Reflections From a Murky Pond

President Obama is supposedly a great admirer or America’s 16th President, Abraham Lincoln.  At least he, his staff, and their media sycophants have made a point of trying to link Obama to Lincoln in many ways. Somehow, given Obama’s actions, I think that this is nothing more than posturing and capitalizing on Lincoln legacy.

I know this would make the Lincoln weep – or have Obama hold off in chains:

As reported by CNN:

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.

But the proposal would be “dead on arrival” if it’s sent to Congress, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said.

Murray used that blunt terminology when she told Shinseki that the idea would not be acceptable and would be rejected if formally proposed. Her remarks came during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs about the 2010 budget.

No official proposal to create such a program has been announced publicly, but veterans groups wrote a pre-emptive letter last week to President Obama voicing their opposition to the idea after hearing the plan was under consideration.

The groups also cited an increase in “third-party collections” estimated in the 2010 budget proposal — something they said could be achieved only if the Veterans Administration started billing for service-related injuries.

Asked about the proposal, Shinseki said it was under “consideration.”

“A final decision hasn’t been made yet,” he said.

Currently, veterans’ private insurance is charged only when they receive health care from the VA for medical issues that are not related to service injuries, like getting the flu.

— Adam Levine
CNN, The 44th President, 1st 100 Days

It’s well known by all reasoning Americans that President Obama, like most – if not all – Liberals, has little or know love or respect for the members of the US Military; he’s already made that abundantly clear. This proposed action goes beyond disrespect though; it is an overt act of disloyalty and is an explicit assault on the morale and operating efficiency of our brave soldiers.

Surprisingly and thankfully, even the Democrats in Congress can’t – judging from Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-WA) blunt language – stomach this betrayal of our military

President Obama wants our armed forces to use their own insurance to pay for line-of-duty injuries?  I guess his desire for Universal Healthcare doesn’t extend to the military. Maybe he thinks they don’t deserve it, or that America can’t afford to provide the care they deserve – though we apparently can afford to provide that care for other demographics.

Over the course of man’s history various rulers and regimes have made the mistake of failing to support their armies. Most of them didn’t last overly long,  either due to the military deposing them or the military “failing” to prevent others from deposing them.

I’m not 100% certain at this point exactly how I feel about this being repeated one more time… 🙁

On February 8, 2009 R & B star Chris Brown is “alleged” to have beaten and threatened to kill his girlfriend and fellow R & B artist Rihanna. The media frenzy surrounding the incident continues to this day (March 14, 2009).

The latest furor – small and localized as of yet, but it will most likely grow – is over the findings of a survey conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission in the immediate wake of the Brown v. Rihanna altercation. It seems that almost half of Boston area teens think Rihanna is to blame for the assault. Some people are dismayed by the responses of the 200 Boston youths (ages 12 to 19) surveyed last month by Boston Public Health Commission.

Among the findings:

• 71% said arguing was a normal part of a relationship
• 44% said fighting was a normal part of a relationship
• 51% said Chris Brown was responsible for the incident
• 46% said Rihanna was responsible for the incident
• 52% said both individuals were to blame for the incident
• 35% said the media were treating Rihanna unfairly
• 52% said the media were treating Chris Brown unfairly

Since 51% + 46% + 52% = 149% (!) the findings listed were either the result of separate questions or a deliberate overlap / massaging of the results by the BPHC.

Additionally, a significant number respondents in the survey said Rihanna was destroying Chris Brown’s career, and it was shown that females were no less likely than males to come to Rihanna’s defense in this matter.

Read the rest of this entry »

It would be appreciated by many Americans if the Liberals and the Obama Administration would make up their collective minds about the state of the American economy. This waffling between woe & doom and confidence is getting more than a bit wearing.

When they’re pushing for increased government spending, they’re all doom and gloom – alternating between wringing their hands over the financial disaster and finding wealthy people to blame for it.

Just this week, we saw more people file for unemployment than at any time in the last 26 years, and experts agree that if nothing is done, the unemployment rate could reach double digits… If we do not act boldly and swiftly, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.

— President Obama
January 24, Weekly Address

~*~

There’s been no good news, and there’s no good news on the immediate horizon. The only good news is the president acted swiftly; he’s put together an economic stimulus package that we believe, and outsiders believe, will create 3 million to 4 million new jobs and set a new framework for the economy to develop on, a new foundation. And so we’re off and running, but it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

— Vice-President Joe Biden
January 25, CBS’ Face The Nation

~*~

Our economy is dark, darker, darkest almost. There isn’t any economist who will give you an optimistic view of the direction our country is going. We have listened to their assessment of where we are.

— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
January 25th, ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos

Now, when they’ve gotten their wish for more government spending than has been seen since the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu built The Great Pyramid over a 14 – 20 year period ending around 2560 BC, they begin to sing a far different tune.

So I am very confident about our long-term prospects. We live in such a rapid-fire information-rich environment that people’s attention spans go like this. And that makes for volatility in confidence. A smidgen of good news, and suddenly everything is doing great. A little bit of bad news — oh, we’re down in the dumps. And I am obviously an object of this constantly varying assessment.  I’m the Object-in-Chief of this varying assessment.

So my view — you know, people ask me sometimes, well, you seem like a pretty calm guy, how do you do that? I say, well, look, I don’t think things are ever as good as they say and they’re never as bad as they say. And things two years ago were not as good as we thought because there were a lot of underlying weaknesses in the economy, and they’re not as bad as we think they are now.

