Promises, Promises... - Big Big Forums

Jolie Rouge · 06-26-2009, 03:21 PM

Promises, Promises...

Quote:

“I don’t know the key to success,
but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

- Bill Cosby

Is Obama Alienating His Base? Interesting tidbit I received via email:

Quote:

Democrats risk alienating one of their most important constituencies by advancing the Waxman-Markey climate change bill this week or any time before an economic recovery is underway, according to the non-partisan National Center for Public Policy Research.
The National Center for Public Policy Research bases this conclusion on the results of a nationwide poll it commissioned of African-Americans. The poll, released today, suggests anxiety in the black community over Waxman-Markey-style regulations.

The survey of 800 African-Americans included 640 self-identified Democrats (80%) and 32 Republicans (4%).

* 76% of African-Americans want Congress to make economic recovery its top priority, even if it delays action on climate change;
* 38% believe job losses resulting from climate change legislation would fall heaviest on the African-American community. Only 7% believe job losses would fall heaviest on Hispanics and only 2% believe they would fall heaviest on whites;

* 56% believe Washington policymakers have failed to adequately take into account the economic and quality of life concerns of the African-American community when formulating climate change policy;

* 52% of respondents aren't willing pay anything more for either gasoline or electricity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 73% are unwilling to pay more than 50 cents more for a gallon of gas and 76% are unwilling to pay more than $50 more per year for electricity to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions;

.... Ridenour added, "As the overwhelming majority of the people we polled are self-identified Democrats and Obama voters, one would expect them to largely agree with the Democratic leadership on this high-profile issue, but they don't. This may in part be why Speaker Nancy Pelosi has run into strong resistance to the Waxman-Markey bill from Democratic Congressmen representing the central states."

The full survey is here. http://www.nationalcenter.org/NCPPR_...udy_090623.pdf

Considering that 90% of black voters voted for Obama, he might want to listen to what they have to say. A mere 2% shift in the black vote in 2004 helped hand George Bush the election: http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan...a-faith18?pg=1

Quote:

There's no question that the faith initiative -- combined with the administration's support for banning gay marriage and promoting school vouchers -- has already helped reshape Bush's image among some traditionally Democratic African Americans. And the change in black support on Nov. 2, though only a 2-percentage-point increase nationwide, helped secure Bush's reelection victory. The gains were greater in battleground states.

In the crucial state of Ohio, where the faith-based program was promoted last fall at rallies and ministerial meetings, a rise in black support for Bush created the cushion he needed to win the presidential race without a legal challenge in that state.

A corresponding erosion of support among gays who are increasingly angry and frustrated with the Obama administration could easily shift the nation back to the right in 2012: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06...y5095815.shtml

Quote:

Aravosis has called for a boycott of a fundraiser tonight for the Democratic Congressional and Senatorial Committees. He said gay rights may have to "punish" the Democratic party in order to move forward its agenda.
"Our people tend to have a lot of money, (and) we vote 70 percent Democrat," Aravosis said, explaining the political weight behind the gay community.

The phenomenon that may well sink Barack Obama in 2012 is the same thing that got him elected: hope. Or perhaps a better term for this phenomenon is raised expectations. This is a man who spent promises like a drunken sailor in order to cobble together the coalition that swept him into office last November.

But what helped at the ballot box may hurt him now that he's in office. Many of the constituencies that supported him have competing expectations of the man they elected. In struggling to satisfy a plethora of mutually exclusive goals, Obama risks accomplishing nothing and satisfying no one. Interestingly, the increasing disarray of a largely marginalized Republican Party is actually beginning to work against him: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...own_97091.html

Quote:

In a conversation the other day with a White House official, I heard something I'd never expected from an employee of Barack Obama's. "I wish," he said, "George Bush would speak up a little more."
In the five months since he left the presidency, Bush has immersed himself in his memoir. He has stayed home in Texas and rarely spoken publicly. The result has been that he has largely disappeared from the news and -- the point the Obama aide was making -- pretty much has been forgotten.

