Nice Deb only has time for two or three posts a day, and these days, she’s feeling rather overwhelmed. My intention is not to be primarily an “anti-Obama” site, but he leaves me no choice. How can I not comment on these daily outrages and faux pas? How can I take a break from politics, and write about light hearted and interesting stories in the news, if virtually everything the man does is an embarrassment and/or God-awful violation of everything patriotic Americans hold dear?
Just in the past few days, these stories have hit the news/blogs:
•A proposal, intended to save the Department of Veterans Affairs $530 million a year, to authorize the VA to bill private insurance companies for the treatment of injuries and medical conditions related to military service, such as amputations, post-traumatic stress disorder and other battle wounds.
COB6 of This Ain’t Hell is calling on General Erik K. Shinseki, the new head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, to resign in protest.
I haven’t blogged about this, because frankly, the milblogs have it pretty much covered, and I have nothing unique or particularly insightful to contribute, other than WTF?!
UPDATE:
Obama has backed away from the proposal.
President Obama will not pursue a proposal that would have allowed the VA to charge private insurance companies for the treatment of veterans with service- and war-related injuries. The proposal raised the ire of prominent Democrats on the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs panels. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was the first to announce Wednesday afternoon that the president won’t pursue such a proposal.
It’s scary that it was even under consideration.
•Barack Obama makes his first appellate court appointment, and it’s a doozy:
David Hamilton will be moving from the federal district court to the Seventh Circuit.
Hamilton has been involved in several controversial cases. In 2005, he ruled that the daily invocation of the Indiana House too often referred to Jesus Christ and a Christian god, in violation of the Constitution, which forbids the government to show preference for any religious denomination. The decision was overturned on appeal on technical grounds.
In 2003, Hamilton struck down part of an Indiana law requiring abortion clinics to give women information about alternatives to abortion in the presence of a physician or nurse. The information had to be given to women 18 hours before the procedure, requiring them to make two visits to the doctor’s office to obtain the procedure. That decision was also overturned on appeal.
Incredibly, Obama characterizes Hamilton as a “model of moderation”.
It’s far from clear what justifies the article’s characterization of Hamilton as a “moderate” (or, as the article oddly puts it, as “represent[ing] some of his state’s traditionally moderate strain”—how does one represent some of a strain?). Was it perhaps Hamilton’s service as vice president for litigation, and as a board member, of the Indiana branch of the ACLU? Or maybe Hamilton’s extraordinary seven-year-long series of rulings obstructing Indiana’s implementation of its law providing for informed consent on abortion? That obstruction elicited this strong statement (emphasis added) from the Seventh Circuit panel majority that overturned Hamilton:
For seven years Indiana has been prevented from enforcing a statute materially identical to a law held valid by the Supreme Court in Casey, by this court in Karlin, and by the fifth circuit in Barnes. No court anywhere in the country (other than one district judge in Indiana [i.e., Hamilton]) has held any similar law invalid in the years since Casey. Although Salerno does not foreclose all pre-enforcement challenges to abortion laws, it is an abuse of discretion for a district judge to issue a pre-enforcement injunction while the effects of the law (and reasons for those effects) are open to debate.
Or perhaps Hamilton’s inventive invocation of substantive due process to suppress evidence of a criminal defendant’s possession of cocaine, a ruling that, alas, was unanimously reversed by the Seventh Circuit?
MORE:
Just great. The American Spectator calls Hamilton, ACORN’s Federal Judge. Of course.
•Obama appoints a “Minister of Culture”:
Obama administration has decided to appoint Kareem Dale to oversee culture in America.
President Barack Obama has established a staff position in the White House to oversee arts and culture in the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs under Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, a White House official confirmed. Kareem Dale, right, a lawyer who last month was named special assistant to the president for disability policy, will hold the new position.
Ed Morrissey has some questions about this:
…why does America need a Minister of Culture, or even an Assistant Sub-Under Secretary/Receptionist for Cultural Affairs? Did the Constitution give the executive power to shape culture? Or did Obama suddenly run out of work and needed to find something to do with his time and energy?
We know the latter isn’t true. After all, according to the latest at the White House website, Obama still has yet to fill seventeen of eighteen top-level positions at Treasury. Obama has yet to nominate most of the Senate-confirmation-required positions in his administration, but Obama insists that economics has been his priority in his first two months as President., while so many crucial ones
Instead of appointing Ministers of Culture, maybe the Obama administration should focus on selecting people to handle economics. If he did that, perhaps we would get less Deadbeatonomics and more sanity. We need that a lot more than cultural advisers in this White House.
