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Tag: Obama

  • Obama faces growing to-do list in 2010

    Top of the list are.
    Economy
    Health care
    Unemployment
    Terrorism
    Homeland Security.
    Foreign policy
    These are not necessarily in the order of priority. All these have to be tackled simultaneously.
    On the economic front expenses, especially conspicuous consumption has to be curbed, Deficit financing to be reduced. Small and medium businesses have to be given priority in credit. Corporations that deal with non infrastructural products need to be discouraged. Off shore employment has to be reduced by offering tax concessions and subsidies. Import of oil must be less. Agriculture is to be accorded priority. Protective import is needed. Banks must be encouraged to lend to small businesses and individuals(for essential purchases)Extra tax must be levied on use of credit card. Savings must be given incentive by higher interest rates.
    Health Care .Instead of going ahead with a new Agency to handle Health care, which will duplicate the work being already carried out, the existing Agencies must be made to coordinate better.
    On terrorism. Visa regulations must be tightened especially from suspect countries. Granting of bail for those arrested for terrorist activity must be dispensed with. Suspected ethnic communities must be under vigorous scanner.
    Fighting terrorism in alien land is not advisable. Better leave it to the Countries concerned and tighten Homeland Security.
    On Foreign policy keep China under check, challenge North Korea, develop cordial relations with Russia and India. Leave Pakistan and Afghanistan to their fate and protect US interest by working closely with India and Russia and Japan.
    EU must be left alone as they are charting their own course.
    In short concentrate more on the domestic front.

    CNN) — President Obama enters 2010 facing many of the problems he vowed to confront during his first year, along with a handful of new responsibilities.
    The president returned Monday from a Hawaiian vacation intended to provide some down time, but with the Christmas Day terror incident, there was little time for rest and relaxation. While on vacation, he tacked on an overhaul of the intelligence community to his already-full agenda.
    Obama met Monday with Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan. He also scheduled a Tuesday meeting with his national security team to discuss how to plug holes in aviation security.
    Republicans have blasted the administration’s handling of the failed attack, with former Vice President Dick Cheney accusing the president of pretending the nation is not at war.
    Brennan, who advises the president on counterterrorism issues, all but called Cheney a liar this weekend.
    Video: Too much on Obama’s plate? Video: Kean: Christmas attack like 9/11 Video: Senators spar over Obama pick
    RELATED TOPICS
    Barack Obama
    Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
    Terrorism
    “Either the vice president is willfully mischaracterizing this president’s position, both in terms of language he uses and the actions he’s taken, or he’s ignorant of the facts,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
    But there are troubling new questions for the administration, such as the president’s plan to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That plan includes sending some detainees back to Yemen, a place that’s become a haven for former Gitmo prisoners.
    The White House believes it was in Yemen that terrorists plotted with Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day.
    Republican Sen. Jim DeMint said he worries the country is losing its focus on security.
    “[Obama’s] been completely distracted by other things … and he is not focused on building security and intelligence apparatus of our country,” the South Carolina senator said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
    The Bush administration made a “huge mistake” by sending Yemenis from Guantanamo back, DeMint said. “We can’t make that mistake again. So it’s not just about this administration. It’s about losing our focus on security. And I’m afraid politics and political correctness has become front and center of this debate.”
    Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill disagreed with DeMint, saying she thinks Obama has “focused like a laser on how to keep this country safe.” The Missouri senator pointed to Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan as evidence he is “building up our intelligence community, not diminishing it.”
    Former 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that domestic concerns like the economy and health care have been a distraction from the threat of terrorism.
    “They weren’t giving this enough attention,” Kean said. “It’s understandable, it’s not acceptable.”
    But Kean said he now thinks that the threat has the administration’s attention: “The president now is saying the right things, and I believe he’ll do the right thing.”
    Despite the criticism, the White House insists it wants to finish the job in the war against al Qaeda.
    As Obama juggles his other priorities, such as health care, economic reform and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Sen. Daniel Inouye, a close ally, says he’s trying to do too much.
    “I think he has done exceedingly well, although as one who has been there for 50 years now, he is pushing himself too hard,” said Inouye, D-Hawaii.
    Inouye, who’s served in the Senate with 10 presidents, said he reminded Obama months ago that the campaign is over.
    In some ways, the first year resembled a campaign, with the president barnstorming the country to sell the largest economic recovery and health care plans in history.
    Last April, Obama acknowledged the weight of the tasks before him.
    “I’d love if these problems were coming at us one at a time instead of five or six at a time. It’s more than most Congresses and most presidents have to deal with in a lifetime. But we have been called to govern in extraordinary times,” he said.
    The president entered office with widespread approval, and while his ratings have dropped, there’s something to be said for striking while the iron is hot.
    “He came in with sky-high approval ratings, and if he was going to get anything done, it was going to happen this year,” said Mark Preston, CNN’s political editor.
    Inouye said 2010 will be about resetting priorities.
    “The second year will be one where the first year will have to be clarified,” he said.