— President Obama
March 12, Business Roundtable

If Obama and his Liberals want to inspire any confidence in the American people at all, they need to settle on a message. Either things are “darker, darker, maybe darkest” and it’s “going to get worse before it gets better,” or things aren’t as bad as the incessant fearmongering and media hype has made it out to be. It’s one or the other and the President’s ongoing message should convey that.

All that this waffling does is convince the American people that they’ve either been conned by Obama and the Liberals worse than anyone was conned Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, or that our government doesn’t have any answer to the crisis and is praying that we can be convinced to remain quiet and complacent about their failures – at least through the 2010 Congressional elections.

The law of averages said that it had to happen and it has; I agree with President Obama on something he wants to and with the stated reasons for his wanting to do it.

From the McClatchy Washington Bureau:

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that American children should go to school longer – either stay later in the day or into the summer – if they’re going to have any chance of competing for jobs and paychecks against foreign kids.

“We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day,” Obama said, adding U.S. education to his already crowded list of top priorities.

“That calendar may have once made sense, but today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st century economy.”

He urged administrators to “rethink the school day” to add more class time.

“I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,” he said. “Not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom. If they can do that in South Korea, we can do it right here in the United States of America.”

This is an attitude and a desire for “change” that I can fully endorse. America’s government run school system is flagging and failing. Overall the students are not provided with an education that will serve them as well later in life as it should. Extending the school day and /or the school year is a means – though not the only needed means – of addressing this critical failing.

Chas Freeman – the thankfully now-former Obama nominee to chair the National Intelligence Council (NIC) – has recused himself from consideration for the position. The man who endorsed the Tienanmen Square Massacre claimed that he couldn’t perform the duties of the office due to public outcry.

America and all the free peoples of the world should rejoice. This is a rare victory.

There has been much uproar over Mr. Freeman’s possibly inappropriate loyalties to foreign regimes such as the Wahabists in Saudi Arabia and the Communists in China. Both his anti-American positions and his antisemitism have been roundly decried – as has his belief that governments should murder protesters.

As I have said earlier, I wasn’t too bothered by Freeman’s antisemitism, considering it a good shield against Rahm Emanuel’s Zionism. That view has now changed.

The would-be butcher, Chas Freeman’s exit rant:

You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office.  The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue.  I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.  I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

As those who know me are well aware, I have greatly enjoyed life since retiring from government.  Nothing was further from my mind than a return to public service.  When Admiral Blair asked me to chair the NIC I responded that I understood he was “asking me to give my freedom of speech, my leisure, the greater part of my income, subject myself to the mental colonoscopy of a polygraph, and resume a daily commute to a job with long working hours and a daily ration of political abuse.”  I added that I wondered “whether there wasn’t some sort of downside to this offer.”  I was mindful that no one is indispensable; I am not an exception.  It took weeks of reflection for me to conclude that, given the unprecedentedly challenging circumstances in which our country now finds itself abroad and at home, I had no choice but accept the call to return to public service.  I thereupon resigned from all positions that I had held and all activities in which I was engaged.  I now look forward to returning to private life, freed of all previous obligations.

I am not so immodest as to believe that this controversy was about me rather than issues of public policy.  These issues had little to do with the NIC and were not at the heart of what I hoped to contribute to the quality of analysis available to President Obama and his administration.  Still, I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society.  It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful  lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East.  The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth.  The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel.  I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel.  It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so.  This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues.  I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.

In the court of public opinion, unlike a court of law, one is guilty until proven innocent.  The speeches from which quotations have been lifted from their context are available for anyone interested in the truth to read.  The injustice of the accusations made against me has been obvious to those with open minds.  Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.

Still, for the record: I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies.  I have never lobbied any branch of our government for any cause, foreign or domestic.  I am my own man, no one else’s, and with my return to private life, I will once again – to my pleasure – serve no master other than myself.  I will continue to speak out as I choose on issues of concern to me and other Americans.

I retain my respect and confidence in President Obama and DNI Blair.  Our country now faces terrible challenges abroad as well as at home.  Like all patriotic Americans, I continue to pray that our president can successfully lead us in surmounting them.

— Chas Freeman
March 10, 2009 exit rant

It’s truly amazing. This piece of filth’s hatred of Jews is so profound that he was forced by it to essentially declare that the Jews and the “Jewish Lobby” libeled him and kept him from being able to to hold the chair the National Intelligence Council. I haven’t read this level of antisemitism and paranoia since I read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Freeman should hook up with Cynthia McKinney. They could trade stories about blaming it on “da Joos.” 😉

Great Gods on their thrones! Even ABC – not exactly the staunchest ally of Israel, Jews, or American Middle eastern policy – couldn’t silently choke down this bullshit.

What’s perplexing about this that so much of what critics objected to were Freeman’s statements, in full context. His record was picked apart like that of any other controversial nominee — sometimes fairly, sometimes not so — but only in Freeman’s case does the nominee make an allegation that a foreign power was lurking nefariously somehow behind it all.

— Jake Tapper
ABC News Senior White House Correspondent

I have to say that this was a close shave for America and the Free World. Obama almost managed to appoint a man with a disturbing agenda and beliefs to be the head of our National Intelligence Council. Can anyone imagine what could have happened with a creature like Chas Freeman in a sensitive position like that?