Department of Flounder

The Obama Adminstration is in apparent freak-out mode over the President's diminishing prospects for re-election.  The debt-ceiling deal (and subsequent credit downgrade) is widely unpopular, and combined with the continuing stagnant economy, has quickly brought his approval ratings down below 40 percent in at least one major public opinion poll. A New York Times article over the weekend has detailed some of the debate going on within the White House over how to limit or reverse the political damage to the President over the economy.

The Administration's fears seem to be leading it down the path so many desperate people take:  looking for salvation in stupid ideas.  From the New York Times article:

On Aug. 5, in a move that went virtually unnoticed amid the clamor over a rating agency’s downgrading of United States debt, the administration announced a new jobs program for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Obama called it a “reverse boot camp,” intended to retrain veterans for civilian jobs. Part of the program would include a “returning hero tax credit” for companies that hire unemployed disabled veterans.

The administration may also merge the Department of Commerce, the Office of the United States Trade Representative and some economic divisions at the State Department into a new agency, administration officials said. Possible names include the Department of Jobs or the Department of Competitiveness.

As for the first paragraph:  if the economy wasn't dead in the water, there probably wouldn't be much of a problem with unemployment among recently released service members.  This is a typical liberal solution to a problem that doesn't really exist.

How anyone could think the idea floated in the second paragraph even approaches being sound thinking is puzzling, but we've come to expect this kind of frazzle-dazzle from the White House.  The fact that the Administration has let this idea escape to the wider world tells me they're lost in the woods on the issue of the economy, and it's going to be a long time before they find their way home, if ever.

The Drumbeat

The President has had one hell of a week.  He signed the debt ceiling compromise bill after several weeks of battle between the White House and Republicans in Congress, to the approval of something like 20 percent of the country, if polls are to be believed.  Financial markets around the world also appear to be unhappy about it.  Today the Standard & Poor credit rating company may have downgraded the bond rating for the US Government (I'm hearing conflicting reports from the news media at this point).  This week has to count as one of the low points of the Obama Administration.

In the midst of all this, I've decided to add a new feature to this blog:  The Drumbeat.  You can find it just to the right of the top of the right side of the page. Here you'll find links to news stories and other items I come across that mention the possibility of Obama or others in his employ resigning, or other items regarding his future as President.  If you come across any such items please let me know & I'll post it if I think it fits.

Raise the Debt Ceiling or We'll Kill The Kid--And His Puppy Too!

In 1973, the National Lampoon humor magazine put on the cover of its January issue a photo of a dog with a gun held to its head, with the declaration:  "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog!" This send-up of crass marketing tactics is now one of the Lampoon's most remembered covers, and is a perfect example of the vicious satire the magazine excelled at in its heyday.

Some members of the generation that grew up reading the National Lampoon are now advisors to our very own President Obama. After hearing what's came out of Obama's mouth in the last few weeks, I'm wondering if the White House has unconsciously adopted that old magazine cover as a road map for the administration's political strategy between now and the election.

Let's take a quick look at where we are with the Obama Administration. Unemployment is up again, after years of hovering around 9 percent.  Job creation is so minimal that it might help the numbers if the administration counted kiddie lemonade stands as employment.  The heralded "stimulus" has proved to be a bust, with even the great one telling us "shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected."  During Obama's term so far the government has added over $4 trillion to the national debt.  The United States has now almost reached the "debt ceiling," which is the legislated limit that the government is allowed to borrow.  The housing sector is low and looking to go even lower.  Public confidence that anything at all is going right is down below the percentage of people who believe in a living Elvis. 

Obama's laser-like focus of the moment in taking all this on is to demand that the Congress raise the national debt even more.  Obama's remaining member of his economic "brain trust", Tim Geitner, is claiming that not raising the debt ceiling will throw the economy into crisis and bring catastrophes yet unknown to capital markets worldwide, and cause further economic distress in the U.S.  The republicans in Congress have been calling for a dollar cut in spending for every dollar the debt limit is raised, among other things.  As it stands now, the White House line is that the deadline for preventing financial armageddon is August 2. 

