Tag Archives: President Obama

Obama Campaign Running Against Obama

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from The Hill

Today, David Axelrod, the chief of the Reelect Obama Campaign, announced that it will formally join the Occupy Wall Street protests and start mobilizing against the policies endorsed by the Obama administration.

Axelrod brandished a Tim Geithner bobblehead doll, which he stabbed repeatedly with a pen knife while chanting an indecipherable spell, which he later said he hoped would lead to the Treasury secretary’s immediate departure from his office.

Axelrod, in announcing this unusual campaign, said: “We have decided that we aren’t going to defend the indefensible. Yes, we have terrible unemployment. Yes, Wall Street is getting away with murder. Yes, people have lost faith in the future. As much as I have tried, we can’t blame Bush for this anymore. We have to blame the Obama administration.

“I believe in Barack Obama, the campaigner. I have lost faith in Barack Obama, the president. So our campaign will basically run against the president and urge his replacement with the guy on the campaign.” Continue reading →

Jobs Plan Balderdash

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

Some years ago, a politician in West Virginia hired a very savvy political professional to write strategic plan for him to run for Congress. The professional burned the midnight oil and produced a comprehensive, 60-page roadmap to Capitol Hill.

She presented it and waited while the prospective candidate began reading: “OBJECTIVE: TO WIN ELECTION TO THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS.”

The candidate lookup up from manuscript and said he had a problem with the first line. He really had no interest in serving in Congress, he wanted to set himself up to run for governor and thought running for Congress would be a good stepping stone.

I was reminded of that story September 7,when President Barack Obama appeared before joint session of Congress and demanded–seventeen times, no less—that the legislators pass his latest job-creation program. Why?

President Obama’s speech was a hoax. His objective that night was not congressional approval of his jobs agenda. He was really setting the stage for his re-election in 2012. Continue reading →

Time for Economic War Council

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

In 1939 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced the creation of his War Cabinet which was made up of five Conservative members and four Liberals. When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister he narrowed his War Cabinet to five members – three Conservatives and two Liberals.

War Cabinets, over the past 100-or-so years, have been formed in Great Britain when it was determined that the very survival of the Kingdom is at risk and it is necessary to bring the best minds in Parliament to bear on the threat, notwithstanding party affiliation.

As I am writing this, at about 9 PM Sunday, I am looking at the Asian markets. They are all down. If you watch CNBC on weekday mornings, as I do, you want to pull the covers up over your head, curl up in the fetal position, and hope that your 401(k) doesn’t go to zero-oh-one(k). Continue reading →

Obama’s Double-Dip Learning Curve

BY TONY BLANKLEY
Reprinted from The Washington Times

In one of the least-needed reassurances in modern political history, President Obama’s top political man, David Plouffe, “told Democrats late last week that the White House would not suffer from overconfidence. ‘What I don’t want to suggest is that we’re sitting around and thinking everything is great,’ he said.”

With the White House’s own economists predicting 9 percent or worse unemployment on Election Day, the president at about 39 percent job approval, college graduates unable to find jobs, a quarter of American homes under water, no credible White House policy or strategy for changing things – and with most non-institutionalized Americans convinced we are in a recession that is going to get much worse – it is surpassingly odd that Mr. Plouffe, as The Washington Post said, was worried that his fellow Democrats might think the president and his men think everything to be hunky-dory. Continue reading →

Get Off PA System, Just Fly the Plane

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

You want a plan to create jobs? Here’s a good one:

1.    Simplify the tax code, reduce capital gains, corporate and dividend taxes, and improve the climate for American businesses overseas.
2.    Open up domestic exploration of oil, encourage use of natural gas and clean coal technology, increase use of biofuels, and increase supplies from our friends, like Canada.
3.    Repeal burdensome regulations spawned by Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley laws, repeal and replace Obamacare, and repeal regulations that inhibit economic growth, particularly those recently promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National labor Relations Board.
4.    Improve our relations with Asian economies and finally ratify pending agreements with South Korea, Panama and Columbia.
5.    Enact patent reform, reform the Federal Drug Administration and privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Continue reading →

Debt Ceiling Debacle: Message There

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

My neighbor looked across the dining room table. “I would vote for anyone on either side…if they had solutions,” he said. “I feel helpless. What can we do?”

