Thursday, April 29, 2010

The Blueprint - Barack Obama's Agenda For An Unconstitutional America

The Blueprint: Obama's Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency book cover. Image Credit: theblueprintbook.net (2010)

The Blueprint - Barack Obama's Agenda For An Unconstitutional America

Authors Ken Blackwell (a former secretary of state of the U.S. state of Ohio and current Vice Chairman of the Republican National Committee's Platform Committee) and Ken Klukowski (a fellow and senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union) have just released a book -The Blueprint: Obama's Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency - in which the facts, profiles of Czars, and actions proposed ... or have already taken place, should make every American wake up in the middle of the night in a pool of cold sweat.

This post is not so much a book review but a call to one's voting and political organizing sensibilities (such as they are for the average freedom loving, life pursuing citizen). It is time to hold firm to the structure laid down in the founding document of a country that grew to become the most powerful governed country in the world ... and the only one based upon rights granted through GOD and not the humans in Government as Barack Obama and the "Progressives" in both the Democrat and Republican political parties would have everyone believe.

Simply stated, in this book, Ken Blackwell and Washington, D.C. based constitutional attorney Ken Klukowski, identify a pattern of unconstitutional acts that form Obama's plan to build a big-government collectivist society on the ruins of our Founding Fathers' nation - ruins that this executive branch of the 44th Presidency purposely creates.

Barack Obama promised, after he was elected posturing as a center-left candidate, to "fundamentally transform" America as our nation's president. But one thing stands in his way: The Constitution of the United States. For Obama to remake our country into what he wants it to be, he must execute an aggressive strategy to subvert key parts of the Constitution that are designed to protect us ... all of us ... from our own government. He plans to become the first president of an imperial presidency without checks or balances.

This excerpted and edited from the National Review -

In The Blueprint, Blackwell and Klukoswi identify and discuss 21 tactics being taken by the Obama administration to restructure the country and ensure perpetual liberal rule -- such as changing voting laws, politicizing the census, coercing corporations into adopting its policies, planning to destroy talk radio, and seeking to make millions of illegal aliens into voting citizens. The authors also show how each of these 21 tactics violate the Constitution -- and what conservatives can do to fight back.

Some of the 21 tactics President Obama is using to subvert the Constitution and "transform" America:

* The Czars: How Obama is creating a "shadow government" by appointing dozens of powerful executive officials -- many of them radicals -- that are not Senate-confirmed, are outside congressional oversight, and report only to him

* The Courts: How Obama is packing the courts with judges who share his far-left vision of the Constitution -- and is also working to expand the lower courts to pack them with dozens of new judges who would dominate the courts for a generation

* Executive orders: The sweeping changes in law Obama is enacting through administrative rulemaking and executive orders, end-running the legislative process

* Domestic army: What Obama, his Chief of Staff, and the First Lady have said about his plans to create a civilian security force as large and well-funded as the U.S. military -- and which would answer to Obama alone

* Healthcare: How the bill just passed by Congress is just the first step in Obama's plan to take over the entire American healthcare system

* Cap and Trade: How Obama is pushing for a job-killing carbon emission control system to give the government enormous power over the entire economy

* Stimulus: How Obama is using stimulus bills to engage in massive wealth redistribution and permanently grow government with new taxpayer-funded programs

* Taxes: How Obama is shifting the tax burden to less than half of the population, so that a majority of voters has nothing to lose by supporting higher taxes on the rest

* Elections: How Obama wants to grant citizenship to every illegal alien in the United States, making them all voters with the expectation that they will vote for bigger government, paid for by higher taxes on others

* Card check: How Obama wants to abolish secret ballots in businesses voting on whether to unionize -- opening the door to massive intimidation to enormously increase the size of labor unions in America

* Guns: How Obama wants to radically restrict gun ownership in the United States.
Reference Here>>

And this excerpted and edited from the website, The Blueprint -

It’s coordinated. It’s dangerous. And it’s real.
President Obama’s unconstitutional plan to create a permanent, far-left, big-government society
Available through: Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Borders, and IndieBound


