Tag: barack obama

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies

Trump = Bad

Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden

“In an extraordinary stretch of just over two weeks,” Naftali Bendavid reports in The Washington Post, “three former presidents have taken to the public stage to sound the alarm against the current occupant of the White House, despite the tradition that former presidents generally refrain from publicly criticizing their successors.”

It turns out that “Obama, Biden and Clinton did not explicitly name Trump,” admits the Post’s senior national political correspondent, though he argues “their message was unmistakable.”

Wait. The three former opposition party presidents bravely took on President Donald Trump but not one has enough courage to mention him by name?

Bad communication skills — no wonder why Trump is president.

“The three Democrats said, as much by their presence as their words,” writes Bendavid, “that these are unusual times for American democracy, that norms are being disregarded and extraordinary measures are required.”

Today’s Washington journalist! 

More a psychic diviner of the deep inner meaning of a former president’s mere presence than mere observer. 

Bendavid failed, however, to detail any specifics from the former commanders in chief as to the “extraordinary measures” that are somehow now “required.”

“Think of [former presidents] as a sort of advisory council to the people of the United States,” he quotes a historian from Columbia University. “And when the advisory council sounds the alarm, the people should listen.”

Wake up, people! Your former leaders have spoken: Trump = bad. 

Thus we witness the national press corps continuing to miss the point. The people are not moved by these ex-​presidents — at least not in their direction. 

From political heavy-​weights to legacy media newsmen, the more the DC establishment attacks President Trump, the more a sizable group of voters like him. 

Trump is validated as the outsider. 

The more popular outsider. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly 

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability media and media people national politics & policies

Weekend at Biden’s

Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Weekend at Bernie's

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” former President Trump told CNN’s debate moderator Jake Tapper. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Mr. Trump was referring to the incoherent ramblings of our current president at last week’s notorious debate — bizarrely held five months before the election. (Well, now, I guess that timing might make a little more sense.)

President Biden, as journalist Glenn Greenwald put it, “unsteadily shuffled onto a debate stage in Atlanta and then preceded to fulfill every fear and nightmare that Democratic Party operatives and American voters have been harboring about him.”

Beyond what Biden’s debate performance says about who should be the next president is what it screams at maximum volume: Who is really running the country?

It’s scary to think that it isn’t the man we elected to do the job. But perhaps scarier still, after last Thursday’s performance, would be if it actually is that man.

On his System Update program, Greenwald also pointed out that, “Just two weeks ago the media was insisting that the only reason Joe Biden looked in any way to be impaired is because right-​wing liars were clipping videos in a deceitful way …”

No one clipped or cheap-​faked the 90-​minute debate, though.

In a country being torn apart and a world on fire, we have a commander-​in-​chief who is simply, obviously, not in command. And arguably even worse, we have a news media that has largely gaslighted the public on the matter.

If President Biden stays in the race, watch for the media to go back to its cover-​up mentality, telling us only what they want us to know about him … so we will vote the way they want.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights insider corruption national politics & policies

Worse Than Hypocrisy

Joe Biden, Obama, medal, money, campaign finance,

“You shouldn’t accept any money from a Super PAC,” former Vice-​President Joe Biden claims he advised his presidential rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, “because [if you do] people can’t possibly trust you.”

Now it must be impossible to trust Mr. Biden.

“Joe Biden is apparently dropping his long-​held opposition to the creation of an outside group,” the media tepidly informed last week, “that would supply an infusion of money to benefit his campaign.”

That is: the dreaded Super PAC.

In his 2017 book, Biden claimed he would not have accepted such “outside” support had he entered the 2016 contest — even though he “knew there was big money out there for me.” 

Why not? “[I]n a system awash with money,” the former VEEP wrote, “the middle class didn’t have a fighting chance.” 

What changed? Now this drowsy Democrat actually needs campaign cash! 

“Biden has struggled to raise money, and last week, his campaign reported having $9 million on hand,” reports The Washington Post, “roughly a third as much as some of his top Democratic rivals.”

Necessity is the catalyst of hypocrisy?

“As president, Joe Biden will push to remove private money from our federal elections,” his campaign explained. “He will advocate for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and end the era of unbridled spending by Super PACs.”

Your private money and mine has as much right to engage in federal elections as Mr. Biden does. And I’ve warned  many times about the free-​speech repealing amendment the doddering Democrat frontrunner is pushing.

There may be worse things than hypocrisy, but there are few things worse than opposing First Amendment rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Joe Biden, Obama, medal, money, campaign finance,

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts


Categories
ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies term limits

Cool Car and Hot Coffee for President Cool

Obama, Seinfeld, coffee, cool, Common Sense

The President of the United States claims to be very popular with “the zero to eight demographic.” The kids like his name, which they say in an unbroken string of syllables: Barackobama.

