After Massachusetts even Pelosi and Reid told the American people they got it a little bit. But when Obama went to Ohio it appears he was saying to America: 'frankly he does not give a damn' and that he is going to continue to press forward on what he deems is good for America - health care, higher spending and taxes, Green legislation etc. Rhett Butler would be proud!
Obama crowd persist in bashing GW and lose. Republican crowd do not bash Obama and win. Is there a message there?
Randall Hoven puts five simple questions to Obama. Doubt Hoven will get answers. (See 1 below.)
Republicans take off for Hawaii to figure out how best to snow American voters that they can do a better job than the Democrats. Why Hawaii? Right from the git go that is a symbolic message that should not sit well. Nothing against Hawaii but why not go to The Greenbrier, closer to home and they could use the business. (See 2 below.)
Time for Obama to move goal post again as Iran crosses 'red line.' More 'I don;t give a damn' Rhett Butler talk from Obama? (See 3 below.)
Netanyahu might as well have gone to The Wall to make this speech. Like Rhett Butler, I am not sure the feckless world gives much of a damn otherwise they would have stopped Iran by now. (See 4 below.)
Wesley Pruden asks whether Obama is the physician or embalmer.? (See 5 below.)
Dick
1)Five Easy Questions for Obama
By Randall Hoven
President Obama, I know you've given lots of speeches, briefings, and statements. And you've schooled us well on subjects ranging from how to create or save jobs to how to change climate and achieve world peace. But there are just a few things I'm still fuzzy on, and no one else seems to be asking you about them.
So if you please, could you answer just a few simple and straightforward questions? I promise that there are no tricks. Here are five questions, four short-answer and one essay.
What is the mission of our military in Afghanistan?
When you entered office a year ago, there were about 37,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. By December, there were about 68,000, when you said you would send yet another 30,000. So you have increased U.S. troop presence there by over 160%. And 2009 was the deadliest year ever for U.S. troops there. But what exactly are those troops supposed to be doing?
Last June, the mission statement for the military in Afghanistan was "Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population." By October, your Secretary of Defense reportedly thought that "Defeat" was "an open-ended, forever commitment," and perhaps "degrade" might be a better choice of wording.
According to the Washington Post, you are reported to have said at a meeting on the matter,
To be fair, this is what we told the commander to do. Now, the question is, have we directed him to do more than what is realistic? Should there be a sharpening...a refinement?
Well, what did you decide? What does the commander of troops in Afghanistan think his mission is? How does that compare with what you think it is? What is his mission statement? Defeat the Taliban? Degrade the Taliban? Deflate them? Debauch them? How did you finally calibrate the wording of that six-word mission statement?
To be clear, I'm not asking for an essay here. The old mission statement was six words on a PowerPoint slide. What is on the newest version of that slide?
What do your staff members get paid, and how do their salaries compare to that of their predecessors?
This would not seem all that important, but one of the first things you did as president, on your very first day in office, was issue a Presidential Memorandum "to freeze the salaries of senior members of the White House staff, to the extent permitted by law." So you seemed to think it was important then. We did hear that Rahm Emanuel gave you an oral report on that thirty days later, as you ordered, but we never heard the results.
So are the salaries of the senior members of your staff frozen? If so, at what levels? And how do those levels compare to their predecessors' levels?
Again, this is not an essay question. Salaries are numbers. What, for example, is Rahm Emanuel's annual salary?
What exactly did you, or will you, do with the $1.4 million from your Nobel Peace Prize?
According to news reports, your Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said on October 9, 2009 that you would give your Nobel Prize money to charity. When asked more recently, on January 19, 2010, "Any update on where the President is going to donate his Nobel Prize money?" Mr. Gibbs answered,
I know they continue to talk about it. I think he has not received any money yet. But as soon as they -- as he makes those donations, we will let you guys know."
It was later reported that you and Michelle contributed $15,000 to the Haiti earthquake victims via the Clinton-Bush Fund. So just what is the status of that $1.4million, and who got it, or is going to get it? Any reason the Haitian victims didn't get all of it, instead of 1% of it?
Again, no essay needed. Just list the names of the recipients and the amounts to each.
What were your SAT and LSAT scores and your GPA at graduation from Columbia?
You are one of the youngest presidents ever, with one of the leanest track records in elected or executive office. Virtually all your predecessors served in the U.S. Congress for many years, or served as vice president, or in a cabinet, or a high military command position, or as governor of a state, prior to being president. (See Appendix.)
