Rather, that was one of the very reasons for enacting ObamaCare in the first place.

As many of us said back in 2009, the purpose of ObamaCare was never to give health insurance to needy people who couldn’t afford it. First, that category was nearly empty:

• The deserving poor were already covered by Medicaid; and if necessary, its qualification threshold could have been temporarily lowered to allow more people to benefit — say, by expanding availability to those who had recently lost their jobs (hence health insurance) but were not yet living below the Medicaid poverty line.

• The biggest chunk of those who did not have health insurance comprised the rich (who prefer to pay for their health care as necessary, rather than buy insurance), and the young, healthy, and shortsighted, who can afford health care but choose instead to gamble that they won’t get so sick or injured that they need expensive treatment. Making such a choice, even if it turns out to be a big mistake, is part of individual liberty. The proper “solution” is to allow us that liberty, then hold individuals accountable for their own decisions; actions have consequences. (Innocents swept up in those bad decisions, such as children, can be helped separately.)

• Finally, a small percentage of the uninsured could have afforded a cheaper, stripped-down policy, but cannot afford the “Cadillac” health-care plans whose costs are driven up by government mandates and regulations.

  For those unfortunates, the easiest fix — which would have benefitted everyone else as well — was to eliminate all the government meddling the caused the problem in the first place: Requiring health insurance by law to cover a littany of specialized services; policies that make it difficult for insurance companies to offer greater variety in policies, such as a medical savings account coupled with catastrophic care (which encourage more parsimony among patients, as they must pay to refill their MSA if depleted); regulations prohibiting insurance companies from offering policies cross-state and cross-border; overly plaintiff-friendly (and especially lawyer-friendly) medical malpractice laws; and so forth.

Real problems, such as people with pre-existing conditions (the faux “casus belli” for the war against private insurance), could have been handled the same way bad drivers are handled for automobile insurance: Create an “assigned risk” pool among health insurers to spread the cost; allow a reasonable increase in rates for those with such conditions, and have a reasonably short waiting period (e.g., six months) before full coverage occurs; and allow for temporary government assistance for those who truly cannot wait and incur unpayable costs. (This isn’t laissez-faire Capitalism, of course; but it’s a reasonable and inexpensive compromise between liberty and safety net.)

Such reforms would have cost a fraction of the trillion dollars that ObamaCare expropriated from the private sector. In fact, once the lifting of government mandates and the squelching of “jackpot justice” malpractice suits lowered actual health-care costs, insurance reform might have wound up cheaper than the original system it replaced. And in any event, it would have been a move towards greater freedom of choice for employers and individuals.

But the Obamunists had precisely the opposite purpose from the beginning; rather than freedom, their ultimate goal was to put more Americans than ever before under the iron boot-heel of the government. Never was it about health insurance for the poor and uninsured; it was always about the federal government seizing control not only of the health care of individuals but also nationalizing those state and local health programs already in place. ObamaCare was, first and last, a power grab by the federal government at the expense of states, local governments, and individual Americans.

So please, let’s not imitate Captain Renault in Casablanca — shocked, shocked to discover that Barack Obama has violated our First-Amendment right to freedom of religion! In fact, that specific mandate was at the heart of ObamaCare tyranny: a frontal assault on the Catholic church in particular, which is so virulently hated by the gay-activist and feminist wings of the Left.

The only element of this policy that should shock anyone is the unbelievably hamfisted way that Obama decreed it: A politically savvy politician would have patiently held off until after the election, giving himself two years to allow the furor to die down.

Instead, the president once again mistook unanimity among his left-liberal friends for a Progressivist “consensus” among the American people; he lives in a bubble of epistemic closure, talking only to true-blue believers on the left. I formerly gave him the nickname “Lucky Lefty,” because (a) he is left handed, (b) he is left-leaning, and (c) he was extraordinarily lucky. Well he’s still (a) and (b), but not so much (c) anymore, so I can no longer call him that.

Obama’s new nickname is “Bubble Boy,” honoring his world view.

But what’s done is done and cannot be undone; Obama has ripped off the mask, and he can’t put it back into the bottle. We now see ObamaCare in all its naked savagery and unAmericanism. Thank goodness for Obamunist “dumbth!”

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

The US and EU backed an Arab League plan to transition Syria from the Assad regime to a new, popularly elected government.  The plan was proposed for UN endorsement, so that its execution would have the imprimatur of the UN and the implied weight of international approval.  The Obama administration made execution of this plan, through the UN, the focus of US policy on Syria, as did the EU and its major member states.

They brought the question to a vote in spite of the fact that the positions of Russia and China on intervening in Syria have been unchanged for months.  It was predictable that Russia and China would veto the resolution.  Indeed, it was a grave tactical error to force the confrontation.  Russia’s and China’s greatest concerns have not changed, and instead of addressing them, the Atlantic members of the Perm-5 forced a vote.

This was a confrontation that did not have to happen.  Russia’s and China’s concerns have sound elements.  Consider the issue in this light: do we really want to set a precedent in which the UN gives its stamp of approval to regime-change proposals from the Arab League?  Should the UN act as a fulcrum for regime change in this manner?  If we allow it to, what will that mean for the future?  For whom else will the UN endorse third-party plans for regime change?

The precedent in principle is one of the great problems here, and Russian and Chinese comments on the issue have consistently centered on it.  Remember that the UN did not give its stamp of approval to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which had as its objective regime-changing Saddam Hussein.  I never considered that a problem, and indeed was glad that a faulty precedent was not set then.

In 2011, the UN declined to endorse any regime-change proposal for Libya.  In approving the use of force against the Qadhafi regime, the UN’s narrow justification was protection of civilians.  That principle was strategically and operationally unsound, to be sure, but by invoking it, the US delegation and the UN avoided pushing for the bad precedent we have just demanded a vote on: having the UN endorse third-party proposals for regime change.

Frankly, Russia and China have good grounds for rejecting that proposal.  It is not safe, for any nation, for the UN to be a source of such endorsements.  The character of the UN is well known; it cannot be trusted with such a portfolio.  Neither the United States nor any nation in Europe is naturally immune to attack by this method – but the Obama administration and the EU continue to behave as if we are.

Besides the flawed principle, Russia is of course concerned about her client, Bashar al-Assad, being removed by outside agency.  But her greater concern is who the remover would be.  Russia cannot tolerate giving a Western-backed Arab League the lead in picking a new leadership for Syria – any more than Russia thought it was a good idea for Turkey’s Erdogan to pick Syria’s new leadership.  The reason is a combination of factors:  Moscow fears political-power wins for the Islamic world in the context of a fading, incoherent American power – and the peril is doubled by the fact that it’s the West actively bolstering the Arab-Muslim bloc as a regional power broker.

From the Russian perspective, this Western move is either diabolical – a means of raiding Russia’s client base without confronting Moscow directly – or colossally stupid.  China, under perceived pressure from American activism in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, also sees the move as opening doors that should be held closed: doors that will usher in new stability problems on China’s western flank.

We should be clear that Russia and China are both happy to have their own special relationships with the Arab League, and with Arab or other Muslim Middle Eastern nations individually.  They understand this as pragmatism, and have no illusions about what it means in terms of amity, goodwill, or commonality of philosophical interests.  The problem, from their perspective, is the West giving a boost on principle to a bloc that is hostile, unreliable, and potentially very exploitable by newly-empowered radical Islamists, as the “Arab Spring” spins off its thunderstorms and tornadoes.  Either the Westerners are ideological dupes, or they are playing a very deep power game.  With their passive-aggressive approach, the US and EU have chosen the path most likely to shift power relationships in negative, uncontrollable directions for everyone in Asia and much of Europe and Africa.

By operating on a set of unrealistic ideological precepts, the Obama administration has made it impossible for Russia and China to tacitly accept US leadership and extract from it the benefits they can.  The vetoes they exercised in Saturday’s vote have launched a new period in which they will make fewer and fewer bones about repudiating US leadership and pushing for alternative arrangements.

 As for Syria, France has already announced that she is pushing, in the absence of a UN resolution, for a coalition approach (emphasis added):

President Nicolas Sarkozy said France would work with its European and Arab partners to create what he called a “group of friends of the Syrian people” to apply international backing to the Arab League’s call for President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, the withdrawal of troops and a transition to democracy.

Apparently, Sarkozy is willing to dispense with American “leadership from behind,” and find a solution for Syria without the United States.  France’s approach is commonsensical and realistic, and that could be a net positive for Syria and the region.  But Russia and China have their own diplomatic channels and proposals in Syria; it is not a given that France’s initiative is the one that will carry the day.  In any case, the outcome could very well be worked out without any real input from US power.

Don’t be too quick to say, “Good riddance; France or Russia should be handling it anyway.”  If our power is so valueless that it can be dispensed with in the Eastern hemisphere, there is nothing that will prevent that region’s security problems from rapidly becoming ours.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a “preliminary commitment” letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-I’m Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

And this?

“We want to work with you. We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and, when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.”

Mr. Obama was saying that while he was drastically slowing down leasing and permitting in the US and whining about “subsides” to US oil corporations. We apparently can subsidize government controlled oil companies in foreign countries, but not here (and I’m not arguing for subsidies here – just pointing out the usual Obama contradiction – kind of like he’s against bailouts, except for Chrysler, GM, Solyndra, etc.)

Well, that little jump-start of ObamaDollars has indeed helped “develop these oil reserves”. And the beneficiary?

Off the coast of Rio de Janeiro — below a mile of water and two miles of shifting rock, sand and salt — is an ultradeep sea of oil that could turn Brazil into the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, behind Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The country’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, expects to pump 4.9 million barrels a day from the country’s oil fields by 2020, with 40 percent of that coming from the seabed. One and a half million barrels will be bound for export markets.

The United States wants it, but China is getting it.

Less than a month after President Obama visited Brazil in March to make a pitch for oil, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was off to Beijing to sign oil contracts with two huge state-owned Chinese companies.

Well done, Mr. Obama.

