"What if Obama can't lead?" :o

[DC Tom]

The most arrogant man in the world strikes again.

 

Oh, what the !@#$ did I do now? Am I getting banned again?

[B-Man]

Oh, what the !@#$ did I do now? Am I getting banned again?

 

Heh.

 

 

Is Obama Any Good at Politics?

 

I’m starting to wonder if Obama is any good at politics at all. Not campaigning; we know he can do that—at least so long as he’s got a teleprompter in tow. But today’s press conference may well be the worst since Nixon’s “I am not a crook” and “let others wallow in Watergate” press debacles 40 years ago. His petulant parting shot at the media today— “The things that go right, you guys aren’t going to write about”—could stand with “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more.”

Jonah Goldberg was all over this problem two years ago:

 

Where’s the proof that Obama is a master of public policy? To be sure there’s ample proof that he’s a master at

talking about

public policy, describing the problems, summarizing the current thinking, regurgitating all of the reigning clichés and platitudes. But where’s the evidence that he’s actually

good

at public policy?

 

 

 

I’m still expecting a “Malaise” speech any day now.

[DC Tom]

Heh.

 

 

Is Obama Any Good at Politics?

 

I’m starting to wonder if Obama is any good at politics at all. Not campaigning; we know he can do that—at least so long as he’s got a teleprompter in tow. But today’s press conference may well be the worst since Nixon’s “I am not a crook” and “let others wallow in Watergate” press debacles 40 years ago. His petulant parting shot at the media today— “The things that go right, you guys aren’t going to write about”—could stand with “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more.”

Jonah Goldberg was all over this problem two years ago:

 

Where’s the proof that Obama is a master of public policy? To be sure there’s ample proof that he’s a master at

talking about

public policy, describing the problems, summarizing the current thinking, regurgitating all of the reigning clichés and platitudes. But where’s the evidence that he’s actually

good

at public policy?

 

 

 

I’m still expecting a “Malaise” speech any day now.

 

It's about time to trot out the Nobel and bin Laden's head.

[IDBillzFan]

Where’s the proof that Obama is a master of public policy? To be sure there’s ample proof that he’s a master at talking about public policy, describing the problems, summarizing the current thinking, regurgitating all of the reigning clichés and platitudes. But where’s the evidence that he’s actually good at public policy?

 

Our president...an ideas man:

 

http://youtu.be/5U5UH1kQeUA

Edited November 15, 2013 by LABillzFan

[B-Man]

Hilarious............much more at link

 

Thus Spake Obama The incompetence of our neo-monarchy

By Mark Steyn

 

It is a condition of my admission to this great land that I am not allowed to foment the overthrow of the United States government. Oh, I signed it airily enough, but you’d be surprised, as the years go by, how often the urge to foment starts to rise in one’s gullet. Fortunately, at least as far as constitutional government goes, the president of the United States is doing a grand job of overthrowing it all by himself.

 

On Thursday, he passed a new law at a press conference. George III never did that. But, having ordered America’s insurance companies to comply with Obamacare, the president announced that he is now ordering them not to comply with Obamacare. The legislative branch (as it’s still quaintly known) passed a law purporting to grandfather your existing health plan. The regulatory bureaucracy then interpreted the law so as to un-grandfather your health plan. So His Most Excellent Majesty has commanded that your health plan be de-un-grandfathered. That seems likely to work. The insurance industry had three years to prepare for the introduction of Obamacare. Now the King has given them six weeks to de-introduce Obamacare.

 

“I wonder if he has the legal authority to do this,” mused former Vermont governor Howard Dean. But he’s obviously some kind of right-wing wacko. Later that day, anxious to help him out, Congress offered to “pass” a “law” allowing people to keep their health plans. The same president who had unilaterally commanded that people be allowed to keep their health plans indignantly threatened to veto any such law to that effect: It only counts if he does it — geddit? As his court eunuchs at the Associated Press obligingly put it: “Obama Will Allow Old Plans.” It’s Barry’s world; we just live in it.

