put it right. That wasted first year, however, is another boulder hanging from his neck: what is wrong needs time to put right. The country’s multi-trillion dollar debt is barely being addressed; and a country engaged in costly foreign wars has a President who seems obsessed with anything but foreign policy – as a disregarded Britain is beginning to realise.
There are lessons from the stumbling of Mr Obama for our own country as we approach a general election. Vacuous promises of change are hostages to fortune if they cannot be delivered upon to improve the living conditions of a people. The slickness of campaigning that comes from a combination of heavy funding and public relations expertise does not inevitably translate into an ability to govern. There is no point a nation’s having the audacity of hope unless it also has the sophistication and the will to turn it into action. As things stand, Barack Obama and America under his leadership do not.
There had been rampant speculation that the White House would narrow its ambitions for health-care legislation after the loss of the Democrats’ filibuster-proof Senate majority last month. Instead, the president’s proposal is striking for the extent to which it hews to the basic scale and framework of the bills on which Congress has toiled for months.
That decision — to go big one last time, rather than small — emerged quickly inside the White House after senior advisers to President Obama concluded privately that his goals for comprehensive changes to the health-care system could not be done piecemeal.
And after initially reeling from the surprise election of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate in Massachusetts, Obama’s chief political strategists came to believe that voters would punish Democrats more severely in this year’s elections for failing to try, they said.
WHEN President Barack Obama’s secret service codename was revealed as Renegade and his wife Michelle’s as Renaissance, the names seemed perfect for a first couple who had come to Washington to shake things up.
More than a year into the Obama administration, with healthcare yet to be reformed, Wall Street banks continuing to pay huge bonuses and Guantanamo Bay prison still open, that mood of hope has turned to disillusion. Obama’s policy of engagement has yielded no progress in the Middle East or Iran; the war in Afghanistan continues to exact a big toll in lives and dollars; while the heaviest snow in Washington for 90 years seems to have stymied any hope of climate change legislation.
The president and his team now find themselves under fire for mishandling Congress from everyone from senior Democrats to social columnists.
Critics say that by failing to move on from the “us versus them” feeling of the Obama election campaign, they have united an opposition that was in disarray. The result is legislative paralysis despite the biggest Democratic majority in 30 years.
Last week a prominent Democratic senator resigned after criticising both government and Congress. Evan Bayh from Indiana, who had never lost a race and was expected to be re-elected in November, complained that the party’s recent loss of the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy should have been seen as a wake-up call.
“Moderates and independents even in a state as Democratic as Massachusetts just aren’t buying our message,” he said.
“They don’t believe the answers we are currently proposing are solving their problems.”
Even society writers are disenchanted. “The Obama White House has closed ranks. They were completely overwhelmed by the new office,” said Karen Sommer Shalett, editor-in-chief of DC magazine. “I haven’t heard of them going to any house parties or Georgetown row houses to be entertained.
“That’s important because if you’re social with someone over canapés and you know their wife and you know their children, you talk business in a friendlier way.”
When the Obamas do go to someone’s house for dinner, almost invariably it is to the home of Valerie Jarrett, their old friend from Chicago who serves as a political adviser.
The Wednesday evening White House cocktail parties which were launched with great fanfare as a way to reach out to Republicans, fizzled out last spring. The two parties seem more hostile than ever.
“This administration has managed to divide its friends and unite its enemies,” said Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation.
He and others lay the blame on the Chicago team, advisers from Obama’s adopted city. “Obama’s West Wing is filled with people who are in their jobs because of their Chicago connections or because they signed on early during his presidential campaign,” complained Doug Wilder, who in 1990s Virginia was America’s first elected black governor and was an early backer of Obama. “One problem is they do not have sufficient experience at governing at the executive branch level. The deeper problem is that they are not listening to the people.”
Obama relies on five people, four of whom are Chicagoans. They are Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, David Axelrod and Jarrett, his political advisers, and Michelle, while the fifth kitchen cabinet member is Robert Gibbs, his chief spokesman, who comes from Alabama.
The president consults them on everything. Military commanders were astounded when they participated in Afghanistan war councils and referred to them as the “Chicago mafia”. It was this group that inserted into Obama’s Afghan surge speech the deadline of July 2011 as a date to start withdrawing.
The White House press room was a jovial place to be in the early days of President Barack Obama’s presidency. But times have changed.
Back in May, POLITICO analyzed the press briefings and found that the instances of laughter — as indicated by “(Laughter)” being noted in the official transcript — occurred more than 10 times per day during press secretary Robert Gibbs’s briefings.
But the laughter has been reduced by half in recent months: In the first six months of the Obama administration, briefings produced an average of 179 laughs per month. Over the past six months, the average has dropped down to 89.
Chalk it up to the close of any administration’s initial honeymoon — and the Obama administration’s tough second half of 2009, as it wrestled with health care and saw the late Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat filled by a Republican.
President Barack Obama is planning to host a televised meeting with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders on health care reform.
The Feb. 25 meeting is an attempt to reach across the aisle but not a signal that the president plans to start over, as Republicans have demanded, a White House official said.
“I want to come back [after the Presidents Day congressional recess] and have a large meeting — Republicans and Democrats — to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Obama said in an interview with Katie Couric during CBS’s Super Bowl pre-game show Sunday.
Sparring between Congress and the White House over treatment of the suspect behind the Christmas Day bombing attempt escalated further Thursday, with Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) accusing the administration of releasing sensitive national security information to the press and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs indignantly demanding an apology.
Bond, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, complained that, on Monday, administration officials asked lawmakers to keep the renewed cooperation of suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a secret but that, on Tuesday night, the White House gave reporters a detailed background briefing on how FBI interrogators used the suspect’s family to win his trust.
“It is deeply disturbing to me that the Intelligence Committee would be advised of sensitive information and told of the vital imperative to keep such information secret for the sake of national security, only to see this information — less than 24 hours later — broadcast to the world from the White House,” Bond wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama. “This distortion of the congressional notification process suggests that other considerations are taking precedence over keeping timely and sensitive information away from our enemies.”
Gibbs said the briefing for journalists was done only after Abdulmutallab’s new talkativeness emerged during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday. Said Gibbs: “No briefing is done here or anywhere in this administration where classified information is used in a place where it shouldn’t be.”
Gibbs demanded an apology, but Bond declined. “After telling me to keep my mouth shut, the White House discloses sensitive information in an effort to defend a dangerous and unpopular decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab, and I’m supposed to apologize?” Bond said through a spokeswoman.
Bond also took a shot directly at Gibbs. “He keeps shoveling no matter what happens,” the senator told Fox Radio.
What an age we live in. Significant campaign promisesorPresidential quotesused to be relegated to the lexicon of public thought. That was until You Tube came along, then even minor promises were preserved, measured, and expected to be kept. Take this one for instance.
This video absolutely nails it. The way most Americans feel about the continuing betrayal of everything we value by the Obama administration and the morally corrupt Democratic Party.
Please go to YouTube and copy and paste this video on every site you have access to and not just the conservative sites, but to the sites where “middle of the road” voters and Independents will see it as well.
I don’t know who produced this video, but major kudos to the folks behind this one, it couldn’t be more spot on.
