Obama Delivers on Bush’s Promise – late!

Last Saturday, the US took the next step in the process of leaving Iraq.  The Marines handed off their responsibilities in Anbar Province to the Army and prepared to leave the country.  This is part of the programmed phase withdrawl from the country, consolidating functions so they can be handed back to the Iraqi government without losing anything.

Most troops will leave after the March 7 parliamentary election. All but 50,000 troops will be gone by Aug. 31, 2010,

This is part of the existing U.S.-Iraqi security pact, but a little later than the timeline promised by Pres Bush.  I’m just glad they’re leaving.

source: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100123/D9DDEHH00.html

Part of the plan

In an interview with Fox news (released on Nov 18), President Obama told us what we alreayd knew – that the policies of the Democrats are bankrupting the country and threaten to bring about economic ruin.

“It is important though to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession.”

How did we keep adding debt?  Bank bailouts (TARP), carmaker bailouts, cash for clunkers, stimulus payments without accountability on their use.  What’s universal health care gonna cost?

And while the mega-banks and mega-businesses are protected as “to big to fail”, this Administration has let lenders to small businesses choke.  While there is overwhelming evidence that the majority of long-lasting jobs are created by small businesses, the policies of the past year seem to have gone out of their way to thwart this massive source of employment.

So why am I not surprised?  Because I’ve read Saul Alinski’s Rules for Radicals.  Mr Obama taught this community organizing handbook as part of his job as a community organizer in Chicago.  He knows it backwards and forwards.  And as good as Hillary Clinton was as a student of Alinski, Obama was even more adept at understanding the mind of his mentor. 

What Rules suggests is that the organizer must create chaos so they can be publicly seen as solving that chaos.  Alinski would promise a benefit that was there for the asking, and instead of asking, would take an audience and demand they comply with his request.  Of course they do, and he looks like a hero, for doing with vitrol what anyone else could have done with kindness.

What Pres Obama has done is to throw gasoline on the economic trashfire.  He has made a troubling situation worse, and now – a year before the election, he is beginning to advocate the Republican message, coopting their agenda by hinting at solutions to his own failed policies.  In the end, he hopes to reshape society to match his view of life, which is looking more and more like a radical departure from what used to be the greatest nation in the world.

ref:  http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN188108620091118

True Health Care Reform

Right now, there’s a lot of debate about how to “fix” the health care “problem.”  However, I’m not sure we have defined the problem clearly.  It seems most of the problems are defined in terms of some politician’s or PAC’s solution.

The “universal health care” option is being sold with the mantra “No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.”

Sounds good on the surface.  It’s a  tragedy when a personal illness forces someone into bankruptcy.  I’ve seen it happen – a friend had just started his new job (after being out of work for some months) when he found out his wife was pregnant.  The doctor determined that the pregnancy started a couple weeks before he signed into the company, so the “pre-existing condition” was not covered.  It became a burden when she delivered early and the preemie went into the state hospital’s neonatal ICU.  By the time the daughter went home, the bill was over half a million dollars.  His job as assistant manager of a fast food chain store could never cover that cost, and they chose bankruptcy.  (That was Massachusetts.)

The baby received the care it needed, and the state had to pay the costs.  There were consequences, but there are always consequences in life.

If instead, the dad had finished high school with more than a barely passing grade, he would have found insurance earlier.  If there were effective public health clinics, she might have carried the baby to term.  And if the government had had free universal health care, it’s doubtful there would have been enough medical advances to keep the child alive to become a vibrant toddler.

We feel for the plight of the underinsured and the uninsured, but taking away choices doesn’t make the system better.

Running the country … into the ground

Blue Virginia has a post today that calls the President’s inability to deal with a struggling economy as “Bush’s Recession.”  It’s a cheap shot, and shows a lack of understanding on what’s been going on.

It’s true GWB was distracted from correcting the structural problems left by his predecessor, keeping terrorism away.  He kept the country going while the economy struggled when al Qaida took out the world’s financial markets on 9/11.  And when the Ponzi kings and mortgage hucksters took down the economy in 2008, he took immediate action to stabilize the country. 

