Posts Tagged ‘Obama’
Obama won the debt-ceiling battle, so Dems, quit whining and smile
August 4, 2011
The only people happy about the battle over the debt ceiling are the pundits, because it gives them an audience and an opportunity to display their insights. Oh, and people close to the President, because they know he won.
Months ago, when John Boehner and Mitch McConnell were assuring everybody that whatever happened they wouldn’t allow the nation to default, President Obama stated his position: he wanted a clean extension that would carry the country past the 2012 election. He didn’t ask for a tax increase on zillionaires, or a deficit reduction—these should be tackled aside from the debt ceiling increase, which after all is only needed to allow the United States to pay its obligations, every dollar of which had been authorized by the Congress.
But Boehner and McConnell couldn’t control their members, especially the Tea Party members who wanted to use the debt ceiling as a bludgeon to smash government. The ceiling had been raised without controversy dozens of times before under Presidents and Congresses of both parties. The Republican threat was a repudiation of ethics, duty, and the Constitution. Still, the threat came.
In the end, and just in the nick of time, the President got what he had asked for: a clean bill that simply raised the limit enough to carry the country past the 2012 election.
You could be confused by the words about a super-committee to identify trillions in savings, or about triggers to force cuts. Here are the facts: (more…)
Joe Walsh (R-IL) challenges the world’s record for hypocrisy in the debt limit debate
July 29, 2011
Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) yields to no one in his determination not to saddle future generations with government debt. This is from the Chicago Sun-Times:
Freshman U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a tax-bashing Tea Party champion who sharply lectures President Barack Obama and other Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes more than $100,000 in child support to his ex-wife and three children, according to documents his ex-wife filed in their divorce case in December.
“I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grandkids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money!” Walsh says directly into the camera in his viral video lecturing Obama on the need to get the nation’s finances in order.
Walsh starts the video by saying, “President Obama, quit lying. Have you no shame, sir? In three short years, you’ve bankrupted this country.”
Walsh joins the ranks of family values politicians who have no family values.
Is Obama a militarist, a peacenik, or a political waffler and difference-splitter?
June 25, 2011
Distrust of the President, and of the government in general, divides our society, emboldens our enemies, and diminishes the effectiveness of our Armed Forces. We owe our elected leaders more respect than that.
President Obama’s Afghanistan drawdown announcement has drawn fire from the left and from the right. He was pilloried on Fox News, on MSNBC, and on CNN, and even ridiculed on The Daily Show after he announced that the U.S. would withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of 2011, another 23,000 by “next summer,” with continuing reductions through 2014.
To the right, the President is recklessly ignoring the advice of his military professionals who know what’s needed. To the left, he’s mindlessly sticking to a hopeless and pointless strategy. To both sides he’s sacrificed principle for politics.
But has he? Is there any chance that his decision was based on what he thought best? If we Americans trusted him we’d give him that much. But we don’t, at least not much: the latest Gallup poll says that just 35% of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the Presidency; 36% have very little confidence or none at all.
But we do trust the military: 78% of us say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence. I’d guess the numbers are even higher on the right. But what happens when the military supports the President? Ah, then it’s a different story. (more…)
Did Obama betray Israel? Or is the Republican outrage manufactured hypocrisy?
May 20, 2011
Has the President “thrown Israel under the bus,” as Mitt Romney said yesterday? Has he “once again betrayed our friend and ally, Israel,” as Michele Bachmann raged? Made a “mistaken and very dangerous demand,” as Tim Pawlenty accused? Or has he “given the Palestinians a huge break,” per Newt Gingrich?
Here’s what the President said:
“I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous.”
Oops. That wasn’t this President, it was President George W. Bush, speaking in Jerusalem on January 11, 2008.
Here’s what President Obama said yesterday:
“We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.”
Get the difference? No? That’s because there isn’t any. The 1949 and 1967 lines are the same. The only difference is that Republican politicians will scream in opposition to anything that President Obama says, even if George W. Bush said the same thing without any complaint.
Politics doesn’t stop at the water’s edge any more.
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Thanks to Michael Smerconish and Hardball for the quotes used here.
