Archive for category Presidency
Marco Rubio’s Letter to Obama on Debt Limit
Posted by Tom in Budgets, Deficit, Fiscal Policy, National Debt, Presidency on January 12, 2012
January 6, 2012 
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President
Any day now, news reports suggest you will ask Congress to approve yet another increase in the debt ceiling. The expected request is another $1.2 trillion, adding to a three year debt binge that has totaled $4.5 trillion on your watch and that has enabled our overall debt to surpass $15 trillion. Your latest request will push the federal debt limit well above $16 trillion.
This pending request will be the sixth time during your Presidency that Congress is being asked to keep allowing government and spending to grow at rates that are unsustainable. In other words, you have made it a routine part of your job to ask for more room to spend without any plan to reduce our debt.
Instead of making debt ceiling increases a routine Washington exercise, we need to make it routine to actually spend no more than we take in. Until then, I will oppose your request to continue borrowing and spending recklessly.
As I wrote in The Wall Street Journal in March 2011, I will oppose a debt ceiling increase unless such an authorization is accompanied by a real plan to tackle our debt. Ideally, such a plan would feature both pro-growth elements and spending restraints, including fundamental tax reform, regulatory reform, meaningful cuts to discretionary spending, a balanced-budget amendment, and reforms to save Social Security and Medicare.
If we had done this in mid-2011 when we last debated the debt ceiling, we could have set America on a path to economic growth and prosperity. This would have led to more jobs and, in turn, to more duly employed taxpayers generating more growth-driven revenue to help us pay down our debt. Instead, you failed to lead, punted the tough decisions and, in doing so, our credit rating was downgraded for the first time in our history. It’s a tragic reality but, on your watch, more and more people have come to believe that America is becoming a deadbeat nation inevitably heading toward a European-style debt crisis.
When you served in the Senate in 2006, you called raising the debt limit “a sign of leadership failure.” Using your own standard, this request will mark your sixth “sign of leadership failure” on the debt ceiling issue alone. Throughout our history, Americans have revered courageous leaders and celebrated them as profiles in courage. Unfortunately, the first three years of your presidency have been a profile in leadership failure. While you may choose to run your reelection campaign against a “Do-Nothing Congress,” your insistence on doing nothing to meaningfully tackle our debt poses a direct threat to America’s exceptional character and is leading us towards a diminished future.
America deserves leaders who will stand front and center, level with the American people about our challenges and offer real solutions to solve them. Instead of simply asking for another debt ceiling increase, I urge you to come forward with a real plan to tackle our debt in 2012.
Sincerely,
Marco Rubio
United States Senator
D-Day, Lest We Forget
Posted by Tom in Defense, Freedom, National Character, Presidency on June 6, 2011
This from Ty Cobb:
Friends,
In 1984 President Ronald Reagan and allied leaders attending the G-7 Economic Summit left London and gathered in Normandy to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, the difficult but eventually successful battle that turned the tide of the war in Europe. My God, it hardly seems possible that it was 27 years ago!
President Reagan gave two extraordinarily moving speeches that day, one at Omaha Beach with President Francois Mitterand, and another, more remembered, at Point du Hoc–the cliffs the Rangers scaled in the face of German artillery firing directly down on them. This was a U.S. only ceremony, and many of the Rangers who survived that assault were on hand to hear the President that day. I was fortunate to be in charge of coordinating the visit and the event, and it was a moment that none of us there will ever forget.
Here is a link to the President’s speech–you may want to listen to Reagan and reflect on the significance of this anniversary.
– Ty
Is the Leftist Media Disenchanted with Obama?
Posted by Tom in Politics, Presidency, Press on April 30, 2011
This from the left coast’s San Francisco Chronicle: “White House Credibility Gap on Press Coverage.” WOW, Obama’s own media, in Pelosi’s home town, calling foul? What’s the story?
Seems that a Chronicle reporter took a video of the anointed one with her cell phone during a political fundraising event. Evidently that’s forbidden. So obviously, she must pay the price. Fair enough, rules are rules, she violated them, she gets canned from further coverage of the President.
“The White House communications operation has a credibility problem. On Thursday, key people in that office told The Chronicle in plain language that reporter Carla Marinucci would be banished as a pool reporter for future presidential visits because she shot video of a protest inside an Obama fund-raising event in San Francisco. The White House further threatened “retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban,” said Editor Ward Bushee. On Friday, the White House flat-out denied that such exchanges took place.”
