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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (43834)	6/21/2010 9:59:27 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Yes he did. Obama is a disaster. The Gulf Oil Crisis just exposed his incompetence to even his most partisan supporters. Anyone who doesn't admit Obama's ineptness is just a democrat hack.

To: PROLIFE who wrote (43834)	7/8/2010 8:50:25 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 71588

Obama Admin Denies It's Supporting Kenya Constitution Legalizing Abortions by Steven Ertelt July 7, 2010 Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Even though a federal law prohibits the United States from spending taxpayer funds lobbying for abortion abroad, the Obama administration has essentially been supporting a new constitution Kenya residents will vote on next month that includes provisions that would legalize unlimited abortions. Although the Obama administration has not officially endorsed the constitution, Vice President Joe Biden appeared in Kenya and supported it while taking great pains to not directly say so. Biden told prominent Kenya government officials that passage will "allow money to flow" to the African nation. "The United States strongly supports the process of constitutional reform. ... Dare to reach for transformative change, the kind of change that might come around only once in a lifetime," he said. "If you make these changes, I promise you, new foreign private investment will come in like you've never seen." Now, Fox News is reporting the Obama administration is denying it is officially supporting the pro-abortion Kenya constitution. After publishing a news story compiling the developments over the last two months that LifeNews.com has chronicled, Fox News received a response from Biden's office. "Requests for comment sent to the vice president’s office were not initially returned, but following the original publication of this story, Biden's press secretary, in an e-mail stressed that while in Kenya the vice president reiterated that it is up the people to decide about their country's constitution," the television news station indicated. And Rebecca Marchinda, director of advocacy for the human rights coalition World Youth Alliance, told FoxNews that the constitution does allow for abortion on demand because of the language in it allowing medical professionals to crtify abortions. "A trained health professional could be anyone who has health training, including a student or a physical therapist," Marchinda said. "The provision is also broadly defined to include any kind of health, including psychological health or emotional health. Finally, this clause opens the way to create other laws that make abortion available on demand." Members of Congress have been concerned about the Obama administration spending as much as $10 million in tax dollars on a campaign supposedly educating citizens of the African nation about the constitution and the approval process. Lobbying for or against abortion is prohibited under a provision of federal law known as the Siljander Amendment annually included in the State, Foreign Operations Appropriations Act. The amendment reads, “None of the funds made available under this Act may be used to lobby for or against abortion,” and violations are subject to civil and criminal penalties under the Antideficiency Act, 31 U.S.C. § 1341." Rep. Chris Smith the leading Republican on the House Africa and Global Health Subcommittee, and two other members of Congress have called for a probe into the Obama administration's spending in support of a campaign to get the pro-abortion constitution approved. “This massive spending will undoubtedly be directed to those entities that are pressing for ratification of the proposed constitution. Such support will further enable passage of a constitution that is opposed by many pro-life leaders in Kenya, because it enshrines new rights to abortion. As such, the funding is a clear violation of federal law against use of U.S. taxpayer funds to lobby for or against abortion,” Smith explained. He added, “Learning of significant additional U.S. donations gives even more urgency to our request for thorough and objective investigations into all State Department and USAID funded activities related to Kenya’s proposed constitution. I hope that all investigative agencies will take our request seriously and act swiftly in this matter." Obama himself has promoted the new constitution in an interview in early June with the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC). He called voting for the document a "singular opportunity to put the government of Kenya on solid footing" and urged Kenyans to"take advantage of the moment." Obama tried to couch his language in neutral impartiality, saying "Regardless of whether they vote Yes or No I just want to make sure that they participate,' but he extolled the virtues of the document to the KBC saying it will promote human rights And in May, US Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger called on the African nation's political leaders to rally the people to pass the referendum. Ranneberger issued a statement praising the Kenya parliament for passing the proposed constitution and urging President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to rally support for it. He also suggested the Obama administration would fund a national campaign to persuade the people to adopt the document. lifenews.com

To: PROLIFE who wrote (43834)	8/12/2010 10:21:23 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

