Well, my guy has been at 1600 for 100 days and I thought it would be nice to take a look at what he has done...the good, the bad, and the ugly.Let's start with the 400 pound gorilla in the room...the economy. For the most part, I didn't really have an opinion on either the stimulus package or the budget. My knowledge of economic matters isn't as extensive as it is with foreign policy. After some reading and some careful consideration....I still don't have one...really. I'm not crazy about the deficit but I also think that you have to spend money to make money. President Eisenhower spent the equivalent of 900 billion dollars of today's money on the national highway system and ended up creating a much stronger economy. I think President Obama is on the right track when he says that health care and climate change can be keys to a stronger economy. But can we sustain a multi trillion dollar deficit? No one really knows so for that reason I give him a C+
On the issue of terrorism, sadly, I have to give him a D at this point. It's not because I think he is "weak" or because he shook hands with Chavez (btw, last time I checked he is not a Muslim). It's because he has continued the same policy of doing nothing in regards to Pakistan and look where that has gotten us? The Taliban within 100 miles of the capital and ready to take control of nuclear weapons. Granted, they wouldn't be there if a certain incompetent cretin with a daddy complex hadn't stomped his feet in frustration from not wanting to learn no more about stuff.
But President Obama is in office now and needs to take ownership, in a very forceful way, of this issue. We cannot allow these people nuclear weapons. They have no regard for human life and would love to see what little regard they do have brought to life with women in chains. This is an issue that is very important to me, as readers of NFTF for years know about, and I will be talking about it more in the coming days as the "liberal" media is not.I do give him props for closing Gitmo and releasing the torture memos. It's time to show the world that we are not like the animals that want to do us harm. So, he barely misses the F.
On the issue of health care, he gets an A from me. He extended insurance to 4 million children and threw out Bush's neolithic stance on stem cell research. The health and wellness of this country means more people working, spending money, and thus, a better economy. It's time to leave the long Spanish robes and cries of heresy behind when it comes to science.
With education, he gets at A. His current budget includes money for ECFE (Early Childhood Family Education) as well as college funds. Our country is falling behind in the world because we value education only through the lens of private corporations. This is an abomination. The simple fact that President Obama's idea of "taking a break" is going to a school is fucking mega. We will never have another "Greatest Generation" unless we bring our country up to speed in multiple intelligences.
In regards to the environment, I give him a C. I'm not certain that cap and trade is the way to go. I need to look more into this. He also seems very laissez faire about the latest IPCC reports which give me pause. But he at least admits that climate change is happening and action is going to be taken which is more than I can say for the world is flat crowd on the right.
On his staff, or the best and the brightest he has put in place to get us out of the Great Recession, I give him a B. James Jones, Robert Gates, Arne Duncan, Joe Biden, Eric Holder, Kathleen Sebelius, Ray LaHood, Eric Shinsecki, Janet Napalitano, Rahm Emmanuel: MONEY! Hillary Clinton: good, but I don't like her personally after the Karl Rove bullshit of the primaries. Timothy Geithner: love his intellect, hate his communication skills, up to his eyeballs in cronyism. President Obama himself gets lower marks due to the Tom Daschle dalliance (why would he EVER consider a guy who has a driver?) and subsequent DC speak surrounding the nomination. Throw in the Bill Richardson BS too. Who was on the vetting team for crying out loud?
Misc gaffes: the special olympics remark (total locker room jock shit), telling Republicans to not listen to Rush Limbaugh (he is only as big as you make him), and taking forever to buy the dog (dude, it's your kids)
Misc goodies: using a teleprompter (that's correct, righties, isn't it nice to have a president who takes the care to prepare?), not using a teleprompter (like...all the fucking time...the right must be tuned in to Hee Haw re-runs when this happens), and watching the beginning of the end of extremism (Ahmadinejad, the Brothers Castro, and Chavez falling all over themselves to be seen with Obama).
So, I guess my overall grade is a B. There has been some impressive stuff so far...certainly waaaayyyy better than President Bush...but the Pakistan thing is really sticking in my craw of late and I don't see a lot of movement in that arena. But hey! Maybe something will happen in the next few weeks...assuming we all don't die of swine flu...and I will be proven wrong.
I'd certainly be happy if he was the one to do it.
6 comments:
He isn’t "spending" money, he’s "borrowing" money (aka going into debt) to pay down debt.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html
I think that is a clear example that bo doesn’t care about the nations security. I don’t see how anyone can have an alternate view of this!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22blair.html
"High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country," Adm. Dennis C. Blair, Obamas Director of National Intelligence, wrote in a memo to his staff earlier this month.
The New York Times, which got a copy of the memo, also notices some odd redactions from the version released by the White House: From the NYT...
Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past," he wrote, "but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given."
In other words, the Obama administration covered up the fact that even their own DNI acknowledges that the interrogations produced actionable and critical information. Withholding the truth that waterboarding produced information that saved American lives shows that Obama values public relations more than he does the truth. This also contradicts what has been said on this blog about info that was gathered from torture.
Senator Diane Feinstein recently tried to defend herself by pointing out that her legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract never was enacted into law. Now that is change I can believe in.
