OBAMA MADE MEXICAN MAIDS CRY WHEN HE WAS IN COLLEGE

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Obama Made Mexican Maids Cry in College

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by Michael Paranzino 

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/obama-in-college-made-his-latino-maids-cry
 

The Democrat Media Complex (DMC), desperate to divert attention from Obama’s weak economy, has spent the last week obsessing over GOP presidential nominee-to-be Mitt Romney’s high school days.  

Like other recent Democrat efforts at distraction – Sandra Fluke’s inability to get her male partner to kick in for the $9/month birth control; Mitt Romney’s dog -- the 5,400 words from the Washington Post on Romney’s high school pranks  almost 50 years ago have backfired miserably. Turns out Romney was a typical teen, and the Post really is a joke. But the DMC’s pimping of Haircutgate has also prompted conservatives to reread Obama’s first memoir, Dreams from My Father, with an eye for vetting him as thoroughly as the amateur historians at the Post.
Romney’s mid-1960s high school years are in play? How about Obama’s college years? How about the time Barack Obama so destroyed his college dormitory that it brought his Latino maids to tears! What—you have never heard that reported by the DMC?
Let’s go to Obama’s Dreams (p. 109, paperback copyright 2004), when he is recounting a college party his sophomore year at Occidental College. Friends Reggie and Regina are also at the party, and Reggie proceeds to tell Regina about a wild weekend from Obama’s freshman year, around 1980:

Just as she was finishing, Reggie wandered out of the kitchen, drunker than I was. He came over and threw his arm around my shoulder. “Obama! Great party, man!” He threw Regina a sloppy grin. “Let me tell you, Regina, Obama and me go way back. Should have seen our parties last year, back at the dorms. Man, you remember that time we stayed up the whole weekend? Forty hours, no sleep. Started Saturday morning and didn’t stop till [sic] Monday.”

I tried to change the subject, but Reggie was on a roll. “I’m telling you, Regina, it was wild. When the maids show up Monday morning, we were all still sitting in the hallway, looking like zombies.  Bottles everywhere. Cigarette butts. Newspapers. That spot where Jimmy threw up . . .” Reggie turned to me and started to laugh, spilling more beer on the rug. “You remember, don’t you, man? Shit was so bad, those little old Mexican ladies started to cry. ‘Dios Mio,’ one of ‘em says, and the other one starts patting her on the back. Oh shit, we were crazy….”

Dios Mio indeed. Obama, in college, completely trashed his California dorm room and left it for “Mexican” women to clean. It was so beyond the pale, including vomit, it brought the hard-working women, who had no doubt seen messes every day, to tears—in Barack Obama’s presence—but he did nothing and let the immigrant women clean up his vandalism and destruction.

Hmm. Perhaps the Fourth Estate should report that (and if I were the RNC, I’d do some Spanish-language direct mail on it). Since we are always told it is laziness, not liberal bias, that keeps the DMC from this kind of investigation, here are a few ready-made questions for them to ask Obama about the incident:
1. Have you ever sought out the Mexican maids to apologize?
2. Will you apologize today?
3. When you had your personal maids in Chicago “come in and clean the house once a week,” as you put it in The Audacity of Hope (pages 341-42, copyright 2006), did you treat those maids as you did the ones in California?
4. Were your Chicago maids also Mexicans?
5. Mr. President, what is worse, cutting a kid’s hair in high school or abusing Latino women in college?
Now let’s be clear. The cries of 88 million adults not in the anemic labor market are better reasons to send Obama packing in November than his mistreatment of and indifference to Latina women when he was 20, as deplorable as it was. But if they want to talk Romney’s haircut, let’s talk Obama’s Mexican maids. Makes you wonder how he’ll trash the White House on the night of January 19th, 2013.
Follow Michael on Twitter at @mikeparanzino.

BORN IN KENYA AND RAISED IN INDONESIA AND HAWAII

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The Vetting - Exclusive - Obama's Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: 'Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii'

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by Joel B. Pollak 

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii

Note from Senior Management:

Andrew Breitbart was never a "Birther," and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of "Birtherism." In fact, Andrew believed, as we do, that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961.