When we are going through tough economic times, and watching the deficit quadruple by the end of the year, why on earth would Obama add an utterly unnecessary post, while so many crucial ones remain unfilled? Political payback?
•The Obama administration decides to disarm pilots:
Hot Air:
After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.
Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.
As Ace said, “If you don’t trust a pilot to carry a gun, what the f*** are you doing allowing him at the controls of a plane carrying 300 people?”
•ACORN To Assist Obama Administration With 2010 Census:
What could go wrong?
•Obama’s faux AIG outrage:
The AP:
Cue the outrage. For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn’t until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back.
Gateway Pundit piles on:
Glenn Reynolds reported that Pelosi-Obama Stimulus Bill explicitly guaranteed contractual bonuses executed before February 11. It looks like Democratic Senator Dodd, who is already in hot water, was the one who slipped this provision into the bill.
And, there’s this…
Contributions To Obama Campaign Track Bailout Money. “In receiving $43.5 billion for their investment of just over $3.3 million, it looks like the banks that gambled on Wall Street certainly got their money’s worth out of their investment in Barack Obama.”
Why is this not surprising?
UPDATE: This is good… Barack Obama received his own $101,332 “bonus” from AIG.
MORE from Ace:
Dodd Admits He Slipped In Bonus-Permitting Language, But Only on Demand of Obama’s Treasury Officials….
Of course Obama has only filled one position in the Treasury dept.
•Obama’s ridiculous reliance upon his teleprompter continues to embarrass:
A teleprompt blunder has led to Barack Obama thanking himself in a speech at the White House in a St Patrick’s Day celebration.
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen was just a few paragraphs into an address in Washington when he realised it all sounded a bit too familiar.
It was. He was repeating the speech President Barack Obama had just read from the same teleprompter.
Mr Cowen stopped, turned to the president and said: “That’s your speech.”
A laughing Mr Obama returned to the podium to take over but it seems the script had finally been switched and the US president ended up thanking himself for inviting everyone to the party.
You would think that he would have discovered the problem before he had gotten to the point of actually thanking himself.
Rush Limbaugh has taken to referring to Obama as a duel entity: (Obama and his teleprompter). He also stated unequivocally, today, that he hopes Obama’s teleprompter fails, too.
•Obama’s new spiritual adviser another far left practitioner of Liberation theology:
Now that he no longer draws spiritual succor from Jeremiah Wright—the America-hating, racist demagogue who served as his pastor and spiritual mentor for twenty years—Barack Obama has turned elsewhere for guidance in the task of carrying out his political duties while remaining true to his religious values.
The most notable of his spiritual advisors today is his friend of many years, Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of the Sojourners organization. Says Wallis, “We’ve [he and Obama] been talking faith and politics for a long time.”
See FrontPageMagazine for the full report.
•Obama overturns the Bush (43) executive order on stem cell research, “restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making”.
The implication being that Bush’s position was dictated by “dogma, ideology and politics”.
Charles Krauthammer, who was invited to the signing ceremony, but declined, claims he would have walked out.
What an outrage. Bush’s nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.
Obama’s address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the “false choice between sound science and moral values.” Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the “use of cloning for human reproduction.”
Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.
Is he so obtuse as not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.
PJ O’Roarke piles on:
….the president puts it, “Many thoughtful and decent people are conflicted about, or strongly oppose this research. And I understand their concerns, and I believe that we must respect their point of view.”
Mr. President, sir, if this is your respect, I’d rather have your contempt or your waistline or something other than what you’re giving me here. The more so because in the next sentence you say,
But after much discussion, debate and reflection, the proper course has become clear. The majority of Americans–from across the political spectrum, and of all backgrounds and beliefs–have come to a consensus that we should pursue this research.
Mr. President, you’re lying. There is no consensus. And you are not only wrong about the relationship between facts and morals, you are wrong about the facts of democracy. In America we have a process called voting–I seem to remember you were once very interested in it. We the citizens determine whether and how to spend the proceeds of taxation, which we alone are empowered to impose upon ourselves through our elected representatives in Congress, not the White House. If you want to kill little, bitty babies, get Congress to pass a law to kill little, bitty babies, if you can. I’m not going to bother arguing with you about whether it’s wrong. Surely you too gazed at the sonogram screen and saw a thumb-sized daughter tumbling in the womb, having the time of her life. And a short life it will be, in a Petri dish. But we’ve already established that you don’t know wrong from right.
