Freedom Line Blog

So one year after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, where do we stand on his promise to pacify the world after eight years of alleged Bush mismanagement?

Well, North Korea just flipped him the bird, providing one resounding answer to that question.  Yesterday, Pyongyang announced that it has disregarded disarmament promises that it made in 2007 and 2008 by processing enough nuclear fuel to produce additional atomic bombs.  By continuing this “one step forward, two steps back” routine, North Korea appears ready to demand even more concessions and dollars from the Obama Administration.  Apparently, Pyongyang resumed nuclear processing in April of this year, after the United Nations Security Council scolded it for testing new long-range missiles.

So there you have it.  The only thing that Obama has offered in terms of defending America’s security interests was a wagging finger and warnings of “stop, or I’ll issue more warnings.”  Now, even that is apparently unacceptable to Kim Jong Il.  Some “Hope and Change.”

By any measure, tonight is not going to be a good one for Democrats. Republican Bob McDonnell has won a commanding victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race, Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffmann looks well-positioned to win the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, and Republican Chris Christie is at the very least going to keep the New Jersey gubernatorial race much closer than anyone would expect in a deep-blue state.

It’s against this backdrop that HBO is debuting “By the People: the Election of Barack Obama” a behind-the-scenes documentary of the presidential campaign that cruised to victory almost exactly a year ago. This also coincides with the release of “The Audacity to Win”, the insider book by Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe.

By the time tonight is over, the public may understand what some of us have been saying for a year: that the 2008 election was a personality-driven anomaly, not an enduring realignment. Not the best time for the Obama camp to be in the hagiography business.

So, what happens when a country increases government spending, enlarges its deficit, and causes an international lender to consider stopping payments for what it sees as an abuse of discretion? No, it’s not the Chinese trying to reign in the Obama Administration. But Ukraine’s decision to raise pension payments and its minimum wage is putting pressure on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to decide whether its lending guidelines have any teeth.

At first blush, the IMF appears to be meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign country. On further reflection, though, the IMF is really just a lender of other people’s money trying to get an increasingly bad borrower to stop charging the international community’s credit card. The dilemma posed by governments that spend money as though there is no consequence for perpetual deficits is that unlike private parties, a government cannot be foreclosed, bought, and sold. At least, not yet. Ukraine isn’t yet a failed economic state, but if the IMF decides to cut off lending it could be. Who knows; perhaps the Chinese government officials holding all that American debt are taking notes on how to control a client’s spending.

An AP story today shows that the Obama Administration overcounted the number of jobs “created or saved” thus far by the stimulus package by about 5,000. That may sound like small change, but not when you realize that the Administration’s entire claim was only 30,000. In other words, one in every six of those jobs is make-believe.

Here’s an intellectual exercise to lay the stimulus bare. It came into effect on February 17 — 254 days ago. Based on the newest estimates that means it’s created about 100 jobs a day (or 2 per day per state). Leaving aside the opportunity cost of pulling the stimulus money out of the private sector, does anybody think that 14 jobs a week is going to pull California out of the morass?

As President Obama mulls over General McChrystal’s request for more troops in Afghanistan — and former Vice President Cheney hits the current administration hard for what he calls “dithering” — the White House has hit back with some heavy accusations.

Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, has claimed that the Bush Administration ignored the strategic planning process for the war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs alleges that the Bush White House let a request for more troops in Afghanistan fall stillborn for nearly a year.

You can debate the merits of various approaches and the trade-offs that are always necessary in national security policy. But as someone who was in the Bush White House during the time in question, I can testify to the fact that Afghan planning was very high on the agenda in the waning days of the administration. Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard has done the legwork to bear this out and his new piece pushes back against the Obama Administration’s claims with great clarity. Among the best passages:

One Bush veteran asks, “If it’s true that the Bush administration sat on these troop requests for eight months, is the White House suggesting that the Pentagon was incompetent or negligent or both? That would be a good question to put to the defense secretary–and President Obama is in a position to make him talk.”

I couldn’t reach Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, but I did talk to a senior defense official who serves with him. This person stressed that Gates has gone to great lengths to avoid being dragged into political fights between administrations. Nonetheless, he offered a strong rebuke to the present White House political team.

“There was no request on anyone’s desk for eight months,” said the defense official. “There was not a request that went to the White House because we didn’t have forces to commit. So on the facts, they’re wrong.”

In reality, the Bush Administration stayed quiet on the options going forward into Afghanistan so that Obama wouldn’t have his choices muddied by having them labeled as recycled goods from the previous president.  That they are now using that fact as a cudgel speaks very poorly of the current denizens of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Read Hayes’ entire piece here.

Apparently, the White House’s “Enemies List” has exhausted its reservoir of Republicans, so it’s now targeting Democrats.