In the past few weeks, President Obama has chosen to portray the conflict about spending and the debt ceiling in typical leftist, rich bastard vs. all God's children terms.  In spite of my better judgement, earlier this week I forced myself to listen to Obama's kind of dicky June 29 press conference.  In the first 20 minutes or so the President focused on the unfairness of tax breaks for "corporate jet owners" and the faithfully evil oil companies in his arguments for increasing revenue, aka raising taxes.  The fact that he and the Democrat dominated Congress have given us three years of $1.5 trillion budget deficits was left unmentioned, as was the fact that the corporate jet tax break was introduced by the administration in 2009. 

This past week Obama has let go a few more zingers.  We need to "eat our peas"; average Americans aren't worried about things like the national debt, government spending and tax policy, because we leave that to professional politicians who have a better understanding of these things; and the republicans are holding "a gun against the heads of the American people to extract tax breaks for corporate jet owners."  In an interview with 60 Minutes to be shown on Sunday, the President has said that if the debt ceiling isn't raised by August 2nd, he can't guarantee that the government will be able to send out the social security checks, veteran's benefits, and other payments on which so many Americans depend.

Lately the negotiations between the White House and congressional republicans have become a bit heated, to the point where the President actually abruptly walked out of a meeting with congressional leaders he had called yesterday afternoon.  During his term so far this president has relied on a couple of techniques to get what he wants--first, portraying every problem as a crisis which must dealt with in haste and with little deliberation, and second, the Alinskyite tactic of focusing on opponents and smearing them with inflammatory accusations, whether they are true or not.  In this latest episode the White House is clearly trying to manufacture yet another crisis, and the way the administration has been portraying its opponents is more of the same smearing tactics they have used so often before. 

This administration is proving daily that it is incompetent in nearly every aspect of governing.  I would like to think otherwise, but as things stand now I have to conclude that as far as the government (and everything it affects) is concerned, prospects for improvement are going to be dim as long as Barack Obama is President.

Breaking Rocks in the Hot Sun

Some time before last November's election, Congressman Darrell Issa vowed to launch serious investigations of Obama Administration shenanigans if the Republicans took control of the House.  It's been six months now since he became chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and with the revelations in recent weeks about the administration's bizarre Operation Fast and Furious, it appears his work is beginning to bear fruit.

For those who haven't heard, "Operation F & F" was a program begun in 2009, whereby the ATF tracked the flow of guns from the US to Mexican drug gangs by allowing surrogates for the gangs to buy weapons in the US, in order to discover who was involved in the gunrunning operations.  This tactic was previously used under the Bush Administration (named "Project Gunrunner"), but the difference between the two administration's approaches is that the Bush administration ATF arrested the surrogates before the guns were delivered.  By contrast, the Obama administration ATF has travelled into dangerous territory by allowing the guns to actually reach the Mexican gangs, apparently in contradiction of the ATF's longtime policy of stopping any weapons from reaching their ultimate destination, once its agents have identified such a plot.  Two of the guns have been implicated in the killing by gang members of a US Border Agent.  The ATF let about 2,000 of these guns reach the gangs, and given the amount of shooting going on across the border, it would be difficult not to believe that many of these guns have been used in killings in Mexico.

There's been speculation that all this might be part of a manufactured crisis by the Administration, aimed at creating a political environment that would be more favorable to restrictive guns laws, which has long been a cherished liberal goal. Whether or not that turns out to be the case, as of tonight the news is that the acting head of the ATF is going to resign, possibly under pressure from above, which would be the first serious fallout of this scandal. Issa has stated that he believes Attorney General Eric Holder hasn't been truthful in his claims about when he became aware of this mess, and Issa has made requests for officials from the Justice Department to appear before his committee in the coming weeks.  These requests may be rebuffed, but ultimately Issa has the power to issue subpoenas to force them to appear. It's entirely possible with this Justice Department that Holder might order his people to refuse to appear even under subpoena, but I can't see how that would do anything but make things worse for the Administration.

