The Turning of President Obama

I will admit right up front that President Obama would never likely be my first choice for President or any other elected office. On the other hand, the candidates put up against him by the Republican Party did not offer much of an alternative leaving no real different choice in the past two elections. When President Obama won election and took the oath of office for his first term I hoped that he would at least minimally fulfill some of my hopes and not necessarily make some of the changes I most feared. I have attempted to satisfy myself by believing it could have been far worse. The passage of Obama’s healthcare reforms has instilled in me a trepidation which goes very deep. The biggest trouble I perceived was the fact that the main enforcement agency for the Affordable Health Care Act is the Internal Revenue Service. This little fact makes it appear that the healthcare bill will be more aligned as a revenue enhancement system which by default supplies healthcare while its primary mission is to collect funds. The evidence implies that the government will take whatever measures possible to minimize the costs of healthcare even if the cost saving measures result in denial of care as the general rule for any costly measures such as surgeries, experimental procedures, highly priced new drugs, extended physical therapies, and other costly procedures. But at least we did not see such items in legislation such as a carbon tax and some of the socialist causes which are counter to a free market economy that candidate Obama claimed he would enact.

 

I do not pretend to understand why it almost always seems to be that Presidents become entangled in conspiracies or other legally questionable events soon after beginning their second term. Such has definitely struck President Obama with the first scandal began during the final leg of the campaign and election cycle in which President Obama still managed to be reelected. The scandal concerned the events around the murder by a terrorist attack of our Libyan Ambassador Scott Stevens and three support personnel in Benghazi. As if this was not causing sufficient problems for the Obama Administration officials, now there are another pair of predicaments that have struck the Administration with the IRS conducting politically motivated audits and special treatment of applicants for tax-free classifications and the Justice Department snooping into Associated Press phone records and tapping their reporter’s phones in order to uncover the identities of any whistleblowers. Each of these tribulations would be sufficient to trouble a President sufficiently to add a dozen years to his appearance and President Obama has definitely begun to show the signs of stress of a man under siege. He even joked about such affects during 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner when he said, “I’m not the strapping young Muslim socialist that I used to be.”

 

While Benghazi is about more than just President Obama, he is still the leader and must be held to answer for the actions or lack of actions for those within his Administration. From what has transpired resulting from the catastrophic events of that fateful day of September 11, 2012, President Obama has appeared to have dodged much of the blame until these other two items hit the news cycle. The entire Benghazi troubles had appeared to begin to wind down and might have passed into the darkness of history after very short hearings held last week but for some reason it appears to be resurrecting itself back into the mix. The apparent tie in has been the lack of personal involvement by the President in these disparate scandals which gives the appearance that either President Obama is not truly in control of his subordinates or is simply uninterested in performing the requirements of his position and has relegated the running of the country to others while he simply reads his teleprompter and otherwise enjoys the privileges of the office. Such suspicions make for a serious problem for the President as if he now takes complete and total ownership of these issues he will face possibly serious charges and if he allows his actions to be interpreted as his being disengaged and uninvolved he risks being seen to be complacent and diminished. The other possible difficulty which could come out of the disaster in Benghazi is what might follow if Benghazi ends up being tied to Syria and the movement of weapons and manpower from Libya into Syria as some of the rebels in Syria are aligned with the same organizations as rebels forces which fought in Libya, namely al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Such assistance to some of the rebel forces in Syria would also serve the desired results sought by Turkey and Prime Minister Erdogan, a close Obama friend and ally.

