President Obama has added to his schedule an 11:30 am ET video conference with America’s top allies to discuss the situation in Ukraine, ensuring that neither he nor them will watch Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plea before Congress and the world to reconsider the Iran nuclear deal.
Netanyahu is scheduled to appear at 11:00 am. He likely won’t get going until several minutes later and will probably not even be at the halfway point by 11:30. And presumably, the Western leaders will be preparing for the meeting when he starts.
The video conference, which was scheduled just this morning, will include British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and European Commission President Donald Tusk. Obama will participate from the White House Situation Room.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defying the Republican-run Congress, President Barack Obama rejected a bill Tuesday to approve construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, wielding his veto power for only the third time in his presidency.
It’s nice to see the process actually working again. You know… where the legislature actually passes legislation and the president actually has to sign or veto it. Now if we can get back to senators having to actually conduct filibusters, we’d be a step closer to a functioning legislative process.
Obama started saying in 2010 that his views were evolving on the issue and in May 2012 Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, citing “the evolution that I went through.”
But privately, Axelrod wrote that Obama made no secret of his support for same-sex marriage.
“I just don’t feel my marriage is somehow threatened by the gay couple next door,” Obama said, according to Axelrod’s book.
In the chapter, in which he notes the “recurring tension between Obama the idealist and Obama the politician,” Axelrod writes that Obama’s public stance didn’t seem to sit well with him.
“Obama never felt comfortable with his compromise and, no doubt, compromised position,” Axelrod writes. “He routinely stumbled over the question when it came up in debates or interviews. ‘I’m just not very good at bulls—ting,’ he said with a sigh after one such awkward exchange.”
Axelrod’s book only confirms previous reports that Obama had, in fact, supported gay marriage for a long time.
And yet because he holds the politically correct position, there will be no outrage over the fact that the President of the United States flat out lied to all of us for years.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Monday proposed a $3.99 trillion budget for fiscal year 2016 that sets up a battle with Republicans over programs to boost the middle class that are funded by higher taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans.
The budget foresees a $474 billion deficit, which is 2.5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. It projects deficits stabilizing at that rate over a 10-year period, senior administration officials said.
Obama’s budgets have been laughed out of Congress without even the Democrats voting for them when they controlled things. Is there any reason that the GOP shouldn’t do the same?
At last Obama comments on something he know about… sports.
President Barack Obama refused Sunday to forecast whether the Seattle Seahawks or the New England Patriots would win Super Bowl XLIX, but he predicted the big game “is going to be close.” In an interview with NBC, Obama also dismissed “deflate-gate,” saying underinflated footballs had nothing to do with the outcome of the AFC title game.
“The Patriots were going to beat the Colts regardless of what the footballs looked like,” said Obama, who expressed surprise that each team provides its own footballs.
“I’m assuming one of the things the NFL is going to be doing, just to avoid any of these controversies, is figure out how the officials are in charge of the footballs from start to finish,” the president said.
As expected, President Obama plans to introduce a bunch of ideas for higher taxes and more spending in his State of the Union address. Given that the Congress is controlled by the Republicans, most of those proposals will not go anywhere – and Obama knows it. He is proposing them to to build the political narrative for the 2016 election that the Republicans are the “party of ‘no’.”
One of his proposals, however, is particularly troubling because of what it says and because it is something that appears innocuous enough that the Republicans might pass it as part of a deal for something else. Obama is proposing a $500 tax credit for families where both parents work.
It sounds nice enough. It is positioned as a way to help families with working parents afford child care and whatnot since both parents are working. But we used to advocate policies that made it easier for families to be able to afford for a parent to stay at home and raise their children. While not everyone can swing it, having a two-parent family where one parent can stay home with the children is substantially better for the children and the family than other circumstances. Not only does the family save a fortune in third-party child care, but the children are nurtured by the people who love them the most – their own parents.
But much like some welfare programs incent parents to not marry, this tax credit would incent both parents to work. Is that what we want our government policies to do? I don’t. I want government policies that make it easier for parents to afford to stay home and raise their own children. It’s better for the kids and better for society.
Nobody is going to choose to get a job who already isn’t for a $500 tax credit. Nor is a $500 credit going to make much of a difference in a family’s ability to afford child care. But this is another step to building a taxpayer-funded infrastructure that encourages every adult to work and let the “professionals” raise our kids.
