Bush vs Obama: Who's Worse?

[3rdnlng]

It was political. Of course it was

 

Now, as to all those other instances where Bush put politics above country....................................................

 

What about those points I made earlier about Obama's many instances when he placed politics above country?

[3rdnlng]

http://scrappleface....-impeach-obama/

 

(2014-08-04) — Because House Republicans have steadfastly refused to impeach President Barack Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) today announced that her caucus would advancearticles of impeachmentagainst the president in early September.

The move comes in the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections, as Democrat fundraising goals outstrip receipts, and some polls show the GOP could recapture the Senate.

“An attack on the president is an attack on all Americans,” Rep. Pelosi said. “Republicans, deep in their hearts, have wanted to impeach President Obama since before he was senator. We Democrats will introduce these articles of impeachment to unmask the true feelings of most Republicans, and to give Democratic lawmakers the opportunity to stand boldly at his side.”

A fundraising letter immediate went out from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee with the subject line, “GOP-Run House Tries to Impeach President Obama!”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest, called the impending impeachment “no surprise given the hostility of Republicans toward America’s first black president.”

“The fact that the Democrats had to launch this impeachment effort,” Earnest said, “is just another example of John Boehner’s do-nothing Republican majority.”

President Obama, informed of his looming impeachment, reportedly said, “Cha-ching.”

Edited August 5, 2014 by 3rdnlng

[DC Tom]

http://scrappleface....-impeach-obama/

 

(2014-08-04) — Because House Republicans have steadfastly refused to impeach President Barack Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) today announced that her caucus would advancearticles of impeachmentagainst the president in early September.

The move comes in the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections, as Democrat fundraising goals outstrip receipts, and some polls show the GOP could recapture the Senate.

“An attack on the president is an attack on all Americans,” Rep. Pelosi said. “Republicans, deep in their hearts, have wanted to impeach President Obama since before he was senator. We Democrats will introduce these articles of impeachment to unmask the true feelings of most Republicans, and to give Democratic lawmakers the opportunity to stand boldly at his side.”

A fundraising letter immediate went out from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee with the subject line, “GOP-Run House Tries to Impeach President Obama!”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest, called the impending impeachment “no surprise given the hostility of Republicans toward America’s first black president.”

“The fact that the Democrats had to launch this impeachment effort,” Earnest said, “is just another example of John Boehner’s do-nothing Republican majority.”

President Obama, informed of his looming impeachment, reportedly said, “Cha-ching.”

 

The problem I have with scrappleface is that their satire is virtually indistinguishable from reality.

[3rdnlng]

The problem I have with scrappleface is that their satire is virtually indistinguishable from reality.

 

It's almost as if the libs are writing it for them.

[B-Man]

The Number of Executive Orders is the Least Interesting Part

by Jonah Goldberg

 

Barack Obama is constantly mocking the House lawsuit by referencing the fact he’s issued the fewest executive orders of any president over the last century. His spin-squad, paid and unpaid, parrots the argument at every turn. My yell-at-the-TV gripe about this has mostly revolved around the fact that the number of executive orders has nothing to do with anything. The president could issue a hundred executive orders a day — about casual Friday dress codes, the need to label food in the West Wing fridge, about how August 15 will hence forth be known as “Wacky Sock Day” — and no one would care. Or he could issue one executive order during his entire presidency. If that one order was about “Wacky Sock Day,” again no one would care. But if he ordered the nationalization of an industry or the rounding up of an ethnic group without trial or the shuttering of media outlets he didn’t like, that one executive order would matter more than all the others combined. He hasn’t done any of those things (though other Democratic presidents have), but the point remains: Quantity isn’t the issue, quality is.

 

Moreover as Andrew Rudalevige at the Washington Post makes clear, the entire issue of executive orders amounts to misdirection. The serious complaint is that Obama is abusing executive powers (which he is) not that he’s abusing executive orders (which he may or may not be). Obama is surely capable of defending himself intelligently. But he and his choir always revert to the mode that his opponents aren’t merely wrong, but that they are laughable idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about.

 

Anyway, the whole post is worth reading. Here’s the beginning:

Edited August 5, 2014 by B-Man

[OCinBuffalo]

So are we still discussing the transcendent, post-partisan, post-racial, post-you, because you simply aren't cool/erudite enough to get it, Barack Obama.....

 

in terms of the utter moron, yet smart enough to fool Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, but not Obama, backwards George W Bush?

 

 

Or....have we now come to terms with the fact that if you have to ask this question at all, given who Barack Obama "is"...

