THE PENTAGON AS SCAPEGOAT

A pretty strong indictment of President Obama by Charles Krauthammer regarding Obama's leadership and decision-making process.

MAKING DECISIONS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

John Fund has written an article about Democrats holding office avoiding President Obama at fundraisers because of his presumed unpopularity.  Criticism is rising in Democrat circles regarding his leadership and his "detached" presidency.

What struck me most was a quote from Bob Beckel, a strong Democrat presence on Fox News.  When I have listened to him he has never said a negative word about the president or Democrats, but Fund quotes him as saying:

Bob Beckel, a former Democratic campaign consultant, said on Fox News this week that he spoke with a Democrat “intimately involved in [Obama’s] campaigns, both of them.” The message was sobering: “He said you have to know what it’s like to get through [presidential counselor] Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama, and I think that’s a tough deal for anybody on a staff to do. . . . [Obama] lives in a zone that nobody else goes to.”

So if you want to get through to the president you have to go through Valerie Jarrett or Michelle Obama!  But this does become an increasing concern with the multiple international crises the United States is facing.  Who and how are decisions being made?

One presidential historian says that if the president’s bizarre behavior deepens, people will start making jokes comparing Obama to President Woodrow Wilson, who was debilitated by illness during his last two years in office, with decisions increasingly made by his aides and his wife, Edith. “The comparisons of course wouldn’t be fair, but they don’t have to be to have elements of truth to them.”

POST WORLD WAR II US MIDDLE EAST POLICY

A review of Hugh Wilford's book, America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East. Truman stood alone in favoring Israel.

One of the most famous anecdotes of the Truman administration was first revealed by presidential adviser Clark Clifford in his memoirs. Secretary of State George Marshall and his undersecretary were called into the Oval Office to debate with Clifford the merits of recognizing Israel. After Clifford argued in favor of Israel, Marshall, whom Winston Churchill called the “Organizer of Victory” for his role as army secretary during World War II, made what Clifford called “the most remarkable threat I have ever heard anyone make directly to a president.” Said Marshall to Truman: “If you follow Clifford’s advice and if I were to vote in the election, I would vote against you.”

Marshall’s stunning comment reflected the viewpoint of “almost every member of the brilliant and now legendary group of presidential advisers, later referred to as the Wise Men, who were then in the process of creating a postwar foreign policy that would endure for more than forty years,” recalled Clifford. Those advisers included such luminaries as George Kennan, Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk, and Charles Bohlen. They were later dubbed the “Arabists” because they believed that the Arabs could be allied with America after World War II—and should be courted instead of Israel.

MEDIA INCEST

Media execs have relatives working in the White House or State Department so the issue becomes one of whether media execs ignore or don't cover some stories well to protect these relatives.

NEW US AMBASSADOR TO ARGENTINA

President Obama has appointed Noah Mamet as his nominee for the ambassador to Argentina.  Mamet's only qualification appears to be that he bundled $1 million in donations for Obama's presidential campaign. While political hacks are often appointed to ambassadorships, normally an appointee has "some" knowledge of the country to which he or she is being sent.  Mamet has admitted never even visiting a Latin American country let alone Argentina.  And evidently there have been a series of less than stellar diplomatic appointees to various posts by Obama.  Obama may even out do President Ulysses S. Grant for poorly prepared appointees. 

From the Washington Examiner.  Mamet's ignorance is even more marked in this account.  Argentina is in the middle of a crisis and he seems to know nothing.

Buzzfeed reported Mamet's nomination angered Democratic donors. "Democratic Party donors complain privately that Mamet unfairly leveraged his clients' work for his own political gain and benefited from a close personal relationship with President Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina," Ruby Cramer wrote.

OBAMA LIES ARE OK

LZ Granderson on CNN:

“All Americans know politicians lie. The question is which lies can you live with? And, time and time again, Americans have said we can deal with the lies that President Obama tells us because we believe in his heart he has the best interest for the American people. Every president is going to lie to you. Every politician is going to lie to you. The question is which lies can you live with?”

I don't think this helps Obama's case.  Hear and see it on YouTube.

PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP

When should a president fire aides?  The National Journal raises the issue of whether Obama has been hurt by incompetents around him.  To save himself, maybe a shake-up is needed.

A series of self-inflicted wounds during his fifth year in office, capped by the botched launch of the Affordable Care Act, have Americans questioning the president's competence and credibility. History suggests that second-term presidents rarely recover after their approval ratings fall as much as Obama's have this year.

History also suggests that there are two types of White House shake-ups. The first is mostly cosmetic and is aimed at sending a signal that the president is serious. He fires somebody, anybody, as a sacrificial lamb. The second is deep cleansing--that rare occasion when a president rebuilds his team to change himself.

