Obama ‘behind enemy lines’

by Ed Lasky at American Thinker - 12/03/2011

A nagging fear that many have had about President Obama is moving closer to the mainstream, as evidence accumulates.

George Will plucks a key sentence from Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” that encapsulates Obama’s philosophy and guiding principle behind his policies

Barack Obama had written that during his brief sojourn in the private sector he felt like ” a spy behind enemy lines.”

Apparently it took only a brief exposure to the real world of free enterprise to make him feel business was the enemy. He considered himself a “spy” against this enemy. A spy wants to do harm against the “enemy.”

Ipso facto: vast new regulations, job-killing ObamaCare, class warfare rhetoric, end runs around Congress to bolster the power of unions, environmental rules that will cripple many businesses with high electricity costs (recall his boast that his Presidency would necessarily lead to high “electricity prices” and that those who build coal mines and coal-fired power plants would face bankruptcy), huge new tax increases, and a myriad of other measures and executive actions that have derailed job growth in America. The class warfare rhetoric has just made this agenda even clearer.

Stephanie Gutmann of the Telegraph found that line of interest in her column from March 1^st, 2009 and wrote about business journalist’s Larry Kudlow reaction to that line in “Does Barack Obama hate free enterprise”:

Kudlow, once a budget guy in the Reagan administration, had a huge head of steam up about what he calls President Obama’s “declaration of war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds.”

Gutmann wrote — almost three years ago, mind you — that she did not know yet whether that passage in Obama’s book was highly significant or not but that she’d throw it into her “Does the President hate free enterprise?” file.

That file must be bulging now; three years out we know the answer.

Barack Obama hates free enterprise. He and the First Lady have derided those who work for businesses as compared to those who work for the government — without recognizing that those who work in the “real world” pay the salaries of those who work for government bureaucracies.

Businesses have heard the message loud and clear and have responded as anyone would: with fear. When businesses lose confidence in leadership — worse, when they fear leadership — they do not expand, they do not hire. Instead they try to husband their resources and save it for better times. Hence, the stagnant job and wage growth. Do not be fooled by the headline yesterday about the unemployment rate falling. That number reflects huge numbers of people leaving the labor force because they are discouraged about the prospects of finding a job. They should be, given the man in the Oval Office and his minions doing his bidding.

From Hope n’ Change – 12/02/2011

Despite candidate Barack Obama’s promise that we’d all be eating pie by now (with someone else picking up the bill for it), it turns out that the real menu in these days of disastrous unemployment is quite a bit less appealing.

As a case in point, the president just signed a bill which clears the way for horses to be slaughtered for meat and be federally inspected before heading to American’s tables as a mane course.

Although many people are appalled at the notion, horse meat is commonly eaten in a number of other countries. For instance, the French delight in serving entire horses with vats of melted garlic butter. Of course, this is due in no small part to the fact that the French are only courageous enough to hunt docile domestic animals who come when their names are called or can be lured with sugar cubes.

The government is trying to put the best face on their decision to facilitate the production and distribution of horseburger, calling it a good “management tool” for horse owners who can no longer afford to feed their equine friends. They don’t, however, say much about why horse owners have run out of funds, why cash-strapped but hungry consumers might soon be arguing over “who gets the hoof,” or what the government will ever do about our declining economy other than having Michelle Obama visit “The View” to share recipes that use Clydesdales and yams. Lots of yams.

But for the time being, whether you own horses you can’t afford or not, it might be a good idea not to complain too loudly about being saddled with Washington’s ongoing fiscal irresponsibility.

After all, look what they’re doing to other creatures who were saddled…

For kids hoping to get a pony this Christmas, it’s a “good news, bad news” deal.

from Obama’s Design for Defeat by Geoffrey P. Hunt at American Thinker – 12/01/2011

“Who will vote for this man the second time around?  Die-hard government, AFL-CIO, and skilled trades union people?  Why would union members vote for a man who has singlehandedly made big government, and the cushy jobs that go with it, toxic to the health of the nation?  Why would union members vote for a man who routinely blocks private-sector construction projects, and the high-wage jobs that accompany them, such as the XL pipeline?  Why would union members vote for a man who spends their money on clean energy misadventures that benefit only his campaign contributors?

Why would anyone, even those who identify with the OWS “99%” rabble, vote for a man whose ambition is to confiscate their property, even if in addition to the ill-begotten gains of the “1%”?

Above The Calls of Duty

From Hope n’ Change – 11/28/2011

When Hillary Clinton was running for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008, she ran a television ad saying that when the world was in crisis and “the phone rang at 3 in the morning,” she’d be ready to take the call. She already knew the world leaders and America’s military capabilities. She made a good argument…but not as good (in the minds of liberals) as whatever the hell “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” means.

