Tag Archives: Barack Obama

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Litigious speaker going to court

Politicians and everyday Americans have griped for decades about the lawsuit-happy society we live in these days.

Well, this one just might take the cake.

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner says he is going to sue President Obama because of the president’s penchant for issuing executive orders. He calls the president’s actions unconstitutional, unlawful and, by golly, he plans to take the commander in chief to court.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/25/boehners-attack-on-obamas-executive-orders-ignores-presidential-history/

But …

Is the 44th president the most executive-order-happy person ever to occupy the White House? Not by a long shot.

To date, Obama has issued 168 such orders. President George W. Bush issued 291 during his two terms; President Clinton logged 364; President Eisenhower signed 484; President Truman put his name on 907.

The all-time champ? None other than President Franklin Roosevelt, who signed 3,572 executive orders. Let’s give FDR a pass, though, given that he served three full terms and a fraction of a fourth before he died in office in April 1945.

Barack Obama has signed fewer such executive orders than any president in the past century.

Boehner, though, says he’s had enough of this executive authority business from the constitutional law professor-turned-president of the United States.

At the start of the year, Obama did declare his intention to bypass Congress to get some things done. The Constitution does give him the authority to do these things, after all. It’s just that he’s stepped on Republican goes on issues such as benefits for same-sex couples employed by the federal government and raising the minimum wage for federal contract employees.

This grandstanding by Boehner is meant to relieve pressure he’s getting from the right wing of his party.

So please, Mr. Speaker, don’t gripe in public about frivolous lawsuits. You’ve just announced your intention to file one yourself.

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Time for lesson on 'mainstream media'

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Listen up, students. Professor John is going to lecture you today on the “mainstream media.”

You’ve heard the term, yes? It’s meant as an epithet. It’s said by those who think of the media as a four-letter word.

The term “mainstream media” came from the right wing of the political spectrum. I cannot cite the precise date the term surfaced, but it’s been around for some time.

MSM usually is a kind of code, students. It comes from those who want the media to think like the righties think. They see their own brand of MSM as pure. They’re the truth-tellers.

They hold, for example, Fox News as their model of truth-telling. Why? Well, Fox has an agenda. It is to undermine the “other side.” By that I refer to the president, Democrat Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in government. Watch most Fox broadcasts and you see how they continue to harp on the same so-called “scandals,” while other media turn their attention — usually — to other issues of the day.

What the righties don’t get, though, is that Fox has become as “mainstream” as the other media. Fox enjoys good ratings among news-and-commentary junkies across the nation. As the leading “conservative mainstream” outlet on cable TV, Fox has a good portion of that segment of the TV-viewing public to itself. Thus, its rating are good.

However, since Fox “covers” the news in a fashion that is suitable to those on the right, it is exempted from the pejorative label of “mainstream media.” Fox’s own talking heads even refer to other media as “mainstream,” sounding as if Fox is some outlier network seeking to be heard by a vast viewing audience.

The other so-called “truth-tellers” reside on the right. They comprise a variety of websites, online political newsletters, unabashed conservatives (of which I have no problem, if they ID themselves as such) and self-described political “watchdogs.” They, too, are exempted from the MSM label.

How about the other major networks: CNN and the broadcast networks — NBC, ABC and CBS? They’re the bad guys, according to those on the right. Why is that? Well, they report the news — in my view — without the flair of some other media. I’ll lump the “liberal” media outlets in that category, such as MSNBC. Don’t forget PBS, the network funded by private donations and from the government. At times, even PBS gets tarred with the MSM label. How silly.

Print journalism also gets lumped into the MSM camp. Namely it’s the New York Times and the Washington Post, the two big daddies of print journalism. Throw in the Los Angeles Times and a smattering of other major metros across the nation and you’ll see them criticized because they don’t cover the news with enough ferocity to suit those on the right. My own view is that they’re doing their job, which is to report the news … period.