[HT: Red Country]

~McQ

Twitter: @McQandO

The administration appears to be doing what it thinks will avert one.  Military force is playing a quiet and relatively minor role.  There has been more “messaging” about force in the last few weeks than actual force activity.  The administration is also trying to discourage Israel from mounting an independent strike on Iran, by frequently advertising US concerns about that possibility.  Presumably the White House knows that this particular messaging campaign serves to keep Iran alerted.  Ultimately, there is more talk than anything else.  Military preparations, such as they are, are defensive in nature.  That includes the acceleration of missile-defense sales to the Persian Gulf nations.

Consider last week’s disclosures about the number of US troops in Kuwait and the announcement that a “second” carrier strike group had arrived in the Central Command (CENTCOM) theater.  News outlets across the nation reported these bits of information as evidence that the US is “boosting” our military presence in the Persian Gulf.  The direct implication is that we are doing this not only because of the Iranian threat but because of a concern in the White House that Israel will conduct a strike on her own (which would produce a backlash from Iran).

But we are not “boosting” our troop presence in the Gulf.  We decided last year to keep some of the troops coming out of Iraq in Kuwait, as a ready force to deal with contingencies.  As far as I can tell, the US administration has not explicitly implied in the last few days that the troops were “dispatched” to Kuwait, as if they had just recently deployed from North America.  But numerous news outlets are reporting the developments in exactly those terms.

The force of about 15,000 includes two Army brigade combat teams (BCTs) and a combat air (helicopter) brigade, all of which deployed in 2011 prior to the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq.  We haven’t “boosted” our ground-force presence in the Persian Gulf; we have drawn it down a little less than originally advertised.  The forces in Kuwait are insufficient to mount an attack with; they might be used instead to help defend Gulf nations if Iran retaliated against sanctions or other Western actions with regional attacks.  (The original premise was being able to go back into Iraq for security operations.)

The carrier strike group situation, meanwhile, will prove out in the coming days; we may have decided to keep two strike groups on station instead of one.  One of two carriers that are currently outside the Persian Gulf – USS John C Stennis (CVN-74), which has been on station and is due to go home to the West coast, and USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), which has just arrived from San Diego – will probably leave shortly.  A third carrier strike group, that of USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), is reportedly headed for the theater from its last port visit in Thailand, which may mean that two carriers will be within a 1-3 day transit of the Persian Gulf, even if both are not operating there continuously.

It has been far from unusual to have two carriers in CENTCOM over the past decade.  Even Pat Buchanan seems to have given up thinking it’s a harbinger of an ill-advised attack on Iran.  Two carriers are, in fact, insufficient to launch a deliberate attack on Iran – like the ground forces being retained in Kuwait.  The presence of two carriers in the theater for an extended period is evidence of a marginally heightened defensive profile.   (It also gives the president the flexibility to send one on a dash to the Eastern Mediterranean if necessary, while keeping one on station in Southwest Asia.)  The two carriers are not a signal that we are going on offense.

Notably, if we did need to apply significant force in the Eastern Med, we’d have to send assets there.  The Russians have the only aircraft carrier task force deployed in EASTMED. The US has not maintained a robust carrier presence in the Med for some years now.  (Interestingly, Britain and France are planning to jointly deploy a large naval force – including aircraft carriers – to the Med later this year.)

Meanwhile, another media narrative, about the US sending a signal of support to Israel (and pressure against Iran) at a crucial time, has just fallen apart.

The US and Israel were set to hold exercise Austere Challenge 2012 in May, followed by Exercise Juniper Cobra 2012, a missile/air-defense exercise that would place the Theater High-Altitude Defense (THAAD) system in a “defense against Iranian missiles” scenario.

The Juniper Cobra series started in 2001, and in 2009 brought the THAAD system into Israel also.  Austere Challenge is a US European Command (EUCOM) exercise series in which the command headquarters practices operating as a joint task force HQ, commanding participants among the US forces stationed or deployed in the EUCOM theater.  US reserve forces regularly deploy to Europe for the exercise, and in 2011, the US Sixth Fleet flagship, USS Mount Whitney, participated as a HQ afloat, concluding the exercise with a port visit in Haifa.

The US and Israel were planning a large-scale combination of these exercises in April-May 2012.  But reporting in the last 24 hours indicates that the exercises will not take place then.  Turkish press, quoting Israeli reporting, says that the exercises have been postponed until later in the year.  But the most recent Israeli reporting suggests the exercises have been cancelled (with budget concerns cited as the reason).

Postponement – probably to an as-yet unspecified date – is more likely.  The US gets as much out of these exercises as Israel, and has been focusing on Juniper Cobra 2012 for validating missile-defense systems and operational concepts that cannot be effectively exercised elsewhere.   (UPDATE:  the latest from the Jerusalem Post confirms that the exercises will be held later in 2012.)

But the political signal is the opposite of the one originally talked up in the infosphere.  Rather than intending to send a signal about US support for Israel, one that would put pressure on Iran, the administration is, at the very least, not concerned that canceling or delaying the exercises will inevitably send a very different signal.

I’m sure the Obama administration would characterize its political posture as one of concern that holding these exercises on schedule would be seen as provocative in an already unsettled situation.  The unspoken premise is, of course, that demonstrating US-Israeli collaboration in missile defense and military operations is provocative.

And from the perspective of Tehran, and no doubt Damascus, it presumably is.  Well-intentioned people can argue honestly over whether it is a good idea to let policy decisions be governed by what our opponents consider provocative.  “Provocative” is always the flip side of “deterrent”; the question is whether, in a given situation, one thinks like a global leader determined to deter, or like a nation that hopes to avoid the need for exertion.

Regardless, it cannot be argued that the Obama posture is anything other than defensive.  Equally defensive is the administration’s emphasis on supplying Gulf nations with air- and missile-defense systems.  These systems are of obvious interest to Iran’s neighbors, but they cannot prevent Iran from launching attacks – of any kind.  They are purely passive, entailing no preemption or active deterrence.

It has been a mistake at every turn to look for evidence of the conventional use of US power in the actions of the Obama administration.  The operations in Libya demonstrated clearly that Team Obama is determined not to use US military power to secure transformative outcomes rapidly.  Obama is prepared to let conflicts continue as long as they must in order that the outcomes be achieved by other means.  His solicitude for missile defenses in the Gulf and in Israel is a signal that he expects to approach Iran on defense.  Our overall military posture in the Gulf simply reinforces that approach.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Initial jobless claims unexpectedly jumped by 24,000 last week to 399,000 as more workers lost their jobs, the Labor Department said Thursday. At the same time, the economy continues to lose workers.

In the 30 months since the recession officially ended, nearly 1 million people have dropped out of the labor force — they aren’t working, and they aren’t looking — according to data from Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the past two months, the labor force shrank by 170,000.

This is virtually unprecedented in past economic recoveries, at least since the BLS has kept detailed records. In the past nine recoveries, the labor force had climbed an average 3.5 million by this point, according to an IBD analysis of the BLS data.

…According to the BLS, the “labor force participation rate” — the ratio of the number of people either working or looking for work compared with the entire working-age population — is now 64%, down from 65.7% when the recession ended in June 2009. That’s the lowest level since women began entering the workforce in far greater numbers several decades ago.

If you adjust for this drop, the unemployment rate would be close to 11%, instead of the official 8.5%.

At this rate, the completely politicized Bureau of Labor Statistics should just remove several million more workers from the labor force, so they can get the unemployment rate down to, say, 4.8%. Like it was during those nightmarish Bush years.

 
Related: Obama Labor Politburo Now Publishing Patently Bogus Unemployment Propaganda.

Romney, the son of a politician, has been running for office, holding office or thinking about running for office for more than two decades. “Just level with the American people,” Gingrich growled. “You’ve been running … at least since the 1990s.”

For some reason, Romney can’t do that. Or at least it seems like he can’t. His authentic inauthenticity problem isn’t going away. And it’s sapping enthusiasm from the rank and file.

Goldberg is right, but the underlying theme that voters need to be reminded of is that during so many important debates fromhealthcare, jobs, Wall Street Reform, confirmations, recess appointments, to taxes the culprits to invoke cloture or side with the Democrats typically are the same:  Senators Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe,  and Scott Brown–the trifecta of RINOs. All from the northeast, too.  See where I’m going with this?

Frankly, Romney, who the mainstream liberal media would like to see win the nomination, has yet to unite the GOP base.  His used car salesman pitch simply rubs people the wrong way.  We’ve seen this over and over again–even John McCain pointed this out and won in 2007′s primary–and now supports him–that should speak volumes to my point.  Romney has always been dogged by this and this is why we have such a large ‘Not Romney’ camp on the right side of the aisle.

The GOP is also paying the bitter price for not having anyone in line to succeed GW Bush.  The party’s internal tug of war will be an historical teachable moment and prepare the party for future elections.  The one saving grace is that, while the Democrats have Hillary, they have no one to succeed her at this point in time.  I say Hillary because she seems to be the only power broker left untarnished by Obama–even though she is an Alinsky kinda girl.

Additionally, the GOP presidential candidate will have a two-pronged mission as the nominee:  to beat the MSM and Obama.  However, enlightened voters now know for sure the media is mostly state-controlled, Obama was never vetted, and that his radical leftist ideology drives his policies, appointments, and regulations out of the mainstream.

Furthermore, the MSM needs Romney to offset Obama.  The formula is quite simple:  RomneyCare is to ObamaCare as Obama’s rhetoric is to Romney’s rhetoric all of which cancel each other out according to how the media sees it.

I’m not buying the media hype over who can beat Obama.  The primary is the primary and the game changes in the general.  Voters are more inclined to vote with their wallets.  We have gas prices averaging at almost $4 per gallon across the country, skyrocketing food prices, record foreclosures, record number of people on food stamps, high unemployment, ObamaCare, crippling regulations, and much more.  So if the MSM thinks that the historic 2010 midterm GOP wave was a whim, think again.  The Right accomplished its key mission of splitting the Congress so that Obama’s agenda could not be rammed through anymore.  Would we have liked the Senate, sure, but in 2012, the job will be finished.  My point is that who do we really want in the Oval Office?  A northeastern Republican who disavows the GOP or not.  We already have someone who does not have the consent of the governed.  Are we really going to take that risk again?

Finally, Romney has always touted RomneyCare as a great model for all the states to implement, but the reality is, the only person who implemented RomneyCare was Obama and now we have ObamaCare.  No thanks.

