Brutally Honest

Taking credit for that which with he had nothing to do

It takes a special amount of greasiness to do what this President is doing:

President Obama praised the growth of the U.S. energy sector during a visit to Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Il., on Friday, crediting his administration’s “all of the above” energy policy for increased oil and gas production.

“We produce more oil than we have in 15 years.  We import less oil than we have in 20 years,” he said. “We’re producing more natural gas than we ever have before — with hundreds of thousands of good jobs to show for it.”

Those numbers are true. Between fiscal years 2010 and 2012, total U.S. oil production rose by about 1.1 million barrels per day over fiscal year 2007, and natural gas production rose 20 percent from 2007 to 2012.

What the president failed to mention is that the growth he is so proud of has taken place in spite of his administration’s energy policy, not because of it.

A recent study by the Congressional Research Service found that all of the increased production from fiscal years 2007 to 2012 took place on non-federal lands.

At the same time, the average daily production of natural gas on federal lands decreased by 19 percent between fiscal years 2011 and 2012, and by 33 percent between fiscal years 2008 and 2012.

An oily man attempting to rid America of the oil industry and the many jobs contained therein.

It smacks of a special kind of slickness.

“It appears coincidentally that those are the very things that are happening right now.”

Dr. Ben Carson, postulating on what it would take to destroy America, at CPAC:

“Let’s say somebody were [in the White House] and they wanted to destroy this nation,” Carson postulated in remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “I would create division among the people, encourage a culture of ridicule for basic morality and the principles that made and sustained the country, undermine the financial stability of the nation, and weaken and destroy the military. It appears coincidentally that those are the very things that are happening right now.”

Carson, who is 62, said that the blame for the nation’s current state of affairs does not lie with “any one particular person.” His barbs, though, were clearly aimed at President Obama.  

Drawing a link between his medical practice and his political beliefs, Carson argued that righting the nation’s course requires governance “of and by the people.” “That’s why we have these complex brains,” he explained, and went on to joke, “the number of interconnections you have [between neurons] rivals the national debt.”

I'd like to see more people think like this guy thinks.

Many more people.

Check out CNN's coverage of the same speech and note how they completely ignore his pointed comments.

I wonder why.

Rand Paul should give Americans hope

The country was promised hope and change by this administration in a mantra that became as stale as month old bread.

Rand Paul has resurrected a hope in me that there are still politicians willing to go the extra mile and stand up against Obama, Holder and their minions

After 13 hours of filibuster in the Senate, he steps down from the podium with eloquence and humor.

Hats off to the man.  May more like him find their backbones in this country.

"We have a president whose self-esteem and regal taste for power is exceeded only by his naivety about the rest of the world."

Ralph Peters with a sobering look at Obama's handling of foreign policy:

Like Garbo, President Obama wants to be left alone.

The world annoys him. His personal interests and political agenda are domestic in focus: “An economy that works for everybody” (without everybody working for the economy, of course) is his dream. But foreign-policy crises will be his second-term nightmare.

Obama and his party behave as isolationist Republicans did in the 1930s, when they refused to take Hitler or Japanese imperialism seriously. Obama’s infamous Cairo speech, pandering to Islamists and Israel-haters, is likely to be seen by historians in a light similar to Charles Lindbergh’s giddy infatuation with the Nazis.

And Benghazi was strictly trouble on training wheels.

We have a president whose self-esteem and regal taste for power is exceeded only by his naivety about the rest of the world. Now the question isn’t whether we’ll face foreign crises — perhaps, disasters — but which crisis will strike first or hit the hardest.

Allowing for the threat that comes unexpectedly from left field (Mother Nature is the ultimate terrorist) and accepting that any estimate of dangers can change sharply overnight, here are the key “known knowns” among the enemies who wish us and freedom ill...

Mr. Peters goes on to chronicle, from Russia to Mexico, Afghanistan to Syria, China to Iran, the hot spots around the globe that promise trouble ahead and that need attention from a President seemingly suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder.

Read the whole thing.

Sober up.

Pray.

Not necessarily in that order.

[Image Source]

"This is no tempest in a teapot but rather the leak in the dike"

Kathleen Parker is writing about the Woodward-Obama administration kerfluffle:

To the world beyond the Beltway, it might not mean much that Bob Woodward of the famed Watergate duo went public with his recent White House run-in.

This would be an oversight.

It also may not mean much that the White House press corps got teed off when they weren’t allowed access to President Obama as he played golf with Tiger Woods. This, too, would be an oversight.

Though not comparable — one appeared to be a veiled threat aimed at one of the nation’s most respected journalists and the other a minor blip in the scheme of things — both are part of a pattern of behavior by the Obama administration that suggests not just thin skin but a disregard for the role of the press and a gradual slide toward a state media.

