http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/02/02/barack-obama-admits-that-by-design-you-remain-unemployed/

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http://www.weaselzippers.net/blog/2010/01/why-the-hell-would-obama-bow-to-tampa-mayor.html

 

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http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/31/obamas-religious-supporters-jumping-ship/ 

 

If they’re becoming disappointed in Obama, perhaps it’s not the president’s fault. Maybe they just chose…unwisely. 

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Hackers reportedly cracked into the Web sites of more than 49 House members overnight and flooded their pages with anti-Obama attacks.

Hackers reportedly cracked into the Web sites of more than 49 House members overnight and flooded their pages with anti-Obama attacks.

The breach, which occurred after Obama delivered his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night, reportedly targeted both Republicans and Democrats, according to Politico.com.

The home page for the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee reportedly read: "F--- OBAMA!! Red Eye CREW !!!!! O RESTO E HACKER !!! by HADES; m4V3RiCk; T4ph0d4 -- FROM BRASIL."

The House members whose sites were hacked include Reps. Joe Wilson, R-S.C.; Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.; Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.; Peter Welch, D-Vt.; Phil Roe, R-Tenn., Charlie Wilson, D-Ohio, John Tierney, D-Mass., Charles Gonzales, D-Texas, Mike Coffman, R-Colo., and others.

The Red Eye Crew claimed responsibility for the incident. The group previously claimed credit for other high-profile hacks, including cyber attacks on Virginia's Old Dominion University and a New York advertising firm.

Jeff Ventura, spokesman for the House chief administrative officer, said the sites were managed by a private vendor -- GovTrends of Alexandria, Va.

Most House Web sites are managed totally by House technicians but individual offices are permitted to contract with a third party to manage new features and updates.

Ventura says GovTrends let its guard down while performing an update, allowing the hacker to penetrate sites of individual members and committees overnight.

Ventura said 18 House sites managed by GovTrends were defaced last August. The House is looking into continued use of the company, he said.

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Imitation, it's been said, is the sincerest form of flattery.

Where Gitmo is concerned, former President Bush should feel somewhat flattered.

Even if President Obama didn't plan it that way.

One year after signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility today, Mister Obama finds himself where Bush was in two key respects: he intends to close the prison but can't say when; he will hold dozens of suspected terrorists in custody without trial.

"One question that raises, of course, is whether the Obama administration is drifting toward a policy very similar to the one that the last president articulated," said Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution. "Once you remove the deadline and you say, 'We're not merely gonna miss it by a few days, we're missing it by a lot, and we're not going to tell you when the next date certain is,' the answer seems to be you're in a much closer place to that prior policy."

What went wrong?

"It was two things," said Charles "Cully" Stimson, former Bush Defense Department head of the Office of Detainee Affairs, now a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "One, naivety; two, irrational exuberance. They were going to be better stronger and faster than us. They had all the answers."

One year later, the two biggest answers are just like Bush's: the closure date is uncertain and a certain number of terror suspects will be held indefinitely and without charges.

The second "answer" infuriates human rights groups and flatly contradicts Obama's May 21 speech at the National Archives.

"Our goal is to construct a legitimate legal framework for remaining Guantanamo detainees that cannot be transferred - not to avoid one," Obama said then. "In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man. If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war,we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight."

But Obama's done nothing to negotiate a new law on indefinite detention. Instead, he's fallen back on the Bush argument that war powers given his administration after 9/11 to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan allow for the indefinite detention of terror suspects.

White House officials say Congress won't pass a new law on detention without trial. The futility excuse does not fly in some quarters.

"The president made a very clear speech in May, saying he was not going to act alone in this," Wittes said. "Then the administration changed its mind and decided that they're not going to do it because it's too politically difficult. I think they deserve a lot of criticism for that. The administration has kind of backed itself into adopting a very unhealthy policy that the last administration had."

Stimson says the failure to pursue a new law allowing for indefinite detentions could complicate, if not completely undermine, another vow Obama made in his National Archives speech.

"I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people," Obama said then.

