‘This is the United States of America,” declared President Obama to the burghers of Liberty, Mo., on Friday. “We’re not some banana republic.”
He was talking about the Annual Raising of the Debt Ceiling, which glorious American tradition seems to come round earlier every year. “This is not a deadbeat nation,” President Obama continued. “We don’t run out on our tab.” True. But we don’t pay it off either. We just keep running it up, ever higher. And every time the bartender says, “Mebbe you’ve had enough, pal,” we protest, “Jush another couple trillion for the road. Set ’em up, Joe.” And he gives you that look that kinda says he wishes you’d run out on your tab back when it was $23.68.
Still, Obama is right. We’re not a banana republic, if only because the debt of banana republics is denominated in a currency other than their own — i.e., the U.S. dollar. When you’re the guys who print the global currency, you can run up debts undreamt of by your average generalissimo. As Obama explained in another of his recent speeches, “Raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt.” I won’t even pretend to know what he and his speechwriters meant by that one, but the fact that raising the debt ceiling “has been done over a hundred times” does suggest that spending more than it takes in is now a permanent feature of American government. And no one has plans to do anything about it. Which is certainly banana republic-esque.
Is all this spending necessary? Every day, the foot-of-page-37 news stories reveal government programs it would never occur to your dimestore caudillo to blow money on. On Thursday, it was the Food and Drug Administration blowing just shy of $200 grand to find out whether its Twitter and Facebook presence is “well-received.” A fifth of a million dollars isn’t even a rounding error in most departmental budgets, so nobody cares. But the FDA is one of those sclerotic American institutions that has near to entirely seized up. In October 1920, it occurred to an Ontario doctor called Frederick Banting that insulin might be isolated and purified and used to treat diabetes; by January 1923, Eli Lilly & Co were selling insulin to American pharmacies: A little over two years from concept to market. Now the FDA adds at least half-a-decade to the process, and your chances of making it through are far slimmer: As recently as the late Nineties, they were approving 157 new drugs per half-decade. Today it’s less than half that.
But they’ve got $182,000 to splash around on finding out whether people really like them on Facebook, or they’re just saying that. So they’ve given the dough to a company run by Dan Beckmann, a former “new media aide” to President Obama. That has the whiff of the banana republic about it, too.
The National Parks Service, which I had carelessly assumed was the service responsible for running national parks, has been making videos on Muslim women’s rights: “Islam gave women a whole bunch of rights that Western women acquired later in the 19th and 20th centuries, and we’ve had these rights since the seventh century,” explains a lady from AnNur Islamic School in Schenectady at the National Park Service website, nps.gov. Fascinating stuff, no doubt. But what’s it to do with national parks? Maybe the rangers could pay Dan Beckmann a quarter-million bucks to look into whether the National Parks’ Islamic outreach is using social media as effectively as it might.
Where do you go to get a piece of this action? As the old saying goes, bank robbers rob banks because that’s where the money is. But the smart guys rob taxpayers because that’s where the big money is. According to the Census Bureau’s latest “American Community Survey,” between 2000 and 2012 the nation’s median household income dropped 6.6 percent. Yet in the District of Columbia median household income rose 23.3 percent. According to a 2010 survey, seven of the nation’s ten wealthiest counties are in the Washington commuter belt. Many capital cities have prosperous suburbs — London, Paris, Rome — because those cities are also the capitals of enterprise, finance, and showbiz. But Washington does nothing but government, and it gets richer even as Americans get poorer. That’s very banana republic, too: Proximity to state power is now the best way to make money. Once upon a time Americans found fast-running brooks and there built mills to access the water that kept the wheels turning. But today the ambitious man finds a big money-no-object bureaucracy that likes to splash the cash around and there builds his lobbying group or consultancy or social media optimization strategy group.
The CEO of Panera Bread, as some kind of do-gooder awareness-raising shtick, is currently attempting to live on food stamps, and not finding it easy. But being dependent on government handouts isn’t supposed to be easy. Instead of trying life at the bottom, why doesn’t he try life in the middle? In 2012, the top 10 percent were taking home 50.4 percent of the nation’s income. That’s an all-time record, beating out the 49 percent they were taking just before the 1929 market crash. With government redistributing more money than ever before, we’ve mysteriously wound up with greater income inequality than ever before. Across the country, “middle-class” Americans have accumulated a trillion dollars in college debt in order to live a less comfortable life than their high-school-educated parents and grandparents did in the Fifties and Sixties. That’s banana republic, too: no middle class, but only a government elite and its cronies, and a big dysfunctional mass underneath, with very little social mobility between the two.