“With their characteristic style, Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski offer compelling arguments and insights demonstrating that much of President Obama’s agenda undermines our Constitution and America’s system of limited government that keeps us free.”
—Edwin Meese III, Former Attorney General of the United States and Counselor to President Ronald Reagan

“Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski do an outstanding job showing how much of President Obama’s agenda, which is undermining America’s families, also violates our constitutional rights. This is a must read!”
—Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council

“The Blueprint proves beyond a doubt that much of Barack Obama’s power grab is more than just terrible for our economy; it’s unconstitutional. Share this book with your friends.”
—Steve Forbes, Chairman and CEO of Forbes Media, and former presidential candidate

From noted conservative leader Ken Blackwell and Washington, D.C.–based constitutional attorney and journalist Ken Klukowski comes an urgently needed book about President Barack Obama’s blueprint to centralize power in the White House, subvert the Constitution, and transform the United States of America into a militant, secular welfare state dominated by an overbearing central government.
Reference Here>>

People wonder why the Tea Party Movement has garnered so much attention and degradation from Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the major media outlets on comparison with the Boston Globe, CNN, and the New York Times. The Tea Party Movement is composed of everyday Americans who are beginning to wake up and see what is happening to their country and are becoming active in order to STOP this transformation and assault on our assumed freedoms guaranteed to us through the Constitution.

Preamble to the United States Constitution - "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

And so it begins ... let us all put an end to its demise as put forward by the activities of this 44th Presidency.

On the fence here in Carter's Second Term? Read the book! Read the Constitution! Then get active!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

WaPo and Obama Administration shape numbers and claim fiscal restraint

United States Surpluses & Deficits Graph (in billions of dollars) Image Credit: The Washington Post / Hugh Hewitt (blog)

WaPo and Obama Administration shape numbers and claim fiscal restraint


The average person stumbling upon an article appearing in The Washington Post, yesterday, about the economy and Government spending would think that our current leadership was having success at being responsible with the citizens money that had been collected in taxes.

The article begins with the following quote excerpted from The Washington Post:

Obama team points to smaller deficit numbers

By David Cho - Washington Post Staff Writer - Tuesday, April 13, 2010

"The federal deficit is running significantly lower than it did last year, with the budget gap for the first half of fiscal 2010 down 8 percent over the same period a year ago, senior Obama administration officials said Monday."
Reference Here>>

While, technically, this statement may be true, it masks the fact that the larger truth is that this adjusted figure moved from being ten (10) times larger than the deficit created by the previous leadership in 2007, to just nine (9) times larger. The Washington Post does reveal the information of this fact in two areas in their article on the Obama Administration report, in a graphic (above) and not until the 13th paragraph of this glowing piece of how well this administration is really not spending that much!

Quote from the 13th paragraph of the same Washington Post article:

"The deficit figure released by the Treasury Department for March means that the federal government has been spending more than it collected for a record 18 consecutive months, dating to the Bush administration."
Reference Here>>

The graph shows the truth of the deficits and Government spending and it is astounding that the Washington Post does not make the lead of this article that the improved spending number of $1,288,000,000,000 (1.3 trillion) is a whopping NINE TIMES larger than $158,000,000,000 ($1.6 billion) of the 2007 deficits of the Bush Administration, the first year with a Democrat Party controlled House of Representatives.

Nationally syndicated talk show host Hugh Hewitt could not have summed up how wrong this article is in its reporting of the effects of the policies of Barack Obama and the reporting job by the Washington Post.

This excerpted and edited from the blog of Hugh Hewitt -

"This is a ruinous level of spending, the sort of wildly-out-of-control hosing of printed money that could lead to a national fiscal stroke. Happy talk about a hundred billion of possible savings here and there and a reduction in earmarks should not divert attention from the fact that President Obama has led the country over a fiscal cliff, and has no solution in the offing except for a commission that will recommend vast tax hikes the prospect of which already chills investment and job growth."