Stimson fears federal judges may do just that once, as expected, these detainees begin serving time in the maximum security prison in Thomson, Illinois, that Obama has ordered replace Guantanamo.

"If they move those folks to Thomson or somewhere else in the united states, judges will order some of those guys into the united states because they're rights have not been defined their privileges have not been defined," Stimson said.

There are 196 detainees at Gitmo now. The Obama administration has released 44. Top officials said today 110 will be sent to other countries, 35 will be tried in U.S. federal courts and roughly 50 will be held without trial.

These numbers reflect a year's worth of work settling - once and for all - what will become of each and every detainee. On this score, Stimson offers Obama high praise.

"We should give credit where credit is due," Stimson said. "They've done something we didn't do. They have shared all the information on all the detainees and racked and stacked them in ways that we didn't. This series of executive orders did serve a good purpose."

But that praise is cold comfort to a White House that can only regard its extravagant "closed in one year" promise as its most conspicuous first-year policy failure.

"Of course that's a policy failure," Wittes said, adding the Democratically controlled Congress deserves some of the blame. "(The White House) has had an exceedingly uncooperative Congress. Many members of both parties have shown themselves much more interested in preventing people from ending up congressional districts than in helping to effectuate an effective national policy. And the administration has not been effective in engaging Congress."

The White House, still reeling from the loss of the Democrats' 60th U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, is trying to find a new way forward on health care. But analysts say it must also persuade Congress to provide new funds to purchase and retro-fit the prison in Thomson, Illinois.

Stimson, for one, isn't optimistic.

"This is an election year. There is law in place that prevents detainees from being brought to the United States unless it's for trial," Stimson said. "With (Senator-elect) Scott Brown's victory now looming in the minds of reasonable Democrats, very few are going to vote to import terrorists to the United States."

Will Gitmo still be open in January 2011?

"I think it's most likely there will still be people at Gitmo a year from now," Wittes said.

"Without a doubt, Guantanamo will not close in 2010," Stimson said.

One thing will be different, though.

"The aspect of this conversation that we will not be having (a year from now) is about unrealistic expectations and deadlines that (the White House) can't meet. I think that's a lesson they've really learned."

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The Associated Press
Wednesday, January 27, 2010; 10:14 PM

 

WASHINGTON -- Don't look for any mention of Pakistan's struggle with al-Qaida in President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.

Or the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Or the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Obama was notably silent on those elements of American foreign policy during his speech Wednesday night to Congress. All are top challenges facing his administration, but they didn't make the cut for his first State of the Union address.

Obama promised during his first days in office to shut down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. That effort is ongoing, but he has missed his own one-year deadline.

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WASHINGTON – An unusual piece of theater that unfolded in the blink of an eye at the State of the Union speech raises questions:

Was President Barack Obama rude to criticize a Supreme Court decision in the company of the justices?

Was his complaint about the decision, which removed corporate campaign spending limits, right?

Was Justice Samuel Alito's read-my-lips critique — "not true" — not true?

Republicans huffed Thursday about Obama's jab at the court. But it was worth keeping in mind that presidents and lawmakers routinely criticize Supreme Court decisions and the justices who make them. Remember Bush v. Gore and the mutterings about a politically rigged court?

Democrats huffed about the huffing and declared that one of the great things about America is that powerful people can disagree in public. But it also was worth remembering that the justices were guests for Wednesday night's speech to Congress, placed as always in the best seats in the House.

It was an odd time and place for Obama to deliver a Supreme Court smackdown.

The ceremony and courtesies that attend rare assemblies of all three branches of power call on everyone to act with respect for tradition and a certain fellowship, however forced.

Exhibit A: The robed justices only clap at the beginning, the end and the safest moments in between. Their applause is invariably judicious, tipping no hand about their political leanings or whether they actually liked what they heard. No fist bumps here.

Still, this is not a nation of powdered wigs and genuflection.

Authority is constantly, bluntly challenged, although not usually during wedding toasts, funeral rites or State of the Union addresses.

