Obama’s Generals
Posted by streiff
Wednesday, September 29th at 8:46PM EDT
“Obama had to do this 18-month surge just to demonstrate, in effect, that it couldn’t be done . . . the president had treated the military as another political constituency that had to be accommodated.”
LTG Douglas Lute
Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan
as quoted in the Washington Post .
The past three days the Washington Post has been serializing the new Bob Woodward book, “Obama’s Wars,” on the front page of that paper. Though I have been stunned by what I’ve read I haven’t been surprised. That a feckless and un-serious man when elected president would pursue a war in a feckless and un-serious way should surprise no one. What has left me stunned is the fact that Obama never seriously considered whether winning the war in Afghanistan (or sealing the victory in Iraq) was in the national interests of the United States. His lodestar was rather an arbitrary and precipitous withdrawal date in July 2011.
Here you have it in black and white. The surge of troops into Afghanistan was below the number recommended by his military advisers. Obama did not support the surge, he was fixated on an early withdrawal, but he lacked the courage to make that decision. How a president can continue to waste the lives of young Americans in a war he neither believes in or cares about is beyond my comprehension.
Worse, no one is surprised that Obama would do this. Anti-Americanism is seems to have been programmed into his DNA, to the point where everyone just expects him to act this way. But that isn’t what this story is about. It’s about the people around him, including our most senior uniformed leaders – men who know better – who have allowed this to happen.
Through most of the Iraq War the left and media, to the extent that they are separate entities, had a fascination with the idea of “the revolt of the generals.” In this particular cloud cuckooland the generals… who back then had all the answers… would rise up en masse and put Chimpy McBushitler in his place. TIME and the NY Times ran stories lionizing the handful of retired generals who decided, from personal pique or inflated sense of self-worth, to break faith with soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines serving in combat in order to settle some perceived slight received at the hands of the Bush Administration.
Retired generals like Paul Eaton
and John Batiste
made commercials for the lefty front group VoteVets criticizing President Bush for pursuing the War in Iraq to what looked to be a successful conclusion as of January 20, 2009. They criticized him for not listening to his generals.
I wrote at the time in response to a shockingly stupid David Ignatius column advocating “push back” by the military:
The military is not a branch of government. It has no special rights to set its own policy in contravention of the directives of the senior leadership. Any thinking human should recognize that military insubordination is not a healthy thing in a democracy. The idea of heavily armed men “pushing back” against their civilian leadership should scare the bejeezus out of us all, regardless of our politics.
Those sentiments apply as much today as they did five years ago.
Sometimes the military is called upon to do stupid things. It goes with the territory when you put on the uniform. But the military should never be called upon to dishonestly spend the lives of young men and women. And that is what sets the current situation apart from the situation under President Bush.
No one ever doubted President Bush intended to win the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Many differed on which war was more important but the resources dictated that one war could be fought and one had to be a holding action. Bush deployed the Army Reserve and National Guard into combat for the first time since the Korean War. He spent the political capital he’d accumulated like a sailor in Olongapo (or a soldier in Tongduchon). When all told him the war couldn’t be won, he doubled down and left his successor a win in the most difficult of the two wars.
Compare and contrast this to the shameful actions of the current president and his administration.
Batiste and Eaton and VoteVets and their fellow travelers on the left have shown their true colors. As recently as last year Eaton was still playing Captain Ahab to Don Rumsfeld’s Moby Dick. John Batiste has been mercifully absent from the public eye. VoteVets is nothing more that a low IQ verson of OFA with a website fails to even mention the Washington Post series or even acknowledge we are still at war. Not a peep is heard from pundits and editorial pages encouraging the military to “push back” against the Obama administration as any opposition founded in principle would require.
More disappointing, however, has been the behavior of GEN David Petraeus and ADM Mike Mullen. Both men, seemingly for the best of reasons — the conviction that they can succeed with one-armed tied behind their back, and perhaps a justified fear that without them, things would go even worse for their men — have elected to go along with Obama’s decisions which inevitably have created a slow motion march to the helicopter landing pad on an embassy roof.
