Thoughts & Commentary on the Obama Administration

[KukriKhan]

Sheer sedition. Treason.

2010 version of 'campaign language'.

[PanzerJaeger]

OBAMA CHEATING SCANDAL

PRESIDENT OBAMA has been caught in a shocking cheating scandal after being caught in a Washington, DC Hotel with a former campaign aide, sources say.

Hey, they were right about John Edwards!

[Tellos Athenaios]

Page under construction. What tinfoil madness is this?

[Lemur]

Hey, they were right about John Edwards!

And they've been wrong plenty of times, as their libel payouts show.

They're citing a single, unnamed source, who's a limo driver. Thin stuff so far. They had three on-record sources signing affidavits over Palin's secret lover, and it still turned out to be bullhockey.

That said, Obama is the biggest, juiciest target on planet Earth, and there plenty of money available for people willing to go on record about our Kenyan muslin prez, so if there's something solid, I expect we will see it surface.

P.S.: Kudos for the Drudge-tribute Big Red Font.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I wouldn't much care if he was boffing the patio furniture, as long as it doesn't impinge on his ability to do the job. As to the National Enquirer being correct about John Edwards, even a blind squirrel can find an acorn once in a while.

[Lemur]

[Hosakawa Tito]

The Prez visited my area on Friday 14th and was greeted by "I Need a Freakin' Job." Hope he got the message.

[Beskar]

"I can't tell the difference between degrees of Socialism and Communism!" then you are a dunce. People can still own private property under socialism, they can own their own house, etc. There are big degrees of socialism simply from having a progressive tax system with public education and universal healthcare, to pure communism where everything is owned by everyone, but you are still assigned your own "private property", you just don't own it.

[PanzerJaeger]

Not that anyone thought any different, but the Administration is finally having to come clean in regards to their blatant deceit over the health care tax. I wonder how many people making under $250,000 will be paying this one.

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

While Congress was working on the health care legislation, Mr. Obama refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was equivalent to a tax.

“For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” the president said last September, in a spirited exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.”

When Mr. Stephanopoulos said the penalty appeared to fit the dictionary definition of a tax, Mr. Obama replied, “I absolutely reject that notion.”

Lying scumbag...

[Fragony]

heh http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/1047...moval_kit.html

[Xiahou]

From ABC's Jake Tapper:
Breaking News: President Obama Says "I'm Having a Great Time" On Vacation
Apparently it was a slow news day.....

[PanzerJaeger]

Didn't that swamp creature he's married to just get back from vacation in Spain?

[al Roumi]

I saw this on the economist and thought it might be of relevance and interest to this thread: After Iraq, America has had a bruising decade. But do not underestimate either the superpower or its president

[Strike For The South]

Didn't that swamp creature he's married to just get back from vacation in Spain?

RACIST!

[Xiahou]

What's it mean when people are asking for Bush to speak out and help clean up the mess that Obama has made with his comments? I thought Obama was supposed to be the eloquent one....

From the NY Times:

The war against the terrorists is not a war against Islam. In fact, you can’t have an effective war against the terrorists if it is a war on Islam.

George W. Bush understood this. And it is odd to see Barack Obama less clear about this matter than his predecessor. It’s time for W. to weigh in.

[PanzerJaeger]

HAH

We'll start rolling out our Ohio poll results tomorrow but there's one finding on the poll that pretty much sums it up: by a 50-42 margin voters there say they'd rather have George W. Bush in the White House right now than Barack Obama.

Independents hold that view by a 44-37 margin and there are more Democrats who would take Bush back (11%) than there are Republicans who think Obama's preferable (3%.)

A couple months ago I thought the Pennsylvanias and Missouris and Ohios of the world were the biggest battlegrounds for 2010 but when you see numbers like this it makes you think it's probably actually the Californias and the Wisconsins and the Washingtons.

There's not much doubt things are getting worse for Democrats...and they were already pretty bad. Somehow the party base needs to get reinvigorated over the next two months or there's going to be a very, very steep price to pay.

