The Man in the Mirror

I remember reading somewhere that back in the days when Michael Jackson was working on his follow up to Thriller, he wrote a message to himself on his bathroom mirror: 100 Million!  That was the number he wanted to sell of his new record.  The follow up he finally put out was called Bad, and though it did sell quite well, the sales weren't nearly as good as Michael had hoped for.

Watching President Obama prancing about the world stage in the past few weeks has me wondering if he doesn't have his own message on the mirror, maybe written with one of Michelle's very expensive tubes of lipstick.  What might his message say?  How about 6.1 billion!   If you haven't heard, that is the current estimate of our world's human population.  Obama has at times seemed as if he sees himself more as president of the world than merely of the United States, and I think it's an open question about whose approval he is most interested in receiving--the world's, or his own countrymen's.  However it is he actually regards himself, I doubt there are many in those billions who can clearly explain what exactly he has been up to in the past few weeks.

First there was the rather hollow sounding remarks he finally got around to making about the disasters in Japan--if he'd said something like bummer, dudes it might have come off as more sincere.  Concurrent with this was his swing through some of the countries of South America, including Brazil and Chile.  As we've come to expect, the family had a fine old time bouncing around the southern hemisphere on the taxpayer's dime.  Obama got to make some points with Brazilians by letting them know we're ready, willing and waiting to buy up a bunch of that oil they're going to get from offshore wells. He didn't go into the subject of where we're going to find the money to do that, but hey, he's the President, not an accountant.  In Chile, Michelle got to sip a little of the local wine while showing off her latest gown, but Obama was on the receiving end of a bit of unpleasantness when the Chilean president suggested that if Obama really wanted to help the economies down that way, he could throw his support behind free trade agreements with Columbia and Panama, something his administration and Democrats in Congress have been stalling for years, at the behest of American labor unions.

And while all this was going on the situation in Libya was rapidly spinning out of control.  Obama seemed to show little interest in the matter for weeks, during which time leading female political luminaries (Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton) led the charge along with some European leaders in calling for quick action to prevent M. Quadaffi from carrying out bloody retaliations against the Libyan rebels.  Obama first demanded that Quadaffi should just go away, which Quadaffi less than politely declined to do.  Since then Obama has cobbled together a strangely evolving coalition of United States and NATO forces that seems to be proceeding with little coherent instruction.

Obama's address on the subject earlier this week did little to illuminate his intentions.  The fact that he has essentially ignored the Congress and acted in a unilateral fashion that contradicts his previous opinions on the subject of presidential war powers is alarming and angering members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

I have a nagging fear that as much as Obama's actions about Libya have been confusing so many of us, the person who is most confused about all this is President Obama himself.  And that ain't good.

Get On With It

I'm beginning to wonder if John Boehner actually isn't a politician, but instead a sly Zen master whose true purpose is to develop in us the arts of patience and persistence. 

As I see it, he's only been able to blaze his trail of tears as Speaker thanks to last year's voter revolt against the Democrats and Obamacare, yet at nearly every turn he seems by nature to seek out a "bipartisan" approach to settling political conflicts. This might be tolerable if liberals and Democrats were themselves willing to make serious concessions, but unfortunately these are people for whom "bipartisan" means "we get what we want, then you shut up!" Whenever Boehner does this, tea partiers, conservatives and even some libertarians erupt in protest, and then he usually backtracks to a tougher position to calm them down.  He and his House leadership have played this tune so often by now that I think it's a safe bet to say that if they continue this approach, they may well blow the opportunity the elections gave them to begin rolling back the Obama disaster.

The latest example of this has been the Continuing Resolution (CR) saga that's been going on since the majority Democrats in the last Congress refused to pass a full year budget, leaving the problem to the new Republican majority. This has been a nice little game for Obama since it keeps the Congress preoccupied with short term emergencies, stopping the Republicans from working on the big picture, the main part of which is defunding Obamacare and setting the stage for its ultimate repeal.

Today another CR went through that funds the government until April 8, and who knows what will happen after that.  The big fear that is driving Boehner & Associates is that if they pass another budget with spending cuts that Obama and the Democrats in the Senate find unacceptable, the latest resolution will expire with no further funding enacted, causing a "government shutdown." The conventional wisdom is that this same situation is what brought Bill Clinton back from the brink in 1995, and the Republican leadership  fears that replaying the Gingrich strategy will lead to a similar revival in Obama's political fortunes.

