This was written the night prior to our leaving for Israel. I have reflected why Obama appears so out of touch with matters even his appointees say he is responsible for. I have come up with four explanations!
First of all Obama is not stupid. He is clever and slick as snake oil
Therefore, in order not to be responsible for what he is responsible for, Obama is never told anything. The reason for this is those who are responsible for informing him have been told they can do so only when he is putting and etiquette requires that you do not talk while someone is putting.
The second reason Obama appears out of touch is he knows no one will lay a hand on him and he can remain aloof and thus, avoid all blame. Why? Because if anyone accuses him for being out of touch they could be investigated by The IRS, their conversations would be listened to by the NSA, the Justice Department would find some trumped up charge and prosecute them and finally, they would be accused of being a racist.
The third reason nothing truly sticks to Obama is that he has perfected the ability of lying in a folksy and breezy manner. He seldom wears a coat when he is lying preferring rolled up sleeves, proving he is just one of us and he generally has a bunch of brain dead supporters standing behind him nodding their empty heads.
Against that staged and contrived backdrop a lot of time must pass before one can decipher truth from prevarication. By the time they do "what difference does it matter."
Obama has lied so often he no longer is capable of telling the truth.
Finally, since Obama previously told us we did not build it, government did, I guess government built the healthcare web page that does not work and cost hundreds of millions of misspent dollars, financed Solyndra which cost us hundreds of millions and trillions in deficits which expanded government's ability to give away,as entitlements, goodies citizens used to work for. Is Obama willing to blame big government for the current debacle or will he blame someone else like the insurance industry? You guessed it. Another lie!
Do not hold your breath if you are expecting the truth?
Now as to why Hillary is running. She knows Obama has made lying acceptable. It is as if he has koshered lying so being one who has a long history of lying the coast has been cleared of land mines. Also, she is a woman and the vaginal vote is hers for the asking.
The press and media folks who dumped her for Obama, now feel guilt and will rally to her side and circle the wagons.
This is why she can say, after four Americans died on her watch, "what difference does it matter" and escape with impunity. (See 2 below.)
===
My next memo will be about our trip.
===
Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) You Can Keep Your Health Plan
President Obama's promise had a secret footnote. Who knew?
President Obama has intoned "if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan" hundreds if not thousands of times. Sometimes he has even added that "no one will take it away, no matter what" or "nothing will change, period."
But now that reality is repudiating the President's unequivocal promise, Democrats want you to know that there was always a secret footnote: If you're losing a health plan you liked, the President didn't mean your plan.
Liberals now argue that Mr. Obama was mostly correct but his claim should have been caveated with a clause that people could keep their plans as long as they met ObamaCareregulations. This asterisk somehow wasn't mentioned until millions of policies started to be terminated as ObamaCare-noncompliant.
Questioned about this on Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said "Well, let's just be clear," which is how he and his boss announce they're about to turn on the fog machine. "What the President said and what everybody said all along is that there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act that create minimum standards of coverage."
On Tuesday Mr. Carney elaborated that allowing people on the individual market to continue their current coverage "would undermine that basic premise of providing the minimum benefits for the American people." That line has also been picked up by Steny Hoyer, the number two House Democrat. Mr. Obama was merely trying "to allay the fears of somebody that had insurance—group insurance, for the most part—that do meet the criteria," he said Tuesday.
The prize for ex post facto rationalization goes to the consultant James Carville, who on Tuesday spun Fox News's Bill O'Reilly like a pro: "Well, I think he could have said—I think the more accurate statement would have been that you will keep your coverage unless you are in an individual market and have a so-called insurance policy that doesn't meet the basic requirements. You know just calling something health insurance doesn't make it health insurance."
Leave it to an old Bill Clinton hand to say it all depends on the meaning of "insurance."
This new liberal candor was absent during the health debate, no doubt because honesty would have made the law even harder to pass. Yet Mr. Obama continued to make a claim he knew to be false.
At least ordinary Americans are now learning that their coverage isn't safe by design, and that those "minimum" ObamaCare standards are really maximal. As Democrats now admit, they knew what they were doing, and the goal is to reduce choice and raise prices in the individual insurance market to drive as many people as possible into the government exchanges.