Politics is a lot like football.

Teddy Roosevelt was the coolest president … until Barackobama.

All this, and more, we learn from the latest episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld’s online interview show, in which Jerry drives a comedian to a coffee shop for a video-​recorded chat.

In the recent Barack Obama episode, the comedian and the Commander in Chief drive inside the confines of the White House fences in a nice silver blue 1963 Corvette Stingray … and then go for a coffee inside the White House. Seinfeld’s excuse for this special episode is that the Prez has gotten off just enough funny lines to qualify.

Some of us wonder whether Mr. Obama could be planning an entertainment career after being ejected from office by the normal workings of presidential term limits. As this and other one-​on-​one interviews have shown, he gives great repartee.

But back to term limits. Aside from the football comment, Seinfeld’s chat did indeed yield a few substantive ideas. Such as:

JS: How many world leaders are completely out of their minds?

BO: A pretty sizable percentage.

And Obama knows why: “The longer they stay in office, the more likely [going bonkers] is to happen.”

“At a certain point,” Obama explains, “your feet hurt, your have trouble peein’, you have absolute power.…”

Good thing we have term limits!

Here’s to a future episode of Former Presidents in Limos Getting Lattes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Obama, Seinfeld, coffee, cool, Common Sense

 

Categories
Common Sense government transparency national politics & policies

What a Day for an Insult

Freedom of Information

Much of politics is timing. When you release information is key.

One favorite “statesman” trick is to bury unflattering information by “releasing” it on a Friday, right before the weekend.

This gives politicians a respite. Surely world events will have spewed up some worse (that is, more interesting!) story over the weekend, so on Monday, when journalism and its followers are back into the work week, coverage will be distracted and lessened.

I guess that’s why the White House waited till last Friday to explain it was officially removing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the burdens on its Office of Administration.

Barack Obama, when he was running for office, proclaimed that his administration would be “the most transparent in history.” But he’s been following President Bush in keeping the administrative side of the White House as opaque as possible.

White House flunkies say this “cleanup” of FOIA regulations is “consistent with court rulings that hold that the office is not subject to the transparency law.”

Accept that, arguendo, and it still looks bad for the “most transparent” prez of all. He didn’t have to do this. He just wanted to.

Adding insult to injury, as noted by Gregory Korte in USA Today, “the timing of the move raised eyebrows among transparency advocates, coming on National Freedom of Information Day.”

This all relates to the current Hillary email scandal, too. It just so happens that the White House office now unencumbered by FOIA requirements is in charge of filing … old emails.

Coincidence?

Perhaps that’s why they risked announcing this on Freedom of Information Day. The irony was lost over the weekend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Categories
Accountability folly ideological culture too much government

Pot, Kettle; Obama, Putin

President Calvin Coolidge looks more like a sage every day. Confucius would’ve been proud of Silent Cal. Today’s top politicians might take a cue from the man: When you don’t have much to say, say nothing.

President Barack Obama, whose popularity in America up until recently rested, in part, on his sounding more intelligent than his predecessor in office, had the reckless temerity — the audacity of dope, perhaps — to float the notion, in an interview the other day, that Russia’s top banana Vladimir Putin had made a “strategic mistake” by annexing Crimea, and said the latter-​day Tsar was “not so smart”:

Those thinking his Russian counterpart was a “genius” had been proven wrong by Russia’s economic crisis, he said.

For my part, I hope that a collapsed economy in Russia is the least we have to fear. The story isn’t over, and I wouldn’t be gloating over a half-​hatched batch of eggs just yet.

Which brings to mind the title cliché: pot and kettle, each calling the other black. Here we have a world leader with a horrible economic track record, in addition to a chaotic diplomatic strategy, calling his chief competitor for public adoration (yes, Putin’s acolytes are just as besotted as Obama’s) something of a fool.

Well, the man so involved with a disaster to have it named after him, Obamacare, and who hailed extravagant “stimulus” as a cure for a depression that still lingers — reminding us again of the longest Depression, the Great, and the wrong-​headed policies of Hoover and FDR — should know when to keep mum.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies

Aeschylation

“In war,” the Greek dramatist Aeschylus told us, “truth is the first casualty.”

This came to mind when Secretary of State John Kerry testified in the Senate last week.

The new Iraq War has been pitched exhaustively to the American people as “only air strikes” and “absolutely no boots on the ground” — even as the Obama Administration continues to send additional U.S. military advisors to place their boots on Iraqi sand (and, at least once thus far, to engage ISIS directly via Apache attack helicopters hovering above Iraqi ground.)

Kerry again assured senators that the president “has been crystal clear that his policy is that U.S. military forces will not be deployed to conduct ground combat operations against ISIL.”

