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Tag Archives: Obama

Two Terms Will Do, Thank You

14 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by pnoetx in Uncategorized

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22nd Amendment, Constitutional Coup, Hot Air, John Hinderaker, Obama, Term Limits

pelosi-obama-waters

Hot Air paraphrases Vox: “Obama can’t govern, so let’s repeal the 22nd Amendment.” I’d be more amused if a third term in office (or lifetime?) wasn’t getting to be such a preoccupation with the President’s leftist, statist base. First, the argument goes, it is “the unwieldy structure of the American political system which is to blame” for Obama’s troubled second term. And a dysfunctional Congress that “just won’t do its job,” but Congressional inaction reflects a nation that is polarized on many issues. Oh, the laments of would-be tyrants!

Former Obama advisor Lawrence Summers’ view is discussed by Hot Air’s Noah Rothman: “Summers does not … recommend the outright repeal of the 22nd Amendment. ‘… my guess is that problems caused by lame-duck effects are much smaller than those caused by a toxic combination of hubris and exhaustion after the extraordinary effort that a president and his team must exert to achieve reelection,’ Summers noted.”

Toxic indeed. The president’s assertions of executive authority have already been described by some as a constitutional coup d-etat. Better not let it get out of hand.

Obama’s Fog Machine Politics

12 Tuesday Aug 2014

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Benghazi, DOJ, Fake Scandal, Fast and Furious, Gaslighting, Glenn Reynolds, Government Failure, Inspectors General, IRS Targeting, John Fund, Obama, Obstruction, Separation of Powers, Sharyl Attkisson

Corruption

President Obama and his aides have raised the ire of his own inspectors general, who are charged with oversight duties within each federal agency. A letter signed by 47 IGs to the Congressional Oversight and Homeland Security Committees claims that the administration has obstructed efforts to perform their investigative tasks. The “most transparent administration in history” has generated a series of controversies (Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS Targeting, and the Healthcare.gov rollout are just the most prominent) and has managed to shield them from effective investigation using delay tactics, apparent destruction of evidence and pure obstinance.

Sharyl Attkisson weighs in on the subject with “Six Serious Questions Regarding Elusive Federal Documents.” In “Stonewaller-in-Chief,” John Fund documents the blatant hypocrisy displayed by Obama last week when he told African leaders of “the positive role inspectors general can play in fighting corruption in government agencies.” More from Fund:

President Obama appointed most of the IGs in office today, and all those who were appointed by him have been confirmed by a Democratic Senate. 

That makes the complaints raised in the IGs’ letter all the more serious. More and more agencies are setting documents off-limits by declaring them “privileged.” The Peace Corps is said to have refused to provide documents for a probe into whether its administrators were properly handling charges of sexual abuse. The Environmental Protection Agency withheld documents by claiming they might fall under an attorney-client privilege, though the IGs’ letter makes clear that such privilege shouldn’t prevent another executive-branch official from reviewing them. Eric Holder’s Department of Justice withheld FBI records that had been previously produced to investigators in past administrations. FBI Director James Comey told Congress in June that the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel was still reviewing what “was a difference of view as to what the law permitted here.”

As Glenn Reynolds has mentioned in the past (though I can’t find a link), the administration seems to be engaged in an unending campaign to “gaslight” the public, rather than any effort at transparency.

No Country For Executive Fiat

08 Friday Aug 2014

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Deferred Action, Executive Orders, Immigration reform, Megan McArdle, Obama, Prosecutorial Discretion, Ron Fournier

1903-unrestricted_dumping-ground

President Obama says he wants to allow the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” in deportation efforts, focusing on individuals convicted of serious crimes instead of immigration violators. He might also expand “deferred action,” by which  legal status and work permits are issued temporarily to certain younger adults and to children arriving illegally. Obama would accomplish this via executive order of questionable legality. An advocate of liberalized immigration, Megan McArdle offers a strong critique of this “trial balloon”:

Whatever your opinion on immigration policy, I hope it doesn’t involve supporting giving the president extremely broad powers to simply rewrite any law that he thinks ought to be different. To see why, you need only ask yourself a simple question: Would you like to give this power to a president from the opposing party on a law where the two of you disagree?

Obama gives lip service to the separation of powers, but he blames the current Congress and the GOP for the current impasse. Ron Fournier is strongly sympathetic to that point of view, but he also lays plenty of blame at Obama’s feet:

Obama’s party is partly responsible for this mess, because of the cynical choices made during his first two years in office to punt on reform, in part because the Democrats who ran Congress wanted to be able to portray the GOP as anti-minority in the 2010 elections.

Obama denies culpability, but the record is clear, and almost any Democrat in Washington will concede, privately, that the president broke his promise to make immigration reform a top priority in 2009-10.