Looking down at the six justices seated in front of him as well as to the wider masses, Obama departed from the scrolling text of his speech and added an unscripted preamble.

"With all due deference to the separation of powers," he began delicately, then reverted to his prepared remarks, "the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections."

Alito, part of the 5-4 majority in the landmark case, objected to the reference to a century of law upended, to the notion that floodgates have been opened, or both.

In any event, after Obama's line on those subjects, he shook his head and quietly mouthed words that included the phrase "not true."

He did not mean for lip-readers to go viral with it. Still, the episode stirred memories of the decorum-shattering shout of "You lie" by Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., during Obama's health care speech to Congress in September.

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said Obama was "kind of rude" in his remark. "It's one thing to say that he differed with the court but another thing to demagogue the issue while the court is sitting there out of respect for his position," he told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton saw it differently: "One of the great things about our democracy is that powerful members of the government at high levels can disagree in public and in private."

Vice President Joe Biden pointed out Obama did not question the integrity of the justices in criticizing the decision.

Instead, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned the integrity of the justices.

He accused "conservative activists" on the court of making decisions on their "whimsical preferences" and "ideological agenda" instead of the law.

Not one for understatement, Leahy said the decision was even worse than the Bush v. Gore case that settled a disputed election in the Republicans' favor in 2000 because conservative activist justices "have now decided to intervene in all elections."

The court's decision broke a century-old trend of tougher limits on corporate political activity. Specifically, the court said corporations and unions could spend freely from their treasuries to run political ads for or against specific candidates.

Obama was not quite accurate in saying the ruling "reversed a century of law" because the 1907 law in question was left intact.

Nor is it established, as Obama suggested it was, that corporations and foreigners can now have the run of the body politic, given other prohibitions still in place.

Still, those firewalls could tumble over time as a consequence of the court's broadly-drawn ruling. That would give fresh meaning to an observation made more than a century ago by Marcus Alonzo Hanna, an Ohio Republican operative who systematically hit up businesses for political cash.

"There are two things that are important in politics," he said in 1895. "The first is money and I can't remember what the second one is."

(This version CORRECTS that Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst took place during Obama's health care speech in September, not his first speech to Congress.)

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(CNSNews.com) - Top Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee publicly reprimanded Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano today for failing to show up at a hearing where the committee examined the attempted Christmas Day suicide bombing of Northwest Flight 253. One Democrat on the committee said he wanted to know “where the hell” Napolitano was. Napolitano sent Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Jane Holl Lute to testify in her place. The Homeland Security Committee is the congressional panel with primary oversight over Napolitano’s department. Appearing on CNN two days after the attempted Christmas Day suicide bombing, Napolitano had said: “And one thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked.” Republican sources on the committee said they believe Napolitano did not show up today because she did not want to explain why she said those words. Democrats openly expressed their dismay with Napolitano as the hearing proceeded. Rep. Chris Carney (D.-Pa.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight, said during his question period: “I am very dismayed that the Secretary herself isn’t here. I mean it’s probably fair to ask: “Where the Hell is Secretary Napolitano?” Rep. Jane Harman (D.-Calif.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Intelligence, said: "I would like to welcome our witnesses but comment on the absence of Secretary Napolitano. This is the committee with primary jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security. She is the secretary of Homeland Security. She is in Washington, D.C. She was invited to testify at this very important hearing, and she should have been here. … I am very personally disappointed that she isn’t here.” Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D.-Miss.) rebuked Napolitano for a lack of courtesy in dealing with the committee. Thompson said during the hearing that he had spoken with Napolitano just two days before and that there had been no discussion of her not attending. He did not want his committee to be “misled,” he said, added that the committee had first been told that Napolitano could not attend because she would be out of the country, then discovered that she was in fact in Washington, D.C. but would not attend anyway. “I don’t want the committee to be misled,” said Thompson. “Now, I talked with the secretary two days ago. We did not talk about her non-attendance or attendance at this hearing. Staff did communicate, based on a directive that we received that the secretary would not be here, and we worked on Assistant Secretary Lute’s presence. That changed, and, at a minimum, based on that change, somebody could have communicated back to the committee one way or the other that we told that you weren’t going to be here, we are here now, but we still can’t come because of some other things. That is the courtesy, I think, the committee still deserves. It does not require comment.”

