Tag Archives: Barack Obama

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Yes, stimulus did leave a ‘trace’

Charles Krauthammer’s latest rant against the Obama administration requires a brief response.

The good doctor, syndicated columnist and Fox News Channel contributor, has declared that President Obama’s stimulus left no “trace in the sand.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/02/17/krauthammer_on_stimulus_this_thing_as_predicted_has_not_left_a_trace_in_the_sand.html

I have to disagree with that one, Dr. Krauthammer.

He talks about a “jobless recovery” and says the president will leave no legacy when he departs on Jan. 20, 2017, unlike Ike who left us an interstate highway system or FDR, who built “a Hoover Dam.”

Well, let’s try this on for size.

The Obama team took the field with an economy in free fall. We were losing 700,000 jobs a month. Unemployment was rocketing toward 10 percent. Banks were failing. Automobile dealerships were closing. People were defaulting on mortgages they couldn’t afford. Wall Street was cratering, with billions of dollars in personal wealth flying out the window daily.

How did the new guys respond? They pumped money into the market. They enacted tough new lending requirements, placing some rules on lenders, telling them they couldn’t throw money at borrowers on request. They bailed out the auto industry, saving more than a million jobs.

How has the economy responded? Well, the nation’s debt has increased — and I am the first to acknowledge it must come down.

But …

Joblessness is now at 6.6 percent. Is it because everyone’s found work? No. I’ll concede many folks have quit looking for work. Those horrific monthly job losses have turned into modest gains each month. The nation’s budget deficit has been cut in half. The foreclosure rate on homes has slowed to trickle. The stock market has more than regained all the wealth it lost.

Are we in economic nirvana? Of course not. But to suggest, as Charles Krauthammer does routinely, that the economic stimulus and the policies that accompanied have had no positive impact is simply hold fast to the partisan denial that the other guys can do anything right.

Yes, we still have steep hills to climb before we get out of this mess. We’ve made progress — and that’s worth saluting.

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Abbott invites ‘Madman’ onto campaign trail

Let’s call it “Greg and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the shoo-in Republican nominee for governor, has invited Ted “Motor City Madman” Nugent to campaign for him across the Lone Star State.

I hardly can wait to hear what’s going to fly out of Nugent’s mouth once he hits the ground and campaigns on behalf of Abbott.

Actually, yes I can.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/greg-abbott-ted-nugent-texas-103597.html?hp=l7

This is an astonishing development in the budding campaign to see determine who will succeed Rick Perry in the governor’s office, a post Perry has held longer than anyone in state history.

Nugent is known these days for far more than his legendary guitar licks. He’s become an avid spokesman for political causes, ranging from gun-owners’ rights to anti-gay policy. He also is prone to utter some remarkably hateful things about those with whom he disagrees. Consider these remarks, which he spewed out a month ago:

“I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America.”

This, I submit, is the kind of rhetoric that awaits likely Democratic nominee Wendy Davis as she campaigns against Abbott.

Honestly, I do not mind hearing people speak out intelligently on issues even when they disagree with my own world view. I do mind the frothing nonsense that proponents too often bellow forth.

Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilbert Hinojosa said it well: “Texans deserve better than a statewide office holder and candidate running for governor who welcomes Ted Nugent and his repugnant comments. I can’t help but recall the old saying, tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Is this really you, Mr. Attorney General? Really?

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We’ve got your drought right here, Mr. President

Dear Mr. President:

I see that you and your team are visiting California to talk up a drought-relief package for regions ravaged by the lack of rainfall.

That’s a good thing. But let me offer this invitation: Come see us in West Texas too.

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/198393-obama-to-launch-administration-wide-drought-response

I know what you might be thinking: They despise me in that part of the country.

Let’s agree that you didn’t poll too well here in the past two presidential elections, but you are the president of all the United States of America and that includes Texas — and that includes the western region of this big state.

The California drought is serious and is cause for huge concern. I get that the Golden State is the most populous of them all and that the central part of California is known as America’s Food Basket.

Texans, too, produce a lot of grain and beef. Some of the grain farmers rely exclusively on rainfall, which hasn’t been falling here the past couple of years. Much of the grain they grow feeds cattle. So, as you understand, with no grain to feed the cattle, ranchers have to sell their livestock that are under weight, producing less income for them.

I hope you can find time in your schedule to come here to see for yourself how the drought is hurting this region of the country just as much as it is hurting the folks in California.

I’ll concede that there some folks here won’t welcome you with open arms. However, we likely won’t bite.

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Cruz upset we haven’t caught Benghazi terrorists

Right-wing politicians and their pals in the right-wing media just won’t let the flames from Benghazi smolder and die.

Benghazi refers to the U.S. consulate in Libya that was attacked on Sept. 11, 2011. Four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. It was a terrible event. The right wingers keep stirring the pot looking for things to hang on Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was then secretary of state and is a possible candidate for president in 2016.