President Obama says he will veto proposed bipartisan legislation to impose new sanctions onIran so long as diplomatic negotiations over a nuclear deal remain underway.
[…]
Republicans and Democrats in Congress are pushing for another immediate round of sanctions on the Iranian economy, a move lead by some high-profile White House allies.
At a Senate Democratic retreat Thursday in Baltimore, Md., Obama reportedly clashed with Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey who is leading the charge on new Iran sanctions, even as talks are ongoing.
While the gathering was closed to reporters, Menendez was said to have taken “personal offense” to Obama’s suggestion that the legislation was politically-motivated, sources told the New York Times.
The thing is… if I had any faith in President Obama’s foreign policy prowess, I would agree with him. If talks on an agreement with Iran that would seriously dissuade them from developing nuclear weapons were actually progressing, I would support him vetoing Congress’ passage of sanctions. Unfortunately, after six years of failed foreign policy – including the absolute fiasco John Kerry foisted on the French today – I don’t believe our president has any capacity to negotiate an enforceable deal with Iran.
by Owen | 1929, 5 Jan 1515 | Politics | 11 Comments
He’s not even trying to pretend to work with the new Congress reports Keith Koffler.
Nope, no meetings scheduled to try to usher in this latest new Era of Cooperation and Goodwill. Not even a phone call to a Republican from Hawaii. Only call I know of he made to a member of Congress from either party was to Harry Reid after Reid fell off an exercise machine and broke his face.
Instead, Obama will be doing his usual dog and pony show this week, flying out to Michigan to talk to autoworkers about the autowonders he has performed for them and then to Phoenix and Tennessee to speak to typical Obama-style audiences of gullible school kids.
This will be worth remembering in a few weeks when Obama starts taking unconstitutional executive actions while claiming that the Republicans aren’t cooperating. It’s easy to pretend that the other side is unreasonable when you won’t even come to the table.
by Owen | 1848, 29 Dec 1414 | Politics | 0 Comments
I doubt that Obama had any idea he was bumping a wedding until after the fact. But still… ouch.
Honolulu (CNN) — A childhood friend of an Army captain whose wedding was moved to accommodate a round of golf for President Barack Obama said the bride and groom had to quickly scramble to find a Plan B. But the agile bride and her wedding party still pulled it all off without a hitch, the friend said.
Still, understandably, there were a few tense moments.
“She was like, ‘I really don’t know what we’re going to do,'” Rebecca Dryer said of her friend and bride, Natalie Heimel.
Dryer said the couple received word of the President’s golf plans after they wrapped up their rehearsal before the wedding was held on Sunday.
The message from the planner was, “The President wanted to play through,” Dryer said.
When the Soviet Union fell, the Castro regime was in dire straits. It survived through sheer repression — until it was sustained by Venezuelan oil money sent by Hugo Chávez. Today Chávez is dead, oil is under $60 a barrel, and Venezuela is reeling. Who will bail Castro out this time? Now we have the answer: Barack Obama.
Put aside the prisoner exchange, which one can be for or against and still decry the rest of Obama’s moves today. It’s clear that Obama told the Cubans they had to let Alan Gross out before he could make the rest of his changes — and told them he would undertake those changes immediately. So the Castros not only get diplomatic recognition and a big financial lift — more trade, more tourism, more remittances to Cubans from family members in the U.S., and from which the regime can take a big cut — but they get it all for nothing. That is, the prisoner trade (whether smart or dumb) was a bargained-for exchange. They got three, we got two. All the rest in the Obama policy changes is simply a gift to the regime. The Castros made no promises at all to reduce oppression, allow freedom of speech or assembly, or make any political reforms or foreign-policy adjustments.
The Obama White House conducted these negotiations itself, with no meddling from the State Department. The centralization of all activity in the White House continues, and in this case the American negotiator was Ben Rhodes. Rhodes is a speechwriter with a graduate degree (M.F.A.) in creative writing, so one might wonder if he struck the hardest bargain possible. But of course those would not have been his instructions anyway: The president didn’t want a hard bargain. He wanted to destroy 50 years of American policy toward the Castro regime.
I’ve thought for some time that it was about time to consider a modification in our relationship with Cuba. The purpose of sanctions was to bend them toward democracy and it clearly did not work. Perhaps engagement would be more productive or perhaps some other policy to advance America’s national interests and promote representative government around the world.