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[No text]

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Well this is potentially embarrassing. It appears that the individual responsible for the naming convention of the presidential imagery on the official White House website has literally “given” hero status to the photos. Any effort to save the lead photos off the Whitehouse.gov homepage saves a file that starts with “hero_.” But its not ALL images on the site, nor the homepage. For example, the “Photo of the Day” is given the rather pedestrian name “P012710SA-0476.jpg.” Cue conservative critics using this as an example of the administrations Messianic complex in 3, 2, 1…Updated

For the non-blogging set, allow me to explain. Somebody at the White House is in charge of updating images on the White House website. And it appears that either that person (or more likely his or her boss) created some sort of naming structure for images of President Obama. Alas, it appears that this individual (or perhaps group of people) thought it smart/clever/ironic to name all the Presidential images by starting with the following prefix “hero_”.

One can see for oneself by going to whitehouse.gov and “right-clicking” on the image, selecting “Save Image,” then reading for oneself. All four images currently on the homepage have the same naming structure. Heads Will Roll!

>Update – a savvy commenter below points out the following: “Photographic Terminology & Glossary: When viewing a proof sheet or selection of images, the “Hero” image is the image selected for final use. i.e. typically the best image from the selection.”

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http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2E4NzU5YWI2NDllMDBjNmUyMDBjYWM0MzUwNTM1ODU=

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Via JWF. So implausible did this sound when I glanced at the header of his post that I figured it was based on some anonymous source claiming that they may do it or whatever. But no: They’ve already said no, and Gillibrand is on record as being “stunned.” No kidding.

You wanted a spending freeze? You got it.

The state’s two senators and 14 House members met with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just hours before President Obama implored in his speech to the nation for Congress to come together and deliver a government that delivers on its promises to the American people.

So the legislators were floored to learn the Democratic administration does not want to deliver for the tens of thousands of people who sacrificed after 9/11, and the untold numbers now getting sick.

“I was stunned — and very disappointed,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who like most of the other legislators had expected more of a discussion on how to more forward…

“She made it clear that the administration does not support any kind of funding mechanism that goes into the bill,” said Bronx Rep. Eliot Engel. “I think it’s fiscal restraint… but you know what? They find money for everything else, they need to find money for this,” Engel said…

The legislators did hold out hope, though. McMahon and others said they would appeal to the President to consider adding 9/11 money to the list ofmandatory items, rather than discretionary measures subject to the White House planned budget freeze.

Total cost: $11 billion … over 30 years. The optics of this are so appallingly bad, especially in light of the rumors circulating about the U.S. and UK offering the Taliban $1 billion to play ball in Afghanistan (which may be paying off), that I can’t believe there’s no ulterior motive. Is this actually some sort of kabuki aimed at giving Obama an excuse to reverse himself about the spending freeze? There’ll be a public outcry, The One will accede and agree to fund the 9/11 bill, and then Gibbs will use it every day going forward as a lesson in how they can’t cut spending because the compassionate American public simply won’t let them make hard choices about denying services to those in need. Or maybe they’re planning to add this to ObamaCare, as a lesson in how desperately some people need health care? Or am I overthinking this because I simply can’t believe they’ve become this tone deaf? What’s up, seriously?


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There was the president, and there were six members of the Supreme Court. The few words from the one to the others went by quickly. The president’s tone was mild compared to the animation in some other parts of the speech, and I thought he looked momentarily awkward. But maybe I was just projecting.

Mr. Obama’s words were sharp, echoing his earlier criticism of the court’s decision last week in the Citizens United case to strike down the limits that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law placed on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions. The decision would “open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign companies — to spend without limit in our elections,” Mr. Obama said, adding that “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests.” He urged Congress to “pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems.”

