Good News for Jimmy Carter

Bill O'Reilly blows his own horn and Taps for the Republic

Bill O'Reilly blows his own horn on Townhall in his article, Semper Fi, Unless It's Not Convenient, which describes the case of Marine Vetran Jon Hammar, who was unjustly held in a Mexican prison.

According to Mr. O'Reilly, his threat of leading a tourism boycott of Mexico directly resulted in Mr. Hammar's release.

Perhaps it did. If he influenced the decision to release the Iraq war Veteran, Mr. O'Reilly deserves to blow his horn. He did an honorable thing.

And in so doing he illustrated the lack of honor and lack of influence of our State Department and the sorry lack of responsibility of our President.

O'Reilly says, "When we asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a comment, she refused to say anything about the case. A few of her deputies visited Hammar in prison, but the official line was that State could do nothing more."

Not since Jimmy Carter has the U.S. Government been so completely impotent.

He adds, "In mid-December, the Fox News White House correspondent asked press secretary Jay Carney about the case. President Barack Obama's spokesman looked perplexed and said he did not know anything about it. As unbelievable as that sounds, I believe that Carney was telling the truth."

I cannot recall a time when a U.S. Citizen, in particular a Veteran, was unjustly held in a foreign prison on fallacious charges and the president didn't even care to know about it.

Obama: Wholly, Completely and Rabidly Anti-Life

Obama defunds ‘snowflake babies’

"The HHS report said the reason to end the $1.9 million embryo-adoption awareness program is “limited interest.” Only a “very small pool of applicants, many of whom are repeat recipients,” are seeking the grants, it said.
Mailee Smith, staff counsel at Americans United for Life, said such a decision is more evidence of “the pro-abortion slant of this administration.”
“Why would the Obama administration cut $2 million for adoption awareness, but keep $1 million a day for Planned Parenthood?” she asked.

"But in March 2009, President Obama authorized more funding for embryonic stem-cell research, and federal guidelines now let couples donate unwanted frozen embryos to such researchers with the proviso that they cannot receive cash, services or special treatment in exchange for their donations."

Obama policy: No living Child left behind.

I don't remember the punk's name, but wasn't there some American kid locked up in a detention facility a few years back who had been swept up from the battlefield and strongly suspected of firing on Americans?

As I recall, the Left protested mightily that he was being denied his Constitutional rights as an American citizen. And the Right objected that joining the enemy and shooting at Americans was a pretty clear declaration of denunciation of citizenship and the civil rights associated with citizenship.

Now, the Left is defending the assassination of Al Awlaki and the right are complaining that his Constitutional rights were violated.

Sheesh.

If in a just war, someone goes over to the other side, he makes himself an enemy combatant. He chooses to become a target. That's easy.

At the same time, I'm afraid that once the State justifies assassination of those the State deems to be enemies of the State, a dangerous line has been crossed. I don't think Attorney General Eric Holder is bright enough to see that the line applies to him and his boss just as much as it did to the previous president.

Holder is reported as saying, "The unfortunate reality is that our nation will likely continue to face terrorist threats that at times originate with our own citizens,"

True enough. But worrisome when connected with some of the DHS idiocy in defining what is a terrorist threat.

"Al-Awlaki's father sued to try to stop the government from killing his son, arguing he had to be afforded the constitutional right to due process. But U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington refused to intervene in al-Awlaki's case because he said the courts do not have the authority to review the president's military decisions.
Holder pointed out that decision in his speech. "The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process," Holder said."

That's not what Holder was saying about military tribunals at Guantanamo. But hypocrisy is a defining attribute for this gang. I'd rather not depend upon Holder and Obama for what constitutes 'due process.'

I seldom agree with the ACLU, but I do this time:
"Few things are as dangerous to American liberty as the proposition that the government should be able to kill citizens anywhere in the world on the basis of legal standards and evidence that are never submitted to a court, either before or after the fact," Shamsi said. "Anyone willing to trust President Obama with the power to secretly declare an American citizen an enemy of the state and order his extrajudicial killing should ask whether they would be willing to trust the next president with that dangerous power."