 

 

 

 

your problem most certainly is not George W Bush?

[IDBillzFan]

The one thing you've gotta hand to Barry: he made terrific steps to be the most transparent admin in the history of the WH.

 

To push that, he created a federal website to make federal spending more transparent.

 

The problem, of course, is that after six years, the website was missing almost $620 BILLION that has gone missing to places no one can trace.

 

Among the data missing from the 6-year-old federal website:

 

• The Department of Health and Human Services failed to report nearly $544 billion, mostly in direct assistance programs like Medicare. The department admitted that it should have reported aggregate numbers of spending on those programs.

 

• The Department of the Interior did not report spending for 163 of its 265 assistance programs because, the department said, its accounting systems were not compatible with the data formats required by

USASpending.gov. The result: $5.3 billion in spending missing from the website.

 

• The White House itself failed to report any of the programs it's directly responsible for. At the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is part of the White House, officials said they thought HHS was responsible for reporting their spending.

For more than 22% of federal awards, the spending website literally doesn't know where the money went. The "place of performance" of federal contracts was most likely to be wrong.

 

Think about that. $620 BILLION dollars...gone...unaccounted for...not a trace.

 

Bet ya didn't know you had an extra two grand to blow, didcha?

[3rdnlng]

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/john-bolton-worlds-descending-chaos-under-obama

 

Bolton responded, “It’s just the tip of the iceberg,” pointing out that Putin broadcasted his intentions eight years ago, but was being met by "no effective American or European resistance":

Bolton:

It’s just the tip of the iceberg. Look, Putin gave us strategic warning eight years ago when he said the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20

^th

century. That was a statement right then that he intended to get Russian hegemony in the space of the former Soviet Union.

That’s what he is doing and he is meeting no effective American or European resistance.

Varney then asked Bolton if he agreed that the problem was that the president had “withdrawn from the game”:

Bolton:

I think that’s a large measure of it. Look, what minimal international order and stability there’s been since World War II has been because of American strength, the projection of our power, our system of alliances around the world. International trade, finance, travel, you name it, didn’t get there by accident. And if the United States pulls back, you’re going to have anarchy increasing. You can see that in the Middle East today but signs of it exist everywhere.

[DC Tom]

The one thing you've gotta hand to Barry: he made terrific steps to be the most transparent admin in the history of the WH.

 

To push that, he created a federal website to make federal spending more transparent.

 

The problem, of course, is that after six years, the website was missing almost $620 BILLION that has gone missing to places no one can trace.

 

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Think about that. $620 BILLION dollars...gone...unaccounted for...not a trace.

 

Bet ya didn't know you had an extra two grand to blow, didcha?

 

Actually, that's just $620B not accounted for on the web site.

 

Given that the site isn't even remotely a system of record, and that it relies on government agencies to accurately report income and expenditures to the site (thus, by implication, requires them to give a **** about the site), it's no wonder it's completely !@#$ed up.

 

The true scandal is an administration that thinks "create a web site" will magically fix anything and everything. Too bad we weren't paying attention closely enough this first time.

[IDBillzFan]

The true scandal is an administration that thinks "create a web site" will magically fix anything and everything. Too bad we weren't paying attention closely enough this first time.

 

" 'Create a web site' is what they say to keep it fresh after countless times of saying 'We're going to have a meeting to discuss this.' "

[B-Man]

Original Article

 

‘Serious limitations’: Gov’t watchdogs unite in letter slamming Obama administration transparency

 

Dozens of government watchdogs are sounding the alarm that the Obama administration is stonewalling them, in what is being described as an unprecedented challenge to the agencies they're supposed to oversee.

 

Forty-seven of the government's 73 independent watchdogs known as inspectors general voiced their complaints in a letter to congressional leaders this week. They accused several major agencies -- the Justice Department, the Peace Corps and the chemical safety board -- of imposing "serious limitations on access to records."

 

The inspectors general are now appealing to Congress to help them do their jobs uncovering waste, fraud, and mismanagement.

"Agency actions that limit, condition, or delay access thus have profoundly negative consequences for our work: they make us less effective, encourage other agencies to take similar actions in the future, and erode the morale of the dedicated professionals that make up our staffs," they wrote.

 

The letter to the chairmen and ranking members of relevant oversight committees in the House and Senate claimed agencies are withholding information by calling it "privileged."

 

More at link:

[IDBillzFan]

Pulled this article off of RCP today. It's interesting to me that it's taken so many people so long to realize how Obama operates.