Well, you just don’t push the Fourth Estate around that easily. After Josh Earnest told Politico.com that threat was not true, Bushee said in effect, liar liar pants on fire! So, in this “he said, she said” spat between adored and adorer, who’s right?
Or, does that really matter? Where would the Chronicle go if not to the anointed one? The answer is simple, they have no place to go, no one to turn to. They and their comrades put him in and now he’s theirs!
The post concludes with: “In fact, the exclusion of electronic journalists itself represents an overbearing attempt by the Obama White House to control what the public sees and hears of presidential visits. The ability to cover the president with 21st century reporting tools should not be subject to White House whims.”
Seems the Chronicle and its MSM fellow travelers should have asked about Obama whims long ago.
SHUT IT DOWN!
Posted by Tom in Bankruptcy, Budgets, Congress, Deficit, Entitlements, National Character, Politics, Presidency, Statism on April 3, 2011
I’ve read several articles and posts on the potential shutdown of the government if a wasteful expense cuts are not agreed to by Reid and Obama. The consensus is, as in past shutdowns, that “essential services” would be maintained. (More on that later.) In essence, defense, boarder protections (such as we have), law enforcement, the courts, congress and the administration would continue as would things like welfare checks and social security, medicare and medicaid payments. Our world, our lives, will not end if the government shuts down!
USA Today reports that President Obama has predicted “dire” consequences if there is a shutdown. However, he has instructed agencies not to reveal their shutdown plans. Seems kinda strange, doesn’t? If consequences are so dire, why wouldn’t he let the agencies explain?
“In e-mails from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) last month, agencies were told their statements to Congress “should not state or imply what functions would or would not be continued in the event of a funding gap.”
It continued: “Agencies should not be previewing shutdown plans — that is, policy and operational decisions — in any way.” Agencies were instructed to clear any responses to questions about their shutdown plans with OMB.”
Here’s the point: why is the United States government rendering NON-ESSENTIAL SERVICES, AND WITH OUR TAX MONEY?
By the blood of our forefathers we are a Constitutional Republic, one of limited powers, those not granted by us are reserved to the states or retained by us; this is embodied in the 10th Amendment. The government should perform ONLY essential services.
So, I say, shut it down. And consider shutting it down permanently. The boogyman Obama and his lackeys in the main stream media would have us fear is our own ignorance and dependency. This doesn’t portend a very confident future for our children!
Our Leadership Vacuum Is A Moral Issue
Posted by Tom in Foreign Policy, Law, Morality & Religion in the Public Square, Military Policy, National Character, Presidency on March 13, 2011
The United States has abdicated its position as leader of the free world. The Obama Doctrine as today’s WSJ points out editorially is one of defer to others, work only through others and blind ourselves to the inherent indecisiveness and ineffectiveness of others. So Obama will work only through an ineffective UN and he’s smart enough to know it’s ineffective. Or he’ll work only through NATO which he knows is inherently divided and can’t make a decision on its own. Or he’ll threaten justice from the international court. Or he’ll spout blustering threats. One thing is clear: he won’t lead.
In short he wants to hide behind others. So, it’s not his fault. It never will be his fault because he won’t make a hard decision. He the perfect picture of a Hamlet wringing his hands and unable to decide. What can one expect of a Chicago politician who has never had any responsibility. A community organizer who learned effective rabble rousing but little else. A state legislator who voted “present” more often than Aye or Nay. A senator seldom present for a vote. A president who takes polls before taking a position. No wonder the Democrat powerhouses wanted him, public unions, trial lawyers, Wall Street, all of them know he’s easily controlled.
So our empty suited leader will stand by and watch Gadhafi massacre his own people and while tragic it won’t be his fault. After all he did bluster a bit and went to all those international organizations! Now it can be effectively argued that what happens in Lybia is immaterial to our strategic interest. What’s happening in Bahrain and Saudi is certainly more critical to our strategic interests. But the humanitarian cost in Lybia will be horrific. He will turn a blind eye and deaf ear. He is the “peace in our time” Neville Chamberlain of today.
Well, what’s the problem with that? After all, we can’t be the world’s policeman. We are bankrupt ourselves. The problem is both moral and practical in nature. Moral in that it is wrong to standby and watch an illegitimate dictator murder his citizens when we have the ability to stop the massacre. It’s the equivalent of watching Hitler freely executing the Holocaust. We are the only nation capable of leading, because before Obama in modern times we have had that position and because of the indecisiveness and ineffectiveness of international organizations. Our abdication is morally wrong.