Yet Andrew also believed that the complicit mainstream media had refused to examine President Obama's ideological past, or the carefully crafted persona he and his advisers had constructed for him.

It is for that reason that we launched "The Vetting," an ongoing series in which we explore the ideological background of President Obama (and other presidential candidates)--not to re-litigate 2008, but because ideas and actions have consequences.

It is also in that spirit that we discovered, and now present, the booklet described below--one that includes a marketing pitch for a forthcoming book by a then-young, otherwise unknown former president of the Harvard Law Review. 
It is evidence--not of the President's foreign origin, but that Barack Obama's public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.

***
Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama's then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."
The booklet, which was distributed to "business colleagues" in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel.
It also promotes Obama's anticipated first book, Journeys in Black and White--which Obama abandoned, later publishing Dreams from My Father instead.
Obama’s biography in the booklet is as follows (image and text below):

Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.  The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation.   He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.

The booklet, which is thirty-six pages long, is printed in blue ink (and, on the cover, silver/grey ink), using offset lithography. It purports to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Acton & Dystel, which was founded in 1976.

Front cover (outside) - note Barack Obama listed in alphabetical order

Front cover (inside)

Jay Acton no longer represents Obama. However, Jane Dystel still lists Obama as a client on her agency's website.
According to the booklet itself, the text was edited by Miriam Goderich, who has since become Dystel's partner at Dystel & Goderich, an agency founded in 1994. Breitbart News attempted to reach Goderich by telephone several times over several days. Her calls are screened by an automated service that requires callers to state their name and company, which we did. She never answered.
The design of the booklet was undertaken by Richard Bellsey, who has since closed his business. Bellsey, reached by telephone, could not recall the exact details of the booklet, but told Breitbart News that it "sounds like one of our jobs, like I did for [Acton & Dystel] twenty years ago or more."


The parade of authors alongside Obama in the booklet includes politicians, such as former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill; sports legends, such as Joe Montana and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; and numerous Hollywood celebrities.
The reverse side of the page that features Barack Obama includes former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader and early-1990s "boy band" pop sensation New Kids On the Block.



Acton, who spoke to Breitbart News by telephone, confirmed precise details of the booklet and said that it cost the agency tens of thousands of dollars to produce.
He indicated that while "almost nobody" wrote his or her own biography, the non-athletes in the booklet, whom "the agents deal[t] with on a daily basis," were "probably" approached to approve the text as presented.
Dystel did not respond to numerous requests for comment, via email and telephone. Her assistant told Breitbart News that Dystel "does not answer questions about Obama."
The errant Obama biography in the Acton & Dystel booklet does not contradict the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate. Moreover, several contemporaneous accounts of Obama’s background describe Obama as having been born in Hawaii.
The biography does, however, fit a pattern in which Obama--or the people representing and supporting him--manipulate his public persona.
David Maraniss's forthcoming biography of Obama has reportedly confirmed, for example, that a girlfriend Obama described in Dreams from My Father was, in fact, an amalgam of several separate individuals.
In addition, Obama and his handlers have a history of redefining his identity when expedient. In March 2008, for example, he famously declared: "I can no more disown [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother."
Several weeks later, Obama left Wright's church--and, according to Edward Klein's new biography, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, allegedly attempted to persuade Wright not to "do any more public speaking until after the November [2008] election" (51).
Obama has been known frequently to fictionalize aspects of his own life. During his 2008 campaign, for instance, Obama claimed that his dying mother had fought with insurance companies over coverage for her cancer treatments. 
That turned out to be untrue, but Obama has repeated the story--which even the Washington Post called "misleading"--in a campaign video for the 2012 election.
The Acton & Dystel biography could also reflect how Obama was seen by his associates, or transitions in his own identity. He is said, for instance, to have cultivated an "international" identity until well into his adulthood, according to Maraniss.

Regardless of the reason for Obama's odd biography, the Acton & Dystel booklet raises new questions as part of ongoing efforts to understand Barack Obama--who, despite four years in office remains a mystery to many Americans, thanks to the mainstream media.

Larry O'Connor contributed to this report.