 

The common element connecting the Internal Revenue Service scandal with the Associated Press phone tapping and records outrage is the evidence of an Administration out of control taking vindictive retribution against all opponents and utilizing every possible office and force that government can bring to bear. This is exactly the manner of overreach and abuse of political and governmental power which most angers a plurality if not an outright majority of American voters. In addition there are all the untruths, obfuscations, invasions of privacy, exchanging sensitive information, illegal use of confidential information, and any denials or cover-ups that will be the eventual downfall if anything develops and has lasting effects. The obvious targeting and investigating of conservative political groups, small government organizations, anti-tax political action groups and Pro-Israel Jewish groups on the grounds of potential support for terrorism because terror groups exist all around Israel are blatant politically motivated witch-hunts which go way beyond the cusp and into the valley of underhanded deceits and dirty tricks. President Nixon was charged with similar activities leading to his impeachment hearings, especially those currently being committed by the Internal Revenue Service at the presumed behest of the Obama Administration. If nothing else, all of these potential investigations which some may even birth other areas to investigate will have one extremely positive result, Congress will have something to fill their days and thus might just be sufficient to keep them from inventing more problems for which they will then proceed to solve by causing even more problems.

 

The particular items which are most likely to have the strongest legs and persist both in the congress and the media will be the phone scandal of the Justice Department snooping through the Associated Press phone records to discover the names of whistle-blowers and the excess of requirements and information gathering demanded by the Internal Revenue Service of any groups deemed problematic by the Obama Administration. I would be remiss if I did not admit that the entire debacle of Benghazi being relegated to trail off like echoes bouncing off the canyon walls until they fade beneath the winds is not an insult to the senses and patriotism of every red-blooded American as well as to the dignity and efforts put forth by our Ambassador and those who gave all in an attempt to protect him and defend the honor of the United States. There are a number of questions which I very much desire to have answered. I would like to know whether any of the Commanders of the various assets available even considered breaking orders and coming to the aid of our people under siege in Benghazi. I would have hoped that we had one Commander somewhere in theater who would act as did the Naval Commander of the Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge, Cmdr. Frank Castellano, who took action on Sunday April 12, 2009, when he determined the situation was dire and waiting for the requested clearance from the White House might come too late to save the hostages from Somali Pirates and took actions necessary and successfully rescued everyone. Beyond this I so dearly demand that the person who was responsible for the stand-down order to be identified and brought up on charges for dereliction of duty. Whoever gave such a heinous and odious order deserves the most extreme punishment which can be brought under whatever code of law is applicable be it the UCMJ or civil laws. The originator of the order which left at least two of our bravest stand against unbelievable odds where they, through miraculous personal efforts, withstood an onslaught of a combination of small arms, rocket propelled grenades, and mortar fire brought down on their defensive position by over one-hundred-fifty terrorist forces carrying out an organized assault. To allow such a cowardly act to go unpunished would serve for all time as an insult to our fighting forces who given even the most remote possibility of success would grab any opportunity to save their countrymen no matter the extremes of the odds or direness of the situation. That is the kind of operation which many of our most elite forces train long, hard and mercilessly so as to be prepared in any situation when the order comes down. Unfortunately, they feel cheated in such an instance as Benghazi where their unequalled abilities are not even given the chance to prove that to our military personnel there is no such thing as impossible, only that which will take a little while longer.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Can the Republican Party be Saved?

Recently the Republican hierarchy released their report detailing the problems the party is facing and attempting to detail the deficiencies and propose solutions. There were numerous voting blocs where they also found problems. One prime example was their losing the under thirty vote by at least a ratio of three to one. Other such blocs included single women, the less well off, almost the entirety of minority voters, and so forth. From what I saw it was possibly debatable if they even won a majority of the registered Republicans. Ok, I made that up but it was really almost that bad. They also found that they managed to receive fewer votes in every voting group over the results from four years earlier. Somehow the Republicans with candidate Romney were unable to even hold on to the McCain voters as they received fewer votes across the board in this last election. As horrible as this news was it was not as unsettling as the solutions the report provided. The main gist of the offered solution was to move the candidates and campaigns to align them closer to the Democrat message.