[Xiahou]

Change you can believe in

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut requested a wide range of premium increases, which will take effect Oct. 1, to cover the costs of new benefits required by federal health reform. Higher prices mostly affect new members shopping for a health plan on the individual market rather than people who have group plans through an employer or some other organization.

The Connecticut Department of Insurance approved Anthem's request without changes, including a boost of as much as 22.9 percent just to comply with one provision: eliminating annual spending limits per customer. But it's unclear how much more customers will pay because of the variety of plans and the complexity of other factors, such as a person's age.

Wait, Obamacare is driving up healthcare costs? No one saw that coming, huh?

[Beskar]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/panzerjaeger/Miss_Me_Yet.jpg[/IMG]

Nope, but that is the whole intention of the poster. It is basically saying "Think Obama is bad? Remember Bush".

Though it is America, they would want Bush, as the results of dumbing down in education pay-off.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Bush was a big government spendthrift. Why replaced him with an even bigger government bigger spendthrift is beyond me. Oh yeah, now I remember, the electorate had a choice between McCain and Obama.

Of course, our elections have been rather silly of late. Dole in 1996, Kerry in 2004, McCain in 2008...it's not like any of these folks had a compelling campaign going. Add in the results of 2000, where voters were so numbed that they couldn't really pick between them ("other" did well that year) and it's not as though we've had compelling leadership lately. By that standard, Obama isn't so very bad.

[Xiahou]

This sound about right?

-

The analogy I always liked to use was: Bush was driving us off a cliff..... then Obama took over and stomped on the accelerator.

[drone]

Obama invokes 'state secrets' claim to dismiss suit against targeting of U.S. citizen al-Aulaqi

The Obama administration urged a federal judge early Saturday to dismiss a lawsuit over its targeting of a U.S. citizen for killing overseas, saying that the case would reveal state secrets.

The U.S.-born citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, is a cleric now believed to be in Yemen. Federal authorities allege that he is leading a branch of al-Qaeda there.

Government lawyers called the state-secrets argument a last resort to toss out the case, and it seems likely to revive a debate over the reach of a president's powers in the global war against al-Qaeda.

Civil liberties groups sued the U.S. government on behalf of Aulaqi's father, arguing that the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command's placement of Aulaqi on a capture-or-kill list of suspected terrorists - outside a war zone and absent an imminent threat - amounted to an extrajudicial execution order against a U.S. citizen. They asked a U.S. district court in Washington to block the targeting.

In response, Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that the groups are asking "a court to take the unprecedented step of intervening in an ongoing military action to direct the President how to manage that action - all on behalf of a leader of a foreign terrorist organization."

Miller added, "If al-Aulaqi wishes to access our legal system, he should surrender to American authorities and return to the United States, where he will be held accountable for his actions."

The administration states that the planning and execution of US citizens are state secrets. No need for minor details like actually filing charges, an indictment, much less a trial. Change we can believe in.

[Xiahou]

More hope and change:

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications -- including encrypted e-mail transmitters such as BlackBerry, social networking websites such as Facebook and software that allows direct "peer-to-peer" messaging such as Skype -- to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The legislation, which the Obama administration plans to submit to Congress next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering technological innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

Basically, the administration's plan is to require all Internet technologies to have a backdoor. This will force products that are unable to comply out of business and make them illegal. Further, building backdoors into everything to the government to use is a glaring security hole. Additionally, it would undermine customer confidence in products.

This is a terrible, terrible idea. Luckily, if they're not planning to submit the law until next year, there's a pretty good chance that it won't get passed. The GOP will have a majority in the House by then and will probably block it's passage just because it was Obama's idea..... hopefully.

[Lemur]

This is a terrible, terrible idea.

Yup, it's a baddie. Didn't we go through this once or twice already, with predictable failures?

The GOP will have a majority in the House by then and will probably block it's passage just because it was Obama's idea..... hopefully.

Until you added that "hopefully" I was scared that you had the sight.

-edit-

Bruce Schneier (the godfather of network security, for those who've never heard of him) weighs in.

Obama isn't the first U.S. president to seek expanded digital eavesdropping. The 1994 CALEA law required phone companies to build ways to better facilitate FBI eavesdropping into their digital phone switches. Since 2001, the National Security Agency has built substantial eavesdropping systems within the United States.