Like to change that? Maybe advocate for less government spending? Hey, Lois Lerner’s IRS has got an audit with your name on it. The tax collectors of the United States treat you differently according to your political beliefs. That’s pure banana republic, but no one seems to mind very much. This week it emerged that senior Treasury officials, up to and including Turbotax Timmy Geithner, knew what was going on at least as early as spring 2012. But no one seems to mind very much. In the words of an insouciant headline writer at Government Executive, “the magazine for senior federal bureaucrats” (seriously), back in May:
“The Vast Majority of IRS Employees Aren’t Corrupt”
So, if the vast majority aren’t, what proportion is corrupt? Thirty-eight percent? Thirty-three? Twenty-seven? And that’s the good news? The IRS is not only institutionally corrupt, it’s corrupt in the service of one political party. That’s Banana Republic 101.
What comes next? Government officials present in Benghazi during last year’s slaughter have been warned not to make themselves available to congressional inquiry. CNN obtained one e-mail spelling out the stakes to CIA employees: “You don’t jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well.”
“That’s all very ominous,” wrote my colleague Jonah Goldberg the other day, perhaps a little too airily for my taste. I’d rank it somewhere north of “ominous.”
“Banana republic” is an American coinage — by O. Henry, a century ago, for a series of stories set in the fictional tropical polity of Anchuria. But a banana republic doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a sensibility, and it’s difficult to mark the precise point at which a free society decays into something less respectable. Pace Obama, ever swelling debt, contracts for cronies, a self-enriching bureaucracy, a shrinking middle class preyed on by corrupt tax collectors, and thuggish threats against anyone who disagrees with you put you pretty far down the banana-strewn path.
By Scott Wilson, Published: November 29 E-mail the writer
Throughout his time in office, President Obama has opened many outside-the-Beltway speeches with a suggestion that he, too, feels like an outsider in the nation’s baffling, frustrating capital city. He shouts to the audience about how good it is to be wherever he is that day — Cleveland, Miami, San Francisco. Then he takes pokes at the town where great success in his chosen profession has brought him.
“It is good to be out of Washington,” he often says — a line that, in good times and in bad, always generates warm, sympathetic applause.
Changing Washington may not have come off as Obama promised. But for the president and his supporters, the city has been an object of contempt they can believe in.
Now, though, Obama has raised the possibility that he might remain a resident of the capital after his lease on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. expires in January 2017.
In an interview this week with Barbara Walters of ABC News, Obama and the first lady, Michelle, said they may live in Washington beyond their time in the White House to allow their younger daughter, Sasha, to graduate from Sidwell Friends School.
Sasha would be a high school sophomore at the end of the president’s second term, giving the family a couple years to enjoy, or endure, Washington as private citizens.
“We gotta make sure that she’s doing well . . . until she goes off to college,” Obama told Walters, according to an advance transcript of the interview, which aired Friday night. “Sasha will have a big say in where we are.”
For a couple who celebrate the city of Chicago as often as they skewer Washington’s nasty political culture, the suggestion that they may stick around past the constitutionally mandated time is surprising. And it highlights the reality that despite the cloistered and well-supported lifestyle of the American presidency, the Obamas are in some ways working parents who face a set of decisions not unfamiliar to others their age.
Obama would be the first former president to remain in Washington post-presidency since the dying Woodrow Wilson more than nine decades ago. A former president is an easy political target, and to stay in Washington is to be a close-range one as well. The journey from leader of the free world to the person most to blame for the early problems of a new administration is as short as a walk across Lafayette Square.
Most find it best to be far from the scene of the alleged crimes when the accusations start flying. George W. Bush, who moved back to Texas and began painting, was relatively well-served by that distance when Obama pointed often to his predecessor as the cause of the economic and fiscal problems his administration faced early on.
Sticking around is “a terrible idea and I can’t imagine it will last very long,” said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution. “Once you’re in Washington you are somehow connected to every problem that your predecessor is going to be confronting. And you will be asked to say something each time your name comes up, given that you will have reporters camping out on your doorstep.”
This, in part, is the reason many former presidents don’t flee just Washington, but public life entirely.
Ronald Reagan and Lyndon B. Johnson vanished onto beloved ranches in California and Texas, the former to enjoy his last years in a pretty valley north of Santa Barbara and the latter to lament what might have been if not for Vietnam.
Both men were getting on in years by the time they left office. Younger occupants such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton remained active on the world stage after their presidencies rather than in the tiny arena that is official Washington.
As for the Obamas, “they are still trying to figure it out,” said Josh Earnest, the White House principal deputy press secretary. “It is certainly something they have been thinking about, and that is evident in the answer they gave.”