Reference Here>>

In short, we all should expect a higher standard of context and truth in reports issued from our current leadership and more importantly, reporting of this information by the Fourth Estate (MSM).

Monday, April 5, 2010

Mr. President ... the question was about TAXES

The great elaborator: Obama gives 17-minute answer to health-care query in N.C. Image Credit: Polypore International, Inc.

Mr. President ... the question was about TAXES


On Good Friday - a day that Christians observe the day Jesus was paraded through the streets of Jerusalem along with two other criminals, dragging a cross on his back, a cross that he would later be nailed through the wrists and feet to, and then have this cross posted in the ground and hang from to die - Barack Obama took to a riser-stage in Charlotte, North Carolina at Celgard, a manufacturer of lithium battery components. The company is expanding through an economic-stimulus-funded grant.

During the Obama Administration's promotional event to highlight Government Spending, President Obama took a few questions from the audience and the following situation of note transpired.

Obama took a question on the new health care reform law and higher taxes and he produced one of the longest answers that had been documented (YouTube video below) ... and he produced this answer without actually answering the essence of the question.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. We're honored to have you here today. I'm Joyce Ravis (ph) from Lake Wiley, South Carolina. I work at Celgard. We have wonderful CEOs that take care of us and have really helped the company grow.

My question is, though, in the economy times that we have now, is it a wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care, because it -- we are over-taxed as it is?


Time: 12:39 p.m. and 40 seconds, EDT

OBAMA: Well, let's talk about this, you know, because this is an area where there's been just a whole lot of misinformation. And I'm going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have.

Here's the bottom line. Number one is that we are the only -- we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 15 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance. And the vast majority of those folks work; it's just that they don't happen to work for a company that is either big enough or generous enough to provide them any coverage.

So that's point number one: There is a moral imperative that is important.


FAST FORWARD TO END (full answer here)

Boy, that was a long answer. I'm sorry, but I hope everybody -- but I hope I answered her question.

Time: 12:56 p.m. and 54 seconds, EDT.




This overview excerpted and edited from The Washington Post -

Obama's 17-minute, 2,500-word response to woman's claim of being 'over-taxed'

by Anne E. Kornblut - The Washington Post
- April 5, 2010


Even by President Obama's loquacious standards, an answer he gave here on health care Friday was a doozy.

----
He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer - more than 2,500 words long -- wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, "F-Map"). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as "FICA").

Always fond of lists, Obama ticked off his approach to health care -- twice. "Number one is that we are the only -- we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance," he said.
A few minutes later he got to the next point, which seemed awfully similar to the first. "Number two, you don't know who might end up being in that situation," he said, then carried on explaining further still. "Point number three is that the way insurance companies have been operating, even if you've got health insurance you don't always know what you got, because what has been increasingly the practice is that if you're not lucky enough to work for a big company that is a big pool, that essentially is almost a self-insurer, then what's happening is, is you're going out on the marketplace, you may be buying insurance, you think you're covered, but then when you get sick they decide to drop the insurance right when you need it," Obama continued, winding on with the answer.

Halfway through, an audience member on the riser yawned.

----
It was not evident that he changed any minds at Friday's event. The audience sat politely, but people in the back of the room began to wander off.

Even Obama seemed to recognize that he had gone on too long. He apologized -- in keeping with the spirit of the moment, not once, but twice. "Boy, that was a long answer. I'm sorry," he said, drawing nervous laughter that sounded somewhat like relief as he wrapped up.
But, he said: "I hope I answered your question."
Reference Here>>

Mr. President ... the question was about TAXES during our ride here in Carter's Second Term!

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Barack Obama ... The Expiration Date Presidency

President Barack Obama said that the private sector is the “true engine of job growth in this country,” and that while the government "can’t reverse the toll of this recession overnight", it can help to spur job growth by providing incentives for companies to begin hiring again. The President recently signed the HIRE Act, a jobs bill that provides tax cuts for businesses that hire new employees, and makes investments in clean energy and schools to encourage job creation. He talked about the Recovery Act, which made significant investments in infrastructure, helping to create private sector jobs. [CTRL-CLICK image to launch "7 Lies In Under 2 Minutes" YouTube video - it came in only one speech!] Image Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Barack Obama ... The Expiration Date Presidency

When one befriends someone, one assesses the value of that person's word to see if the person can be trusted with telling the truth. Generally speaking, if a person is true to their word ... their word stands the test of time with the intention and commitment of maintaining what was said through actions and additional consistent statements. One does not expect an expiration date on statements made from a truthful person.

