President Obama

Posted on Random Musings

a closing argument – to change direction

I am nervous about Election Day. This country is in a very divided place. Politics has become such a polarizing force that families are fighting over it, friendships have been broken and not easily repaired, and we are separated in a class struggle that threatens the very fabric of our nation – all because we disagree on how to fix what’s broken in this country. This shouldn’t be the case. Some of the blame should rest with our current president and his political party. Remember “hope and change”? That has long since disappeared, and anyone who cares to pay attention should feel quite disillusioned at this point.

President Obama has failed to keep his promises. All politicians break promises, so this shouldn’t surprise anyone. What is remarkable about our president is that he fails to take responsibility for his own record. What is that record? Let’s start with 7.8% unemployment. Even if you buy the argument that President Obama started with a deeply problematic economy (and he did), his policies have done very little to improve these numbers. We can do better than 7.8% unemployment. We can get people back to work. We just need to reverse the job-killing direction of this administration’s policies by lowering taxes for small businesses and putting a big sharp knife into Obamacare. The president keeps saying he has a jobs plan and we should read all about it on his website. If it’s such a great plan, where was this great plan the last 4 years when many people lost their jobs, and still haven’t regained them? It’s time for President Obama to give the presidency to someone who wants to do the job that is required.

How about his policy on energy? How’s that working for us? We all know about the high gas prices. These prices are having serious effects on us as consumers both directly (as we fill up our cars / trucks / SUVs) and indirectly (increased costs for truckers and those who are transporting products to our stores and supermarkets). This is all part of the administration’s plan to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by making us use less because of the price. Sometimes it seems that environmentalists care more about the planet than the people that live there. Nevertheless, it would be good policy to ok the Keystone Pipeline to increase our supply of energy, which will help to ease gas prices while we explore new ways to power our vehicles and heat our homes. Our president refuses to do this.

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Posted on Democrats, Republicans

a little more unserious

One of my favorite movies is Dave. It is a movie where an average citizen (Dave) impersonates the President of the United States for a living, and is thrown into the real job due to some really shady political operatives.  (Quick aside – Kevin Kline is awesome in that role!) There’s a scene in that movie  in which Dave enlists his accountant friend Murray to cut the federal budget so that the homeless shelter wouldn’t have to close.  Murray looks at the budget and says something to the effect of if private citizens handled their books like this, they would be in jail. Yeah.  One of the items in that budget was an advertising campaign to bolster confidence in the American auto industry.   Dave asks the Congresscritter (I forget the name of the guy) to explain this.  He explains that this was designed to boost Americans’ confidence in a previous auto purchase.  So an ad campaign to make American feel better about cars they have already bought.  Mmhmm.

What I’m getting at here is there are many unnecessary expenditures in our budget even before we get to domestic spending.   If America is broke — and if we are not there yet, we are close — then why are we spending so much money on foreign aid?   Why are we validating the UN by providing a significant portion of its financing to its collection of Third-World despots, dictators, and countries who would seriously consider wiping US off the map along with Israel?  As for Iraq and Afghanistan, don’t pretend that an already-planned troop reduction should count toward a spending cut since this will happen regardless of which plan ends up passing in Congress.  So let’s not insist that all these things (some more important than others) are off the table when we have to make so many cuts to domestic spending to balance this budget.

And yes, it’s true – neither side is serious about making the cuts we need to make to get our fiscal house in order.  But at least the House Republicans are providing some level of opposition to the bipartisan failure that is the Boehner plan.  From the way Speaker Boehner explained his plan on every single talk radio station, it’s clear to me that proposed spending cuts don’t have any weight to them, and that’s the kind of cuts in this plan.  Also, those spending cuts are spread out over 10 years, which means that they won’t offset the rise in the debt ceiling that would happen in this agreement.    I’m not advocating irresponsibility.  Still, I find it difficult to trust Congress and the president when they insist that certain doom will befall America if we don’t raise the debt ceiling.  There will be no incentive to make those necessary cuts when the government knows that they have a limitless checkbook.    For these, and many other reasons,  I would encourage Congress and especially the Republicans to keep trying.  We aren’t there yet.