Earnest said the decision will likely be made late in the president’s term and pivot largely on Sasha, who is 12 and in seventh grade. Malia, 15, a high school sophomore, will have left for college by then.
“I think it is school and Sasha being able to keep her social group as much as possible — that is what is most important to them,” Earnest said.
The Obamas have kept their home in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, staying there on some visits home. Their departure was always meant to be temporary. As Valerie Jarrett, a close family friend and senior adviser to Obama, said as the family decamped for Washington, “It is really not goodbye. Rather, Chicago will say, ‘See you soon.’ ”
Michelle Obama, if not her husband, has raised the prospect of picking up post-White House life somewhere other than the city where she grew up. Last year, she said on two occasions that the family may not return to Chicago, as much as she loves the city.
“While I like going back to Chicago — I like to see the lake — this is home now because this is where we’ve built our lives,” Michelle Obama told USA Today in May 2012. “And when it’s time to leave, we’ll build it somewhere else.”
The Obamas’ frequent knocks of Washington have focused on the politics — the K Street money and the 24-hour punditry, the partisanship on Capitol Hill and the culture of point-scoring, which the president and his predecessors have said comes at the expense of the country.
Obama’s message about the city: Hate the players, not the playground. But how much Obama and his family like Washington as a place is a bit of a mystery.
At the start of Obama’s presidency, the first couple dined out with some frequency, not only on special occasions such as anniversaries but also for regular date nights. The Obamas seemed to embrace the city as much as the city embraced the new administration in the afterglow of a historic election.
Those nights out have become less common, and off-hours Obama now leaves the White House most regularly for the fairway-to-green seclusion of 18 holes at Andrews Air Force Base.
So what would private life in Washington look like for an ex-president?
That is hard to say, given that the most recent precedent is Wilson, who remained in town after his presidency ended in 1921 largely because he was suffering the debilitating aftereffects of a stroke.
One unknown is what Obama, who will be 55 when he leaves office, will want to do after his presidency.
There are law schools where he could pick up his teaching career — a vocation he says has informed his presidency — and any private home the couple may choose would certainly have a place for him to hide away and write the inevitable memoir of his presidency, even if his presidential records and library would be somewhere else.
That work could take the couple through Sasha’s graduation — and then, perhaps, far from a city traditionally full of transients who find it hard to love it.
“It’s just not a very congenial place to hang out,” Hess said.
http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/f...._USA-OBAMA.JPG
U.S. President Barack Obama reaches for a pen as he signs a bill in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, November 27, 2013. According to the White House, Obama signed three bills into law, S. 252, H.R. 1848, and H.R. 3204. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS) The time has come to end presidential term limits, because continuing the restrictions on how long one can serve in the country's highest office is bad for the United States, a university professor argued this week.
In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post, Jonathan Zimmerman, a history and education professor at New York University, says deciding whether a president deserves a third, fourth or more terms should be left to the American people, not the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which placed a two-term limit on the position. As background, here's an excerpt from the amendment, ratified in 1951:
"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."
The amendment came into being a few years after Franklin Roosevelt was elected to the fourth of his White House terms. Known to Americans as the president during the final years of the Great Depression and most of World War II, Roosevelt, a Democrat, died in office before completing his last term. After the war, Republicans made a successful bid to install a two-term maximum for future presidents. But, according to Zimmerman, they limited not only the president's time in office, but also "democracy itself."
With President Obama's job-approval numbers down sharply, Zimmerman indicates that the nation's chief executive is perhaps being hampered by the fact that he's in his final term, giving GOP opponents and even Democrats little incentive to support him on issues that might hurt their own re-election chances.
To illustrate his point, he uses two topics in the headlines: the implemention of the new health care law and the nuclear agreement with Iran.
He writes:
"Many of Obama’s fellow Democrats have distanced themselves from the reform and from the president. Even former president Bill Clinton has said that Americans should be allowed to keep the health insurance they have. Or consider the reaction to the Iran nuclear deal. Regardless of his political approval ratings, Obama could expect Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and John McCain (Ariz.) to attack the agreement.
But if Obama could run again, would he be facing such fervent objections from Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)? Probably not. Democratic lawmakers would worry about provoking the wrath of a president who could be reelected. Thanks to term limits, though, they’ve got little to fear."
Zimmerman adds, "Nor does Obama have to fear the voters, which might be the scariest problem of all. If he chooses, he could simply ignore their will. And if the people wanted him to serve another term, why shouldn’t they be allowed to award him one?"
On this last point, he invokes George Washington, the first president of the United States. Washington, he says, stepped down after his second term, but not because he was required by law to do so. Zimmerman says Washington didn't support enforced term limits, citing one of his letters. "I can see no propriety in precluding ourselves from the service of any man who, in some great emergency, shall be deemed universally most capable of serving the public," Washington wrote. By leaving office, however, he did establish a precedent that would be followed for more than a century.
