Is There Rhyme of Reason to Obama's Foreign Policy?

Victore Davis Hanson isn't really sure.

"During the 2008 campaign, the Obama group argued that Bush & Co. were insensitive to allies and had acted in clumsy, unilateral fashion, permanently damaging our stature in the world. Given the first 15 months of foreign policy in the new administration, we can see now that Obama's critique largely meant that we had damaged relations with supposed belligerents like Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela — inasmuch as right now, British, Colombian, Czech, German, Honduran, Indian, Israeli, Japanese, Polish, and South Korean leaders might privately prefer the good "bad" old days of the supposed cowboy Bush. All of which raises the question: Why Obama's shift in foreign policy? I offer four alternatives, uncertain of the answer myself."

Click through and read the whole thing. Frankly, my money is on "d".

Obama Inherited a Mess Alright - One of His Own Making

I've posted a couple of times on why it isn't quite accurate to blame presidents for deficits. The simple fact of the matter is all spending bills orignate in the House of Representatives. This time though, President Obama rightly gets his share of the blame. Congress.org has an open letter to Harry Reid with the subject line "I'm Sick of Inherited", that makes exactly this same point. It rightly points out that the Democrat Party controlled House started the recent climb in deficits and as a Senator, President Obama voted in favor of the budget busting spending of the 110th Congress and as President signed the 111th Congress' spending into law.  Here is the letter in it's entirety, along with my favorite graphic illustration of the deficit timeline since 2000.

To:  Sen. Harry Reid

February 23, 2010

The Washington Post babbled again recently about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush, blah blah blah. Amazingly enough, a lot of people swallow this nonsense.

So once more, I'll try a short civics lesson.

Budgets do not get approved by the White House. They are passed only by CONGRESS and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. For FY 2009, though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009.

Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period:

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for those budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th.

Obama: A Real-Life Version of Saruman?

Lately I have been picking up on a common theme in the blogosphere. Roger L . Simon for one has posed a pop-quiz question; “Can anyone think of anything memorable Obama said in one of his speeches other than hope, change, etc.?” I’ve seen a few other mentions of people who have heard his speeches being unable to remember any particular quotes from them but do remember that they thought they liked them at the time. As James Taranto quipped in the lead paragraph of today’s Best of the Web Today at the Wall Street Journal, “President Obama is to deliver his first official State of the Union Address tonight, though he has previously given two speeches to joint sessions of Congress, the one nobody remembers and the one during which a rude man shouted, "You lie!" .“ There have been a few other examples of others making similar observations in the last week or so, just none that I can find right now. Like Obama’s words, they soon fade from memory.

I thought all this seemed familiar to me, listening to him speak and watching how people reacted to his voice. It took a while but then I remembered why. Obama has the same ability as Saruman, the supposedly good wizard gone very, very bad in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy to lull the weak-minded with his voice. In the second book, The Two Towers, we find this description of Saruman’s voice on page 183:

…..Suddenly, another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke, they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. For some the spell only lasted while the voice spoke to them, and when it spoke to another they smiled, as men do who see through a juggler’s trick while others gape at it. For many the sound of the voice alone was enough to hold them enthralled; but for those whom it conquered the spell endured when they were far away, and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them. But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.

Personally, I have never been able to stand listening to President Obama at all. His voice grates on me and I find myself wanting to yell at the TV, which annoys the dog so I refrain, but the Saruman description is the first thing I think about whenever I do hear it. In the end, Saruman’s voice lost its ability to beguile when Gandalf provoked him into losing his temper, something else Obama seems to be having trouble controlling lately, thereby exposing his true nature. The spell was broken forever.

Obama’s sole talent as an orator is the ability to read a teleprompter. It is his crutch and when his crutch is taken away, he is every bit as inarticulate as George W. Bush was um, ah, um, derided for being. When he does have the teleprompter, it looks like he’s watching a tennis match with his head swiveling back and forth between screens. It’s very distracting after a while.

I can’t decide whether or not to watch the STFU SOTU (h/t Chris Muir) Address tonight. I will probably follow Stephen Green drunk-blogging it (which I presume he’ll be doing Update: Yup, he is) and read the transcript later. At least I’ll get some entertainment value out of it first.