 

The reason for the benign Sovereign’s exercise of the Royal Prerogative is that millions of his subjects — or “folks,” as he prefers to call us, no fewer than 27 times during his press conference — have had their lives upended by Obamacare. Your traditional hard-core statist, surveying the mountain of human wreckage he has wrought, usually says, “Well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” But Obama is the first to order that his omelet be unscrambled and the eggs put back in their original shells.

 

Is this even doable? No. That’s the point. When it doesn’t work, he’ll be able to give another press conference blaming the insurance companies, or the state commissioners, or George W. Bush . . .

 

The most telling line, the one that encapsulates the gulf between the boundless fantasies of the faculty-lounge utopian and the messiness of reality, was this: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” Gee, thanks for sharing, genius. Maybe you should have thought of that before you governmentalized one-sixth of the economy. By “we,” the president means “I.” Out here in the ruder provinces of his decrepit realm, we “folks” are well aware of how complicated insurance is. What isn’t complicated in the Sultanate of Sclerosis? But, as with so many other things, Obama always gives the vague impression that routine features of humdrum human existence are entirely alien to him. Marie Antoinette, informed that the peasantry could no longer afford bread, is alleged to have responded, “Let them eat cake.” There is no evidence these words ever passed her lips, but certainly no one ever accused her of saying, “If you like your cake, you can keep your cake,” and then having to walk it back with “What we’re also discovering is that cake is complicated to buy.” That contribution to the annals of monarchical unworldliness had to await the reign of Queen Barry Antoinette, whose powdered wig seems to have slipped over his eyes.

 

 

.

Edited November 15, 2013 by B-Man

[DC Tom]

“What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” Gee, thanks for sharing, genius.

 

[TheMadCap]

 

 

 

No way! he did NOT say that. Seriously?

[Chef Jim]

No way! he did NOT say that. Seriously?

 

Actually it's not complicted to buy. Only if you're a dumbass, coddled community organizer that has never had to do anything for themselves.

[DC Tom]

No way! he did NOT say that. Seriously?

 

From the transcript:

 

Q: You hear criticism on the Hill that you and your White House team are too insular. Is that how this mess came to be?

 

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, you know, I think there's going to be a lot of -- there's going to be a lot of evaluation of how we got to this point. And I'm -- I assure you that I've been asking a lot of questions about that. (Chuckles.) The truth is that this is, number one, very complicated. You know, the website itself is doing a lot of stuff.

 

There aren't a lot of websites out there that have to help people compare their possible insurance options, verify income to find out what kind of tax credits they might get, communicate with those insurance companies so that they can purchase, make sure that all of it's verified, right? So there's just a -- a bunch of pieces to it that made it challenging.

 

And you combine that with the fact that the federal government does a lot of things really well. One of the things it does not do well is information technology procurement. You know, this is kind of a systematic problem that we have across the board.

 

And you know, it is not surprising, then, that there were going to be some problems. Now, I think we have to ask ourselves some hard questions inside the White House, as opposed to why we didn't see more of these problems coming earlier on, A, so we could set expectations, B, so that we could look for different ways for people to end up applying.

 

So, you know, ultimately, you're right. This is something that's really important to me, and it's really important to millions of Americans who have been waiting for a really long time to try go get health care because they don't have it. And you know, I am very frustrated, but I'm also somebody who, if I fumble the ball, you know, I'm going to wait until I get the next play, and then I'm going to try to run as hard as I can and do right by the team. So, you know, ultimately I'm the head of this team. We did fumble the ball on it. And what I'm going to do is make sure that we get it fixed.

 

In terms of what happens on November 30th or December 1st, I think it's fair to say that the improvement will be marked and noticeable. You know, the website will work much better on November 30th, December 1st, than it worked certainly on October 1st. That's a pretty low bar. It'll be working a lot better than it is -- it was last week and will be working better than it was this week, which means that the majority of people who go to the website will see a website that is working the way it's supposed to.

 

I think it is not possible for me to guarantee that a hundred percent of the people a hundred percent of the time going on this website will have a perfectly seamless, smooth experience.

