Obama - "Behind the Mask"

June 15, 2009 - Subject: Dr. Charles Krauthammer

Dr. Charles Krauthammer spoke to the Center for the American Experiment. 

1.  Mr. Obama is a very intellectual, charming individual.  He is not to be underestimated.  He is a ‘cool customer’ who doesn’t show his emotions.  It’s very hard to know what’s ‘behind the mask.’  Taking down the Clinton dynasty from a political neophyte was an amazing accomplishment.  The Clintons still do not understand what hit them.  Obama was in the perfect
place at the perfect time.

2.  Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan and Clinton.  He has a way of making you think he’s on your side, agreeing with your position, while doing the opposite.  Pay no attention to what he SAYS; rather, watch what he DOES!

3.  Obama has a ruthless quest for power.  He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, including dismantling capitalism.  He can’t be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along.  He has a heavy hand, and wants to ‘level the playing field’ with income redistribution and punishment to the achievers of
society.  He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada .

4.  His three main goals are to control ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION, and NATIONAL HEALTHCARE by the Federal government.  He doesn’t care about the auto or financial services industries, but got them as an early bonus.  The cap and trade will add costs to everything and stifle growth.  Paying for FREE college education is his goal.  Most scary is his healthcare program,
because if you make it FREE and add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type, single-payer system, the costs will go through the roof.  The only way to control costs is with massive RATIONING of services, like in Canada .  God forbid.

5.  He’s surrounded himself with mostly far-left academic types.  No one around him has ever even run a candy store.  But, they’re going to try and run the auto, financial, banking, and other industries.  This obviously can’t work in the long run.  Obama’s not a socialist; rather, he’s a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution.  He ran as a moderate, but will govern from the hard left.  Again, watch what he does; not what he says.

6.  Obama doesn’t really see himself as President of the United States, but more as a ruler over the world.  He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate and coordinate various countries and their agendas.  He sees moral equivalency in all cultures.  His apology tour in Germany and England was a prime example of how he sees America, as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made
errors.  This is the first President ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies!

7.  He’s now handing out goodies.  He hopes that the bill (and pain) will not ‘come due’ until after he’s reelected in 2012.  He’d like to blame all problems on Bush from the past, and hopefully his successor in the future.   He has a huge ego, and Dr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcissist.

8.  Republicans are in the wilderness for a while, but will emerge strong.   We’re ‘pining’ for another Reagan, but there will never be another like him.  Krauthammer believes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Bobby Jindahl (except for his terrible speech in February) are the future of the party.  Newt Gingrich is brilliant, but has baggage.  Sarah Palin is sincere and intelligent, but needs to really be seriously boning up on facts and info if she’s to be a serious candidate in the future.  We need to return to the party of lower taxes, smaller government, personal responsibility, strong
national defense, and states’ rights.

9.  The current level of spending is irresponsible and outrageous.  We’re spending trillions that we don’t have.  This could lead to hyper-inflation, depression, or worse.  No country has ever spent themselves into prosperity.  The media are giving Obama, Reid, and Pelosi a pass because they love their agenda.  But, eventually, the bill will come due, and people will realize that the huge bailouts didn’t work, nor will the stimulus package.  These
were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama’s allies, unions, and the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4, above.

10.  The election was over in mid-September when Lehman brothers failed.  Fear and panic swept in, we had an unpopular President, and the war was grinding on indefinitely without a clear outcome.  The people are in pain, and the mantra of ‘change’ caused people to act emotionally.  Any Dem would have won this election; it was surprising it was as close as it was.

11.  In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power.  If it’s under 8%, the Dems continue to roll.  If it’s between 8-10%, it  will be a dogfight.  It will be about the economy.

Obama's Ultimate Agenda

 

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, April 3, 2009

Five minutes of explanation to James Madison, and he'll have a pretty good idea what a motorcar is (basically a steamboat on wheels; the internal combustion engine might take a few minutes more). Then try to explain to Madison how the Constitution he fathered allows the president to unilaterally guarantee the repair or replacement of every component of millions of such contraptions sold in the several states, and you will leave him slack-jawed.

In fact, we are now so deep into government intervention that constitutional objections are summarily swept aside. The last Treasury secretary brought the nine largest banks into his office and informed them that henceforth he was their partner. His successor is seeking the power to seize any financial institution at his own discretion.

Despite these astonishments, I remain more amused than alarmed. First, the notion of presidential car warranties strikes me as simply too bizarre, too comical, to mark the beginning of Yankee Peronism.

Second, there is every political incentive to make these interventions in the banks and autos temporary and circumscribed. For President Obama, autos and banks are sideshows. Enormous sideshows, to be sure, but had the financial meltdown and the looming auto bankruptcies not been handed to him, he would hardly have gone seeking to be the nation's credit and car czar.