We heard repeated frequently in the late Weiner affair the post-Watergate axiom that it's not the crime, it's the cover-up that brings scandal-ridden politicians down.  It seems to me that there is a possibility here that the possible criminal aspects of this scandal may be as serious as whatever political consequences may be suffered by any efforts toward a cover-up. The fact that this misbegotten operation has resulted in at least one death at the hands of evil people brings this to a level beyond the usual money/sex/influence peddling scandals we've seen so often.

The big question for the moment is how far up into the Justice Department this will reach.  If it is proved that Eric Holder hasn't been truthful about his role, I think he'll have a hard time holding onto his job.  Anything beyond that will take the Administration into the dark land of politician's nightmares, one in which a President with failing prospects heads into an election with a storm of scandals at his back.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has stated that Obama was completely unaware of what was going on with Operation Fast & Furious. If that statement proves untrue, I think Obama might find he's made a seriously wrong turn down a mean little street called Impeachment Alley. 

Hiatus

I'm recuperating from hand surgery so the blog will be inactive for another week or two.  It's a bit much to work up one of these posts doing the one handed hunt-and-peck, so barring Obama doing something silly like precipitating a constitutional crisis (imagine that!), I won't be posting anything here until I can use both hands.

Your Bath Is Drawn, Sire

I'm beginning to think our modern political class should dress like 17th century royalty instead of pretending to be ordinary guys who just happen to have a Brooks Brothers charge account. It would at least be an honest expression of how so many of them regard themselves, and us.

The last few weeks have brought us a bumper crop of news about past and current public officials assuming the royal prerogative:

First, and most spectacularly, we have the French head of the IMF arrested in New York for sexually assaulting a hotel maid, part of which included the Monsieur in the buff chasing the maid down one of the hotel hallways.  This is not the sort of stuff you'll get from your average peasant unless he's had about 12 shots of Jack and some strong weed, and even then only if he thinks there's no way his wife will find out. Some in France have sniffed at the notion that an eminent man such as the head of the IMF should be held to ordinary standards, but I think it will be hard for M. Strauss-Kahn himself to get sniffy if he finds himself living next to a stainless steel toilet.

Out in California, Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently has an easier way with domestic staff.  The revelation that he fathered a child with the family maid has not only broken up his marriage but probably ended his political career, whatever that was worth.  The fact that he felt no need to mention this indiscretion before or during his time as Governor has been little mentioned amid the soap opera aspects of the affair, but it does fit in with my theme here.

Meanwhile, some of our current and former presidential candidates have been keeping their hands in the royalist game well enough.  Newt Gingrich and his wife bought at least $250,000 worth of jewelry from Tiffany's through something called an "interest-free" revolving account, which Gingrich described as a "normal business arrangement." I'm personally familiar with "interest-free" transactions, also known as paying cash, but I don't think I've ever known anyone who had an interest-free credit account, and I've certainly never had one myself.  Stupid me, maybe all I had to do was ask.

The 2008 election's most toothsome candidate, John Edwards, this week came under indictment for what looks like major hanky-panky involving $925,000 of off-the-books campaign contributions used to keep his extra-marital affair (and the resulting child) out of the public eye, even as he was trying to become the leader of the free world.  I never did like the guy, but I didn't imagine he was as loathsome a beast as he's turned out to be.  I just figured he was a stuck-up, two-faced SOB.

Currently, Rep. Anthony Weiner's political career is rapidly decomposing following his "can't say with certitude" statement about whether or not that was his bulging crotch in the photo someone tweeted to a 21-year old female college student.  From what I've seen of him, I regard Weiner as the political equivalent of a cloud of gnats at a picnic, an annoying partisan pest much like the defeated Alan Grayson. Some Democrats have had high hopes for him, but I doubt that he has much of a political future after this, especially if it turns out he's been telling a great big fib.  So the big question in all this is: who does this schmuck think he is, a Kennedy?