(update: discovered a link I thought I'd pasted in  missing: "It is his crutch....")
(update to update: the drunkblog transcript is here.)

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize - The Onion?

I did a double take when I saw the headlines this morning and thought someone must have changed my homepage to The Onion. Al Gore must be livid that he has been bumped out of his third-place slot for the most undeserved Nobel Peace Prize in history. The Instapundit has a roundup of links to reactions from all over.

Maybe they meant to award him the newly created Nobel Appease Prize.

Update: The deadline for nominations for the prize was February 11, 2009, a bare 11 days after President Obama took office. He hadn't even gotten a start on his non-accomplishments since then.

Update to the update: This is obviously sinking in very slowly with me this morning. Just because the deadline for submissions was February 1, doesn't mean they waited that long. For all we know, he may not even have secured the nomination whne his name was submitted.

Nemesis Comes Calling for Obama

Victor Davis Hanson says President Obama has caught the attention of the goddess, Nemesis. She really, really isn't someone you want taking an interest in your doings. Not at all. She possesses the power of payback.

"I have believed in the power of the goddess Nemesis (“dispenser of dues”) ever since I was introduced to the concept as a teenager studying classics, especially in the texts of Hesiod, Herodotus, and Sophocles.

Some of you know her also as a variant of eastern Karma, or the folk notion of ‘what comes around, goes around’, or the now common “ain’t payback a bitch”? We all agree on the symptoms: overweening success and surfeit (koris) lead to hubris (gratuitous arrogance), which in turn promotes destructive behavior (atê), that at last calls you to the attention of divine Nemesis—who ensures your ruin. At Rhamnous on the Attic coast there is a beautiful temple to the goddess, proof of her ubiquity and power."

Read the whole thing.

If A Republican Has a Good Idea and Speaks Up About It, Can a Democrat Hear Him?

Not when he has his fingers stuffed in his ears as he shouts "la, la, la, la, I can't hear you" over and over again. When the President accused Republicans of just trying to kill healthcare reform without offering any alternatives, he was knowingly telling a lie. The Republicans have offered no less than 32 pieces of legislation addressing healthcare reform:

H.R. 77; H.R. 109; H.R. 198; H.R. 270; H.R. 321; H.R. 464; H.R. 502; H.R. 544; H.R. 917; H.R. 1086; H.R. 1118; H.R. 1441; H.R. 1458; H.R. 1468; H.R. 1658; H.R. 1891; H.R. 2520; H.R. 2607; H.R. 2692; H.R. 2784; H.R. 2785; H.R. 2786; H.R. 2787; H.R. 3141; H.R. 3217; H.R. 3218; H.R. 3356; H.R. 3372; H.R. 3400; H.R. 3438; H.R. 3454; and H.R. 3478.

Oh, and by the way, Joe Wilson was right too. It seems to me like the apologies went the wrong way here.

The Day Obamacare - Died?

Paul Shanklin does another one of his great satirical take-offs on a well known song:

In Government We Trust? No, Says Daniel Henninger

Daniel Henninger's weekly Wonderland column in the Wall Street Journal is a must-read today.

"Ronald Reagan used to joke that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' Barack Obama is making those words welcome."

No he's not. The public reaction to the health-care proposal, evident both in public-opinion polls and town halls, tells us that the misgivings Ronald Reagan identified 25 years ago remain a potent factor in American politics. There's a reason why the United States motto on the back of its currency reads "In God We Trust," not the other G-word.

The left likes to say that conservatives hate government. The truth, and it holds for many people beyond conservatism, is closer to what Alfred Hitchcock said when he was accused of hating the police. "I'm not against the police," Hitchcock said, "I'm just afraid of them."

Read the whole thing

O's "O" Gets Turned Around On Him

Glenn Reyolds occasionally likes to post the following chart showing the deficits under GW Bush and those projected under Obama:

(I'll point out one more time that as bad as the Bush era deficits were, they were on the way down until 2007. That's when the Democrats took over both houses of Congress and all spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives.)