Yet you served in the U.S. Senate for only one year before starting your run for president, had never held any other national office, had never been a governor of any state, had never held any executive position, and had not even been in the military. We really know very little about you. We have not even seen your real birth certificate, meaning the official "long form" version.
We knew President Bush's SAT scores and his grades at Yale. We also knew Al Gore's SAT scores and grades at Harvard. And John Kerry's grades, too. Yet without ever releasing any test scores or transcripts, you have been proclaimed as "probably the smartest guy ever to become president" by a presidential historian of such credibility that PBS puts him aside noted plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin on its News Hour.
So what exactly were your test scores and grades? Did you take any economics courses? Was your SAT score higher than 1206, which was President Bush's score?
You told us your eleven-year-old daughter Malia's score on a third-grade science test. How about telling us your test scores?
Essay Question: What, if anything, is wrong with socialism?
Imagine a world without elections and stubborn legislators to slow down enactment of your agenda. Fast-forward to the U.S. of your dreams. Describe it for us, in terms of who would control things like education, health care, banking, the media, the car companies, and the means of production in general.
Socialism would include single-payer health care. You already said you support that. Socialism would bring about "major redistributive change." You have talked previously about doing that. The government now owns 61% of General Motors and all of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it backs nearly 90% of new home loans. Why not have more things under the control of government, and specifically the federal government?
What did Stalin and Mao do wrong? What did Fidel Castro do wrong? What is Hugo Chávez doing wrong? Be specific.
Which of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto do you disagree with? Which parts of the Communist Party USA's 2008 platform do you disagree with? Again, be specific.
On this question, use all the words you'd like.
Appendix: U.S. Presidents since 1900 and their highest levels of executive or national legislative experience.
McKinley - Governor of Ohio
Teddy Roosevelt - Vice President, Governor of New York
Taft - Secretary of War
Wilson - Governor of New Jersey
Harding - U.S. Senator (1915-1921)
Coolidge - Vice President, Governor of Massachusetts
Hoover - Secretary of Commerce
Franklin Roosevelt - Governor of New York
Truman - Vice President, U.S. Senator (1935-1944)
Eisenhower - Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (World War II)
Kennedy - U.S. Senator (1953-1960)
Johnson - Vice President, U.S. Congressman and Senator (1937-1960)
Nixon - Vice President, U.S. Congressman and Senator (1947-1952)
Ford - Vice President, U.S. Congressman (1949-1973)
Carter - Governor of Georgia
Reagan - Governor of California
George H. W. Bush - Vice President, Director of the CIA, U.S. Congressman (1966-1970)
Clinton - Governor of Arkansas
George W. Bush - Governor of Texas
Obama - U.S. Senator (2005-2008)
Of these twenty presidents, fourteen had been vice president and/or governor of a state. Another two had held cabinet posts, and one had been Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II. The remaining three had never held such an executive position, but had been in U.S. Senate.
For those three of the twenty, the number of years in the Senate before becoming president were as follows:
Harding: 6 years.
Kennedy: 6 years.
Obama: 3 years.
2)Victory in First Principles
By Jeff Elmendorf
Voters are looking for change, but will they find hope in Republicans? Despite the good news of Democratic implosion presenting the real opportunity for a 1994-style Republican takeover of Congress, there is no enthusiasm or coherence coming from the top of the party.
In a startling January 4, 2010 interview with Sean Hannity, RNC Chairman Michael Steele was not too optimistic about Republicans reclaiming the House in 2010. When asked if he thought Republicans could take back the House, Steele's transparency on his party's prospects was revealing: "Not this year." He shortly went on to add that "the question we need to ask ourselves is, if we do [take the House], are we ready?"
Steele seems to point to a crisis in the party, saying, "That's what has gotten us into trouble, when we walked away from principle. Our platform is one of the best political documents that's been written in the last twenty-five years, honest [injun] on that. It speaks to some core principles, conservative principles on value of family, faith, life, economics. Those principles don't change."
We might ask what those eternal principles are to which Chairman Steele is referring. In a speech delivered last May, he seems to be speaking of the timeless truths of liberty and equality in the Declaration of Independence, yet he assured us just moments before in the same speech that "[t]he Republican Party is again going to emerge as the party of new ideas."
There is more than a hint of confusion in his remarks. Will Republicans be the party of new ideas, or will Republicans return to the principles of liberty and equality in the Declaration upon which our republic and the Republican Party were founded? If Republicans are to rally to victory in 2010, it will be only by making this distinction clear: whether the party will return to its and the Republic's first principles, or whether it will conjure up some new, faddish ideas.