NOVEMBER 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

It is beginning to look like the Democrats "stole" the election from Mitt Romney and resembles a Chicago election with the Republican having no way to win because of the corruption and manipulation.  Or is it a "culture of cover-ups?"

1.  From CNBC.  Jack Welch said the September 2012 unemployment numbers look "fishy and perhaps had been manipulated".  Now we find out that An employee in the Census Bureau, under pressure to make the required amount of interviews to formulate the monthly nonfarm payrolls report, allegedly fabricated interviews that consequently made the unemployment rate slide from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent, according to the New York Post.

2.  IRS admits to targeting conservative groups in 2012 election

3.  Benghazi cover-up.  Even MSNBC admits something smells.

4.  Healthcare.  "If you like your healthcare, you can keep it -- period."  And then there are all of these "friends" of the administration who are given contracts to develop or manage various parts of Obamacare.

5.  Operation "Fast and Furious."

And let me know if I have missed something.

ROLE OF CABINET IN OBAMA WHITE HOUSE

From Politico.  The cabinet is marginalized and hardly ever consulted by Obama.  It is his White House advisors who run and control the policies and message.

“We are completely marginalized … until the shit hits the fan,” says one former Cabinet deputy secretary, summing up the view of many officials I interviewed. “If your question is: Did the president rely a lot on his Cabinet as a group of advisers? No, he didn’t,” says former Obama Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Little wonder, then, that Obama has called the group together only rarely, for what by most accounts are not much more than ritualistic team-building exercises: According to CBS News White House reporter Mark Knoller, the Cabinet met 19 times in Obama’s first term and four times in the first 10 months of his second term. That’s once every three months or so—about as long as you can drive around before you’re supposed to change your oil.

For any modern president, the advantages of hoarding power in the White House at the expense of the Cabinet are obvious—from more efficient internal communication and better control of external messaging to avoiding messy confirmation battles and protecting against pesky congressional subpoenas. But over the course of his five years in office, Obama has taken this White House tendency to an extreme, according to more than 50 interviews with current and former secretaries, White House staffers and executive branch officials, who described his Cabinet as a restless nest of ambition, fits-and-starts achievement and power-jockeying under a shadow of unfulfilled promise.

JIMMY CARTER ON OBAMA

President Jimmy Carter is hardly one to criticize another president for ineptness, but he is quite tepid in his response regarding the success of Obama's presidency.

He’s done the best he could under the circumstances. His major accomplishment was Obamacare, and the implementation of it now is questionable at best.

WHAT DID OBAMA KNOW AND WHEN?

Kathleen Sebelius has indicated in a CNN interview that Obama did not know about glitches in Obamacare registration until he read about it in the newspapers!  Cynics are saying he also didn't know about Benghazi or the IRS Scandal either until he read about it--if this is true he is a president out-of-touch or is he being served by a very poor staff? 

But there were warnings since at least last March from a variety of sources that the system coding was not going well.  Did Obama not read anything about that in the newspapers????  But wait, the headlines from CNN read "Administration Knew of Obamacare Website Glitches, Ignored Warnings"--the White House includes President Obama so what is happening?  Either you knew or you don't know--is it an uninformed president or an incompetent staff that is keeping him from knowing anything???  A lot of questions.

Kathleen Sebelius:  "I haven't tried to sign up for Obamacare because I have insurance."  A government bureaucrat doesn't have to deal with Obamacare--it's for the "little" people who have no power.

Investors.co asks:  "What kind of chief executive is out of his own loop?"

Sebelius had an August report that there were problems.

But the inspector general for HHS issued a report at the beginning of August noting that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services missed multiple deadlines for testing and reporting data security risks in connection with signing up on the healthcare exchanges as they barreled toward the launch date.

John McAfee (computer developer) interviewed by Neil Cavuto at Fox..

From Frontpage.

The biggest contractor, CGI Federal, was awarded its $94 million contract in December 2011. But the government was so slow in issuing specifications that the firm did not start writing software code until this spring

As late as the last week of September, officials were still changing features of the Web site, HealthCare.gov, and debating whether consumers should be required to register and create password-protected accounts before they could shop for health plans. 

HISTORICAL SUPPORT FOR HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IN BUDGET BATTLE

This is the word from James Madison in Federalist Papers No. 58.  The House of Representatives is to protect the people from the Senate and presidency.

Peggy Noonan, quoting unnamed international sources, reports on the drop in respect for President Obama in the international community. 

In diplomatic circles, attitudes toward his leadership have been declining for some time, but this week you could hear the disappointment, and something more dangerous: the sense that he is no longer, perhaps, all that relevant. Part of this is due, obviously, to his handling of the Syria crisis. If you draw a line and it is crossed and then you dodge, deflect, disappear and call it diplomacy, the world will notice, and not think better of you. Some of it is connected to the historical moment America is in.