Obama has far different ambitions. His goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation's income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax.

Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission.

Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism. (Asked by Charlie Gibson during a campaign debate about his support for raising capital gains taxes -- even if they caused a net revenue loss to the government -- Obama stuck to the tax hike "for purposes of fairness.") The elements are highly progressive taxation, federalized health care and higher education, and revenue-producing energy controls. But first he must deal with the sideshows. They could sink the economy and poison his public support before he gets to enact his real agenda.

The big sideshows, of course, are the credit crisis, which Obama has contracted out to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and the collapse of the U.S. automakers, which Obama seems to have taken on for himself.

That was a tactical mistake. Better to have let the car companies go directly to Chapter 11 and have a judge mete out the bitter medicine to the workers and bondholders.

By sacking GM's CEO, packing the new board, and giving direction as to which brands to drop and what kind of cars to make, Obama takes ownership of General Motors. He may soon come to regret it. He has now gotten himself so entangled in the car business that he is personally guaranteeing your muffler. (Upon reflection, a job best left to the congenitally unmuffled Joe Biden.)

Some find in this descent into large-scale industrial policy a whiff of 1930s-style fascist corporatism. I have my doubts. These interventions are rather targeted. They involve global financial institutions that even the Bush administration decided had to be nationalized and auto companies that themselves came begging to the government for money.

Bizarre and constitutionally suspect as these interventions may be, the transformation of the American system will come from elsewhere. The credit crisis will pass and the auto overcapacity will sort itself out one way or the other. The reordering of the American system will come not from these temporary interventions, into which Obama has reluctantly waded. It will come from Obama's real agenda: his holy trinity of health care, education and energy. Out of these will come a radical extension of the welfare state; social and economic leveling in the name of fairness; and a massive increase in the size, scope and reach of government.

If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: "fair," leveled and social democratic. Obama didn't get elected to warranty your muffler. He's here to warranty your life.

What Andy Rooney DIDN’T say!

The “Andy Rooney’s Political Views” found its way to my inbox again this morning.  I thought I’d seen it before, and also thought I remembered it was a hoax.  So I checked Snopes, and yup, Andy didn’t say these things.  In fact, he not only denies them, he thinks they’re racist, and hateful.

I tend to not agree with Mr. Rooney – assuming there’s validity in the numbers, I believe there’s truth in these statements.  I took a few lines out – some of them don’t belong.

Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer. You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game.

I believe they are called the Boy Scouts for a reason, which is why there are no girls allowed. Girls belong in the Girl Scouts! ARE YOU LISTENING, MARTHA BURKE ?

I think that if you feel homosexuality is wrong, it is not a phobia, it is an opinion.

I have the right 'NOT' to be tolerant of others because they are different, weird, or tick me off.

When 70% of the people who get arrested are black, in cities where 70% of the population is black, that is not racial profiling; it is the Law of Probability.

My father and grandfather didn't die in vain so you can leave the countries you were born in to come over and disrespect ours.

I think the police should have every right to shoot you if you threaten them after they tell you to stop. If you can't understand the word 'freeze' or 'stop' in English, see the above lines.

I don't think just because you were not born in this country, you are qualified for any special loan programs, government sponsored bank loans or tax breaks, etc., so you can open a hotel, coffee shop, trinket store, or any other business.

We did not go to the aid of certain foreign countries and risk our lives in wars to defend their freedoms, so that decades later they could come over here and tell us our constitution is a living document; and open to their interpretations.

I don't hate the rich; I don't pity the poor. I know pro wrestling is fake, but so are movies and television. That doesn't stop you from watching them.

I think Bill Gates has every right to keep every penny he made and continue to make more. If it ticks you off, go and invent the next operating system that's better, and put your name on the building.

It doesn't take a whole village to raise a child right, but it does take a parent to stand up to the kid and smack their little behinds when necessary, and say 'NO!'

I think tattoos and piercing are fine if you want them, but please don't pretend they are a political statement. And, please, stay home until that new lip ring heals. I don't want to look at your ugly infected mouth as you serve me French fries!

I am sick of 'Political Correctness.' I know a lot of black people, and not a single one of them was born in Africa ; so how can they be 'African-Americans'? Besides, Africa is a continent. I don't go around saying I am a European-American because my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was from Europe. I am proud to be from America and nowhere else.
And if you don't like my point of view, tough ...

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG, OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA , AND TO THE REPUBLIC, FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!

It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God.

Therefore I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a problem in having 'In God We Trust' on our money and having 'God' in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Why don't we just tell the 14% to  BE QUIET!!!