Bush's silence has made it harder for Obama to keep the public focused on Bush as being responsible for our present difficulties -- the weak economy, the unsettled wars, the scandals of Guantanamo and the detainee program.

Without a powerful (and easy to demonize) opponent, Obama and his policies are finally beginning to receive scrutiny that should have occurred before the election:

Quote:

Five months into his tenure, Obama has become the only president the American people think about. And a series of polls last week showed that when Americans think about Obama, they are becoming increasingly critical.

Complicating all of this is Obama's own lack of leadership - his lack of core beliefs, of direction; of focus: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124596573543456401.html

Quote:

New White Houses are always ardent for change, for breakthroughs. They want the sentence even when they don't know the sentence exists, even when they think it's a paragraph. The Obama people want, "He was the president who gave all Americans health care," and, "He lessened income inequality," and, "He took over a failed company," and other things. They wants a jumble of sentences and do a jumble of things. But an administration about everything is an administration about nothing.

Mr. Obama is not seeing his sentence. He's missing it. This is the sentence history has given him: "He brought America back from economic collapse and kept us strong and secure in the age of terror." That's all anybody wants. It's all that's needed.

It is a great and worthy sentence, the kind that gives you a second term and the affectionate memory of history. If Mr. Obama earns it and makes it true of himself, he will be called good to great. But you have to meet it, you have to do it.

To get the first part of the sentence right would take a lot—restoring the confidence of the nation, getting spending down so people don't feel a sense of horror as they look at the future, getting or keeping the dollar sound, keeping the banks up and operating. A friend says that what's missing is an adult and responsible sense of limits, that we need to remember—we need to be reminded by our leaders—that it's not un-American to see limits. It's adult to see limits, it's right and realistic.

The irony here is that Obama's election was largely a backlash against a president who, his critics said, focused too much on the war on terror and didn't listen enough to his critics. Obama seems to be making the opposite mistake: listening too much and focusing too little.

It may well be his undoing.

Posted by Cassandra at June 26, 2009 08:09 AM

http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcb...es_promis.html

Jolie Rouge · 07-16-2009, 11:55 AM

The White House strikes back
Jonathan Martin
Thu Jul 16, 5:52 am ET

On the defensive over the economy and health care, the White House is shooting back with a double-barreled message for its critics and skeptics.

To Republicans who say the stimulus isn’t working: Back off.

To moderate Democrats wary of health care reform: We’re watching you.

Earlier this week, the administration launched a coordinated effort to jam Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican who’s argued that the government should “cancel the rest of the stimulus spending.” No fewer than four Cabinet secretaries wrote to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer — also a Republican — to ask her if she agreed with Kyl that it was time to turn off the state’s stimulus spigot.
“If you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, as Sen. Kyl suggests, please let me know,” wrote Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. For good measure, he attached a three-page addendum listing each of the Arizona projects paid for by the $521 million the state is getting.

Brewer knew she’d been thrown a high, hard one.

“The governor is hopeful that these federal Cabinet officials are not threatening to deny Arizona citizens the portion of federal stimulus funds to which they are entitled,” her spokesman said in a statement. “She believes that would be a tremendous mistake by the administration. And the governor is grateful for the strong leadership and representation that Arizonans enjoy in the United States Senate.”

The administration took a gentler approach with its own Wednesday, when Organizing for America, President Barack Obama’s campaign-in-waiting, launched ads in a handful of states aimed at pushing centrist Senate Democrats to get behind health care reform. The ads don’t identify their targets by name, and they talk up the urgency of passing a bill without talking down its skeptics.

“It’s time for health care reform,” implores a woman in the ad who’s struggling with health care bills because of her son’s cerebral palsy and epilepsy.

The two different approaches — a fist to the nose and a gentle elbow nudge — reflect a White House that increasingly recognizes the political stakes at play in reviving the economy and passing health reform this year.