According to this morning’s Washington Post, senior Obama advisors anticipate a resounding defeat in the Virginia governor’s race between Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds. Accordingly, the article reports that the White House fears a Republican victory “would likely be seen as a sign that Obama’s popularity is weakening in critical areas of the country.”

So how does the White House respond?  Simple – scapegoat Deeds, and ignore Obama’s plummeting popularity in Virginia, which voted for a Democrat in the presidential race for the first time in over four decades.  The White House conveniently claims that Deeds should have targeted the bloc of younger and African-American voters who propelled Obama in 2008, but the fact is that those 2008 surge voters are deflated after nine months of disastrous performance by Obama.

The lesson?  Democrats across America can no more count on steadfast loyalty from the Obama White House than foreign allies such as Poland, Afghanistan, Israel, Honduras or Colombia can.

The Obama Administration’s highly-publicized campaign to punish and silence Fox News may have broader implications than just the broadcast media.  So too might the “Fairness Doctrine” that it favors.  Namely, as noted by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R – Tennessee), they portend ominous censorship possibilities if government control over the Internet becomes a reality via so-called Net “Neutrality.”

By targeting Fox News, the Obama Administration has abandoned any pretense of governmental content neutrality.  It has thereby commenced an attempt to censor those whom it disfavors, and elevate those whom it favors.  The same is true of the “Fairness Doctrine,” which conveniently targets those media sources most likely to engage in criticism of Obama and the liberal agenda more generally.  Should Net “Neutrality” become a reality, that censorship could be spread to the Internet as well by introducing regulatory control over Internet delivery options.  Does any reasonable person believe that they would stop there?  It may sound far-fetched to suggest that the White House would stoop to Internet censorship, but who would have thought that it would so openly and explicitly target a single media outlet, the only one that exposed such things as the ACORN undercover videos?

We’re not just talking about a slippery slope here.  With this White House and the Pelosi/Reid Congress, we’re talking about a greased slope.

The Baucus Bill, passed by the Senate Finance Committee last week, has been written and filed… all 1,502 pages of it.  The public posting of the bill is, of course, after the Committee passed it without reading it.  After the absolute certainty that it isn’t going to be the bill on which the entire Senate votes.

You can read it here, but we wouldn’t recommend wasting your time.  Harry Reid and other members of “the most open and transparent Congress in history” are presently working behind closed doors with senior aides of “the most open and transparent Administration in history” to draft yet another version of ObamaCare that will ultimately be considered by the full Senate.   News reports indicate that a floor debate on the new, secret “reform” legislation could begin as early as next week.  But that all depends on whether the White House and Senate negotiators are able to buy off the docs and finish their other back-room wheelings and dealings by week’s end.  

Didn’t President Obama promise to air all health care reform negotiations on C-SPAN?

For all you policy junkies out there who just can’t resist, we must warn you that reading the Baucus Bill can cause severe anxiety, eye strain, sudden spikes in blood pressure, heart palpitations and chronic disgust in your government.  If you decide to proceed, it’s best you read it online rather than printing it off and carrying it over to that comfy Lazy Boy.  It’s still unclear whether hernia operations will be included on the final list of government-approved procedures covered by what is likely to be your new government-approved insurance plan.

“President Barack Obama has not yet determined whether he will make a decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan before the November 7 election runoff, a US official [White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs] said Tuesday.” — AFP

“The United States cannot wait for problems surrounding the legitimacy of the Afghan government to be resolved before making a decision on troops, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said.” — Reuters

Regardless of how you feel about its policy aspects, the legal components of the Obama Administration’s decision to essentially halt prosecution for users of medical marijuana in states where it is legal is curious.

The problem is that the Controlled Substances Act has prohibited marijuana as a matter of federal law since the 1970s.  And in 2005, the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Raich clarified that this federal power supercedes the states’ ability to legalize pot for medicinal purposes.  Yet despite the fact that there has been no change in federal law, the Justice Department is now essentially allowing the states to nullify the statute by telegraphing that DOJ won’t bring prosecutions.

In fairness, you can make a good case that the medical marijuana laws really are an instance of federal excess (Clarence Thomas does it very well in his Gonzales dissent).  But that’s an argument about what should be, not what is.  And in a nation of laws, that’s not enough.

How’s this for unadulterated, sanctimonious chutzpah:  “Top Obama Aides Upbraid Wall Street.”

So announces a Washington Post headline, discussing the harsh criticisms leveled by Obama Administration officials against Wall Street firms.  But consider this:  if Wall Street executives ran their firms and kept their books the same way that the federal government does, they would be in jail until their dying days.  Or consider how Obama and his apologists promised that if his “stimulus” plan was passed, unemployment would top out at 8%.  Well, it’s now at 9.8% and rising.  If a Wall Street CEO made similarly fatuous promises to unwary consumers, the resulting onslaught of class action lawsuits would descend faster than a Swiss avalanche.