Nearly every president finds something to criticize about the Supreme Court, but not every one gets to do it to the justices’ faces, on national television, in the State of the Union speech. Of the six justices in the audience, three were in the majority in the 5-4 decision: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote the opinion; Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.; and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Three were among the four dissenters: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

Supreme Court justices usually make for an awkward sight at the State of the Union speech, because they sit stony-faced and never clap or cheer.

RELATED
The State of the Union

75 ThumbnailColumns, quick takes and the editorial on the president’s 2010 national address.

 

Some members of the court dislike the exercise so much that they never attend. Justice Sotomayor’s predecessor, David H. Souter, never did. For several years, Justice Breyer attended alone.

This time, Justice Alito shook his head as if to rebut the president’s characterization of the Citizens United decision, and seemed to mouth the words “not true.” Indeed, Mr. Obama’s description of the holding of the case was imprecise. He said the court had “reversed a century of law.”

The law that Congress enacted in the populist days of the early 20th century prohibited direct corporate contributions to political campaigns. That law was not at issue in the Citizens United case, and is still on the books. Rather, the court struck down a more complicated statute that barred corporations and unions from spending money directly from their treasuries — as opposed to their political action committees — on television advertising to urge a vote for or against a federal candidate in the period immediately before the election. It is true, though, that the majority wrote so broadly about corporate free speech rights as to call into question other limitations as well — although not necessarily the existing ban on direct contributions.

But this was a populist night and the target was irresistible. There are a variety of specific proposals floating around to address the Citizens United decision. The president offered no specifics and did not endorse any of them. Just as the decision doesn’t lend itself to a sound bite, neither do the fixes.

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When President Barack Obama asked New York Sen. Hillary Clinton to join his cabinet as secretary of state, the move was widely praised. Clinton, his principal rival for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, added a measure of gravitas to his team of advisers and would, it was suggested, help unite the president's party at a time the Republicans appeared to be on the verge of complete collapse.

At the time, comparisons were made to Abraham Lincoln. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin recounts in her book Team of Rivals how the 16th president of the United States invited others who held leadership claims on the new Republican Party into his cabinet in an effort to present a united front. But Lincoln's decision to invite his rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination--William H. Seward, Edward Bates, and Salmon P. Chase--into his administration was also a matter of political preservation. Their inclusion in the cabinet kept them inside the tent looking out rather than outside the tent looking in, forcing an alliance with Lincoln as the Union threatened to come apart.

It will be up to history to judge whether Obama's selection of Clinton falls in the same category. Whether it does or not depends on what Clinton decides to do.

[Sign up for a free four week trial subscription to U.S. News Weekly.]

She is not, unsurprisingly, speaking publicly about her intentions beyond saying, as she told PBS's Tavis Smiley in an interview that airs Wednesday night, that she is "absolutely not interested" in running again for president of the United States. But in the same interview Clinton also allows that her current job is a difficult and time-consuming one and that, while she is honored to have it, she cannot see herself serving in the same post in a second Obama administration.

The ongoing decline in the president's approval ratings has more than a few Democrats concerned. The Democratic defeats in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections and the Massachusetts Senate race have a number of them running scared, in much the same way that the party's poor performance in 1978 helped propel Sen. Edward M. Kennedy forward to challenge incumbent President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

The chatter has increased in recent days about Clinton leaving the cabinet sometime in the first term, likely over some matter of principle, so that she can position herself to challenge Obama in 2012. Perhaps it is just wishful thinking on the part of those Democrats who have already grown tired of Obama. What is true is that Clinton can still mobilize the political infrastructure necessary to mount an effective challenge to the sitting president. A primary challenge against a sitting president whose approval numbers are above 50 percent and one mounted against an incumbent who is below 50 percent are two very different things, a fact of which the Clinton political team is surely aware.

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Palin: The Credibility Gap

January 28, 2010

While I don’t wish to speak too harshly about President Obama’s state of the union address, we live in challenging times that call for candor. I call them as I see them, and I hope my frank assessment will be taken as an honest effort to move this conversation forward.