When speaking with Sean Hannity, Steele made reference to the party platform. I think there is a bit of exaggeration in his claim that it is one of the best political documents of the past twenty-five years, but we cannot blame him for trying. The 2008 Republican Platform is 67 pages of lofty ideals, drippy slogans, and appeals to particular interests that leave an interested reader wondering what the purpose of such mumbo-jumbo ultimately is. In this regard, the 2008 Platform is not much different from most political speeches in that the document was written predominantly as a product for media consumption and only accidentally as a statement of party principle and position.
The last section of the 2008 Platform is called "Preserving our Values." This section is replete with subheadings consisting of participial phrases: "Upholding the Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms," "Ensuring Equal Treatment for All," "Preserving Americans' Property Rights," etc. These snappy phrases are the sort of simplistic gibberish that adorns most backdrops and podium placards whenever truly serious addresses today are given. (I do not mean to mislead -- the entire platform contains these cutesy phrases.) While the objectives behind these slogans are good as a matter of policy, we have no insight or guidance into the principles that inform these positions. This ambiguity on principle was not always the case.
The Republican Party's first platform in 1856 stands in stark contrast to the latest iteration. It is a document that could be easily printed on two standard pages. The brevity of the 1856 Platform is not an indication of shallowness or deficiency, but of succinctness and clarity. The first of nine resolutions reads:
That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence, and embodied in the Federal Constitution are essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions, and that the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and the union of the States, must and shall be preserved.
If Chairman Steele is still looking for the principles his party walked away from, he need look no farther than these words from its first platform. In 1856, the Republican Party put the Declaration first in its resolutions because it was first in importance for the principles of liberty and union. What was first for Republicans in 1856 gets a passing mention by name on numbered page 17 of the 2008 Platform (page 24 of 67 total pages).
The 1856 Platform was written with the issue of and growing controversy over slavery in mind. Particular violations of the rights of the people of Kansas are referenced to show how a firm understanding of the principles of the Declaration leads to solid judgment in 1856 and political success in 1860. What the 1856 Platform reveals in its foundation and examples is prudence -- the application of principles to particulars in the interest of justice.
There is no need to, as Steele said to Hannity, "[talk] about how we get to those first principles and defin[e] them." That work on our first principles has already been done by our Founders.
Our duty is not to rediscover what is already known. Ours is to take what we know is true and right to restore our republic, just as Abraham Lincoln did as the first Republican president. Republican victory will lie in the ability to articulate and act on how the particular issues and problems of 2010 are best solved by the eternal principles of 1776.
3)Iran crosses red line, can enrich uranium up to 20pc grade
Attaining the ability to enrich uranium up to 20 percent grade brings Iran dangerously close to "break-out" point for a nuclear weapon capability, intelligence sources report. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised the "good news" would be announced during the Feb. 1-11 celebrations of the Islamic Revolution. The "news" also prompted an urgent cabinet meeting in Jerusalem last week.
Ahmadinejad's announcement is a provocative demonstration of contempt for the six world powers and their offer to trade Iran's low-grade uranium for 20 pc enriched product overseas. By going public on the banned process and abandoning concealment, Iran's rulers are throwing down the gauntlet to them and Israel.
Iranian sources report hawks of the Islamic regime led by Ahmadinejad and spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have won the day for their tactics of jumping ahead of any possible US-led or Israel steps against their nuclear program with its own aggressive initiatives.
The Iranian president's enrichment announcement at a time that the Obama administration is pondering tough sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards was part of this policy; so were the Syrian and Hizballah declarations of military preparedness for a purported Israeli attack last week, taking advantage of an IDF war game to raise the alarm.
Political sources predict Tehran's provocative move will be met with more of the five months of foot-dragging with which Washington and Jerusalem have met Iran's contempt for one deadline after another for ending nuclear enrichment.
Both will continue to dither and pretend that stiff sanctions can scotch the Iranian nuclear threat. Tehran has meanwhile made good use of those five months to go forward and achieve a 20 pc enrichment capability.
The only straight talk from any Western leader has come from French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Saturday, Jan. 23, he told visiting Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri that France has evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons contrary to its claims. He warned that Israel "would not stand by while Iran develops nuclear weapons."
4)Netanyahu at Yad Vashem: World must stop calls to destroy Israel
By Nir Hasson
The world must stop new attempts to destroy the State of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem on Monday.
"There is evil in the world, and it doesn't stop, it's spreads," the premier said at the opening of an exhibition which includes the original blueprints of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp.
Netanyahu said that "there is a new call to destroy the Jewish state, it's our problem, but not only our problem."
