Circular Logic Defines Obama’s Turn At President

Leaders of the White House economic team and the Senate's top Republican bellowed about bonuses at a bailed-out insurance giant and pledged to prevent such payments in the future.From one Sunday talk show to the next, they tore into the contracts that American International Group asserted had to be honored, to the tune of about $165 million and payable to executives by Sunday, even as the company has benefited from more than $170 billion in a federal rescue. Image Credit: KOMO News

Circular Logic Defines Obama’s Turn At President

Here we are only about 57 days into the 44th Presidency of the United States and what we find doesn’t match up with what was promised.

Barack Obama ran on an overriding theme of ushering a new era of responsibility, yet all this administration can do is put forward and hire people, Timothy Geithner, to oversee our economy and its pursuit of increased taxes, that cheat on their responsibility to actually pay taxes.

Case in point:

The Obama administration blames this economy and the Government solutions put in place to correct its downturn on the previous executive administration of George W. Bush, yet this administration fights to keep most of the same people, policies, and level of oversight in place from the previous administration.

This administration decided to give a third round of additional TARP fund billions of dollars to its largest troubled financial institution, AIG, without pre-condition (again) while upping the Government’s ownership (80%) in the company … then becomes outraged (only after the disclosure of the bonus plan) when the company honors its employment contracts with many of its top executives by issuing $165 million dollars in bonuses – averaging $500,000 to each.

Obama economic chief Larry Summers: AIG bonuses 'outrageous' but government can't stop them. Image Credit: Associated Press via KDRV-TV

This excerpted and edited from NationlJournal.com –

Hotline After Dark -- Resident Evil?
March 17, 2009 8:50 AM

"World News" led with AIG bonuses. "Evening News" led with AIG bonuses and featured a taped interview with special inspector gen. for Iraq Stuart Bowen Jr. "Nightly News" led with AIG bonuses.

Last night's TV coverage was dominated by Pres. Obama's announcement that he asked Treas. Sec. Tim Geithner to use all legal tools to block the AIG exec bonuses. Among the reaction:
----
Weekly Standard's Ham: "There's nothing that brings people in Washington together from both sides of the aisle faster than the need to get on the right side of a populist backlash" ("O'Reilly Factor," FNC, 3/16).

Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ): "None of this should have surprised any of us. ... And it was actually out there also for Secretary Geithner to understand coming into this, as well. ... So it's only now that it's making headlines that the president is coming back and basically second-guessing his own treasury secretary on this. Why Secretary Geithner didn't raise this when he first understood it is beyond me" ("NewsHour," PBS, 3/16).

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), asked if he's satisfied with the responses from the WH: "I'm not satisfied. ... They have to renegotiate their contracts. There is no reason why when the federal government is poised to do another $30 billion that, in fact, we can't insist that those contracts get renegotiated, and renegotiated in such a way in which those bonuses simply don't take place." ("1600," MSNBC, 3/16).
----
FNC's Hume: "... it is a big problem for the president. He has already added substantially to the bailout money previously provided to AIG and to others and will almost certainly need to add more, much more to address the continuing credit crisis. ("Special Report," 3/16).
----
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA): "The boneheads are the people in the previous administration and this administration who gave out over $170 billion of our money and did not, in fact, do what anyone else giving money does, which is ensure that the money is not a conduit for simply paying out bonuses" ("Hardball," MSNBC, 3/16).

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer: "This is not so much an economic issue as a psychological and a political issue. Economically, if you add up all the bonuses, it's less than 1/10 of one percent of the bailout to AIG alone, so it's lunch money. Psychologically, it's important because there's outrage in the country, and ... unless there's an appeasement in the anger in the population who are going to have to support the next bailout, which is going to be a trillion dollars, the money won't be made available, Congress will deny it. So that's why you get the president heaping opprobrium on these miscreants who made the bad deals and now are getting the bonuses."

More Krauthammer: "I'm all in favor of keeping this heaping opprobrium. I would deny them the bonuses if possible. I would be for an exemplary hanging or two. Have it in Times Square, invite Madame Defarge. You borrow a guillotine from the French and we could have a party. If that's what it takes to maintain popular support, let's do it. But it's not going to change anything economically" ("Special Report," FNC, 3/16).

CNN's Dobbs: "I'm calling for Liddy to be fired. I'm calling for the Board of AIG to be fired here tonight, and looking forward ... we can't afford in this country any longer to tolerate corporate leaders who don't understand the basic values of this country ... ("Lou Dobbs Tonight," 3/16).
Reference Here>>

Why is anyone surprised? Barack Obama never was an executive in charge of anything throughout his entire career.

He became educated, earned a law degree, edited a law review publication, worked as a foot soldier for ACORN (an organization that is funded, in part, by the federal government to support socialism projects to people who look for handouts as opposed to a hand up on which one can become self-sustaining), became friends with a group of radical educators and priests, taught constitutional law at a college, ran for and secured a state senate office in Illinois, then waged an uncontested campaign to become a Senator from the state of Illinois to the federal government, where he served 144 days before he declared and ran for President of the country full time until he became elected.

And now, as President, with the help of a Democrat political party lead congress and three Republican political party Senators, he has been successful at committing each and every household to an additional $18,500+ in spending debt. He has defined his presidency by throwing taxpayer money at continuing, and historically, self-correcting economic problems while re-labeling our effort to stop islamofascism created violence that continues to kill thousands of innocent citizens … from an act of ongoing war to a police action.