 

We're going to have to continue to improve it, even after November 30th, December 1st. But the majority of people who use it will be able to see it operate the way it was supposed to.

 

One thing that we've discovered, though, that I think is -- is worth noting, a lot of focus has been on the website and the technology, and that's partly because that's how we initially identified it; you know, these are glitches. What we're discovering is that part of the problem has been technology, hardware and software, and that's being upgraded. But even if we get the -- the hardware and software working exactly the way it's supposed to with relatively minor glitches, what we're also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy. And another mistake that we made, I think, was underestimating the difficulties of people purchasing insurance online and shopping for a lot of options with a lot of costs and lot of different benefits and plans and -- and somehow expecting that that would be very smooth, and then they've also got to try to apply for tax credits on the website.

 

So what we're -- what we're doing even as we're trying to solve the technical problems is also what can we do to make the application a little bit simpler? What can we do to make it in English as opposed to bureaucratese? Are there steps that we can skip while still getting the core information that people need?

 

And part of what we're realizing is that there are going to be a certain portion of people who are just going to need more help and more hand-holding in the application process.

 

And so -- so I guess part of the continuous improvement that I'm looking at is not just a technical issue; it's also can we streamline the application process; what are we doing to give people more assistance in the application process; you know, how do the call centers and the people who are helping folks in person -- how are they trained so that things can go more smoothly, because the bottom line ultimately is I just want people to know what their options are in a -- in a clear way. And you know, buying health insurance is never going to be like buying a song on iTunes. You know, it's just a much more complicated transaction.

 

But I think we can continue to make it better, all of which is to say that on December -- or December 1st, November 30th, it will be a lot better, but there will still be some problems. Some of those will not be because of technological problems, although I'm -- I'm sure that there will still be some glitches that have to be smoothed out. Some of it's going to be how are we making this application process more user-friendly for folks.

 

And you know, one -- one -- one good example of this, by the way, just to use an analogy -- when we came into office, we heard a lot of complaints about the financial aid forms that families had to fill out to get federal financial aid. And I actually remember applying for some of that stuff and remember how difficult and confusing it was.

 

And Arne Duncan over at Education worked with a team to see what we could do to simplify it, and it made a big difference. And that's part of the process that we've got to go through. And in fact, you know, if we can get some focus groups and we sit down with actual users and see, you know, how well is this working, what would improve it, what part of it didn't you understand, that all, I think, is part of what we're going to be working on in the weeks ahead.

 

Quoted in full because it's interesting to note that:

1) he basically admits that his team not only didn't understand the insurance industry, but didn't understand any other damn thing either, and

2) When asked the question of if his administration is too insular, THAT WAS HIS !@#$ING DEFENSE! Stop digging, you moron.

[Nanker]

From the transcript:

 

PRESIDENT OBAMA:

Well,

you know

, I think there's going to be a lot of -

- there's going to be a lot of evaluation of how we got to this point. And I'm -- I assure you that I've been asking a lot of questions about that.

(Chuckles.)

The truth is that

this is, number one, very complicated.

You know,

the website itself is doing a lot of stuff.

 

There aren't a lot of websites

out there

that have to help people compare their possible insurance options, verify income to find out what kind of tax credits they might get, communicate with those insurance companies so that they can purchase, make sure that all of it's verified,

right?

So there's just a -- a bunch of pieces to it

that made it challenging.

 

And you combine that with the fact that the federal government does a lot of things really well. One of the things it does not do well is information technology procurement.

You know

,

this is kind of a systematic problem that we have across the board.

[well, SOMEONE had to be thrown under the buss, it might as well be the faceless bureaucracy]

 

And you know,

it is not surprising, then, that there were going to be some problems.

Now, I think

we have to ask ourselves some hard questions inside the White House,

as opposed to why

we didn't see more of these problems coming earlier on, A, so we could set expectations, B, so that we could look for different ways for people to end up applying.

 

So, you know

,

ultimately, you're right. This is something that's really important to me, and it's really important to millions of Americans who have been waiting for a really long time to try go get health care because they don't have it.