For more, read Reason’s excellent article here.

4 Comments Posted on Democrats, Republicans

motives

Finally there appears to be some agreement that we must reduce spending. Unfortunately, the mindset of those who wish to do this is all wrong. I guess I shouldn’t care about the motives of the Democrats and Republicans here, as long as they do what we all want them to do. But it does matter, because even if we manage to get our fiscal house in order (and that’s no small task), if we do not quit wasting money on unnecessary things, we will quickly get back to the same problem we are in right now. When getting out of debt, one must change the behavior that led to the fiscal crisis they were in. I know this first hand. Why is this concept so difficult for the White House and Congress to grasp?

Read the following quote from President Obama and you tell me whether he understands this concept:

If youre a progressive that cares about investments in Head Start and student loan programs and medical research and infrastructure, Mr. Obama said, were not going to be able to make progress on those areas if we havent gotten our fiscal house in order.”

So we have to put the fiscal house in order to spend MORE money on social programs. Got it. I would argue that putting our fiscal house in order requires a re-evaluation of our current spending priorities and maybe eliminating some programs. That’s not what the President wants to do.

Posted on Random Musings

good questions

George Will on Libya:

But if Khadafy can’t be beaten by the rebels, are we prepared to supply their military deficiencies? If the decapitation of his regime produces what the removal of Saddam Hussein did — bloody chaos — what then are our responsibilities regarding the tribal vendettas we may have unleashed? How long are we prepared to police the partitioning of Libya?

Explaining his decision to wage war, Obama said Khadafy has “lost the confidence of his own people and the legitimacy to lead.” Such boilerplate seems designed to anesthetize thought. When did Khadafy lose his people’s confidence? When did he have legitimacy?

American doctrine is that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. So there are always many illegitimate governments. When is it America’s duty to scrub away these blemishes on the planet? Is there a limiting principle of humanitarian interventionism? If so, would Obama take a stab at stating it?

I think the general consensus that Khadafy should be gone is correct.   The question should be how much the United States should be involved in another possible regime change situation.  It’s a question that requires much more thought than it’s been given by the Obama administration, and requires that we have a defined mission and objectives to determine what victory looks like.   Now my friends on the left are going to bring up Iraq and whether we had a plan for victory there.  If you believe that Iraq was a mistake (debatable but a fair position) and you have lost hope in Afghanistan, then it’s not possible to support the way the Obama administration has handled Libya.   If the United States calls for the removal of a dictator, the rest of the world generally expects that we will support all attempts to remove said dictator — even if that means eventually sending our own military to accomplish that goal.

The problem is that we have not committed to long-term military intervention.  Nor should we at this point.  The reasons we would get involved in this way should not have anything to do with the inclinations of our European allies.  The responsibility of the President of the United States should be to act in our best interest.   There are many areas of the world that could be candidates for our next humanitarian intervention – the Congo, Uganda, etc.   Where do we stop?  Where do we draw the line?  We can’t save everyone. It’s admirable to want to, and it’s one of America’s best qualities – to desire to reach out and help whenever there’s a crisis or people in need.

But our government doesn’t have unlimited resources.  There’s only so much we can do, and we can’t really afford to intervene everywhere.   We need to count the cost in Libya, and determine whether there’s something we can do without committing long-term, because we are still funding Iraq and Afghanistan.   The administration also should get the approval of Congress before going any further.  The Constitution requires it, and it would add legitimacy to the mission.  Getting further involved in Libya might be a tough sell to the American people, especially with Iraq and Afghanistan still on the board, but the President must make the case for it if he believes that the removal of Khadafy is important enough for our military to be involved in that process.

