Peggy Noonan wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal that perfectly lays out what Americans are thinking.
I cannot for the life of me see how an American president can launch a serious military action without a full and formal national address in which he explains to the American people why he is doing what he is doing, why it is right, and why it is very much in the national interest.
The absence of such a statement from our President, the Commander In Chief, is especially puzzling when you consider his previous position on the use of our military.
“I don’t oppose all wars … what I am opposed to is a dumb war.” – Barack Obama, 2002
For the first time, Obama is the Commander-in-Chief of a war that he authored rather than inherited. And the man who a decade ago anointed himself the arbiter of intelligent warfare is leading the U.S. into a conflict that is questionable on its merits and incoherent in its execution.
The blatant in-over-his-head behavior of our president is embarrassing. Certainly causing belly laughs in Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia.
President Obama was in Chile today and answered questions for the first time since U.N. authorized military action in Libya began.
Some of what he said was ‘we can’t simply stand by with empty words.’
In the real world, what goes around comes around. The President is very convincing when he is speaking and has had the media hypnotized for years.
Anyone with a memory of the 2008 campaign will remember Sen. Obama criticizing Sen. Clinton for her ‘words, just words. Follow the link, you decide who owns empty words.
Oh there I go again, picking on President Obama. Not exactly. But the media is doing their best to hold him harmless for higher energy prices. It’s just a shame that circumstances beyond his control continue to deal him a losing hand.
On the road to a national energy policy, President Barack Obama is hitting pothole after pothole.
‘On the road to a national energy policy?’ Not only has he taken the wrong turn. He is lost. His idea of an energy policy is to not use it. And by all means, don’t get it. Keep on buying it from the Middle East, Russia, and Venezuela. There’s a plan. Make the cost of gasoline so high that it will cripple the economy. Small price to pay to push technologies that do not yet exist in any practical supply.
First, worries over coal-burning plants’ role in global warming prompted Obama . . .
Worries? What worries? By some divine providence, the media ignored candidate Obama’s thoughts on an energy policy where coal is concerned. Candidate Obama said that his Cap and Trade legislation would make it difficult, if not impossible for coal burning electrical generating plants to operate.
[I]f somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.
Half of the electricity in the United States comes from coal fired electric plants.
and other Democrats to look more favorably on offshore oil and gas exploration.
Right. That’s why, oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico is still on hold, against court orders to the contrary, nearly a year after the crises that he didn’t let go to waste. And seven months after the Deepwater Horizon leak was plugged. That’s a pothole?
Next came a warmer embrace of nuclear power as part of a possible broad political agreement . . . Now the crisis in Japan is throwing a shadow over nuclear energy worldwide.
Right. And a year before the current crisis in Japan, Obama cut the funding for the only approved site for the disposal of nuclear waste. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.
Making matters worse for Obama, a spike in U.S. gasoline prices is angering Americans just as his re-election campaign cranks up. Experts say gas price fluctuations have almost nothing to do with the tragedy in Japan or the Gulf oil spill. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from lumping various issues together and using them to club Obama.
There’s a really big wagon. Rising gas prices are not his fault. He’s just having a run of bad political luck. Is that what the media, and Democrats, were saying when Bush was in The White House?
In reality, Obama could cause the world market of oil and gasoline to fall overnight, simply on the announcement that he intends to make the United States an oil producer instead of an oil buyer. That would be a part of an energy policy to embrace.
Pointing out the obvious is characterized as taking ‘cheap shots.’ The media takes the Democrat points that, if you point out that stopping oil and gas exploration and development, and if you point out that relying on technologies that are not yet practically available are major factors in rising costs and reasons for instability in the market, then you’re taking a ‘cheap shot’ at President Obama.
“As long as our economy depends on foreign oil,” Obama said, “we’ll always be subject to price spikes.”
So don’t worry. Be happy.
He called for “a comprehensive energy strategy that pursues both more energy production and more energy conservation. We’re working to diversify our entire portfolio with historic investments in clean energy.”
President Obama just said last week that we are using less energy, as if that is a good sign of conserving and using less. Here’s a clue. We are using less because our economy is slowing down. You can’t have both a growing economy and less energy consumption. All the ‘historic investments in clean energy’ are fine, but not at the expense of exploiting our own fossil fuel resources.
The problem here is our President is not the leader America, and the media, had hoped he was. If he were a leader, he would be the one leading America around those potholes, or fixing them and moving forward. Not portraying him, and us, as innocent victims.
House Speaker John Boehner is facing a showdown, and it’s not between himself and President Obama. Contrary to his bold statements of a few short weeks ago regarding turning this government around from its debt and spending binge, Speaker Boehner is turning out to be one of those establishment Republicans, apparently ready to ignore the people who put him where he is today, and the reason he is there.