And that is the tragedy here. Ultimately staff colleges will examine the actions of Petraeus and Mullen since 2009 and equate them to those of the Joint Chiefs during the early stages of the escalation of the Vietnam War. Just as every young officer when I was commissioned heard the story of Army Chief of Staff Harold Johnson and his failure to resign over Johnson’s hare-brained plan to fight Vietnam on the cheap, so too will be told the story of the hubris of Petraeus and Mullen who were convinced they could mitigate a military disaster that the civilian leadership of this nation has deliberately brought on.
Ironically, Batiste and Eaton and the other unprincipled tools who made the political fight over Iraq much harder than it need have been and who never thought twice about besmirching the reputations of others if it served their purposes will continue to ride the MoveOn generated meme that they were men of integrity despite their conspicuous silence on Afghanistan today.
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Boehner surprise: Dems barely get votes to adjourn after floor speech
House Democrats on Wednesday barely won a 210-209 vote to adjourn the House without extending the Bush tax cuts.
Thirty-nine House Democrats voted against adjournment after Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) urged opposition to the motion in a floor speech that said it would be irresponsible for Congress to leave without providing certainty on the tax issue. Dozens of Democrats in tough races voted against adjourning.
“Vote no on this adjournment resolution. Give Congress a chance to vote on extending tax rates,” Boehner said.
Boehner’s floor speech turned the vote on adjournment into a referendum on the tax cuts, which has divided Democrats for months. President Obama wants to extend tax cuts for families making less than $250,000, while allowing taxes to rise on income above that threshold. Many centrist Democrats have joined Republicans in arguing for extending all of the tax cuts.
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* Hoyer: Democrats will stop GOP tax hike
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Wednesday that the House would not vote on the expiring George W. Bush-era tax cuts before lawmakers break for the November midterm elections. The House is expected to conclude its work late Wednesday or early Thursday morning.
The House had been seen as unlikely to vote on the tax measure since the Senate decided last week against acting on it before the election, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did not inform lawmakers of a final decision until Wednesday morning, a House leadership aide said. Hoyer and Pelosi had split on the timing of the vote, but the aide said the two party leaders were ultimately on the same page.
Wednesday’s vote, however, made it clear that dozens of Democrats were uncomfortable with leaving Washington without a vote on extending the tax cuts.
The 39 Democrats who voted against adjournment were a mix of centrist Blue Dogs and vulnerable members from Republican-leaning districts. Reps. Jason Altmire (Pa.), Gerry Connolly (Va.), Travis Childers (Miss.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Steve Driehaus (Ohio), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (S.D.), Frank Kratovil (Md.), Walt Minnick (Idaho) and Tom Perriello (Va.) were among the vulnerable Democrats to vote against ending the work period without voting on the tax cuts.
Three House Democrats who are running for Senate, Reps. Brad Ellsworth (Ind.), Charlie Melancon (La.) and Joe Sestak (Pa.) also voted against adjournment.
Members who voted to adjourn were “putting their election above the needs of your constituents,” Boehner said in his speech. “Vote no on this adjournment resolution. Give Congress the chance to vote on extending tax rates.”
Following the vote, Pelosi’s office criticized Boehner’s speech, saying it did not contain productive solutions to help aid the economic recovery.
“After listening to House Republican Leader John Boehner’s speech on the House floor today, it is clear that Americans face a choice: keep moving America forward—or return to what Republicans themselves call the ‘exact same’ agenda of failed ideas that favored corporate special interests, pushed us to the brink of economic disaster and left the middle class and small businesses struggling,” a release from her office reads.
The House still has several votes today, including on a measure to keep the federal government operating through Dec. 3, before it adjourns.
Here’s the full list of Democrats who voted against adjournment:
Rep. John Adler (N.J.)
Rep. Jason Altmire (Pa.)
Rep. Michael Arcuri (N.Y.)
Rep. Melissa Bean (Ill.)
Rep. Tim Bishop (N.Y.)
Rep. Bobby Bright (Ala.)
Rep. Chris Carney (Pa.)
Rep. Travis Childers (Miss.)
Rep. Gerry Connolly (Va.)
Rep. Joe Donnelly (Ind.)
Rep. Steve Driehaus (Ohio)
Rep. Chet Edwards (Texas)
Rep. Brad Ellsworth (Ind.)
Rep. Bill Foster (Ill.)
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (Ariz.)
Rep. Martin Heinrich (N.M.)
Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (S.D.)
Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio)
Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (Ariz.)
Rep. Frank Kratovil (Md.)
Rep. Betsy Markey (Colo.)
Rep. Jim Marshall (Ga.)
Rep. Mike McIntyre (N.C.)
Rep. Mike McMahon (N.Y.)
Rep. Jerry McNerney (Calif.)
Rep. Charlie Melancon (La.)
Rep. Mike Michaud (Maine)
Rep. Walt Minnick (Idaho)
Rep. Harry Mitchell (Ariz.)
Rep. Patrick Murphy (Pa.)
Rep. Glenn Nye (Va.)
Rep. Tom Perriello (Va.)
Rep. Gary Peters (Mich.)
Rep. Mark Schauer (Mich.)
Rep. Joe Sestak (Pa.)
Rep. Heath Shuler (N.C.)
Rep. Zack Space (Ohio)
Rep. Gene Taylor (Miss.)
Rep. Dina Titus (Nev.)
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The Waxman Net Neutrality bill should move forward
If you take one message from everything I write today on technology issues, take this one: House Republicans need to get on board and support Henry Waxman’s Net Neutrality bill. The bill urgently addresses the critical issue of the moment, and its passage would avert disastrous regulation of the Internet going forward.
As things stand on Net Neutrality, Barack Obama and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski are holding all of the cards. We can debate all we want about the legality or necessity of the FCC’s plans to unilaterally regulate the Internet and we can go to court later all we want but without new legislation we can’t stop them from trying it and doing the damage anyway.
The Waxman bill is that legislation, and I want every Republican to support this bill to stop the Obama administration from yet another end run around Constitutional process.
The most important thing the Waxman bill does is to expressly disallow the “deem and pass” reclassification of Internet service providers as telephone companies under Title II of the Communications act.
This is a critical reinforcement of the deregulating spirit of the Telecommunications Act, fundamentally limiting the amount of regulation that the FCC can apply to the Internet. The narrowly tailored new Net Neutrality rules that this bill allows are a molehill next to the mountain of powers that the FCC could claim under Title II reclassification.
The Internet in America is in serious risk of devastating regulatory asphyxiation should the FCC be allowed to proceed with Title II reclassification. The FCC promises “forbearance” of the full use of Title II powers should this happen, but the pressure is already being brought to bear on the FCC to use those (not yet claimed) powers to regulate so-called hate speech and other content online. And that’s just the beginning. When future debates come around, including the debate over a National Broadband Plan, I think we all know the FCC’s forbearance will go right down the memory hole.
Republicans in this case should not fear supporting this bill, and in fact must support it against the radical progressives, including the neo-Marxists at Free Press. This bill is a major check on the runaway FCC’s designs on Internet regulation. I cannot more strongly urge Leader Boehner, Ranking Member Barton, and the rest of the party to get behind this bill.
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The Bias Of The Generic Ballot
Henry Olsen at National Review Online has a smart critique up on my observation that the generic Congressional ballot may underestimate Democrats’ standing in House races this year. Let me warn you up front: this post is going to get into some fairly technical issues.
The most important question raised by Mr. Olsen’s article actually doesn’t have to do with the generic ballot per se, but rather boils down to whether polls of individual races tend to underestimate the standing of candidates who have relatively poor name recognition (as is often the case when, for instance, a non-incumbent is matched up against an incumbent in a U.S. House race). This is a real effect, and Mr. Olsen is right that it is something to be mindful of. Early in an election cycle, in fact, it’s something to be very cognizant of — candidates who are poorly known to voters generally have some upside in their numbers. By the time we reach Election Day, however, the bias against these candidates pretty much disappears — if nobody knows who you are by the morning of the election, well then, it’s probably too late.
Our House forecasting model has some ways to account for this: for instance, it tends not to look very much at polls of individual districts early in the election cycle, but tends to place more emphasis on them (at the expense of the generic ballot) as Election Day draws nearer. Also, looking at the number of undecideds in a poll can sometimes be informative: a 40-30 lead in the polls is not as solid as a 50-40 lead.
I owe Mr. Olsen a longer response on some of these points (I actually don’t think we disagree on very much). Perhaps more important, I owe FiveThirtyEight readers a more comprehensive overview of our House model in general.