In his "Presidential Term Limits in American History: Power, Principles, and Politics," Michael Korzi, a professor of political science at Towson University, cites the first president's remark, stating that Washington departed voluntarily after his second term "more for personal reasons than for reasons of philosophy."
Even so, the Founding Fathers had different opinions on whether to impose a mandate on term lengths, researchers indicate. (U.S. senators and representatives don't have term limits.) Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the U.S., felt a maximum had merit. In "Jefferson Himself: The Personal Narrative of a Many-Sided American," edited by Bernard Mayo, Jefferson referenced his dislike of the idea of an entrenched leader:
"That I should lay down my charge at a proper season is as much a duty as to have borne it faithfully ... . These changes are necessary, too, for the security of republican government. If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will in fact be for life; and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance."
As for the present, Zimmerman's idea isn't new, and in fact, rumor-researching website Snopes.com notes multiple proposals in recent years to repeal the 22nd Amendment. Republicans and Democrats alike have raised the issue, but none of the attempts have gotten too far. .
You tell us: Do you prefer to have presidential term limits? Or would you rather a president be able to run as many times as they want?
December 2nd, 2013, 14:24
American Patriot
Re: Obama: Anti-Colonial President, Plans for the next term
Term Limits for ALL!
December 12th, 2013, 00:25
vector7
Re: Obama: Anti-Colonial President, Plans for the next term
President Obama’s Kansas speech is a remarkable document. In calling for more government controls, more taxation, more collectivism, he has two paragraphs that give the show away. Take a look at them.
there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes–especially for the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.
Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.
Though not in Washington, I’m in that “certain crowd” that has been saying for decades that the market will take care of everything. It’s not really a crowd, it’s a tiny group of radicals–radicals for capitalism, in Ayn Rand’s well-turned phrase.
The only thing that the market doesn’t take care of is anti-market acts: acts that initiate physical force. That’s why we need government: to wield retaliatory force to defend individual rights.
Radicals for capitalism would, as the Declaration of Independence says, use government only “to secure these rights”–the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. (Yes, I added “property” in there–property rights are inseparable from the other three.)
That’s the political philosophy on which Obama is trying to hang the blame for the recent financial crisis and every other social ill. But ask yourself, are we few radical capitalists in charge? Have radical capitalists been in charge at any time in the last, oh, say 100 years?
I pick 100 years deliberately, because it was exactly 100 years ago that a gigantic anti-capitalist measure was put into effect: the Federal Reserve System. For 100 years, government, not the free market, has controlled money and banking. How’s that worked out? How’s the value of the dollar held up since 1913? Is it worth one-fiftieth of its value then or only one-one-hundredth? You be the judge. How did the dollar hold up over the 100 years before this government take-over of money and banking? It actually gained slightly in value.
Laissez-faire hasn’t existed since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. That was the first of a plethora of government crimes against the free market.
Radical capitalists are just beginning to have a slight effect on the Right wing. The overwhelming majority on the Right are eclectic. Which is a nice way of saying inconsistent.
The typical Republican would never, ever say “the market will take care of everything.” He’d say, “the market will take care of most things, and for the other things, we need the regulatory-welfare state.”
They are for individualism–except when they are against it. They are against free markets and individualism not only when they agree with the Left that we must have antitrust laws and the Federal Reserve, but also when they demand immigration controls, government schools, regulatory agencies, Medicare, laws prohibiting abortion, Social Security, “public works” projects, the “social safety net,” laws against insider trading, banking regulation, and the whole system of fiat money.
Obama blames economic woes, some real some invented (“inequality”) on a philosophy and policy that was abandoned a century ago. What doesn’t exist is what he says didn’t work.
Obama absurdly suggests that timid, half-hearted, compromisers, like George W. Bush, installed laissez-faire capitalism–on the grounds that they tinkered with one or two regulations (Glass-Steagall) and marginal tax rates–while blanking out the fact that under the Bush administration, government spending ballooned, growing much faster than under Clinton, and 50,000 new regulations were added to the Federal Register.
The philosophy of individualism and the politics of laissez-faire would mean government spending of about one-tenth its present level. It would also mean an end to all regulatory agencies: no SEC, FDA, NLRB, FAA, OSHA, EPA, FTC, ATF, CFTC, FHA, FCC–to name just some of the better known of the 430 agencies listed in the federal register.