And that scary phone which rings in the middle of the night? It’s going unanswered by Barack Obama.

At least, that’s how it looks to Hope n’ Change as we’ve examined the grim news headlines this weekend. The economic crisis in Europe appears to be coming to a head, Iran has announced that they’ve got 150,000 missiles pointing at Israel, and Pakistan has angrily closed a U.S. airbase used for drones as well as cutting off our military supply lines to Afghanistan.

But try as we might, we couldn’t find any news stories talking about what the president was doing to respond to any of these crises…at 3 in the morning, or any other time of day.

Instead, weekend news reports said that Mr. Obama went golfing for the umpteenth time, played some hoops, attended a basketball game, and took his daughters shopping at a bookstore to show his support of “Small Business Saturday” (although we think it’s likely that small businesses would feel more supported if the president would stop threatening to raise their taxes).

All of which makes us wonder why, in an administration that has sworn enmity towards bankers, the president insists on keeping banker’s hours and taking weekends off?

Of course, it could be a lot worse.

He might actually answer that ringing phone and try to do something.

During his videotaped Thanksgiving address, President Obama proclaimed himself “commander and chief.” Take a look. Start at 2:36 on the tape if you want to skip forward to it. SEE VIDEO HERE

This you might be hearing it wrong? From the official White House transcript: “So today, I’m thankful to serve as your President and Commander-and-Chief.”

Just two weeks ago on Veterans’ Day, Obama mispronounced Khe Sanh, calling it “Key Sanh.”

From White House Dossier

Climategate 2.0: New E-Mails Rock The Global Warming Debate

James Taylor at Forbes – 11/23/2011

A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.

Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.

Regarding scientific transparency, a defining characteristic of science is the open sharing of scientific data, theories and procedures so that independent parties, and especially skeptics of a particular theory or hypothesis, can replicate and validate asserted experiments or observations. Emails between Climategate scientists, however, show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures.

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,”writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden,” Jones writes in another newly released email. “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

The original Climategate emails contained similar evidence of destroying information and data that the public would naturally assume would be available according to freedom of information principles. “Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]?” Jones wrote to Penn State University scientist Michael Mann in an email released in Climategate 1.0. “Keith will do likewise. … We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!”

The new emails also reveal the scientists’ attempts to politicize the debate and advance predetermined outcomes.

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.

“I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email.

By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON - THE WEEKLY STANDARD – 11/23/2011

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent claims to debunk the conservative argument against raising taxes on wealthier Americans, by drawing attention to “how much the share of their own income they are paying in taxes” and observing how much that share “has shrunk” (italics in original). But the facts don’t back him up.

James Madison

Sargent claims that, from 1986 to 2008, the share of income that the top 1 percent of American income-earners paid in federal taxes dropped from 33 to 23 percent. But the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that the percentage actually rose from 25.5 to 29.5 percent from 1986 to 2007 (the last year for which the CBO provides such figures). And according to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, the share of income that the top 1 percent paid in federal taxes in 2008 was 30 percent. So wealthier Americans are not only paying a higher share of federal taxes — the top 0.1 percent now pays more in federal income tax than the bottom 80 percent — but the share of their own income that they are paying in federal taxes has risen as well. 

The bigger problem, however, is not Sargent’s facts but rather his implicit belief that it’s the federal government’s job to redistribute income so as to equalize (to whatever degree) after-tax incomes.  This is a far cry from James Madison, who wrote in Federalist 10 of the “diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate.” Madison added that the protection of these faculties “is the first object of government.” To put this otherwise, inequality of income doesn’t necessary indicate that a society is free, but equality of income necessary indicates that it’s not — for equality in incomes will not arise naturally in a free society but will require government intervention and redistribution, at the expense of the inalienable right (so often violated in other nations and other ages) to keep the fruits of one’s own labor.  Madison and Sargent have very different notions about the proper ends of government.

Moreover, a quarter-century (and more) of experience demonstrates that increased income redistribution — as the middle class pays progressively lower federal tax rates, and as the lower two income quintiles no longer pay any federal income taxes at all but instead get money back — hasn’t done much of anything to help the middle class. During the Obama years, when redistribution of income has picked up all the more, the real median American household income has plummeted — it’s dropped 6.7 percent during the Obama “recovery” alone. 

What’s needed is to stop focusing on (socking it to) the 1 percent, and start focusing on advancing economic policies whose explicit goal is to promote the prosperity (through higher incomes, not greater redistribution) of the middle class.