But, for the time being, I want to focus on one particular comment that Mr. Olsen made. He writes:
But, as one noted prognosticator observed earlier this year, “On average the generic ballot has overestimated the Democrats’ performance in the popular vote by 3.4 points since 1992.” When this is applied to the AAF data Nate cites, it appears that the Democratic problem is not better than it appears; it’s worse.
The “noted prognosticator” that Mr. Olsen refers to is yours truly! As I wrote in April, there’s some history of the generic ballot overestimating the Democrats’ performance in the national House popular vote.
The House popular vote is what you get if you simply add up the votes for the Democratic and Republican candidates, respectively, across all 435 congressional districts. For instance, in 1998, Democratic candidates received a total of 31,490,298 votes for the House, while Republicans received 32,233,067, and candidates from other political parties, 2,154,221 votes. That translates into a Republican win of about 1 percentage point in the national popular vote. Most of the generic ballot polls that year, by contrast, had shown Democrats with a slight advantage, so this was one of those years in which it somewhat overestimated their performance.
This is only relevant, however, to the extent that you care about the aggregate House popular vote — which you might, for instance, if you were using the popular vote to back into an estimate of the number of seats that a particular party might gain or lose. (That’s what I was trying to do back in April.) If you’re working with this type of model, you have a decision to make about whether to apply a correction for the fact that the generic ballot has tended to overestimate the Democrats’ popular vote performance in the past. (For a variety of reasons — like the fact that the effect seems to have become less profound in recent elections, and that other types of polls haven’t shown a systematic bias toward one or the other party — it’s not quite so straightforward a decision as it seems, but it’s certainly something a forecaster has to wrestle with.)
That is, however, not the type of model we’re working with now, mainly because it isn’t very precise. Instead, we’re working from the ground up, trying to make calls on each of the 435 individual House races, and then aggregating those projections in a careful way to figure out how many seats each party is likely to control overall. So what we’re really concerned with is
Blaming The Voters
Democrats seeking to boost voter turnout this fall are beginning to sound like the late comedian Chris Farley’s portrayal of a “motivational speaker” on Saturday Night Live. Farley’s character sought to inspire young people by announcing that they wouldn’t amount to “jack squat” and would someday be “living in a van down by the river.”
The tea-party movement has emerged as a potent force in American politics and the center of gravity within the GOP, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll finds. Jerry Seib discusses. Also, with higher car fuel-efficiency standards coming soon, Joe White discusses why we all might be driving Fiestas.
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who prefers sailing vessels to vans by the river, recently tried out the Farley method. Said Mr. Kerry, “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.” Bay State voters are surely thrilled to be represented by a man so respectful of their concerns.
This week President Obama chimed in with another uplifting message about the American electorate. Mr. Obama told Rolling Stone that the tea party movement is financed and directed by “powerful, special-interest lobbies.” But this doesn’t mean that tea party groups are composed entirely of corporate puppets. Mr. Obama graciously implied that a small subset of the movement is simply motivated by bigotry.
The President said “there are probably some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the President.” The tea party is now supported by a third of the country in some polls.
Perhaps advocates for smaller government shouldn’t take Mr. Obama’s comments personally. In the new Democratic attacks on the voting public, not even Democrats are spared. Vice President Joe Biden recently urged the party’s base to “stop whining” and “buck up,” a message echoed by Mr. Obama in his Rolling Stone interview. The President demanded that his supporters “shake off this lethargy,” warning that it would be “inexcusable” for liberals to stay home on Election Day.
Mr. Obama added that “if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.” Making the case for left-wing voters to show up in November, Mr. Obama told Rolling Stone that he is presiding over “the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.”
We’d agree, but his problem is that most Americans don’t like that agenda and millions of voters in both parties wanted him to oversee an economic expansion instead. Blaming the voters is not unheard of among politicians, but usually they wait until after an election.
Mr. Obama, How Do I Hate Thee, Let Me Count The Ways
In 1846 Elizabeth Barrett Browning penned the following words from her now-famous sonnet number 43:
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach…”
When I read those words I’m reminded of the sycophantic love affair between Barack Obama and his supporters. Their devotion to him can be characterized as nothing short of mindless.
Until now.