The Democratic “attack” was to throw gasoline on the fire.  The VEEP even admitted they didn’t understand the situation they inherited.  The old-guard Democrats don’t have a clue how to run a country. Even our Governor, with federal stimulus funds, can’t see a way ahead, short of cutting services.  What’s up with that?

(note…I tried to post this on his site, but they blocked it!  )

Who’s running the country?

It’s becoming clear that Barry Obama is in over his head.  In his early state visits, he committed a number of serious protocol blunders.  His second-in-command isn’t let out in public any more, afraid of what “crazy uncle Joe” might say. (“Hey, I found the secret bunker.  Wanna know where it is?”)

The stimulus bill was put in place before he took office.  It’s not his, it’s Nancy Pelosi’s!  She pushed it through.  All Obama did was sign it and take credit for it.  Except that now that it’s not working, all he can say is “the problem was worse than what we thought.”  In other words, “I signed it before I read it, and I sure hope it works, because I’ve stolen the credit from its authors.”

Health care was an issue he campaigned on, but the bill came out of the House.  It’s a thousand pages of Democrat Party pork.  It’s the rough draft of Hillary’s failed health plan, without the attention to detail or careful study.  Mr Obama is out making fake speeches with hired audiences about why it’s important, trying to tell us it doesn’t say what it clearly does say.  He’d know that if he’d read the bill.

Again, it’s Ms Pelosi that’s running the show.  She thinks in party lines and can’t understand why the Average American doesn’t.  We think issues and people.  The American people elected Obama as President, and we think he can control his party.  He can’t. 

Last Spring, he said we were gonna close Gitmo but there’s no place to move it.  He also said he wouln’t prosecute the CIA for what happened there. But as soon as he leaves on another vacation, his Attorney General announces a special prosecutor to look at whether someone ought to be tried for the tactics.

And now he can only stand by in amazement as the economy keeps getting worse and unemployment getting higher.

It’s no wonder his approval ratings are slipping so badly.  In barely half a year, his numbers are getting down to where Bush’s were after 7 years.  Worst part is, Hillary is starting to look good by comparison.

Joe Biden: Not Ready to Govern

Crazy Uncle Joe Biden is at it again. Over the weekend, our favorite politician again showed why the Democrats still aren’t quite ready to govern.

“We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package,” he said. “The truth of the matter was, no one anticipated, no one expected that that recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of money.”

Didn’t the opposition ticket suggest a different package to cure the economy? Didn’t the Republican leadership warn that the stimulus package would not solve the problem – would even make it worse?

How many times will Hillary be proven right?  Who is competent to govern when the phone rings?  One diplomatic faux pas after another, renegging on “open government” and accountability.

If our leaders are making it up as they go along, do they have to play with so much of my money?

source:  ABC News

What Community Organizing Isn’t

If you want to make changes in your community, instead of just writing about it, you have to read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

I regret I didn’t get my copy until December, after Obama took the election.  I was quoting it from other people’s writings, but didn’t fully understand the import of the book.  No wonder ACORN was using it, and how Obama successfully came out of nowhere politically to beat all the insiders for the office.

Today, I found an old post by beeveedee on Community Activism, what it is and what it isn’t.  He/she quotes from Alinsky on why Palin didn’t understand the importance of being an organizer.

Advocacy / Activism – Simply being in favor of something does not make you an organizer. In fact, community organizers are, at least in their professional lives, distinguished by not really being in favor of anything except building the power of organized people. Once you’ve built power, then you don’t have to stop at being in favor of things. You can actually get them. Advocacy and activism are about being right. Organizing is about being effective.

This is why we couldn’t understand Mr Obama.  Whatever we claimed he was, he wasn’t.  He acted however he needed to act to build power.  He promised what he thought his listeners wanted, only he did it with more finesse than Ms Clinton, his primary opponent.

Question now is whether he’s got the skills to use that power.  He advocated for a portion of the electorate, most of whom lose interest between elections.  But he didn’t organize Congress.  He wasn’t there long enough.  Alinsky told us:  If you’re not there organizing, you’re just increasing the census.

Let me leave you with beeveedee’s concluding thought:

Let me say at plainly as I know how: If you are building the power of organized people to hold political and economic systems accountable, you are organizing. If you aren’t doing that, you’re not organizing.