Posted on Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

elena kagan – it could be worse

How does it add anything to a SCOTUS nominee’s qualifications when it is noted that a nominee’s life story is inspirational, a real American rags-to-riches success story, and so forth and so on?  While the life experiences of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor are certainly a made-for-TV movie waiting to happen, they have nothing to do with being a Supreme Court justice.  If anything, those life experiences tend to suggest a certain subjective POV that leans toward one specific ideological perspective – and it’s not one conservatives can support.  But that’s hardly a surprise.

It’s difficult to believe that President Obama doesn’t know exactly what he’s getting in Elena Kagan. What we know about her so far is enough to suggest to me two things – one, she leans progressive; and two, she doesn’t have any judicial experience.  The latter doesn’t technically disqualify her from serving as a Supreme Court justice, as others have accurately pointed out.  However, this gives greater importance to her writings and speeches, and her actions as a law professor.   Those evaluating her fitness for this job will have to look at everything she has said and done in the past, and try to accurately predict which way she will go as a Supreme Court justice.  This evaluation will be completed before Elena Kagan gets her first question in the Senate confirmation hearings.

Many Democrats have already started lining up behind the President’s pick, while Republicans are promising to ask hard questions that are unlikely to be answered.  That’s the way this kabuki theater works.  Actually ask hard questions of SCOTUS nominees from the opposing party that you will never get a straight answer to, and in the end the nominee gets through, unless he/she is fatally flawed like Harriet Miers.

Honestly, I’m ok with this.  Many pundits find their latest column idea by disparaging the way nominees are told to handle their confirmation hearings.  Since both sides have already made up their minds about the nominee before the hearings ever take place, the questions will always be a formality.  When was the last time we learned something useful from SCOTUS confirmation hearings?  Bork.  Right.  If straight-up answers keep qualified candidates from making it to the high court, then I’m all for the non-sequiturs.  Besides, it’s not likely that anything said in the hearings would turn a Democrat against Elena Kagan, and since the Republicans could very well be so open-minded their brains fall out, they could decide that there’s no point in opposing a nominee when her confirmation is more than likely.

Posted on Democrats, Liberals, UK

good stuff other people wrote

What I’m currently reading:

The fallacy that continues to dog Project Cameron – John Rentoul (who wrote this killer Tony Blair bio I totally loved) says that David Cameron’s ideas are just as flawed as Gordon Brown’s. Sad part is that in this battle between the Conservative Party (Cameron) and Labour Party(Brown) one of these two will probably end up being UK Prime Minister.  Side note: Current UK PM Brown was never going to be Tony Blair.  Sometimes a politician is best suited to his previous job, rather than his current one.  This is very true of Brown.   However, I have no love for David Cameron and his “New Labour” -lite schtick and his obsession with the environment.  Of course, that’s generally how the Brits roll anyway — with their entrenched welfare state and their socialized health care with the NHS.  Naturally, these are the kind of politicians they like.  Bully for them.   Moving on…

Jack Kelly on President Obama’s new nuke deals.  Here’s the bottom line as far as I’m concerned – if President Obama really believes that we are facing a more challenging time in dealing with nuclear threats, then he’s got the wrong solution to this.   We can’t be voluntarily reducing our own nuclear arsenal and stopping production on more modern weapons at the same time North Korea and Iran are ramping up their nuke production.   This seems backwards to me.  The United States of America may very well be the only country which would be willing to voluntarily do this — and that’s exactly why we can’t do it.

A cautionary tale from Europe – Greece’s monetary struggles – a result of overspending and a massive entitlement society.

2 Comments Posted on Random Musings

the state of the middle ground

America was not designed to be run by elitists – nor was it designed for pure mob rule.  What we need to find here is some middle ground – a government that will be responsive to the needs of the people without being subject to the whims of daily polling and public opinion that is too often swayed by a slanted press corps.  That’s not where we are in the state of American politics.   What we have is a bloated federal bureaucracy that is incapable of being the kind of government we need, and the American people are beginning to wake up to that truth — that’s the idea behind the growing tea party movement in this country.   It could be reasonably argued that both parties (yes, even the Republican Party) share the blame for the massive spending,  but the sins of one party should not serve as an excuse for the other party to continue the bad behavior.  That’s where I believe the average citizen, and the tea party protests serve the purpose of drawing the line here, to say, “Enough of this.  It’s way past time for Congress to start being more responsible with taxpayer money.”  Nothing at all wrong with that.