...

 

Woodward, almost 70, is Washington’s Reporter Emeritus. His facts stand up to scrutiny. His motivations withstand the test of objectivity. Sperling obviously assumed that Woodward wouldn’t take offense at the suggestion that he not only was wrong but was also endangering his valuable proximity to power.

He assumed, in other words, that Woodward would not do his job. This was an oversight.

This is no tempest in a teapot but rather the leak in the dike. Drip by drip, the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script. Yes, all administrations are sensitive to criticism, and all push back when such criticism is deemed unfair or inaccurate. But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger. And, thanks to technological advances in social media, Obama has been able to bypass traditional watchdogs as no other president has.

More to the point, the Obama White House is, to put it politely, fudging as it tries to place the onus of the sequester on Congress. And, as has become customary, officials are using the Woodward spat to distract attention. As Woodward put it: “This is the old trick . . . of making the press . . . the issue, rather than what the White House has done here.”

Killing the messenger is a time-honored method of controlling the message, but we have already spilled that blood. And the First Amendment’s protection of a free press, the purpose of which is to check power and constrain government’s ability to dictate the lives of private citizens, was no accident.

At what point will America set aside her obsession with pop culture, with reality shows, with the shallowness that is so much of television, with the brain fog inducing wastefulness that are video games and begin to pay attention to what is happening in this country?

I pray, for the sake of my children and their children to come, that it'll be soon.  

It needs to be real soon.

"The reality is that we have a president who wants power but no responsibility"

Dr. Susan Berry with a piercing look at the Obama presidency:

Aided by a relatively weak Republican Party, Obama travels around the country, appearing to be fighting against the horrific consequences of his own policies. Consequently, the president has remained fairly popular without having to own any of his destructive strategies and programs. It’s all about perception.

The situation with the sequester is a perfect example. The White House came up with the idea of sequestration as a punishment/enforcer during the debt ceiling debate of 2011. The sequestration--an across-the-board spending cut, or a slowing in the growth of spending--was the compulsory “trigger” designed to appear to cut spending. The White House believed it would never happen because Republicans allegedly would do anything to avoid cuts to defense spending in particular.

Fast forward to the present day, however, where we have Barack Obama traveling around the country denying he came up with the sequester idea as he warns Americans of the apocalypse that is upon them because of the compulsory cuts the Republicans want them to endure.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, however, Mark Thiessen recommended a plan for Republicans to force Obama to take responsibility for the sequester: make the president decide where and how to make the required “cuts.”

The problem with the sequester is that the cuts are indiscriminate, hitting both critical and unnecessary programs with equal force. And it is the indiscriminate nature of the cuts that Obama is using to bludgeon Republicans.

Using terms like “meat-cleaver approach” to attempt to whip Americans up into a fearful frenzy, Obama is even now, with the sequester upon us, doubling down on images of budgetary cuts that will cause enemy invasions because of a weakened military, criminals being let free because of a debilitated justice system, injured people dying in the streets because of a lack of emergency personnel, and a rampant rise in communicable diseases because of cuts to medical and preventive care. 

To be sure, whatever negative event befalls the United States over the next several months, it will be blamed upon the “Republican Sequester.”

Thiessen urged legislation, which Senate Republicans did eventually draft, to give Obama total authority to allocate the automatic cuts as he sees fit, allowing him to “replace the ‘meat cleaver’ with a scalpel.”

In other words, Republicans would be placing Obama in a position in which he must govern. Even if they did not agree with the cuts he made, the cuts would belong to him.

However, while Thiessen advised, “Republicans should give him the power to cut bloated programs and protect vital services,” he also admitted, “Obama may not want such authority.”

In fact, on Tuesday, campaigning again against the “Republican” cuts, this time in Newport News, Virginia, Obama said that he rejected any suggestions that he should have more power to carry out the sequestration cuts.

Instead, the president insisted that Congress work out a better solution by raising taxes on the wealthy. He told shipyard workers that he doesn’t want responsibility for making the sequester “cuts,” because “there is no smart way to do it.”

Sounding very much like he is not cut out for this governing stuff, Obama said:

The problem is, when you're cutting $85 billion in seven months there's no smart way to do that. You don't want to have to choose between, "Let's see, do I close funding for the disabled kid, or the poor kid? Do I close this Navy shipyard or some other?"

Sad for us that the president thinks that’s how a national leader goes about budgetary decisions.

Nevertheless, when have we ever heard Obama decline more power? This is a president who has repeatedly attempted to consolidate power for the Executive Branch while openly bemoaning the fact that he must deal with a Congress and a Constitution. 

