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

To: Carolyn who wrote (65590)	6/7/2013 9:18:53 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Transforming America One Political Appointee at a Time By Janice Shaw Crouse June 7, 2013 Even Democrat partisans like James Carville describe the latest Obama political appointees as "in your face" appointments. President Obama just named two very controversial, radical women to top-level foreign-policy appointments in his administration. Susan Rice has been appointed the next National Security Adviser -- significantly, this choice does not require Senate clearance. Such a clearance would be highly unlikely because Ms. Rice figured prominently in the recent Benghazi debacle for her role as the television front-person promoting the myth that the Benghazi massacre was fanned into reality by an obscure Christian video. The President also nominated the highly controversial and even more radical Samantha Power to replace Ms. Rice as the American U.N. ambassador. Glenn Beck called Ms. Power the "most dangerous" woman in America and Sean Hannity identified her (and her husband) among the "10 most dangerous people in the Obama administration." Clearly, she is a very polarizing figure based on her radical ideology and far-out policy proposals. With tongue firmly in cheek, the Daily Caller reported that Ms. Rice is "UNsuited for the job." Philip Klein, a columnist for the Washington Examiner, tweeted the rhetorical question, "With Samantha Power as the UN Ambassador, who is supposed to represent the US at the UN?" Ms. Power, who won a Pulitizer Prize for her book on genocide advocating an interventionist approach, chaired President Barack Obama's Atrocities Prevention Board. Further, she has publicly expressed concern about the "sins of our allies in the war on terror." This woman who explained that "a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United States" is needed because the United States "brought terrorist attacks upon itself by aping Israel's violations of human rights" will now be in a position on the Human Rights Council to see her radical ideas translated into U.S. Policy around the world. In the past as a "foreign policy confident" of the President, Ms. Power was known as one of the "main architects" of the Obama administration's Libya policy. The New York Times called her the "foremost voice" for the President on human rights issues, even though Power famously compared U.S. foreign policy to Nazi Germany. Further, Power is a vocal anti-Israel activist who blames wealthy American Jews for the failure of peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. Ironically, Ms. Power is married to President Obama's former White House Regulatory Czar, who, if possible, is even more controversial than his wife. Cass Sunstein is known for his radical views advocating government paternalism (but then, what W.H. Czar is not known for radical ideology) and his bizarre beliefs about the "humanity" of animals, i.e., he likens having household pets to slavery. During the 2008 campaign when she was an Obama campaign operative, Power called Hillary Clinton a "monster" who would "stoop to anything" to win the presidency. The political backlash for such blunt, impolitic remarks forced her into the background during the rest of the campaign. Even though Power was known to seek the limelight and was eager to become famous for her intellectual influence on policy, she has worked largely behind the scenes since the "Hillary goof-up," but few doubted that Ms. Power would be awarded a plum position and be back in the media spotlight sometime in the future. Sadly, that appointment puts her in a position where her public policy stances -- advocating "external intervention" in Israel and "mammoth protection" forces -- can cause extensive damage for U.S.-Middle East relationships, not to mention the potential for far more serious ramifications. Power has a long history of blaming America. She wanted Mr. Obama to embark on an "apology tour." In an article critical of the Bush Administration, she proposed a "doctrine of the mea culpa" that recommended the U.S. "look back before it moved forward" in order to assure other countries that the U.S. does "not endorse the sins of their predecessors." She recommended that U.S. foreign policy be "completely re-worked" in order to "tell the world we are sorry" (implying that the U.S. sinned against other countries). An old adage says that "personnel is policy." Clearly, President Obama's political appointees are burrowing into the government agencies to implement their far-left, radical ideology; they are quite literally transforming America, just as the President promised he would do. Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., a former Presidential Speech Writer, is now Senior Fellow for Concerned Women for America's Beverly LaHaye Institute. americanthinker.com

To: Carolyn who wrote (65590)	6/9/2013 1:01:01 AM
From: greatplains_guy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

On IRS Corruption: Not A Training Issue, But A Systematic, Character, Moral Issue Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) addressed how IRS spending on conferences is not a question of training, but a moral and character issue at a Congressional hearing on Thursday. REP. GOWDY: I’ll say this to the witnesses: I’ve prepared a list of questions for all three of you. But during the ranking member’s opening statement, I shared with him, the floor, my mind went away from the questions, and it went back to South Carolina. And the very same month, the very same year that the IRS was conferencing in Anaheim. We were furloughing law enforcement officers, we were furloughing teachers. Prosecutors in my own office were furloughed, secretaries in my own office were furloughed, those are secretaries who trouble to make ends meet on the best circumstances. And here, we’re asking them to go two weeks without pay, and we cancelled all out-of-town training. We brought our own food to our Thanksgiving and Christmas office socials. We started an anonymous fund to help our fellow employees who were struggling to make ends meet. And one night one of my secretaries came to me after hours and asked if she could borrow the money to buy her child a birthday present. And she kept apologizing for having to do it. She kept saying: ‘I’ll pay you back, I’ll pay you back.’ And at exactly the same time that young government employee single mom was borrowing money for a child’s birthday present, other government employees were staying in $3500 dollar-a-night rooms. Other government employees were spending more money on promotional materials than that young woman makes in a year. And other government employees were spending more on audience participation tools than that young woman makes in a year. So, Mr. Inspector general, I appreciate the work that you’ve done. But, with all due respect, this is not a training issue. This cannot be solved with another webinar, with just one more recommendation – If we could just get that recommendation implemented. We’re just one recommendation away from people acting responsibly. Mr. Inspector general, w can adopt all the possible recommendations you can conceive of. I’m just saying that it strikes me – and maybe it’s just me – it strikes me as a cultural systemic character moral issue. The IRS has been in existence, depending on how you want to count, either since 1862 or 1918. In either event, they had one hundred years to figure out that whle your fellow Americans are losing their jobs, and their health insurance, and their homes, you do not spend $4 million at a conference where there is no accountability. You do not hire people to make meaningless speeches or artists to paint paintings of Bono, while your fellow citizens are struggling. That is character issue, training cannot fix that. They sent more that twenty-five employees on a scouting trip to see whether or not the hotel was ok. That’s not going to be fixed with training, Mr. Inspector General. When you’ve got law enforcement officers being furloughed, and you’ve got a hundred years to figure out how to act appropriately, you don’t need and IG report to tell you that spending $25,000 for someone to talk about how random combinations of ideas can drive radical innovations. There’s not a webinar in the world that’s going to fix that. So, Mr. Inspector General, reality, it just strikes me that we need one single recommendation. Start over. This entity has not only targeted citizens that it was supposed to serve, it’s allowed itself to be used as a political tool, not only does it have access to our financial information, it will soon have access to our health information. Those are details that we don’t share with people that we do trust. And we’re going to be asked to share it with people who are so disconnected as to spend this amount of money while our fellow citizens are struggling mightily in the fall of 2010. I don’t think training is going to fix it. I think replacement might. realclearpolitics.com