Another Democrat, Pennsylvania Rep. Jack Murtha, is facing a federal probe for purportedly steering defense appropriations to clients of KSA Consulting, which employed his brother, and the PMA Group, founded by a former senior staffer on the Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Defense.
Democrat rep Charlie Rangel is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee in at least four areas, including his reported failure to properly report income taxes on a Caribbean villa in the Dominican Republic; use of four, rent-controlled apartments in Harlem; questions about an offshore firm asking Rangel for special tax exemptions; and whether Rangel improperly used House stationery to solicit donations for a school of public affairs named after him at City College of New York.
Obama criticized pork barrel spending in the form of 'earmarks,' urging changes in the way that Congress adopts the spending proposals. Then he signed a spending bill that contains nearly 9,000 of them, some that members of his own staff shoved in last year when they were still members of Congress.
California democrat Jane Harman cut a deal with the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to get two of its officials off the hook on espionage charges in exchange for lobbying help with Nancy Pelosi to get Harman the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Nancy Pelosi got briefed years ago on the NSA’s wiretap recordings that caught Jane Harman discussing a deal with espionage suspects for AIPAC’s political support.
Al Sharpton called Somali Pirates a "voluntary Coast Guard".
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/
- here you go Dick. The link is Heritage but the numbers are from the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office. This should enlighten folks as to the "structural deficit" Obama inherited. The jump in the last year was the spending on bailouts. Your side spent more in 1 pork package than GWB spent for two wars and your leaders didn't bother to read the bill, as evidenced by their temporary outrage over the AIG bonus language that was in the bill.
The Commander of the American Legion, David Rehbein, sent a letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano explaining to her that military veterans are not the enemy.
Who was it that said "NEVER WASTE A GOOD CRISIS"? Isn’t that the kind of line that "your side" used to imagine Bush people saying in secret? What if George Bush or Dick Cheney had said something like that openly?
I’m still imagining the disparaging comments that would be made against George Bush’s intellect if he couldn’t make a simple six minute announcement without a teleprompter. Call it Preparation all you want.
How about the double of the Air Force One plane with 2 military fighter jets right behind it buzzing the towers over NYC and the people in the streets running out of buildings and away from the plane? Using military resources for a cheap photo-op? I can only imagine if a GOP administration had done this. Try photoshop, it’s easier and cheaper. Louis Caldera, the head of the White House Military Office, authorized and conducted this "mission". It has also come out in Bloomberg that the FAA was aware of "the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes" in New York yet the DOD (your side) also insisted on secrecy and even threatened local authorities with "federal sanctions" if the public learned of the impending fly-by. It's now been reported that the flyover cost $329,000. So your side spent over $300,000 to "update" a PR photo. To do this, they knew they may have panic in lower Manhattan…and they forced city officials to keep the fly-by secret from the public. This isn’t that big of a deal really but it does illustrate the decision making abilities of people in government. One might wonder, then, whether it is a good idea to turn our energy system, our health care, the educational system, the banks and auto companies over to institutions and people who can't be relied on to make sane decisions.
In early February, the 2010 census was moved out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House, politicizing how federal aid is distributed and electoral districts are drawn.
A bust of Winston Churchill was given to the white house as a gift after 9/11 by Great Britain. Obama sent it back to the British embassy...wanted nothing to do with it.
Not too many people caught this, but the same day Barack Obama announced that he would bravely reduce federal spending 0.0029% by demanding $100 million in cuts to administrative budgets, he announced an additional $100 billion pledge to the IMF. Savings spent.
Obama proclaimed during his inauguration that on this day we have chosen hope over fear. Not long after that, be began warning us that the US economy would be forever destroyed if the stimulus bill was voted down. When he needed the stimulus bill passed, we heard the word depression every 6 hours. After the stimulus got passed, he abandoned all talk about a depression. And you know what? It isn’t even that I have a problem with that. It’s that you all think he is a different type of politician. What if he is just another partisan democrat who will do anything to get his agenda passed? Have you considered that?
Hugo Chavez gave him the anti-American book "The Open Veins of Latin America" as a gift. It is a book about how Latin America has been exploited by America and Europe. In the world of leftists, "exploitation" is what happens when someone coordinates the labor of workers to yield a surplus, pays the labor, then appropriates the rest to himself. The appropriated surplus is the measure of exploitation!!
"The Obama administration has directed defense officials to sign a pledge stating they will not share 2010 budget data with individuals outside the federal government." -- Defense News, 2/19
Obama asked Congress for an extra $83.4 billion to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a special funding measure of the kind he voted against while in the senate.
Much has been made on this blog of GWB holding hands with Saudi leaders. Obama bowed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at a G-20 meeting in London. Not a peep from anyone here.
After saying he wouldn't have lobbyists in his administration, Obama made 17 exceptions in the first two weeks in office.
He quietly announced that he would not press for new labor and environmental regulations in the North American Free Trade Agreement, going back on a campaign promise.
On Earth Day, Obama took two flights on Air Force One and four on Marine One to get to Iowa, burning more than 9,000 gallons of fuel. He also keeps the thermostat in the oval office at 78 degrees.