Recently his mindless supporters are giving him a piece of their minds, much to his chagrin. A lot of people voted for Barack Obama for many different reasons, none of which seem to matter a whole lot anymore. What does matter, even to his supporters, is where we are now. The people who supported and worshipped him just one short year ago are beginning to turn on him. What would cause millions of fawning, adoring sycophants to turn on their messiah like a pack of ravaging wolves? There are probably several good reasons, but the one crossing my mind most often can best be characterized by this anecdote.
Last week I picked up my daughter from cross-country practice and we were talking in the car.
I’m not bragging, but last spring in track she broke the school record for the 2-mile run (as a freshman) and now she’s trying to do the same thing in cross country as a sophomore. (Okay, so I’m bragging a little.) It made me happy to see her all excited about her life and her dreams. We were talking about what she needs to do to make her dreams come true. And then it hit me.
Is the American dream still attainable for our children? And, if so, to what extent? I didn’t share this with my daughter, but, if the present course of political events remains unchanged, it won’t matter how fast she runs, or what records she breaks. If our economy continues to plummet, the American way of life and the dream so long accompanying it, will no longer be attainable. And it happened on my watch. That saddens me.
I also have a 4-year-old son. He’s cute. He’s bright. He’s happy. Are America’s best days behind him? If the American way of life dies, instead of fighting to the top of the heap using his brains and his charisma, he’ll be fighting with a shotgun and his instincts just to stay alive in a world of chaos. And I believe that’s why Obama’s supporters are rapidly turning on him. They see the American way of life slipping from their grasp. But more important, they see it slipping away from their children. Every good parent wants to see their children do better than them. And in America that was always possible.
Our children are our legacy. Not only are they the fruit of our loins, but also the one thing we leave humanity that impacts history forever. Our children are the future, but what kind of a future are we leaving them? The days are short and time will soon tell.
I’m reminded of a concealed carry student I once had. I was teaching a husband and wife in a private lesson on their farm in southwest Michigan. We were on the range behind their barn, shooting at targets up against an embankment. The woman was shooting a nice, 9mm Glock, and she honestly could not hit the broad side of a barn from the inside.
I tried everything I knew to get her on target, but it was no use. I couldn’t find the problem. I questioned her some more, and she finally threw up her hands in frustration and said, “I don’t even know why I’m doing this! I could never shoot anyone anyways. My husband made me take this class!”
At her remark, a light went off in my head, and I interjected. “What if someone was trying to kill you? Could you shoot someone then?” She said, “No! I couldn’t kill someone to save my own life. I’d just go ahead and die!” I thought that was rather odd, but I could tell she was sincere, so I thought about it a second. Even though most people have an aversion to killing another human, I personally believe that there are very few people on this planet who would rather die than protect themselves. Almost everyone has a point where they will cross the line and take a life.
Earlier in the day, this couple had introduced me to their baby girl, so I said, “How old is your daughter?”
“Nine months.”
“Okay, let’s use a little training technique called visualization.”
She nodded her head impatiently.
“Okay, here’s the scenario: You’re at the gas station filling your tank. A man drives up and parks next to your car. He gets out, walks over, reaches through the open window of your car, removes your daughter from her car seat and puts her in his own car. He then starts to get into his car to drive away.”
There was a horrified look on the young mother’s face.
“At that moment in time, could you take another human life?” This good, Christian woman said,
“I would kill that son of a bitch!” I said, “Okay then, that target down there is that man who is stealing your daughter. Fire away.”
She never missed the target again.
And I believe that’s why people are turning on President Obama. He is hurting our children. He is robbing their future. He is destroying any chance they have to attain the American dream. President Obama is that man reaching into your car and kidnapping your children’s future. Even the most ardent liberal loves their children, so that’s where they draw the line. You can mess with me, but stay away from my kids or I’ll give you my best impersonation of a mother grizzly bear!
Like so many other cultists before him, Barack Hussein Obama’s sun is setting in the west, and, if he doesn’t back off, his ex-supporters soon could be saying, “Mr. Obama, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways!”
Let’s hope and pray his sun sets quickly.
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Impact Of Social Security On National Debt
The purpose of this essay is to explain a complicated and important issue in practical terms. For those who are interested in the technicalities, the footnotes contain detailed documentation to complement and substantiate the main text. All financial data is based on figures produced by the U.S. government. Since these figures are constantly changing, for the purpose of uniformity, the year 2000 is used as a baseline.