Even you, dear reader, are probably wondering how on earth anyone could challenge things like Social Security, government schools, and the FDA. But that’s not the point. The point is: these statist, anti-capitalist programs exist and have existed for about a century. The point is: Obama is pretending that the ProgressivePGR +0.41% Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society were repealed, so that he can blame the financial crisis on capitalism. He’s pretending that George Bush was George Washington.
We radical capitalists say that it was the regulatory-welfare state that imploded in 2008. You may disagree, but let’s argue that out, rather than engaging in the Big Lie that what failed was laissez-faire and individualism.
The question is: in the messy mixture of government controls and remnants of capitalism, which element caused the Great Depression and the recent financial crisis?
By raising that question, we uncover the fundamental: the meaning of capitalism and the meaning of government controls. Capitalism means freedom. Government means force.
Suddenly, the whole issue comes into focus: Obama is saying that freedom leads to poverty and force leads to wealth. He’s saying: “Look, we tried leaving you free to live your own life, and that didn’t work. You have to be forced, you have to have your earnings seized by the state, you have to work under our directions–under penalty of fines or imprisonment. You don’t deserve to be free.”
As a bit of ugly irony, this is precisely what former white slave-owners said after the Civil War: “The black man can’t handle freedom; we have to force him for his own good.” The innovation of the Left is to extend that viewpoint to all races.
Putting the issue as force vs. freedom shows how the shoe is on the other foot regarding what Obama said. Let me re-write it:
there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The government will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just pile on even more regulations and raise taxes–especially on the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the losers are protected by more social programs and a higher minimum wage, if there is more Quantitative Easing by the Fed, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle up to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle up, well, that’s the price of the social safety net.
Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our intellectuals’ collectivism and Paul Krugman’s skepticism about freedom. That’s in Harvard’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the Soviet Union. It’s not what led to the incredible booms in India and China. And it didn’t work when Europe tried it during over the last decades. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this statist theory.
How does that sound? That’s blaming an actual, existing condition–government controls and wealth-expropriation–not a condition that ended in the late 19th century.
So which is the path to prosperity and happiness–freedom or force? Remember that force is aimed at preventing you from acting on your rational judgment.
Obama’s real antagonist is Ayn Rand, who made the case that reason is man’s basic means of survival and coercion is anti-reason. Force initiated against free, innocent men is directed at stopping them from acting on their own thinking. It makes them, under threat of fines and imprisonment, act as the government demands rather than as they think their self-interest requires. That’s the whole point of threatening force: to make people act against their own judgment.
The radical, uncompromised, laissez-faire capitalism that Obama pretends was in place in 2008 is exactly what morality demands. Because, as Ayn Rand wrote in 1961: “No man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others. . . .
To claim the right to initiate the use of physical force against another man–the right to compel his agreement by the threat of physical destruction–is to evict oneself automatically from the realm of rights, of morality and of the intellect.”
Obama and his fellow statists have indeed evicted themselves from that realm.
US President Barack Obama has called for a “year of action,” vowing to take measures into his own hands when necessary.
During his weekly address, Obama said, “I’ll keep doing everything I can to create new jobs and new opportunities for American families — with Congress, on my own, and with everyone willing to play their part.”
However, analysts believe that Obama will probably bypass Congress resorting to executive actions even more frequently that he did in the past, according to the Washington Times.
The US president called on Congress to move quickly to extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million US citizens who have had no unemployment insurance since late December 2013.
“This vital economic lifeline helps people support their families while they look for a new job,” Obama said. “Congress needs to finish the job right away. More than one million Americans across the country will feel a little hope right away.”
1.3 million Americans lost their unemployment benefits after Congress failed to extend an emergency federal program under which jobless American workers received unemployment insurance payments.
Before December 28, 38 percent of unemployed Americans received unemployment insurance through their state or federal government. But now, as the program has expired, only a quarter of jobless Americans will receive the benefits, the lowest rate in over half a century.
In order to extend the benefits, the Senate introduced a measure this week that would cost about $6 billion over three months.
Later, Senate Democrats put forward an extension of 10 months that would be paid for, although the proposal remained pending thanks to Democrats trying to block Republican amendments. A new vote is tentatively scheduled for next week.
But I can’t think of a better start, given the people who are participating today. I am glad that Brookings has been willing to provide a home for this wonderful effort.
Just remember, as we move forward, that there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. There are people in places like Decatur, Illinois, or Galesburg, Illinois, who have seen their jobs eliminated. They have lost their health care. They have lost their retirement security. They don’t have a clear sense of how their children will succeed in the same way that they succeeded.
They believe that this may be the first generation in which their children do worse than they do. Some of that, then, will end up manifesting itself in the sort of nativist sentiment, protectionism, and anti-immigration sentiment that we are debating here in Washington.
So there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. This is not a bloodless process.