The economy has lost over 40% of its value since he was voted into office (over 15% in these last two months), South Korea and Iran threaten to launch rockets and make nuclear bombs, Russia is moving to control the flow of oil out of their region of the world while President Barack Obama reverses the opening up of off-shore drilling activity in our own country, Riots are breaking out in Pakistan, and Barack Obama pledges $900,000,000 (nine-hundred million dollars) of United States taxpayer money to rebuild infrastructure in Hamas (a recognized islamofascism ideology based terrorist organization) controlled Gaza.

All of this chaos and we have only witnessed this President’s first two months in the office of executive leadership.

Circular logic … dizzying, isn’t it?

The “I”- “Me”, uh, Barack, uh, Oba, uh, ma

Barack Obama sits down to speak with the editorial board of The Military Times. Image Credit: YouTube Account, pe11201 - Video by M. Scott Mahaskey / Military Times Staff

The “I”- “Me” (monopolistic thinking of), uh, Barack, uh, Oba, uh, ma

Somebody please ask junior Senator Barack Obama what he means when he says that contract worker support of our war effort should be just used for kitchenwork and automobile repair. Does Barack Obama actually know what kind of invaluable service outfits like Blackwater perform in the support of our efforts in ferreting out zeolots who want to do harm to the Iraqi citizens we are trying to liberate?

This is what Barack said to The Military Times, July 2, 2008:

There is room for private contractors to work in the mess hall, providing basic supplies and doing some logistical work that might have been done in-house in the past. I am troubled by the use of private contractors when it comes to potential armed engagements... I think it creates some difficult morale issues when you've got private contractors getting paid 10 times what an Army private's getting paid for work that carries similar risks…

Does Barack even understand what Blackwater does ... they are NOT mercenaries. They do not replace the activity of our armed forces but actually complement the effort through special tasks best left to security professionals.

But Barack continued:

… When it comes to our special forces, what we've seen is that it's a potential drain of some of our best-trained special forces, and you can't blame them if they can make so much more working for Blackwater than they can working as a master sergeant. That, I think is a problem.

Q: Blackwater would argue that they're a bargain: that you get a higher level of ability, that they can put people there, they can keep top-level talent there perpetually.

A: I am not arguing that there are never going to be uses for private contractors in some circumstances. What I am saying is if you start building a military premised on the use of private contractors and you start making decisions on armed engagement based on the availability of private contractors to fill holes and gaps that over time you are, I believe, eroding the core of our military's relationship to the nation and how accountability is structured. I think you are privatizing something that is what essentially sets a nation-state apart, which is a monopoly on violence. And to set those kinds of precedents, I think, will lead us over the long term into some troubled waters.

Barack Obama doesn’t know… what he doesn’t know. What does he mean when he says I think you are privatizing something that is what essentially sets a nation-state apart, which is a monopoly on violence. WHAT?!

War is war and to be truthful, there is no monopoly of violence when bullets start flying or when people are strapping bombs to themselves to blow innocent citizens up. What does exist is an environment where specialized talents are placed into use to enable our effort to push back and win more efficiently and effectively. This is not much different than how American Rules football is put together, where specialized talent helps to move the ball down the field.

The same interview showed that Barack also does not understand the difference between an ally and an enemy.

He continued, And if you look at costs and benefits and if you look at the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, overall I think it was a bad decision on the part of our commander in chief.
----
Those are the kinds of decisions that are going to be coming up in the future.

We're going to have to make decisions about Iran, we're going to have to make decisions about Pakistan.

The capacity of the next commander in chief to forge alliances so that we can, when we act militarily, act in the ways that we did during the first Gulf War, a war in which, not only were our casualties kept low, but it effectively cost us almost nothing in terms of taxpayer dollars.

For us to think in a forward-looking way about energy, and understanding the strategic geopolitical implications of our failure to implement a serious energy strategy in this country.

Our ability to engage the Muslim world in a serious way so that we are tamping down anti-American sentiment even as we recognize that there is always going to be an element of extremism that can only be dealt with militarily.

Pakistan is an ally … Iran is an enemy. Also, what happened to Mr. Negotiation when he now comes out and says - Our ability to engage the Muslim world in a serious way so that we are tamping down anti-American sentiment … is this type of comment an example of his famous promise of “CHANGE”?

We, at MAXINE, must add that Barack has become increasing difficult to listen to . He used the “uh” transition filler eleven times in a single 90-second segment of this interview (as observed by Hugh Hewitt on his program this afternoon). I do not care if this becomes Obama's first term or Carter's Second Term if Barack gets into office ... four years of listening to him alone without a teleprompter will ruin the country.

The audio of this interview is very telling as to the level of what the junior Senator Barack Obama does NOT know.

Additional proof on how hard it is to listen to Senator Barack Obama - he says "uh" nine, or ten times in this fifty-five second clearification of his position on Iraq (some would say flip-flop).

Video Credit: YouTube account 3873uj201, added July 07, 2008

Quoted & Comments At Gateway Pundit:
Gateway Pundit: And, Here's Obama's Gobbly-Gook, Mumble-Jumble, "What the H*ll Is He Talking About?" -Video Clip of the Day#comments