Monday Brief: Is Obama Just 'Being There'

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Brief · June 27, 2011 The Foundation "Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason." --Benjamin Franklin Political Futures Barack Obama is reminiscent of simpleton Chauncey Gardiner "Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Well, Obama announced his candidacy in Lincoln's hometown two days before Abe's birthday, and he did expand the size and scope of government. But no one seriously compares him with Lincoln or FDR anymore. Conservative critics have taken to comparing him, as you might imagine, to Jimmy Carter. ... But there is another comparison I think more appropriate for a president who, according to one of his foreign-policy staffers, prefers to 'lead from behind.' The man I have in mind is Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie 'Being There.' As you may remember, Gardiner is a clueless gardener who is mistaken for a Washington eminence and becomes a presidential adviser. Asked if you can stimulate growth through temporary incentives, Gardiner says, 'As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden.' 'First comes the spring and summer,' he explains, 'but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.' The president is awed as Gardiner sums up, 'There will be growth in the spring.' Kind of reminds you of Barack Obama's approach to the federal budget, doesn't it? In preparing his February budget, Obama totally ignored the recommendations of his own fiscal commission headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Others noticed: The Senate rejected the initial budget by a vote of 97-0. Then, speaking in April at George Washington University, Obama said he was presenting a new budget with $4 trillion in long-term spending cuts. But there were no specifics. Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf was asked last week if the CBO had prepared estimates of this budget. 'We don't estimate speeches,' Elmendorf, a Democrat, explained. 'We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech for us to do our analysis.' Evidently 'first we have the spring and summer' was not enough." --political analyst Michael Barone Government "[American seniors] want their Social Security and their Medicare to stay the way they are -- and their anger is directed against those who want to change the financial arrangements that pay for these benefits. Their anger should be directed instead against those politicians who were irresponsible enough to set up these costly programs without putting aside enough money to pay for the promises that were made -- promises that now cannot be kept, regardless of which political party controls the government. ... Many retired people remember the money that was taken out of their paychecks for years and feel that they are now entitled to receive Social Security benefits as a right. But the way Social Security was set up was so financially shaky that anyone who set up a similar retirement scheme in the private sector could be sent to federal prison for fraud. ... Despite irresponsible political ads showing an old lady in a wheel chair being dumped over a cliff, the people who are really in danger of being dumped over a cliff are the younger generation, who are paying into Social Security but are unlikely to get back anything like what they are paying in. ... What needs to be done is to allow younger workers a choice of staying out of a system that is simply running out of money." --economist Thomas Sowell The Best Source of Opinion on the Internet In addition to the outstanding essay excerpts we provide in each Monday Brief, The Patriot Post offers the best in conservative opinion daily on our website. And the best part is, we do it with NO annoying page breaks, advertising or pop-up ads that plague other sites. This great resource and so much more is made possible by the generous support of our readers. Help us keep it coming by making a secure online donation to The Patriot Post's 2011 Independence Day campaign. If you prefer to support us by mail, please use our printable donor form. We have just 7 days to raise the remaining $131,203 for our campaign. Thank you, and God bless! Nate Jackson Managing Editor Reader Comments "I have just made an online donation to your Independence Day campaign. The work that you all have done and continue to do is absolutely essential to the edification of the American public at large concerning the Liberty and Freedom we Americans enjoy. That the power of the pen is mightier than the sword is as true today as it was in the days when swords were valuable (and sometimes the only) weapons used in battles and writing was accomplished with quill pens. The battle for preserving and protecting our essential and revered qualities of faith, family and freedom is not only aided but greatly enhanced by the work you accomplish each and every day. I receive pleas for assistance from many conservative organizations in this nation but am able to support only a very few. The Patriot Post has been and will remain at the top of my own personal list. The message is quite simple: WE SHALL NOT FAIL in preserving our founding principles. Because of the work you do that job is made much easier." --James "I agree with you 