Finally, lest we forget, our dear President has recently returned from his trip to Europe, where his super-giant sized prez car ran aground leaving the American Embassy in Ireland, which surely must be a metaphor for something.  Obama had along with him a staff of 500, none of whom were able to keep him from blowing it with the Queen of England yet again.  It appears that feeling like royalty and actually being royalty are two different things--at least, it probably takes more practice than Obama's had to convincingly pull it off.  In any case, Obama came home and rubbed it in our faces on a stop in Toledo, where he wolfed down two chili dogs and a side of fries, the day after the First Lady unveiled the USDA's new vegetable-heavy dietary guide, which replaces the widely despised food pyramid.

Enough already, guys, we give up.  Would you please just take your ermine robes and your golden balls and play somewhere else?  Please?

Dog on a Hot Car Roof

There's a weird but true story that Mitt Romney once strapped a dog carrier to the top of the his car and took his family, with the dog up top, on a 12-hour drive to visit his parents in Canada.  This isn't the same thing as beating or starving the poor animal but it is odd, and I think it's fair to wonder if this might be a small glimpse into the real man behind the haircut.

Be that as it may, Romney currently is facing an obstacle more serious than weird stories in his quest to be nominated:  his own record in office.  The Wall Street Journal last Friday published an editorial slamming Romney's insistence on defending the health care plan in Massachusetts that was the cornerstone of his term as governor, while at the same time criticizing Obama's federal health care plan, which was largely based on the Massachusetts model.  Romney reacted with a letter claiming the Journal editorial distorted the history of Romneycare, and that what was important was ending Obamacare and allowing each state to work out the problem as the citizens of that state see fit.

That last bit is a nod to the principle of federalism, and it's good that Romney recognizes that this is an important part of the argument against Obamacare.  Part of the trouble with Romney continuing to defend his now-disastrous plan in Massachusetts is that it will give the Democrats a very large club in trying to destroy Romney's credibility when he attacks Obamacare, should he become the Republican nominee.  The trouble Romney is currently facing on this issue from conservatives, though, is that Romneycare was a "big government" style solution to the health care issue, and I think the fear is that Romney is a technocratic, big solutions guy at heart. In the wake of the Tea Party movement and the conservative electoral victories of last November, the prospect of yet another "big government" Republican as the presidential nominee isn't going to go down well with a sizeable number of voters who wants to see Obama defeated, and the government downsized.

Meanwhile, another Republican seeking the nomination inserted a very large foot into his even larger mouth last Sunday on Meet The Press.  When pressed on whether or not Paul Ryan's approach to Medicare reform might hurt Republicans with voters, Newt Gingrich described the reform plan as "right wing social engineering," a remark that was poorly received just about everywhere on the Republican side.  This is an early but serious crisis in Gingrich's campaign, and he has spent the last week trying to repair the damage by speaking to conservative radio talk show hosts, among them Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, and Mark Levin.  From the way things look now, I think his campaign is in serious danger, and I see few signs that he'll be able to recover from this mistake.

I think that what we'll be seeing in the battle for the Republican nomination is a contest between the candidate that the Republican establishment decides is acceptable, versus some sort of "outsider" candidate with a mandate to go to Washington and turn things upside down.  At the moment the establishment doesn't seem to be entirely happy with any of the candidates who have announced, and there is a casting about to convince acceptable candidates to enter the race, such as Mitch Daniels, Rick Perry, even Marco Rubio.  Meanwhile, presumed outsider Sarah Palin appeared yesterday in an interview with Greta van Sustern, to me sounding very much like someone who has nearly made up her mind to run for office.

In presidential primaries, there is always a faction that seems to be working for an early and insurmountable lead by the candidate who is supported by the party leaders, under the theory that the party can then approach the general election with more time and unity.  While that faction does sometimes prevail (as in the case of Bob Dole, for instance), it isn't remotely a guarantee of winning the final election.  I doubt that any such effort is going to succeed in the race for the Republican nominee for 2012, but if the establishment somehow manages to get their candidate nominated in a way that makes Tea Party types and other conservatives feel shut out, I think there will be an electoral rebellion against the party establishment throughout the country that will make 2010 seem only the prelude.

