Sequestration Reality Check

With a hat tip to Randy's Roundtable for the graphic below:

From Bob Woodward's February 22, 2013 essay about sequestration:

In fact, the final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation’s debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection.

So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made.

What is the motive behind the sequestration-related demonization of the GOP? The 2014 elections?

Sealed

With thanks to Big Bubba, who emailed me the graphic below:

List of Obama's sealed or unreleased records:

1) [T]he original, long-form 1961 Hawaiian birth certificate....
2) Marriage license between Obama’s father (Barak Sr.) and mother (Stanley Ann Dunham) — not found, not released
3) Obama’s baptism records — sealed
4) Obama’s adoption records — sealed
5) Records of Obama’s and his mother’s reptriation as US citizens on return from Indonesia — not found, not released
6) Name change (Barry Sotero to Barack Hussein Obama) records — not found, not released
7) Noelani Elementary School (Hawaii) — not released
8) Punahou School financial aid or school records — not released
9) Occidental College financial aid records — not released. (These records were, however, subpoenaed but Obama lawyers succeeded in quashing the subpoena in court. No other Occi records have been released.)
10) Columbia College records — not released
11) Columbia senior thesis — not released
12) Harvard Law School records (not mentioned below, but not released)
13) Obama’s law client list — sealed
14) Obama’s files from career as an Illinois State Senator — sealed
15) Obama’s record with Illinois State Bar Association — sealed
16) Obama’s medical records — not released
17) Obama’s passport records — not released

That’s a lot of records sealed and not released.

What may be even more amazing: the paucity of tattling or bragging from individuals who personally knew Obama during the above "gaps."

Also of interest: Last October, the Democrats in Congress introduced a bill (H.R.307.1.IH) to seal Obama's Presidential records.

A $10,000 reward is being offered to anyone who will provide Obama's college transcripts.

Addendum: Because of my grueling work schedule as the end of the school term looms, I just saw yesterday's post at Z's site. She posted the same graphic and asked, "They're demanding Romney's last 12 years of tax returns?" Same old, same old – the double standard. The Left demands transparency and full disclosure, but, instead, dodges and obfuscates.

Failed Leadership

With thanks to Z, a blast from the past:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.

Americans deserve better.

SENATOR BARACK H. OBAMA, MARCH, 2006

More from that same speech is HERE.

Obama has changed his mind, of course.

The Astounding Hypocrisy of Barack Obama

Hat tip to Mike's America for the following video of Obama's remarks to the House GOP Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 29, 2010:


Mike comments:

Since then, Republicans won big in the November 2010 election and came back to Congress with multiple plans to address the budget, debt and entitlements. The response from Obama and the Democrats has been to demagogue GOP plans using every scare tactic in the book, like pushing Grandma off the cliff, and even some new ones (like Obama's veiled threat to withhold Social Security checks).

These kinds of inconsistencies in Obama's past and present statements need to be brought to the fore.

Hillary Clinton In 2003

With thanks to Beamish:



With all that screeching, let's be sure that Hillary Clinton's words are clear:

I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.

My, my. How times have changed!

Obamanoids become what they claim they hated: WHITE HOUSE SAYS - Critics 'Serving the Goals of al Qaeda'

Image via Wikipedia

Absolutely beautiful symmetry of hypocrisy

There is most definitely a god.

From ABC WH correspondent Jake Tapper:

In an oped in USA Today, John Brennan -- Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism -- responds to critics of the Obama administration's counterterrorism policies by saying "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda."

I guess if you feel the kumbaya-ism of the plan to treat KSM and all comers caught alive as some kind of super car thieves and American citizens or constitutional PERSONS,- being detrimental to the national well being and the safety of the american people, instead of acting as FDR did ..YOU ARE HELPING AL QAEDA. Exsqueeze me, but isn't this PRECISELY what caused all these same people to shriek FASCISM when they were criticized by Dick Cheney?

Brennan writes that, "Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill."

In the oped, titled "'We need no lectures': Administration disrupts terrorists' plots, takes fight to them abroad," Brennan writes that politics "should never get in the way of national security. But too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points, instead of coming together to keep us safe."

The administration op-ed is in response to a USA Today editorial entitled "National security team fails to inspire confidence; Officials' handling of Christmas Day attack looks like amateur hour."

Brennan provides a detailed defense of the administration's handling of failed Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab whom, he says, was "thoroughly interrogated and provided important information."

He suggests that many critics are hypocritical and clueless.

That is PRETTY good coming from the man Michael Scheurer identified recently as THE MAN who stopped the CIA from killing Bin Laden during 1996-2000.

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Why am I not amazed?

Psychologists in Canada may have found out that people who become eco-conscious consumers are "more likely to steal and lie" than others. Authors of the study are Professor Nina Mazar of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and her colleague Chen-Bo Zhong. "Buying products that claim to be made with low environmental impact can set up 'moral credentials' in people’s minds that give license to selfish or questionable behavior."

You don't say!

The paper can be read in full online here (pdf-format).