The bare bones of the agreement our president is hammering out with the Taliban is this:

• Americans unconditionally withdraw all forces from Afghanistan.
• We give up all objection to the Taliban returning to power (as part of a “coalition” with the Karzai government * ).
• We build a headquarters compound for the Taliban.
• We announce that we are no longer enemies with the Taliban.
• We release all Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay and allow them to return to Afghanistan — and resume the activities that landed them in Gitmo in the first place.
• We issue an apology from the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan; after which Obama goes barefoot and bareheaded to Kandahar, where he bows deeply from the waist and begs forgiveness — for George W. Bush’s wickedness.

(That last bullet point isn’t official; I’m just logically extrapolating.)

In the Power Line post, John Hinderacker theorizes about what President B.O. has in mind:

[T]he Afghanistan war is deeply unpopular [it is? I thought that was the good war! -- DaH], and Obama wants to run for re-election next November on the boast that he “ended two wars.” The baleful consequences of re-installing the Taliban in Afghanistan will not appear until long after the next election campaign, which is all that Obama cares about.

John implies, I believe, that the maneuver will have the desired effect: Obama will be lionized for being the peacemaker, Bush reviled as a warmonger, and this will give Bubble Boy a swift boost into a second term. But bear in mind that traditionally, the closer we approach an election, the more pessimistic become the lads at Power Line.

I have a different take on the political outcome of Obama “workin’ the machinations behind the scenes,” as Louis Farrakhan might put it. Rather than a political triumph for Obama, I see a soft spot that even the Republican Party will be able to hit while dead drunk and with one eye tied behind its back — which, to be honest, is the way it usually campaigns.

Here’s the plan. We wait until Barack Obama begins strutting and chest thumping about how he has “ended two wars,” then we respond thus:

President Obama has discovered a super-easy way to end any war quickly: just surrender. We prematurely withdraw from Afghanistan at the same time we prematurely withdraw from Iraq, leaving the door wide open to an Iranian invasion; what a diplomatic masterstroke! Obama becomes the first president in American history to lose two wars… simultaneously!

It seems the One We Have Been Waiting For actually believes that surrendering to two different gangs of radical Islamists is America’s greatest national-security triumph, and he expects us to reward him with another term. Even worse, these are two wars that we had already won — that is, until Barack Obama took over and found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Heckuva job, Mr. President.

I have no idea who gave him the cockamamie idea to bring the Taliban back in Afghanistan and to prematurely withdraw from Iraq and allow Iran to take over. It’s as if in 1945, after the Germans surrendered in World War II, FDR had entered into secret negotiations with the surviving Nazis to withdraw all American troops, then help restore the Nazi Party to power again in Germany… while simultaneously encouraging the Soviets to seize control of Japan, China, and the Philippines.

Even Jimmy Carter stands in awe of such a colossal concatenation of catastrophe.

Barack Obama has pulled off a feat that none of us thought possible: His foreign and national-security policy has failed even worse than his domestic and economic policy… a breathtaking achievement!

I say, bring it on; how I long to have that debate. What is Obama going to argue? “Look, it has been three months already, and the Taliban has not yet reinstated mass torture-executions of Christians, moderate Moslems, and uppity women!”

Well of course not: Part of Obama’s secret deal with the Taliban requires them to hold off until Obama is safely reelected… probably the only clause of the contract they will fulfill; and then only because having Barack Hussein Obama continue to occupy the White House is in the Taliban’s best interest, and Iran’s as well.

All that’s left is to declare all American hydrocarbon fuel off-limits at the very moment the Iranians decide to blockade the Strait of Hormuz; then the cosmic Obasmic failure will be complete, thorough — and irreversible.

* Note that the Taliban and Hamid Karzai’s government are deadly, sworn enemies; how’s that parlay going to work out?

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

The U.S. exported more oil-based fuels than it imported in the first nine months of this year, making it likely that 2011 will be the first time since 1949 that the nation is a net exporter of such goods, primarily diesel.

That’s not all. The U.S. has reversed another decades-long trend. It began producing more crude oil in 2008 than the year before and accelerated that upswing 3% in the first nine months of this year compared with the same period in 2010. That production has helped reduce U.S. imports of crude oil by about 10% since 2006.

“It’s dramatic. It’s transformative,” Edward Morse, a former senior U.S. energy official who now directs global commodities research at Citigroup, says of the historic shifts. He says the U.S. is importing a smaller share — 49% in 2010, down from 60% in 2005 — of the oil it uses, adding: “We’re moving toward energy independence.”

Before we start jumping for joy here, it’s important to note that these figures include all exports of any petroleum based products, not just what we drill here at home. Two factors accounted for the lion’s share of this shift, and one of them is the increasing quantity of oil sands based products which we import from Canada and refine. Large amounts of that, particularly diesel, are then resold and exported.

The second factor is the boom we’ve seen in seen in the extraction of oil (along with natural gas) in shale deposits, particularly in North Dakota, Montana and Texas. Additional strain on domestic supplies has been relieved by the falling price of natural gas as we open up more supplies in Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere. A number of manufacturing interests, such as steel production, have been increasingly turning to natural gas to cut production costs, making their products more competitive and lowering demand for crude oil products.

Crude oil production is still far below where it could be, given the stingy nature of the Obama administration when it comes to drilling permits and oil lease auctions, but even that has been on the rise. The industry has managed to fight its way back to a great degree, producing jobs and reducing our dependence on foreign sources, even as they fight with their own government. Imagine where we could be if Washington wasn’t trying to throttle the flow by holding up the Keystone XL pipeline or constantly pushing job killing bills like The FRAC Act which would restrict horizontal drilling and development of previously untenable resources.

Of course, as the study notes, no matter how much progress we make, we’re probably never going to get back to the production / consumption ratio we had in the 70′s. But that doesn’t mean that we still can’t do a lot better than we are now. In 2010 we only imported 12% of our oil from Saudi Arabia, down from 19% in 1993. And with just a little less interference from the government, we can drive that number down further still.

Weasel Zippers offers an eye-opening then-and-now media pair that the Obama administration is going to have a difficult time explaining away. First is a quote from an article at ABC News dated July 30, in which the president and his minions touted the success of the auto industry bailout, assuring skeptics that the taxpayers would be reimbursed:

Obama said Thursday that the government will recover all of the taxpayer money used in the auto industry bailout last year and held it up as an example of ‘a good story’ in his administration’s economic efforts.

The White House said today that that pledge covers the money that the Obama administration put toward the auto industry, not the $25 billion spent under the Bush Administration in late 2008.

‘The money that this administration invested, about $60 billion, we believe we’re on the path to recouping all of that,’ [then-Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs said.

Fast forward to this morning and an appearance by Obama car czar Steven Rattner on CNBC (video here), where he was asked, “Do you think that the taxpayer is ultimately going to get paid back?” Rattner’s response: “No, but we never said the taxpayer was going to get paid back.”

Meantime, there goes another $60 billion of your hard-earned money down the crapper. Four more years, anyone?

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You can also tell from this message at the president’s campaign website:

This holiday season, we’re giving you a chance to have a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life by letting them know they inspired you to make a donation to the Obama campaign.

Simply enter their name and email address below. Then, we’ll send them a message letting them know they inspired you to donate. [Emphasis added]

Keith Koffler at White House Dossier writes vis-à-vis the request for contact information:

The effort could help the Obama campaign build a database that would enable it to target Republican voters during the general election campaign. But, more perniciously, it could also become part of an [sic] Democratic effort to influence Republican primary voters to select a candidate Democrats think Obama could most easily defeat.

While Obama does have a troubling history of asking supporters to snitch on his enemies, I see this latest move as far less invidious, as just another sappy hook to raise donations. In fact, the message doubles down on a previous hook—dinner with Obama and his missus—by including the following as a footnote:

Important: By making a donation today, you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to have dinner with Barack and Michelle Obama. By clicking on the ‘Submit’ button below or otherwise participating in the promotion, you agree to be bound by these Official Rules and represent that you satisfy all of the eligibility requirements.

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Defiant Republicans pushed legislation through the House Tuesday night that would keep alive Social Security payroll tax cuts for some 160 million Americans at President Barack Obama’s request—but also would require construction of a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline that has sparked a White House veto threat. [Emphasis added]

Passage, on a largely party-line vote of 234-193, sent the measure toward its certain demise in the Democratic-controlled Senate, triggering the final partisan showdown of a remarkably quarrelsome year of divided government.

So, the Republicans accede to the president’s request but are still somehow the bad guys because there are strings attached, in this case Obama’s signing off on the Keystone XL pipeline. Even if you accept opponents’ arithmetic—that the project will create 5,000 to 6,000 jobs, not 100,000 or more as supporters are claiming—it still reduces dependence on foreign oil. Besides, the bill contains other sweeteners, including another round of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

But nothing will stave off the measure’s “certain demise in the Democratic-controlled Senate,” whose leader, Harry Reid, dismissed the pipeline provision as “ideological candy” for the Tea Party set.

Oh, and did I neglect to mention that the government is facing another shutdown on Friday? With the two parties in Congress locked in a stalemate, Democrats, at the president’s urging, are holding up a $1 trillion omnibus bill to fund government for the balance of the fiscal year that began on October 1.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday:

We’ve got a bipartisan agreement on a number of appropriation bills, and the president presumably—in order to create some political issue, which I find difficult to understand—has instructed Democratic senators not to sign the conference report on a bill they support.

A question that naturally arises is when will the liberal-left media, not to mention Democratic leaders in Congress, declare that their own party and the president are holding the government hostage? That is what they did in April, when a governmental shutdown was looming because Republicans, in the words ofDemocratic Whip Steny Hoyer, refused “to compromise on their divisive social agenda.”

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I was pretty mad at Obama … I had changed my registration from Democrat to Independent, and I had blacked out the top of the “h” on my Obama bumper sticker, so that it read, “Got nope” instead of “got hope.” I felt like he had let down the struggling middle class. My son and I had campaigned for him, but since he took office, we felt he had let us down.

But then she learned about the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) created by ObamaCare, which is tailor-made for her needs as an uninsured Californian with breast cancer.