In politics, the American, mostly Center-Right, voter will fire people they have elected into office for making statements that do not hold up to the test of time ... remember "Read my lips, No New Taxes" POTUS 41 George Walker Bush who was swept into that office and not too long thereafter, raised taxes? He became famous as a one-term president for making a statement that had an expiration date, so the American voter gave one to him.

Since then we have had two, two-term presidents, and as politicians, have made statements that have had expiration dates. More often then not, they both got re-elected because most of the statements they made campaigning and then while holding the office they were elected, their statements held up with the test of time. One could take their word on major policy issues to the bank. Their expiration date for holding the highest elected office in the land was a mandate of law, not voter action.

Enter Barack Obama who campaigned as a center-left Democrat ... but has governed as a hard-left Progressive with strong socialist, single party rule and executive order deafness in defiance to the wishes of the majority of American voters.

Statements and actions this 44th President will surly make him become known as the "Expiration Date President" ... a title previously held by George Walker Bush.



This excerpted and edited from National Review Online -

A Long Post: The Complete List of Obama Statement Expiration Dates
By popular demand, a comprehensive list of expired Obama statements...
Jim Geraghty - National Review Online - Monday, March 29, 2010


HEALTH CARE MANDATES

STATEMENT: “We've got a philosophical difference, which we've debated repeatedly, and that is that Senator Clinton believes the only way to achieve universal health care is to force everybody to purchase it. And my belief is, the reason that people don't have it is not because they don't want it but because they can't afford it.” Barack Obama, speaking at a Democratic presidential debate, February 21, 2008.

EXPIRATION DATE: On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the individual mandate into law.

HEALTH CARE NEGOTIATIONS ON C-SPAN

STATEMENT: “These negotiations will be on C-SPAN, and so the public will be part of the conversation and will see the decisions that are being made.” January 20, 2008, and seven other times.

EXPIRATION DATE: Throughout the summer, fall, and winter of 2009 and 2010; when John McCain asked about it during the health care summit February 26, Obama dismissed the issue by declaring, “the campaign is over, John.”

RAISING TAXES

STATEMENT: “No family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase.” (multiple times on the campaign trail)

EXPIRATION DATE: Broken multiple times, including the raised taxes on tobacco, a new tax on indoor tanning salons, but most prominently on February 11, 2010: “President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.”

RECESS APPOINTMENTS

STATEMENT: Then-Senator Obama declared that a recess appointment is “damaged goods” and has “less credibility” than a normal appointment. August 25, 2005.

EXPIRATION DATE: March 27, 2010: “If, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis.”

BORDER SECURITY

STATEMENT: “We need tougher border security, and a renewed focus on busting up gangs and traffickers crossing our border. . . . That begins at home, with comprehensive immigration reform. That means securing our border and passing tough employer enforcement laws.” then-candidate Obama, discussing the need for border security, speaking in Miami on May 23, 2008:

EXPIRATION DATE: March 17, 2010: The Obama administration halted new work on a "virtual fence" on the U.S.-Mexican border, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Tuesday, diverting $50 million in planned economic stimulus funds for the project to other purposes.

GUANTANAMO BAY

STATEMENT: Executive Order stating, "The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order." January 22, 2009.

EXPIRATION DATE: November 19, 2009: "Guantánamo, we had a specific deadline that was missed."

