Tag Archives: Change

February 6, 2012

I guess this is OK

By Paul Stagg

As long as there’s a Democrat in charge, this must be acceptable.

As the report notes, it’s particularly remarkable that these findings come on the heels of President Obama’s recent boasting about the efficacy of drones and his specific claim that the policy has “not caused a huge number of civilian casualties”, adding that it was “important for everybody to understand that this thing is kept on a very tight leash.” Compare that claim to the Bureau’s almost certainly under-stated conclusion that it has “found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children.” And targeting rescuers and funeral attendees of your victims is quite the opposite of keeping the drone program on a “very tight leash.” As Samiullah Khan, one of the Bureau’s field researchers put it:

In a war situation no one is allowed to attack the Red Cross. Rescuers are like that. You are not allowed to attack rescuers. You know, the number of Taliban is increasing in Waziristan day by day, because innocents and rescuers are being killed day by day.

Strictly speaking, the legality of attacking rescuers may be ambiguous because, as the Bureau put it: “It is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions to attack rescuers wearing emblems of the Red Cross or Red Crescent. But what if rescuers wear no emblems, or if civilians are mixed in with militants, as the Bureau’s investigation into drone attacks in Waziristan has repeatedly found?” But there’s nothing ambiguous about the morality of that, or of attacking funerals (recall the worst part of the Baghdad attack video released by WikiLeaks: that the Apache helicopter first fired on the group containing Reuters journalists, then fired again on the people who arrived to help wounded). Whatever else is true, it seems highly likely that Barack Obama is the first Nobel Peace laureate who, after receiving his award, presided over the deliberate targeting of rescuers and funeral mourners of his victims.

Change indeed.

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January 1, 2012

Serious Reservations

By Paul Stagg

When our Dear Leader signed the latest defense bill in to law, he expressed serious reservations about the power of the executive branch.  His reservations?  That the bill tried to limit the Executive’s power to detain people without due process.

President Obama ended 2011 by signing a major defense bill, despite what he called “serious reservations” about provisions regarding interrogations of terrorist suspects, sanctions against Iran, and relations with Russia.

“Some in Congress continue to insist upon restricting the options available to our counter-terrorism professionals and interfering with the very operations that have kept us safe,” Obama said in a statement issued from Hawaii, where he is spending his end-of-the-year vacation.

All this Change ™.  He’s continued the ‘failed policies’ of the previous administration.. and in some cases went further (for all his faults, George W. Bush didn’t assassinate a US citizen, The One did.)

People who continue to support this administration for any reason related to civil rights are fools.

 

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January 6, 2011

I’m confused

By Paul Stagg

I thought the Obama administration was going to Change ™ all of the failed policies of the Bush administration, like detaining, torturing, and then denying the return back to the US of a US citizen.

He still does not know why he was detained and beaten, nor does he know what is happening to him now.  Indeed, although Mazzetti writes that he was detained and beaten by Kuwait captors, Mohamed actually has no idea who was responsible, and told me that at least some of the people interrogating him spoke English.  He has been told that he will be deported back to the U.S., but is now on a no-fly list and has no idea when he will be released.  American officials told Mazzetti that “Mr. Mohamed is on a no-fly list and, for now at least, cannot return to the United States.”  He’s been charged with no crime and presented with no evidence of any wrongdoing.

It doesn’t matter who is in charge, they will abuse power if we continue to give it to them.

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September 28, 2010

More examples of Change ™

By Paul Stagg

President Obama says that assassination program is a state secret.

But what’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”:  in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.

So The One who said the government running health care won’t lead to the government deciding who will live or die says the government (President) has the power to kill anyone he wants as long as he calls that person a terrorist.  Good thing we got rid of all the failed policies, huh?.

Hat tip:  The Agitator

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September 21, 2010

Buyers Remorse

By Paul Stagg

On Monday, The One held a ‘Town Hall’ meeting.  In an interesting twist, a number of people got in who aren’t exactly happy with him.

Mr. Obama was confronted by people who said, in short, that they had expected more from him. People from Main Street wanted to know if the American dream still lived for them. People from Wall Street complained that he was treating them like a piñata, “whacking us with the stick,” in the words of a former law school classmate of Mr. Obama’s who now runs a hedge fund.

“I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for,” said the first questioner, an African-American woman who identified herself as a chief financial officer, a mother and a military veteran. “I’ve been told that I voted for a man who was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class, and I’m waiting, sir, I’m waiting. I still don’t feel it yet.”

While that’s interesting, those of us with IQs above room temperature knew it would happen, given He is still a politician first and there was never any substance behind the campaigning.  What I think is more telling of the people who support The One is this quote from a recent law school grad.

A 30-year-old law school graduate, Ted Brassfield, told Mr. Obama he had hoped to pursue a career in public service — like the president — but could barely pay the interest on his student loans, let alone think of getting married or starting a family.

“I was really inspired by you and your campaign and the message you brought, and that inspiration is dying away,” Mr. Brassfield said, adding, “What I really want to know is: Is the American dream dead for me?”