And that is good advice to my friends on the Right: Anyone willing to trust President Bush with that sort of power should ask wether they would be willing to trust President Obama with that dangerous power.

Dreams from Chairman Mao

The current artificial crisis over the draconian HHS mandate has been manufactured by the Administration even though or perhaps because it tramples 1st Amendment freedoms. It's difficult to believe that the Administration's conflict with the Catholic Church was unanticipated and unintentional; it is one more instance of them being either complete idiots or wholly evil. Of course, it's also possible that they're both.

In 2008, the majority of Catholics in the US voted for Obama. The Catholic hierarchy, though less blindly committed to Democratic policies than their predecessors, maintained a generally favorable view toward Democratic social welfare schemes. They have a long history of supporting the concept of universal healthcare. Until it became clear that Obamacare would be used to advance abortion and contraception, the bishops supported it. HHS could have easily crafted a regime of mandates that provided cover for Catholics and Catholic institutions who support Obama and Obamacare but who want to maintain the appearance of adherence to Catholic doctrine: Fr. Jenkins of Notre Dame, Sr. Keehan of the Catholic Health Association, the Campaign for Human Development, America and Commonweal magazines, etc. While events have shown that some members of this motley crew have placed allegiance to their Progressive ideology over their obedience to their bishops and the teachings of their church, the Administration could have gotten much broader support from prominent Catholics and Catholic organizations with little if any real cost in support from radical feminists and the Abortion industry.

Nevertheless, the Administration's political calculus and/or blind ideology led them to make a very public, very resolute and very radical stand on 'women's health issues,' AKA: contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs.

The Administration very publicly announced an extreme policy on the only issue that the bishops might balk at. And they left no room in it for sophistry or Jesuitry by the administration's Catholic lap-dogs. They refused to waver from a policy that directly puts the bishops and faithful Catholic organizations in a position where they must either choose to serve Caesar or to serve God.

So far, the bishops have hewn to St. Thomas More's example of being "the kings good servant, but God's first." Lord preserve us from having to follow too far in his footsteps.

On March 2nd, Cardinal Dolan of NY, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a letter to his brother bishops. He made it clear that the conflict is not about contraception but about religious freedom and the relationship between the secular society and religious associations in a free society:

"How fortunate that we as a body have had opportunities during our past plenary assemblies to manifest our strong unity in defense of religious freedom.  We rely on that unity now more than ever as HHS seeks to define what constitutes church ministry and how it can be exercised." "Since January 20, when the final, restrictive HHS Rule was first announced, we have become certain of two things: religious freedom is under attack, and we will not cease our struggle to protect it. We recall the words of our Holy Father Benedict XVI to our brother bishops on their recent ad limina visit: 'Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion.'” "We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans.  We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it."

Cardinal Dolan made one observation, however, that gave me pause - as if the Obama administration's assault on religious freedom and its radical anti-family and anti-life agenda weren't enough.

Cardinal Dolan described "a recent meeting between staff of the bishops’ conference and the White House staff, our staff members asked directly whether the broader concerns of religious freedom—that is,
revisiting the straight-jacketing mandates, or broadening the maligned exemption—are all off the
table.  They were informed that they are.  So much for “working out the wrinkles.”  Instead, they 
advised the bishops’ conference that we should listen to the “enlightened” voices of 
accommodation, such as the recent, hardly surprising yet terribly unfortunate editorial in
America.  The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand 
Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has 
nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers."(emphasis mine)

That remark reminded me of something: The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

Nah, couldn't be. Certainly, in a country whose Constitution contains the explicit words, "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion nor the free exercise thereof" the government would never consider mandating what is or isn't a religious organization, prescribing what religious organizations may or may not do or deciding who does or does not speak for a particular religion. That is too great a violation of the Constitution and the long tradition of religious freedom in this country. But that is exactly what Cardinal Dolan shows that the Obama administration is doing. That is also exactly the official policy of the Communist regime in Beijing.