  • Obama presses security overhaul, Nigerian indicted

    One must remember the enormous odds the intel.Agencies face when fighting a faceless enemy.While there face is unknown to the Agencies, terrorists know all the moves of the Establishment, thanks to media.However, ego clashes of Heads of Agencies and mis/non communication could have been avoided.Central Nodal Agency,Homeland Security should have coordinated better.
    Obama need not have lowered their morale in public for political expediency.

    U.S. President Barack Obama is “not patient” and is demanding immediate changes in airline security, the top U.S. military officer said on Wednesday, as a grand jury indicted a Nigerian man for trying to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day.

    Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there was concern that potential extremists could be inspired by the bombing attempt blamed on 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

    Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the attempt, one of the most serious U.S. security breaches and intelligence breakdowns since the September 11 attacks.

    “Certainly there is the concern that this would bring more, generate more support from young males who might be on the fence about what to do with their lives,” Mullen said.

    A grand jury in Michigan indicted Abdulmutallab on six counts, including attempted murder of the other 289 passengers and crew on board the plane, and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He faces life in prison, if convicted.

    The bomb, which Abdulmutallab has told investigators was given to him by al Qaeda in Yemen, contained the highly explosive ingredients Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate, or PETN, and Triacetone Triperoxide, or TATP, the indictment said.

    U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder held out the possibility of others being charged, saying, “Anyone we find responsible for this alleged attack will be brought to justice using every tool — military or judicial — available to our government.”

    Jitters have gripped the U.S. travel industry in the aftermath of the bombing attempt. In the latest security scare, an unruly passenger on a Hawaii-bound airliner on Wednesday prompted the pilot to return the plane to Portland, Oregon, escorted by two military fighter jets.

    Obama called the Detroit incident a potentially disastrous “screw-up” by the intelligence community during a two-hour meeting with his national security team on Tuesday.

    “The president — he’s not patient about this at all. These changes have to be made immediately,” Mullen told university students at a seminar in Washington.

    Obama will address the issue again in a public statement on Thursday, when the White House will release a review that will make recommendations on plugging holes in security, including changes in passenger screening and terrorism watch lists.

    “The review will simply identify and make recommendations as to what was lacking and what needs to be strengthened,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, adding it would be “comprehensive.”

    INTELLIGENCE SHARING

    U.S. spy agencies and the State Department had information about Abdulmutallab but they never pieced it together to put him on a no-fly list. Instead, passengers and crew subdued the Nigerian bomb suspect as he tried to detonate the device.

    Mullen said part of the problem was intelligence sharing and filtering through the extraordinary amount of data collected by U.S. spy agencies.

    “It does have to do with sharing information and it does have to do with huge bureaucracies. And we collect an extraordinary amount of data,” Mullen said.

    Obama has been lambasted by Republicans who accuse his Democratic administration of being weak on terrorism and unable to fix intelligence gaps that have lingered since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States involving hijacked planes.

    Senior Republican lawmakers on Wednesday called on Obama to take more concrete steps to improve security and challenged the decision to try Abdulmutallab in federal court.

    “All jihadist attackers should be charged as enemy combatants, taken into military custody, interrogated for vital intelligence, and tried in military courts under the laws of armed conflict,” they said in a letter to Obama.

    Since the Christmas bombing attempt, there has been finger- pointing within the U.S. intelligence community, including at the National Counterterrorism Center, created in 2004 to serve as the main repository for counterterrorism intelligence.

    Asked whether people might lose their jobs over the incident, Gibbs said, “I don’t know what the final outcome in terms of hiring and firing will be.”

    “This is a failure that touches across the full waterfront of our intelligence agencies,” he said.

    Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell did not rule out the possibility the review could affect the Defense Department, but added he did not see any readily apparent failings “within this department as to how we should have responded.”

