Category Archives: Government
Hearing Voices
President Obama had this to say about his shellacking last week:
“To everyone who voted, I want you to know that I hear you. To the two-thirds of voters who chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you, too.”
Jared Rizzi of Sirius XM was curious about the nonvoting voices Obama hears. Rizzi asked WH spokesman Josh Earnest if the president is “leader of a coalition that doesn’t vote?”.
Voices
Based on Obama’s obsession with rule by fiat he does appear driven by voices that don’t vote. He insists he’ll impose immigration reform by executive action if Congress doesn’t give him what he wants right now. Speaker Boehner, a voice for those who do vote, says that would “poison the well”.
Maybe well poisoning is the objective. In 2010 Obama told latinos to punish our enemies and reward our friends. After all, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough tells us Washington would “work better if Obama has his way”.
Harry Reid’s Desk
A year ago President Obama said, “If you don’t like a particular policy, if you don’t like a particular president, go out there and argue your position, win an election.”
And so it came to pass.
Now that his party has lost the Senate, Obama says he’s willing to listen to Republican ideas – if they have any. Whether he is or they do remains to be seen. But they have had some ideas in the past. Those ideas were packaged into about 350 House Resolutions and passed on to the Senate where they sit in Harry Reid’s desk.
The way Mitch McConnell sees it Reid protected the president from legislation he didn’t like by not bringing bills to his desk.
The New York Times, in January, called Harry a brute.
Politifact, however, says some of those bills are simply caught up in committee. Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post says it’s not at all unusual for Harry Reid to have 300 bills to be stuffed in his drawers.
Not About Him
Well, it’s finally not about him. That was President Obama’s reaction to the Republican wave that swept Democratic governors and senators out to sea.
He said the voters’ message is that they want to “get stuff done” and “make Washington work”.
Daniel Henninger sees it differently. He thinks the “labor force participation rate” killed the Dems:
Read between the lines of this paragraph in the federal government’s October employment report, on the eve of the election:
“In September, 2.2 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.”
Henninger says the average economic growth rate since WWII is 3.3%:
Here are the growth rates for each year of the Obama presidency (World Bank data):
2009: -2.8%; 2010: 2.5%; 2011: 1.8%; 2012: 2.8%; 2013: 1.9%
You preside over that performance, you lose. The 2014 growth uptick arrived too late to save the Democrats.
About Him
Before the election Obama said it would be about him, his policies, actually. Now he says it was about Republicans working with him. My friend Steve Kelly nailed the Obamian Attitude with this cartoon. Click the thumbnail.
Obama Policies Lose Senate
Hog-castrator, and Taylor Swift-look-alike, Joni Earnst put Republicans in control of the U.S. Senate with her victory in Iowa last night.
Six years ago first term senator Barack Obama accepted his party’s presidential nomination in front of fake Greek columns and 70,000 true believers in Denver. Two weeks ago he said that he’s not on the ballot in this election but his policies are. And so they were.
Obama Policies
The Washington Post said yesterday this election was all about Obama.
Even the president’s Illinois home state governor, Pat Quinn, went down in flames. (By the way that’s Valerie Jarrett in the picture, not Joni Ernst.)
Russian Bombers
NATO fighter jets scrambled last week as Russian bombers probed European airspace. US officials think President Putin is making a “show of force”:
“It’s concerning because it’s moving in the wrong direction,” said one U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the air activity publicly. “It’s not helping to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine. It’s not helping to improve relations between NATO and Russia. It’s not helping anybody.”
Also last week a NASA resupply rocket for the International Space Station suffered a “catastrophic anomaly“. Normal people say it blew up. The rocket used a 40 year old Russian engine. The U.S. relies on Russia.com for all manned space travel needs.
Update: It was a bad week for private sector space flight says, National Post. The Russian engine powered an Antares rocket designed by Orbital Sciences. NASA hopes to outsource payload flights to private companies like Orbital Sciences.
A Virgin Galactic rocket also blew up last week killing the co-pilot. Virgin is planning to offer sub-orbital flights to private paying customers.
