Category Archives: Obama

Bob Woodward: Obama’s sequester deal-changer – The Washington Post

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The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debate last fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later.“There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger,” Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It “was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure.”The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid D-Nev.. They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, “We didn’t actually think it would be that hard to convince them” — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. “It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table.”A majority of Republicans did vote for the Budget Control Act that summer, which included the sequester. Key Republican staffers said they didn’t even initially know what a sequester was — because the concept stemmed from the budget wars of the 1980s, when they were not in government.

via Bob Woodward: Obama’s sequester deal-changer – The Washington Post.

U.S. Capitol official: Obama wrong on janitors’ pay cut – CBS News

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The president’s mention prompted Carlos Elias, the superintendent of the U.S. Capitol building and the Capitol Visitors Center, to email his employees within hours of Mr. Obama’s comment.

“The pay and benefits of EACH of our employees WILL NOT be impacted,” Elias wrote.

“There was a specific mention in the news today by a high ranking official that said ‘The employees that clean and maintain the US Capitol will receive a cut in pay’ (not specific quote but very close to it),” Elias continued.

“This is NOT TRUE,” wrote Elias. “Therefore, I request that you please notify all of our employees about the importance of ignoring media reports.”

via U.S. Capitol official: Obama wrong on janitors’ pay cut – CBS News.

Woodward’s Apostasy by Harry Stein – City Journal

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Bob Woodward’s charge that he was threatened by a high-ranking Obama administration official after publishing a column critical of the White House was, it turns out, at least somewhat exaggerated. But it’s no accident that the media has chosen to focus on Woodward’s characterization of his exchange with White House economic director Gene Sperling, while all but ignoring the essence of the column that touched off the brouhaha in the first place: that Obama’s claims about Republican responsibility for the looming sequester were false, and that it was “months of White House dissembling” that had “eroded any semblance of trust between Obama and congressional Republicans.”

Indeed, the media treatment of the episode provides an all-too-telling glimpse into the administration’s relationship with the press. It hardly bears repeating that from the start of Barack Obama’s career on the national stage, he has enjoyed an unprecedented kinship with the media—one that, as frustrated opponents rightly observe, often seems indistinguishable from outright alliance. On contentious issues like those involving the budget, especially, the administration has been hugely dependent on a compliant press—not only to shore up public support for its ongoing campaign of class warfare, but also to marginalize competing arguments.

via Woodward’s Apostasy by Harry Stein – City Journal.

Debunking Obama’s Phony Claim That Sequester Cuts Will Cause Flight Delays – Investors.com

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Back in 2000, the FAA handled 23% more air traffic with fewer flight controllers than it employs today, according to the Department of Transportation’s own inspector general, who added this raises “questions about the efficiency of FAA’s current controller workforce.”

Either air traffic controllers have gotten far less efficient over the past 13 years, or the FAA could get by with about 3,400 fewer of them — without affecting the quality of air travel one bit. Cutting out those excess controllers would get LaHood more than halfway to the $600 million he has to cut from the FAA’s budget.

And while LaHood ominously talks about closing 100 control towers, what he doesn’t say is that these towers should have been closed long ago.

In fact, Bloomberg News reports the FAA itself identified more than 100 “zombie towers” that handle so few flights they should be cut back or closed.

Then there’s the fact the administration has more flexibility in dealing with the sequester cuts than LaHood, or anyone else working for Obama, is willing to admit.

As the fact-checking site PolitiFact.com points out, “within the specific programs targeted for cuts, federal managers have a fair amount of discretion about what to reduce.”

via Debunking Obama’s Phony Claim That Sequester Cuts Will Cause Flight Delays – Investors.com.

Waterboarding Bad, Assassination Good – By Peter Kirsanow – The Corner – National Review Online

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So, as NBC News’ Michael Isikoff reports, according to an Obama/Holder Justice Department memo, it’s okay for the U.S. government to authorize the extrajudicial killing of American citizens who are believed to be senior operational leaders of al-Qaeda, even if there’s no intelligence that they’re involved in an active plot against the U.S. According to Jay Carney, such killing is “legal, ethical, and wise.”

On the other hand, it’s inarguably torture and a war crime to waterboard a non-citizen who’s the confirmed No. 2 leader of al-Qaeda and who actually planned the most horrific terrorist attack in American history. CIA officers involved in enhanced interrogations are kept in fear of possible criminal prosecution for years by the same Obama/Holder Justice Department. The author of memos on the legality of enhanced interrogation (the felicitously named “torture memos”) is the subject of endless vitriol and opprobrium from the Left. Leftist foreign leaders call for the arrest of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld as war criminals. And if you depict waterboarding in a movie without explicitly condemning such waterboarding as torture most heinous, you don’t get an Oscar.

Got it. When engaged in wet work, make sure it’s the permanent kind. And that the rest of your policies are favored by the Left.

via Waterboarding Bad, Assassination Good – By Peter Kirsanow – The Corner – National Review Online.

American drone deaths highlight controversy – U.S. News

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But the most controversial drone strike took place on Oct. 14, 2011, when 16-year-old Abdulrahman was killed by U.S. forces.

Family of the Denver-born teenager say he had no ties to terrorist organizations and was unjustly targeted because of his father.

Nassar al-Awlaki, grandfather of Abdulrahman and father to Anwar, said he tried to protect his grandson as Anwar al-Awlaki’s profile grew.

In December, Nassar al-Awlaki told CNN, “In Anwar it was expected because he was under targeted killing, but how in the world they will go and kill Abdulrahman. Small boy, U.S. citizen from Denver, Colorado.”

Nassar al-Awlaki said his grandson snuck out of their Yemen home one night, leaving a note for his mother saying he would return in a few days. The boy never returned, killed instead while eating at an outdoor restaurant.

via American drone deaths highlight controversy – U.S. News.

Washington Times Communities: Reagan’s home could become a parking lot for Obama’s library

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You know, I almost want them to do this. Then we can visit the parking lot and ignore the Obama museum.

A new Cold War is brewing here in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood and it has nothing to do with the frigid temperature.

The apartment building at 832 E. 57th Street was once the Chicago home of a boy who would become a President.

No, it’s not Barack Obama of Hawaii. It was at the apartment’s first floor window that a young Ronald Reagan looked out upon the world.

But some powerful Chicagoans are planning to demolish Reagan’s historic home. Is it politically motivated? Is Mayor Rahm Emanuel behind the move?

Reagan as a child.

It was a different world back in 1915. Reagan’s family had moved here from Tampico, Illinois. His father had gotten a job at the famed Marshall Field’s – now only a memory. A coin-operated gas lamp was the only home’s only source of heat.

But it didn’t stop a young “Dutch” Reagan from dreaming.

via Reagan’s home could become a parking lot for Obama’s library | Washington Times Communities.

Obama recess appointments unconstitutional – Washington Times

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The important difference between this and other recess appointments is that the Senate had not declared they were in recess when Obama made the appointments. This was an abuse of emergency powers to overrule Senate approval of Presidential appointments.

In their ruling the judges said their duty is not to speed up the workings of government, but to hold to constitutional principles.

“If some administrative inefficiency results from our construction of the original meaning of the Constitution, that does not empower us to change what the Constitution commands,” the judges wrote.

The judges said the recess power was created for a time when Congress met only a few months out of the year, and was designed for the president to fill vacancies during the long periods when Congress was not meeting. In modern times, when Congress is almost always capable of meeting, the recess powers should be more circumscribed.

Obama recess appointments unconstitutional – Washington Times.