    “As for what this department in particular will do differently, I think that is something that is yet to be determined,” Morrell told reporters.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60342S20100106?feedType=nl&feedName=usmorningdigest

  • Most outrageous comments of 2009

    Outrageous comments are nothing new to the conservative media — one might even call them a defining characteristic. The Most Outrageous Comment of the 2009 came when Fox News host Glenn Beck asserted that Obama is a “racist” who has “exposed himself as a guy” with “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture,” but right-wing media figures made plenty of other unhinged remarks throughout the year:

    Racially charged remarks

    The election of the first black U.S. president led to a slew of racially charged comments that were truly outrageous:

    Limbaugh on Obama: “We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles … because his father was black”
    Jesse Lee Peterson: “I think we all agree that Barack Obama was elected by, mostly by black racists and white guilty people.”
    Criticizing federal response in KY, Quinn claimed Obama “basically sees white people as kind of a you know, sort of an evil fact of life”
    Savage: Obama is “biggest liar in the history of the presidency,” and he’s “getting away with it… because he’s a man of color”
    Limbaugh: “[I]n Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering”
    Limbaugh: Obama is “the greatest living example of a reverse racist”
    Limbaugh: “Obama’s entire economic program is reparations”
    Bay Buchanan on “quota queen” Sotomayor: “Her whole life was dedicated to demanding special privileges”
    Pat Buchanan: “This has been a country built, basically, by white folks”
    O’Reilly tease: “[S]hould white Americans be concerned about Judge Sotomayor?”
    Quinn to “race-baiting” African-American “ingrates”: “get on your knees” and “kiss the American dirt” because slavery brought them to U.S.
    Savage declares: “The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America”
    War on the poor

    In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, some right-wing media figures attacked the poor:

    Cunningham on the poor: “They’re poor because they lack values, ethics, and morals”
    Cunningham on Section 8 housing: “I like keeping all those degenerates in one location so we can keep an eye on them”; residents “sit around and fornicate, defecate”
    Bill Cunningham claims stimulus “give[s] ACORN up to $4.2 trillion” and contains “$350 million to hand out condoms and birth control pills so the poor can fornicate like rabbits”
    Limbaugh fill-in Davis: Cash for Clunkers “helps your shiftless cousin buy more meth,” lets you buy “carton of Luckys”
    Boortz: People living in Katrina trailers, Section 8 housing and on welfare shouldn’t be allowed to vote
    Boortz welfare rant — “human parasitic garbage lining up to get their applications to loot”
    War on women

    Right-wing media figures also engaged in sexism and downright misogyny:

    Quinn calls Pelosi “Bolshevik Bitch with a Mallet”
    Limbaugh: If Pelosi “wants fewer births, I have the way to do this and it won’t require any contraception: You simply put pictures of Nancy Pelosi … in every cheap motel room. … That will keep birthrates down because that picture will keep a lot of things down”
    Limbaugh airs clip of Hillary Clinton, asks his listeners, “Doesn’t that remind you of your first, and maybe your second, both, your ex-wives?”
    Limbaugh on Pelosi: “The third person in line for the presidency in this country is a complete airhead”
    Limbaugh: “[Granholm’s] a ditz. Pelosi is a ditz. Obama is a menace and a danger.”
    Savage claims that “as a result of women on Naval ships,” they have become “floating brothel ”
    sLimbaugh: Hillary Clinton wasn’t let into Marines because “they didn’t have uniforms or boots big enough to fit that butt and those ankles”
    Post’s Milbank, flashing Hillary Clinton photo: “We won’t tell you who’s getting a bottle of Mad Bitch” beer
    Quinn on Pelosi: “This bitch is trying to get us to lose the war!”
    Ingraham: “Nancy Pelosi basically did everything except sell her own body” to pass health care reform bill
    Beck on Landrieu: “We’re with a high-class prostitute”
    Echoing Beck, Limbaugh claims Landrieu “may be the most expensive prostitute in the history of prostitution”
    Attacks on GLBT community

    In addition to a sustained assault on Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, right-wingers made outrageous attacks based on sexual orientation:

    Savage: “One of the reasons America is suffering right now is because so many people who are gay have not had children. … Some of the most wonderful genetic material is going to waste”
    Hannity and “Great American” panelists fearmonger about Jennings “indoctrinating” children, “promoting homosexuality”
    Limbaugh: “[W]e all know that Barney [Frank] patrols Uranus”
    Quinn:”[T]the last time I checked, two guys doing the bone dance with Mr. Sphincter was not going to produce the next generation of children”
    Robertson: Many “made homosexual because of a coach or a guidance counselor or some other male figure who has abused them”
    O’Reilly again claims that if gay marriage was legalized, “you could have married a duck”
    Pat Robertson suggests “ultimate conclusion” of legal same-sex marriage is legal polygamy, bestiality, child molestation, pedophilia
    Revolutionary and paranoid rhetoric

    Right-wingers frequently employed paranoid and revolutionary rhetoric and suggested that progressives, including Obama and Democrats in Congress, were betraying America.