So as things stand now, all that Obama and Harry Reid have to do to forestall any serious budget cuts is to hint that the Republicans will only come to disaster if they actually try to do what so many of them were elected to do, cut spending and stop Obamacare. Apparently this is a strategy that takes very little energy, if Obama's social calendar is any indication, and I can imagine them going on this way for the rest of Obama's term if it keeps working.

There appears to be a growing revulsion among members of the House that their leadership has led them to this state of affairs, and I think that many of them are realizing that they are in serious danger of losing support from the voters who gave them such a whopping majority in the House to begin with. The Republican leadership may be willing to avoid a showdown on spending if they think it will keep them from a Gingrich-style political disaster, but I think if they take this path they will only be courting a much larger disaster by completely alienating most of the same voters who gave them the power they now seem so reticent to use.

Instead, I think they should take heart in how Gov. Walker in Wisconsin has so far been able to win out against extreme opposition in his quest to save his state from bankruptcy.  As has been shown in Wisconsin, even small requests for budgetary savings drive leftists to near savagery in their opposition.  What could they possibly say or do that would be much worse than what we've seen from them already?

It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing

Earlier on this blog I've stated my Article of Faith regarding Obama: No matter what Obama becomes involved in, he will make it worse. So I do have an idea of the small irony involved in now choosing to discuss the President's seeming detachment from important events and issues. You'd think I'd be glad for any instance where he'd have the grace to leave well enough alone, but somehow I find this aspect of his behavior to be disturbing, if not alarming.

For example, in the past two weeks or so we've had a number of events unfolding, including the budget controversy in Wisconsin; the ongoing battle between Quadaffi's government forces and the rebels in Libya; and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, with the resulting destruction and loss of death.

I think it would be fair to say that of these three situations, the one the White House has been most focused on has been Wisconsin. The President and Sec. of State Clinton have essentially abdicated any leadership role regarding Libya, so on this question we've been witnessing the odd spectacle of the French president leading the charge in finding a way to stop Quadaffi from committing a massacre against his opponents, which clearly is what he will do if he reconsolidates his power. 

Obama did find it necessary to have a useless press conference addressing the problem of rising oil prices, but as far as I know he hasn't made anything more than a perfunctory statement about the disaster in Japan. I think the Japanese deserve better. Is it inconceivable that Obama could have given a short address restating our long and close relationship with Japan as partners in freedom, pledging our government's support, and calling for Americans to support charities that will help in the recovery? Just a thought.

Instead the President spent the best part of a Sunday playing golf, looking happy and unburdened as can be, then spent the evening (behind closed doors) at the annual Gridiron Dinner, where reporters and politicians engage in the fiction that they actually have a sense of humor and that they aren't all in on screwing the rest of us over.

What's been demonstrated here is that of all that has gone on in the world in the last two weeks (quite a lot, really), the event that the White House has found to be most important has been the one that most directly affects Obama's reelection prospects. Not surprising, I suppose, but it would be nice to have a president who doesn't think his main task as President is to get himself reelected.

Bully, You Say

Today the White House is hosting a conference on school bullying (they're against it, if you're wondering).  From President Obama's opening remarks:

As parents and students, teachers and communities, we can take steps that will help prevent bullying and create a climate in our schools in which all of our children can feel safe.

Well, sure, we can all agree with that.  Of course the devil is in the details, so who knows if the answers this conference comes up will actually be effective. Persistent problems are always easier to talk about than solve.

Meanwhile, at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, teachers and their supporters have been busy giving us extra-curricular lessons in bullying as they continue their attempts at illegally obstructing the business of the Governor and state legislature, with the assistance (if not direction) of the Obama Administration. Anonymous death threats, property destruction, mob intimidation--they know how to do it all.  Is it going too far to go to a state Senator's residence at 6 am and bang on his windows, demanding he come out?  Apparently not.

I'll bet you a nickel we're not going to hear the President denouncing the bullying aspects we've seen from the demonstrators in Madison.  I'd bet you more, but I'm still paying off bills left over from "Recovery Summer."

Total Repeal: The Movie

There's an old saying that parents have long told their children, probably for centuries: If you can't say anything good about someone, don't say anything at all. 

Unfortunately, if I applied that rule to my thoughts on Obama, I'd be struck dumb. We're now almost 25 months into the Obama presidency, and I'll be damned if I can think of anything this administration and its allies in Congress have done that I can consider to be even remotely a step in the right direction. The Obama foreign policy has been a masterpiece of delusion, emboldening enemies and slighting allies to an extent not seen since Jimmy Carter sat in the big chair. The Obama economic agenda is a sort of Keynsianism on crack, its wrong-headedness exceeded only by the incompetence of its execution. Obamacare, as I see it, is probably the most destructive piece of legislation signed into law since the Civil War. Even the personal conduct of the President and his wife has been less than inspiring to anyone who thinks the antics and excess of ancient Rome might be a bad model for presidential behavior.

At this point, in the rare instance when I hear of something from this administration that actually makes sense, such as Timothy Geitner proposing dismantling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, my reaction is how will they screw this up? and which one of Obama's friends is going to make money off of it?

I think a new concept needs to be introduced into the debate among Obama's opposition:  total repeal.  Two years of Obama have done so much damage to the country and its people that we need to think beyond just stopping his re-election; we need to consider repealing as far as nature allows everything this administration has done, whether it was with the approval of Congress or by executive fiat.  This is a hideous project to contemplate, but the Obama presidency is turning out to be such a disaster that if we want to minimize any future damage Obama's policies might do, we're going to have little choice but to rip the whole thing out by the roots.

We Gotta Take the Bastards Down

It's a been a lovely couple of weeks in our recently dawned era of "new civility."

Courtesy of the internet, you can now find more videos than you'd want to see of public union supporters at demonstrations around the country spitting, screaming, punching, shoving, advocating violence, calling people who disagree with them Nazis, and engaging in other behavior your mommy would tell you isn't very nice.  That doesn't even include the ones making anonymous death threats against elected officials such as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, which I suppose would be considered felonies.

Last week at the Wisconsin rally a Boston band called the Dropkick Murphys played their latest song, called "Take 'Em Down".  Donning my music critic hat, I'd say they sound like the Pogues on a bad day without Bushmill's.  The song is essentially a folky rant that evokes the lovely specter of union goonism in all its glory.  The first line of the chorus is "we gotta take the bastards down."  Yeah, whatever.

Meanwhile from the White House we have Obama commenting about all this that " I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or when their rights are infringed upon."  My first impulse on hearing that is to say screw you, Mr. President, but I think there's much more involved here than people on either side of the issue expressing bad opinions about each other.

The White House recently let it be known that that they intend to raise more than $1 billion for Obama's 2012 re-election bid.  One problem with that is that many of the people who contributed to his campaign back in 2008 aren't so happy with how things have gone since then, and many are also unemployed, making them a lot less inclined to come up with some extra cash for the Big O.  The public employee unions at this point will be a vital source of funds for Obama's campaign.  Now that so many new Republican governors have come into office with huge state budget deficits to eliminate, and with the cost of employees being such a large share of state spending, the power of the unions and their ability to contribute to political campaigns is being threatened.  This is an intolerable situation for the White House, and they are almost openly leading the charge in favor of the unions, including VP Biden meeting with unions leaders at a conference in the White House, and the involvement of Obama's campaign wing Organizing for America in bringing out-of-state demonstrators into Wisconsin.

I can't think of any similar situation in presidential history, where a President has actually used demonstrations, disorder and sabotage of the democratic process to protect his political situation.  I can remember Nixon visiting some pro-war "hardhat" demonstrators in Manhattan around 1970, but that was as far as that went.  Maybe I'm going off on the deep end with this, but I think the most apt parallel in history for what the White House is up to is Chairman Mao riling up the students and Red Brigade against his own political enemies in the early part of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which plunged China into almost ten years of chaos.  That worked for a while for Chairman Mao, but not so well for China.

Clearly the larger public in the United States has had it with their governments being run by and for public employees and their political lackies, with the ever-escalating spending that comes with it.  Apparently the President and his party have no trouble employing a by any means necessary approach to holding on to power.  That may make them feel proud of themselves and very hopeful, but to me they're looking more and more like Napoleon the 14th. Guess what, Napoleon:  we're coming to take you away.

Bad Dog!

U.S. Constitution:  "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Obama:  "They talk about me like a dog."