Obama’s mother’s story
May 20, 2011
Here is a fascinating piece from the The New York Times Sunday Magazine, “Obama’s Young Mother Abroad.” It’s adapted from Times reporter Janny Scott’s new book, “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother.”
His mother and his upbringing are extraordinarily unusual. Good read.
The ethics of flying while Muslim
May 14, 2011
Most African-Americans are familiar with the charge of DWB. By now many even joke about being stopped by police for “driving while black.” The practice survives, even while police across the country have become sensitized to its wrongs.
It even reached the Presidency when a Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates for attempting to enter his own house without a key. President Obama commented off-handedly that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly,” then apologized and invited the arresting officer and the professor to the White House to talk things over at a “beer summit.”
Masudur Rahman and Mohamed Zaghloul can add another to the list of offenses that can attract the unwelcome attention of the authorities: FWM, or “flying while Muslim. They were removed from an Atlantic Southeast Airlines (“The Delta Connection”) flight because their garb made the pilots nervous. Fortunately for them, the pilots of a later flight from Memphis to Charlotte weren’t as skitish, and the two Muslim travelers reached their destination safely, albeit, tardily.
George Jonas of Canada’s National Post describes the incident and its meaning here.
Republican Party stands by while Glenn Beck and the birthers spread their poisonous lies
February 13, 2011
We’re responsible for what we tolerate. If I stand next to a friend who slanders you and say nothing, then I’ve accepted that slander and am responsible for it. John Boehner Told David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press that he believes Obama’s a Christian, born in Hawaii, but if a third of Republicans believe different, that’s apparently OK with Boehner: “It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think.”
Why not, Mr. Speaker? You’re complicit in the lies if you don’t challenge them.
And Glenn Beck says that a giant conspiracy comprising Obama, the Egyptian demonstrators, the Muslim Brotherhood, the communists, and the AFL-CIO is dedicated to creating a new caliphate that will govern all of Europe and the Middle East under Sharia law. And Americans, he beseeches, wake up before it’s too late.
We haven’t seen the polls or focus groups yet, but you can bet that a third of Republicans will swallow it, hook, line, and sinker.
The Republican Party has one adult, Bill Kristol, who publicly rejects Beck’s conspiracy rant:
Hysteria is not a sign of health. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. (more…)
Our President sets a high–and ethical–goal for us.
January 12, 2011
President Obama gave a healing speech at the memorial service in Tucson, and near the end set the bar high for all of us to aspire to and work toward. Speaking of the nine-year old victim, Christina Taylor Green, he appealed to the better angels of our nature:
“Imagine — imagine for a moment, here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that some day she, too, might play a part in shaping her nation’s future. She had been elected to her student council. She saw public service as something exciting and hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.
“I want to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. All of us -– we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.”
Obama shows Presidential leadership in supporting second chance for Michael Vick after Vick’s prison term for felony dogfighting
December 29, 2010
Leadership isn’t saying what’s popular, it’s following one’s conviction. Barack Obama believes that our society needs to do a lot more to help felons reenter society productively after serving their prison time. He took this position as a Presidential candidate in 2008, and this week commended Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie for giving Michael Vick a second chance.
Vick was college football’s player of the year in 2000, and was the first player chosen in the NFL’s 2001 draft. He got out of federal prison fifteen months ago after serving 23 months for felony dogfighting and cruelty, then was hired by the Eagles as a backup quarterback.
His hiring was controversial. His crimes were especially vile, and many dog-lovers will never be able to accept that he should ever have a second chance.
Into this stepped President Obama to openly praise Lurie, who recalled their conversation:
“He said, ‘So many people who serve time never get a fair second chance. It’s never a level playing field for prisoners when they get out of jail.’ And he was happy that we did something on such a national stage that showed our faith in giving someone a second chance after such a major downfall.”
Illustrative of the opposition to Vick’s hiring was this opinion expressed today by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson:
“I’m a Christian, I’ve made mistakes myself, I believe fervently in second chances. But Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a cruel, heartless way. Personally, I think he should’ve been executed (more…)
Ethics Bob 