At the White House Wednesday, Obama stressed the need for speed, saying that Wednesday’s approval of a bill by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee should “provide the urgency for both the House and the Senate to finish their critical work on health reform before the August recess.”

Republicans are hammering the White House and its allies in Congress on the $1 trillion Congressional Budget Office price tag for the House health care plan and the tax on the wealthy that some Democrats would use to pay for it. At the same time, polling suggests that the GOP is making a dent with its arguments that the Democrats are spending too much with too little to show for it.

The coordinated assault against Kyl came after weeks of frustration in watching GOP members of Congress trash the stimulus as ineffective while their own states and districts received millions in funding thanks to the act. In some cases, congressional Republicans have even sought to claim credit for the money in a bill they opposed.

There hadn’t been an aggressive pushback,” lamented one administration official.

So after seeing Kyl and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) again paint the legislation as a failure on Sunday talk shows, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel directed that the letters from the Cabinet secretaries be sent to Brewer, according to two administration officials.

And then the DNC made sure other Republicans saw the message being delivered to Arizona by touting the letters.

“If Republicans want to bash job creation in their own home states for political purposes, that’s their choice, but we aren’t going to hesitate to point out that they are putting their party’s political strategy above good jobs for the people they were elected to represent,” said Democratic National Committee spokesman Hari Sevugan. “And we sure as hell aren’t going to let Republicans or their allies get away with misleading anyone about the jobs being created by the recovery act.”

A senior administration official put it plainly: “You can either be for the recovery act or against it.”
Kyl responded by accusing the White House of threatening his state.

“It’s unfortunate that President Obama and his administration seem unwilling to debate the merits of the stimulus bill and acknowledge its shortcomings,” the senator said in a statement. “Instead, they have resorted to coordinated political attacks with the [DNC] and the politicization of departments of government by using Cabinet secretaries to issue thinly veiled threats to the governor and the people of Arizona.”

Not surprisingly, the administration is taking a more subtle approach in pushing Democrats on health care.

While acknowledging the 30-second ads going up in eight states are largely aimed at its own senators, White House aides and other Democratic officials say the spots and coordinated grass-roots push by the president’s political apparatus are less about pressuring than providing air cover for the tough vote.
“Senators in these states are key voices in this debate, and with this ad and with all that we are doing on the ground we want them to know — and all their colleagues to know — that they have the support of their constituents to do the right thing and reform health care, consistent with the president’s principles, this year,” said Sevugan.

Obama aides no longer feel it’s enough to have only third-party groups airing ads that push health care reform in key states and are now demonstrating how much the administration is invested in getting a bill.

“We’re in a different place now,” said one official.

"The fight has been [joined],” said another, pointing to the “crucial” next weeks before the congressional recess to explain why.

Just how much the ads will sway Democratic senators remains to be seen, though. When asked about them Wednesday, some of the moderates being targeted responded with a collective shrug befitting the mild nature of the commercials.

“It’s fine with me,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), a member of the Finance Committee. “Nothing is unusual anymore — it’s been happening for years. Every time there is a major issue that comes before Congress, they run ads in my state, so this is absolutely standard procedure.”

Asked if it was productive for Obama to run the ads, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said: “It really doesn’t matter to me literally one way or another.”

She added: “When the president has a health care plan, I’ll be happy to support it, but he doesn’t have one right now. The president doesn’t have a plan right now. Congress is putting plans together, and we are debating every different aspect of it.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/200...politico/25003

janelle · 07-16-2009, 06:34 PM

You mean he didn't deliver on the ice cream he promised everyone if he got elected? I am shocked!!!!!!!

pepperpot · 07-16-2009, 06:45 PM

Quote:

“I don’t know the key to success,
but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

- Bill Cosby

nice quote

Jolie Rouge · 08-17-2009, 02:03 PM

Some Obama Promises Must Wait
Adriel Bettelheim, Cq Staff
Mon Aug 17, 6:14 am ET

President Obama sounded a bit like a weary air traffic controller on Aug. 10, when he was quizzed during a three-way summit with leaders from Mexico and Canada about a promised overhaul of U.S. immigration laws.