What makes this typical?  The message Obama brought was not one of self-reliance, it was one of dependence on government.  It was a message that said (with an appropriate reverb) “I will take care of you”.  Now that hasn’t happened and this fellow thinks the American dream is dead.

The American dream isn’t using force to get other people to pay your student loans or your healthcare bills.  It is that you have the freedom to make and follow your own path, to whatever prosperity lies at the end.  At least, until recently.

Face it.  He’s a politician.  He made a bunch of promises he never had a chance to keep and never intended to keep.  He and the Congress have stopped any recovery by passing laws that create remarkable uncertainty for business owners and investors, because they think the right role of government is the owner/distributor of all property and labor.

And I think there will be some Change in November.

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July 19, 2010

Harder than it looks

By Paul Stagg

The One is going to learn being President and running for re-election is much more difficult when you have an actual record.

The Cato Institute puts together a nice summary of all His positions on ObamaCare

First, The One said there will be no individual mandate.

Then, The One signed a law with an individual mandate.

Then, The One said an individual mandate is not a tax.

Then, when faced with a Constitutional challenge to a law very few people want (or understand), The One’s administration says the individual mandate is a tax, because that makes the law Constitutional.

This would be funny if it wasn’t so scary.

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July 17, 2010

Shocker

By Paul Stagg

More Change ™.

Election watchdogs have fined Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign more than $219,000 for sloppy bookkeeping and accepting excessive contributions, including a discounted flight on a private jet.

The audit was released Friday by the Federal Election Commission.

It determined that the Biden campaign accepted an illegal corporate contribution in the form of a round-trip flight between New Hampshire and Iowa in June 2007 for three people. The Biden campaign paid GEH Air Transportation $7,911 for the first-class airfare, but regulators say the campaign should have paid the charter rate of $34,800.

The FEC also found that the Biden campaign received at least $106,000 in donations that were over the limit, and the campaign was ordered to pay the U.S. Treasury more than $85,000 for stale-dated checks.

The Biden campaign also failed to disclose more than $3.7 million in payments and roughly $870,000 in debts.

The good news is that this is commonplace.

Elizabeth Alexander, a spokeswoman for Biden in the vice president’s office, on Saturday said the campaign would pay the fines.

“Some repayment is commonplace after presidential campaign audits and the repayment ordered here is relatively small. Payment is due to the Treasury 30 days after the FEC issues its formal ruling and Biden for President will comply with that,” she said.

Everyone who put these people in office should be embarrassed every time they hear or read the word “Change”… as the rest of us told you, this Administration had nothing to do with “Change”; they are politicians, who will do and say anything to get elected.  Think about what’s Changed ™; looks to me like a lot of those ‘failed policies’ are still in place.

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July 8, 2010

This simply can not be possible

By Paul Stagg

In the US, with our substandard health care, long waits, and incredible expense, cancer death rates are dropping.  Oh, and that’s with better detection and people living longer, both things that should make this look worse, not better.

Of course, on the same day, the news was released that The One will appoint Dr. Donald Berwick to run Medicare.  As a recess appointment (something Candidate Obama wouldn’t have done) to avoid scrutiny of his record, which some might find a touch troubling.

“Please don’t put your faith in market forces,” he said (italics in original).  “It’s a popular idea: that Adam Smith’s invisible hand would do a better job of designing care than leaders with plans can. I find little evidence that market forces relying on consumers choosing among an array of products, with competitors fighting it out, leads to the healthcare system you want and need. In the US, competition is a major reason for our duplicative, supply driven, fragmented care system.”

Berwick argued that purposely provided an inadequate supply of health-care—as Britain’s health-care system does—is superior to allowing the market to provide an excess.

“In America, the best predictor of cost is supply; the more we make, the more we use—hospi­tal beds, consultancy services, procedures, diagnostic tests,” Dr. Berwick wrote.  “… Here, you choose a harder path. You plan the supply; you aim a bit low; you prefer slightly too lit­tle of a technology or a service to too much; then you search for care bottlenecks and try to relieve them.”

Because everyone knows that mean old free market with its excessive healthcare availability can’t possibly be as good as one with planned shortages.

In case it didn’t catch your eye the first time, this is the mantra of state run, centrally planned healthcare:

You plan the supply; you aim a bit low; you prefer slightly too lit­tle of a technology or a service to too much; then you search for care bottlenecks and try to relieve them.

Good luck with that.  I’m gonna buy it on my own.

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May 19, 2010

Don’t let the door hit you…

By Paul Stagg

Arlen Specter, on why he moved to the Democratic party in April of 2009:

In the course of the last several months … I have traveled the state and surveyed the sentiments of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania and public opinion polls, observed other public opinion polls and have found that the prospects for winning a Republican primary are bleak.

Plan didn’t work out so well, did it?  Voters are starting to wake up and realize this is all about getting re-elected and about power, not about anything else… and they’re coming to throw more of you out.

That’s Change(tm).

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March 9, 2010

Quote of the Day

By Paul Stagg

Comes from Matt Welch at Reason, in his short article on the President’s relationship with the truth.

There’s a three-letter word for blaming the defeat of his bill on health care lobbyists, and it rhymes with pie.

Read the whole article.

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