WTF

Somehow Blogger deleted my last post, called "Home of the Whopper".  It was about Obama's problems with telling the truth.

I can't remember all of what I wrote, so I'll just have to let this be the one that got away.  The only lesson I can learn from this is one I already knew--back it up!

Father Obama Knows Best

Barack Obama proves himself unfit for office in an interview to be shown Sunday on CBS, saying he will not authorize release of photos of bin Laden's dead body.

My view:  Release the photos.  We paid for them. They belong to us.

Note:  In my original post on this subject I quoted from the CBS announcement on their website where they attributed the following quote to Obama: “Imagine how the American people would react if Al Qaida killed one of our troops or military leaders, and put photos of the body on the internet.  Osama bin Laden is not a trophy – he is dead and let’s now focus on continuing the fight until Al Qaida has been eliminated.” They now are attributing that quote to Rep. Mike Rogers of the House Intelligence Committee, with no mention of the correction. I guess being CBS means never having to say you're sorry.

Thank You, President Obama

The killing of Osama bin Laden by a U.S. military team last week is indisputably a welcome event to anyone who believes in punishing evil, no matter how long it takes.  The Obama Administration deserves commendation for this part of fulfilling President Bush's promise to bring to justice bin Laden and anyone else involved in committing the 9/11 massacres.

Beyond that, however, as in all things Obama, there are contradictions and unsettling questions that come to mind.

First, it appears that if the Obama Administration had gotten its way in closing down the Guantanamo detention facility, the information that led to discovering where bin Laden was hiding might never have been obtained by our intelligence services.  In addition, the special attack team that carried out the mission in Pakistan has long been derided by the left as a malevolent creation of America's prince of darkness, former Vice President Dick Cheney.  Whatever the nature of the attack team's creation, it sure did come in handy when Obama needed it.  Somehow it seems to me it would be nice if the Obama Administration was more forthcoming in giving credit to those in the Bush Administration who helped make this mission possible.

Second, the method of disposal of bin Laden's body, and the apparent indecisiveness on whether or not to present conclusive evidence that bin Laden has in fact been killed is a bit disturbing, if only for the fuel it might provide for yet more conspiracy theories surrounding the events on 9/11.  I have to wonder if the concern with showing bin Laden's remains proper Muslim respect isn't going to sicken relatives of victims of the 9/11 attacks, given the Administration's support for holding trials for the terrorists in Manhattan and for the mosque at Ground Zero.  Also, if I recall correctly from my short naval career, burial at sea from a naval vessel is granted for those who have served the nation honorably, clearly not the case with bin Laden. And given that U.S. taxpayers have paid for all this, I have trouble conceiving of any valid reason why we shouldn't see the pictures of bin Laden's dead body, whatever the potential for inflaming the endlessly-offended Muslim world.

Third, the Administration appears already to be using this to make political gains. The White House released photos of Obama and senior officials in a room watching the operation as it went down, I suppose to show how incredibly involved and committed Obama & Co. were to the success of the mission.  Would they have released these same photos if the mission had been a failure?  I find this reminiscent of the failed rescue mission in Iran during the Carter presidency, an indication that Obama may practice the same sort of micro-management that was so spectacularly unsuccessful during the Carter years.

The liberal media has been spinning all this as a wonderful triumph for Obama personally, and as something that should put to rest the notion that his reelection is in danger--in essence, that the election is already over.  Obama himself at a "bi-partisan" dinner (planned before the raid) remarked that he hopes this will bring back some of the unity in the country that has been lost since 9/11.  Whatever.  If he wants more "unity" in the country, he might try backing off on destroying the economy and circumventing the Constitution, for a start.

The notion that Obama has done something extraordinarily courageous and visionary in this affair is simply ridiculous.  The American people have long demanded that bin Laden be brought to justice.  If it became known that Obama (or any other President) had refused to attack bin Laden once his whereabouts were discovered, he would surely have faced calls for his impeachment and likely would have been driven from office.

So, let me thank you, Mr. President.  For once.