Yet there was David Axelrod on ABC’s This Week, labeling Wall Street behavior “offensive” and admonishing them that “they ought to think through what they are doing.”  Perhaps, but nobody should take that advice more than officials of an administration that is taking an already-dangerous fiscal situation and making it positively deadly.  Too bad there are no righteous trial lawyers who can do anything about them.

Sane observers knew instantly that Barack Obama and his substance-free diplomacy were undeserving of this week’s Nobel Peace Prize.  But who knew that the award’s absurdity would be confirmed this quickly?

This week, in a double shot to the Obama Administration’s chin, both the Russians and Chinese undermined calls for tough new sanctions against Iran.  This is particularly embarrassing for Obama because it comes on the heels of revelations that Iran has been completing additional secret enrichment facilities, as well as the supposed “breakthrough” meeting last week between American and Iranian diplomats on the issue.  Dumping icewater on Obama’s unfounded optimism, however, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flatly stated yesterday that it is “premature” to threaten Iran with sanctions.  And now, China has announced that it is strengthening, not reducing, its cooperation with Iran.

Russia and China constitute two of the United Nations Security Council’s permanent members, meaning that any substantive penalty against Iran for its continuing mendacity and misbehavior is unlikely.  Perhaps another Nobel Peace Prize next year will do the trick, though…

President Obama loves the Mayo Clinic.  President Obama loves Medicare.  But the Mayo Clinic doesn’t love Medicare.

The Arizona Republic reported on Friday that,

One of the Mayo Clinic’s two family-medicine practices in Arizona soon will stop accepting Medicare, leaving thousands of patients to pay out of pocket for routine doctor’s visits or find a new physician. … Hospital officials called the new policy a ‘two year pilot program’ and said Thursday that the changes are necessary because of low Medicare reimbursement rates.”

Does anyone recall that one of the provisions of “health care reform” is to reduce Medicare reimbursements to doctors even further?  Medical insurance that doctors won’t take just doesn’t seem like a healthy reform.

It’s name is Honduras.  It’s tiny and impoverished.  It hasn’t had an easy time becoming a democracy.  It’s president was recently thrown out in a “coup.”

Well, that’s what President Obama and a bunch of his South American thug-buddies say.  And Obama’s sticking to his story, come hell or the Honduran Constitution or responsible legal interpretations of it by people who, you know, have actually read it and have determined that the ouster was legal.  Those interpretations have been published.

Well, never mind, the President has his own legal opinion, written at the State Department.  It hasn’t been published.   It’s secret, as if written in the invisible ink that has become a hallmark of this administration’s “transparency.”

U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, went to Honduras on a fact-finding mission.  He published his impressions over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. Ambassador to Honduras urged Demint to read the State Department legal analysis.  He tried, before and after his trip.  His request has been refused.  Did we mention that he’s on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?  Did we mention that President Obama and his South  American thug-buddies have not exactly contributed to the internal peace of Honduras, following the ouster?

Honduras is a tiny country, from which a major U.S. foreign policy blunder is emerging.  Its impact on the world?  Not so much.  It’s impact on the history of U.S. foreign policy regarding South America?  Add it to a long list of sad and sordid tales.  This one is President Obama’s.

In response to questions being raised about the justification for President Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, a Democratic National Committee official is accusing the GOP of siding with terrorists.

DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse earlier today told Politico:

The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.”

Among those praising the surprise decision by the Nobel Committee?  CNN reports:

Praise came from … a senior official from Hamas — the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza.”

This week, the fictional character Don Draper from AMC’s critically-acclaimed series Mad Men was somehow named the Most-Influential Man of 2009 by askmen.com.  That’s right – a nonexistent man is somehow the year’s most influential.

So what does this have to do with Barack Obama and his coronation as Global Prom Queen this week by the Nobel committee?  Lots.

Just as a fictional character has somehow attained the title of most-influential man, a President who has done absolutely nothing to achieve actual peace in the world has just won the Nobel Peace Prize after just nine months in office.  Indeed, last February’s Nobel nomination deadline meant that Obama was nominated no more than 11 days into office. 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy captured the essence of this absurdity last month when he mockingly referenced Obama’s “virtual world.” But as Sarkozy also pointed out, we don’t live in that virtual world – we live in the real world.  And by repeating mindless platitudes about ridding the world of nuclear weapons, Obama ignores the very real danger of nations like Iran rapidly acquiring them.  It’s possible that Obama’s Nobel will prove to be nothing but a bizarre, humorous footnote when we look back, but Sarkozy’s observation reminds us that living as if we’re in a virtual world can have dangerous implicaitons for the real world.