He seems to want to forgive and forget Speaker Pelosi’s House that changed the rules, locked out Republicans, and used every trick in the book to force Obamacare down America’s collective throat. Speaker Pelosi wasn’t lying when she said we would have to pass the bill first in order to see what’s in it. Which is just what that Democrat-controlled House and Senate did. Which makes sense to who?
Of all people, Speaker Boehner shouldn’t need to be reminded why we are even discussing CR’s today. But apparently he does. It’s because the Democrat-controlled congress failed to make a budget last summer, on purpose. They knew their sneaky maneuvers would have been exposed had they done so.
Representatives Spence and Bachman, and now Senator Rubio are exactly right to put on the brakes and right that wrong.
“I think we have to have a fight. I think this is the moment,” Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) told POLITICO prior to the vote. “Things don’t change around here until they have to, and Republicans ought to draw a line in the sand.”
Sen. Rubio says . . .
‘What is this continuing resolution crap? I didn’t come in here to fund the government every two to three weeks, and $6 billion here and $6 billion there. What the hell is going on here?’”
Of course, they are right. Republicans, and Democrats are still on probation from November’s general election. For Speaker Boehner, this is no time to go wobbly. In the psyche of the American people, you are in violation of probation.
It is beginning to look like the old conservative movement is feeling challenged by the new one. From here though, the only difference is that the ones criticizing Sarah Palin and the ‘Tea Party’ are old, where she, by comparison, is not.
It’s not the difference between ‘old school’ conservatism and modern because conservatism is timeless. There is no difference.
When Sarah Palin started in politics, she broke the mold of how things got done and she was good at it. She saw the opportunity to spread the conservative message more than she could have done behind a governor’s desk in Alaska, so she did it.
Sarah Palin is nothing like what has been all too common for those ‘old’ conservatives. Their inability or unwillingness, maybe both, to stand up to unfair criticism, to stand up to media bashing, and to not lose focus on the conservative message. All of which Bush, McCain and the so-called blue blood or establishment republicans are guilty of. They feel threatened.
George Will exemplifies that in this statement . . .
“This is a problem for the movement,” said Will about what Palin represents. “For conservatism, because it is a creedal movement, this is a disease to which it is susceptible.”
Matt Labash, a longtime writer for the Weekly Standard, said that because of Palin’s frequent appeals to victimhood and group grievance, “She’s becoming Al Sharpton, Alaska edition.”
Again, look how standing up for principles and conservative values are interpreted. As ‘frequent appeals to victimhood and group grievance.’ It is not her fault that the media and the Left frequently single her out. Well, in a sense it is her fault. They single her out because she is so effective. And because she is so effective, they consider her to be the biggest threat to their liberal agenda.
Sarah Palin needn’t change one thing. Those old fogies who cannot adapt to the new ‘new world order’ in American politics are more a strain on the conservative movement than anyone out there. And that includes democrats.
In the ‘it depends on what the meaning of justice is’ department, Attorney General Eric Holder’s justice department is telling Dayton’s police department to lower its testing standards because not enough of his people are passing the tests.
Dayton is in desperate need of officers to replace dozens of retirees. The hiring process was postponed for months because the D.O.J. rejected the original scores provided by the Dayton Civil Service Board, which administers the test.
Under the previous requirements, candidates had to get a 66% on part one of the exam and a 72% on part two.
The D.O.J. approved new scoring policy only requires potential police officers to get a 58% and a 63%. That’s the equivalent of an ‘F’ and a ‘D’.
The local office of the NAACP comes down on the side of safety over skin color.
“The NAACP does not support individuals failing a test and then having the opportunity to be gainfully employed,” agreed Dayton NAACP President Derrick Foward.
Where is that ‘post-racial‘ America anyway? Eric Holder’s conduct as Attorney General is, or should be, an embarrassment to the country and needs to go.
President Obama, never one to duck an issue, is appearing to take on a more adult posture at problem solving. From not being the first to the microphone anymore to that of letting others deal with it. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer calls it staying above the fray. The media calls it keeping a low profile. I call it ducking when it is politically expedient to duck.
Ever ready to jump in front of the news, as in the Cambridge, Mass incident between black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and white Cambridge, Mass. police Sgt. James Crowley, who “acted stupidly,” and inject himself into the business of the state of Wisconsin by saying it is “an assault on unions,” President Obama missed his golden opportunity at Friday’s news conference to make a statement about the goings on in the Wisconsin state house. After all, it consumed the news media all week/month long, culminating in the passage of the budget repair bill that state Democrats fled the state for. The protests were orchestrated in part by Obama’s Organizing for America and other union bullies. Bullying is OK when it works for BIG LABOR you know.