•Janet Napolitano, Obama’s new Homeland Security Secretary Comes Up With “Nuanced” New Euphemism for Terrorism:
In my speech, although I did not use the word “terrorism,” I referred to “man-caused” disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.
“Man-caused” disasters?!
You see what I mean? This is only a partial list of the b.s. coming out of this administration, and I need to quit blogging, now, because I have things to do, today. Who can keep up with all of this insanity? The stupidity and incompetence we are confronted with day after day is just mindboggling.
I grow weary of it. Can’t he do just one thing right, so I can take a break?
UPDATE:
Now this from the Washington Times:
•Obama profits off kiddie propaganda project:
As he empathized with recession-weary Americans, President Obama arranged in the days just before he took office to secure a $500,000 advance for a children’s book project, a disclosure report shows.
The book is to be an abridged version of Dreams From My Father, for middle school kids.
“I don’t recall any sitting president entering into a book deal,” said campaign finance lawyer Jan Baran, former general counsel to the Republican National Committee. “They all have historically done that after they leave office.
“I recall the only ones who did sign book deals while living there were first ladies, and my recollection is they gave it to charity.”
As Drew at Ace of Spades HQ said, “It’s almost like the rules and traditions of the office don’t apply to Him or something”.
UPDATE II (March 19):
The outrages are coming fast and furious, these days. How about this to get your blood pressure up?:
•Obama administration plans to release GITMO detainees inside the U.S.
Attorney General Eric Holder said some detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may end up being released in the U.S. as the Obama administration works with foreign allies to resettle some of the prisoners.
Mr. Holder, in a briefing with reporters, said administration officials are still reviewing individual cases of the approximately 250 detainees to determine which will be put on trial and which may be released to comply with plans to close the detention facility by next year.
Ed Morressey makes the brilliant point that apparently hasn’t crossed the minds of our betters in the Obama administration:
What a great idea for national security! Why, most of these fellows could never have made it inside the US had we not captured and detained them on the battlefield. Now we’ll just bring them in ourselves, bypassing all of those nasty border- and transportation-security systems designed just to keep these very radical Islamist terrorists from entering the country. Brilliant!
Why will Holder consider releasing them in the US? The Obama administration found out that talk is cheap among our European allies. Most of the detainees can’t return to their home countries, because their home countries will either kill them (Saudi Arabia, China), torture them and then kill them (Egypt), or send them straight back to al-Qaeda with lovely parting gifts (Yemen). Obama wants Europe to take them, since most of Europe spent the last seven years criticizing Gitmo and demanding their release. Now that Obama actually called their bluff, Europe suddenly discovers that they don’t want dangerous terrorists in their back yards, either.
Call it a survival impulse that the Obama administration lacks.
I wonder which lucky American communities will be taking in these wayward practitioners of “Man made disasters”.
ONE MORE:
Via Pirate’s Cove:
•The White House leaks to the press their covert plans in Pock-ee-stahn. Brilliant.
OKAY, THE LAST ONE, I PROMISE, BEFORE I START A NEW THREAD:
•Obama insults the mentally disabled on Jay Leno.
The President of the United States, appearing on the Jay Leno show:
Towards the end of his approximately 40-minute appearance, the president talked about how he’s gotten better at bowling and has been practicing in the White House bowling alley.
He bowled a 129, the president said.
“That’s very good, Mr. President,” Leno said sarcastically.
It’s “like the Special Olympics or something,” the president said.
When asked about the remark, the White House had no comment.
The remark will almost certainly be edited out of the show. I would watch, but I need to clean my kitchen cabinets, so darn the luck, I’m gonna miss it. But I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough that it was.
Also, Newsbusters is reporting that:
NYT’s web-posting concerning Obama’s “Tonight Show” appearance didn’t cover his Special Olympics faux pas. Ditto USA Today. And AP. And MSNBC.com.
From what I can tell, of the major outlets — not including blogs — only the Christian Science Monitor and FoxNews.com covered this.
Snap!
Apparently the remark was not edited out. See Newsbusters for video.
LAST UPDATE (March 25):
l’d still like to see that video.
Kevin Baker
Photoshop credit: Leo Alberti
Obama Sushi