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

"Just for the taste of it!"

The Christian Science Monitor offers some views on the current German election race at their global news blog:

Chancellor Angela Merkel debated Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on TV Monday, ahead of Sept. 27 elections.

A televised debate between the two candidates for Germany’s highest office was declared a draw by unimpressed Germans, as an election looms two weeks away for Europe’s top economy.

The election will pit center-right incumbent Angela Merkel against her current foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, from the left-leaning Social Democrat party.

At stake is whether Germany will chart a course out of recession with tax cuts and other business-friendly measures (Merkel) or pursue more state-led strategies such as funds for emerging industries, higher minimum wages and tighter regulations on executive pay (Steinmeier).

But many Germans have been left cold by both candidates. Playing on US President Obama’s campaign theme, the German newspaper Bild ran an analysis of the debate with the mocking headline, “Yes, we gahn!” (Yes, we yawn).

Deutsche Welle called the debate “uninspiring” in a roundup of the German press reaction; other descriptions included “shop talk between the chancellor and her deputy,” with “no real verbal sparring.”

The Associated Press said surveys were mixed, and cited a political analyst saying that the “well-mannered duel” was unlikely to change many voters’ minds.

Surveys carried out by three television stations after Sunday night’s duel found that viewers rated it a virtual draw, two putting Steinmeier marginally ahead and one giving a slight advantage to the conservative Merkel.

The debate, like much of the campaign, lacked passion and personal attacks between rivals who govern together in a “grand coalition” of right and left — the result of an indecisive 2005 election.

But the Wall Street Journal said undecided viewers favored Steinmeier, and gave the left-leaning candidate good reviews for a “snappy, vigorous debating performance.”

He argued for new tax rules to deter high executive pay and bonuses, and for minimum wages to slow the growing gap between Germany’s highest and lowest earners.

Mr. Steinmeier warned that the right-leaning government Ms. Merkel is seeking would pursue free-market policies of deregulation that he said had caused the global financial crash. “The thinking that got us into this crisis can’t get us out of it,” he said.

Merkel, by contrast, stuck to a pro-growth message, according to the Journal. The Journal said the candidates’ only significant foreign policy difference was on German troop deployments in Afghanistan, which two-thirds of Germans oppose.

Steinmeier said Germany should by 2013 “lay the groundwork” for pulling its troops out; Merkel offered no timeline.

To start on a negantive note: It is not Germany's "highest office" that the debaters are aiming for. It is the most important office. We have a head of state and that is NOT the chancellor. Frankly, lack of basic knowledge like that doesn't inspire much faith in a political commenter. Get some education. In such a light, it doesn't really amaze that Merkel and her Christian Democrats are dubbed "conservative" all the time by Americans. But hey! Can they really be blamed for it? Germans are doing it all the time themselves. One the other hand, Germans don't know what "conservative" means, Americans do, or at least: they ought to, and, apart from a some issues dear to a Catholic's heart that can be linked to a conservative world view, there is nothing "conservative" about the CDU, never was, never will be. The CDU was founded post-WWII as the successor of the "Zentrum" (which translates, notabene, to "Center") the party of political Catholicism, devoted in considerable parts to the Catholic social doctrine, something which will remind Americans painfully of liberal leftis pinkos, the more dumber ones even of commie marxists. And that knowledge is just a couple of keystrokes and mouseclicks away at Wikipedia.

Now Merkel: During the entire debate she managed to totally and utterly avoid terms like "Christian" (even "Christian-Democratic"), "values", "family", "ethics", "human dignity" and "Lebensschutz" (= "pro life"), and even those who notice that at all and predict that Merkel will thus lose her "party stalwarts" are barking up the wrong tree. What "party stalwarts"? Those who voted for the CDU because they were Christian/Catholic, are dying out rapidly.

Merkel was socialized in the former GDR. Her parents went with baby Angela, who had been born in Hamburg, to the GDR. Only hardcore Socialists went voluntarily to the Stalinist GDR to live there, so this sheds a light on the political proclivities of her father, a Protestant pastor. (By the way, that knowledge, too, is just a couple of keystrokes and mouseclicks away at Wikipedia.) She was never heavily involved in official party politics and described her FDJ youth movement years as "cultural work" later. It is not too amazing for a Protestant pastor's daughter either that she she did not take part in the secular coming of age rite "Jugendweihe", but was confirmed instead. She chose science as a profession, like many bright and gifted students did in the GDR, because it provided a relatively politics- and hassle-free environment. But all that does NOT say that Merkel is NOT a Socialist. Pure and simple, she is. Even if her politics so far were NOT testimony to that (they are) what she is doing now is aiming head-on at another four years of coalition with the Social Democrats. Why? Any other choice would bind her to the free-market Free Democrats (FDP), and that is exactly what she does NOT want. And if Steinmeier, who is bound to know that quite well, is blathering about "the right-leaning government Ms. Merkel is seeking" he is an even worse hypocrite than Merkel herself. Steinmeier, by the way, belonged, together with current minister of justice in Merkel's Cabinet, Brigitte Zypries, to the editorial staff of the leftist quarterly "Demokratie und Recht" (DuR) published by Pahl-Rugenstein-Verlag, who was at that time under observation by the office for the protection of the constitution (Verfassungsschutz). So far about some major members of "conservative" Angela Merkel's Cabinet.