How “The West Wing” predicted the future

There’s a post from the social networking site digg.com from user “DaviDTC” that contrasted how the 2008 presidential elections seemed to mirror the 2006 The West Wing elections that closed out the final season of the show.

London’s Daily Telegraph reported the connection on Oct 29, but I wasn’t watching closely enough.  (Maybe I didn’t want to see.)

Slate Magazine also noticed the connection.  According to their video, The West Wing writers modeled their candidate on Obama’s Senate bid.  It’s a case of life imitating fiction imitating life.

West Wing => Matt Santos, a young, minority (Latino) democrat becomes the new president
Real Life => Obama, a young minority (black) democrat becomes the new president

West Wing => Santos rises from an underdog position and beats a more experienced candidate (current VP) in a long primary campaign
Real Life => Obama rises from an underdog position and beats Hillary, a more experienced candidate in a long primary campaign

West Wing => Santos runs against an aging maverick Republican (Vinick)
Real Life => Obama runs against an aging maverick Republican (McCain)

West Wing => Santos picks an old Washington insider as his running mate (McGerry)
Real Life => Obama picks an old Washington insider (Biden) as his running mate

West Wing => Vinick picks a conservative running mate to please the Republican base
Real life => McCain picks a conservative running mate (Palin)to please the Republican base

West Wing => Santos picks a major campaign opponent (Vinick) to be the new secretary of state<
Real Life => Obama picks a major campaign opponent (Hillary) to be the new secretary of state

West Wing => Santos picks a jewish, democratic hardliner to be his Chief of Staff (Josh Lyman)
Real Life => Obama picks a jewish, democratic hardliner to be his Chief of Staff (Rahm Emanuel)

Pretty freaky!

Inaugural Racism

I am astounded at the quantity of race-related comments surrounding this election.

“I never considered attending an inauguration before.”

“I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“One of ours has made it to the highest office.”

I know I never envisioned anyone looking like Barack Hussein Obama ever residing in the White House in my lifetime and I am so glad I lived to see it.

Barack Obama has accomplished what was thought to be the impossible and become the 44th and first African American President. This historic triumph transcended race. (even though that person made a point to mention race)

A lot of people had predicted that America could never accept his election. Stealthy forces would buy votes, steal them or otherwise overturn democracy.  Instead, Obama’s opponents have congratulated him graciously, and pledged their cooperation. So far, they even seem charmed. (Does he really think that poorly of White people, to think we think about race instead of character?)

The most telling came from an NPR commentator.

“I looked behind me and the demons of my pasts were only ghosts.”

And that’s the problem.  Most non-blacks got over their racism 20 years ago.  Most Americans under 21 never learned prejudice.  Most of the blacks on the news for the past month are still fighting the demons of their childhood and the battles told them by their parents.

It’s part of the black news experience.  Especially in the Black press.  Black Voice News says “More than a quarter of the 2.6 million jobs lost in 2008 were among African-American, even though Black workers are only 11 percent of the civilian work force….That means that nearly half of all African-American men were out of work or have permanently dropped out of the labor force. What would happen if half of all White men did not have jobs?  … why doesn’t it happen in response to shameful levels of Black joblessness?”

Could it be that, even though there are significantly more  whites than blacks in America, more blacks are in prison than whites, and blacks are less likely (proportionally) to finish high school?  Or is it the white man’s fault the blacks are being held back?

I  believe Mr Obama can indeed rise above race; I hope his supporters can as well.

Oprah Moving Close

The NY Post is reporting that Oprah Winfrey is looking to buy a house in DC.  They say she wants to be as close to Barack Obama as possible.

This is just too odd.

I don’t want this column to turn into a gossip rag, but back in Sept I did wonder publicly about their relationship.  I quoted Oprah’s former boyfriend Steadman as saying: “Michelle hated Oprah being do involved, was jealous of [Oprah's] power and resented [Oprah's] blatant flirting with Barack. Michelle even warned her husband if he didn’t start backing away from Oprah, it would put a serious crack in their marriage.”

Barack needs to be careful.  The press would have a field day if this were anything more than a good friendship.