However, these media outlets continue to be seen by those on the right as coddling left-wing politicians. Those critics miss a fundamental point here. It is that human beings rarely recognize their own “bias.” They see it in others, but not in themselves. If a news medium does not report on issues with one’s own slant, then they’re “biased.”

With that, students, our lesson ends.

If you’re going to criticize the “mainstream media,” take care to include your own favorite news organization in that category. Chances are they’re as “mainstream” as the media you are trying to criticize.

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Treason? Come on, Mr. Vice President

Of all the things former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter wrote in their much-discussed essay in the Wall Street Journal, the most outrageous was this:

President Obama is deliberately seeking to take America “down a notch” before leaves office.

The essay is here. Read it for yourself.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/dick-cheney-and-liz-cheney-the-collapsing-obama-doctrine-1403046522

It amazes me in the first place that the former VP would continue to undermine an administration’s efforts to stem a serious international crisis. Cheney’s carping is outrageous and disgraceful.

To suggest, though, that the president of the United States seeks to deliberately weaken the nation that elected him twice to its highest office is go so far beyond the pale that it defies even my huge reservoir of dislike for the policies that Cheney put forward while he was in office.

The Cheneys — father and daughter — have shown us a shameful exhibition of disloyalty.

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That slope is slippery, Mr. President

The Vietnam Generation remembers a time when U.S. military assistance overseas went from “advisory” to engaging in bloody combat. It didn’t take terribly long for our role to change in Vietnam.

It is that memory that’s been stirred in recent days as President Obama has announced the return of U.S. advisers to Iraq to aid the Iraqi military in its fight against Sunni insurgents seeking to take back the government Americans overthrew when it went to war there in March 2003.

http://time.com/2901449/obama-iraq-isis-troops/

The president has declared categorically that the United States will not send combat troops back into Iraq. I and no doubt million of other Americans will hold him to his word on that.

I just watched an interesting segment from CNN’s series “The Sixties” that dealt with the Vietnam War. President Kennedy was killed in November 1963 and by then our advisory role in ‘Nam had grown to several thousand troops. President Johnson fairly quickly granted military requests for more troops, ratcheting up our involvement to a level where Americans were shouldering the bulk of the combat operations against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army.

By the time I arrived at Marble Mountain, just south of Da Nang, South Vietnam, in March 1969, American troops strength was at its absolute peak: 543,000 of us were deployed there. But soon the drawdown began as President Nixon implemented his “Vietnamization” program of turning the combat responsibility over to those who had the most skin in the game.

Surely, the wise men and women at the White House and perhaps even at the Pentagon will remind the current president — who was not quite 8 years old when I arrived in ‘Nam way back when — of the folly of resuming a ground combat role in Iraq.

Listen to them, Mr. President. Please.

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'Take the fight to terrorists'

Bet on this: President Obama’s critics will say his statement today about how the United States plans to aid Iraq in its fight against Sunni insurgents is insufficient.

They know this, how?

I’m willing to give this strategy a try.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/obama-u-s-prepared-take-targeted-action-iraq-n135621

The president today announced the deployment of 300 military advisers who will guide the Iraqi armed forces on using the weapons we’ve given them to defend their country against the insurgency that has erupted.

The United States, Obama said, is ready to launch “targeted” attacks against Sunni military positions. When those attacks occur no doubt will be kept secret.

It’s fair to ask: What in the world is the political and/or military gain sending ground troops back to Iraq? The president believes we have nothing to gain by re-entering the battlefield. Sure, we could whip the Sunnis, force them to retreat, perhaps surrender … and then what? We’d leave yet again and the Sunni fighters would emerge from their hiding places to resume the fight.

Do we want to keep a residual force there — a la South Korea and Europe? What happens when the insurgents start targeting Americans? Do we start shooting again, thus reigniting a war we thought was over?

It’s been said time and again: This crisis requires a political solution, not a military one. The war we’ve been fighting since 9/11 is as unconventional as it gets. It’s a war against terrorists who know zero boundaries. We need to employ counter-terrorism measures, which we’ve been doing with considerable effectiveness.