6 months ago
“What we see here is Obama speaking to his true base, those who gave him his marching orders, and continue to do so.”
On April 5, 2006, Barack Obama, a neophyte with only 15 months in Congress, was the only U.S. Senatorto attend the first meeting of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin’s Hamilton Project at the centrist Brookings Institute think tank, in Washington.
Rubin is the man who advised President Bill Clinton toderegulate the banks, which led to the economic meltdown of 2008.
In the video, above, Obama speaks to the Rubin crowd about how the new economic order will not be a “bloodless process.”
He heaps praise on the elites who engineered the economic crash.
Dinesh D'Souza, the political commentator, author and movie-maker came under fire four years ago when he wrote a column for Forbes Magazine, "How Obama Thinks" that speculated President Obama saw the world as split in two: those nations who colonized and oppressed and the victim nations and people who were colonized and were the oppressed.
D'Souza expanded on this theme in his blockbuster documentary 2016: Obama's Americathat -- despite or maybe because of -- its being a huge hit was snubbed by the Academy Awards. However it did win D'Souza a federal indictment for behavior that, if proven, earned merely a misdemeanor charge when a donor to John Edwards engaged in the same alleged fundraising violation.
Barack Obama certainly does not care for Winston Churchill who did inherit imperialistic dreams from his ancestors as D'Souza speculated Obama inherited the anti-imperialistic dreams of his father. Churchill's bust was soon thrown out of the White House when Obama assumed office.
And he did engage in an apology tour for America's actions overseas over the years ; was the first American President to say that America was responsible for the 1953 coup in Iran and suggested some of that nation's ire towards America was rooted in that history.
But Obama may have also unwittingly tipped his hand -- as he often does when his mouth is not controlled by a teleprompter or by his handlers -- when he has talked about Israel.
A little history may be in order.
To dispel concerns that he is anti-Israel Obama has repeatedly boasted of his knowledge of Judaism and his dedication to fighting anti-Semitism. They were, like much of what he has says, not quite true.
When Barack Obama began his presidential campaign, concerns were raised when it was discovered that Jeremiah Wright, the man he called his "moral compass" and the pastor of his church, was a severe critic of Israel and anti-Semitic as well ("them Jews"). The tip off to me came when Wright told New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor that when Obama's "enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli" to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell."
Further research led to the discovery that Wright was afflicted with obsessive-compulsive disorder when it came to attacking Israel from his pulpit over the years. Close ties with Farrakhan, including the awarding of a medal to him by Obama's church exacerbated concerns -- as did the church's support for Hamas and Hezb'allah over the years. Wright made clear in his sermons that Israel was a colonial entity that oppressed Palestinians.
Contrary to the campaign's claims that Barack Obama never heard this drumbeat of denunciations of Israel because he did not attend church during those episodes, he had earlier boasted of his reliable attendance record and Stanley Kurtz in his book Radical in Chiefprovides further proof that he heard these anti-Israel rants -- and kept coming back to attend the church, along with his wife and young daughters.
The media did its best to cover for him, yet when videos came to light, courtesy of ABC News, of Wright's chortling over 9/11 and assorted rants against America, whites and Israel, Obama had to respond -- and, is his wont, engaged in hyperbolic boasting.
Barack Obama said "Nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti-Semitism than I have". This elicited ridicule from ABC's Jake Tapper in "Somebody Call Abe Foxman" (the head of the Anti-Defamation League):
Really? No one? Elie Wiesel? Simon Wiesenthal? Alan Dershowitz? No one? Wow.
Of course, the claim by Obama was nonsense: there was no record, repeat, no record of his ever having spoken out against anti-Semitism. His actions since then have belied his boast.
After being elected President he rewarded Hannah Rosenthal, one of his Jewish supporters, with the post of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism (she must not have raised enough money to be rewarded with an Ambassadorship or even a grant to boost green energy schemes).
What kind of anti-Semitism fighter was Rosenthal? One that blamed Israel for generating anti-Semitism, for which she was rebuked by none other than Abe Foxman. His choice for Ambassador to Belgium felt the same way. One would be hard-pressed to find any positive impact she made during her tenure..
Barack Obama certainly has no problem with one of the people who has done the most to spread anti-Semitism around the Arab world. His favorite foreign leader is Turkey's autocratic Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who has been a fount of anti-Semitism and used the organs of the state to spew the same.
Nor has Obama had a problem associating with groups that spread anti-Semitism in America. Yet Jeffrey Goldberg -- one of the few journalists to whom Obama deigns to grant interviews (perhaps correlated with their willingness to do his bidding) -- insisted on calling Obama the "most Jewish President ever."
And didn't Obama himself stress his knowledge of Judaism?