We are heading for a diet version of the GDR -- "Just for the taste of it!". Mark my words.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

Promoting Grievance and Polarization

President Obama, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sergeant James Crowley met "for a beer" the day before yesterday. This official White House photo by Pete Souza shows them walking from the Oval Office to the Rose Garden.

The story behind that meeting is by now old news. In brief: White cop arrested black Harvard professor (and Obama chum), Henry Louis Gates jr, professor accused cops of racism, Obama ended up stuck both feet in mouth.

How could that happen? As conservative writer Thomas Sowell put it:

The racial-profiling issue is a great vote-getter. And if it polarizes the society, that is a price that politicians are willing to pay in order to get votes. Academics who run black-studies departments, as Prof. Henry Louis Gates does, likewise have a vested interest in racial paranoia.

For “community organizers” as well, racial resentments are a stock in trade. President Obama’s background as a community organizer has received far too little attention, though it should have been a high-alert warning that this was no post-racial figure.

What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose.

To think that someone who has spent years promoting grievance and polarization was going to bring us all together as president is a triumph of wishful thinking over reality.

And predictably, Gates is cashing in now on the publicity he triggered off by attributing his July 16 arrest to racism. He is, too, a frustrated elitist. The cops main misdoing was that they treated the professor like an ordinary man. Not like an ordinary BLACK man, mind you, but not with the reverence the professor thought he deserved. He was really lucky that a white cop happened to be the first one on the scene, which enabled him to play the race card.

What is remarkable about that?

First, that it shouldn't take a man with a Ph.D. to know that mouthing off at police officers will dramatically increase one's chance of being arrested. Police officers have the moral and legal authority to use force to serve and protect. They may overstep or fail to exercise their authority, but the general idea is that they must be ready and willing to use force. That means that one should exercise one's best behaviour around them. Always. Gates obviously thought that he was above that.

For Obama, it wasn't quite that easy. After all, he is supposed to show some statesmanship. Therefore, it was remarkable that the Commander in Chief, whose job it is to choose the Attorney General to be the chief law enforcement officer in the United States, was instinctively not, as he ought to have been, on his default position to support the police. Instead, he was in automatic "Promoting Grievance and Polarization" mode, and this is probably the most remarkable bit about that whole sleazy story indeed!

Now the picture! It shows Sergeant Crowley politely helping the older and slightly handicapped Professor Gates down some steps. Both are wearing suits and ties, while the Commander in Chief, in his shirt sleeves, walks ahead, totally detached from the scene, when it ought have to been his, the host's, task to stay close to his guests and to help the professor, his guest and friend, on his way.

I'm sure there are already, and will soon be, many and more clever interpretations buzzing through the Internet, but to me it just seems that the Commander in Chief has simply no manners. One doesn't expect that from a man with such a gentlemanly posture, but, so it seems, it's not enough to look good in suits.

As for Professor Gates, I don't think I will see another poseur and arrogant prick QUITE that awful in a hurry -- when he hasn't been caught on the wrong foot and yelling abuse at police officers, that is.




I, for one, congratulate Sergeant Crowley on his professionality, discipline and restraint.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

Two Good Questions To Ask

UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF POST (from Pastorius)

The next time somebody tries to smear conservatism by citing James Von Brunn's attack on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, below is a strategy to use in the discussion: (from this essay by Andrew Breitbart):

[1] "Why was it outrageous 'guilt by association' to connect Barack Obama to a domestic terrorist like Bill Ayers and an anti-Semite like [the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.], but it's perfectly mainstream to associate all conservatives with this nut job?" asked Jonah Goldberg, best-selling author of "Liberal Fascism" and a nationally syndicated columnist.

[2] Or what about the countless terrorist attacks by unaffiliated Muslim groups or individual jihadists that the media explains away as isolated incidents? Somehow the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its media defenders win the day with their collective cry: "Don't rush to judgment!"

Mr. Breitbart concludes his essay with the following paragraph:

Right now, the Democratic-Media Complex is using the single act of a lone lunatic far removed from the political mainstream to split this country on racial grounds in the pursuit of its own political advantage. With the listless Republican Party lacking in any vocal leadership, it will probably succeed.

Don't let the tactics of leftist hypocrisy succeed! Answer back!

Please take time to read Andrew Breitbart's entire essay HERE.

(Hat tip to LA Sunsett for alerting me to the above essay)

Crossposted earlier this week to THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS and Infidel Bloggers Alliance

UPDATE: Damien left these links for us (thanks Damien):

"James von Brunn a Radical Atheist who Hated Christians and William F. Buckley, Just like Daily Kos!," 

"James von Brunn was an Admitted Socialist with Connections to Noam Chomsky"