My bet is should they pursue this path it will lead to the death of the Republican Party. When the base voters who are the lifeblood of your political party are not getting to the polls your problem is not that you are too far removed from the other party, it is that you are not offering them anything distinctly different from the other party. The solution is not to attempt to be perceived as the Democrat Lite Party but to be the heart and soul Republican Party. Show a difference and celebrate that difference. The Republican Party has not given the feeling that they are proud, confident, or even that they believe in their party. They sound almost apologetic whenever they sound all that different from what the Democrats stand for. If you want a near perfect example of the real problem is that is cursing the Republicans all you need to do is listen to the “old guard” of the GOP during the debates on virtually any legislation where immigration reform is one of the most glaring examples. Another problem is the seeming lack of unity and cooperation between the different factions that make up the Republican Party. Sometimes it appears as if as a whole the Republicans do not stand unified for anything and are without honest and driving principles. We had a perfect example after Rand Paul’s efforts to make a serious protest over the evasiveness and apparent policy which would allow the use of drone strikes on American civilians inside the country’s borders in place of arrests and a trial if the President so deemed necessary with his thirteen hour filibuster and a number of the senior Republican Senators demeaned his efforts on the floor of the Senate. Such disagreements should never be fought out in the public square but should be discussed and resolved within the party. When was the last time you heard one Democrat Senator demean another Democrat on the floor of the Senate? Such would never happen as the Democrats have party discipline and would not stand for parading the party laundry in public.

Another problem the Republican Party needs to work on is simply getting their message out and being heard. Since the mainstream press is actually a willing partner in any Democrat candidate’s campaign, the Republicans have to find a delivery for their message which does not rely on the mainstream press. They definitely need to work on their Internet usage and make more and better use of U-tube, Twitter, Facebook, and all other forms of social media as well as blogs and the new media. There are a good number of conservative bloggers who would be anxious to support getting the republican message out if they only would be included in the campaign planning and get some assistance in coordinating with the candidate. They could offer releases to these bloggers once they had compiled an extensive list. But the most important challenge facing the Republican Party hierarchy and planners is a message around which the membership can rally and be excited over. The current state of the Republican can be summed up in two words, disjointed disarray. Until they can establish something that can be advertised as the Republican core beliefs around which every party candidate tailors their message, the Republican Party will continue to wander leaderless in the political wastelands.

Beyond the Cusp

Our Sequestration Outage

Over the past few days all of our schedules here at BTC have been disrupted by a series of high intensity meetings and brain storming sessions all having to do with how we might be able to adjust to the state of things post sequestration with the serious cuts being made in all government programs, especially those which will affect the most numbers of Americans not part of the higher echelons of government, you know, Congrescriters, their staffers, the President, members of his family, and all attached to the Administration.  There had been numerous warning, actually more like threats, of how the sequestration cuts would be the end of life as we know it with the government forced to make draconian cuts to so many vital programs and this was the concern we addressed in our meetings. We went over our budget numerous times, it took so little time we thought we should do it repeatedly until it seemed larger than life, we never attained such levels. Then we reviewed the funding we receive from the government and that caused us great distress. Hard as it may believe, but our government subsidy was less of our budget than anyone could imagine. We checked and rechecked and even double-rechecked and to our complete surprise we were unable to track down one red cent we receive from the government at any level. We even contacted others we know who might be facing difficulties resulting from the sequestration budget cuts and all our fellow private enterprises also were having little problems with these cuts as they, surprise, surprise, also do not receive any funding from government sources. Empowered with this information we decided to review some of the warnings, or threats, your choice, as to which services would likely be curtailed or cut back due to sequestration. The results were nothing short of amazing.

 

Some of the services we found that were to be cut were absolutely astonishing. The TSA might not have sufficient numbers of screeners and security personnel on all shifts to facilitate safe travel conditions. The concierge services at Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport who provide services for Congressional and Presidential staffers and high government officials would remain at full staffing, after all, only the best for our best, or something like that. Another small inconvenience for travelers by air would be a possible deficiency in the number of Air Traffic Controllers to handle the full load of flights. There were some reports that as some locations receive Federal funding for some of their Police, Fire and Rescue personnel that in such areas there may be a reduction in force in order to meet the cuts. Don’t get too worried, security personnel and the Federal and Capital police will remain at their fully funded levels providing nothing but the best for our elected officials and their staff members.