Daniel Halper of the Weekly Standard, took note of this particular Obama boast (he makes so many of them) back in 2012:
President Obama met yesterday with "about 20 Conservative Jewish community leaders, thanking them for the work they do to improve communities around the country and discussed their shared commitment to rebuilding the U.S. economy," Haaretz reports. In the meeting, Obama reportedly boasted about his knowledge of Judaism, telling the leaders that he thinks he knows more "about Judaism" than all past presidents. He said he gained this knowledge of Judaism from reading. "Obama ... stressed he probably knows about Judaism more than any other president, because he read about it," Haaretz reports.
He also said that many of his Chicago friends were Jewish. As the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens noted in "The Jewish President: Don't believe Obama when he says he has Israel's back" the Jews Obama called "friends" in Chicago were not fans of Israel. I wrote about one of them, Arnold Wolf, in "Barack Obama's Curious Rabbi," because he was a harsh critic of Israel's going back to the founding of the state in 1948.
Even Peter Beinart, a relentless critic of Israel, said "this small coterie of people bred in Obama a specific, and subversive, vision of American Jewish identity and of the Jewish state."
Bill Kristol mocked Obama's claim of omniscience regarding Judaism in "Barack Obama-Friend of Jews, Scholar of Judaism"
It's truly pathetic that Obama has to reach for the tired (to say the least) trope that some of his best friends were Jewish. Actually, one wishes more of his best friends were pro-Israel Christians. They might have had more luck convincing him, a fellow Christian, that he should be pro-Israel. And the claim that Obama knows more about Judaism than any president? His vanity boggles the mind. One could begin by citing Adams and Madison, who knew Hebrew, or Harry Truman, who knew Jewish history ... but it's silly to dignify this claim with a rebuttal. In thinking about the presidents since Truman, though, I'd guess the president who knew the most about Judaism was Jimmy Carter, who taught Sunday school and had a deep interest in religion. So let's stipulate that of the modern presidents, Carter and Obama "know" the most about Judaism. But what is it they know? In Obama's case, one could ask whether what he "knows" is what he learned from Rashid Khalidi and Jeremiah Wright.
Incidentally, the most Jewish president ever got the date of Hanukkah wrong by two weeks and flubbed the lighting of the Menorah to boot. Yet he has shown his ignorance of Judaism and Jewish history in more startling and disconcerting ways -- and unwittingly offers evidence that supports Dinesh' D'Souza's claim that Obama views the West as being guilty of colonialism. Through various statements over the years Barack Obama seems not to appreciate the historic role that Israel has played for the Jewish people. Furthermore, he absolves the Muslim world of responsibility for thousands of years of anti-Semitism.
How can this thesis be supported?
Barack Obama, in his grandiose 2009 Cairo paean to the "Muslim" world (filled with inaccuracies) he mentioned Israel in passing:
"America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust."
As Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes noted "This strange reading of Israel's origins confirms the Islamist view of Israel - as a concession made by Westerners guilty about their treatment of Jews".
Pipes was not alone in recognizing that Barack Obama completely neglected the thousands of years of Jewish history -- a history that long pre-dated the rise of Islam in the region. His view of history ignored the long history of Zionism that began long before the Holocaust. He also specifically indicted European anti-Semitism and not Muslim anti-Semitism; he seemed to indicate that the European colonial powers imposed Israel on the Middle East to atone for the Holocaust. This distorted view is quite popular in the Middle East.
He again-and quite recently-made the same telling mistake.
Michael Taube writes in "Obama's Flawed view of Muslim anti-Semitism" about Obama's recent interview with the New Yorker's David Remnick and in particular these remarks
What's preventing them from entering into even an informal alliance with at least normalized diplomatic relations is not that their interests are profoundly in conflict, but the Palestinian issue, as well as a long history of anti-Semitism that's developed over the course of decades there, and anti-Arab sentiment that's increased inside of Israel based on seeing buses being blown up. If you can start unwinding some of that, that creates a new equilibrium."
Taube notes the basic flaws in Obama's view:
Mr. Obama is claiming Muslim anti-Semitism is only a few decades old at best. This statement is so baffling that it's hard to know where to start. Clearly, he hasn't read a great deal on this topic. If Mr. Obama had ever delved into the work of pre-eminent historians such as Will Durant, Paul Johnson and Bernard Lewis, he would quickly discover that his knowledge of this important topic was severely lacking.
Islamic anti-Semitism is as old as Islam. Many examples of anti-Semitism and calls to kill Jews are found in the Koran, as Andrew Bostom noted in his articles (many for American Thinker) and in his bookThe Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History.