I have tremendous sympathy for this woman, who was facing breast cancer at a time when her husband’s COBRA had long since run out, and the family had been unable to afford insurance for several years.  Health insurance is very expensive in California, as a result of the state’s penchant for overregulation, public subsidies, and rent-seeking.  All insured health-care transactions in the Golden State contribute in one way or another to the gigantic state health-care apparatus, which endlessly drives up the cost of everything in the “private” sector.  (This squeeze has produced a mushrooming medical-services industry across the border in Mexico, as well as causing a growing number of practitioners in the state to operate on a cash-only basis – no insurance accepted.)

But PCIP is a superb example of how ObamaCare was frontloaded with goodies to attract constituencies.  Because if the Valley Gal were to read the fine print on PCIP, she’d discover that the program ends on 31 December 2013.

California administers the PCIP using ObamaCare funds.  Here is the information from the California PCIP website (emphasis added):

As a result of the federal Affordable Care Act of 2010, California has a contract with the federal Department of Health and Human Services to establish a federally-funded high risk pool program to provide health coverage for eligible individuals. The program will last until December 31, 2013 when the national health reform is set to begin. After that date, there will no longer be a need for high risk pools because federal rules will not allow insurers to reject persons with pre-existing conditions or charge them higher rates than those without such conditions.

The federally-funded program is called the California Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP). The PCIP offers health coverage to medically-uninsurable individuals who live in California. The program is available for individuals who have not had health coverage in the last 6 months. The California PCIP is run by the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB).

California actually already had a high-risk insurance program, before ObamaCare was passed.  The Major Risk Medical Insurance Program (MRMIP) became operational in 1991, and at one time served over 27,000 Californians.  Spiraling costs (partly due to legislative increases in plan benefits) meant the plan had to increase premiums and cap the number of participants at around 14,000.  In 2002, a 36-month limit was imposed on participation in MRMIP, with the proviso that MRMIP insurance providers would guarantee the offer of insurance to termed-out “MRMIP graduates” at 110% of the cost of their MRMIP premiums.

Loosely tethered to some semblance of fiscal accounting, MRMIP is definitely more expensive than PCIP in terms of monthly premiums.  Through 31 December 2011, for example, the woman in the San Fernando Valley can get PCIP coverage for herself for $306 a month, compared to the $480 she would have to pay Kaiser Permanente under MRMIP, or the $797 for a PPO plan with Anthem or Blue Cross under MRMIP.  And in January 2012, the MRMIP premiums are scheduled to increase.  The PPO plan premiums will go up to $865, and the Kaiser Permanente premiums to $516.

But that’s just something states and private companies have to do, because they face bad consequences if they don’t exert some control, however slight, over the gap between their revenues and their expenditures.  ObamaCare is subject to no such pressures.  Hence, it was able to lower PCIP premiums for Californians by an average of 18% in August 2011, because, as explained by the California administrators, “We want to make sure that everyone who qualifies for this program has access to its benefits and is not deterred by price.”

Presumably, ObamaCare, like Obama Money, comes from Obama’s Stash. It has certainly bought an apology from a Democrat who was previously angry enough at the president to switch to Independent; it may well buy her vote next year.  But the joke on her will not be a funny one.  PCIP ends on 31 December 2013, and what will happen after that is that premiums will go up – for everyone.  But services will also be restricted, for everyone who contracts for medical care using “insurance.”  And those are just the direct, first-order consequences.

The Valley Gal will find herself increasingly subject to state bureaucrats who get to decide how much she has to pay for her health “insurance” – which will actually be a state-run health plan over which she has no discretion – based on her income and assets.  Up to now, even in the wildly overregulated health care environment we have today, middle-class householders have been able to make choices of their own by maintaining private insurance at their discretion.  But it is “insurance” itself that is being subverted:  under ObamaCare, “insurance” is not a ticket to independence but a means for the government to exert control over the middle class.

The process of subverting medical insurance began decades ago, as alert readers will no doubt point out.  But ObamaCare takes it across the finish line with the insurance mandate.  Under no circumstances is the premium-cutting, welcome-all-comers PCIP model sustainable – and without a mandate, its unsustainability will blow up all over the Obama Stash program very, very quickly.  There’s nothing behind the politically deceptive PCIP premium-cutting except the future earnings of millions of people who have other plans for their money – if they’ve even been born yet.

Will Obama get his mandate?  The Supreme Court will make one decision on that before the 2012 election.  Americans may or may not accept it, if it goes the wrong way.  But one thing is for sure: as provided by the “Affordable Care Act” itself, PCIP will cease providing access to medical care in exchange for unrealistically low premiums in a little over 24 months.  I’d strongly suggest no one build his or her life around it.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

A report from the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) reveals that 47% of Congress members are millionaires, some of them many times over. When you contrast that finding with the percentage of U.S. households with net assets of at least $1 million—a mere 4%—the handwriting on the wall is clear. Extend the number of seats in Congress to roughly 115 million, one for each household recorded in the 2010 census, and we become a nation of mostly very wealthy people. How’s that for wealth redistribution?

Sheila Krumholz, executive director of CRP, writes that “the vast majority of members of Congress are quite comfortable, financially.” That’s putting it mildly. Of the current 250 members who are millionaires, nine of them have over $100 million. One of them, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), is within hailing distance of half a billion dollars, with an average net worth of over $448 million.

Issa, who is the richest, is followed by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) with $380 million, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) with $232 million, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) with $193 million, and Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI) with $174 million.

Since there are 531 Congress members in total, that means that 281 members have an average net worth of less than a million dollars. But is anyone in Congress poor? If the records obtained by CRP are accurate and truthful, the answer is a resounding yes. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) is in debt to the tune of $4.7 million. Rep. Steve Fincher (R-TN) is also reportedly in the red $3.3 million, followed by Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX), who owes $2.5 million.

But back to the good news: Despite the global economic meltdown and moribund recovery, the estimated median net worth of a current U.S. senator (senators tend to be richer than House members) is up about 11 percent, from $2.38 million in 2009, to $2.63 million in 2010 (the most recent year for which financial data were available).

A complete list of Congress members and where they fall on the wealth continuum is here. You might also enjoy tabbing over to a listing of the most popular investments among members of Congress. I’ll give you a sneak preview: The number one favorite investment vehicle is a company that paid no federal tax in 2010.

Do you think this is what the founding fathers envisioned when they established Congress?

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Sad but true, the president is number 25 on the magazine’s “25 Least Influential People Alive.” He is down sharing the dregs with MSNBC host Ed Schultz, Newsweek editor Tina Brown, deposed Egyptian “President” Hosni Mubarak, disgraced C&W singer Hank Williams, Jr., and (GOP take notice!) House Majority Leader John Boehner.

If the fact of being included in a list of do-nothings and failures is not already a bitter enough pill for a man of Obama’s towering ego, the irony that he was GQ’s “Man of the Year” in 2008 and “Leader of the Year” in 2009 is surely not lost on him.

The issue has yet to hit the stands, but the website TVNewser offers a preview of things to come in its summary of Ed Schultz:

…Then there pundits like Ed Schultz. Do you watch “The Ed Show” on MSNBC? Of course you don’t. No one does. The only reason people watch “The Ed Show” is they’re working out in a hotel gym and they can’t find a staff member to change the channel to ESPN.

But that’s small potatoes compared with GQ’s assessment of Tina Brown, quoted by Forbes:

Brown spent 2011 transforming Newsweek from a magazine no one reads into a magazine no one reads but everyone despises. That’s what happens when you star-f**k the corpse of Princess Diana by Photoshopping her at age 50 for your cover, then do a separate Photoshop of her holding an iPhone, and then create a fake Facebook page for her that includes wall posts from Deepak Chopra. Did you know Tina and Di were friends? They were! This Photoshopped image of them having lunch with Stevie Nicks is proof!

While the president’s detractors will take perverse delight in GQ’s diss of him, I think a case could be made that he is one of the more influential people alive today. Consider: Under his stewardship, the nation’s AAA credit rating was downgraded by Standard & Poor’s for the first time ever. By January of 2013, he will have added as much debt as all 43 prior presidents combined. Finally on his watch, the poverty level in the U.S. has reached an all-time high.

I would contend that none of these “achievements” would be possible under a leader who lacked influence. Barack Obama has proved to be powerfully influential in much the way plague and natural disasters have impacted the lives of the many.

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While President Obama is not exclusively to blame for the God-awful “mess” the country finds itself in, a CNN/ORC International Poll released Wednesday demonstrates that one demographic—white blue-collar Democrats—has so soured on his presidency that nearly half would prefer their party nominate a different candidate to run in 2012.

The poll also shows that Obama’s approval rating has plummeted from 76% shortly after his election in 2008 to 44% now, while his disapproval—23% then, 54% now—has taken the opposite turn.

Finally, the survey shows that a combined 53% of respondents oppose Obama’s health care law, while 38% favor the law. What is striking about this statistic is a secondary split among those who oppose it. Thirty-seven percent claim the law is too liberal, while 14% say it is not liberal enough. The clear suggestion is that the president, who has straddled the fence on many issues, has alienated voters from the other end of the ideological spectrum while simultaneously failing to win over those at his own end.

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As Mediaite observes:

Hey, all you people complaining that the Occupy protesters need to start protesting the White House in addition to the evil banks? You just got your day.

The chant—“Mr. President, over 4,000 peaceful protesters have been arrested”—begins at about the 1:07 cue in the video. It crescendos and continues until the president’s supporters shout down the protesters with the distressingly familiar “O-bam-AH” chant that was so prevalent in 2008 and shortly thereafter.

If nothing else, the noisy reception Obama received today reveals that the Occupiers are equal opportunity boors.

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The Secret Service states that a second round of ammunition was found outside the White House on Tuesday. An investigation has been launched, but the Secret Service has been tight-lipped about specific details including the caliber of the bullets recovered and which room of the executive mansion the shots were aimed at.

The president, who was on his way to the APEC summit in Hawaii at the time of the shooting, was not in the building.

U.S. Park Police have an arrest warrant for Oscar Ortega-Hernandez, who is believed to be connected to an incident on Friday, when witnesses heard gunshots and saw two speeding vehicles in the vicinity of the White House. Authorities later recovered an assault rifle in an abandoned car near the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge that crosses the Potomac River to Virginia. Items inside the vehicle led investigators to consider Ortega-Hernandez as a possible suspect.

