Obama Finding The Same Tough Issues Bush Had
Jul 2, 2009 Political
Barack Obama addressed the issue of indefinite detentions for the enemy combatants we are holding and said that the thought “gives me huge pause.” He has already discovered how difficult it is to get rid of the ones that we have determined can be released because, like Bush, he is unable to find them homes.
According to the AP:
But the president says there are some detainees who don’t fall neatly into existing categories for criminal prosecution in the United States or under international law.
Obama says that dealing with these situations is going to be “one of the biggest challenges” of his administration. The president says he’s not comfortable imposing indefinite detentions by executive order. But he didn’t explicitly rule it out. Breitbart
Obama has discovered that some of these people do not fit into neat little categories and that bringing them to trial is a difficult issue. He said that he was not comfortable with the Executive Order but did not rule it out. In fact, recent news indicates that his administration is drafting an EO that will do just what he is uncomfortable with.
This rookie went to the White House full of bravado and ideals with plans that he just knew would get things done. He made it sound so elementary during the campaign. Bush was an evil man who just wanted to hold these innocent people who were out wandering around battlefields minding their own business when our troops captured them. Some claim that a few were turned in for reward money. They were falsely accused. If that is the case would they have ever made it to Gitmo? We have plenty of places to hold them overseas and could have easily released them. Even if true, it amounts to a small minority of those held and they have probably been cleared but don’t want to go home and no one will take them.
Obama’s biggest problem with this is that he acted without thinking in order to appease his supporters. He signed the order to close Gitmo in a year before he had all the facts and before he discussed the release with other countries. Now he has a base that expects him to close the place on time and he is having trouble getting rid of the offenders. He might end up moving them to other prisons in the war zone in order to close Gitmo but he will not really be keeping his promise. He will just be shifting the issue from Cuba to some other place. He can claim he did what he said but it would be a hollow claim.
Rushing in without thinking seems to be a pattern with this guy. He rushed on Gitmo and then he rushed the stimulus bill through so quickly that he broke promises about transparency in so doing. In addition, no one had a chance to read the thing and there have been unintended consequences. The stimulus has also not had any effect on the economy. This economic downturn would have begun a recovery by now had the government not involved itself. It is FDR and the Great Depression all over again.
Now they are rushing Cap and Trade and Health Care Reform through. No one had the chance to read Cap and Trade and it is a disaster.
This guy is rushing head first into things in order to get them passed while he has a majority and popularity. He wants to get these things done, never letting a crisis go to waste, before the public turns on him which it is beginning to do.
The natives are restless. Obama promised that unemployment rate would not go higher than 8% if the stimulus was enacted but would be higher if it was not. The stimulus was enacted and unemployment is at 9.5%, further proof they do not know what they are talking about. The report is here and the end note only states that the estimate for unemployment without action could be higher. It does not give an out for it going up if they enacted the stimulus. They believed it would work so why have an out?
(1) Forecasts of the unemployment rate without the recovery plan vary substantially. Some private forecasters anticipate unemployment rates as high as 11% in the absence of action.
Obama rushes head first into the fire without knowing what is going on. He is using the “crisis” to get the Democrats’ wish list passed before the pitchfork crowd starts surrounding DC.
His pattern from Gitmo to economy has been to rush in. He exercises “caution” when he should be a roaring voice in the world but rushes things here at home. That is no way to lead.
A rookie at the helm is a bad thing.
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Tags: detainees, gitmo, indefinite detention, Obama, rookie, stimulus
The Stimulus And Jobs; A Visual Tutorial
Jun 14, 2009 Political
Joe Biden was on Meet the Press where he said this about the failing stimulus:
Biden tells “Meet the Press” that “everyone guessed wrong” on the impact of the stimulus, economy was worse off than anyone thought.
Isn’t it nice to know the supposed leaders are guessing about how things will be? I know that much of what happens is based upon predictions and supporters are quick to point that out (since a prediction is an educated guess). They seem to have problems with reconciling the issue of what Obama said would happen with the Stimulus and what would happen without. While I realize jobs lag in any recovery, it was not I who said I would create or “save” so many jobs by certain points in time by spending nearly a trillion dollars.
Seems to me if you are going to spend that much money you really ought to have better people making the predictions. Obama predicted we would be at a certain place at a certain time and we are not there. Biden ducked that issue; “[Biden] Backs away from the estimate that the funds could create or save 3.5 million jobs, instead promises 600,000 by the end of the summer.”
Here is a video that shows this with training aids, for those who learn better that way:
Please feel free to comment (a penny for your thoughts…)
Source:
Time
Big Dog Salute to Stop the ACLU
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Tags: biden, failure, job losses, Obama, stimulus
Majority Of Those Polled Say Cancel The Stimulus
Jun 11, 2009 Opinion, Political
Rasmussen has a fresh new poll out that indicates 45% of Americans polled want the government to cancel the rest of the stimulus spending. 36% disagree with that and 20% don’t know. This is a drastic turn around from just 4 months ago when the massive package was passed.