CLINTONS & MONEY

For Maureen Dowd (liberal progressive) all the Clintons are about is money, money, money.  They certainly do not have Jimmy Carter's "heart" to help people or even George W. Bush's humanitarian concerns.

If Americans are worried about money in politics, there is no larger concern than the Clintons, who are cosseted in a world where rich people endlessly scratch the backs of rich people.

As George Packer wrote in The New Yorker, Bill Clinton earned $17 million last year giving speeches, including one to a Lagos company for $700,000. Hillary gets $200,000 a speech.

PRESIDENTS PORTRAYED AS MONKEYS

President Obama was recently portrayed as a monkey which created quite a negative reaction among progressives.  No Pasarani has a historical analysis on how presidents have been portrayed as monkeys.

OBAMA'S LEADERSHIP

From the Hill:  Both Democrats and Republicans are not impressed with Obama's presidential leadership.

IGNORING THE CONSTITUTIONAL PROCESS OF RULE BY LAW

Obama has been deciding what laws he wants to enforce and what ones he chooses not to enforce.  This may give him a lot of influence over policy now, but what happens in the future when future presidents decide to do this?  America will no longer be ruled by law (and certainly Congress) but by a "dictatorial" president.  And would Democrats want a Republican president doing this?

Mickey Kaus who lost in a Democrat Senate Primary in California a few years ago writes that Obama may just as easily ignore the "E-verify" clause in the new immigration bill the Senate is considering.

Obama has unilaterally decided to suspend Obamacare’s mandate for employers after receiving business complaints;Don’t you think he’ll also decide to suspend the Senate Gang of 8′s mandate that employers use “E-Verify” (to screen new employees for legal status) when he receives similar business complaints?

And Mario Loyola at the National Review writes about Obama's disregard for enforcing laws he does not like from a more theoretical perspective.

During the presidency of Barack Obama, we’ve learned something about our Constitution that we did not know: The president can simply refuse to enforce whatever laws he doesn’t like. Not as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, mind you, but in general, as to whole categories of people.

First it was DOMA, in a sop to the gay lobby. Then it was the immigration laws, which the president has decided not to enforce against young illegal immigrants. Now it’s the crucial employer-insurance mandate in Obamacare, which is “suspended” for a year, because the president feels like it. I say “crucial” because, absent the employer mandate, the official estimate of how much Obamacare is going to cost, and how it’s going to affect the number of uninsured, is no longer valid

INSIDE THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

A tell-all book is coming out!  It is not going to make the administration look as noble as the media presents it. A lot of hypocrisy.

A column on the "hubris" of Obama. Even as the nation’s workers wilted under a struggling economy and high unemployment, Obama decided to take two round excursions to Hawaii at taxpayer expense over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Just six weeks later, he jetted down to Florida for a luxury four-day golf vacation where he played with Tiger Woods. Meanwhile Michelle Obama also took another vacation, skiing in Colorado.

THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY

USA Today columnist, Jonathan Turley, argues that Obama has achieved "the imperial presidency" that Nixon tried to establish but failed.  Warrantless surveillance, unilaterial military action, kill lists, and attacking whistleblowers. . .not exactly aspects of constitutional rule.

A CALL FOR OBAMA TO ACT: IGNORE THE CONSTITUTION

Eric Posner calls on the President to act in the debt crisis without involving Congress and tries to build a legal case for Obama to do this. 

So in the face of contradictory orders from Congress, President Obama should do what he believes is in the public interest. And if the House refuses to raise the debt ceiling, this surely means some combination of cutting spending, borrowing beyond the debt limit, and perhaps even searching out new sources of revenue.

Will this move us to an imperial presidency and the end of the balance of powers established by the Constitution?

Our Obsolete Constitution!  From the Hoover Institution. 

Our modern constitutional system seems to be weighed down by non-stop political crises, from entitlement reform to labor relations. With each new crisis comes a short-term fix. Over time, these fixes will only exacerbate the nation’s long-term problem of living beyond its means—for now, short-term interest rates remain low enough to fund the nation’s tidal wave of debt. 

 The Hoover essay is responding to liberal Louis Michael Seidman in the NYT who writes "Let's Give Up on the Constitution."  

Seidman writes:  This is not to say that we should disobey all constitutional commands. Freedom of speech and religion, equal protection of the laws and protections against governmental deprivation of life, liberty or property are important, whether or not they are in the Constitution. We should continue to follow those requirements out of respect, not obligation.  But who will determine what parts we follow and what ones we don't?--a benevolent dictator?