99.9% of the time. but in regard to Opting out of Afghanistan, this time we disagree. The suggestion that we should remain in Afghanistan makes no sense. Too much treasure and too many lives lost. Bring the troops home. We are tired of paying for it and tired of the losses. There is no benefit to staying there and we will end up just like the Russians ... defeated. I say if we leave five years from now all our gains will be lost then too! Gates and the Generals are in the war business! They remind me of management of a company that is going in the wrong direction, but don't listen to the frontline employees who are trying to tell them." --Colorado Alexander's Reply: Note that I wrote, "The question we should ask is what action in Afghanistan is in the best long-term interest of our national security? Our objective was to contain the nuclear threat posed by asymmetric elements in the region. Is our nation-building strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan the right strategy, and if so, how much and for how long? Or, will targeted hunt and kill operations by SpecOps suffice to meet our national security objectives in the region? The answer to this question should be determined by sound analysis of the risks to our national security and the resources we have to mitigate those risks. Obama is answering this question by analyzing popular polls." In regard to BHO's plan to retreat, we will stand on the side of the strategic and tactical wisdom of all those in leadership positions, from Army and Marine commanders on the ground, to General Petraeus. And to suggest that these commanders are not able to see any other options because "they are in the war business," is absurd. If you knew any one of them, you would know there first interest is the safety of their people. "Alexander's analysis of our national security interests and operations in Afghanistan was outstanding, but a minor correction. OBL was not killed by US. Special Forces but by Navy Seals, part of the US Special Operations Command, USSOCOM at McDill, FB, Tampa Florida." --ABN< SF< SPECOPS Alexander's Reply: My bad ... meant SpecOps not SF. "Whether the war is necessary or not is irrelevant at this point. The problem is that we have a Washington regime in power that is utterly incompetent to prosecute this or any other war. We have a military under the command of Demsheviks. The three pillars of Demshevik fascism are corruption, incompetence, and tyranny. Management of the military is currently dominated by pillar number two." --California The Gipper "The American people are no longer on the defensive. I believe the conservative movement deserves some credit for this. You spoke for the permanent against the merely prevalent, and ultimately you prevailed. I believe we conservatives have captured the moment, captured the imagination of the American people. And what now? What are we to do with our success? Well, right now, with conservative thought accepted as mainstream thought and with the people of our country leading the fight to freedom, now we must move." --Ronald Reagan For the Record "President Obama addressed the nation to discuss the beginning of the Afghanistan withdrawal. ... Rarely has it been so tedious watching someone put lipstick on a pig. Strangely, he tried to make it sound more exciting by thumping the podium a lot. It didn't work. You see, when you're a wartime President discussing a victory, you don't need a lot of balloon juice about 'the principles upon which our union was founded,' or our 'unwavering belief that all human beings deserve to live with freedom and dignity.' You just declare America's triumph, and talk about all the wonderful things the bad guys said while they were surrendering. The substance of the President's remarks was already well known. ... As the President boasted, this is consistent with the timetable for withdrawal he previously laid out. The Taliban doubtless applauds his consistency. Wars are much easier to fight when you know exactly when your enemy plans to leave." --columnist John Hayward Opinion in Brief "I understand the frustration conservatives feel about the federal government's virtually unchecked growth over the past 75 years and how this is destroying our liberties and bankrupting our nation. But the Constitution isn't the problem. Rewriting it isn't the solution. Proponents of a constitutional convention might protest that their goals are far more modest than a new constitution. Well, so were the Framers' plans when they met in Philadelphia to amend the Articles of Confederation. Fortunately, they drafted an entirely new constitution instead. ... We can certainly support tweaking the Constitution through limited amendments, but a convention would open the floodgates to the nefarious devices of what Ann Coulter -- in her new book, 'Demonic' -- describes as 'the mob.' ... Leftists, from the netroots to the radical activist groups to government officials, have all shown their willingness to twist the Constitution and thwart its provisions to achieve their policy ends. ... The remedy to the generations-long encroachments on the integrity of the Constitution is to throw out the bums who insist on destroying our form of government and replace them with those who respect the concept of limited government