Giving the Queen of England an iPod full of his own speeches? Narcissist?
"Education Secretary Arne Duncan has decided not to admit any new students to the D.C. voucher program, which allows low-income children to attend private schools ...For all the talk about putting children first, it's clear that the special interests that have long opposed vouchers are getting their way." -- Washington Post, 4/11. Obama enrolled his own daughters in a DC private school.
Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general overseeing the TARP, has already opened 20 criminal investigations and six audits into whether tax dollars are being pilfered or wasted.
Obama went into its first medical outbreak without a secretary of Health and Human Services or appointees in any of the department’s 19 key posts. We also don’t have a surgeon general yet either.
"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." -- Attorney General Eric Holder
Mark mentioned the vetting process. Geithner failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes. He also employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper. He was confirmed anyway. Richardson is involved in criminal investigation involving David Rubin, president of a firm named Chambers, Dunhill, Rubin & Co. (although there was no Chambers or Dunhill), who had donated at least $110,000 to Richardson's campaign committees and had also profited from $1.5 million in contracts from the NM state government. Nancy Killefer was tapped to be First Chief Performance Officer (to police government spending). But it surfaced that Killefer had performance issues of her own -- a tax lien was slapped on her DC home in 2005 for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax. She withdrew herself from consideration. You all know about the rest of them.
Your government as well as union workers will now own one of our largest industrial companies as of yesterday. I consider the restructuring of GM a social experiment that will show us two things: Whether businesses can be managed to a profit when in the hands of unions and government bureaucrats with a political instead of an economic agenda, and whether consumers will trust such people to stand by the products that they make. GM is now Obama's company. If it closes, it will be on his say-so. But Obama is a politician, not a CEO. So his first concern is to avoid bad political fallout, which means he will prop up the company for as long as it takes, regardless of what makes sense economically.
Raising the price of energy with carbon taxes will harm the economy because high energy prices do just that. You all saw what high gas prices did. Prediction – if cap and trade is proposed in its current state, several Midwestern democrats will come out against it because they know it will harm the economies of their states. Hit hardest will be those folks not in the upper 5% of wage earners. I notice Obama keeps omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy". Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work and home heating, etc. This will be a much larger tax increase than most on "your side" are willing to admit.
How about the Global Poverty Act? It is a monstrosity that takes nearly a trillion dollars out of the pockets of American taxpayers and doles it out to the world through the most corrupt intermediary, the U.N. Biden recently tried to slam it through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Were you worried about the $85 billion AIG bailout? Just just imagine doing that once a year for about a decade. The price tag by 2015 for this is estimated at about $845 billion. And that, you can be sure, is just the start.
Health care – to be fair, none of us have read their plans for health care yet because the bill doesn’t exist yet so I’m going to speculate. Why do you think the stimulus package poured $1.1 billion into medical "comparative effectiveness research"? Once you establish what is "best practice" for expensive operations, medical tests and aggressive therapies, you've laid the premise for funding some and denying others (aka rationing). It is estimated that a third to a half of one's lifetime health costs are consumed in the last six months of life. Britain's National Health Service can deny treatments it deems not cost-effective...and if you're old and close to the end, the cost-effectiveness of treating you is pretty much non-exitstent. In Canada, they ration by queuing...you can wait forever for so-called elective procedures like hip replacements. In an aging population, how do you keep medical bills from universal healthcare from blowing up the budget? There is pretty much only one answer: rationing. To be fair, rationing is not quite as alien to America as we think. We already ration kidneys and hearts for transplant according to survivability criteria as well as by queuing. A nationalized health insurance system may ration everything from MRIs to intensive care by similar criteria. And what exactly did Obama mean when he called for "additional adjustments" to medicare and social security? None of you will ever investigate. Obama no doubt knows to offer the candy (universality) today before serving the spinach (rationing) tomorrow. The rollout adheres to the Democrat tradition of being the party that gives things away, while leaving the cold-hearted stinginess to those heartless folks on the "other side". It may work for a while, but there is no escaping rationing. In the end, the spinach must be served.
Look, I know there are examples of conservative or right-wing rhetoric getting out of hand vis a vis Obama. But I just have a hard time listening to liberals grow suddenly high-brow and Ivy League serious about the paranoid style of the American Right. Where were these people for the last eight years when abject paranoid hysteria consumed the left? And when, for whatever reason, they can't excommunicate left-wing idiots and conspiracy nuts from their ranks, they usually defend what they say as valuable speech in the grand process of Dissent in American democracy or make apologies for or defend their "legitimate anger" that drives folks like Garafalo to say demonstrably idiotic and crazy things.
http://townhall.com/columnists/LauraHollis/2009/04/29/100_days_and_awful_in_almost_100_ways?page=full&comments=true
thats a good article anonymous. contains links to everything. i notice that obamas solution to most everything involves simply spending more money on it. are you saying we should invade pakistan markadelphia?
Shh
Dick?
Paul?
Neolithic stance on stem cell research? Dude, thats a bit much.
I don't think it should be illegal, just not funded by tax money. I fits a viable technology, it will attract private investors all by itself.
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