But what would lead a reasonable person to suspect an American president of aspiring to have the sort of totalitarian control exercised by Hu Jintao?

Maybe the president's on comments?

Jonah Goldberg observed recently, "He's even reportedly expressed envy for Chinese President Hu Jintao. "Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China," the New York Times reported last year. "As one official put it, 'No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao's words in Tahrir Square.'"

I haven't read "Dreams from My Father," but I half expect to see a pocket-sized version with a red cover to hit the streets if Obama wins a second term. 

What does it take to be a successful President of the United States?

What does it take to be a successful President of the United States?

Hard to say, we’ve had so few.

Democrats point to Clinton and Roosevelt. Republicans tout Reagan. Historians, political scientists and journalists continually compile rankings and polls. Washington, Lincoln and FDR are most commonly put at the top of lists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States

Given the great number of dummies with the right to vote in US elections, it comes as no surprise that there is a Guide for Dummies for evaluating US presidents:

Evaluating U.S. Presidents

By Marcus Stadelmann

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/evaluating-us-presidents.html

“U.S. presidents are evaluated in many ways. The major characteristics that academic and public polls use to evaluate the 44 U.S. presidents vary from survey to survey, but the main standards remain consistent.”

Policy leadership

Crisis management

Presidential appointments

Foreign standing

Character and integrity

Public persuasion

Presidential vision

They seem like pretty reasonable criteria for evaluating whether a president is relatively successful or not. But the characteristics we use to evaluate a presidency aren’t always apparent when we are evaluating candidates for the office.

To take the current president for an example, we can see that he has done a poor job of policy leadership. His policies have been abysmal and he has too often “led from the rear.”

Crisis management: He has had plenty of crises to manage, many of his own making. He has mismanaged almost all of them. In each case, the president’s response seems to have diminished the standing of the US in the world and made the US less safe and less secure. From the Bailout that bailed out Democrat constituencies rather than the nation, to Fast and Furious, ad nauseum, this administration has exacerbated or prolonged crises. One begins to wonder: what was Rahm Emanuel thinking when he said, “Never let a crisis go to waste?” Of course he knew that crises are useful for autocrats. A crisis focuses public attention on something other than the government. Progressives back to Henry James saw the value in creating a ‘moral equivalent for war.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_Jimmy_Carter%27s_Moral_Equivalent_of_War_Speech

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Presidential appointments: Van Jones, Timmy Geitner, Kathleen Sebelius, Eric Holder. ‘nuff said.

Foreign Standing: From dissing England and Israel in his first weeks in office through “Reset” or something with Russia to spending 3 years to the Arab Spring which has sprung anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Israel Islamist autarkies across North Africa and the Levant to Iran, North Korea and China who are all becoming more hostile to the US. The current president has been a failure at home and abroad.

Character and Integrity: Tony Rezko on line 1, Rod Blagojevich on line 2, Mr. President.

Public Persuasion: He still has 26% of the nation persuaded: “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 26% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president.” http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

Presidential Vision: Sorry, anyone who envisages “fundamentally transforming America” has the wrong vision.

The problem is that at least half of those attributes cannot be known until it is too late. We are dealing with that reality today.

What are the traits, attributes, beliefs etc. that we may discern from the public record of candidates for the office of president? What can be discerned from what they’ve said and done in prior positions and on the campaign trail that may give us some understanding of how they would each do in the office when their legacy and the future of the country is played out.

IMHO, the characteristics a person needs to even have a chance to succeed in the presidency are:

Vision – No. I don’t mean “a vision” as in “having a vision for the country.” That’s the sort of thing that got us into this mess. I mean the ability to see and think abstractly and creatively; to grasp the important things in the welter of data, incomplete information, and conflicting opinions. The ability to see the pattern amid the clutter and grasp the interrelatedness of apparently disparate things. To see the essential thread that must be addressed to untangle the knot. Reagan saw that modernizing our nuclear forces and deploying tactical nukes to Europe was the best path to nuclear arms reductions and the end of the Cold War.