Bill Whittle posted a video at PJTV the other day on Iconography, and how symbols can be turned around. It's definitely worth the 8 minutes you will take to watch it, but here is a great example of what he's talking about, the same chart as above but using Obama's famous "O" icon against him:




Brilliant.

Created and published by Gunzip.

Obamacare From the Perspective of a Practicing Physician

I found this article in the American Thinker, written by an Atlanta opthalmologist, talking about the problems with Obamacare from the perspective of a practicing physician. Click through and read the article, it's excellent. There are also some very enlightening comments by other doctors. One in particular jumped out at me though:

Posted by: dermdoc --> Aug 06, 11:10 AM

In the early 1990's, a woman, a mother in her early 50's was dying of cancer. She had advanced cancer, must have not received screening services (LACK OF PREVENTIVE SERVICES). She likely received chemotherapy, toxic nasty stuff, still her best hope. Her oncologists did their best. Why would they not. She suffered. Her son watched as she did. He watched as she died. Yes, she did die (BAD OUTCOME). Sad.

The cost for her care? lots! Costs of medicine (greedy pharmaceuticals) hospital care, physician fees (greedy doctors) surely significant. Outcome no good, she died. He thinks, why should there BE payment for a bad outcome? Makes little sense to him. Her son is grieving as he should. Still, he's facing a big bill. Pre-existing issues involved. Unpleasant experience. The son is incensed. He does not forget this horrible experience. It' s his mother! She raised him. His father abandoned him/them when he (the boy) was very young, went back to Kenya.

Please understand my fellow MD's, this is personal!

This says a lot about what is driving The Won to me.

Impossible Promises - John Stossel on Obamacare

John Stossel has an article about Obama's healthcare plan posted at Reason Online. It's right on target. This point on the difference between insurance and welfare is about as succinct an explanation as I've seen about why insurance companies don't cover pre-existing conditions:

The New York Times describes a key part of the House bill: "Lawmakers of both parties agree on the need to rein in private insurance companies by banning underwriting practices that have prevented millions of Americans from obtaining affordable insurance. Insurers would, for example, have to accept all applicants and could not charge higher premiums because of a person's medical history or current illness.

"No more evil "cherry-picking." No more "discrimination against the sick. But that's not insurance. Insurance is the pooling of resources to cover the cost of a possible but by no means certain misfortune befalling a given individual. Government-subsidized coverage for people already sick is welfare. We can debate whether this is good, but let's discuss it honestly. Calling welfare "insurance" muddies thinking.

Read the whole thing.

Keith Hennessey Subjects President Obama to a Well Deserved Fisking

(via Instapundit) President Obama has an op-ed piece entitled "Rebuilding Something Better" in today's Washington Post. Keith Hennessy, a former senior economic adviser to President Bush has posted a very thorough Fisking of same right here. And lest you think it's all bad, he does give the President credit where it's due. (Link to the op-ed in the Hennessey post)

Obama on the Flying Trapeze

Rex Murphy on President Obama's first six months, in the The Globe and Mail:

We've seen him in action for a bit more than six months. What we can say with confidence, now that we have the evidence of his actions, is that had he run on (a) transforming the U.S. economy by massive federal government intervention, (b) taking an owner's stake in the automobile industry, (c) transforming the rules of America's energy economy, (d) instituting a national health-care system - all of these simultaneously and in the centre of a financial meltdown - Barack Obama wouldn't merely have lost the election, he wouldn't have got as many votes as gnarly old Ross Perot did in an election long past. He wouldn't, in other words, have beaten a bad-tempered, egotistical spoiler.

Buyer's remorse yet, Obama voters? If not, I've got a nice little bridge to sell you. I also feel compelled to point out that we're 30 months into a Democrat controlled congress.

Read it all.

(via Instapundit)

C. Edmund Wright - Recovery When? How About If?

Back in December I posted on and linked to an article in the American Thinker by C. Edmund Wright, a small business owner who had been reading the handwriting on the wall post election and not liking what he saw, decided to wind his business down. He has just written another article for the American Thinker entitled, "Recovery When? How About If?". He lays out a very good synopsis of the series of events that have led the economy to where it is today. It starts with energy prices. Go and read the whole thing of course but here is the lede:

"Shhh. Don't let this get around, but Warren Buffet just let the cat out of the bag -- no economic recovery in sight.