Then comes Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to weigh in today on the Fox News Channel. I caught a snippet of the interview today on TV while at work. He was offering up the usual stuff about accountability and trying to assess blame on Clinton over her department’s response to the chaos that erupted in the Libyan city.

Then he made the one point that caught my attention: He’s upset that “17 months to the day we haven’t yet brought the terrorists responsible for the attack to justice.”

Seventeen months later and we still haven’t caught the bad guys. Does that really upset you, Sen. Cruz?

Allow me to put this into a little different perspective.

Osama bin Laden plotted the attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, nine months into George W. Bush’s presidency. U.S. forces went to war the following month in Afghanistan. We looked for bin Laden and nearly had him in Tora Bora. He got away.

Then, after President Bush had left the White House, U.S. intelligence analysts located bin Laden in Pakistan. Nearly 10 years after the 9/11 attack, President Barack Obama ordered a team of Navy SEALs, CIA operatives and Army Special Forces pilots into Pakistan to kill the terrorist mastermind.

They did the deed.

It took a long while, nearly a decade.

I’m pretty sure we’ll get the individuals responsible for the Benghazi attack. It’s going to take some time. That’s how meticulous intelligence-gathering works.

Let’s stop the carping, Sen. Cruz.

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Politics shows nasty side once again

Once upon a time I thought of politics as a noble profession. I subscribed to the Robert F. Kennedy view that politics should be a force for positive change and reform of what we think is broken in our society.

I continue to believe politics has the potential for nobility.

Then we hear the carping that arose from the U.S. Labor Department’s jobs report for January.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/07/republicans-slam-president-over-jobs-report/?hpt=hp_bn3

Republicans were quick to pounce on the numbers, which weren’t as good as the White House had thought would come out. The nation added “only” 113,000 jobs in January, down from the expected 178,000. The jobless rate ticked down a bit, to 6.6 percent. It’s down from its high of 10 percent in 2009, but still too high to suit the loyal opposition.

“Today’s jobs report underscores that there remains a real crisis for the chronically unemployed in this country. It’s too hard for many to find good jobs, wages are stagnant, and it’s harder to get ahead,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

I guess the most annoying aspect of the reactions to these jobs numbers is that the “other side” is quiet when they’re good, as they were in November and December. The labor market added about 400,000 jobs at the end of 2013. Did we hear anything then from Cantor and his congressional Republican colleagues? Their silence was deafening.

Yes, I am acutely aware that Democrats do the same thing to Republican presidents. George W. Bush couldn’t buy a break from congressional Democrats whenever his administration welcomed good economic news.

The nobility of politics has been replaced by something far less high-minded. It’s become a game of who can get the better of the other guy. It goes on and on.

I’m going to talk today to U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, who’s running for his 10th term in the House. I intend to ask him what he’s going to do to restore some sense of comity in Congress and repair its relations with the White House.

Let’s hope he can offer a noble answer.

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CVS deserves a huge salute

It’s time to offer a word of praise and a tip of the cap to a corporate giant.

CVS Pharmacy, take a bow.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/so-long-cigs-cvs-pulls-tobacco-products-its-stores-n22156

The drug-store chain announced it will phase out sale of all tobacco products by Oct. 1. Its mission is to promote good health and CVS officials say the sale of cigarettes and snuff/chew next to medicinal products undermines that mission.

Do you think?

The end of selling these products is going to cost the company about $2 billion annually in sales, according to a statement issued by CVS. That doesn’t seem to matter as much to the corporate brass as it’s staying true to its belief in promoting good health.

President Obama — a former smoker — was quick to praise CVS. “As one of the largest retailers and pharmacies in America, CVS Caremark sets a powerful example, and today’s decision will help advance my administration’s efforts to reduce tobacco-related deaths, cancer, and heart disease, as well as bring down health care costs — ultimately saving lives and protecting untold numbers of families from pain and heartbreak for years to come,” he said in a statement.

I know about quitting smoking. I was a smoker for half my life before quitting cold turkey 34 years ago this week. I was smoking two-plus packs a day when I decided — after incessant nagging from my wife — to throw them away. I’ve never looked back.

I’m not sure I could afford the habit today, given the huge increase in the cost of these products.

This is a big deal in the retail business. Walgreens said it is “evaluating” whether to eliminate tobacco sales. Will other pharmacy chains follow suit?

I hope they do. It sends a powerful message across the country about the hazards of this hideous habit, as if the Surgeon General’s warning on cigarettes packs that smoking can kill you isn’t enough.

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Obama says O’Reilly ‘unfair’? Shocking!

Imagine my surprise when I saw the story in which President Obama said Bill O’Reilly was unfair in his interview just prior to the Super Bowl.