MILITARY TRIBUNALS

STATEMENT: “Somebody like Khalid Sheik Mohammad is gonna get basically, a full military trial with all the bells and whistles.” September 27, 2006

EXPIRATION DATE: Ongoing. “President Obama is planning to insert himself into the debate about where to try the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, three administration officials said Thursday, signaling a recognition that the administration had mishandled the process and triggered a political backlash. Obama initially had asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to choose the site of the trial in an effort to maintain an independent Justice Department. But the White House has been taken aback by the intense criticism from political opponents and local officials of Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian courtroom in New York.”

RECOVERY.GOV

STATEMENT: “We will launch a sweeping effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov.” – President Obama, January 28, 2009

EXPIRATION DATE: “More than two months after some of the funds were released, [Recovery.gov] offers little detail on where the money is going… The government [spent] $84 million on a website that doesn't have a search function, when its purpose is to ‘root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government.’” April 2, 2009

Eighteen from his first 100 days:

1. "As President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide."

2. "I will make sure that we renegotiate [NAFTA]."

3. Opposed a Colombian Free Trade Agreement because advocates ignore that "labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis."

4. "Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut."

5. "If we see money being misspent, we're going to put a stop to it, and we will call it out and we will publicize it."

6. "Yesterday, Jim, the head of Caterpillar, said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off."

7. "I want to go line by line through every item in the Federal budget and eliminate programs that don't work, and make sure that those that do work work better and cheaper."

8. "[My plan] will not help speculators who took risky bets on a rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell."

9. "Instead of allowing lobbyists to slip big corporate tax breaks into bills during the dead of night, we will make sure every single tax break and earmark is available to every American online."

10. "We can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress's seniority, rather than the merit of the project."

11. "If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."

12. "Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe the United States has to be frank with the Chinese about such failings and will press them to respect human rights."

13. "We must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights."

14. "Lobbyists won’t work in my White House!"

15. "The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result."

16. "I'll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we'll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills."

17. "Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days." Obama is 1-for-11 on this promise so far.

18. A special one on the 100th day, "the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing I'd do."

And a list from of promises that expired during the campaign:

Monday, November 03, 2008

IRAQ

STATEMENT: “Based on the conversations we’ve had internally as well as external reports, we believe that you can get one to two brigades out a month. At that pace, the forces would be out in approximately 16 months from the time that we began. That would be the time frame that I would be setting up,” Obama to the New York Times, November 1, 2007

EXPIRATION DATE: March 7, 2008: Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power, to the BBC: “You can’t make a commitment in whatever month we’re in now, in March of 2008 about what circumstances are gonna be like in Jan. 2009. We can’t even tell what Bush is up to in terms of troop pauses and so forth. He will of course not rely upon some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or as a US senator.”

Also: July 3, 2008: "My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything I've said, was always premised on making sure our troops were safe," Obama told reporters as his campaign plane landed in North Dakota. "And my guiding approach continues to be that we've got to make sure that our troops are safe, and that Iraq is stable. And I'm going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold."

STATEMENT: On June 14, Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice called the RNC’s argument that Obama needed to go to Iraq to get a firsthand look "complete garbage."

EXPIRATION DATE: On June 16, Obama announced he would go to Iraq and Afghanistan “so he can see first hand the progress of the wars he would inherit if he's elected president.”

DEBATES

STATEMENT: May 16, 2008: "If John McCain wants to meet me, anywhere, anytime to have a debate about our respective policies in Iraq, Iran, the Middle East or around the world that is a conversation I’m happy to have."

EXPIRATION DATE: June 13, 2008: Obama campaign manager David Plouffe: “Barack Obama offered to meet John McCain at five joint appearances between now and Election Day—the three traditional debates plus a joint town hall on the economy in July [on the Fourth of July] and an in-depth debate on foreign policy in August.”

IRAN

STATEMENT: “We can, then, more effectively deal with what I consider to be one of the greatest threats to the United States, to Israel, and world peace, and that is Iran,” Obama speaking to American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Chicago, March 5, 2007

EXPIRATION DATE: “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny...They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us.” – May 20, 2008

STATEMENT: Question at the YouTube debate, as the video depicted leaders of the countries, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea?....."