Strangely, however, the Secretary most adamantly urged Senators not to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that would restrict President O from doing precisely what he has so often and emphatically pledged not to do: put combat boots on the ground in Iraq.

The fact that the Obama Administration has foreclosed any possibility of putting US troops on the ground to fight, according to Sec. Kerry, “doesn’t mean that we should preemptively bind the hands of the commander in chief or our commanders in the field in responding to scenarios and contingencies that are impossible to foresee.”

Impossible to foresee? Yeah, right. The “no boots” promise provides all the stability of leaves in the wind.

Having any trust in this administration is impossible to foresee.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment Tenth Amendment federalism

Keep Your Money

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

So says Michigan State Representative Tom McMillin to President Barack Obama.

In response to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and its aftermath, and then the non-​indictment of the officer involved, and its aftermath, President Obama requested that Congress fund a new $263 million Justice Department spending package. Part of the spending, a total of $75 million, would put federal dollars toward outfitting 50,000 local policemen with body cameras.

Rep. Tom McMillin, a Rochester Hills Republican, has introduced House Bill 5970 to require all gun-​toting state and local police in Michigan to wear body cameras. The legislation would mandate that video footage be destroyed within weeks except in cases where police use force, make an arrest, a complaint is filed or a request is made by a citizen.

McMillin thanks Obama for supporting the idea of body cameras, but the state rep argues that “providing body cameras to state and local police officers in Michigan isn’t a proper role of the federal government,” adding: “We could figure out how to pay for it here in Michigan.”

“Frankly, the feds have put me and my kids in enough debt,” he says, “I wouldn’t want them adding to it.”

Great point. Plus, the federal government really doesn’t have to pay for every single thing that happens in this world.

I’ve advocated the cameras, calling them “justice vision.” Where tried, the video system has served to protect citizens and police and improve public confidence.

But doing the right thing in our hometowns doesn’t require a Washington bribe.

That’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture U.S. Constitution

Dead Document?

Could it be? We do not live under the Constitution of the United States. The document has been a dead letter for a century, maybe longer.

Ours is a Post-​Constitutional America.

Surely, there have been great moments of executive usurpation.

Andrew Jackson, in defiance of the Supreme Court, and against all normal principles of law and justice, removed the Cherokee from their agrarian holdings in Georgia and contiguous southeastern United States, sending them marching to Oklahoma. The Supreme Court said his order was unconstitutional. Jackson’s response? Not really much different from “nyah nyah, nyah nyah, nyah nyah.”

Much of the Civil War and Reconstruction was undertaken on the shakiest of constitutional grounds. And then came the “great progressive” presidents.

Republican Teddy Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson defied the explicit intent of the Constitution’s authors — as written in The Federalist as well as in the state houses that adopted the new compact. Both presidents construed the Constitution as authorizing the federal government to do pretty much darn near anything not explicitly forbidden in the document.

That was not the original understanding.

And then there is war. The U.S. Congress hasn’t declared an explicit war since World War II. But we’ve been in a never-​ending string of wars.

With Obama, the post-​constitutional prevarication has reached new … effrontery. The current president says that, though he had previously declared the “Iraq War” a done deal, over, finito, he now says his new attacks upon ISIS are constitutionally justified by 2002’s Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq.

“Post-​constitutional”? It means our leaders are liars, beyond the law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

Who Needs Canada (or Oil)?

What has Canada done for us lately, eh?

Sure, Canadians invented peanut butter and the egg carton. But hey: peanut allergies … and loose eggs in a grocery sack will do.

Canada also gave us the Wonderbra, Trivial Pursuits and Instant Replay. But put those all together and what have you got?

A country where it snows too much. That’s what.

But what about oil?

The U.S. House of Representatives voted last week to build the Keystone XL pipeline to bring that Canadian oil down to our Gulf Coast refineries. The Senate is set to vote on similar legislation tomorrow.

But our President sports a veto pen, and refuses to allow a bunch of peanut-​butter-​eating, Wonderbra-​wearing Canadians to invade America with all their dirty crude.

“I have to constantly push back against this idea that somehow the Keystone Pipeline is either this massive jobs bill for the United States or is somehow lowering gas prices,” an exasperated Obama complained. “Understand what this project is. It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else.”

Well, if the 40,000-plus jobs from the pipeline’s construction are discounted … well, then, those jobs don’t count.

And to suggest that increasing the supply of petroleum might lower prices because of the law of supply and demand? Surely, an executive order trumps economic law.

The Daily Beast’s Jack Holmes also minimizes Keystone’s benefits, noting it amounts only to “a few billion dollars kicked the U.S. economy’s way.”

Yeah, who needs a “few billion dollars” or some construction jobs or more oil or our northern neighbors …

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.