Just kidding. No surprise there.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/02/03/22560607-obama-says-fox-newss-oreilly-absolutely-unfair-in-extended-interview?lite

O’Reilly is the noted Fox News Channel blowhard who fancies himself a serious broadcast journalist. He is no such thing. He is a commentator, a guy with lots of opinions on lots of issues — and someone who is totally unafraid to express them, even while he is interviewing a Very Important Person, such as the president of the United States of America.

My takeaway from the pre-Super Bowl interview is that O’Reilly is love with the sound of his own voice and doesn’t care to hear what others have to say. He has demonstrated that countless times in the many years he has been on TV.

Obama noted also that Fox has been “unfair” in its coverage of his administration, which of course should come as no surprise either.

Yes, I know the pendulum swings widely in that regard. Liberal-leaning MSNBC has been none too kind to Republican officeholders and would-be officeholders. The folks at that network are shills for the left, just as O’Reilly and his Fox brethren are shills for the right.

And that brings me back to my favorite TV “news” slogan, which is how Fox proclaims itself to be the “fair and balanced” network.

A news network that keeps saying such things about itself usually is neither.

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Loudmouth O’Reilly makes news

One of the many things I dislike about contemporary broadcast “journalism” is when the so-called journalist becomes the newsmaker.

Such was the case prior to the Super Bowl on Sunday when Fox News loudmouth Bill O’Reilly interviewed Barack Obama — and tried to steal the thunder from the president of the United States.

As he has done before when the men have met, O’Reilly interrupted the president repeatedly. He cut him off. He wouldn’t allow him to answer questions, many of which were excellent and pointed.

I don’t mind one bit journalists digging hard for answers to questions that linger out here in Viewer Land. I do mind, though, when journalists seek — by virtue of their outsized personality and ego — to become part of the story.

That ain’t their job.

Their job is to ask questions, to collect answers and to allow consumers of the news and analysis to decide for ourselves what we believe to be correct or incorrect. This consumer, me, cares not one bit what the interviewer thinks about anything. Just ask the questions and get the heck out of the way.

Once again, O’Reilly demonstrated that news and entertainment have melded into some new form that — in my view — is hard to watch.

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Ready for court fight, Mr. President?

The overheated and inflated response of congressional Republicans to President Obama’s vow to use executive authority to move issues forward would make you think the president is imposing some brand of imperial law on the country.

It’s not happening.

See you in court, says GOP

The sound had barely been turned off in the House of Representatives chamber after Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night before we heard GOP lawmakers proclaiming the president was overstepping his constitutional authority, was trying to crown himself King Barack the First or seeking to render Congress totally irrelevant.

Give … me … a … bleeping … break.

Barack Obama’s use of executive orders is but a fraction of its use by many of his predecessors. He’s acted in such a manner less frequently than President George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, two heroes of the GOP right/far-right wing.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., believes Obama is abusing “the intent of the Constitution.” Really? What precisely is that intent, senator? He doesn’t offer specifics, other than to rattle his sword and bluster about taking the Obama administration to court.

Let’s quit hyperventilating here. President Obama’s legal team is fully aware of the constraints placed on him by the Constitution. He cannot write law. He cannot raises taxes. He cannot increase the minimum wage for every American — but he can, and did, raise the minimum wage for some Americans, such as federal government contract employees. This is small stuff, ladies and gentlemen of the GOP.

Let’s lose the righteous indignation and take Barack Obama up on another pledge he made at the State of the Union: let’s work together.

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‘With or without’ Congress …

President Obama’s State of the Union speech contained a phrase I hadn’t heard before, and he repeated it maybe three or four times.

“With or without Congress,” he said.

That means he’s going to use whatever executive authority he has as the head of government to enact laws that have been stalled so far in Congress … such as raising the minimum for federal contract workers to $10.10 per hour.

Is it legal? Yes. However, I am now awaiting someone in either house of Congress to come up with a pretext that the president is overstepping his legal authority. Wait for it. It’ll come.

Indeed, some on the right have accused Obama of lawlessness already. They keep mentioning the “i-word,” meaning impeachment based notably on his use of executive authority.

It’s good to remember that the 44th president has issued fewer executive orders than his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, did at a similar point in his presidency. So, he’s not governing by executive fiat.

I’ll have to defer as well — and others might do the same — to the man’s knowledge of constitutional law, which he taught for a time after graduating from Harvard Law School. Oh yes, he also has a pretty good team of constitutional lawyers working in the White House and at the Justice Department who can advise him when he might be stepping over the line.

Barack Obama said again Tuesday night that he’s willing to work with the entire Congress on ways to move legislation forward. Bring those ideas up, debate them and then vote. Didn’t I hear him say that?

Didn’t he also say he’s willing to consider ways to improve the Affordable Care Act, or improve the health-care delivery system, or help even more Americans obtain health insurance? Didn’t he offer Congress a chance to play a constructive role in that effort?

However, if Congress isn’t willing to act on some of these issues, the president will use his authority — which he possesses within the confines of the Constitution — to act.

The next move now belongs to Congress.