A Few Items About Barack Obama: Immigration, Budget Reporting And Obamanomics

It's been a few days since I last posted. But, that is to be expected when you are the father of a four-and-a-half month old baby boy. Many times, your obligations to your family simply outweigh any other activity you engage in.

That said, let's catch up on a few things that are brewing out there. (In a later post today, I'll try to tackle Nancy Pelosi's lies about her being briefed on waterboarding and a little something about states declaring sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment.)

First, Obama appears to have reversed his position on immigration. Contrary to his many promises during the campaign last year, he now supports "enforcement first" immigration policies. From the Washington Times:

[Obama] now says he can't move forward with the type of comprehensive bill he wants until voters are convinced that the borders can be enforced. Having already backed off his pledge to have an immigration bill this year, Mr. Obama boosted his commitment to enforcement in the budget released Thursday. The spending blueprint calls for extra money to build an employee-verification system and to pay for more personnel and equipment to patrol the border. This security-first stance is not unlike that of President George W. Bush, Bush Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who said their immigration bill failed in 2007 because voters didn't trust the government to be serious about enforcement.

But Obama is still trying to convince illegal immigrant support groups that he wants to legalize illegals. Somewhere along the line, Obama must have realized that if he stays the course on such an explosive issue, the Democrat majority in Congress will be in greater danger in 2010 than it already is.

You can read the complete article on-line here:

Obama Reverses Stance On Immigration
Stephan Dinan
Washington Times
May 8, 2009

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Obama seems to have come to another realization about the economy and is taking steps to hide certain things. Despite what he or any other politician says about the way things are going, people can walk through the downtown shopping districts of their hometowns or cities and see the truth.

They see business owners doing everything possible to stretch a nickel into a dime while the Obama adminstration and the Democrat-controlled Congress run up huge national debts by spending way more money that they have to spend.

So, in an effort to stem the tide of public opinion, Obama is issuing instructions to the press about how to report on economic issues. Obama is betting that Joe and Jane Average American aren't smart enough to see reality and will instead believe whatever Old Media spoon-feeds them.

From the American Thinker:

Well, I guess it's better than the $100 million he asked his department heads to trim a couple of weeks ago. But $17 billion cut from a $3.4 Trillion budget is still a microscopic amount. Congress sneezes and spends $17 billion on Kleenex. But the truly weird part of this story is the president of the United States instructing journalists how to report this story. Brian Montopoli of CBS News quotes the president giving instructions in how to spin the miniscule budget cutting efforts of his administration: As Steve Chaggaris noted in Hotsheet's morning bulletin today, the news that the cuts totaled $17 billion "landed with a bit of a thud" in the media. Reporters stressed that the cuts made up "a tiny fraction" of the total budget and that they would be hard to push through; USA Today noted that the "proposed cuts are about one-fiftieth the size of this year's $787 billion economic stimulus package - all of which was added to the deficit." In his remarks today, the president sought to change that tenor of that coverage. He mocked the notion that smaller savings are considered "trivial" in Washington and stressed that "these savings, large and small, add up." And he told journalists directly that they should stress the fact that the cuts are "significant" - a surprisingly direct appeal to reporters concerning which angle they should take in their coverage. Update - Thomas Lifson adds: Well, now it is out there for all to see. Obama sees the press as his flacks. I applaud the President for his honest and forthright acknowledgement that the White House press corps exists to publish flattering information about him, and has given up any pretense of objectivity. And if any of them from Fox News or the Washington Times or Examiner break the rules, they won't ever get any more press conference questions. The New York Times will be enchanted to do his bidding.

It seems as if Obama would like to re-write economic history. He knows his policies will only lead to more dependency on the government and hence, greater government control over people's lives.

Lifson's remarks are right on the money.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Obama Schools The Press On How To Report His 'Budget Cuts'
Rick Moran
American Thinker
May 8, 2009

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And finally, we have to ask: Is Obama intentionally hurting our economy, or is he simply naïve?