"I would," Obama answered. July 27, 2007

EXPIRATION DATE: May 10, 2008: Susan E. Rice, a former State Department and National Security Council official who is a foreign policy adviser to the Democratic candidate: “But nobody said he would initiate contacts at the presidential level; that requires due preparation and advance work.”

JEREMIAH WRIGHT/TRINITY UNITED

STATEMENT: "I could no more disown Jeremiah Wright than I could disown my own grandmother."

—Barack Obama, March 18, 2008

EXPIRATION DATE: on April 28, 2008, cut all ties to Wright, declaring, “based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought.”

STATEMENT: Obama said that his church, “Trinity United "embodies the black community in its entirety" and that his church was being caricatured on March 18, 2008.

EXPIRATION DATE: On May 31, 2008, Obama resigned his membership at Trinity United Church.

JIM JOHNSON

STATEMENT: Criticism of running mate vetter Jim Johnson loan from Countrywide was "a game" and that his vice-presidential vetting team “aren’t folks who are working for me.” June 10, 2008

EXPIRATION DATE: June 11, 2008, when Obama accepted Johnson's resignation.

FISA

STATEMENT: Obama spokesman Bill Burton on October 24, 2007: “To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”

EXPIRATION DATE: June 20, 2008: “Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program.”

NUCLEAR ENERGY

STATEMENT: “I am not a nuclear energy proponent.” Barack Obama, December 30, 2007

EXPIRATION DATE: The above statement actually was the expiration date for his previous position, “I actually think we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix,” expressed on July 23, 2007; the above statement expired when he told Democratic governors he thought it is “worth investigating its further development” on June 20, 2008.

NAFTA

STATEMENT: Tim Russert:: Senator Obama . . . Simple question: Will you, as president, say to Canada and Mexico, "This has not worked for us; we are out"?

Obama: “I will make sure that we renegotiate, in the same way that Senator Clinton talked about. And I think actually Senator Clinton's answer on this one is right. I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced. And that is not what has been happening so far.” February 23, 2008

EXPIRATION DATE: June 18, 2008, Fortune magazine: “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified,” he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.

Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered.

"I'm not a big believer in doing things unilaterally," Obama said. "I'm a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people."

PUBLIC FINANCING

STATEMENT: “If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.” Also, a Common Cause questionnaire dated November 27, 2007, asked “If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?”, Obama checked, “Yes.”

EXPIRATION DATE: June 19, 2008: Obama announced he would not participate in the presidential public financing system.

WORKING OUT A DEAL ON PUBLIC FINANCING

STATEMENT: “What I’ve said is, at the point where I'm the nominee, at the point where it's appropriate, I will sit down with John McCain and make sure that we have a system that works for everybody.”Obama to Tim Russert, Febuary 27.

EXPIRATION DATE: When Obama announced his decision to break his public financing pledge June 19, no meeting between the Democratic nominee and McCain had occurred.

WELFARE REFORM

STATEMENT: “I probably would not have supported the federal legislation [to overhaul welfare], because I think it had some problems." Obama on the floor of the Illinois Senate, May 31, 1997

EXPIRATION DATE: April 11, 2008: Asked if he would have vetoed the 1996 law, Mr. Obama said, “I won’t second guess President Clinton for signing” it. Obama to the New York Times.

GAY MARRIAGE

STATEMENT: "Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as president. He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage.” – campaign spokesman, May 5, 2008

EXPIRATION DATE: June 29, 2008: “I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states… Finally, I want to congratulate all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks.” — letter to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club

PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION

STATEMENT: "Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term." – Interview with Relevant magazine, July 1, 2008

EXPIRATION DATE: July 5, 2008: “My only point is that in an area like partial-birth abortion having a mental, having a health exception can be defined rigorously. It can be defined through physical health, It can be defined by serious clinical mental-health diseases.” statement to reporters.

DIVISION OF JERUSALEM

STATEMENT: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." — speech before AIPAC, June 4, 2008

EXPIRATION DATE: June 6, 2008: "Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties" as part of "an agreement that they both can live with." – an Obama adviser clarifying his remarks to the Jerusalem Post.