Many arguments can be made against full amnesty for illegal immigrants, most of which I find objectionable, but under the constitution, existing laws must be enforced “faithfully” by the president. Immigration reform is extremely important, but it must be thrashed out through the legislative process.

Questioning Student Loan Subsidies

12 Thursday Jun 2014

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Elizabeth Warren, Megan McArdle, Obama, Student Loans, Subsidies

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Obama and other statists are proposing extra subsidies to student loan borrowers. As Megan McArdle points out, the proposed breaks are questionable public policy at best: “It’s good to remember, as we discuss these plans, that people with college degrees are the best-off people in the U.S. They are a cognitive elite with substantially more earning power than almost anyone else….” These borrowers are highly visible, of course, so political opportunists like Obama and Elizabeth Warren can’t resist such proposals. 

Smartest Guy Strikes Again

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

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Bergdahl, Desertion, Obama, Prisoner Trade, Taliban

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I shouldn’t lead with a sarcastic headline like that, but the prisoner trade executed by the White House is almost beyond belief. Almost, but this is the Obama White House, after all. Here’s The Hill’s latest report: Prisoner Swap Blows Up On WH. Even if you want Guantanamo closed, the trade is grotesque: behind Congress’s back, in violation of recent legislation, we have the release of five high-level Taliban, who themselves are very likely to have played a role in killing Americans, in exchange for a deserter who’s disappearance is strongly alleged to have cost the lives of several American soldiers. So far, it seems that everyone except Harry Reid is upset. Mad Magazine’s take is shown in the pic above, but Bergdahl is a sergeant, not a private. 

“I Wake Up Every Morning Thinking About Who To Blame”

22 Thursday May 2014

Posted by pnoetx in Uncategorized

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Incompetence, Leadership, Obama, VA Scandal

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The New Obama Narrative: Epic Incompetence. As I said two years ago on Facebook, before the election, this president is likely to earn the distinction of being the worst performer in-office of all time, and that conclusion does not necessarily require an ideological perspective. He’s not even good at being a progressive! To call him ineffectual or Carteresque would be too generous. And now, as Charles Krauthammer has noted, we’ve heard the most absurd excuse for inaction of all time: Obama says that he learned about the VA scandal from media reports, even though he’s been working on it for six years! Wait, did Biden write that?

Baring Emperor Barack

10 Saturday May 2014

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Filibusters, Obama, Pinoccio, WaPo

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WaPo: four Pinocchios are awarded for Mr. Obama’s latest fib. Yes, yes, Dear Leader recently claimed that Republicans in Congress had filibustered about 500 pieces of legislation that, by his reckoning, would have helped the middle class. The Post demonstrates rather convincingly that Obama’s number is inflated by at least a factor of 10. 

That’s nothing new for the president, who has a penchant for making just about any assertion he goddamn pleases. We have this case, and then there’s the deception over the impact of sequestration, the repeated falsehoods used to sell Obamacare, the misleading statements about what happened at Benghazi, and the “smidgeonization” of the IRS targeting scandal. The list goes on and on, but the President’s keeps his nose in the air, and it’s safe to say he’s never met that blonde in the image above. 

State Knew Benghazi Terror Facts Right Off

03 Saturday May 2014

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AlQaeda, Benghazi, Cover-Up, Hillary Clinton, Obama, Sharyl Attkisson

arrest youtuber

Sharyl Attkisson reports that the State Dept. knew the truth and “immediately attributed the Benghazi attack to a terrorist group…. The private, internal communication directly contradicts the message that President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and White House press secretary Jay Carney repeated publicly over the course of the next several weeks. They often maintained that an anti-Islamic YouTube video inspired a spontaneous demonstration that escalated into violence.”

With the presidential election less than two months away, the administration was seeking cover for Obama’s claim that “Al Qaeda was on the run” and a tragic security lapse that could have been avoided. They even arranged to have law enforcement make a show of arresting the man who made the video (and he is still in jail for a minor parole violation).

We now have a cover-up of a cover-up. Unlike the Ben Rhodes email, which was withheld by the administration for 20 months despite a subpoena, Congress has had this email since August under a restriction that it not be made public, but this week’s revelations prompted its release.

I’m not being defensive! You’re the one who’s being defensive!

19 Saturday Apr 2014

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Martin Short, Obama, Obamacare

 

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As if the new ACA enrollment numbers can be taken at face value, Obama tells Obamacare critics to Just shut up! James Taranto: “He says ‘we need to move on,’ and two sentences later calls for a forceful defense, before saying that ‘I don’t think we should be defensive about it,’ which reminds us of Martin Short as Nathan Thurm: ‘I’m not being defensive! You’re the one who’s being defensive! Why is it always the other person who’s being defensive? Have you ever asked yourself that? Why don’t you ask yourself that?'”

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