and cherish our liberties." --columnist David Limbaugh Culture "Most Americans are largely unaware of the important differences in political viewpoint between the races, and prefer to refrain from commenting publicly about such things. So it wasn't for them to point out what the pundits ignored: Obama is and always has been a hardened, bare-knuckled veteran of the culture wars, who not only pursues racial divisions among Americans for political gain but personifies the stark differences in political attitudes between whites and blacks. It was as obvious in 2008 as it is now that electing a man who describes a sermon containing the passage 'white people's greed runs a world in need' as the formative moment in his spiritual life would guarantee a period of unusual social bitterness and resentment. And that is, in fact, where we are. ... Pundits who spoke of a post-racial America if Obama became president were ignoring the fact ... that Obama himself embodies the ambivalence that many blacks feel toward the 'American creed,' a set of beliefs and attitudes born from a revolution against state authority and centered on the ability of individuals to determine their own destiny. The result is that the country now seems to be teetering on the edge of race-based political partisanship." --columnist Seth A. Forman Click Here Seasonal Items Shop our great gift selection to get you in the mood for summer fun, celebrations and vacation travel! The Last Word Editor's Note: The following is satire. "Back before the Unites States was an independent nation, people lived in horrific conditions under British rule. The British weren't providing very good free health care (wait time for a poor person to get an MRI was over 200 years), they were refusing to increase taxes on the rich, and they had very few laws dictating what colonists were allowed to eat, causing many to become obese on the high-fructose maize syrup the Indians taught them to make. So the colonists kept demanding that the British give them big government to regulate their lives and provide for their basic needs while confiscating all their wealth. 'We're stupid,' they'd cry out to the British. 'Please rule us and make us do what you think is best!' But the British kept refusing, saying, 'No, you guys are doing okay by yourselves. We want you to have the freedom to run your own lives.' It was this laissez-faire attitude that led to the Boston Massacre, in which five people died of heart attacks in Boston from eating fatty foods a proper government would never have let them eat in the first place. Finally the colonists had enough of not being bossed around and decided if the British weren't going to provide them the all-encompassing government they wanted, they had to make it themselves. They started by throwing tea into the Boston Harbor since they determined it had too much caffeine and people shouldn't have been allowed to drink it. Then they formed militias to collect more taxes from the colonists to spend on welfare and government works projects. The British tried to strike back by ending regulations and giving tax rebates, but the colonists were now ready to fight to make sure some large entity would tell them what to do. And many were rallied to the cause by Patrick Henry's cry of 'Give me a large government telling me what I can and can't do while spending most of my money, or give me death!'" --humor columnist Frank J. Fleming Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis! The Patriot Post Editorial Team (To submit reader comments click here.) Patriot News Review Iran to Stage Missile Wargames China Moves to Save Euro Two U.S. Troops Die in Iraq; 11 Total This Month U.S. Plans Stealth Survey on Access to Doctors No 'Him' or 'Her': Swedish Preschool Goes Gender Neutral Norah O'Donnell: Obama Has More Aggressively Prosecuted the War on Terror Than Bush More News The Right Opinion Michael Barone: Like Chauncey Gardiner, Obama Is Profoundly Aloof Burt Prelutsky: The Mass Media Is a Mess George Will: A Texan's 'Exceptionalism' Argus Hamilton: From The Comedy Store Peggy Noonan: The Enigma of Jon Huntsman Burt Prelutsky: Fifth Columnists Everywhere I Look Charles Krauthammer: Who Takes Us to War? Jonah Goldberg: GOP Should Hope Primary Race Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint Suzanne Fields: Don't Know Much About History Mona Charen: How the Democrats Nearly Destroyed the Economy Lawrence Kudlow: Did the IEA Just Deliver a QE3 Quick Fix to Save Obama's Skin? David Limbaugh: Just When You Thought Our Fiscal Nightmare Couldn't Get Any Worse More Opinion Grassroots Commentary Tim Tebow's Talk We Can Do This Unless We Don't Huntsman Fakes One for the Gipper Challenging Our Debt It Ain't a Horserace, Doodah, Doodah What Are the Polls Telling Us? More Commentary Policy and Analysis Heritage Foundation Insider Heritage Foundation Research American Enterprise Institute Center for Strategic and International Studies The Cato Institute Hoover Institution National Rifle Association Ludwig von Mises Institute Citizens Against Government Waste National Center for Policy Analysis The Heartland Institute (Please pray for our Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.) Follow The Patriot Post:

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