This is some of what has gone on in the past week or so:  

Civil unrest in Tunisia and Egypt has spread throughout Middle East, and this weekend we have news of demonstrations in China.  Gas prices are going up almost daily, with food and commodity prices also on the rise.   The Obama justice department asked the Florida federal judge who ruled Obamacare to be unconstitutional for a clarification on whether or not his order allows the administration to crack down on states that are refusing to continue implementing the health care act.  The House Republicans have passed a "continuing resolution" for this year's budget with $61 billion in cuts, a good piece short of the $100 billion cut they promised in their "Pledge to America." Joe and Jill Biden are on vacation in Florida, while Michelle and the first daughters are skiing in Vail.  Finally, a mob in Wisconsin has shut down the legislature in protest against Governor Scott Walker's plan to help balance the budget by making teachers pay for part of their retirement and healthcare costs.  There have been threats of violence against the Governor and legislators, and members of the mob have gone through the capitol building pounding on windows and doors.  Enough Democratic legislators have fled the state to prevent a quorum that would allow the legislature to proceed with a vote on the matter, which Republicans have vowed they will pass.

Regarding this last item, President Obama has apparently come out in support of the mob, saying the bill the Governor is proposing "...seems like more of an assault on unions." The national Democratic Party through Obama's "Organizing for America" have participated in organizing the protest.  Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emmanuel have also lent their support. The idea that the President and other federal officials have no business whatsoever in an individual state's legislative deliberations seems to be alien to Obama and his compadres.

So we have here another all-out leftist binge shortly on the heels of the disgusting slander-fest that went on following the Tucson murders.  It's hard not to think that Obama and the left are seizing on any opportunity they can find in an attempt to nullify the results of the November elections, using chaos and disruption to halt attempts to reverse their agenda, and personal attacks on anyone who stands against them.

Now, after two years of Obama as President, we have this state of affairs:  a national economy on its back; massive unemployment; a foreign policy so clueless it would be funny, if the consequences weren't potentially tragic; historically large budget deficits; a bankrupt Social Security system; an energy policy intent on starving the country of energy; a healthcare plan that will help bankrupt the treasury, and drive thousands of doctors out of the profession; Islamic terrorist attacks on American soil, after which the administration refuses to utter the words "Islamic terrorism;" a Justice Department suing a state government for enforcing federal laws; and a President and First Lady who have a taste for high living that, in a time of economic distress and deprivation, borders on being obscene.  

I don't know where I would find the energy and imagination if I were President to screw things up as badly as President Obama has in only half a term.  He's made it look almost effortless, to boot.

The impeachment of a President is something that most people never want to see happen.  It has the potential to tear the country apart, and no one beyond a President's most bitter enemies would be pleased to see a President subjected to such a terrible humiliation.  I don't know of anything as yet that Obama has done that would technically be considered "...Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors," but he seems for all the world to be intent on destroying any institutions, traditions and people that stand in the way of his changing this country into whatever it is he imagines it should be. For instance, in pursuing his delusional theories about economics, he's caused immense pain in the lives of millions of people.  I doubt any prosecutor would take this up, but inflicting this sort of pain on one's own countrymen in pursuit on an ideological agenda must be some sort of crime, I think.

I can't recall another presidential administration (exception, Nixon) where I thought things had gotten so bad that there was any reason at all to think of removing the President from office before his term was over.  I feel differently about Obama.

Obama has been so creative in finding ways to make things worse that I can't possibly envision what exactly he might do, but I think we should be prepared for him at some point to overstep the legal bounds of his authority. He's shown little regard for the authority of the federal courts, for instance, first in defying court orders about banning oil drilling in the Gulf; lately the administration seems to be pretending that the decision striking down Obamacare didn't really happen.  Not that they aren't busy enough already, but I think that Republicans in the Congress would do well to ponder once in a while the possibility that they might need to remove this President from office before his term is over; and that if things come to that, time might be of the essence in protecting the Republic from permanent harm.

Life Imitates Art

Just weeks after I made a guess at what sort of flak Rep. Darrell Issa might run into in his investigations of the super-transparent Obama Administration, some of Obama's political allies are wasting no time in gearing up an effort to discredit Issa and slow him down.

This week we have news from Politico that a group of Californian political operatives and others have formed an organization called "The Third Lantern" to investigate Issa and publicize their results.  The "Lantern" has been set up as a non-profit, and according to the Politico story there is no legal requirement to publicly disclose funding sources, which so far they have refused to do.  It sounds to me like they're almost begging some conservative organization to take up its own investigation of the "Lantern."  It's anybody's guess at this point who might be the moneybags behind all this--George Soros?  Bill Clinton? Kim Kardashian?  Who knows, this could even develop enough momentum to become a third rate Washington novel and a fourth rate movie, produced and directed by Sean Penn, with Charlie Sheen making a big-screen comeback as Issa.  I can already imagine myself not watching it.

As for Issa himself, he's not wasting any time either.  His committee has already begun writing subpoenas to obtain documents relating to the "Friends of Angelo" Countrywide mortgage scandal, which will no doubt generate all kinds of overdue anxiety among some current and former public officials, including Chris Dodd.  How sad.

Oh I'd Like To Be a GOP Leader, That Is What I'd Truly Like To Be

It seems the Republican leaders in Congress have a liking for getting hit over the head with two-by-fours. Fresh off of doing the right thing by repealing Obamacare in the House and forcing Senate Democrats to go on record against repeal, we have news that the Republicans in the House have yet again reverted to form by offering a budget bill that falls short of their wimpy pledge of cutting $100 billion dollars, and way short of Sen. Rand Paul's proposal to cut $500 billion.  Once again fiscal conservatives and Tea Partiers are incensed.  And out come the two-by-fours...

Two Republicans in the House Appropriations Committee voted against sending the bill to the floor, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Arizona's truth-telling hero Jeff Flake, arguing that the cuts are inadequate.  It's too bad there aren't more like them in the Congress.  I don't know anything about Cynthia Lummis, but I am familiar with Jeff Flake's battles over the years at getting Republicans to live up to their proclaimed ideals of smaller government and lower taxes. I think that if they had paid attention to his arguments in the last six years we'd be in much better shape now, not having to fight our way out of the leftist swamps Obama & Co. have driven us into.

Article of Faith

A couple of disclosures about who I am will probably be a good start for this post. First, when it comes to religion, I am about as serenely faithless as you can be this side of the foxhole.  I have my own ideas about what is or isn't plausible in the universe, but I certainly don't imagine I have any special insight into spiritual matters.  Second, I have absolutely no expertise in the history or politics of Egypt--and unless you are a highly-paid reporter for a major media outlet, you probably don't either.

Last week our hero made an appearance at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, where he made a point of restating the Christian faith that he and the first lady share.  He did sound a bit aggrieved that some have questioned his sincerity about this, but who knows if that's what he really meant.  My reaction to all this:  whatever.  If he's actually sincere in his statements about his beliefs, wonderful.  If instead this is part of a strategy to position himself in a better light with religious voters, I'd say, good luck with that.  I think that with a lot religious people, actions speak louder than words.

Meanwhile the turmoil in Egypt has continued, though Mubarak at this writing has survived longer than many thought he would after the first week of the crisis.  Apparently the Muslim Brotherhood, the grandaddy of radical Islamist organisations, has become a major player in this, and they may become a big part of the government once things have been worked out, if they don't completely take over.  Of course, as has been plain to see in the cases of Afghanistan and Iran, if you put Islamic radicals in charge of your country, you'll be on the fast track to increased poverty, oppression and misery, with no easy way out--especially not through the ballot box.

His pathetically weak reaction to the 2009 unrest in Iran was an early sign that Barack Obama is not to be counted on when it comes to standing up for anyone's freedom, and I can't recall anything about his presidency since to contradict that perception.  Somehow we ended up on the same side as Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro during the Honduras situation, and just lately we've found out that Obama has yet again stuck our old friends the Brits with another shiv, this time being the newly discovered requirement (in the newly enacted START treaty) that the United States report to Russia the number and identity of nuclear missiles that we sell to Britain.  His performance during the current Egyptian crisis has been true to form.  At first he was seemingly oblivious, then he called for all sides to calm down, and finally we have been left scratching our heads as to what the hell it is he actually wants to happen.

Well, as I said at the beginning of this post, I don't have many articles of faith that I subscribe to, but after two years of watching this administration, I think I have found one I can rely on:  No matter what Obama becomes involved in, he will make it worse.