Sound principles – In our Constitutional Republic based on Natural Law and Christianity; that means adherence to the principles laid down by the Founders upon the bedrock of Natural Law. Principles are different from ideology; which is brittle, shallow, narrow and inflexible.

Judgment – This may be a result of Vision and Principles. It may be its own trait. I would place management ability under the broader category of Judgment. Prudential Judgment should naturally lead to good choices of staff and to effective leadership – maybe not inspiring leadership, but effective leadership.

Personal Integrity – Do I really have to explain this one?

I cannot score the current president highly in any of these four areas.

How do the major candidates remaining measure up? None of them score significantly high in all four characteristics. Each of them scores well in at least one. All of them score better than Obama across the board.

Romney scores well in Vision as understood as the ability to understand complex problems – strategic leadership. I believe he has personal integrity. I thought he had good judgement. But I am unconvinced of his commitment to sound principles.

Santorum’s Personal Integrity and Sound Principles are nearly unquestionable. His reputation as a supporter of big government is worrisome, but I think he has a clearer understanding that the government you nurture as your pet inevitably becomes a monster at someone else’ hand. Best to starve the beast and keep it caged even when it means you can’t use it for what you think are good purposes. I do worry about his executive management ability.

Gingrich is a very mixed bag. He may be a visionary, but I’m not sure he has strategic vision. He didn’t cover himself in glory while Speaker. Although he did accomplish some historic things, it didn’t take long for the Republican caucus to fall apart. That speaks poorly of his judgement. His personal integrity remains iffy, too. 3 wives? I’ll gladly accept that he has repented and has a firm resolution to avoid the near occasion of sin. But he does seem to have a politicians love of dancing the side-step when he gets called on things. His lame explanation of his work for Fannie Mae is an example.

I thought Ron Paul had impeccable integrity, until I heard about his evasions over his old newsletters and his possibile colusion with Romney on behalf of Rand Paul. While I concede that he is probably closest to the principles of government held by the Founders, I do question his judgement. He shows no evidence of possessing strategic vision or exectutive management ability.

This article in the New Yorker isn't good enough and too long to read in its entirety. It is basically another pro-bama echo chamber / in-kind campaign contribution. But this paragraph jumped out at me:

Polarization also has affected the two parties differently. The Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than the Democratic Party has drifted to the left. Jacob Hacker, a professor at Yale, whose 2006 book, “Off Center,” documented this trend, told me, citing Poole and Rosenthal’s data on congressional voting records, that, since 1975, “Senate Republicans moved roughly twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left” and “House Republicans moved roughly six times as far to the right as House Democrats moved to the left.” In other words, the story of the past few decades is asymmetric polarization.Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1kPCBTIRH

Of course, where the New Yorker thinks the center is can be roughly guaged by this description:
Two well-known Washington political analysts, Thomas Mann, of the bipartisan Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, agree."

Norman Orstein is also a contributor to the NYT, and blogged for the HuffPo, which lists a brief bio: "Norman J. Ornstein is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He also serves as an election analyst for CBS News. In addition, Ornstein writes for USA Today as a member of its Board of Contributors and writes a weekly column called "Congress Inside Out" for Roll Call newspaper. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs and other major publications, and regularly appears on television programs like The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, and Charlie Rose. He serves as senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission, working to ensure that our institutions of government can be maintained in the event of a terrorist attack on Washington; his efforts in this area are recounted in a profile of him in the June 2003 Atlantic Monthly. His campaign finance working group of scholars and practitioners helped shape the major law, known as McCain/Feingold, that reformed the campaign financing system. Legal Times referred to him as "a principal drafter of the law" and his role in its design and enactment was profiled in the February 2004 issue of Washington Lawyer."