Well no kidding. I have long tired of the economists and investment gurus debating "when our economy recovers" and how to position your investments for "when America bounces back" and so on, as if it's a foregone conclusion. Haven't they heard? The America that always recovers is not in anymore. Any assumption of a recovery fails to consider the idea that we now have a government run by people who ignore American history and who are hell bent on changing America's future.

Obama has done more than apologize for America's greatness and generosity while abroad. He is wreaking havoc on the economy that paid for that greatness and generosity at home. Don't you remember? He is "the one" we've been waiting for to finally do something right around here.

Thus the conviction that Americans always bounce back and bring their economy with them is not necessarily relevant anymore. The rules for business have changed and continue to do so daily. Incentive has been devastated. The reliable motivations of the past do not matter, because most of those dynamics have been targeted as what is wrong with this country and they are systematically being removed at a stunning pace.

In reaction, Atlas is shrugging. And who can blame him (and her)."

Widow of Murdered Fly to File Suit - Iowahawk

Iowahawk as the details on plans by the widow of the fly murdered by Barack Obama, to file a civil wrongful death suit against the Whitehouse.

"WASHINGTON -- The widow of the housefly murdered by Barack Obama during a recent CNBC television interview announced this morning that she would be filing a wrongful death suit against the President in federal district court. The plaintiff brief -- citing pain, suffering and loss of income -- seeks a formal apology and compensatory damages, including an unspecified quantity of shit."

Money, Money, Money. - Stephen Green Explains Speculaton and Investing

The inimitable Vodkapundit, Stephen Green, put up a post on investment and speculation yesterday. He makes two very important points:

1. All investment is speculation.
2. The secondary market makes the primary market possible.

The first point is easy. You invest, but there’s risk. The higher the risk, the higher the reward sought. Everybody knows that one. You also should bear in mind that no matter how risky (or safe) an investment might be, you always always always seek to minimize that risk. That’s not just the invisible hand or whatever, that’s human nature. And it’s a good thing.

The second point is a little more subtle, but nothing difficult to understand. And it applies to both stocks and bonds. When you buy a newly-issued bond from GM, you’re the primary market. If I buy that bond from you, I’m the secondary market. And if I didn’t exist, you would never buy bonds from anyone.

He goes on to explain why the markets work the way they do, and why investors expect greater returns for greater risk.

If you have any money in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, pension funds, REITS or any other investment vehicle at all you are a speculator. If you ever buy a lottery ticket, you're a speculator (and not a very smart one).

Our president has taken to demonizing "speculators" and has justified turning established law on its head by depriving investors of their lawful rights to essentially confiscate their lawfully obtained property and redistribute it to his favored political constituencies, namely the United Auto Workers Union. This is a very slippery slope he has started us down and the people you would think would start taking him to task on this our esteemed fifth column fourth estate, the mainstream media are either silent or actively cheerleading for him. Until they decide to do their jobs, he's going to keep getting away with this and soon, we will have no property rights left. And property rights are the foundation of all our other rights.

Go read all of Steve's post.

Chrysler Dealership Closures May Be Driven by Owner Political Sympathies

It seems there is a positive correlation between the announced closures of Chrysler dealerships and the propensity of their owners to make political contributions to Republicans. Obama and his minions are just common Chicago machine thugs.

(via GatewaPundit )

Obama-Man! / Candy Man

Also via Sgt. Mom, we have this brilliant little parody:

Obama's Budget Cutting Extravaganza

Watch this for a perspective on how massive President Obana's proposed budget cuts aren't.

Mark Steyn: Obama Looks Moderate, Acts Radical

Of course this is Mark Steyn, so you'll read the whole thing, but this quote near the end is worth being reminded of:

The problem in the Western world is that governments are spending money faster than their citizenry or economies can generate it. As Gerald Ford liked to say, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." And that's true. But there's an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give Phil from Cathedral City everything he wants isn't big enough to get Phil to give any of it back. That's the stage the Europeans are at: Their electorates are hooked on unsustainable levels of "services," but no longer can conceive of life without them.

I don't want to live in Europe in North America. Do you?