The Impact of Social Security on the National Debt >
By James D. Agresti and the Staff of Just Facts
9-1-01
As of December 2000, more than a trillion dollars of the U.S. national debt is owed to the Social Security program.[1][2] This amounts to $3,600 for every man, woman, and child living in the United States.[3] By 2015, this figure is projected to reach $9,000 per person, burdening young people with a debt that they had no part in creating.[4][5] To make matters worse, some politicians are pushing a proposal to “save Social Security” that would increase this figure dramatically.
This essay will explain and substantiate the following points:
Citizens are being misled about the national debt.
Despite what you’ve been told, the budget has not been balanced for the past 3 years.
Every dollar in the Social Security Trust Fund is matched by a corresponding dollar of national debt.
What is referred to as “raiding the Social Security Trust Fund” has no effect on the Social Security Trust Fund. Its real effect is to raise the national debt.
What is referred to as “putting Social Security into a lockbox” has no effect on Social Security.
Some politicians are promoting a plan to “save Social Security” that could add 9 trillion dollars to the national debt.
Privatization would block politicians from using Social Security as a smokescreen to run up debt behind the backs of citizens.
Citizens are being misled about the national debt
More often than not, when a politician or reporter uses the term “national debt,” they are not really referring to national debt. They are only referring to a portion of it. The United States government divides the national debt into two categories:
Money that it owes to federal entities such as the Social Security program.
Money that it owes to non-federal entities such as individuals who have purchased U.S. Savings Bonds.[6]
As of December 31, 2000, the national debt looks like this:
Debt owed to federal entities
2.7 trillion
Debt owed to non-federal entities
3.0 trillion
National debt (total)
5.7 trillion [7]
The debt owed to federal entities accounts for more than 45% of the national debt, yet it is often dismissed or ignored. The excuses that people use to justify disregarding this portion of the national debt generally run along the lines of, “This is just money that the federal government owes to itself. It’s only a bookkeeping device. It’s as if you owed money to yourself.” This line of reasoning ignores the fact that U.S. taxpayers have to pay for this debt. The federal law that governs the payment of the national debt draws no distinction between money owed to federal versus non-federal entities. Both must be paid with interest.[8]
A prime example of downplaying the debt owed to federal entities appears in a 207 page economic plan published by the Bush administration. Not until page 201 is there any mention of the full national debt. This plan states that Bush will retire “$2 trillion in debt over the next ten years.”[9] The problem is that this figure only applies to the debt owed to non-federal entities.[10] What about the rest of the debt? Buried in a table on page 201, we find that the debt owed to federal entities increases by 3.8 trillion dollars, and the overall national debt increases by 1.5 trillion dollars.[11]
Worse than this, some people completely ignore the debt owed to federal entities, but have no problem with including it in the assets of the federal programs to which the money is owed. During the 2000 presidential race, the Gore-Liebermann campaign released a 192 page economic plan that contained over 150 uses of the word “debt.” This plan does not mention or even acknowledge any of the debt owed to federal entities.[12] Yet, the plan states that the Social Security program will remain solvent until 2037.[13] Contrast this assertion with the fact that in 2015, the Social Security program is projected to start spending more money that it collects in taxes.[14] This is a 22 year discrepancy. How does Social Security stay solvent for 22 years while spending exceeds tax revenue? It collects on the money that it has loaned to the federal government; i.e. the debt owed to federal entities. If Gore and Liebermann want to dismiss the debt that the federal government owes to Social Security, to be consistent, they would also have to state that the program would become insolvent in 2015. But they don’t do this. They pretend as if the federal government doesn’t have to repay the money that it has borrowed from Social Security while simultaneously including this money in the assets of the Social Security program.