    Morris: “Those crazies in Montana who say, ‘We’re going to kill ATF agents because the U.N.’s going to take over’ — well, they’re beginning to have a case”
    Limbaugh: “Thank you President Obama. Thank you CNN. You are doing the job that everybody expects of you, taking every tradition and institution that defined this country’s greatness and trying to rip it to shreds”
    Limbaugh claims White House is “[p]erfectly timed, perfectly programmed, perfectly educated to destroy capitalism … and they’re in the process of doing it”
    Fox’s Charles Payne: “[O]ne day, I think that we are heading toward a one-world sort of government. I think Obama probably likes that”
    Limbaugh attacks state of Maine, says “saw the state off and let it float out to sea”
    Claiming Obama is “letting our troops literally bleed and die” in Afghanistan, Beck suggests he will “pay for it” in afterlife
    Savage: “[L]ikelihood is very high” that “martial law will be declared” after “equivalent of the Reichstag fire” occurs
    Savage: “There are internment camps being planned” and the National Guard is going to “run” them
    Limbaugh: “if we had any good luck, Honduras would send some people here and help us get our government back”
    Beck guest Scheuer: “The only chance we have as a country right now is” for bin Laden to “detonate a major weapon” in U.S.
    Beck: “[I]f we don’t have some common sense, we’re facing the destruction of our country… it’s coming”
    Rodgers: A “few million dead Americans” will “wake up” public “to the fact that they have elected an anti-American President”
    CBS golf analyst Feherty: “[I]f you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it … there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.”
    Morris on Obama’s foreign policy: “If you’re an enemy of America… he’s in bed with you… The way to get popular with this administration is to be an enemy of the United States”
    Beck: “You can’t convince me that the founding fathers wouldn’t allow you to secede”
    Beck imitates Obama pouring gasoline on “average American”; says: “President Obama, why don’t you just set us on fire? … We didn’t vote to lose the Republic”
    Newsmax columnist: Military coup “to resolve the ‘Obama problem’ ” is not “unrealistic”
    Birthers

    Conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth certificate were conclusively debunked during the 2008 campaign, but that didn’t stop several right-wing commentators from continuing to push the smear:

    Limbaugh: “Barack Obama has yet to have to prove he’s a citizen. All he’d have to do is show a birth certificate”
    Dobbs asks: “[S]hould he produce his birth certificate — the long form, the real deal? Should he be a little more forthcoming? … What is the deal here? I’m starting to think we have a — we have a document issue. Do you suppose he’s un — no, I won’t even use the word undocumented. It wouldn’t be right.”
    Liddy claims Obama “born” in Kenya; warns guest to “to avoid the corpses of the illegal aliens” while passing through desert
    Limbaugh: “God does not have a birth certificate. Neither does Obama.”
    Hannity: Given his father’s birthplace, what’s wrong with asking if Obama has a “legitimate birth certificate?”
    Nazis and fascists and communists, oh my!

    There were far more attacks on Obama and other progressives as Nazis, fascists, communists, Marxists, socialists, and similar labels than we have space for, so here are some of the most ridiculous examples:

    Days after decrying those who say Democrats are “trying to turn us into communist Russia,” Beck claimed Obama “has Marxist tendencies”
    Beck continues long history of invoking Nazis by comparing Fox to the Jews during the Holocaust
    Quinn agrees with caller that Democrats “took over the country without firing a shot,” adds “so did Hitler”
    Savage: Obama “is a neo-marxist fascist dictator in the making”
    In CNBC host Cramer’s “U.S.S.A.”: “Comrade[]” Obama is a “Bolshevik” who is “taking cues from Lenin”
    Limbaugh: “Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate”
    Hannity suggests SCOTUS nominee will be “somebody extremely radical” since Obama’s policies have been “radically left” and “socialist”
    Dick Morris’ self-confessed conspiracy theory: Obama “wants his plan to fail…so that he can make the case for bank nationalization and vindicate his dream of a socialist economy”
    Other

    Plenty of other remarks defied categorization but certainly merited mention among the Most Outrageous Comments of 2009:

    Limbaugh likens Democrats to murderers, rapists, and “this Muslim guy” that “offed his wife’s head”
    Limbaugh on EFCA: “One day Tony Soprano will walk in with a lead pipe and he will start beating people upside the head to vote to unionize”
    Ingraham guest host Bruce on the Obamas: “We’ve got trash in the White House”
    Beck portrays Obama, Democrats as vampires “going after the blood of our businesses,” suggests “driv[ing] a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers”
    Beck: “Nobel Peace Prize should be turned down by Barack Obama and given … to the Tea Party goers and the 9-12 Project”
    Perino: “We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term”
    Fox’s Wallace on ACORN booking: I wish we “were going to have the prostitute [Giles] because she’s pretty cute”
    Beck encourages “day of Fast and Prayer for the Republic” on Yom Kippur
    Dobbs on Howard Dean: “[H]e’s a bloodsucking leftist — I mean, you gotta put a stake through his heart to stop this guy”
    Beck jokes about “put[ting] poison” in Nancy Pelosi’s wine
    Brandishing bat, Beck declares, “Anyone not on board, look out, because you too could be the next victim of the killing spree”
    http://mediamatters.org/research/200912210033

  • Obama presses ‘fat-cat bankers’ to lend, but has no real leverage

    It would have been better if he had also advised them to lend based on performance and repayment capacity of the loan seekers to avoid another bail out.
    President Obama summoned the nation’s top financial executives to the White House today for a little jaw-boning on how they can help rebuild the economy.

    The day before, in an interview on “60 Minutes,” Mr. Obama called them “fat-cat bankers.” On Monday, they were at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – or most of the 12 were, as three were fogged in in New York and had to participate via conference call.

    Obama’s point: We bailed you out, now you do your job. Specifically, he wants these financial institutions to boost lending to small businesses, a key engine of economic recovery.

    Obama put it this way after the session: “My main message in today’s meeting was very simple: that America’s banks received extraordinary assistance from American taxpayers to rebuild their industry – and now that they’re back on their feet, we expect an extraordinary commitment from them to help rebuild our economy.”

    Earlier in the day, Citigroup announced that it would repay $20 billion in aid and leave the government’s financial protection program.

    Obama says he called on the bankers to find “ways to help creditworthy small and medium-size businesses get the loans that they need to open their doors, grow their operations, and create new jobs.”

    But bankers, according to Obama, say they “face a shortage of creditworthy individuals and businesses.”

    So did the meeting advance the ball at all on the nation’s credit issues? Obama called it a “candid and productive meeting,” but he did not come forth with any concrete deliverables. There were hints that the assembled men were telling the president what he wanted to hear – such as when they said they supported financial regulatory reform.

    But, as Obama went on to note, “there’s a gap between “what I’m hearing here in the White House and the activities of lobbyists on behalf of these institutions or associations of which they’re a member up on Capitol Hill.”

    Obama added that he “urged them to close that gap, and they assured me that they would make every effort to do so.”

    Ultimately, the session may have been in a vein similar to the jobs summit held at the White House Dec. 3, a high-profile effort to show the public the administration is doing something about high unemployment and the challenges homeowners face in refinancing their homes.

    Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, argues that the banks – actually, the regional banks, which sell their loans to the big banks – will start lending again anyway, and the situation will sort itself out.

    “They’re going to return to lending anyway, and the president is going to declare victory,” says Mr. Morici. “Today was a show.”

    At least the bankers traveled (or tried to travel) on commercial airlines, not private jets, the New York Daily News pointed out.

    Last year, the CEOs of the big three US automakers flew to Washington in private jets to ask for taxpayer money. That didn’t play well with Congress or the public.
    http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2009/1214/Obama-presses-fat-cat-bankers-to-lend-but-has-no-real-leverage
    —

  • FOX News Poll: Is Obama Corrupt?

    Odd question and true answer.
    The fair and balanced folks at FOX asked respondents in a poll a pretty interesting question. Post Tools
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    Most of the questions in the FOX News poll released yesterday are pretty normal. Many gauge general approval and disapproval of Obama, key members of his staff, and the administration’s general policies. And then there’s a a few odd-ball questions such as, “Have you ever crashed a party?” (20 percent of Dems have, compared to 16% of Republicans and 17% of independents.)

    But no question elicits more head-scratching than the seventeeth: “What do you think President Obama would like to do with the extra bank bailout money — save it for an emergency, spend it on government programs that might help him politically in 2010 and 2012, or return it to taxpayers?”

    In all truth, I had to read this woozy a few times over to get what, exactly, they were trying to skew in respondents’ answers. But it’s now clear that FOX essentially gave people the following three options:

    A) Will Obama save extra bank bailout money for an emergency?

    B) Will Obama spend extra bank bailout money to help himself politically?

    C) Will Obama return the extra bank bailout money to taxpayers?

    It’s not so hard to see which one of the three options isn’t like the other. The screwy one — option B — is openly leading, suggesting Obama would spend the money on government programs only to grow his own electoral capital. In other words, the only reason he would spend the money on public programs is because he is corrupt.

    More people in every category — Democrats, Republicans, independents — picked B.