And you know,

I am very frustrated,

but I'm also somebody who, if I fumble the ball,

you know,

I'm going to wait until I get the next play, and then I'm going to try to run as hard as I can and do right by the team.

So, you know,

ultimately I'm the head of this team. We did fumble the ball on it. And what I'm going to do is make sure that we get it fixed.

 

In terms of what happens on November 30th or December 1st, I think it's fair to say that the improvement will be marked and noticeable.

You know,

the website will work much better on November 30th, December 1st, than it worked certainly on October 1st.

That's a pretty low bar. It'll be working a lot better than it is -- it was last week

and will be working better than it was this week, which means that the majority of people who go to the website will see a website that is working the way it's supposed to.

 

I think it is not possible for me to guarantee that a hundred percent of the people a hundred percent of the time going on this website will have a perfectly seamless, smooth experience.

 

We're going to have to continue to improve it, even after November 30th, December 1st. But the majority of people who use it will be able to see it operate the way it was supposed to.

 

One thing that we've discovered, though, that I think is -- is worth noting, a lot of focus has been on the website and the technology, and that's partly because that's how we initially identified it; you know, these are glitches. What we're discovering is that part of the problem has been technology, hardware and software, and that's being upgraded.

But even if we get the -- the hardware and software working exactly the way it's supposed to with relatively minor glitches,

what we're also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.

And another mistake that we made, I think, was underestimating the difficulties of people purchasing insurance online and shopping for a lot of options with a lot of costs and lot of different benefits and plans and -- and somehow expecting that that would be very smooth, and then they've also got to try to apply for tax credits on the website.

 

So what we're --

what we're doing even as we're trying to solve the technical problems is also what can we do to make the application a little bit simpler? What can we do to make it in English as opposed to bureaucratese?

Are there steps that we can skip while still getting the core information that people need?

 

And part of what we're realizing

is that there are going to be a certain portion of people who are just going to need more help and more hand-holding in the application process.

 

And

so -- so I guess

part of the continuous improvement that I'm looking at is not just a technical issue; it's also can we streamline the application process; what are we doing to give people more assistance in the application process;

you know,

how do the call centers and the people who are helping folks in person -- how are they trained so that things can go more smoothly,

because the bottom line ultimately is I just want people to know what their options are in a -- in a clear way.

And you know

, buying health insurance is never going to be like buying a song on iTunes.

You know,

it's just a much more complicated transaction.

 

But I think we can continue to make it better, all of which is to say that on December -- or December 1st, November 30th, it will be a lot better,

but there will still be some problems. Some of those will not be because of technological problems, although I'm -- I'm sure that there will still be some glitches that have to be smoothed out. Some of it's going to be how are we making this application process more user-friendly for folks.

 

And you know,

one -- one --

one good example of this, by the way, just to use an analogy -- when we came into office, we heard a lot of complaints about the financial aid forms that families had to fill out to get federal financial aid.

And I actually remember applying for some of that stuff and remember how difficult and confusing it was.

 

And Arne Duncan over at Education worked with a team to see what we could do to simplify it, and it made a big difference. And that's part of the process that we've got to go through.

And in fact,

you know,

if we can get some focus groups and we sit down with actual users and see,

you know,

how well is this working, what would improve it, what part of it didn't you understand, that all, I think, is part of what we're going to be working on in the weeks ahead.

 

Quoted in full because it's interesting to note that:

1) he basically admits that his team not only didn't understand the insurance industry, but didn't understand any other damn thing either, and

2) When asked the question of if his administration is too insular, THAT WAS HIS !@#$ING DEFENSE! Stop digging, you moron.

 

I appreciate your including the entire dissertation.

I've bolded the jive-talk that would get any CEO immediately removed by their Board of Directors if they made a similar pronouncement.

And the liberal lap dogs were so acrimonious in their criticism of Bush's speech patterns.

Tom, I know I'll owe you a licensing fee, but I just have to say, the man's an idiot. He is a moron.