There’s already been plenty of criticism leveled at this morning’s announcement that the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is going to President Obama — despite the fact that the nominating window closed 11 days into his presidency and he did not then (or for that matter now) have a single major foreign policy achievement under his belt.

What hasn’t received enough attention yet is the false humility of Obama’s Rose Garden remarks this morning on the prize.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

“But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build — a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action — a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.”

Good grief. So here we have the President essentially admitting that the award is a preemptive endorsement of the transformative nature of his time in office. This would be less bothersome if it were untrue. Unfortunately, the Nobel Committee (which has doled out prizes to the likes of Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Paul Krugman in recent years) has lost all trace of being a non-partisan organization.

“This is the first time the award is given for wishful thinking.”

Those were the words of Israeli Knesset member Danny Danon upon receiving word that Barack Obama won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Who knew that Saturday Night Live’s parody of Obama admitting that he had done absolutely nothing so far in office would prove so prescient?

This bizarre and absurd decision by the Nobel committee, of course, follows earlier awards to such towering architects of peace as PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in 1994…  Six years before he commenced the bloody intifada against Israel in 2000.  In contrast, Ronald Reagan led the free world to victory in the Cold War without firing a shot against the Soviet Union, freeing hundreds of millions of human beings and ending the looming threat of a global nuclear holocaust, but never seemed to gain sufficient esteem within the minds of the Nobel committee.  One can only speculate about the true basis on which this now-discredited award is given, but it certainly isn’t for tangible results in achieving peace.  If that was the basis, they could just as easily rename it the Reagan-Thatcher-Pope John Paul II Peace Prize.

Earlier this week, we got an Afghan Taliban press release courtesy of the Associated Press.  It assured us that all the Taliban want is “independence and establishment of an Islamic system” and don’t want to harm other countries or any other bad stuff if only all of us would simply go away and leave them alone to do with the indigenous people as they will.  (Perhaps you are familiar with how the Taliban go about establishing an Islamic system.)

Well, good to know and thanks for sharing, we thought.

Then we got a UPI story, which led with, “U.S. officials say al-Qaida is seen as a greater threat than the Afghan Taliban in the emerging war strategy formulations of President Barack Obama. … After the president met with top advisers Wednesday for three hours, officials said the new strategy may focus more on a campaign against al-Qaida in Pakistan than on the Taliban in Afghanistan.”

And then, sure enough, we got another Associated Press story that began, “President Obama is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afganistan’s political future and appears inclined to send only as many more U.S. troops as needed to keep al-Qaida at bay, a senior administration official said Thursday.”

You do see what is happening here, with President Obama’s “War of Necessity,” don’t you?  If not, don’t worry, you soon will.

“Health Care Bill Gets Green Light in Cost Analysis”

That is the gift proponents of government-run health care received this morning in the form of a New York Times headline.  That headline, however, along with its accompanying story about the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary cost analysis of the Baucus bill, is about as deceptive as the ObamaCare sales job Washington politicians have been employing for months.

CBO’s preliminary cost analysis is just that – a preliminary estimate based on a theoretical framework of ideas approved by the Senate Finance Committee.  It’s preliminary because the actual bill hasn’t been written yet, much less been combined with at least five other, more expensive versions of “reform” circulating in the House and Senate.  As Chris Frates of Politico.com noted yesterday:

While the media and lawmakers often shorthand a CBO letter as a ‘score’ or ‘cost estimate,’ today’s CBO letter is neither. Because the bill is still in ‘conceptual,’ or layman’s terms, CBO’s letter today was a ‘preliminary analysis.’  For it to be an official cost estimate, the bill has to be translated into legislative language.

“And CBO goes to great pains in its letter to make the distinction:

“‘CBO and JCT’s analysis is preliminary in large part because the Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language,’ the letter says.”

In other words, is anyone prepared to believe that the most recent CBO cost estimate will even come close to resembling reality once the Baucus bill is combined with the budget-busting provisions of the various other versions of ObamaCare?  After Reid and Pelosi are through with their parliamentary tricks outlined here and here?

Yet liberals and the mainstream media today are giddy with excitement.  Why?  Because regardless of the fact that the CBO letter means nothing in the grand scheme of things, something at which the CBO itself hints, for the first time in this debate they have something – anything – that supports their dream of government-run health care.   Reality be damned. 

Our guess is that the large majority of Americans are still not ready to join their party.  Even taken at face value, CBO’s preliminary claim that the Baucus bill will actually reduce the budget deficit by $81 billion over 10 years simply means that the legislation raises taxes on businesses and individuals and cuts benefits only slightly more than it increases spending, while still leaving 25 million people uninsured.  And the more expensive the final bill gets – don’t believe for a moment that it won’t get more expensive – the greater the tax increases and benefit cuts will become in order to square with the President’s pledge to not sign a bill that adds “one dime” to the deficit.

Isn’t “change” grand?