Last night, the president spoke of the “credibility gap” between the public’s expectations of their leaders and what those leaders actually deliver. “Credibility gap” is a good way to describe the chasm between rhetoric and reality in the president’s address. The contradictions seemed endless.

He called for Democrats and Republicans to “work through our differences,” but last year he dismissed any notion of bipartisanship when he smugly told Republicans, “I won.”

He talked like a Washington “outsider,” but he runs Washington! He’s had everything any president could ask for – an overwhelming majority in Congress and a fawning press corps that feels tingles every time he speaks. There was nothing preventing him from pursuing “common sense” solutions all along. He didn’t pursue them because they weren’t his priorities, and he spent his speech blaming Republicans for the problems caused by his own policies.

He dared us to “let him know” if we have a better health care plan, but he refused to allow Republicans in on the negotiations or consider any ideas for real free market and patient-centered reforms. We’ve been “letting him know” our ideas for months from the town halls to the tea parties, but he isn’t interested in listening. Instead he keeps making the nonsensical claim that his massive trillion-dollar health care bill won’t increase the deficit.

Americans are suffering from job losses and lower wages, yet the president practically demanded applause when he mentioned tax cuts, as if allowing people to keep more of their own hard-earned money is an act of noblesse oblige. He claims that he cut taxes, but I must have missed that. I see his policies as paving the way for massive tax increases and inflation, which is the “hidden tax” that most hurts the poor and the elderly living on fixed incomes.

He condemned lobbyists, but his White House is filled with former lobbyists, and this has been a banner year for K Street with his stimulus bill, aka the Lobbyist’s Full Employment Act. He talked about a “deficit of trust” and the need to “do our work in the open,” but he chased away the C-SPAN cameras and cut deals with insurance industry lobbyists behind closed doors.

He spoke of doing what’s best for the next generation and not leaving our children with a “mountain of debt,” but under his watch this year, government spending is up by 22%, and his budget will triple our national debt.

He spoke of a spending freeze, but doesn’t he realize that each new program he’s proposing comes with a new price tag? A spending freeze is a nice idea, but it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. We need a comprehensive examination of the role of government spending. The president’s deficit commission is little more than a bipartisan tax hike committee, lending political cover to raise taxes without seriously addressing the problem of spending.

He condemned bailouts, but he voted for them and then expanded and extended them. He praised the House’s financial reform bill, but where was Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in that bill? He still hasn’t told us when we’ll be getting out of the auto and the mortgage industries. He praised small businesses, but he’s spent the past year as a friend to big corporations and their lobbyists, who always find a way to make government regulations work in their favor at the expense of their mom & pop competitors.

He praised the effectiveness of his stimulus bill, but then he called for another one – this time cleverly renamed a “jobs bill.” The first stimulus was sold to us as a jobs bill that would keep unemployment under 8%. We now have double digit unemployment with no end in sight. Why should we trust this new “jobs bill”?

He talked about “making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development,” but apparently it’s still too tough for his Interior Secretary to move ahead with Virginia’s offshore oil and gas leases. If they’re dragging their feet on leases, how long will it take them to build “safe, clean nuclear power plants”? Meanwhile, he continued to emphasize “green jobs,” which require massive government subsidies for inefficient technologies that can’t survive on their own in the real world of the free market.

He spoke of supporting young girls in Afghanistan who want to go to school and young women in Iran who courageously protest in the streets, but where were his words of encouragement to the young girls of Afghanistan in his West Point speech? And where was his support for the young women of Iran when they were being gunned down in the streets of Tehran?

Despite speaking for an hour, the president only spent 10% of his speech on foreign policy, and he left us with many unanswered questions. Does he still think trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York is a good idea? Does he still think closing Gitmo is a good idea? Does he still believe in Mirandizing terrorists after the Christmas bomber fiasco? Does he believe we’re in a war against terrorists, or does he think this is just a global crime spree? Does he understand that the first priority of our government is to keep our country safe?

