Obama 101: How did closing Guantanamo, Muslims and gay issues affect his fifth month as president?

January 20, 3:58 PMDallas Political Buzz ExaminerDevonia Smith

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1. The President took a minor PR hit, unjustified in my opinion.
   
   The highlight of a school field trip for a hundred kindergarteners was supposed to be a tour of the White House, but the children arrived at the White House later than scheduled. They were to have been there at 9:30 but arrived at about 10:25, blaming heavy traffic. The White House had to be prepared for a noon luncheon for Obama and the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the administration canceled the children's tour.
   
   Organizers cried foul, saying they arrived ten minutes (or fifteen - accounts vary) late, but in fact they arrived ten or more minutes after a forty-five minute extension granted by the White House. That is, first they were forty-five minutes late and then they were ten more minutes late.
   
   This is certainly unfortunate, and you or I might have moved mountains to reschedule one thing or another to accommodate the kids, but we are not the President, whose time is tightly rationed even on days set aside for such PR activities.
   
   Incidentally, the Prez and the Steelers used their time more constructively than just schmoozing. They put together care packages for US troops.
   
   Efforts are underway to reschedule the childrens' tour.
    
2. Obama glided smoothly from his campaign position that closing Guantanamo would be "easy" to the position that it was actually, well, "difficult."
   
   Good thing we avoided sending to Washington people like the empty-headed, inexperienced Sarah Palin, who disagreed with Obama during the campaign and said such things would be . . . difficult.
    
3. Keep your eye on Obama, the Democrats, and gay issues. One of his broken campaign promises is the one about moving "immediately" on the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy, and gay political leaders are quite upset. Gays voted almost three to one for Obama/Biden.
   
   Now a bill has been introduced in the House, sponsored by thirty Democrats and Republicans, which would define the word "marriage" as meaning the union of one man and one woman (within the District of Columbia).
   
   I don't see how the Democrats can afford to pass this bill, and my guess is that there will be much holier than thou talk about "interfering" with the DC Council, and that talk will serve as cover for voting against it while minimizing the damage with voters who are in favor.
   
   But if they *do* pass it, can Obama keep it at arm's length?
   
   Also fueling gay discontent is the fact that Obama's Justice Department has filed a motion to dismiss a case brought against the Defense of Marriage Act, a law Obama pledged to repeal if elected.
    
4. The President chose Appeals Court judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. If confirmed (and I imagine she will be quite easily) she will be the first Hispanic and third woman to become a Supreme Court Justice.
   
   Politically, it's a good move for Obama in that her being Hispanic and female lessens the chance that she won't be confirmed. For the country, not so much - sixty percent of her decisions have been overturned by the Supreme Court. She's one of those people who feel that being a woman and a member of a minority endows her with the sensitivity to see "what's right" and that her feelings should trump the Constitution.
    
5. Continuing to duck his transparency pledge, Obama signed more bills a day or so after they were passed. The White House is now taking the position that posting a link to a Congressional site while the bill is being considered fulfills his pledge.
   
   But it doesn't, of course. A bill in progress is seldom the same as a bill passed by the Congress. Here's the exact campaign promise:
   
   "When there's a bill that ends up on my desk as President, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government's doing,"
   
   This hasn't happened yet. Not. One. Time.
    
6. The President's approach to terrorist nations is to yack at them, and as reported here in March, when North Korea launched an ICBM he called on the UN to issue a resolution to replace the resolution that North Korea had ignored.
   
   That approach got spanked again as North Korea upped the ante by launching a half dozen more missiles in one week.
   
   Whaddaya think, Mr. Prez, another UN resolution?
   
   But this failed policy did not originate with Obama. The US and UN have kept their blinders on and failed with it for fifteen or twenty years. In fact, the Clinton and Bush administrations paid North Korea billions of dollars in various aid packages (five billion dollars in oil in 1994 alone) to give up their nuclear program. The sequence has been:
   
   
   1. "Here's the money."
   2. "OK, no more nuclear development."
   3. "You cheated!"
   4. "North Korea is a sovereign nation and has the right to such development."
   5. "Well then, take that!" (A UN resolution follows.)
       