The suspect is described as 21-year-old Hispanic man. He is 5 feet, 11 inches tall and weighs 160 pounds. He is further described as being of medium build with brown eyes and black hair. He is believed to have ties to Idaho. He has no links to radical organizations but does have an arrest record in three states.

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The official pronouncement came at the APEC Summit in Hawaii, America’s 57th state. During a news conference captured on video (cue 35:17), he made the following observation:

When I meet with world leaders, whether it is in Europe or here in Asia, the kinds of fundamental reforms and changes [they need to effect] are so much more significant than what we need to do to get our books in order. [Emphasis added]

Turning serious, I’m not sure what prompted Obama to mistake the state he was born in as being in Asia. One factor noted by some commentators is that he was working without his beloved teleprompter (note his struggle to articulate his thoughts in the video clip).

The bottom line, however, is that presidential flubs are a dime a dozen. That is because of all presidents are mere mortals, a fact that must come hard for those who once viewed Obama as larger than life (which includes Obama himself).

It would be well if we could remember this going forward. Should anyone need a “booster shot,” a tidy summary of Obama then and now can be found here.

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The response may have seemed disingenuous to viewers with an awareness that the president’s $800 billion stimulus had failed to keep the unemployment rate below 8% as promised or that Congress was locked in partisan gridlock despite Obama’s promise to usher in an era of post-partisanship inside the Beltway.

Then again, considering the source of that grade—Obama—the inflated self-assessment was hardly surprising.

Nor should it come as that much of a surprise that he is still engaged in blatant self-promotion. Despite misstep after misstep, failure upon failure, he told a crowd in his home state of Hawaii that he has delivered “change that you can believe in” during his first term in office.

In explaining the many ways in which he made good on his promise (while carefully circumventing the ways in which he has not), Obama also shared his unique vision of America. His, he told those gathered, is not a

narrow, cramped vision of an America where everybody is left to fend for themselves. It was a vision of a big, generous, bold America, where we look out for one another. An America where everybody has a shot—where everybody, if they work hard, if they take care of their responsibilities, if they look after their families, that they can get their piece of the American Dream.

The statement is as curious as it is revealing. It betrays an ignorance of the fact that Americans are among the most charitable people on the planet and were so before Barack Obama became president. His characterization of an America where “everybody is left to fend for themselves” as “narrow” and “cramped” reflects his refusal to believe in self-reliance and underscores his profound belief in a cradle-to-grave nanny state. Either way, his vision contradicts the last sentence of the quotation, which espouses the virtues of hard work and responsibility as keys to achieving the American Dream, neither of which derive from government.

When Obama turns to specific examples of the changes that he effected, his thinking becomes even more addled, his ideas more self-serving. He boasts of the auto industry bailouts (which cost American taxpayers $14 billion and whose wisdom is still a topic of hot debate) and of the passage of ObamaCare (a law so odious and overreaching that 56% of Americans want it repealed).

He speaks proudly of “bringing the war in Iraq to a close” despite warnings from his own Pentagon officials and senior military commanders that a total troop pullout may undo a decade of sacrifice in lives and treasure. As always, the idea of “winning” the war—as opposed to just “ending” it—goes unmentioned.

A “change” Obama also fails to mention is the openness and transparency he would bring to government, a promise he claimed he had fulfilled a year into his presidency. In this video from January of 2010, he tells a group of believers:

We have put in place the toughest ethics laws and toughest transparency rules of any administration in history. In history! By the way, this is the first administration since the founding of the country where all of you can find out who visited the White House. First time in history. And that’s just one example. [Emphasis added]

Yet, when the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a DC-based watchdog group, attempted to take Obama up on his offer and filed a FOIA request for White House visitor records in 2009, their request was turned down flat. Since then a federal judge has upheld the request. And the White House, true to form, has filed an appeal.

Change you can believe in?

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Showing footage of an ebullient crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park on election night in 2008, the video—titled “What if…”—is an attempt to reawaken the lost spirit of hope and change through a series of clichés (“We built a movement one conversation at a time,” “We changed the course of history,” “Change isn’t something you stop fighting for”).

The ad closes with the ominous admonition that “one year from now all our progress could be erased,” followed by the question “Are you in?”

It’s a reasonable question. Perhaps Obama should try to reassemble the flag-waving hometown throngs who cheered his election three years ago and ask how many of them are still “in”? Or he should stop by a different park, here in New York, where the question was answered graphically this weekend by a group of Occupy Wall Street protesters.

In terms of erasing all “the progress” the president has made, a recent Rasmussen poll suggests that progress is in the eye of the beholder. According to the survey, 54% of voters favor repeal of his signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Health Care Act, and 28% give good or excellent marks to his progress on the economy.

It is impossible to know how different the state of the nation might be today if Obama had never been elected, but another poll, by ABC News/Washington Post reveals that anger toward the government—currently at 80%—has never been higher.

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Unemployment has dipped slightly, to 9.1%, but that’s hardly a stat Obama wants to boast about on the campaign trail. The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report shows 80,000 new private sector jobs for the month of October, but that too is woefully short of the quarter million-plus jobs the economy will need to add each month to eventually reach pre-recession unemployment levels.

So where does that leave the president, and what are his chances for reelection? That, needless to say, is anybody’s guess, and enough commentators have handicapped the election to make another opinion superfluous. Instead, I will simply lay out some facts that will be—or can be—make-or-break issues for the president:

• Independents’ low opinion of the American Jobs Act. The president and his Democratic colleagues have been touting  the results of a Gallup poll conducted in September that shows strong support for his jobs plan—and especially its provisions for taxing “the rich.” According to the poll, 66% favor raising taxes on families earning at least $250,000 versus 32% who do not. What the Democrats conveniently overlook is a second poll released around the same time by Public Opinion Strategies showing that independent voters reject the plan by a 20-percent margin. Only 33% support the bill while 53% oppose it. The independent vote was instrumental in helping Obama win election in 2008. He will need it again in 2012 if is to have a chance of renewing his lease on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
• The power of the self-fulfilling prophecies. People like to back a winner. In my own case, that simple truth explains why I am an avid Pittsburgh Steelers fan but haven’t followed, much less rooted for, the Pirates in decades. So with elections. Even though a trip to the polls takes relatively little time, many voters will stay home if they believe the man they plan to cast their ballot for is toast. And that is the current scuttlebutt surrounding Obama. Intrade, the prediction website, currently gives Obama a 49.9% chance of winning the 2012 election, but assigns Mitt Romney a much healthier 69% chance. Put in more conventional terms, no president ever won reelection with an approval rating of 47% or lower one year out from the election. Obama’s Real Clear Politics aggregate approval rating is currently at 45.4%.

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I’m guessing you didn’t know the White House even had an Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, let alone a Facebook page dedicated to this worthy cause with 3,859 followers.

But it does. And last Saturday the administration sent officials associated with that initiative to Hunter College here in Manhattan, to meet with local parents, teachers, students, and community leaders at a bullying prevention summit. The stated purpose of the conclave was “to address the safety of Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Muslim American students.”

To be honest, I didn’t know there were any Pacific Islanders living in the Big Apple. Since the Census Bureau fixes the percentage of Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders at 0% for 2010, I would imagine their numbers are relatively small. I also wouldn’t think that Asian Americans are that much at risk unless it’s of having other test takers copy their answers. Forgive my racial insensitivity, but the vast majority of my sons’ classmates and friends at the brainiac high schools they went to were Asian, and they placed extremely well when it came time for college applications.

And what of Muslim Americans? I recall hearing fears expressed after 9/11 that Muslims in this country were likely to be targeted, but those fears were never realized. Sure, there were random offenses, but no massive hate-fueled campaign against the American Muslim community, no rash of attacks on mosques.

Yet, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Education, Muslim American students and their pan-Asian counterparts are likely targets of bullying. In a statement, Thomas Mariadason, an attorney at the Manhattan-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said:

Post 9/11, bias-based bullying toward religious and immigrant communities has been a consistent issue, and it continues to be under reported.

We’ve seen the egregious effects bias-based harassment has on students when there is a failure to intervene, from the violence at South Philadelphia High School in 2009 to reports we received in years past from the former Lafayette High School in Brooklyn. The problem persists, and it is a critical time for the White House to address these issues.

The incident in South Philadelphia Mariadason refers to involved some two dozen Vietnamese students who were jumped and beaten by black students. The motivations for the attacks were never scrutinized. The number of victims varied between 7 and 13 depending on the account; all were treated at an area hospital for scrapes and bruises and released.

The event precipitated a response within the school—50 Asian immigrants led a boycott—and the community at large. A year later, the Notebook, a Philadelphia public school blog, which had done extensive reporting on the incident initially, wrote:

[T]here’s no doubt South Philadelphia High School is a very different school. A new principal, an energized student base, emerging partnerships, a commitment to addressing school violence—all have resulted in striking progress. The violence and chaos of last year is largely gone, and students report a changed attitude from staff members, some of whom had participated in the harassment by mocking their accents and refusing to take seriously their reports of racial bias.

In brief, the incident was one-off. Corrective action was taken, and everyone has since moved on—except Thomas Mariadason. His mention of Lafayette High School in Brooklyn is doubly ludicrous since the hates crimes alluded to are close to a decade old and the school hasn’t existed since December of 2006. It’s a pretty safe bet that closing a school down will end any racial animus within its student body.

That still doesn’t answer the question of whether American Muslim students are likely targets of bullying on account of their race. But this does (h/t Creeping Sharia). It is a table from the FBI’s most recently published Hate Crime Statistics Report (dated 2009). The table, headed “Incidents, Offenses, Victims, and Known Offenders by Bias Motivation,” reveals that there were 132 victims of anti-Islamic crime in 2009. It also shows that there were 1,132 victims of anti-Jewish crime for the same year. Since Jews outnumber Muslims in the U.S. by only about 3 to 1, the Muslims still come out ahead. If they want to avoid persecution, all they need to do is be careful that their salaams don’t sound too much shaloms.