And if Brookings can be called, "bipartisan" so can AEI for employing Ornstein. Mann's comments are clearly from the Left.

"From September 1st to Election Day, Obama outspent McCain by almost three to one, and, as many Republicans are quick to note, ran more negative ads than any Presidential candidate in modern history. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1kPCBTIRH"

Why are "many Republicans quick to note" something that would be an indelable mark in the MSM were O not a fellow traveller?

I expect I won't take the time to watch the POTUS SOTU speech, when ever it is. Perhaps I will, and give it the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" treatment. That might be fun with some beers and similarly minded friends.


The WashTimes correctly points out that the speech is merely a campaign event with the taxpayer providing an impressive-looking venue: "Anyone wondering whether President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday will focus more on policy or the politics of his re-election should consider the trip he has planned immediately afterward: visits to five battleground states in three days."


There is zero chance of candidate Obama doing other than pandering to his base and head-faking to Independents. But, in case some naive soul or alien from another planet doesn't believe me, he gave us a preview in the form of a (paid for by taxpayers) ad: "In a video preview of his State of the Union speech emailed to 10 million supporters Saturday, Mr. Obama said he would call for “a return to American values of fairness for all and responsibility from all.”

Anyone doubt that the pre-view included a plea for contributions to 'help the president win the future we can't wait to fundamentally transform hope and change to dispair and decline blah blah blah..." But we don't have to conjecture. "fairness for all" and "responsibility from all" - well, not exactly ALL "all". We want fairness FOR all the people who support the concerns expressed by OWS blah blah blah. We want responsibility from the Koch brothers and the 1% that don't attend $36,000/plate Democratic fund raisers.

"“We can go in two directions,” the president said. “One is towards less opportunity and less fairness. Or we can fight for where I think we need to go: building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.”

This is less than a weak echo of President Reagan's A Time For Choosing speech. In fact, it is more of a tawdry parody.

"This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: [up] man's old -- old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course."

But of course the administration can't admit that it is taking its cues from an iconic Republican president. So, they pretend they are channelling Slick Willie:

"Americans of all political persuasions are going to want their elected representatives here in Washington to work together, whether it’s an even year or an odd year or a year in the presidential cycle,” Mr. Carney said. “I think there are historic examples that actually contradict the assumption that you can’t get anything done in a presidential election year — 1996 comes to mind.”
"In 1996, President Clinton delivered his election-year State of the Union address to a Republican Congress that voters had put into power in a midterm election as a check on Mr. Clinton.
"It was in this speech that Mr. Clinton famously declared, “The era of big government is over.” During the address, he added that it was time to “finish the job and balance the budget.” He had to wait just one year to sign legislation requiring a balanced budget by 2002."

Of course, a president is far more likely to get what he proposes through Congress when he proposes what Congress wants in the first place. Unfortunately for the current president, Congress is not interested in "fundamentally transforming America" into a Democratic Socialist Progressive distopia.

"Former U.S. Comptroller General David A. Walker, CEO of the nonprofit Comeback America Initiative, noted that presidents “love” to begin State of the Union speeches with declarations that “The state of our union is strong.”
“This year, that statement would be false,” Mr. Walker said. “And it is more false now than ever before, because of our calamitous financial situation.”"

Who said it?

"A hesitant America, disengaging from its commitments and uncertain as to its role, will inspire disillusion among its allies and confidence on the part of its adversaries. A strong, self-confident America will help create the conditions for its own security and that of its allies and friends."

A. John Bolton, 2009

B. Ronald Reagan, 1980

C. Michelle Bachmann, 2011

D. Barack Obama, 2008

E. Jordan, Taylor, and Associates in "American National Security"; a text book published shortly after the end of the Carter presidency, 1981

The answer is E. I just threw D in there for fun. But it illustrates the fact that Obama's foreign policy is rivaling Jimmy Carter's for ineptitude and damage to American security. And the fact that all of the grown ups in the room today seem to be members of the Republican party.