One take on why Obama failed to talk about it was that the polls suggest that the public does not support it or that he should not be involved in a state issue. Or both. To be sure, if he thought he could make hay out of it, he would have brought it up. If he thought it would hurt his chances of re-election, he might stay ‘above the fray.’ But what is the excuse of the press corps to not ask one question about it? To think that there was no collusion between the press corps and the administration requires a suspension of dis-belief. If not just good old-fashioned Chicago style threats to intimidate the press corps from asking about it. Fact is, no one did.
The Left can’t be too happy with Obama’s new low profile either. They expect him to be in Madison with the demonstrators. Like he said he would do when he was in campaign mode. Try this question that was not asked. Mr. President, critics in your own party are frustrated that another campaign promise seems to have gone by the wayside. What do you say to those who want you to go to Madison and show your solidarity with the labor union? (like you said you would do during your campaign?) The latter part is pure fantasy that he would ever be put on that spot. You know if he was an R, that’s the way the question would have been delivered. But I digress.
Here’s Rush Limbaugh’s take on it . . .
All right. It’s official. There were no questions on Wisconsin asked of the regime at the press conference today. Now, come on, folks, please. It’s only been the rallying cry of the Democrat Party. We’ve only had Obama joining the debate saying we shouldn’t vilify or denigrate public sector union people, they’re our neighbors and so forth. He got involved. It’s his website, Organizing for America, that organized all of the spittle-flecked protesters that were out there. Not one question. Not one statement made by Obama. Again, let me tell you what this means. I’ll explain it by doing it the opposite way. Had there been questions and had there been answers, had Obama made a statement, it would have meant that the polling data was clearly on his side, that the Republicans were really taking it in the shorts in the polls, and that it was a golden opportunity to hammer this whole business of destroying collective bargaining rights for unions.
If they had polling data that suggests that the Democrats won big in this thing that would have been 90% of the content of this presser. And it didn’t even come up.
The president and his handlers certainly have their hands full, both here and abroad. Makes me wonder who has the tougher job? Obama acting as President of the United States or his handlers trying to make an empty suit look as though there is something in it?
Remember those ‘two Americas’ that John (the Breck girl) Edwards was talking about in the 2004 presidential campaign? The rising prices of crude oil, now north of $104 per barrel, and gas at the pump north of $3.50 (and 9/10) a gallon, and rising by about a dime a week got the attention of the New York Times with this front page analysis.
The highlights . . .
Rising Gas Cost Finds the Nation Better Prepared.
The increase in energy prices is beginning to resemble the rise in 2008. But this time, the American economy may be better prepared for higher fuel costs.
While the latest surge in energy prices is likely to cause some pain and slow the recovery from the recession, economists say the spike is unlikely to derail the rebound unless prices rise a lot further.
One big reason is that consumers and businesses have learned lessons from the last oil shock. … Industries like airlines and trucking, which are most severely affected by fuel prices, have passed on their higher costs almost immediately instead of waiting for the price increases to hammer profits.
And much of the rest of the United States economy is far less dependent on oil than it used to be.
A fascinating and in-depth analysis of the high gas prices that took the combined efforts of five reporters. So you know it must be complete and comprehensive.
Harken back to the high gas prices under the Bush administration which, according to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), was blamed on the Bush administration and the fact that there were ‘two oil men in The White House.’ Today, it is apparent from the New York Times that the cost of crude and gas have nothing whatsoever to do with Washington.
According to preliminary numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion.
Put into perspective, it is the 29th straight month the government has run in the red. A modern record. This one month federal deficit is nearly four times as large as the spending cuts House Republicans have passed in their spending bill, and is more than 30 times the size of Senate Democrats’ opening bid of $6 billion.
And after hundreds of billions, trillions, of dollars of so-called stimulus spending, unemployment continues to worsen. Despite President Obama’s hooting the unemployment rate drop below 9 percent last week, the drop was not a result of more people getting jobs, which is what the community organizer would have you believe. No, the drop was a function of fewer people looking for work, a smaller pool of people looking for jobs that have given up looking for work is what made the unemployment rate drop.
Analysts say an increase in the unemployment rate would indicate that the unemployed, those who have given up looking for work, would share the confidence in the economy that Obama says he has and are actively looking for work again. But that is not whats happening.
president can launch a serious military action without a full and formal national address in which he explains to the American people why he is doing what he is doing, why it is right, and why it is very much in the national interest.