As a governing leader, it is within the scope of Obama’s authority already to stop truly harmful cuts that could damage the country and, instead, strategically target where the sequester cuts would occur, perhaps even eliminating wasteful spending first. Why would Congress have to force Obama to address the danger that he's been so passionately warning against?"

The reality is that we have a president who wants power but no responsibility. The reality is that we have a president, an eternal “campaigner,” who hasn’t a clue about governing.

That from Breitbart.com, the site founded by he who passed away unexpectedly a year ago yesterday and yet who lives on in the passion he instilled in others.

God rest him.

Obama exhibiting a "kind of madness I haven't seen in a long time"

That from none other than Bob Woodward:

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward ripped into President Barack Obama on "Morning Joe" today, saying he's exhibiting a "kind of madness I haven't seen in a long time" for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns.

"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" Woodward said. 

"Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need?'" Or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters,' ... because of some budget document?"

The Defense Department said in early February that it would not deploy the U.S.S. Harry Truman to the Persian Gulf, citing budget concerns relating to the looming cuts known as the sequester.

"Under the Constitution, the President is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the President going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement. 'I can’t do what I need to do to protect the country,'" Woodward said.

"That’s a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time," he said.

But wait... there's more madness in DC... seemingly:

Days before the March 1 deadline, Senate Republicans are circulating a draft bill that would cancel $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts and instead turn over authority to President Barack Obama to achieve the same level of savings under a plan to be filed by March 8.

The five- page document, which has the tacit support of Senate GOP leaders, represents a remarkable shift for the party. Having railed against Senate Democrats for not passing a budget, Republicans are now proposing that Congress surrender an important piece of its Constitutional “power of the purse” for the last seven months of this fiscal year.

As proposed, lawmakers would retain the power to overturn the president’s spending plan by March 22, but only under a resolution of disapproval that would demand two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate to prevail over an Obama veto.

The proposal would require — like the sequester — that no more than $42.6 billion of the cuts come at the expense of defense programs. But the elaborate, almost Rube Goldberg construct is already provoking sharp criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike and reflects a political scramble to escape the fallout from the sequester.

My hope is that there's some grand strategery here that I'm too simple-minded to see.  Big-time hope.  Perhaps one of you readers can explain what the Republicans are doing here.  Ceding power to he who is in essence destroying this country doesn't seem all that smart to yours truly.

And speaking of things seemingly not all that smart... and perhaps even mad... how about this tweet from Donna Brazile, vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee:

What's on your menu? Just got off the phone with my health care provider asking them to explain why my premium jumped up. No good answer!

— Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) February 27, 2013

Would someone please direct her to Obamacare?

Hello!?

Madness all around I tell ya.

Did Obama use faux twitter accounts to boost his anti-gun crusade? (UPDATED)

One Texas Republican is making the charge:

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) accused Obama of trying to make support for his position look stronger than it really is by flooding Twitter with messages from people who don't exist.

"Obama's anti-gun campaign is a fraud," Stockman said. "Obama's supporters are panicking and willing to do anything to create the appearance of popular support, even if it means trying to defraud Congress," he added. "I call upon the president to denounce this phony spam campaign."

 Stockman said that in response to Obama's call for people to tweet their congressman in support of gun control legislation, he received just 16 tweets. But he said all of these messages were identical, and that a closer look at them revealed that only six were from real people.

"The other 10 are fake, computer-generated spambots," his office said in a press release. As evidence, he said these 10 tweets use default graphics and names, and have not engaged in any interaction with other people. Two of the tweets were sent at nearly the same time, and both follow just one person: Brad Schenck, Obama's former digital strategist.

It's terrible that anyone would besmirch the President in this way, a man of integrity and character and class.

What's that?  There's semi-related news on the integrity, character and class meme?

He's selling access?  To quarterly meetings?  And he's taking money from people who might actually be appointed to administration jobs and/or even ambassadorships?

No way.

He's not that in your face is he?:

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd criticized Monday the new fundraising efforts of President Obama’s dark money group, Organizing for Action, calling a scheme for high donors to meet regularly with Obama “the definition of selling access.”

...

“This just looks bad–it looks like the White House is selling access,” Todd said Monday. “It’s the definition of selling access. If you believe money has a strangle hold over the entire political system this is ceding the moral high ground.”

You know, there's only so much the American people will put up with.  I mean, when Chuck Todd is questioning his morality, who else might be getting fed up?

When Michelle Obama was introduced by Jack Nicholson most of the reporters in the media room groaned....loudly

— stevengregory (@stevengregory) February 25, 2013

WTF is Michelle doing in here? #Oscars

— Tina Brown (@TheTinaBeast) February 25, 2013

For anyone who doubted the Hollywood-Washington nexus; always happy to see Michelle Obama, but somehow, here, it's the wrong message.

— Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow) February 25, 2013

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin of the WaPo minced no words at the First Lady's Oscar appearance:

It is not enough that President Obama pops up at every sporting event in the nation. Now the first lady feels entitled, with military personnel as props, to intrude on other forms of entertaining (this time for the benefit of the Hollywood glitterati who so lavishly paid for her husband’s election). I’m sure the left will holler that once again conservatives are being grouchy and have it in for the Obamas. Seriously, if they really had their president’s interests at heart, they’d steer away from encouraging these celebrity appearances. It makes both the president and the first lady seem small and grasping. In this case, it was just downright weird.

It's good to know that more people are seeing these folks for who they really are though it's extremely tough not to ask... where the hell have you been?

"Obama is ultimately accountable for the budget fiasco"

Each day we're exposed to more of the impacts the looming sequestration cuts will have on jobs.  Just yesterday, the Pentago formally informed Congress that 800,000 of them were on the line.

Ron Fournier of The National Journal is placing the buck stops here sign squarely on the President's desk:

Your federal government is almost certain to blow past the March 1 deadline for averting $1.2 trillion in haphazard budget cuts that could cost 700,000 jobs. Don’t worry. We know whom to blame. President Obama makes a credible case that he has reached farther toward compromise than House Republicans.

But knowing who’s at fault doesn’t fix the problem. To loosely quote Billy Joel: You may be right, Mr. President, but this is crazy.

Is this fiscal standoff (the fifth since Republicans took control of the House in 2011) just about scoring political points, or is it about governing?

If it’s all about politics, bully for Obama. A majority of voters will likely side with the president over Republicans in a budget dispute because of his popularity and the GOP’s pathetic approval ratings.

If it’s about governing, the story changes: In any enterprise, the chief executive is ultimately accountable for success and failure. Sure, blame Congress — castigate all 535 lawmakers, or the roughly half you hate. But there is only one president. Even if he’s right on the merits, Obama may be on the wrong side of history.

Fair or not, the president owns this mess. What can he do about it?

Mr. Fournier goes on to cite an op-ed published a couple of months ago and written by a Republican that Fournier believes carries the key to solving the problem.

I don't agree with all of Fournier's assertions here but I do agree that ultimately it's Obama's lack of leadership that has brought us to this point.  Yes, Republican weakness sickens me as well. I've reached a point where I think the first jobs that ought to be lost in this mess are each of those jobs held by members of Congress and the Executive branch.  If their jobs were on the cutting block come March 1st, we'd see some action.  Unfortunately, that's not going to happen.

I want to believe that some budget agreement will be reached.  I do.

But it's beginning to look like a belief in unicorns might be more rational.

"Betrayed is a good word"

What follows is quite revealing, made all the more revealing in that ABC News, normally not much more than an echo chamber for this administration, is reporting it:

Three years after the White House arranged a hero's welcome at the State of the Union address for the Fort Hood police sergeant and her partner who stopped the deadly shooting there, Kimberly Munley says President Obama broke the promise he made to her that the victims would be well taken care of.

"Betrayed is a good word," former Sgt. Munley told ABC News in a tearful interview to be broadcast tonight on "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline."

"Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," she said. "In fact they've been neglected."

There was no immediate comment from the White House about Munley's allegations.

...

Munley, since laid off from her job with the base's civilian police force, was shot three times as she and her partner, Sgt. Mark Todd, confronted Hasan, who witnesses said had shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he opened fire on soldiers being processed for deployment to Afghanistan.

As Munley lay wounded, Todd fired the five bullets credited with bringing Hasan down.

Despite extensive evidence that Hasan was in communication with al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki prior to the attack, the military has denied the victims a Purple Heart and is treating the incident as "workplace violence" instead of "combat related" or terrorism.

...

Munley and dozens of other victims have now filed a lawsuit against the military alleging the "workplace violence" designation means the Fort Hood victims are receiving lower priority access to medical care as veterans, and a loss of financial benefits available to those who injuries are classified as "combat related."

Some of the victims "had to find civilian doctors to get proper medical treatment" and the military has not assigned liaison officers to help them coordinate their recovery, said the group's lawyer, Reed Rubinstein.

"There's a substantial number of very serious, crippling cases of post-traumatic stress disorder exacerbated, frankly, by what the Army and the Defense Department did in this case," said Rubinstein. "We have a couple of cases in which the soldiers' command accused the soldiers of malingering, and would say things to them that Fort Hood really wasn't so bad, it wasn't combat."

Read the whole thing.

If this isn't an indication of how deep America's problems are, problems brought to us by a progressive ideology focused more on political correctness and conservative leadership lacking the courage to confront the idiocy, then I don't know what other measurement there might be to plumb the depths.

It all sickens me.