These laws are dangerous, both for citizens of countries like China and citizens of Western democracies. Forcing companies to redesign their communications products and services to facilitate government eavesdropping reduces privacy and liberty; that's obvious. But the laws also make us less safe. Communications systems that have no inherent eavesdropping capabilities are more secure than systems with those capabilities built in.

Any surveillance system invites both criminal appropriation and government abuse. Function creep is the most obvious abuse: New police powers, enacted to fight terrorism, are already used in situations of conventional nonterrorist crime. Internet surveillance and control will be no different.

Official misuses are bad enough, but the unofficial uses are far more worrisome. An infrastructure conducive to surveillance and control invites surveillance and control, both by the people you expect and the people you don't. Any surveillance and control system must itself be secured, and we're not very good at that. Why does anyone think that only authorized law enforcement will mine collected internet data or eavesdrop on Skype and IM conversations?

[Lemur]

An eerie coincidence:

Every few months, I post the following comparison, just to give pause to both the Left and the Right. Because as time goes by, Obama's approval numbers have been very closely tracking one particular previous occupant of the Oval Office -- none other than Ronald Reagan. Every so often, a political commentator will point out that Obama's numbers are currently better than Carter's or Clinton's were at the same point in their presidencies (which they are -- you can see comparison charts all the way back to Eisenhower, updated monthly, at my ObamaPollWatch.com site, if interested). But I personally have been struck at how closely Obama and Reagan are following the same path. Take a look, to see what I'm talking about (Reagan's second term is not charted, to make this easier to read):



Not only have their lines been tracking overall on the same general trajectory, but check out the last six months or so -- the lines are tracking not just on a general smoothed-out trendline, but month-to-month in almost perfect synch.

Conservatives have built up the myth of Reagan as being well-loved throughout his presidency, but he hit the same midterm doldrums Obama now finds himself in, and for almost exactly the same reason -- the economy was in the same doldrums, and it wasn't recovering fast enough to do the president any good politically. Reagan was about two points lower than Obama in disapproval, but he was almost four points lower in approval, as well.

It's also interesting to note that Reagan hit bottom right when the new midterm Congress (where Republicans took a shellacking) was sworn in.

[PanzerJaeger]

In the proud tradition of American black (and I'm using the term loosely here) politicians on the rails, Obama plays the race card.

Invoking the Civil Rights Movement and emancipation, Obama encouraged “foot soldiers like you, sitting down at lunch counters, standing up for freedom” to do it again for him.

“I need everybody here to go back to your neighborhoods, to go back to your workplaces, to go to churches and go to the barbershops and got to the beauty shops, and tell them we’ve got more work to do,” he said. “Tell them we can’t wait to organize.”



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz125AvjRlX

Failed stimulus bill: $862, 000, 000, 000.

Health care 'reform': $1, 000, 000, 000, 000.

Making yourself the new Civil Rights Movement™: Priceless.

[Xiahou]

Flailing.
I guess the thinking is- we can't run on our record, so let's make a bunch of stuff up. If they can sling enough mud, maybe some of it will stick.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Flailing.
I guess the thinking is- we can't run on our record, so let's make a bunch of stuff up. If they can sling enough mud, maybe some of it will stick.

It's worked in the past -- and both major parties have played this particular "card."

[PanzerJaeger]

More interesting polling...

(CNN) - Americans are divided over whether President Barack Obama or his predecessor has performed better in the White House, according to a new national poll.

And a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday also indicates in the battle for Congress, Republicans hold large advantages over the Democrats among independents, men and blue-collar whites. The poll also indicates that Republicans are much more enthusiastic than Democrats to vote.

By 47 to 45 percent, Americans say Obama is a better president than George W. Bush. But that two point margin is down from a 23 point advantage one year ago.

"Democrats may want to think twice about bringing up former President George W. Bush's name while campaigning this year," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

[Megas Methuselah]

Sucks to be an American, lol.

[Crazed Rabbit]

So you're saying you're not an American?

CR