[B-Man]

The Lawlessness of the ‘Fix’

by Andrew C. McCarthy

 

Barack Obama could not have been more unequivocal. The telecommunications companies had to be punished for violating the letter of federal law. He didn’t want to hear about how President Bush told them it was okay.

 

One laughs now remembering how Obama’s base, the anti-anti-terrorist Left and its lawyer legions, used to call Bush the “imperial president” and thunder for his impeachment. Bush couldn’t hold a candle to our incumbent Caligula. He had no idea, for example, that presidents can just “waive” inconvenient parts of congressional statutes, like FISA.

 

FISA governs foreign intelligence surveillance. It requires the executive branch to get a judicial warrant before it can eavesdrop on alien terrorists and other foreign agents who threaten national security. Nevertheless, after al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11, Bush directed the NSA to wiretap suspected jihadists without obtaining court permission. He pressed the telecoms to help the NSA carry out the program — stressing the imperative of protecting American lives during a crisis, assuring these private companies that they would face no legal jeopardy for complying with his request.

 

Oh no you don’t, Obama and his base shrieked.

 

After the top-secret program was revealed, a paralyzing debate threatened to shut down American intelligence collection — at a time when we had troops in harm’s way in two war theaters and jihadists continued plotting mass-murder attacks against our homeland. By late 2007, recognizing the desperate need to reopen foreign-intelligence operations, Congress was poised to pass a FISA overhaul that would clarify the NSA’s surveillance authority. But passage was delayed for months because the hard Left refused to budge.

 

The Left’s goal was to bleed the telecoms dry with lawsuits over Bush’s warrantless surveillance program. Thus they pressured Democrats to block the passage of any FISA bill that would give telecoms the legal protection — in Obama parlance, the “waiver” — Bush had promised them. And the hard Left had a card to play: the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.

 

Then-senator Barack Obama, himself a hard Leftist and an opportunist (yes, that’s redundant), realized that captivating the party’s Marxist wing — the anti-business, blame-America-first activists — was vital to capturing the nomination. So he duly dispatched his top campaign spokesman to proclaim to the progressive media, “To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”

 

Of course, you must keep in mind that this is Barack Obama we’re talking about — a.k.a. Barack “If You Like Your Health Insurance Plan You Can Keep Your Insurance Plan, $2,500 Premium Reductions, Obamacare Is Not a Tax, The Video Caused Benghazi, Raising the Debt Ceiling Is Unpatriotic, I Didn’t Know About Fast and Furious Until I Read About It in the Newspapers” Obama. So naturally, after he snagged the nomination and it came time to appeal to the sane part of the country in the general election, he did his usual 180 and supported the FISA overhaul with retroactive immunity for the telecoms.

 

The purpose here is not to prove, yet again, that Obama is a fraud, which would be like proving that Detroit may be a tad mismanaged. The purpose is also not to establish, yet again, Obama’s hypocrisy in condemning Bush’s flouting of a single statute when, once he assumed power.

 

No, the purpose is to highlight how insouciantly lawless and transparently political the president’s latest Obamacare “fix” is. I refer, of course, to Obama’s magnanimous proclamation that he now deigns to permit insurers to issue policies made illegal by the Obamacare statute — at least until the Democrats can get through the 2014 elections. This was frivolous to the point of malfeasance.

[B-Man]

The beginning of the end for Barack Obama

by Joseph Curl

 

Second-term presidents in the past 30 years have had some pretty embarrassing news conferences, full of frank admissions of failure, submissive spasms of shame and groveling, grieving apologies.

Bill Clinton had to admit that he actually did have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky; George W. Bush finally thought of something he might have done wrong; his dad had to explain all those new taxes after his unequivocal pledge; and even Ronald Reagan ate crow over the Iran-Contra affair.

 

But there has never, ever, been a more pitiful presser than the one conducted last week by President Obama. In a nutshell, he said sure, everything’s a mess, but he just didn’t know.

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.washingto.../#ixzz2l0hw5bG1

 

 

 

 

.

[TheMadCap]

The beginning of the end for Barack Obama

by Joseph Curl

 

Second-term presidents in the past 30 years have had some pretty embarrassing news conferences, full of frank admissions of failure, submissive spasms of shame and groveling, grieving apologies.

 

Bill Clinton had to admit that he actually did have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky; George W. Bush finally thought of something he might have done wrong; his dad had to explain all those new taxes after his unequivocal pledge; and even Ronald Reagan ate crow over the Iran-Contra affair.

 

But there has never, ever, been a more pitiful presser than the one conducted last week by President Obama. In a nutshell, he said sure, everything’s a mess, but he just didn’t know.

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.washingto.../#ixzz2l0hw5bG1

 

 

 

 

.

 

It's without question that Democrats are going to try and throw him under the bus to survive 2014 and 2016. It remains to be seen if the President plays along for the good of the party and takes the beating he so richly deserves, or if the ego just can't let him shut his mouth. I think he does not go quietly into that good night...

[B-Man]

THAT CLINT EASTWOOD EMPTY CHAIR SKETCH WAS SPOT-ON, WASN’T IT?

 

This was eyepopping. Obamacare is the single most important initiative of his presidency. The website rollout was, as the President himself has repeatedly stated, the most important element of the law’s debut. Domestically speaking there was no higher priority for the President and his staff than getting this right.

And the President is telling the world that a week before the disaster he had no idea how that website was doing.

 

Reflect on that for a moment.

The President of the United States is sitting in the Oval Office day after day. The West Wing is stuffed with high power aides. His political appointees sit atop federal bureaucracies, monitoring the work of the career staff around them. The President has told his core team, over and over, that the health care law and the website rollout are his number one domestic priorities.

 

And with all this, neither he nor, apparently, anyone in his close circle of aides and advisors knew that the website was a disaster.

 

Plus:

As more people reflect on the President’s extraordinary press conference, the public sense that the President and his team just aren’t up to the job will inevitably grow. It was a jaw dropping moment of naked self revelation, and the more one reflects on it the more striking it becomes. The President of the United States didn’t know that his major domestic priority wasn’t ready for prime time—and he thinks that sharing this news with us will somehow make it better. It is moments of this kind that give epithets like “Carteresque” their sting.

.

[Chef Jim]

 

It's without question that Democrats are going to try and throw him under the bus to survive 2014 and 2016. It remains to be seen if the President plays along for the good of the party and takes the beating he so richly deserves, or if the ego just can't let him shut his mouth. I think he does not go quietly into that good night...

 

I want you to stop for a minute and read that part in bold you wrote again. Is this a question that really has to be asked? Obama has the ego of a small planet.

 

Is this the look of a guy who is going to let his ego take a beating?

 

[TheMadCap]

 

 

I want you to stop for a minute and read that part in bold you wrote again. Is this a question that really has to be asked? Obama has the ego of a small planet.

 

Is this the look of a guy who is going to let his ego take a beating?

 

 

Did you miss the sentence right after? No, I do not believe he will lay down and take his beating. The only question I have is if he burns Hillary on Benghazi, thus blowing up her 2016 run...

[B-Man]

http://nypost.com/2013/11/18/census-faked-2012-election-jobs-report/

 

WELL, NOW, THIS SEEMS LIKE A BIG STORY: Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report.

 

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

 

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

 

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

 

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.

 

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.

 

“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked.

 

The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this past weekend that he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.

 

So with this and the IRS intimidation of the opposition, the asterisk on Obama’s re-election gets bigger. . . .

[Chef Jim]

Did you miss the sentence right after? No, I do not believe he will lay down and take his beating. The only question I have is if he burns Hillary on Benghazi, thus blowing up her 2016 run...

 

Yes I did. And you said you didn't THINK he was going to go quietly. This is not a man that is going quietly.

[3rdnlng]

Is it out of the question to think Obama is working on a way to get a third term?

[DC Tom]

Is it out of the question to think Obama is working on a way to get a third term?

 

What's to work on? He can simply hold a press conference and repeal the 22nd Amendment himself.