"I've got a lot on my plate, and it's very important for us to sequence these big initiatives in a way where they don't all just crash at the same time," the president said in response to a reporter's question.

While Obama said he expects Congress to send draft legislation his way later this year, the issue, at least for the moment, has been relegated to the back burner.

Triage is a necessity in an administration confronted by a deep recession, with a president who is simultaneously shepherding big initiatives addressing health care, climate change, education and financial regulation.

Obama and his aides understand there is only so much bandwidth to accommodate these efforts -- and to complete work on fiscal 2010 spending bills and second-tier issues, such as a proposed rewrite of the rules for student lending.

But that means a large number of political promises Obama made during his historic campaign have been pushed to the back of the agenda. Most, in fact. The PolitiFact.com Web site, which compiled a list of 515 Obama pledges, lists 374 under the category of "no action."

To be sure, Obama has begun to make good on some of his most prominent promises.

Just days after he was sworn in, he issued orders to shut the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and limit harsh interrogation methods. Initiatives to overturn federal funding curbs on embryonic stem cell research, deliver a major address to the Islamic world and stem mortgage foreclosures, to cite just three others, followed suit.

Many other high-profile issues have been deferred, either because they involve time-consuming negotiations with Congress or because Obama simply doesn't want to expend the political capital. Here are five that are not likely to be acted on before year's end:

Revise 'No Child Left Behind' The 2002 education law (PL 107-110) was passed with bipartisan fanfare and promoted by former President George W. Bush as one of his most important domestic policy achievements. But its focus on standardized testing as the measure of achievement and the way it expanded the federal government's role into what has been traditionally a local issue prompted heated calls for revision.

During his campaign, Obama said he would overhaul the law "so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them" and pledged to find innovative ways to recruit and reward good teachers.

However, a planned reauthorization has been crowded out by other domestic priorities, particularly Obama's push to retool the U.S. health care system, making it unlikely that a planned reauthorization will move quickly. Education Secretary Arne Duncan wants to complete a nationwide listening tour before submitting a proposal to Congress. His department is also overseeing the expenditure of about $100 billion in new funding.

Confronting China Obama stated last year that China's rise posed one of the most important foreign policy challenges to the United States in the coming decade. He promised to discourage China from manipulating its currency, the yuan, to keep the prices of its goods cheap and generate trade surpluses. And he pledged to discourage China's support for genocidal and repressive regimes in Sudan, Burma, Iran and Zimbabwe.

Though Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said during his confirmation hearing that the administration would act "aggressively" using "all the diplomatic avenues" to change China's currency practices, the White House has stopped short of making a formal declaration to Congress that China is manipulating the yuan to gain an unfair trade advantage. Such a move could spark punitive action and countermeasures from China.

Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao instead launched a "strategic and economic dialogue" in April. Experts such as Brookings Institution visiting fellow Dennis C. Wilder sense there is more continuity than change in the administration's approach to engaging China -- characterized by non-ideological dialogue that stresses positive areas for cooperation.

One difference is the administration's elevation of climate change to a top-tier issue. The administration understands that efforts to pass climate change legislation in Congress hinge, in part, on getting China to do its part in reducing the global carbon footprint.

Fully Funding Veterans' Programs Obama, who as a senator served on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, spoke during the campaign about the "sacred trust to care for our nation's veterans" and complained about years of chronic underfunding of the Veterans Administration medical care system.

He pledged to fully fund the VA and make the VA budget must-pass legislation.

But it's Congress that is doing most of the heavy lifting to make the promise reality. The House in June passed a measure (HR 1016) that would put veterans' health care programs on a two-year budget cycle and make funding more predictable. The VA would receive $108.9 billion, about 15 percent more than in fiscal 2009 (PL 110-329) and equal to President Obama's fiscal 2010 budget request.