Reference Here>>

During the campaign, Barack Obama joked often, by saying that his opponent, John McCain, represented a George Herbert Walker Bush third term ... in all reality, given the leadership style and economic mayhem Barack Obama has shown, his presidency is Carter's Second Term ... on steroids.

It is time to give this president his own expiration date come November 2010 and elect people from any political party who are committed to stand in his way ... then on to 2012 when we all can send this 44th President of the United States his walking papers.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Bubble, Bubble, who has the Bubble now?

Bubbles - Image Credit: ventrella.com

Bubble, Bubble, who has the Bubble ... now?

Our cultural lexicon has been inundated with the concept and effects of the "Bubble" these last few years.

A Bubble is an artificially modified sustaining of an activity which has been created to attract attention and interest in people so that they either believe that something is better or good and to have people invest their time and/or money upon said activity to sustain the effect.

Generally, and this is why these activities are called Bubbles ... the activity BURSTS ... and people loose their well intended time and/or money.

Take the new jobs number released this morning for example. The number of people employed increased and showed the largest jump in the growth in jobs in three years - good news, right? Well, there is a trick behind the job growth, which represents 1/3 of the jobs created, and it is called temporary, single project government hiring - for follow-ups on the United States census. At $21.00 an hour, most people without a job would gladly sign up and take these jobs to knock on doors and gather information ... but these jobs come from Government spending (tax and borrowing against the deficit from China) and will only last until the census information taking is completed (months at best), and there is the rub - it is the next big Bubble to BURST!

We have seen Investment Bond bubbles, Dot.Com internet company creation and company investment growth bubbles, and most recently, Government seeded loose housing purchasing rules and Mortgage Packaging bubble run roughshod through our economy but the one Bubble no one wants to recognize is the looming Big, Bigger, Biggest Government Spending Bubble!

Imagine the world surrounded with bubbles. Image Credit: moolf.com

This excerpted and edited from Businessweek -

China’s Central Bank Sees New Asset Bubbles Emerging

Bloomberg - April 02, 2010, 7:41 AM EDT

China’s central bank said asset bubbles are emerging in parts of the world and in certain industries that may burst unless supported by real economic recovery.

Rapid asset price increases in major markets since 2009 have been pushed by “ultra-loose” monetary policies by governments around the world and “don’t mean real economies have recovered or will recover strongly,” the People’s Bank of China [PBOC] said in a report posted on its Web site today. Such gains “unless they receive sufficient support from macroeconomic fundamentals, may lead to a new round of asset bubbles that may burst,” the Beijing-based bank said.
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Governments worldwide have spent more than $2 trillion in fiscal stimulus to spur growth and may face difficulty coordinating exit strategies because of the “unbalanced global recovery,” the central bank said. The withdrawal of support, together with the threat of inflation and the risks surrounding the sovereign debt of some economies complicate the process, the PBOC said.

Asset bubbles are the “real worry” as China emerges from the global financial crisis into a “boom time,” former central bank adviser Fan Gang said Feb. 1. Economists at the government- backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences warned Jan. 11 that the nation’s gross domestic product could expand as much as 16 percent in 2010 unless policy makers withdraw stimulus.
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The PBOC’s comments today echo those of other international central bank officials. Donald Tsang, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said Nov. 13 that he was “scared” that money flowing into Asia because of low interest rates in the U.S. could lead to another crisis in the region. World Bank President Robert Zoellick told Australian Financial Review on Jan. 13 that a liquidity-driven world recovery faces the risk of asset price inflation.
Reference Here>>

The Obama Administration has not learned the lessons of the past shown in the economic policies of the Carter Administration. During the one-term Carter Presidency, we saw inflation and recession happen at the same time and send our economy into a tailspin.

Now that Health Care Reform has just been signed into law, this effect will pale in comparison with the economic policies implemented here during Carter's Second Term! Just ask our biggest debt investor ... China. To have them tell it, we are drowning in Bubbles.