Austin Hill over at Town Hall looks at that very issue:

Okay. Let’s consider the possibility that President Obama is, simply, “a little naïve.” So was it this presumed “naivety” that led him to defy U.S. bankruptcy law, and insert himself in between a corporation and its secured creditors? According to such law, a company in bankruptcy must pay its debts to its “secured creditors” before it pays its unsecured creditors. Not only that, in most cases, secured creditors can demand to be paid in full. In the case of Chrysler, several of the institutions to which it owes money are banks that accepted government bail-out funds last year and earlier this year. Those banks are now enslaved to whatever President Obama and the U.S. Treasury Department tell them to do. So when Obama tells, say, “bank X” to “accept twenty-eight cents on the dollar as payment of the debt Chrysler owes you,” well, those banks are obliged to obey Obama, whether or not it makes financial sense to do so, and whether or not bankruptcy law allows that bank to demand more.

You would think that a president who was also a lawyer would know these things, right? So why would he intentionally go against the law? Is it deliberate, or is Obama really that uninformed about such things?

More:

President Obama has now demonstrated to the world’s investors that rules and laws don’t matter - - his personal and political preferences are what matter, and he will get his way, even if investors are denied their rights and damaged in the process. If Obama’s objectve is to weaken the U.S., so as to make a “more fair world,” he’s well on his way to achieving that goal. Yet if Obama actually wants something other than a weaker U.S., then his naivety is something America cannot afford.

Amen.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Obamanomics: Naive, Or Intentionally Destructive?
Austin Hill
TownHall.com
May 10, 2009

Socialized Medicine: Enforcing Your "Duty To Die"

As noted earlier, the Porkulus/Spendulus/Stimulus Package passed by the socialist Democrats in Congress and set for signature by our socialist President Barack Obama, contains language that will begin setting up American Health Care in the style of European Health Care (or more accurately, lack thereof if you happen to be one of the unfortunate ones who fall into certain categories). That language will allow the creation fo a Federal Council that will have the power to over-ride your doctor's treatment prescriptions if some faceless bureaucrat with little to no medical traiing decides that you are not worth treating.

Writing for Town Hall, Austin Hill has this:

Western Europe’s utopian ambitions to “insure everybody” and make healthcare “free” have by no means been realized. In fact, the nationalizing of healthcare in Europe has led to worsening government deficits, and increased healthcare costs, and efforts to contain those costs have resulted in the denial of treatment to those persons not expected to live much longer - - that is, the elderly and the seriously ill. This “need” to deny people health care has frequently, in Europe, been cast in terms of one’s “duty to die.” The idea is that, once you have lived “long enough;” after you have consumed your “fair share” of the earth’s resources; and when your combined age and health conditions make it “obvious” that further efforts to prolong your life just simply “aren’t worth it;” you will then have a responsibility to accept these consequences, and to accept that you’ll just have to get along without life-sustaining healthcare. In other words, once a government employee has determined that spending healthcare resources on you will not produce much of a “return on the investment,” you will then have a “duty to die.”

That is precisely what we are heading for. And, in this world of ironies, the American Association of Retired Persons was lobbying Republicans to pass this beast. In essence, the AARP wanted to pass legislation that would make it legally acceptable for the government to withhold medical treat from AARP members!

Moreover, you are about to lose the privilidge of doctor-patient confidentiality:

Forget the notion that the Doctor-patient relationship is “sacred,” or that you will make “private” decisions about your health care, in consultation with your Doctor. If Democrats continue the trend of "Europeanizing" our American health care, the office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology will eventually be overseeing your healthcare, making sure that if your Doctor spends “too much” on you, they will face federal “penalties, ” the likes of which have yet to be fully defined. For over three decades, the Democratic Party has insisted that it is wrong for government to “interfere” with a woman’s medical decisions with respect to the child in the womb. Now, President Obama and congressional Democrats are insisting that government must be involved in everybody’s medical decisions. Worse yet, their proposals threaten human life on yet another front: not only are unborn children threatened by their policies, but so, also, are the ill and the elderly. If Americans continue voting for “more government” as a means to “cure” all our societal ills, we will continue to move closer to the point where anonymous government bureaucrats determine when you have lived “long enough,” when you have consumed your “fair share” of resources, and when it is “obvious” that you won’t live much longer. President Obama and the Democratic Congress are determined to take us to this point.

More double-standards. If that was the "change" you wanted in Washington D.C., I'd say you now have it.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Democrats, Health Care "Reform," And Your "Duty To Die"
Austin Hill
TownHall.com
February 15, 2009