In his address last night, the president once again revealed that there’s a fundamental disconnect between what the American people expect from their government, and what he wants to deliver. He’s still proposing failed top-down big government solutions to our problems. Instead of smaller, smarter government, he’s taken a government that was already too big and supersized it. 

Real private sector jobs are created when taxes are low, investment is high, and people are free to go about their business without the heavy hand of government. The president thinks innovation comes from government subsidies. Common sense conservatives know innovation comes from unleashing the creative energy of American entrepreneurs.

Everything seems to be “unexpected” to this administration: unexpected job losses; unexpected housing numbers; unexpected political losses in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey. True leaders lead best when confronted with the unexpected. But instead of leading us, the president lectured us. He lectured Wall Street; he lectured Main Street; he lectured Congress; he even lectured our Supreme Court Justices.

He criticized politicians who “wage a perpetual campaign,” but he gave a campaign speech instead of a state of the union address. The campaign is over, and President Obama now has something that candidate Obama never had: an actual track record in office. We now can see the failed policies behind the flowery words. If Americans feel as cynical as the president suggests, perhaps it’s because the audacity of his recycled rhetoric no longer inspires hope.

Real leadership requires results. Real hope lies in the ingenuity, generosity, and boundless courage of the American people whose voices are still not being heard in Washington.

- Sarah Palin

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Last night, CNN did a focus group during the State of the Union Address, and it provided further evidence of the skepticism toward President Obama among independents. As always with focus groups, this needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But a few things worth noting in the video below. First, whenever Obama mentioned "hope," independents reacted negatively, and during the health care portion of the speech, while the reaction meter for Democrats turned up, the reaction among independents dropped like a rock.

 

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President Obama’s primary problem is not rhetorical -- though, about an hour into the State of the Union address, I gave up hoping that it might eventually build toward something remotely interesting. (For much of the speech Obama sounded like a commerce secretary at a professional conference on a particularly uninspired day.) Obama’s problem is not primarily political -- though he seems in complete denial about the political dangers he faces. (He amazingly blamed his health-care failure on “not explaining it more clearly.”) Obama’s problem is not a vice president behind his right shoulder who can’t stop his distracting, sycophantic nodding -- though it was certainly annoying.

Obama has a reality problem.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated this week that unemployment will average more than 10 percent for the first half of this year, before declining at a slower pace than in past recoveries. On this economic path, Obama’s presidency will fail. Many Democrats in the House chamber tonight will lose their jobs. And the nation will enter a Carter-like period of stagnation and self-doubt.

Every element of the president’s speech tonight should be considered in this light.

Health Care. On this issue, elected Democrats are desperate for leadership. They want to avoid total defeat on last year’s highest legislative priority, while pivoting swiftly to the economy. Obama gave no indication of how this feat will be accomplished. Instead, he called attention to his own virtue, foresight and tenacity in pursuing the issue. His approach was entirely self-centered. Democrats in tough races can only conclude that the president is indifferent to their political needs. On health care, it is every Democrat for himself.

The Deficit. The president’s trial balloon of a limited, discretionary spending freeze has quickly deflated. Conservatives dismiss it as pathetic symbolism. Liberals attack it as Hooverism. And the policy conflicts with Obama’s campaign criticism of spending freezes. It is a policy disaster.

A spending commission might be a good idea, if it had fast-track authority that forced Congress to vote on a package of serious cuts. But, as the president noted, the Senate defeated a similar measure earlier this week, and his executive order is weak version of this concept.

Middle Class Relief. These are the type of proposals that work for politicians in normal economic times. In bad economic times, the middle class (and others) do not want symbolism and sympathy. They want economic growth and jobs.

Economic Growth and Jobs. Tonight the president had one main task: to make a credible case that his policies will help reduce unemployment. For the most part, he failed. His proposal to cut the capital gains tax for small business investment seems positive. His other ideas -- taking money from some bankers and giving it to other bankers and a temporary hiring tax credit -- are a caricature of job-creation policy. For the most part, Obama defended a continuation and expansion of the stimulus package, which promises to bring prosperity on high-speed trains. Compare Obama's speech to John Kennedy’s State of the Union in 1963, which called for permanent tax cuts that would allow America to move toward full employment. Some Democratic presidents have actually understood how the economy works.