Members of both political parties have distorted this issue on numerous occasions, and the vast majority of news reports on the subject that have been reviewed by Just Facts contain varying degrees of misrepresentation or inaccuracy. A simple rule of thumb to keep yourself from being duped is to be familiar with the numbers. As of December of 2000, the national debt is about 5.7 trillion dollars and the annual interest on it is about 373 billion dollars.[15] If your favorite newspaper or public servant cites figures that are significantly different, be aware. The U.S. Government keeps an up to date accounting of the national debt at http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np [Revised 9-27-09]
The Hidden Rage of Barack Obama
Even before his new book hit the shelves, the Left was already in a tizzy over Dinesh D’Souza’s look at the moral and intellectual foundation of Barack Obama’s ideology. Here is the first of three-parts excerpted from D’Souza’s The Roots of Obama’s Rage.
Barack Obama is a radiant figure on the world stage. He looks the way an American president should look, and he talks the way many in the world want the American president to talk. As a personality, he conveys dignity and calm; he seems to be what Aristotle called the great-souled man.
Obama is also a consequential president. Less than two years into his first term, he has revamped the Bush administration’s foreign policy: no more invasions, no more preemptive wars, plans for withdrawals both from Iraq and Afghanistan, a new approach for punishing terrorists, and in general a very different understanding of America’s role in the world. At the same time, Obama has transformed the relationship between American citizens and their government. He has passed the most significant raft of laws since the Great Society: the bank rescue plan, the auto industry bailout, the stimulus package, sweeping regulation of Wall Street, a complete remaking of the health care system.
So far, conservative opposition to Obama has been shrill, focusing on several familiar themes: Obama is not an American citizen; Obama is a pawn of radical extremists; Obama is an unscrupulous power-seeker; Obama is a Muslim; and Obama is a socialist. These javelins, however, have at best grazed Obama; they have not fully found their target. Was Obama born in America? The best evidence is that he was. He was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961. His birth was mentioned in two local papers, the Honolulu Sunday Advertiser and the Star Bulletin. This makes him a “natural born” American, as the Constitution requires of a president. No evidence has been produced that Obama is anyone’s pawn. Sure, there are radical elements associated with him, but quite possibly they are his pawns. Obama is certainly ambitious, and like most presidents he seeks power, but power to do what? Power for what end?
I certainly don’t think that Obama is a closet Muslim extremist who seeks to destroy America from within. The charge of socialism, now furiously leveled against Obama, seems to bring us closer to the mark. Here is a president who has no business background and very few people with business experience around him; as he goes about slicing the economic pie, it is not clear that he has any idea how to make a pie. More troubling, Obama is a president who spends the taxpayer’s money with shameless promiscuity. Still, the charge of socialism isn’t quite right. Even if it could account for Obama’s economic policy, it certainly could not explain his foreign policy.
To grasp Obama’s story, we have to put aside the multicultural mantras and the conservative boilerplate and enter Obama’s world. Imagine a little boy growing up in the sunbathed beauty of Hawaii, soaking in the culture, hearing about how the innocent natives were crushed and overrun by horrible invaders and profiteers. Imagine a slightly older child on a bicycle on the crowded streets of Indonesia, learning from his stepfather the harsh code of a developing country, shaped out of the history of European colonialism. Now imagine a young man undertaking a journey to Kenya, for many people a journey to nowhere, but for him a journey to his own past, where through inner soul-searching and conversations with relatives he discovers who his father really was, and what he must do to make good on the dead man’s unfulfilled dreams. This is Barack Obama. But for him these aren’t imaginings; they are memories. These memories are formed out of the indelible ink of experience, and they have by his own account marked the man. By attentively examining his experience as he tells it himself, and as elaborated by others who have researched his background, we can understand Obama in a way that he has not been understood before.
He is his father’s son, and his dreams are derived from his father’s aspirations and failures. Everyone who knows Obama well says this about him. Obama of course makes the same point in his title Dreams from My Father and his whole book is an elaboration of how he internalized his father’s dreams and goals. Obama calls his memoir “the record of a personal, interior journey” a boy’s search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American. And again, “It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself.”
Who was Barack Obama Sr.? First and foremost, he was an anti- colonialist. This Obama was an economist, and as an economist he was influenced by socialism, but he was never a doctrinaire socialist; rather, his quasi-socialism sprang from and was integrated into an anti-colonial outlook that was shared by many of his generation, not only in Africa but also in Asia and South America.