The practical nature of the problem is that our abdication of leadership creates a vacuum. As nature abhors a vacuum, so does human nature. The vacuum will be filled by every two bit dictator with any ambition. In this case Gadhafi. And while Gadhafi is a minor player and really more of a European problem, Kim Jong II isn’t; nor is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So the moral wrong begets a major security risk.
As today’s WSJ editorial concludes: “Lybia today is what the world without U.S. leadership looks like.”
Time For A Little Humor…….Aw WTF!
Posted by Tom in Budgets, Deficit, Fiscal Policy, Humor, National Debt, Politics, Presidency on February 23, 2011
Sorry but I couldn’t resist!
Newsweek Waking Up?
Posted by Tom in Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Presidency on February 21, 2011
Hard to believe this interview of a Harvard professor on MSNBC and THE BLAZE. I leave it to the reader to figure it out!
Organizing For America
Posted by Tom in Employment, Politics, Presidency, Unions on February 20, 2011
Well, if you didn’t know by now, you now know what the job of a community organizer is. After all we have had one in the White House running the country for the past two years. The job of a community organizer is to promote dissension among various groups and thus gain political advantage, not for the groups mind you but for the “community organizer!”
John Fund covers President Obama’s current community organizing antics in his WSJ article, What’s at Stake in Wisconsin’s Budget Battle. “The real assault this week was led by Organizing for America, the successor to President’s Obama’s 2008 campaign organization. It helped fill buses of protesters who flooded the state capital of Madison and ran 15 phone banks urging people to call state legislators.”
“Myron Lieberman, a former Minnesota public school teacher who became a contract negotiator for the American Federation of Teachers, says that since the 1960s collective bargaining has so “greatly increased the political influence of unions” that they block the sorts of necessary change that other elements of society have had to accept.”
That’s right, a labor guy admits that the public employee unions control society. Even the most progressive of Democrats, FDR warned against this: ”The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, “I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place” in the public sector. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government.”
So the public unions control the leftist politicians, they have the votes, they own the elected! Not only that, but they have a monopoly. They don’t need to worry about competition as do the private sector unions. They are living fat, fatter than the private sector while the rest of us put up with their mouth pieces and pay their unsustainable wages, benefits and pensions.
Bravo to Governor Scott Walker, the Wisconsin Republicans and this mild proposal to level the playing field!
The Epitome of American Exceptionalism
Posted by Tom in Individual Freedom, National Character, Politics, Presidency on February 18, 2011
Another segment from Chris Christie’s talk before the American Enterprise Institute.
To my way of thinking, this states the essence of American Exceptionalism, the individual’s desire to live freely and succeed. People still struggle and take great risks to come here just to have the opportunity to succeed.
Sorry, President Obama, your mealy mouth put downs of American Exceptionalism just don’t cut it.
JFK-BHO, What a Contrast!
Posted by Tom in Democrats, National Character, Presidency on November 22, 2010
As a kid raised in a Roosevelt Democratic household, I learned politics from a pro, my Dad. This was tough St. Louis, ward politics from a working-class, Irish-Catholic perspective. So I was rooting for, campaigning for and praying for Kennedy’s election when in the Army Reserves in Chicago I watched the election returns, even though at 18 I couldn’t vote.
Reading Warren Kozak’s op-ed in today’s WSJ, Remembering JFK in an Age of Terror, reminded me why I was so star struck. He tells of a speech by Kennedy on the steps of the UN on September 25, 1961:
“Terror is not a new weapon,” the young president tells the world body. “Throughout history, it has been used by those who could not prevail either by persuasion or example. But inevitably, they fail either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats and that aggression would meet its own response. And it is in the light of that history that every nation today should know; be he friend or foe, that the United States has both the will and the weapons to join free men in standing up to their responsibilities.”
“Free men standing up to their responsibilities”—there is a lasting quality in those seven words that harks back to who we are as a people, to our War of Independence and our frontier days. It describes 18-year-old Marines on Pacific islands and in Afghanistan today. And it carries even more weight because this president, 18 years earlier, had almost lost his own life as a Navy officer on a patrol torpedo boat, PT-109, during World War II. He served his country in war despite his privileged background because, like most men of his generation, he believed in freedom and standing up to aggression. In other words, he took responsibility.
“The United States has both the will and the weapons.” No apology for our strength. No apology for our past. No apology for who we are, and yet the world still admires him.”
What a refreshing contrast to the weak, apologizing, groveling, America-bashing president we now have in office! And what a happy time to have been proud to be a Democrat!