Once money is released, the VA would detail to Congress any impediments to estimating future budgetary needs. The Office of Management and Budget would then request advance funding a year ahead of time and make the VA submit to Congress detailed explanations of those spending figures. The agency then would have to update Congress by July 31 of each year on whether the advance appropriations would be sufficient to meet the department's needs.

This would give the VA more certainty, but not as much as Obama pledged.

Rebuilding the Gulf Coast During the campaign, Obama said he would "keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast" and take steps to prevent failures in emergency planning and response seen during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Specifically, Obama would ensure New Orleans has a levee and pumping system to protect the city against a 100-year storm by 2011, free up rebuilding funds that had been allocated but not released and to rebuild hospitals and schools.

Much of the work remains on the drawing boards. The administration got into a tussle with Sen. David Vitter, R-La., after he briefly stalled the nomination of Craig Fugate to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency because new federal flood maps included areas that were not previously designated flood zones, including much of Louisiana's Cameron Parish, Grand Isle, and Lafourche Parish.

Federal regulations prohibit FEMA recovery funds from being used for rebuilding in areas designated as "V-Zones" because of their risk for future flooding.

An August 2009 report from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program concludes the region still faces major challenges due to blight, unaffordable housing and vulnerable flood protection.

Though New Orleans' economy is weathering the recession fairly well, the report says some districts continue to have high numbers of vacant and blighted residences, and that essential service workers can't afford fair market rents. And while 16 additional schools opened in the New Orleans area in the previous 12 months, the entire area remains vulnerable to storm-related flooding. A storm-surge protection system now being built by the Army Corps of Engineers would not adequately protect against another storm of Katrina's magnitude, the report states.

Importing Prescription Drugs In spite of its overwhelming focus on overhauling the health care system, the administration has been silent on one of Obama's signature health care promises: allowing consumers to import drugs made in FDA-approved facilities in countries where they are often sold for less.

During the campaign, Obama charged that some drugmakers were exploiting Americans by charging premiums of as much as 67 percent higher than the prices they charge for the same medicines in Europe and Canada.

But Obama's administration has since cut a deal with the pharmaceutical industry in which drugmakers promised to provide $80 billion in discounts to seniors and the government over 10 years to help pay the cost of a health system overhaul.

Ironically, Obama's 2008 presidential opponent, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., offered an amendment during debate on a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee health plan that would have written such an importation provision into law. Democrats helped defeat it by a 10-12 vote, arguing that allowing access to the cheaper drugs from abroad was potentially dangerous in light of all the hazards Americans have faced in recent months from risky imported products.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20090817/...FnZXNvbWVvYg--

Jolie Rouge · 10-22-2009, 01:54 AM

Obama must shift focus off Guantánamo
Juan Carlos Zarate – Wed Oct 21, 5:00 am ET

Washington – As the Obama administration's self-imposed deadline to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay nears, the United States could have a new mess of its own making to clean up.

Come Jan. 2010, if Guantánamo remains open, and this looks increasingly likely, the president's credibility among Congress, the American people, and the international community would be weakened.

Even worse, the legal and policy questions surrounding how to hold detainees legitimately in the war on Al Qaeda and its allies – a formulation the president uses intentionally – would remain muddled. The international focus would remain on the closure of GuantÃ¡namo.

The president's commitment to close Guantánamo by Jan. 22 without fully understanding both the dangerousness of most of the remaining detainees and the legal and diplomatic complications of detention policies surrounding Guantánamo was a mistake.

Failing to have a plan and to work with Congress to transfer the remaining detainees further hamstrung the administration's efforts.

But it's not too late to reshape the nature of the domestic and international debate about detention of Al Qaeda-related terrorists. The Bush administration tried but lacked the credibility to redirect the world's focus.