   6. "Here's the money."
   7. "OK, no more nuclear development."
   8. "You cheated!"
   9. "North Korea is a sovereign nation and has the right to such development."
   10. "Well then, take that!" (A UN resolution follows.)
   
   Ad infinitum.
   
   Obama has yet to make his first attempt to buy their cooperation, although the funds may be buried in the fine print of the stimulus package. Ah ha ha ha ha ha.
   
   Update: The UN Security Council added sanctions to the previously impotent sanction policy. I imagine it took the usual troublemakers, Russia, China, Olympia Snowe Syria, Iran, et al., only a few seconds to begin violating them. In response North Korea has announced for the first time that it has a uranium enrichment program. Our response?
   
   June 13 (Reuters): - The United States said on Saturday that North Korea must stop its "provocative" actions and return immediately to stalled six-party talks on its nuclear program.
   
   Or what? Hmmmm?
    
7. There are rumblings that the administration has selected the specific dealerships to be closed by Chrysler, and that the chief criterion is whether the owners are Republican donors. In keeping with Obama's promised "transparency" policy, the White House is stonewalling requests for information regarding what criteria were used.
   
   I have *no* idea whether this will come to anything. I mention it only because interest has grown to the extent that even the mainstream news media is being forced to look into it, albeit reluctantly.
   
   In related news, three House Democrats, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and two others, are circulating a letter in the House for signatures. The letter is to President Obama, asking how closing healthy dealerships will improve the financial stability of GM and Chrysler, and questioning the fairness of the criteria used to determine which dealerships will be closed.
   
   The letter closes "We may consider legislative proposals to ensure that dealers and their employees are treated fairly, and we look forward to your timely response."
    
8. In the most blatant political misuse of the Justice Department in a long time, the Attorney General decided - no reasons given - to drop a seven month old case against Black Panthers who had used weapons to threaten voters and block entrance to a Philadelphia precinct's voting facilities during the 2008 elections, telling one white poll watcher "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker."
   
   The three accused had entered no responses to the Justice Department's suits, and so judgments had been rendered against them. This is the first time in the history of the United States that the Attorney General dismissed a case already won by default.
   
   In the meantime, the Justice Department is making sure that enemies we capture in Afghanistan are read their Miranda rights. How in Hell did *they* acquire Miranda rights?
   
   No, I didn't make that up. I. Did. Not.
    
9. Having corrupted the Justice Department to the maximum extent possible in such a short time, Obama has turned his attention to corrupting the Census Bureau. Remember ACORN? The organization that stole votes for Obama by registering ineligible people in a number of states? Their reward is to become an "Executive Partner" in the 2010 census process. You don't suppose they'd abuse that, do you? Nahhhh.
    
10. Searching for new political corruption opportunities, Obama announced the firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin, calling him "confused" and "disoriented." Since he provided no evidence of confusion or disorientation, one is left to assume the obvious: He had gotten to close to Democrats' shenanigans. He had found millions of dollars of fraud and deception in programs involving CUNY's Research Foundation and the St. HOPE Academy - run by a major Obama supporter (Kevin Johnson). And - shades of Travelgate - Michelle Obama is up to her neck in this one, selecting for appointment program overseers. Her Americorps ties go back to one of its Chicago programs in the mid-nineties and serving on the national board until 2001.
     
11. The President opened the kimono on one of his double standards. When a pro-abortion doctor was murdered by a lone gunman, it was only a matter of hours before Obama issued a statement condemning acts of violence, "however profound our differences."
    
    One day later, when a lone gunman murdered one soldier and critically wounded another on the streets of Little Rock, the Prez was silent. Mum. Zip-lipped.
    
    Say what you will about Bush, at least he knew that murdering one of our soldiers was an act of violence worth condemning.
    