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So much a product is the president of present-day Internet technology that in his three years in office he has launched more White House website pages than you shake a cursor at. Some, like the now-defunct AttackWatch.com, which called upon the snitches among us to rat out Obama’s critics, sent a pernicious and troubling message.

Others have backfired for equally cynical if less obvious reasons. In this second category is We the People: Your Voice in Our Government. Launched in late September, the site gives concerned and politically active Americans an easy way to

petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country. If a petition gets enough support, White House staff will review it, ensure it’s sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.

For those too dumb to follow the three-step process outlined on this page, there is a helpful video that users can watch.

Mediaite’s Josh Feldman reports on the success (if that is the correct term) of the project so far. He notes that this week the White House delivered its first responses to petitions that reached the 25,000-signature benchmark (the number needed to guarantee a response).

One blanket response was to eight separate petitions, all demanding that the administration decriminalize the use of marijuana. Its author was Obama “drug czar” Gil Kerlikowske, who wrote:

Like many, we are interested in the potential marijuana may have in providing relief to individuals diagnosed with certain serious illnesses. That is why we ardently support ongoing research into determining what components of the marijuana plant can be used as medicine. To date, however, neither the FDA nor the Institute of Medicine have found smoked marijuana to meet the modern standard for safe or effective medicine for any condition.

As a former police chief, I recognize we are not going to arrest our way out of the problem. We also recognize that legalizing marijuana would not provide the answer to any of the health, social, youth education, criminal justice, and community quality of life challenges associated with drug use.

That is why the President’s National Drug Control Strategy is balanced and comprehensive, emphasizing prevention and treatment while at the same time supporting innovative law enforcement efforts that protect public safety and disrupt the supply of drugs entering our communities.

The response had the effect of generating seven new petitions. One calls upon the White House to “respond to each of the 7 marijuana related petitions individually instead of one canned response,” while another urges the administration to “take these petitions seriously instead of just using them as an excuse to pretend you are listening.” That one has received more than 7,600 signatures so far. (Two of the seven new petitions ask that Gil Kerlikowske be replaced, but every crowd has its jokers.)

If there is a lesson for the White House in this misadventure it is that reaching out to the electorate requires physically going out among the voters—and not just the ones who are your friends. And if there is a lesson for voters, it is that sometimes words are just words, even when they are wrapped in silver-tongued oratory.

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The survey, conducted by the Fordham University Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy, finds that 73% of Occupy Wall Streeters disapprove of the way the president is handling his job and that only 36% plan to vote to releect him in November of 2012. In contrast, 60% said that they voted for Obama in November 2008. These paired data dovetail with those of a USA Today/Gallup conducted in August, which found that 51% of voters do not believe that Obama deserves a second term.

Demographically, the breakdown of Wall Street protesters is what you would expect. An overwhelming majority (68%) describe their race as white, while only 10% identify themselves as Black/African American. Hispanics make up another tenth of the total population.

When it comes to ideology, 39% think of themselves as extremely liberal, while another 33% consider themselves as plain liberal—again no surprise there. In terms of party affiliation, nearly as many protesters, 22%, identified themselves as Socialists or Green Party members as Democrats (25%). Thirty-nine percent claimed identification with no political party, and 2% claimed to be Republicans.

To put these polling data in a larger context, consider first the findings of a newly released Pew poll that reveal that support for the Occupy Wall Street movement among Americans have fallen to about 2 in 5 (39%). Then add in the self-acknowledged by team Obama that casting their lot with this rag-tag movement could further alienate independents and other mainstream voters, and you have the makings of a perfect electoral storm.

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As analysts on the left scratch their heads and try to figure outwhat went what wrong, one factor they tend to overlook is what I call Obama’s “most” problem. Every contender for high office makes promises. Where Obama went astray in his 2008 campaign was the peppering of his promises with superlatives and absolutes.

His was not simply going to be a transparent White House but the most transparent in history. His presidency, he promised, would bridge Washington’s fierce partisan divide, giving new meaning to the “U” in USA. His administration would be the fairest, the most honest, the most wow. With unattainable goals like those, his chances of success were doomed from the start.

Perhaps no anecdote better captures the yawning chasm between Obama’s promise of transparency and the reality than his banning the press from a ceremony where he was to receive an award for transparency! Each time he strays from his own stated lofty ideals, moreover, he gives his critics fresh ammunition. Just this week, he was excoriated by the left-leaning San Francisco Chronicle for refusing their reporters access to a Bay area fundraiser. The paper retaliated with an editorial that accused Obama of making a mockery of his “most transparent” claim.

He has also made a mockery of his promise of bipartisanship, attacking the opposition party incessantly, calling them “the enemy” and telling them “they can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.” And that was while Obama still had a majority in both houses of Congress. Since control of the House of Representatives was ceded to the GOP in 2010, his remonstrations against them have grown only louder. He decries almost daily the partisan gridlock the Republicans created but fails to acknowledge that his own party, which has rejected many of his proposals as too radical, shares responsibility.

Despite his vow that influence peddlers would be kept at arm’s length from his administration, his campaign’s newest hire is a longtime Washington lobbyist with ties to corporations that have very deep pockets. Today, Chris Stirewalt of FOX News reports that Obama will break his “campaign finance purity” pledge by accepting donations from lobbying groups.

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“If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years,” Cahill said in a press conference in his office.

…[T]he state’s health insurance law…Cahill said, “has nearly bankrupted the state.”

Cahill said the law is being sustained only with the help of federal aid, which he suggested that the Obama administration is funneling to Massachusetts to help the president make the case for a similar plan in Congress… “…I would argue that we’re being propped up so that the federal government and the Obama administration can drive it through” Congress.

Commonwealth Connector, the independent state agency established to help residents find the health insurance, has “totally failed,” to create competition and connect people with affordable insurance, Cahill said, pointing out that 68 percent of the residents it serves receive subsidized care.

“We haven’t done anything about driving down costs,” Cahill said. “We haven’t helped small business. We haven’t changed the way we pay for health care and the way we deliver it.”…

Look, if Romney somehow wins the nomination, I’ll support him without question against Barack Obama.

But we need to elect a conservative in 2012 who is 100% committed to the eradication of Obamacare. For if it isn’t wiped from the books, I fear this country may not survive.

Related: Oh, Super: Romney Consulted With Obama Mass Sterilization Expert and Science Czar John Holdren

His most recent politically calculated gambit is to win back the youth vote by issuing an executive order that mandates “student loan relief.” That the proposal happens to cater to one of the anti-Wall Street protesters’ demands is purely coincidental.

In actuality, the plan is nothing new. The order merely fast-tracks an income-based student loan repayment program passed by Congress last year.

Here is how Obama introduced the plan to an audience of students at the University of Colorado this week:

When a big chunk of every paycheck goes toward student loans instead of being spent on other things, that’s not just tough for middle class families; it’s painful for the economy and it’s harmful to our recovery.

Sounds good. So how does the plan work? Basically, it envisions two fundamental changes to federally backed student loans. Neither of the changes will apply to private student loans that are not government-guaranteed.

The first change falls under the heading “Special Direct Consolidation Loans” and mainly affects loan holders who have already left school. To qualify, the borrower needs to have two types of student loan—one issued by the Department of Education under the direct loan program, the second by a bank or other private lender under the Federal Family Education Loan (FEEL) program. Borrowers who meet these conditions can consolidate their loans and in so doing shave a quarter of a percentage point off their rate of interest.

What do the savings translate to? Suppose hypothetically, that a qualifying borrower has $25,000 in student loan debt to be paid back over 120 months at an interest rate of 6.8%. Currently, that individual’s monthly payment is $287.70. Once the quarter percent is subtracted from the rate, which becomes 6.55%, the monthly payment shrinks to $284.50. The savings works out to $3.20 a month. Multiplied times the 6 million students estimated to qualify for loan consolidation and extrapolated over a year, those will savings return just over $23 million to the economy annually—not quite enough to rescue the recovery or register as even a dimple in the nation’s towering debt.

The second change covered by the executive order is nicknamed in true Obamaesque doublespeak “Pay as You Earn.” This change is also a retread more or less of an extant program called Income Based Repayment (IBR). Pay as You Earn will apply to an estimated 1.6 million students who are currently in college.

The differences between IBR and Pay as You Earn are matters of degree. IBR caps student loan payments at 15% of discretionary income and forgives outstanding debt after 25 years. Pay as You Earn decreases the cap to 10% and forgives the loan after 20 years.

The problem with IBR is not the numbers but its low visibility among students applying for loans. According to Mark Kantrowitz, of the student financial aid website Finaid.com, a scant 1.25% of current borrowers take advantage of IBR because few people have ever heard of it. Before the government incurs more debt by replacing IBR with Pay as You Earn, the Education Department might try publicizing the extant program.

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Ditto for the Obama re-election campaign. Its latest hire is Broderick Johnson, who has come aboard in the role of senior campaign adviser.

Johnson, should the name be unfamiliar, is a longtime Wall Street lobbyist. His clients include have included Bank of America, Fannie Mae, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Shell Oil, AT&T, Comcast, and other OWS-defined enemies of the state.

Johnson currently is a partner at Collins Johnson Group, a D.C.-based communications firm that claims to provide

superior strategic planning and political consulting services to multinational corporations, government entities, political campaigns and parties, elected leaders, nonprofit organizations, issue groups, investors and entrepreneurs.

If you’re a member of the anti-Wall Street protest movement, you can find plenty of people in those sectors whose homes you might want to visit.

Matthew Boyle of The Daily Caller notes that Johnson, while still a registered lobbyist, visited the White House 17 times. The visits must have been of a personal nature because 2008 candidate Barack Obama was unequivocal about banning lobbyists from his administration. He even signed an executive order his first day in office excluding former lobbyists from working “on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.”

And Barack Obama keeps his promises. Or at least he does 60% of the time. He said so himself on a campaign swing through Nevada and California yesterday:

I carry around a little checklist, and I think we’ve got about 60 percent of it done so far. And that’s not bad for three years, because I need another five.

Actually, the president’s math is suspect. If he made good on 60% of his promises in three years, then he needs only two more years to complete the remainder.