At that time, my friend and frequent commenter, Adam told me that I was out of touch and that the majority supported this boondoggle. It has taken people a little bit of time to wake up to what many of us knew from the start but they are awakening. Now that they have had time to see how out of control spending is and how it will affect future generations they are not too happy with the package and want the government to end it.
The stimulus was not really a jobs creation package as much as it was a reason to spend money on countless pet projects, many of which will not create (or even save) one single job. There is spending for far too many items that have nothing to do with stimulating the economy and there are pay offs to political supporters. Most people polled do not think the stimulus will create jobs and most do not think it will be good for the economy:
However, only 31% of Americans believe the new government spending in the stimulus package creates new jobs. Forty-eight percent (48%) say the stimulus spending does not create jobs, and 21% are not sure.
Americans have mixed feelings about whether speeding up the new government spending in the stimulus package will help the economy. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say the increased spending will be good for the economy, but 44% say it will be bad. Eight percent (8%) think it will have no impact.
Rahm Emanuel said not to let a good crisis go to waste and that is the philosophy of this administration but the public is slowly catching on and they are seeing this for what it really is; spending for the sake of spending.
Unemployment continues to increase because the stimulus will not create many jobs, at least not enough to justify the expense.
What say you liberals who extolled the virtues of the stimulus and boasted about how people overwhelmingly supported it? Will you now have a change of heart because your fellow Americans want it ended?
You wanted me to climb on board because of majority support. Will you now jump off because the majority does not support?
Will you live by what you expect of others?
I expect to see Obama’s approval ratings start to decline in the near future.
Americans are waking up.
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Attributed to Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
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Tags: Obama, objections, stimulus, unemployment
Laugher; Obama Wants Fiscal Responsibility
Jun 10, 2009 Political
After spending more money than any of the past presidents and after quadrupling the debt, Obama now claims to want fiscal responsibility. He is touting the pay as you go plan which means that Congress must have the money to spend it. If they spend a dollar they have to either cut a dollar or raise one in taxes. Besides the comedy involved with Obama wanting to be fiscally responsible, pay as you go is not a bad idea. Except…
Democrats have options under pay as you go. They either have to cut something or raise taxes. Their history is quite clear, they will not cut spending and they will not cut other budget items so that leaves them with raising taxes.
“The ‘pay as you go’ principle is very simple. Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere,” Obama said in a speech at the White House attended by several Democratic members of Congress. al-Reuters
Notice he did not say or raise taxes. That would be too honest and meet opposition. He is misleading us once again.
Under pay as you go the Democrats will continue to spend and will raise taxes to pay for it. Imagine if pay as you go was the rule prior to the stimulus. There is no doubt that taxes will have to be raised but they would have to have raised them when they passed the stimulus and we would be getting socked from all angles.
The stimulus would have never passed.
If pay as you go becomes the rule and there is no mechanism to keep them from raising taxes then everyone who earns wages will end up paying more. There are simply not enough rich people to pay for the largess of government.
The irony of it all is that Obama is talking about fiscal responsibility when he has been fiscally irresponsible since the day he took office.
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Tags: fiscal responsibility, Obama, stimulus
Germany Was Right About Stimulus
Jun 9, 2009 Political
Barack Obama said we needed to pass the stimulus package or things could worsen. He said we could go into a tailspin, a spiral from which we might not recover. The very fear tactics he criticized Bush for were front and center. Obama said that if we did not pass the stimulus that unemployment would be over 9% but if we did pass it unemployment would be around 8%. He got it passed and unemployment is now at 9.4%. My liberal friends dismiss this and say that these are just estimates and predictions. If this is the case and he was this wrong, why should we pay attention to any of his other predictions?
Obama tried to get Angela Merkel of Germany to pass a huge stimulus and she said NO. The Keynesian economists were not happy. Merkel took the same approach that I wanted us to take, and that was not to spend the money.
Looks like she was correct. According to the AP (via Forbes) The unemployment rate in Germany is dropping and jobs are being created or or filled (or are they being saved).
The number of jobless dropped 127,000 in May to 3.458 million for a 0.4 percentage point decline in the unemployment rate to 8.2 percent, the Nuremberg-based agency said. Forbes
The article does indicate that some of these are seasonal jobs and that there might not be a lasting recovery. The important thing to take away is that Germany did not spend huge sums of money for a stimulus and the country did not go into a tailspin and into a spiral from which it might not recover.
In other words, they are seeing some improvement that might not be sustained but that is better than ours and they did not spend a trillion dollars. As I said, the economy moves in cycles and there will be recessions. Our biggest mistake is to intervene and manipulate the economy because it eventually adds up. All the interventions of the past exploded in 2008 (along with Democratic housing market antics). If we let the economy move in its normal cycles things will get better faster.
The US will lag behind Germany in recovery because we made the same mistakes that FDR did during the Great Depression.
What makes anyone think that government can fix the problem it created? If spending were the solution we would not have a problem because government has been on a spending spree for years.
Unemployment will be in the double digits along with inflation right after we suffer the deflationary cycle. All the stimulus in the world will not help.
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Tags: depression, germany, inflation, merkel, Obama, stimulus