While we’re on this subject, allow me this additional statement about the nation’s security.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others have been yammering about the alleged “surrender” of American security to the bad guys. Have we been attacked the way we were on Sept. 11, 2001? No. Have our forces been killing and capturing terrorists? Yes. Did we exterminate the 9/11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden? Yes again.

Will this country be any safer if we send thousands of troops back into Iraq? I think not.

It’s time to force Iraqi political and military leaders to step up the fight and defend their country against those who seek to topple them. It’s their fight in their country. We can lend a hand. Our battlefield job is finished.

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Kettle, meet pot

Dick Cheney’s latest rant against President Barack Obama’s foreign policy brings to mind a not-too-distant past debate about another president’s foreign policy.

The former vice president’s recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal reminds me of what Republicans said about what Democrats said about President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/dick-cheney-and-liz-cheney-the-collapsing-obama-doctrine-1403046522

Remember those bad old days?

President Bush — and, yes, Vice President Cheney — argued that the United States needed to topple Saddam Hussein. Their campaign to win congressional approval of their plan was based on a series of untruths, such as Saddam’s supposed involvement with the 9/11 attacks.

Well, some Democrats objected to us going to war in Iraq. Do you remember the Republican response? Why, if you criticize a president’s foreign policy, particularly when it involves war or potential war, you embolden the enemy, the GOP said. We must speak with one voice. Partisanship ends at the water’s edge, yes?

Yes, many Democrats were indelicate in their criticism at the time. In fact, many Republicans spoke reasonably in trying to tamp down the dissension here at home as we prepared to go to war.

Now the shoe is on the other proverbial foot. President Obama has withdrawn our troops from Iraq and is preparing to do the same in Afghanistan. Iraq is erupting into sectarian violence.

Who’s leading the criticism of a Democratic president? None other than the former Republican vice president, Richard Bruce Cheney.

His absolute lack of self-awareness, his complete amnesia on what he and other Republicans said a decade ago to similar criticism and his nonsensical defense of a policy that killed more than 4,000 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqis is simply stunning.

I hate to think Dick Cheney has lost his mind.

However …

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Cheney's hubris is astounding

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Listening to former Vice President Dick Cheney blast President Obama over his Iraq policy is like listening to — and I’ll have to give credit to a former editor of mine for this one — Xaviera “Happy Hooker” Hollander lecture us on chastity.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/obama-briefs-top-lawmakers-options-iraq-n134626

Cheney co-wrote with his daughter Liz an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he blamed Obama for the mess that has erupted in Iraq.

This man continues to spew nonsense with absolutely zero trace of self-awareness of his own role in creating the monster that is now roaring loudly across Iraq.

It was Cheney and President Bush who sold the world a bill of goods on Saddam Hussein’s bogus role in the 9/11 attacks; on his goal of developing nuclear weapons; of his possession of “weapons of mass destruction”; of how Iraqis would greet U.S. forces as “liberators” after they breezed into Baghdad.

Yet the former VP fails to recognize any complicity in the turmoil that has erupted in the country we occupied for nearly a decade.

And what did Republicans say in 2003 when Democrats criticized President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq? Oh, yes. They said such criticism gave aid and comfort to the enemy. Hmmm. Is that notion now off the table?

What in the world does it take to persuade this chicken hawk to shut his pie hole and follow the lead of the president he served for eight years? George W. Bush — following the lead of his own father, George H.W. Bush — has taken a vow of silence on the policies of his successor. I am quite certain “W” has plenty of thoughts on where he believes President Obama has gone wrong. That’s fine. He’s entitled.

However, President Bush recognizes we have one commander in chief at a time. If only the vice president who called so many of the shots in his own administration would come to the same recognition.

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Ask first, strike later?

Very soon, perhaps, we just might be able to learn how sincere congressional critics of President Obama are in their stated effort to be accountable for key decisions.

The president is weighing whether to launch air strikes against the ISIS insurgents seeking to take control of Iraq. Obama’s critics in Congress, namely Republicans, want him to “make a decision,” lead, take charge. They also want to have a say in whatever military action occurs.