But I digress. Writes Matthew Boyle:

The Obama re-election campaign appears to have tried to hide or downplay Johnson’s lobbying history, as the original campaign press release announcing his hire completely ignored it. Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse hasn’t returned The DC’s request for comment on the issue, either.

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He spoke of it again last month, at a meeting of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, where he said:

I wish I had a magic wand and could make this all happen on my own. There are times where—until Nancy Pelosi is speaker again—I’d like to work my way around Congress. [Emphasis added]

A troubling headline this morning suggests that the president intends to grant his own wish. Reuters reports that the White House this week will “announce a series of actions to help the economy that will not require congressional approval, including an initiative to make it easier for homeowners to refinance their mortgages.” The first of these announcements will come later today as Obama begins a three-day swing through western states (taxpayer-funded, bien sûr).

There will also be “a student loan initiative,” details of which will be unveiled on Wednesday. How timely—and how cynical! A student loan bailout is at the top of the anti-Wall Street protesters’ agenda. What better way to win back the hearts and minds of youth-set voters as an election approaches?

How Obama intends to make good on his initiatives remains to be seen. Reuters outlines one of the strategies:

The Obama administration has been working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to find ways to make it easier for borrowers to switch to cheaper loans even if they have little to no equity in their homes. [Emphasis added]

The FHFA intends to loosen the terms of the two-year-old Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), which helps borrowers who have been making mortgage payments on time but who have not been able to refinance as their home values have dropped.

Obviously, accomplishing this goal requires forcing lenders who have been dragging their feet to get with the program and issue a new round of high-risk loans. What could possibly go wrong?

As for Congress (remember them?), White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer is quoted as telling The New York Times, “The only way we can truly attack our economic challenges is with bold, bipartisan action in Congress.” In the same breath, Pfeiffer states:

The president will continue to pressure Congressional Republicans to put country before party and pass the American Jobs Act, but he believes we cannot wait, so he will act where they won’t.

Sounds like a plan to me.

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No problem, though. The White House keeps a backup teleprompter just in case. Besides, a teleprompter isn’t the piece of equipment the president most desperately needs at this juncture. That would be an “Applause” sign.

The Los Angeles Times reports that at the president’s last stop on his most recent taxpayer-funded, non-campaign bus tour, only “one or two people clapped” at his mention of the American Jobs Act. Obama is quoted as responding, “You can go ahead and clap. Go ahead, nothing wrong with it.”

It’s not as though the president was expecting a thunderous ovation to begin with. There were 100 or so people in the audience at the campaign stop—I mean, jobs tour—to begin with.

That’s got to be tough for anyone, let alone someone with the president’s towering ego. When you’re used to playing to sellout crowds in vast amphitheaters, it’s rough delivering one of your patented golden-tongued orations and receiving only a polite smacking of hands.

Perhaps it’s a sound that Obama had better grow accustomed to. Given his continuing low approval ratings and commensurately high national rate of unemployment, he may soon be listening to the sounds of silence.

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At last Tuesday’s debate among the Republican presidential candidates, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former U.S. senator Rick Santorum both mentioned that repeal of Obamacare could be accomplished through the special budgetary procedure known as ‘reconciliation.’

Here is the relevant exchange from the debate:

SANTORUM: We need to repeal [the health care reform law] by doing it through a reconciliation process. And since I have experience and know how to do that, we’ll take care of it…

[…]

ROMNEY: Rick, you’re absolutely right. On day one, granting a waiver for all 50 states doesn’t stop in its tracks entirely ObamaCare. That’s why I also say we have to repeal ObamaCare, and I will do that on day two, with the reconciliation bill, because as you know, it was passed by reconciliation, 51 votes.

In his article, Capretta walks the reader through the process of reconciliation, though anyone who has been paying attention hardly needs a refresher. This legislative process, which allows a bill to pass in the Senate with a simple majority, usually 51 votes, was used by Senate Democrats in 2010 to pass the health care reform law.

The invidiousness of their actions was underscored by the fact that the Democrats at the time had a 60-vote supermajority but couldn’t cobble together enough support from their own party to win passage. So they resorted to what was essentially a parliamentary trick.

The process of reconciliation arose out ofthe Congressional Budget Act of 1974. It was intended to give Congress a means to fast-tracking an essential budget bill by limiting debate to twenty hours under prevailing Senate rules. By its nature, the procedure precluded filibustering.

The procedure was never meant to be exploited in the shameless fashion of the 111th Congress in March of 2010. Nor was it intended to be used in the manner currently under consideration by Messrs. Santorum and Romney.

Capretta looks for legitimacy in the move if it were to be acted on (which would require a Republican supermajority in 2012) by observing:

Obamacare is in law—with all of its trillion-dollar spending and taxes now part of CBO’s “baseline” budget projections. Reconciliation was created for the express purpose of giving Congress an expedited process for making changes to just this kind of spending and tax policy. Obamacare is thus a very ripe target for budget cutting, and that means reconciliation.

That’s the letter of the law—but it’s not the spirit. The unvarnished truth is that in so acting, Republicans would be resorting to the same dirty trick as their colleagues across the aisle. It would be gamesmanship, not statesmanship.

Don’t get me wrong. I share the widely held opinion that ObamaCare is a socialist’s dream and just about everyone else’s worst nightmare. A third of small business owners view the law as the biggest hurdle they face to hiring new workers. Americans of all stripes hate it. A September Rasmussen poll found that 56% of those surveyed favor repeal.

An expedited vote on the individual mandate by the U.S. Supreme Court may render this discussion moot. So would Republicans’ failure to win a supermajority in the Senate in the event the high court upholds the law. But if it comes down to quashing the law by using reconciliation, I urge the GOP to think twice. Otherwise, where does it all end?

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We will keep organizing and we will keep pressuring and we will keep voting until this Congress finally meets its responsibilities and actually does something to put people back to work and improve the economy.

How convenient then that a loosely knit and malleable agglomeration of angry protesters has suddenly emerged on the scene in the persons of Occupy Wall Street. Protesters’ demands, which vary depending on whom you ask, make them easy pickings for an experienced community organizer like Obama.

Which is why, after initially voicing tepid approval of the protest movement, Team Obama has gone “all in,” to borrow a term from the game of poker. Senior campaign adviser David Plouffe said in an interview:

We intend to make [the anti-Wall Street anger] one of the central elements of the campaign next year. One of the main elements of the contrast will be that the president passed Wall Street reform and our opponent and the other party want to repeal it.

I’m pretty confident 12 months from now, as people make the decision about who to go vote for, the gut check is going to be about, ‘Who would make decisions more about helping my life than Wall Street?’

Plouffe acknowledged that there is a risk in attempting to channel this anger, but it is clearly one that Obama is willing to take, considering the “lousy hand” he is currently holding.

But there is a risk as well for Republicans, who are counting on the Occupy movement to collapse of its own weight. If it doesn’t and the masses come to accept Obama as their savior, he could be swept into office for a second term, and for the same messianic reasons as in 2008—just by a different electoral demographic.

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One writer at the Atlanta Post, which describes itself as “the #1 news source for African-American business news and African-American politics,” listed Cain’s brainwashing remark as the #1 offense in a compendium of the candidate’s “seven most outrageous statements.” Talk show host Tavis Smiley was not merely incensed but incredulous, asking, “How does he get away with saying this to black folk?”And David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, an organization dedicated to improving the socioeconomic status of blacks, is quoted by The Christian Post as saying:

[Cain] is not somebody that is knowledgeable about African-Americans as a whole. He’s an individual.

It could be argued that David Bositis is also an individual, who therefore has no greater claim than Herman Cain to knowing “about African-Americans as a whole,” but I digress. In the two weeks since Cain made his incendiary remark, his poll numbers have climbed. While no one on the left has yet imputed a cause-and-effect relationship (although I suspect that claim will be made sooner rather than later if Cain’s star continues to rise), the candidate has become a hot topic among liberal talkers.

One of them is Goldie Taylor, who writes for another black news website, The Grio. Appearing on Martin Bashir’s show on MSNBC, Taylor expressed her opinion that if

[Herman Cain] could shed his ethnicity today, if he could become what I call the color of water, he would do it. He would do it in an effort to prove that he and people just like him could fit in anywhere and have the same level of success no matter what their race, gender, or ethnicity happened to be. [Video here.]

The comment is interesting for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is Taylor’s implication that “people like” Cain—by which I presume she means people of color—can’t enjoy “the same level of success” as the former Godfather Pizza CEO. She must not have been paying attention when the president said at a fundraiser on Tuesday:

What’s great about this country is you’ve got a good idea, you’ve got a service that nobody else has thought of, you know what, go out there, start a business. Make money…. Anybody in America should be able to make it if they try.

But the most intriguing aspect of Taylor’s analysis is the implication that Cain is not comfortable in his skin—that he would shed if he could. She further states that “the base that he [Cain] believes he is after is a right-wing, ultra-conservative base that does not want to either see racism as a dilemma or see it as a way—or see it as an attack on them.”

In short, Cain has been brainwashed into accepting a pernicious right-wing narrative. I’m waiting for Tavis Smiley and the others to express their righteous indignation that another black man has been accused of having been brainwashed.

In reality, though, it isn’t Cain’s skin color that is the source of his self-delusion. That, rather, is something he shares in common with all conservatives. As I wrote here, liberals generally see themselves as the lone “intellectuals” in the room. As for conservatives? The prevailing view of them is best summed up in the words of the left’s most cerebral living thinker, who said “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

It is for this reason that conservatives will never support, let alone become enthusiastic, about a black candidate. Oh, wait.

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On Friday the administration filed a formal appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that Secret Service records of White House visitors are subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

In August U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell upheld a March 2009 FOIA request for White House visitor records made by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a DC-based watchdog group. Initially, the request was denied, prompting CREW to sue for injunctive relief.

The judge’s ruling rejected an argument by administration attorneys that the visitor’s log is the property of the White House even though it is maintained and used by the Secret Service. Ironically, the same argument was used by the Bush 43 administration, which candidate Obama roundly castigated for its secrecy.

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But if it’s true that Romney consulted with Obama’s crazed ‘Science Czar’ John Holdren, he should step out of the GOP race today.