His wife had a suggestion: “If we voted them all out would that help?”

“You just did that a year ago,” I said. “You can’t just keep voting them out and voting them back in again.”

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Status Quo Triumphs Over Future

BY TONY BLANKLEY

Reprinted from Washington Times and Townhall.com

The debt deal, if it sticks, is a triumph for the bipartisan, status quo-clinging Washington establishment. Here is a prediction: Between now and January 2013, total actual spending cuts will be minimal. That will result from the following: (1) The $900 billion deficit reduction is almost all back-loaded to the years beyond 2012. (2) The select committee created by the budget deal will fail to pass a “second tranche” deficit-cut package of an additional $1.5 trillion. (3) The “trigger” will be pulled that will identify an additional $1.2 trillion. (4) The pulled trigger won’t require any more deficit reductions to go into effect until 2013, when a new Congress and either a new president or a re-elected President Obama will be able to re-decide (or repeal) all these decisions.

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Predicting the Presidential Race

Call the Bluff: Tax the Rich

BY FRANK HILL

Reprinted from Telemachus.com

President Obama has chosen the well-worn and worn-out ‘tax the rich!’ mantra to try to become the 19th US President to win re-election when he runs in 2012.

Continue reading →

Obama Speech Okay But Late

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

President Obama’s speech on Monday night was, at best, OK. It got tongues wagging about the “Obama Doctrine” which appears to be: “If it won’t drag Iran into the fight we’ll take a look.”

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Lybia, Japan and Other News

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

There has been so much going on this week, it’s almost impossible to make sense of it all in just one column.

First of all the is the ongoing non-war in Libya. It is a non-war in which country appears to want to take control.

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Seeing Through Lybian Fog

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

I need someone to explain to me what in the world we are doing bombing convoys in Libya.

On the very first day of the anti-Gaddhafi attacks we launched a reported 110 Tomahawk missiles into Libya at a cost of about $600,000 per. The very first day of President Barack Obama’s very first war cost $66 million not including the cost of fuel, manpower, tax, title and dealer prep.

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War In Lybia: What’s In A Name

By Tony Blankley

Reprinted from The Washington Times

Amidst all the confusion over our new little war in Libya , one thing is clear: Notwithstanding the bravery and professionalism of our troops in naming it Operation Odyssey Dawn, the Pentagon has invoked a haunting specter. The war’s namesake Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” is the tale of the hero, Odysseus, taking 10 years to get home from the Trojan War which itself took 10 years to fight.

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Japan: Nuclear Power’s Unknowns

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

There is an old saying which goes (approximately) “Every patient a surgeon sees, needs surgery.”

In putting together his Cabinet, President-elect Barack Obama chose a nuclear physicist – a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist – to be his Secretary of Energy.

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Government Shut Down

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from thefeeherytheory.com

During the Eddie Murphy years, Saturday Night Live had an iconic skit that can best be called “Who Shot Buckwheat.” In a spoof of the media culture that glorifies murderers and assassins, it examined why John David Stutts shot Buckwheat.
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Egypt: Serious Troubles for All

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

On December 17, 2010 a 26 year-old fruit vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest at his treatment by the local authorities in the Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid.

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President, Politics and A New Year

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
There are a number of sites which will recount the month-by-month news for 2010. I’m not going to do that.

There is only one story for 2010 – and it was not Stephen Strasburg needing Tommy John surgery. That was number two.

The only story for this year was the uprising among American voters to produce a 63 seat turnover in the U.S. House plus major changes in the U.S. Senate, in Governors’ mansions, in State Legislatures, county courthouses and city halls from one end of the nation to the other.
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Obama’s Next Two Years

BY TONY BLANKLEY

Reprinted from RealClearPolitics.com

In the last week or two, an eccentric debate has been dividing Democratic Party pols and commentators in Washington: In 2011, should President Obama strive to be more like Harry Truman in 1947 or Bill Clinton in 1995?

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Obama’s Slump

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Mullings.com and Townhall.com

If you live in Washington, DC and follow the local Major League Baseball team – the Nationals – you know a little something about slumps.

You know how you can deny that one of their players is heading into one; you can deny he’s in the midst of one; and then you celebrate when he comes out the other side – in spite of the previous denials.

President Obama is in a real, hit-into-a-double-play-with-no-one-on-base slump.

Continue reading →