Instead of focusing attention on closing Guantánamo, the new White House should use the president's credibility abroad to focus attention on the underlying legal and policy questions related to detention and terrorism prevention, for which Guantánamo is only a symptom.

There remains no consensus about how to hold suspected terrorists and insurgents in a seemingly endless global conflict, in which the theaters of conflict range from recognized war zones and ungoverned havens to city centers and suburban neighborhoods.

Neither the laws of war nor criminal legal principles fit the challenges presented by an amorphous transnational enemy wearing no uniform and intending to inspire a religiously motivated movement to commit catastrophic atrocities.

This is a hybrid conflict still in need of legal and policy innovation.

In May, President Obama formally announced a preventive detention system, admitting that there are some individuals too dangerous to release. This is an important decision that reflects the reality of the threats the president rightly perceives and the inadequacies of the current legal systems to deal with such threats. It is also a decision that disappoints the left, which expected that Obama would rely wholly on criminal trials to hold terrorist suspects or let them go free.

The president should now explain this decision to the world and reshape the nature of the GuantÃ¡namo debate.

By doing so, he can reclaim the high ground for the US. He can use themes from his recent UN address and the mantle of his Nobel Peace Prize to challenge the international community to a constructive dialogue on detention of terrorist suspects. But he must defend his decision forcefully based on principle and national security interests.

The president and Congress should also examine alternative systems or procedures to detain suspected terrorists preventively and obtain intelligence while ensuring individual rights.

Several promising models have been put forward in this debate already – such as a new national security court – and elements from other systems around the world could prove useful, including rehabilitation programs as "half-way houses" for less dangerous violent extremists.

Whatever form this takes, the US needs to establish transparent rules for justifying continued detention while protecting basic individual rights, and it will need to gain some degree of international legitimacy. This can only be achieved if the president commits his own credibility to explaining the balance he has drawn.

This will be difficult. Any such discussion will pour salt in the wound of those who question the need for the continuity of Bush-era policies. It will be more difficult internationally. Much of the president's legitimacy – as articulated by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee – is built precisely on the perception that he has abandoned the policies of the past that have struck a balance in favor of US security to the detriment of international law.

The establishment of a preventive detention system, while Washington agonizes over the closure of Guantánamo, will force this issue. The president may find that this shift in focus will be the best way for him to preserve his credibility at home and abroad. And then he can begin to defend America's security decisions instead of apologizing for them.

In many ways, Obama is the ideal leader to clean up this mess and shape, along with Congress and international partners, a legitimate, long-term legal framework for preventively detaining terrorist suspects across the globe.

Juan Carlos Zarate was deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism from 2005 to 2009 and served as a prosecutor in the Terrorism and Violent Crime Section of the Department of Justice during the Clinton administration. He is now a senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20091021/cm_csm/yzarate

Jolie Rouge · 10-23-2009, 12:52 AM

From GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra’s office, a demand for transparency from the Obama Administration on its Gitmo relocation plans:

[Hoekstra,] the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, used a rare, open hearing of a House Intelligence Subcommittee to highlight the fact that nine months to the day after President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order to close Guantanamo Bay, the administration still has not presented a plan and is avoiding transparency with Congress.

“The National Security Act requires that Congress be kept fully and currently informed, but when it comes to Guantanamo Bay, the administration is doing anything but that,” Hoekstra said. “We have asked questions, sent letters and requested briefings, but this committee has received nothing in the way of meaningful answers. The administration’s lack of transparency with Congress and the American people on this critical national security issue has been absolutely shocking, so we had little choice but to use this hearing to speak out.”

Hoekstra said today’s Intelligence Community Management Subcommittee hearing on the requirements for congressional notification provided a perfect opportunity to discuss the fact that the administration continues to stonewall congressional requests for information on Guantanamo Bay. Rather than focus on the topic as an academic discussion, Republicans decided to instead focus on the real world implications of the administration’s failure of transparency with Congress.