But if Obama erases this long history, he replaces it with his own version of history in a way that further confirms D'Souza's views that Obama views Western nations as imperialistic colonizers. He dates Muslim anti-Semitism as going back "decades." Why decades? Could it be because Israel was established as a state in 1948 --just a few decades ago?
He seems to imply that the genesis of Islamic anti-Semitism dates from the founding of Israel -- blaming the victims (strange for man who touted his own credentials as an anti-Semitism fighter). He ignores the many prayers in Judaism calling for the founding of Israel and the call at every Passover "Next Year in Jerusalem".
For a man who claims he knows a lot about Judaism he does not seem to know a lot about Judaism.
His views reflect instead a man who thinks of Western nations as being colonial oppressors and Israel as being one of its creations.
And he intends to correct that mistake by weakening Israel and becoming the father of a new nation: Palestine.
President Obama made clear to Democrats, in a closed-door meeting, that he intends to do everything possible to obstruct the newly-elected Republican congress.
Politicoreports, Obama is going shock-and-awe to stop the popularly-elected Congress:
According to several sources at the Thursday summit in Baltimore, Obama vowed to defend his agenda against Republicans in Congress, promised to stand firm against GOP efforts to dismantle his agenda and called on his Democratic colleagues to help sustain his expected vetoes. The president also was explicit over his administration’s opposition to an Iran sanctions bill, promising to veto legislation with his administration in the midst of multilateral nuclear negotiations with the Middle Eastern regime.
This President has nothing to lose. As a second-term, lame-duck and largely unpopular leader has no political capital, prestige or honor left to give up. He cannot be re-elected, no Democrat wants them on their campaign stops and every leader in Congress that supported his agenda is… no longer a leader (R.I.P Harry and Nancy.)
The difficulty the President faces is that many other re-electable Democrats don’t actually agree with him. It would seem that about 40% of Democrats support the Keystone XL Pipeline and moderate Dems are ready to bump heads with the lame-duck President:
Centrist Democrats have criticized President Obama for the time it has taken to review the project, and are trying to pass legislation to approve Keystone XL.
These Democrats are in-danger of losing their seats as their constituents face real day-to-day costs like gas and groceries. Obama’s policies have done nothing to help them and the President’s new obstructionist stance just infuriates those already tired of the inability of Washington to do much of anything.
The President of change and working together is now the President of “My way or the highway.” Then again.. hasn’t he always?
January 19th, 2015, 19:49
American Patriot
Re: Obama: Anti-Colonial President, Plans for the next term
Nothing to lose because the fuckers won't impeach his ass.
February 15th, 2015, 18:42
vector7
Re: Obama: Anti-Colonial President, Plans for the next term
President Obama on Friday night returned to his core 2008 themes of hope and change, telling Democratic party loyalists that he intends to challenge “cynical politics” during his final two years office.
Speaking at a party fundraiser in San Francisco, the president blamed Democrats’ poor showing in the November midterm elections on voter apathy driven by frustration and anger with government. He said low turnout largely is to blame for the GOP gaining seats in the Househttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png and capturing control of the Senate.
But Mr. Obama said he still has two years in office and intends to use that time to strengthen Americans’ faith in Washington.
While battling Republicans — and in some cases, his own party — on political fights of the day, Mr. Obama said he’s also beginning to lay the groundwork for Democratic campaigns in 2016.
“Two years is a long time. And two years is also the time in which we’re going to be setting the stage for the next presidential election and the next 10 years of American policy,” the president said. “And so I intend to run through the tape and work really hard, and squeeze every last little bit of change and improvement in the lives of ordinary Americans and middle-class familieshttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png that I can.”
President Barack Obama said that at least some Americans who oppose gun control take that position because they think he wants to be a dictator.
“The politics have to change and the [gun control advocates] who are troubled by this have to be as intense, organized and as adamant about this issue as folks on the other side who are absolutists and think that any gun safety measures are somehow an assault on freedom, communistic or a plot by me to take over and stay in power forever or something,” Obama said Friday during a White House news conference.
Obama took several questions about gun control one day after a gunman murdered community college students in Oregon.
“There are all kinds of crackpot conspiracy theories out there, some of which are ratified by elected officials in the other party on occasion,” Obama said. “So, we have got to change the politics of this and that requires people to not just feel deeply, because I get a lot of letters after this happens telling me to do something.”
Obama said that those who favor more gun control must become single-issue voters.
“You have to make sure that anyone who you are voting for is on the right side of this issue, and if they are not, even if they are great on other stuff, for a couple of election cycles you have to vote against them and let them know why you’re voting against them,” Obama said. “You just have to, for a while, be a single-issue voter because that’s what’s happening on the other side.”