The average citizen may not be the most eloquent, and in some cases,  may know just enough to question the direction of government policy without getting a front row seat to the halls of power.  Engagement in the political process by all citizens should be encouraged, but at the same time, we also have a responsibility to be able to argue intelligently on the issues of the day. While I believe that everyone should have a voice, I think it’s in the best interest of opponents of the policy positions of President Obama and the Democrats to know what they are talking about.  The media will continue to do what it does best — shredding the reputation of good and decent people who care about their country to burnish their merit badges and keep their invites to the hot cocktail parties.  It’s up to us not to give them any additional ammo by bringing our A game, doing our research, and being armed with the facts when discussing policy.

Posted on Democrats, Liberals

somebody’s not reading from the script

Watch Al Sharpton say something interesting on Fox News:

In case you didn’t catch it,  Al said that the American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama.  But that’s not possible.  How could such a committed capitalist free-marketeer as President Obama have any intention of implementing anything close to a socialist agenda? Quite a mystery to me.   Guess we have to watch the effects of what he and the Democrats do and decide for ourselves what we want to call all these new laws.

Posted on Democrats, George W. Bush, Iraq, Liberals

not likely

Our lovable Vice President Joe Biden talking to Larry King:

I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.

I spent — I’ve been there 17 times now. I go about every two months — three months. I know every one of the major players in all of the segments of that society. It’s impressed me. I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.

I’m obviously blinded by my anti-Obama bias, because it’s not clear to me how this administration gets credit for Iraq.

I would say that the credit for that should go to President Bush, just like the credit / blame for deficits, the stimulus, the bailouts,  and every struggle that our new President has to deal with right now.   Didn’t President Obama run for president as an anti-war candidate?  Why yes.  Didn’t VP Biden propose that Iraq be divided up into three partitions to keep the peace there? Yes again. It takes an incredible amount of nerve for this administration to attempt this argument when President Obama has opposed the war from the beginning.   But it could just be VP Biden talking out of school, as he is often prone to do…

Fair is fair.  If everything previous to the Obama administration is Bush’s fault (and Iraq is part of that), then any success there should be credited not to President Obama, but to his predecessor.

Now, that said — if Iraq becomes a stable ally to the United States, and a useful partner in that dangerous region of the world, ultimately I don’t care who gets the credit.   The end game is far more important to me than political points for Republicans or Democrats.

Posted on Democrats, George W. Bush, Liberals

well…yeah

What Alan Bock said in the OC Register:

It’s not that there isn’t a good deal of truth in such criticisms of the ways of a “Washington” he invoked more as an epithet than a place. But at what point does a president of the United States take responsibility for his part in feeding the atmosphere of distrust?

Barack Obama has been president for a little more than a year, during which time his party has had a theoretically filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (a rare occurrence) and a substantial majority in the House. During that time he has engaged in a goodly share of partisan sniping while making only empty gestures toward the will-o-the-wisp of bipartisan cooperation. He’s the ultimate insider. Yet he took no responsibility for the poisonous atmosphere in Washington, trying to make believe that he is still quite above it all.

Yep.  You can only convincingly run against Washington when you aren’t part of its culture of failure.  That’s part of the reason for Scott Brown’s success in Massachusetts.  At some point  — and God only knows when this will happen — the statute of limitations on blaming Bush will run out and President Obama will have to take responsibility for his own actions.  Until then, we all must suffer through complex explanations of why the consequences of Democrat / Obama policies are all Bush’s fault.  Yay.

It’s going to be a very long three years…