After a series of political humiliations, Obama called on Republicans to change their course. Facing a general revolt against Washington, he proudly took credit for posting the names of White House visitors online. Promising to change the tone in Washington, he managed to be petty, backward looking, defiant and self-justifying.

Barack Obama has lost his promise. He has lost his momentum. He has lost his touch. He has lost his filibuster-proof Senate majority. He has lost his first year in office.

Tonight, he lost his grip on reality.

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Only ten?  Maybe the Associated Press got as tired as everyone else listening to Barack Obama’s lengthy State of the Union speech last night and stopped paying attention after an hour.   AP’s headline focuses on the “toothless commission” that Obama demanded, but the other nine fails on their fact-check test are just as interesting and revealing (via Geoff A):

President Barack Obama told Americans the bipartisan deficit commission he will appoint won’t just be “one of those Washington gimmicks.” Left unspoken in that assurance was the fact that the commission won’t have any teeth. …

OBAMA: “I’ve called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can’t be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline. Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.”

THE FACTS: Any commission that Obama creates would be a weak substitute for what he really wanted — a commission created by Congress that could force lawmakers to consider unpopular remedies to reduce the debt, including curbing politically sensitive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. That idea crashed in the Senate this week, defeated by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success.

Of course, even his first proposal was a rather dishonest dodge of accountability, especially for Democrats.  A bipartisan commission that recommended tax hikes as a means of raising revenue would allow Democrats to shove part of the blame for raising taxes in a recession on Republicans.  It would allow more of them to tell voters, “Well, we committed to doing what the commission demanded,” or “We had to accept the commission’s findings in toto based on the rules established for it,” or other such nonsense.  We already have a bipartisan commission with 535 members to handle budgetary decisions — it’s called Congress.

The other whoppers:

  • Spending freeze – The AP points out that it will save less than 1% of predicted deficits over the next ten years — and that Obama scoffed at such a plan when John McCain proposed it in 2008.
  • Health care – Obama said the Democratic plan would allow people to keep their insurance and their doctors, but the bill doesn’t guarantee either.  Their plan has massive cuts to Medicare Advantage, which would definitely affect coverage of a large portion of America’s seniors and disabled.
  • Lobbyists – Obama has not “excluded” lobbyists from his administration; he’s hired over a dozen for key posts, and the AP notes seven of those waivers were for White House posts.  Obama called for restrictions on lobbyist contributions, but those already exist.
  • Two million jobs saved through Porkulus – The CBO puts the theoretical range between 600K and 1.6 million, but also cautions that the methodology of estimating jobs “saved or created” is “uncertain.”  The last detailed numbers the White House produced totaled 650,000 — and were found to be highly inaccurate.
  • Openness: “Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign — to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN “so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders behind closed doors. Nor has Obama lived up consistently to his pledge to ensure that legislation is posted online for five days before it’s acted upon.”

The last two are on the rate of killing al-Qaeda leadership and the status on START talks with Russia.  In both cases, the AP suspects that Obama overstates his case, but also reports that it’s difficult to measure either.  The US has never given body counts on fighting AQ in the Af-Pak theater, mainly because many of the operations are covert, and because enemy body counts fell out of favor with the Vietnam War and have been only reluctantly shared in other conflicts.

Let me add at least one other whopper that the AP doesn’t mention.  Obama repeatedly insisted that he inherited massive budgetary problems from George Bush, but the Con Law professor may want to retake his high-school civics class.  Congress passes budgets, not the President, and the last three budgets came from Democrats.  In three years, they increased annual federal spending by $900 billion, while the admittedly profligate and irresponsible Republican Congresses under George Bush increased annual federal spending by $800 billion — in six years.  And during the last three years before taking office as President, Obama served in the Senate that passed those bills, and he voted for every Democratic budget put in front of him.


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