The president, meanwhile, is considering whether to ask Congress. Does he make the decision to strike, then ask, then proceed — hopefully with an affirmative vote?

Will Obama seek approval for Iraq strike?

Or does he just act as commander in chief of the armed forces and hit the Iraqi insurgents hard in an effort to stop their advances on our allies fighting on behalf of the Iraqi government?

If the president takes the initiative, he’ll be criticized for acting like a “Lone Ranger” and for ignoring Congress. If he decides to ask Congress for authorization, he’ll be criticized for being wishy-washy.

Which is it, ladies and gentlemen of Capitol Hill? Do you want the president to act, or don’t you?

If someone were to ask me, I’d say that if there’s a chance of crippling ISIS with air strikes, the president ought to order them — without asking Congress for its authorization. The way Congress has performed in recent years, House members and senators would take weeks just to get organized to debate and then vote.

In this armed conflict, time is not our friend.

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POTUS always on duty

What is it about presidential critics — and I lump them all together regardless of party — that makes them forget that presidents of the United States never are off the clock?

Byron York, writing for the Washington Examiner, is at it again, chafing at the notion that President Obama played some golf while the Iraq crisis heats up.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/barack-obama-golfs-while-the-middle-east-burns/article/2549799

We’ve heard this so many times before I’ve lost count.

President George W. Bush was lampooned because he vacationed at his Central Texas ranch while crises erupted around the world; Bush also was known to tee it up as trouble arose.

President Ronald Reagan spent a great deal of time at his beloved Rancho Del Cielo in southern California.

President George H.W. Bush was photographed speeding around the Maine coastline aboard his “cigarette boat” while Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990.

President Bill Clinton also liked to play golf and, oh yes, the critics lampooned him too.

Presidents are on duty 24/7. They never go anywhere on the planet without the “football,” that case carrying the nuclear launch codes. They are briefed continually by their national security teams. They know what’s happening at all times.

York, though, takes umbrage at Barack Obama’s love of golf. Allow me this, Byron: Dwight Eisenhower liked to play the game as well, as did John Kennedy, Gerald Ford, G.H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

So bleeping what if the president enjoys some relaxation? Let him relax and seek to stay sharp when the chips are down and he has to respond to whatever crisis is erupting.

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Carrier headed to Persian Gulf

Here we go.

The United States has just dispatched a nuclear-powered attack aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush — one of the newest ships in the fleet — to the Persian Gulf.

Its mission is to protect Americans who might be put in harm’s way in the fighting that threatens to engulf Iraq.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/u-s-aircraft-carrier-ordered-persian-gulf-wake-iraq-unrest-n131256

This is a most interesting development.

Just so everyone is in the know, the George H.W. Bush is packing an immense amount of firepower.

I had the honor about two decades ago of spending a few nights aboard the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, another of the Navy’s premier attack carriers. I was there to cover a tour led by the late U.S. Rep. Charles Wilson, D-Lufkin, who wanted to tour the ship, buck up the sailors and Marines aboard and tell them how proud he was of the service they perform for the country.

The Carl Vinson, I hasten to add, was the ship where they took Osama bin Laden’s body in May 2011; he then was “buried at sea,” reportedly in a respectful manner.

But to the point. The commanding officer of the Carl Vinson at the time was Capt. John Payne and he told us about the incredible amount of ordnance those ships pack while they’re deployed. I, of course, asked the obvious question: “Skipper, are you carrying any nukes?” He answered the only way he could: “You know I can’t answer that.” He had the slightest smile on his face as he replied.

There remains immense conventional firepower on these ships.

The George H.W. Bush is packing all of that — and perhaps even more, given that it is such a new ship.

This, I submit, is one of the “other options” President Obama is considering in response to the Iraq crisis. He has declared he won’t send ground troops back into Iraq. He hasn’t ruled out air strikes.

But with a massive warship headed straight into the war zone, my hunch is that we might be getting ready to unleash some of that firepower on the bad guys.

Stay tuned for the next act.