Perhaps that's why at Wednesday's big Kathleen Sebelius hearing, Democrat Henry Waxman saw nothing amiss. "The Affordable Care Act is working," he said. "This January, the worst abuses of the insurance industry will be halted" and "that is why allowing insurers to continue offering deficient plans next year is such a bad policy."
In a world in which offering plans that consumers want is an abuse and Democrats are openly instructing adults that they don't know what's best for their own good, here is an opportunity for Republicans. They've mostly flogged ObamaCare's failures, which are real, but now that the law is no longer an abstraction they can start to build a case for a reform alternative.
The reasons for opposing benefit mandates, command-and-control regulation and the rest are now being demonstrated in the real world. The people who feel betrayed by Mr. Obama will be open to better ideas that would allow them to choose—and keep—health plans they like.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)Hillary Will Run
How could she not?
By Sen.Pete DuPont
Hillary Clinton is going to run for president in 2016. Granted, she is exhibiting even more coyness than most presidential prospects, and yes, the media are filled with those asking "Will she or won't she?" But the only real question is: How could she not run?
How can someone who has spent a life in politics and who sees a clear path to becoming president not run? Mrs. Clinton started her career four decades ago, working with the House Judiciary Committee staff during Watergate. She served as first lady in Arkansas, as an active and highly visible first lady in Washington, as a U.S. senator and as secretary of state. She may have the most diverse political experience of any nominee for president in the last 20 years.
How can a feminist icon not run when she has a solid chance to become the first female president of the United States? Mrs. Clinton surely knows how close she came in 2008. Had she won the Democratic nomination, she would have almost certainly ridden a feminist wave to a victory over John McCain, and she'd likely be in her second term now. She recognizes the election of a female president would mean something for future generations.
Her husband seems to want her to run, and there is no indication their daughter is against it. Eight years will have passed since 2008, and at close to 70, she'd be older than recent nominees other than Mr. McCain. But assuming her health does not deteriorate, she should seem fit for office. She's certainly tough enough. The 2008 nomination process and her sometimes rocky tenure as first lady would lead one to think there is no new scandal or embarrassment—involving her or her husband—that could come to light between now and 2016 and be large enough to derail a campaign.
It is difficult to think of any possible Democrat opponent who could best Mrs. Clinton for the nomination. A recent poll of likely Democratic voters in the important primary state of New Hampshire shows Mrs. Clinton with 64%, more than four times as much support as the next four names combined. True, it's doubtful many people saw Barack Obama as a nomination threat in 2005, and it is possible some very strong candidates will emerge between now and 2016. But Mrs. Clinton starts with quite an advantage.
To keep that advantage, she must begin the process of increasing the number of Democrats who are politically indebted to her by campaigning and raising money for the party's candidates for congress and governor. Her recent stumping on behalf of Terry McAuliffe, who's running for Virginia governor, is certainly a start.
She needs to evaluate the shortfalls of her 2008 campaign and make sure she corrects them. She needs to start squeezing out any competition; if she lets word get around to liberal donors and party apparatchiks that she's likely to run, that would suck much of the air out of other potential campaigns. She will need—at the right time and in the right way—to solicit President Obama's support, or at the very least see that he does not actively support her competition.
While questions from Mr. Clinton's tenure as governor and president are old news now and will be even older in 2016, Mrs. Clinton and her team will need to develop a response when the Benghazi tragedy, which occurred on her watch at the State Department, inevitably arises on the trail. Fairly or not, it is doubtful she will suffer much in the way of fallout, but when the Benghazi issue does arise, she won't want it to consume more than one or two news cycles.
To win the general election, she should hope the Republicans nominate a candidate as uninspiring as Mr. McCain. Demographics will play a role. Will the Republicans have a woman on the ticket, or an African-American? Would a Republican nominee like Sen. Ted Cruz or Sen. Marco Rubio pull Hispanic voters from Mrs. Clinton's column? Or would Mr. Cruz or Mr. Rubio suffer because of their inexperience in a nation still smarting from promoting a first-term senator to the White House in 2008? What would a female, Hispanic governor on the Republican ticket, such as New Mexico's Susana Martinez, mean to the race?
These are questions for the future, but we know the answer to what everyone's asking now: Yes, Hillary Clinton is running for president.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment