Obama 's broken campaign promises

All presidential candidates make campaign promises that they cannot possibly keep once elected, e.g. eliminate waste, slow the growth of federal spending, lower the sea levels, etc. What has struck me about our current president, however, is the number of broken pledges that Obama could easily keep with the stroke of a pen.

Many of them involve transparency and the flow of information. Remember his promise to have the most transparent administration in the history of the country? It hasn't happened. Obama promised to publish the log of visitors to the White House on the White House website, so that people could see who was meeting with him and his key advisers. He hasn't done it. He promised to post the text of bills passed by Congress on the Internet for 72 hours before he signed them. Again, he hasn't done it.

Unfortunately, Congress seems to be taking its cues from the White House.Congressmen and senators are asked to vote on bills they've never had the opportunity to read. Senator Baucus objects to posting the text of his health-care overhaul bill on the Internet, because he claims (implausibly) that it would take two weeks to put it on the website. Even Olympia Snowe wonders why a two week delay is unacceptable given the magnitude of the legislation.

And then there is the matter of ethics: Obama promised that his administration would not hire lobbyists. But the one executive office in the Obama administration that is fully staffed is that which grants ethical waivers to the host of lobbyists who have joined the current administration. Such waivers are now routinely and expeditiously granted.

President Obama doesn't need new legislation or federal regulations to keep these promises. Did he ever intend to keep them?

Racist slurs from the left.

Further to my "End of Race Baiting" post, as Mark Steyn points out, racial slurs actually are tolerated by the left, as long as they are aimed at conservatives.

Mark Steyn on Obama and the U.N.

I wish I could write as well as Mark Steyn, but, since I can't, herewith his latest column regarding this week's events at the U.N.

Nuphedrine

The end of race baiting?

When people on the left want to curtail debate, they frequently hurl one of two epithets: fascist or racist. This is designed to silence people with whom they disagree, rather than engage them on the merits of whatever topic is under discussion. This tactic has been much in evidence of late.

"Fascist" isn't working terribly well these days, however, in no small measure because Jonah Goldberg, in his book, Liberal Fascism, has convincingly demonstrated that fascism is a doctrine of the left. "Nazi," after all, is shorthand for the National Socialist German Workers Party. Benito Mussolini was named after a prominent Socialist leader. This fact does not make modern-day lefties fascists of course, but it severely undercuts their reflexive claim that modern-day conservatives are.

This week, the left has been trotting out the "racist" canard. If you oppose a government takeover of the government healthcare system or Charlie Rangel defrauding the American taxpayers or Acorn using taxpayer money to aid and abet child prostitution rings, you're a racist. The aforementioned Jonah Goldberg also has a recent article on this tactic, entitled a Tackle Box Full of Race Bait.

Frankly, I am glad that the left has resorted to this sordid tactic so early in the debate, precisely because the charge is so ridiculous and unsupported that it too is losing its power to intimidate. Yes, President Obama is black, but, as he himself recently noted, he was black before he was elected President. And the country rejected government-run healthcare when the Clintons proposed it, even though the Clintons are white folks. In short, conservatives know that the charges of racism are malarkey, and they are saying so.

Now I am not so naïve as to believe that race baiting will end any time soon. It is a cheap and convenient tactic, and people with nothing constructive to say will continue to resort to it. But I am hopeful that race baiting's capacity to intimidate conservative voices will continue to decline. Then we can get back to debating the merits of the important issues that confront us.

Obama at the United Nations

Peter Wehner has an excellent critique of President Obama's speech to the U.N.

Charles Krauthammer on Maureen Dowd

Charles Krauthammer's take on Maureen Dowd"s latest collumn, priceless:


"As for Maureen Dowd, imagining a word [“boy”] that wasn't said: Well, in my previous profession, I saw a lot of people who heard words that weren't said. They were called patients. Many of them were actually helped with medication."

Venezuala's declining oil production

We know that Mexico's oil production is declining with no prospect of new supplies coming on-line in the foreseeable future. Now we have word that production in Venezuela is also declining. Bloomberg.com reports:

"What the media rarely report is that the existing plant in Venezuela is continuing to produce less and less oil every year--at this point roughly half of what it would normally be capable of extracting--because of bad management, the departure of qualified engineers, and plain old corruption, not to mention the squandering of petrodollars to buy political influence in Latin America and elsewhere (including Joe Kennedy's Massachusetts) instead of investing in maintenance, spare parts, and acquisition of new technology."

This merely confirms what many of us suspected, but it reinforces the need for the U.S. to aggressively develop its own natural resources. Mexico and Venezuela are two of our largest suppliers, and both are declining. Is anyone in Washington paying attention?

The Omnipresent Leader

I don't know if the furor over President Obama's address to the school children in overdone. But I, like many, find the accompanying materials originally drafted by "his" Department of Education "creepy." Mark Steyn, as usual, has an excellent take on the subject.

The war in Afghanistan

A lively debate over the war in Afghanistan has broken out, sparked by George Will's most recent column,Time to Get Out of Afghanistan. His column has already drawn responses from Frederick W. Kagan, Mark R. Levin, Rich Lowry, Mark Steyn, and others.
No doubt,many more will follow.

Each of these authors makes valid points. Afghanistan is a mess, both geographically and politically. I don't know what "victory" there would consist of. What are our near-term and long-term goals, and what price -- especially in blood -- are we willing to pay to achieve them? Maybe this debate will help to clarify these issues

Wars are inherently difficult and bloody undertakings with uncertain outcomes. I certainly don't claim to have any answers. I can only hope that our leaders are giving these issues as much thought as the columnists and bloggers are.