Even with the opening of China, it is worth remembering that it took years of meetings and serious thinking. Mao was open to a relationship with the US and the US was open to a relationship with China because it was in their interests to do so – primarily to ward off the Soviet threat. And that relationship has evolved ever since. Agree with it or not, it was a serious change in foreign policy based on advancing national interests and large-scale geopolitical maneuvering.
In contrast, Obama’s move is an unserious farce motivated by ideological affinity for Cuba. There was no serious policy analysis from the professionals in the State Department. There was no larger plan. Obama gave the Castro brothers international recognition and oodles of financial resources with which they can continue to oppress their people. In exchange, America got to buy Cuban cigars. The prisoner exchange was a fig leaf so Obama could pretend that his gift was humanitarian. All he did today was give a tyrant more means to keep the Cuban people under his boot.
Looks like just a place-holder bureaucrat to finish off Obama’s term. That’s probably the best idea and, frankly, the best Obama can get at this point. No top tier candidate is willing to take that role under these conditions.
Washington (CNN) — Ashton Carter, the former second-in-command at the Pentagon, appears to be the top choice to replace outgoing Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Barring any last minute complications, Ash Carter will be President Barack Obama’s choice as the new Secretary of Defense, several U.S. administration officials told CNN.
A person close to Flournoy said she had concerns about the job, including whether she would be given more latitude than Hagel in policy making. Pentagon officials have long griped about White House micromanagement, and Hagel was largely seen as someone who would acquiesce to the West Wing.
by Owen | 1930, 24 Nov 1414 | Politics | 0 Comments
Yeah… setting a precedent of executive overreach is a bitch, ain’t it?
Stephanopolous asked: “How do you respond to the argument, a future president comes in and wants lower taxes. Doesn’t happen. Congress won’t do it; so he says ‘I’m not going to prosecute those who don’t pay capital gains tax.’”
“The truth of the matter is George,” said the President, haltingly, “The reason that we, have to do.. uhm prosecutorial discretion in immigration, is that we know, that we – are not even close to being able to deal with the folks who have been here a long time…” Obama then pivoted to immigration talking points, without addressing the original question.
“The vast majority of folks understand that they need to pay taxes, and when we conduct an audit, for example, we are selecting those folks who are most likely to be cheating,” said Obama. “We’re not going after millions and millions of people who everybody knows are here and were taking advantage of low wages as they’re mowing lawns or cleaning out bedpans, and looking the other way.”
“So you don’t think it’d be legitimate for a future president to make that argument?” Stephanopoulos said.
Obama: “With respect to taxes? Absolutely not.”
Here again I warn you liberals who are supporting Obama on his abuse of power. The pendulum will swing – likely in 2016 – and this power can be used to enact all sorts of things. Liberals are relying on the constraint of a conservative president to adhere to the constitution even where a liberal one did not. Sadly, not all conservatives feel such constraints. And conservatives who do aren’t going to feel very motivated to speak up after watching liberals lie down when Obama did it.
by Owen | 0235, 22 Nov 1414 | Politics | 2 Comments
This is apparently the only veneer of an excuse that Obama could come up with for his abuse of power regarding immigration. From the fundraising email he sent out after his speech:
Right now, I want to tell you why I’m taking action on immigration.
There’s no disagreement in Washington that our system is badly broken. That’s why a bipartisan majority in the Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform. That was more than 500 days ago, but we’re still waiting for the House to hold a vote.
So… because the House didn’t pass a bill that the Senate did, that gives the President authority to ignore Congress, the law, and the Constitution and act by executive fiat? Bills get passed by one house of congress and ignored by the other all the time. And some bills never get passed by either house because there isn’t any support for it. That does not give the president dictatorial powers to act alone.
This president is dangerous and liberals will rue the day they let him get away with it if a conservative tyrant ever ascends to the throne.
President Obama heads to Milwaukee on Tuesday to campaign for Mary Burke, who is locked in a close contest with Republican incumbent Scott Walker for Wisconsin governor.
With Democrats all around the country running from Obama, Burke welcomes him with open arms. Why? Has she abandoned trying to win the undecideds and moderates and is focused on just turning out her base where Obama is still popular? Is she delusional in thinking that Obama is going to swing undecideds and moderates?