Barack Hussein Obama has clotted the executive branch with unaccountable “czars” — unsavory characters too extreme to be confirmed for cabinet positions even by a hyper-partisan, Democrat-controlled Senate. Among the most alarming of these malevolent lunatics is Science Czar John Holdren, a participant in ClimateGate who has advocated de-developing America and putting sterilants in the public water supply…

…Holdren has also spoken in favor of forced abortions, confiscation of babies, targeted as well as mass involuntary sterilization, bureaucratic regulation of family size, and global authoritarian government. If there is a line between ultra-left ideologue and evil maniac, Holdren clearly crosses it. No one to the right of Pol Pot would want John Holdren advising our leaders.

This brings us onto still more common ground between Barack Obama and Willard “Mitt” Romney. From an official memo released by Willard’s office when he was Governor of Taxachusetts, announcing “Strict New Clean Air Regulations“ [i.e., Cap and Trade]…

…Sound familiar? Obama wanted to impose Cap & Trade nationwide, but it would so obviously cripple the economy that he couldn’t get it through a Democrat Senate that was radical enough to pass ObamaCare — the national version of RomneyCare.

Now to the even scarier part: In the development of greenhouse gas policy, Romney Administration officials have elicited input from environmental and economic policy experts. These include John Holden [sic], professor of environmental policy at Harvard University…

Of course, that was back in 2005. By now everyone knows that global warming is a hoax, and CO2 is harmless. Everyone except Mittens, that is. He continues to proclaim that economic activity makes it be too hot out.

This comes on the heels of reports that President Obama met with Romney’s key advisers while designing Obamacare.

Newly obtained White House records provide fresh details on how senior Obama administration officials used Mitt Romney’s landmark health-care law in Massachusetts as a model for the new federal law, including recruiting some of Romney’s own health care advisers and experts to help craft the act now derided by Republicans as “Obamacare.”

Romney’s shape-shifting positions are so flagrant that even Democrats are producing flip-flop videos of the sort that pulverized John Kerry in 2004.

Look, folks: I’ll support Mitt Romney against Barack Obama if he’s the nominee. But he’s not the nominee. Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are all vastly superior candidates — and vastly more electable in the general — than Mitt Romney.

We don’t need another John McCain or Bob Dole. We don’t need another mushy centrist with ill-defined principles. Too much is at stake this year. While there may not be a Reagan in the race, there are Constitutional conservatives to choose from. And choose from them we must if this Republic is to survive.
 
 
Related: Early glimpse at the official 2012 Obama bumper-sticker (if they accept my design proposal).
 

The group, the Lord’s Resistance Army and its bloodthirsty leader, Joseph Kony, have recruited Ugandan children in their mission, ordering them to commit atrocities, including murdering their own families, or face mutilation.

In the letter Obama writes:

Although the U.S. forces are combat-equipped, they will only be providing information, advice and assistance to partner nation forces, and they will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense.

In a separate statement, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland noted that the U.S. has provided more than $40 million in equipment and training to Uganda’s military to aid in what has been a decades-long stalemate between the government and the LRA.

The decision to put boots on the ground is supported by Congress, which in 2010 passed “the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act,” authorizing U.S. efforts to eliminate the LRA menace.

The president claims in his letter that the move is being made in the interests of national security, though one is hard-pressed to justify the action on other than humanitarian grounds. I am not suggesting that those are not valid reasons, but it’s high time the president started calling a spade a spade.

It is equally hard not to feel cynical about his decision once again to bury the announcement late on Friday, at the end of the weekly news cycle, or to question why no statement was made directly to the American people.

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As the sun sets on his presidency, candidate Obama continues to hammer away at the same stale message about economic fairness and shared sacrifice to anyone who will listen. If only the wealthiest Americans, he laments, would open up their hearts and—more importantly—their pocketbooks, all would be well. Our looming $14 trillion national debt would be erased.

Sometimes the president adds a logical flight of fancy to his argument, on one occasion for example calling upon the rich to dip into the “additional income” that they “don’t need.” Last night in Orlando he channeled a former member of his own administration, Elizabeth Warren, who said during an unsuccessful run for a seat in the U.S. Senate, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.”

Obama’s version was less grammatically well turned—he said, “None of us make [sic] it on our own”—but the argument was the same, which is to say equally flawed:

Somebody—an outstanding entrepreneur like a Steve Jobs—somewhere along the line he had a teacher who helped inspire him. All those great Internet businesses wouldn’t have succeeded unless somebody had invested in the government research that helped to create the Internet. We don’t succeed on our own. We succeed because this country has, in previous generations, made investments that allow all of us to succeed.

Obama is engaging in some chicken-and-egg reasoning here. It is true that teachers can be inspirational but only to students with the raw talent or intellect to become a Steve Jobs or a Thomas Edison. And even in the most compelling cases, a teacher is seldom little more than a conduit through which a gifted mind passes and becomes refined.

But more importantly, the assumption that teachers are perforce government employees is flat-out wrong. Using taxpayer money to finance education is a sufficient condition to educating the nation’s youth, but it is not a necessary one. Steve Jobs, given his druthers, sent his own daughter to a private school, which he praised as “the best school I’ve seen in my life.” There is no reason to assume that all “free” education in the country could not be run as well or better than the public sector by the private sector.

Obama’s Internet argument fails for similar reasons. It is easy to turn his claim about “government research that helped to create the Internet” on its head and say that without Lawrence Roberts, the man credited with designing the fundamental architecture underlying the ARPANET, there would be no Internet. There is also again no compelling reason to assume that the technology behind the Internet wouldn’t and couldn’t have been invented purely independently of the government.

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So why are so many columnists beginning to refer to his presidency using the past tense? It’s worth noting that these references are not by conservative bloggers engaging in wishful thinking. Rather, they are emanating from the liberal commentariat.

Here is Mother Jones’s Kevin Drum:

Ezra Klein has a really, really good piece in the Post today that looks back at the Obama administration’s response to the Great Recession and explains why it wasn’t enough. [Emphasis added]

Looks back? Wasn’t? Isn’t the administration’s response to the recession ongoing—a work in progress? The last time I looked, Obama was vigorously lobbying Congress to pass a second stimulus bill.

The article Drum links to has an equally ominous title: “Could this time have been different?”

Even the almighty New York Times, maker and breaker of presidents, ran an article on August 6 asking “What Happened to Obama?”

What I believe is happening is that the left is reading the handwriting on the wall and resigning itself to the harsh reality the man they trusted to “fundamentally transform America” is on the verge of being unelected. The polls may not be the ultimate arbiter of elections, but Obama’s approval ratings, which have followed a steadily downward trajectory, are now at a low of 42%. It is a point far south of the widely accepted cutoff of 47%, from which no incumbent ever recovered.

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Since taking office, I have worked to renew American leadership and pursue a new era of engagement with the world.

The strategy has worked like a charm. The number of times the president has been burned in effigy in the past three years (approximately 400) is still lower than the number of curtseys he has dropped in front of disbelieving world leaders.

You’d think that by now Obama would have realized that America has long been regarded by the international community as a pillar of strength, not a temple to arrogance, and that prostrating himself in the presence of peers diminishes—rather than elevates—the nation’s standing.

And you’d have thought wrong. The Charlotte Observer reports that the family of slain anti-American terrorist Samir Khan was called by an official with the U.S. State Department to express his condolences.  Khan, a propagandist for al Qaeda, was taken out in the same missile strike that killed cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.The Observer, which serves the North Carolina city where Khan’s survivors live, writes:

The phone call came a day after the family released a statement through [Jibril] Hough that condemned the ‘assassination’ of their 25-year-old son—a U.S. citizen—and said they were ‘appalled’ that they had not heard from the U.S. government to discuss their son’s remains or answer questions about why Khan was not afforded due process.

Isn’t that special? Our own state department does a mea culpa maxima to the family of an enemy combatant sworn to killing innocent Americans. Among Khan’s “life achievements” was his stewardship of the radical al Qaeda English-language online magazine Inspire, in an early edition of which he declared himself “proud to be a traitor to America.” He went on to author a number of articles, including one charmingly titled “How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”

The Khans have not spoken to the press since receiving the phone call, but if they’re still miffed, no problem. The president can pack his “bowing” gear and be in Charlotte in nothing flat.

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Based on the group’s latest shenanigans, Scherer could have added violent to his list of descriptors. Last night members of New York’s finest clashed with demonstrators for the second time, but this time things really got ugly. The New York Post reports that

skirmishes broke out along Broadway, with arrests at Liberty, Cedar, Wall and Ann streets.

In most cases, protesters tried to jump barricades, drawing sharp police responses.

The biggest clash happened as more than 150 marchers demanded access to Wall Street from Broadway.

About 25 of them tried to push through, as officers used clubs and Mace to move them back. One cop in a white shirt, signaling he’s a supervisor, was caught on camera wildly swinging his baton in the battle, which led to at least six arrests.

Shades of the Tea Party, no? No. Jim Treacher at The Daily Caller asks rhetorically, “Who’s more likely to get arrested, a Tea Partier or a Wall Street Occupier?” but only the most abject liar on the left could profess not to know the lone truthful answer to that question.

In addition to their proclivity toward violence, the OWSers still seem to be a group in search of a message. But neither that nor their angry-mob mentality has stopped the president from expressing his admiration for them.

At his press conference today, Obama explained somewhat circularly:

We had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression—huge collateral damage throughout the country, all across main street. And yet, you are still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to crack down on abusive practices that got us in the situation in the first place. I think people are frustrated.

Come again? “Some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly” are now“trying to crack down on abusive practices that got us in the situation in the first place”? I don’t think people who read those words will be as frustrated as they are confused.

Extracting the message that he was aiming for (and repeats more lucidly later on in his remarks—that Americans are angry “over abusive practices by the financial sector”), one gets the clear sense that Obama somehow sees his own abusive practices as not deserving of the same the angry response.

They’ve been receiving that response from the Tea Party all along, but Obama isn’t nearly so sympathetic to that group of dissenters. In fact, he has taken shots at them for doing essentially what he praises OWS for doing.

The president should really keep his distance from the Wall Street protesters. Once they figure out what—and whom—they’re really mad at, he may want to make sure he’s nowhere in sight.

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