 

The Obama gift is, or was, empathy. Every politician since Julius Caesar has known how to do empathy. Bill Clinton summited empathy's Everest with, "I feel your pain." But the Obama style of empathy hasn't matched the office he achieved.

 

It started with all those weird, dropped "g's." A cranial gong goes off when Barack Obamastarts droppin' "g's." The American president who is seen discoursing eloquently at the African leaders summit hits the stump and suddenly he sounds like Gabby Hayes. "Folks like you are havin' a hard time makin' it when the wealthiest are grabbin' it all in for themselves."

 

What is worse, Mr. Obama has used his empathy gift only in one direction—to animate his base against opponents. It worked for him. He won re-election.

 

But the way Mr. Obama talks, and talks, has diminished his authority and credibility. The U.S. has a president who is capable of moving factions with words, but not a people. This is a president without a presidential vocabulary.

 

The 44th president in Kansas City last week: "Stop bein' mad all the time. Stop just hatin' all the time." He is a politician talking his way to an approval rating in the presidential red zone that lies below 40.

[B-Man]

How’s that Nobel Peace Prize Working Out for You?

by Elliot Abrams

 

In the summer of 2014, the climate of international politics is sour: war, terror, confrontations. Negotiations — whether between Iran and the “P5+1,” Egypt and Hamas, or even trade talks among advanced nations — seem to be going nowhere. Democracy is in retreat in Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia; NATO has been severely weakened by the Ukraine crisis; Russian aggression is clear; American prestige and influence have diminished everywhere. And the oceans have not stopped rising! After five and a half years of Obama, not only in America but in much of Europe and Asia there is a palpable sense that the next U.S. presidential election cannot come too soon.

 

With all this in mind, it’s worth remembering with contempt the following lines:

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

 

 

Where’s that from? Tom Friedman in the New York Times? David Ignatius in the Washington Post? Nancy Pelosi at some Beverly Hills fundraiser? Valerie Jarrett at Obama’s birthday party?

 

No: That is the actual Nobel Committee statement of October 9, 2009, revealing that the Great Man was about to get that year’s Nobel Prize for Peace.

 

No amount of sarcasm will quite rise to the level the Nobel boys deserve, and anyway they aren’t listening right now: they are too busy this month denouncing Israel for defending itself. But world politics is so serious, and so depressing these days, that one shouldn’t pass up the chance for a good laugh. Obama did not wish to be seen or judged as a normal American politician; he was above all that, and above crass considerations like national interests. He would heal the nation and the world. Of course in buying that self-regarding Obama nonsense the Nobel committee was trying to insult George W. Bush, but they are stuck with exactly what they said — quoted above.

 

[IDBillzFan]

For a president who doesn't care about photo ops, this is beyond ridiculous and straight into full-on embarrassment.

 

Read here

 

[B-Man]

Well, it would appear whoever took that from behind shot of the other photographers realized where the real story lies.

[DC Tom]

For a president who doesn't care about photo ops, this is beyond ridiculous and straight into full-on embarrassment.

 

Read here

 

 

The press pool usually doesn't get any opportunity to photograph the President in the Oval Office. Allowing even this much exposure is a rarity.

 

Though it would have been less embarrassing to the administration if they'd stuck with the usual policy.

[SoulMan]

How about this, make a list of each of the two's biggest screw ups?

 

Bush:

9/11

Iraq

Katrina

Deregulated market crash

 

Obama:

Slow middle/lower class recovery

Drones

Benghazi

ACA

Negotiating with terrorists

 

Is that about right?

 

Left out:

ObamahusseinOcare - " if you like your dr......."

IRS

Border melt down

VA

$$millions of tax $$ flying to fund raisers $$

Iraq meltdown

Ukraine

$ 7 Trillion added to children's big credit card (got 2 years to go)

- 10 % + erosion of household incomes

$ Trillion stimulus flush

Hope & change

Income redistribution

 

Edited August 8, 2014 by SoulMan

[B-Man]

SMART DIPLOMACY:

 

June 2014: Obama declares world ‘less violent’ than ever.

 

 

August 2014: Asked if Kerry was traveling to help broker a political truce, @PressSec had to ask what country the question was about.

 

 

 

 

.

[Azalin]

http://safeshare.tv/w/fHyHhEzssd

[B-Man]

Did White House press secretary Josh Earnest just tell the biggest whopper of the Obama era?

 

I DUNNO, THERE’S A LOT OF COMPETITION FOR THAT ONE

 

 

 

 

 

The country's in the very best of hands: The sad but common irony that lawbreakers such as Lois Lerner are in positions of law enforcement.

 

 

.