I am not suggesting that Obama has a comprehensive knowledge of anti-colonialism. I admit that Obama must occasionally and pragmatically bend to the realities of a given situation or to the exigencies of politics. Still, Obama’s anti-colonialism is deeply felt, and it suffuses his writings and speeches. In fact, it is the moral and intellectual foundation of his ideology. In a sense, I am saying nothing more than what Obama himself says: that his father’s dream has become his dream. It is a dream that, as president, he is imposing with a vengeance on America and the world.
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Cyberterrorism A Threat – Authority to Shut Down Internet Should Be Granted US Pres. According to Former CIA Director
SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – Cyberterrorism is such a threat that the U.S. president should have the authority to shut down the Internet in the event of an attack, Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said.
Hayden made the comments during a visit to San Antonio where he was meeting with military and civilian officials to discuss cyber security. The U.S. military has a new Cyber Command which is to begin operations on October 1.
Hayden said the president currently does not have the authority to shut down the Internet in an emergency.
“My personal view is that it is probably wise to legislate some authority to the President, to take emergency measures for limited periods of time, with clear reporting to Congress, when he feels as if he has to take these measures,” he said in an interview on the weekend.
“But I would put the bar really high as to when these kinds of authorities might take place,” he said.
He likened cyberwarfare to a “frontier.”
“It’s actually the new area of endeavor, I would compare it to a new age of exploration. Military doctrine calls the cyber thing a ‘domain,’ like land sea, air, space, and now cyber It is almost like a frontier experience” he said.
Hayden, a retired U.S. Air Force general, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the administration of President George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009.
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Washington DC — Today’s Major Events
The House has 24 votes on bills on suspension today.
One report states that conservatives are Six Months Closer to Repeal on ObamaCare, on this, the six month anniversary of the passing of the Health Bill.
Anyone who has been following the news since Obamacare’s passage already knows why the law is so unpopular: billion dollar employer losses, exploding spending estimates, higher health care costs, fewer doctors, fewer choices, fewer jobs, etc
Michael Cannon of CATO wrote for the Washington Times today that ObamaCare is hurting patients and the idea of affordable health care.
Six months ago today, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. The intervening six months have shown that this health care law offers neither patient protection nor affordable health care – in fact, quite the opposite. Obamacare’s greatest selling point was that it would guarantee health insurance coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, starting with children, through government price controls that would prohibit insurers from charging higher premiums to those patients. Unfortunately, the only thing price controls guarantee is misery.
ObamaCare has been a disaster for consumers and things are only expected to get worse. The repeal ObamaCare effort spearheaded by Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) has picked up steam and we can expect elements of repeal to commence in 2011.
Top Bills in Congress- H.R.2583 Security Assistance Act of 2011 February 22, 2012
- H.R.3630 Welfare Integrity and Data Improvement Act February 22, 2012
- S.1720 Regulatory Responsibility for Our Economy Act February 22, 2012
- Constance Cumbey’s Blog
- THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT'S LATEST: Shut down the corporations??? On my 17th Birthday at that!? February 10, 2012
- OCCUPY MOVEMENT MAKES WAR ON CATHOLIC SCHOOLGIRLS, RIGHT TO LIFE February 2, 2012
- THE NEW AGE HIDDEN DANGERS OF NEWT GINGRICH January 28, 2012
- Dr. Ott’s Blog
- “Fraud College” 101: “Don’t Let TRUST Blind You to Scams” Good Mormons!! February 17, 2012
- MUST WATCH VIDEO!!!! STUNNING EDOMITE CONFESSIONS OF 9-11!! February 14, 2012
- A Lunatic Goy Video Goes Viral – When will America WAKE UP???? February 13, 2012
- Open Congress Blog
- Dems Re-Intro Super PAC Disclosure Bill February 21, 2012
- Unemployment Insurance Cuts in the Latest Deal February 15, 2012
- With SOPA Shelved, Congress Readies its Next Attack on the Internet February 13, 2012
- Anti-Web Censorship Bill Protest from Our Perspective at OC February 8, 2012
- Senate Passes FAA Bill With Anti-Union Language February 7, 2012
- House Getting Creative With the Earmark Moratorium February 6, 2012
- Liberate OpenGovData Now February 1, 2012
- Senate debates STOCK Act, dodges real issue of money in politics February 1, 2012
- The Week Ahead in Congress January 30, 2012
- Congress Links - STOCK Act January 30, 2012
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