The Blame Bush Strategy Won't Work Polls reveal voters are receptive to GOP ideas. AUGUST 12, 2010. By KARL ROVE To save themselves in the midterm elections, Democrats are counting on selling two themes: The state of the economy is all George W. Bush's fault, and Republican policies will take us backwards. President Obama relished going to Texas this week to blame his predecessor for the current bad economy. Nice try, but it won't work. Don't take my word. This is what Mr. Obama's pollster, Joel Benenson, has found. The Benenson Strategy Group wasn't exactly quite this blunt in its report for the "Third Way," a centrist Democratic organization. But its data was. In its poll released in July, Benenson asked, "Generally speaking, who is more responsible for the recent economic recession—President Barack Obama or President George W. Bush?" The answer was Mr. Bush 53%, Mr. Obama 26%, and "Don't know" 21%. But answers to important issues like who's responsible for the recession are rarely binary. Buried in the "Third Way" data was a different answer that went unmentioned in its covering memo. The question of who's responsible for the recession was asked a second way, with more possible culprits. Here the biggest blame for the recession went to "big banks and Wall Street" (34%), followed by "American consumers who lived beyond their means" (24%). Thirteen percent blamed Mr. Obama, 20% blamed Mr. Bush, and 9% were still in the "don't know category." Put another way, at least 80% didn't blame Mr. Bush, as Mr. Obama obsessively does. More importantly, Americans simply won't fall for Mr. Obama's claim that if empowered, congressional Republicans would only return to "policies that crashed the economy . . . undercut the middle class . . . [and] mortgaged our future." Here Mr. Obama's polling firm is more direct, warning "two-thirds of Americans now see congressional Republicans and their economic ideas as new." It's hard to argue with widely held impressions like this, especially with 81 days left until Election Day. In this fall's contest, the GOP has a strong hold on the banner of change. Republican candidates can strengthen that claim by emphasizing a positive agenda of reform, fiscal restraint and economic growth while beating up Democrats for their miserable two-years of economic stewardship. Mr. Obama and the Democrats are in a pickle because Americans don't like what they've done. This was brought into sharp relief this week in a poll of likely voters in 13 states with hot U.S. Senate races. The poll was sponsored by American Crossroads, a political group involved in the midterm election that I support. Democrats now hold eight of these Senate seats while Republicans hold five. (The poll can be found at the website of American Crossroads.) By a 61%-33% margin, voters in these battlegrounds believe America is on the wrong track. Republicans lead on the generic ballot in these Senate races by 47% to the Democrats' 39%. The poll also tested each side's arguments, offering a choice between what Democrats and Republicans are saying about the economy, health care, financial regulation and the country's future. Republicans win all four arguments by margins of five to eight points. If this holds up (as I believe it will) and if GOP candidates have adequate resources to make their arguments (this remains unclear), Republicans have an outside chance of taking control of the Senate. They need 10 more seats; since World War II, the average number of Senate seats the out-party has gained in an administration's first midterm election is three. For Mr. Obama and his party, all the escape hatches are shutting at the same time. Blaming Bush and harping on the GOP's driving abilities is not a good strategy, but it may be the best Mr. Obama and his beleaguered party have. Democrats can't sell themselves as "the results party," as Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine proclaimed in April. Nor do they have an attractive or popular policy agenda moving forward. Mr. Obama's fixation with blaming his predecessor has badly weakened him. Constantly engaging in the blame game makes the president look enfeebled and whiny rather than sturdy and confident. One of any president's most important possessions is his reputation for strong leadership. Democrats are likely to lurch from one approach to another. Candidates on the ropes often do. At this stage, though, it doesn't much matter what they decide on. The narrative for this election is firmly in place. Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions, 2010). online.wsj.com

To: PROLIFE who wrote (43834)	8/20/2010 1:10:11 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Obamanomics is Destroying Jobs Jobbed In America Posted 08/13/2010 07:07 PM ET Jobs: Obamanomics has done more than just keep unemployment high during a modest recovery. It may also be keeping high joblessness permanent by raising the costs to businesses of hiring new workers. July's 9.5% unemployment level was bad enough. But the real problem is that the private-sector jobs machine, which is usually going full tilt at this point in a recovery, now seems to be broken. To many, it's becoming clear that if President Obama's radical job-killing agenda stays in place, job growth will be nonexistent. One of America's great advantages has always been its flexible, private-sector labor markets. From 1985 to 2008, U.S. unemployment averaged 5.6%. For the six largest economies in the European Union, the average rate was 34% higher, at about 7.5%. Yet many of those countries now have jobless rates lower than ours. Why? They've been dropping Keynesian stimulus as a strategy and moving more toward cutting spending and, in some cases, cutting taxes. Not Obama. He and Congress remain wedded to an outdated economic model that replaces the private sector's animal spirit and dynamism with the dead hand of government bureaucrats and their unions as the main economic forces in our country. That's what last week's $26.1 billion state "bailout" was all about. We were told it was to keep teachers from being laid off and "for the children." In reality, it was a cynical taxpayer-funded payback to teachers' unions, which gave Obama and his party enthusiastic support and millions in donations in the last election. This is Obama's New America — a government-run economy, with special benefits for unions and plenty of government jobs, but few private ones. Businesses today face rising burdens — from ObamaCare, the financial overhaul, the expiration of tax cuts for entrepreneurs, the threat of new energy taxes or the surge in growth strangling regulations on business — that discourage hiring. "The real threat to a robust recovery on the labor side," Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, warned recently, "has come from employer and entrepreneurial fears that once the economic environment improves, a Democratic Congress and administration will pass pro-union and other pro-worker legislation that will raise the cost of doing business and cut profits." It's never been costlier to hire and keep a worker employed. And as ObamaCare kicks in and Bush's tax cuts expire — not to mention the huge tax hikes that will be needed to make Social Security and Medicare solvent — businesses will simply quit hiring. In this new system, the government will continue to raid the private sector for money to hire more federal workers and to support its union base. And businesses, rather than invest their $1.8 trillion in idle cash to hire workers, will continue to cut jobs. Already, government is where the action is. Since the recession began, federal employment has jumped 10%. Private sector employment has fallen 6.8%. As USA Today recently reported, government workers in 2009 earned $123,049 in pay and benefits, twice the $61,051 earned in the private sector. This Keynes-on-steroids model has been tried before, in Europe. It didn't work. It led to permanently high levels of joblessness — what economists call structural unemployment. A recent peer-reviewed study in Sweden found that for every 100 new jobs government creates, 114 are destroyed in the private sector. Similarly, a French study of data from OECD countries from 1960 to 2000 discovered, on average, "creation of 100 public jobs may have eliminated about 150 private sector jobs." In short, it was a disaster that the U.S. is now duplicating. The next Congress should have no greater priority than reversing it all. investors.com