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"This is a crime against the Jews, and a crimes against humanity, and it is a test of humanity," the Israeli PM said adding, that "we shall see in the following weeks whether the international community deals with this evil before it spreads.
The Yad Vasehm collection, "Architecture of Murder," includes 29 plans given to Netanyahu during a visit to Germany last August.
Netanyahu later brandished some of the documents at the United Nations to denounce Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for calling the Holocaust a lie.
The exhibition in Jerusalem includes four of the colored sketches showing detailed aerial views of the camp and blueprints of its bunks and one of its crematoriums. Tens of thousands of other prisoners, including Polish, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war, also died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi's concentration camp complexes.
After attending the exhibition's official opening today, Netanyahu will travel to Poland to take part in a ceremony marking 65 years since the camps' liberation by the Red Army.
5) Is Obama the physician, or the embalmer?
By Wesley Pruden
The gentlemen of the press (and the ladies, too) are mostly a decent sort, often a bit prideful and sometimes with not very much to be prideful about. They're comfortable only by running in a herd. Trying to think alone gives them a migraine.
A fortnight ago, Scott Brown was merely a footnote to the ritual of selecting a successor to Teddy Kennedy, not worth the attention of respectable reporters, pundits or pollsters. Everyone in the herd was sure that "the Kennedy mystique," though tattered and frayed, would produce a suitable substitute to fill Teddy's size twelves. A pundit or pollster who took the trouble to look, to discern the gathering perfect storm, was sneered at as a right-wing nut cake. Yet when Mr. Brown, against all odds, expectations and calculations won, one of the first questions he took on election night was whether he would now run for president of the United States.
He wasn't even a senator yet, but this is the way a herd thinks, insofar as it thinks. It's a phenomenon that demolishes the theory, famously enunciated by Hillary Clinton, that there's a vast conspiracy out there driving the scribblers and blabbers of press and tube. It's actually worse than that. It's a mindless consensus, not a vast conspiracy.
Given the shrinking attention span of readers and viewers, there's a competitive pressure driving the herd to manufacture great, defining moments and lay them out neatly as "the future." Facts, caution or history need not apply. The institutional memory, once so prized in the newsroom, has withered and died, unmourned.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms were supposed to have dealt a mortal blow to both Republicans and the idea of government restraint, but the era of the New Deal was followed by the conservative renaissance, interrupted when the body politic burped and out popped the Kennedy mystique. When Richard Nixon won 49 states against George McGovern in 1972, the left could only gnash what was left of its teeth as the learned pundits called in the morticians to embalm the Democratic Party. The body politic burped again and out popped Jimmy Carter. Then the Democrats finally, really and truly, died graveyard dead with the arrival of Ronald Reagan. The election of Bill Clinton, the New Democrat who turned out to be only the Nude Democrat, buried the Republicans once more. The party corpses were getting a little weary of the trip to the graveyard and back when Barack Obama finally plowed them under once and for all. "Conservatism is Dead," headlined Daily Kos, the voice of Democrats who never learn anything, "And It's Not Coming Back." Many conservatives, as uninterested as the liberals in learning from history, glumly agreed.
And then came the Massachusetts miracle, sometimes called the Massachusetts massacre. Only it's neither miracle nor massacre, but the way politics works in an electorate that's about evenly divided, consistently conservative with a big and compassionate heart, but ever ready to enjoy taking down a politician who grows a little too big for his britches even when the britches are tailored by Armani.
Scott Brown has given the Republicans an opportunity, not a cure - either for his party or the country. He's showing the Republicans how to get up to fight again. He stopped the rush to destroy American health care (with all its manifold shortcomings still the best place in the world to get sick) and remake America into a European nanny state. Mr. Brown succeeded because he didn't adopt his party's usual war cry: "I'm a Republican but I'm not as bad as you think."
If the Democrats can't learn the lesson of Massachusetts, there will be other Scott Browns on the way. In many quarters, disappointment and disbelief have yet to turn to determination to get up off the floor. Howard Dean, famous for his scream when voters wised up to him, told Chris Matthews on the rant-and-rave cable-TV program "Hardball" that Democrats actually won because what a lot of Massachusetts voters were really saying was they don't want health care reform without the public option. The more the cable guy tried to tell him he was nuts, the louder and nuttier Mr. Dean became. He was only slightly nuttier than the Internet bloggerator who urged "someone" to look into the possibility of a rigged count on election night.
All this is what makes politics fun, though more fun for some than for others. Democrats will need some good health care themselves, as Barack Obama decides whether he's a gifted physician or a clever embalmer.
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