Republicans invited Dave Munson, a private citizen from Standish, Mich., and founder of the Coalition to Stop Gitmo North, to testify on the challenges that the community has faced in accessing background and threat information on terrorist detainees from local, state and federal officials. A state prison in Standish that is slated for closure may or may not be under consideration for housing terrorist detainees moved from Guantanamo Bay.

“It’s dismaying that we cannot even get an answer as to whether or not the prison in Standish is still under serious consideration by the administration,” Hoekstra said. “One thing is clear, as Dave Munson has indicated, the people of Standish do not want detainees from Guantanamo Bay moved there, and the administration should remove the cloud that is hanging over their community.”

Hoekstra went on to say that he is aware of classified information related to Guantanamo threats and to renew his call for the administration to make threat assessments available to state and local officials.

Editors’ Note: Hoekstra, along with Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other ranking Republicans, introduced the Keep Terrorists Out of America Act, H. R. 2294, to (1) affirm Congress’ opposition to transferring or releasing terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility into the United States; (2) prohibit the administration from transferring or releasing any terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay to any state without express approval from the state’s governor and legislature; and (3) prohibit the president from transferring or releasing a terrorist detainee into the United States unless he provides notification and certification to Congress.

Jolie Rouge · 10-29-2009, 04:21 PM

Campaign) Promises, (Campaign) Promises
posted at 9:46 am on October 29, 2009 by Howard Portnoy

Barack Obama is angry that he is taking heat for keeping a campaign promise.

No, no — it’s not the promise to be transparent. He’s broken that promise into so many pieces that the repair shop called and said he’s better off buying a new transparency. And it’s not the promise to change the tone of politics in Washington: his airing of the pettiest of grievances toward imagined offenders has the country more bitterly divided than ever.

It’s a “campaign” promise he made to his lovely wife, Michelle. He promised the one who wears the broad shoulders in the family that he would take her to New York after the election “for one of their ‘date nights’ — dinner and a Broadway play.”

You know, just when you thought the big lug couldn’t get any more lovable. . .! Think about it. Gives the country the middle finger when it comes to Afghanistan, turns his back on an ailing economy to attempt to radicalize the health care industry, and fills his administration with people who believe America’s biggest sin is that it hasn’t bent over backward far enough to be more like Europe, and his chief priority is keeping his promise to take the missus out for a big night? I thought her big night was hip hop night at the White House. (By the way, rumors are flying that the president has banned hip hop from the White House. Say it ain’t so. What will Congresswoman Barbara Lee and the rest of the Hip Hop Caucus Institute think?)

But I digress.

Obama told The New York Times Magazine for an article appearing in the Nov. 1 issue that he was pee-ohed at conservative commentators and Republican officials for making his date into a political issue. “If I weren’t president,” he said, “I would be happy to catch the shuttle with my wife to take her to a Broadway show, as I had promised her during the campaign, and there would be no fuss and no muss and no photographers. That would please me greatly.” His not being president would please me greatly, too.

Unfortunately for the world’s most dedicated husband, presidents are restricted to traveling by secure government aircraft and vehicles. That means that an evening out on the town for the first couple costs the American taxpayers a pretty penny. Naturally, the penny wouldn’t have been nearly as pretty if they elected to, say, eat in Washington (I hear the city has one or two restaurants that isn’t a McDonald’s) and go the Kennedy Center afterwards, but — hey! — a promise is a promise. And what the hell business is it of ours anyway?

Oh, that’s right.

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives...aign-promises/

Jolie Rouge · 10-29-2009, 04:23 PM

Death of transparency, Pt. 98,765:
Pelosi blocks public from public option event
October 29, 2009 12:52 PM

Queen Nancy Pelosi reportedly ordered Capitol Hill police to block a GOP staffer from attending the Speaker’s public option announcement on Capitol Hill.

Transparency, schmansparency:

Power to the people!

As always, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/10/29...-option-event/