To: PROLIFE who wrote (43834)	8/24/2010 2:09:39 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

As Economy Flounders, Dems Push More of the Same LVRJ, Las Vegas Review-Journal August 21, 2010 Editorial: Plumb crazy But Harry wants more of the same If Albert Einstein was correct and the definition of insanity is indeed doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, what are we to make of the Obama administration and its legislative water boy, unpopular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid? On Thursday, the bad economic news continued. The Labor Department reported the number of people filing first-time unemployment claims rose by 12,000 last week when economists had expected a drop. Then on Friday, the Labor Department issued unemployment statistics for July, which were humdrum, to say the least. The nation's jobless rate remained at 9.5 percent, but unemployment jumped in 14 states and the private sector added a paltry 71,000 jobs. "Nothing but awful," one economist told USA Today. Nevada continued to lead the nation in joblessness, with its unemployment rate inching up to 14.3 percent. In response, Sen. Reid offered boilerplate drivel: "Today's news is further proof of why we need to continue our work to create jobs and diversify Nevada's economy. By giving businesses tax breaks to hire unemployed workers and continuing our work on the small business jobs bill, we are cutting taxes and taking steps to make it easier for Nevada businesses to put more Nevadans to work. "Recent progress on the clean energy transmission line from White Pine County to Clark County is promising because it will put thousands of Nevadans to work on an industry that will help diversify our state's economy. ... " Blah, blah, blah Sen. Reid, Democrats and the Obama White House have doubled down on the same recipe now for more than 18 months and it has failed miserably. Pouring billions of dollars into the public sector, spending the nation into oblivion, threatening successful entrepreneurs with massive tax hikes, seeking to impose huge new energy costs on all Americans in the name of creating "green" jobs, demonizing entire sectors of the private economy, and imposing a brand new Byzantine regulatory structure on employers called ObamaCare have yielded thoroughly predictable results. To expect -- as does Sen. Reid -- that doing more of the same will eventually produce a strong economic recovery is ... well, nuts. lvrj.com

To: PROLIFE who wrote (43834)	8/6/2012 12:44:32 AM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

Can We All Agree Obamanomics Is a Flop? Jobless Rate Climbs to 8.3 Percent, Creating More Anxiety for Obama and the Left Posted by Daniel J. Mitchell August 3, 2012 @ 11:46 am Can we finally all agree that Keynesian economics is a flop? The politicians in Washington flushed about $800 billion down the toilet and we got nothing in exchange except for anemic growth and lots of people out of work. Indeed, we’re getting to the point where the monthly employment reports from the Labor Department must be akin to Chinese water torture for the Obama administration. Even when the unemployment rate falls, it gives critics an opportunity to recycle the chart below showing how bad the economy is doing compared to what the White House said would happen if the so-called stimulus was enacted. But for the past few months, the joblessness rate has been rising, making the chart look even worse. I never watch TV, so I’m not in a position to know for sure, but I haven’t seen any articles indicating that the Romney campaign is using this data in commercials to criticize Obama. That seems like a missed opportunity. But since it’s not clear to me that Romney would actually do anything different than Obama (check out this post if that seems like an odd assertion), I don’t focus on the political implications. Instead, I’m hoping the American people will learn an important long-run lesson: If you want more growth and prosperity, the recipe is smaller government and free markets. In other words, our economic policy should be more like Hong Kong and Singapore, but the Obama administration has been making us more like France. cato-at-liberty.org