    UPDATE: (6/4/2009) After several days of some of us wondering publicly whether he would ever acknowledge that second incident, Obama wept that he was "deeply saddened by this senseless act of violence."
    
    Did you catch that? The murder of the abortionist was committed by a right winger acting on an agenda difference, but the murder of the soldier was "senseless." It was not committed by a converted Muslim, not a matter of an agenda difference, just, you know, sh*t happens.
    
    Do you suppose this is connected? In his speech in Cairo, he said " And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."
    
    When, exactly, did defending Islam become a responsibility of our President? And if it *really* is, shouldn't that be true of Christianity too, among others? You know, not stereotyping Christians as abortionist killers?
     
12. Discovering his inner Muslim, Obama has begun not only using but *featuring* his middle name. What a difference between a running candidate and an elected candidate!
    
    It began a couple of months ago in Austria, and continued in Turkey, where he was introduced to the Turkish Parliament as Barak Hussein Obama. Now, in an interview with a French journalist, he has made the claim that there are so many Muslims in the US that we are "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."
    
    Claims regarding the number of Muslims in America range from one to eight million, the most common being six million. But the *only* polling organization with a number, Pew, says there are one and a half million.
    
    This would make us the 48th largest, behind such powerhouses as Burkino Faso, Eritria, and Montenegro.
    
    Do you suppose Good Ol' Joe Biden is rubbing off on him?
     
13. While most countries that are changing corporate tax rates are decreasing them to stimulate their economies, our President is trying to increase them. As reported here in March, some energy companies have already reacted to the prospect, relocating to Switzerland. Now Microsoft has announced that it will move a large number of jobs overseas if Obama's tax increases make it through Congress.
     
14. The President spent the month mouthing platitudes about the US not "dictating" solutions, which, he said, it does "all too often." Then he dictated to one - and only one - country, our only ally in the Middle East, Israel. Now the US "does not accept the legitimacy" of actions negotiated in years past under Presidents Clinton and Bush, and endorsed in a Congressional resolution.
    
    On behalf of Israel, Prime Minister told the President to take a hike, although in much gentler words. It is good to know that somewhere in this diminishingly free world, one of the leaders on *our* side will stand up.
    
    Netanyahu announced that he would buy into Obama's two state agenda on two conditions:
    
    • "Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognise Israel as the state of the Jewish people."
       
    • "The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarised with ironclad security provisions for Israel."
    
    He also said that a new Palestinian state must be monitored on the ground, " . . . real monitoring, and not what occurs in Gaza today."
    
    So Netanyahu has called Obama's bluff. Those conditions are eminently reasonable and neither Obama nor the UN will press them on the Palestinians.
    
    I *think* Obama is going to have to back off at least some of what passes for his "policy," as 75 US Senators have expressed concern about it. As his popularity begins to decline to terrestrial levels, he cannot afford to alienate three quarters of the Senate, which is already on his case about the amount of money he plans to spend, the tax increases he proposes, the smoke and mirrors "cap and trade" scheme, and the handling of General Motors and Chrysler.
     
15. Having publicly predicted for us that passing the stimulus package would prevent unemployment from reaching 8%, he and we watched it shoot up to 9.4%.
    
    Good Ol' Joe Biden tried to spread the blame, saying "We all guessed wrong." No, Joe, not all of us. Republicans voted unanimously against the stimulus package.
    
    The Prez now says unemployment will probably reach 10%, which may be conservative or may be accurate, but in any case will certainly be closer to the truth than his 8% prediction.
     
16. I wonder whether the President cringed at the mainstream news media report that his former spiritual mentor, the racist, anti-American Reverend Jeremiah Wright, said that he and Obama would be back in touch with each other in a few years, but right now "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me." Prolly not.
     
17. Demonstrating a hitherto concealed sense of humor, Obama said it’s "important for the U.S. to maintain fiscal discipline." 

From Flame Free Politics by ghengis_ken (reprinted with permission)