 

Fortunately we did some further research and things will be far less dire than the predictions from the let’s shock the life out of the public newscasters and press personnel releasing these reports to the newswires in order to paint a picture of apocalyptic events being just on the horizon if the sequestration was allowed to befall the United States. Most of the cuts would amount to a small percentage of the Federal workforce having to take one day a week or even every two weeks furlough. This means they may use their personal leave and still be paid or they may simply forgo that one day of pay in the immediate future until a budget is finally formed. After a budget is approved, if these furloughs are treated as every previous furlough, these employees who were forced to take time off will receive back pay to cover every hour they missed of work. Yes, that’s right, at the end the furloughed employees will receive pay for the time they stayed home and did absolutely no work and may have even received pay as they took leave. So, if a furloughed Federal employee chooses to use leave time to receive pay for the furlough days, once the budget is passed they will be paid for those days a second time and still not have worked those hours. So, at a minimum, any Federal worker who does not receive any furlough days has to work those extra days while their coworkers stay home and in the end the ones who got to stay home will get as much if not more pay for the same period. The ones who take leave to cover furloughed days will be paid both leave and regular pay for taking a day off. Who wouldn’t want that deal? But there is a small catch.

 

That might be a problem as there has never been a budget passed since President Obama was first sworn in January of 2009. That year they finished out on the final budget approved and signed by President Bush but since then President Obama has never signed a single budget. Even during his first two years he did not sign an annual budget by only signing continuing resolutions and partial budgets for certain departments or programs. The theory behind this ploy was the President was able to push through numerous budgetary increases by using numerous continuing resolutions and including increases with each and every one leading to an annual increase larger than had one yearly budget been passed. The end result was by the end of eighteen months, a year and a half; President Obama had increased the baseline budget for numerous of his favored entitlement programs allotting significant new funds in order to greatly expand their benefit roles. One of the more notorious of these was the Food Stamp Program which has seen the most massive increase in enrollees in its history. Should the sequestration force spending cuts, it still will not force President Obama to actually sign a real budget. Of course when the President or his spokespeople are questioned as to why he has not signed any budget for a full year, they all answer with he has not received a budget from the Congress for him to sign.

 

Needless to point out, but the usual reason is he has never received a budget from the Republican Congress. This little bit of information is almost universally reported verbatim as if it were the gospel truth. The honest truth is that the Democrat controlled Senate, half of the Congress but who’s counting, has refused to even schedule the numerous House of Representatives passed budgets for committee hearings or a floor vote or debate. Senate Majority Leader Reid has announced from day one after the 2010 elections that no budget the House of Representatives would send to the Senate deserved even a minute of debate and were dead on arrival. This refusal to even debate and to never, ever, ever allow a vote on a full budget is actually a service provided by the Democrat Party to their Democrat President to relieve him of ever being held responsible for the budget and to have a ready-made excuse to beat like a drum whenever he is questioned by the press or anyone else. With Senate Majority Leader Reid following the President’s actual words given in countless speeches where he has said what amounted to the denial that President Obama was standing ready to sign any bipartisan and proper budget that the Congress could agree upon and send to his desk, oh, and he is waiting anxiously. Then comes the whispers from the White House into Senator Reid’s ear, no budget must ever pass the Senate without White House giving prior approval. Then the only budgets approved and sent to the President are kick the can down the road continuing resolutions. But why let such a trifling matter spoil a good thing. Eventually a budget or possibly one of the myriad of continuing resolutions that gets passed will include the back-pay for the furloughed workers and it will be excused as necessary as the unfortunate Federal workers who were furloughed cannot be made to suffer because the Republican Congress would not do their job and send a responsible budget to the President in time to avoid the sequestration. Also, you do realize that the whole idea for sequestration was a Republican one and the President had nothing to do with the idea, well, other than proposing it, defining it, demanding it, and then complaining how the Republicans forced it on the country. Oh to have an echo chamber anywhere as faithful and loyal as the fifth estate is to their leader, President Obama.

 

Beyond the Cusp