THE OBAMA-ROMNEY PLAN TO INCREASE STUDENT-LOAN SUBSIDIES

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The Obama-Romney Education Plan

By James Freeman

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL POLITICAL DIARY ONLINE
Tuesday, 24 April 12

Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum warned that Mitt Romney might not present a "clear contrast" to President Obama in the general election. Judging by Monday's action on the campaign trail, Mr. Santorum had a point.

On a day when the White House urged Congress to increase student-loan subsidies, Mr. Romney had an opportunity to draw a sharp distinction between the expanding the Obama entitlement state and a plan focused on revival of the private economy. Mr. Romney rightly focused his attention on rising unemployment among recent college graduates, as well as the huge federal debt "they're going to have to pay off all their lives."

But instead of laying out plans to create jobs and reduce government spending, the former Massachusetts governor arrived at the same policy conclusion as Barack Obama. "Given the bleak job prospects that young Americans coming out of college face today," said Mr. Romney, "I encourage Congress to temporarily extend the current low rate on subsidized undergraduate Stafford loans. I also hope the president and Congress can pass the extension responsibly that offsets its cost in a way that doesn't harm the job prospects of young Americans."

House members who have been opposing the extension know it is anything but responsible. The Obama-Romney subsidy will keep rates as low as 3.4% for many student borrowers, not that far above the 3.1% rate that the Treasury pays to borrow for the long term. If interest rates spike, taxpayers could be losing on every single new loan, never mind the cost of defaults. And as for offsets, the White House and Senate Democrats favor a new tax on small businesses. If Mr. Romney can't provide a contrast to that idea, Republicans will know they're in for a very long campaign.

HOW TO CELEBRATE EARTH DAY: FLY 2,300 MILES CROSS-COUNTRY FUND RAISING

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NRO Newsletters . . .

Morning Jolt

. . . with Jim Geraghty

April 20, 2012

Obama's Vacations: Fair Game!

The time allotted for my interview with Mitt Romney yesterday was limited, but I think it was spent well. This comment jumped out at me:

NRO: Are you following the GSA scandal? How pervasive is a culture of waste within the federal bureaucracy -- is it endemic or a few bad apples? How would a Romney administration go about changing habits and reducing tolerance for waste and excess? 

ROMNEY: I think the example starts at the top. People have to see that the president is not taking elaborate vacations and spending in a way that is inconsistent with the state of the overall economy and the state of the American family.

I believe that any place such as the GSA, where you find leaders who failed to properly oversee their people and to properly manage resources, those managers have to be replaced. At the GSA, you have leadership taking the Fifth, and that's a pretty clear indication that these folks have not done the job they should have in managing taxpayer dollars and providing transparency.

I can't tell you how pervasive this is in the various agencies of government. What I can tell you is that there is too much government, too many bureaucrats, and too little willingness to send programs back to the states.

I know there are a lot of folks who think that Obama's critics should lay off him for his golf and vacations, but obviously they resonate beyond conservatives -- witness the St. Louis television reporter asking about them -- and they illustrate a certain oddity in the way Obama governs.

Andrew Malcolm seemed to hit this nail best in a column from about a year ago:

What the White House issues are photos of a tieless, laughing Obama, feet up on the historic Oval Office desk, chatting on the phone system that he complains is so decrepit.

What the public sees, while it frets over stubborn unemployment and soaring gas prices, is a diffident Democrat who takes a 17-vehicle motorcade of SUVs and limos to be seen looking at clean-energy cars.

A pontificating president who suggests that one worried commuter buy a new car instead of complaining.

A guy who spent 745 million donated dollars to get into the White House complaining to visiting editors about losing his anonymity and being locked in the presidential bubble that provides service, luxury, power and security unimaginable to most.

To be sure, other presidents have played golf. Maybe not during three simultaneous wars with the awful accompanying human tolls.

Not likely working the putter the day after a colossal combined earthquake/tsunami natural disaster hit as close an ally as Japan. Or canceling a trip to the funeral of Poland's president and hitting the links.

It's one thing to urge Americans to vacation on the troubled Gulf coast last summer, while your wife flies off to Spain with a planeload of pals.

It's another to spend much of Earth Day in a 747 jumbo jet flying 2,300 miles cross-country back from a slew of multimillion-dollar West Coast fundraisers, as Obama did last week.

It's one thing to launch a war against Libya while packing up your wife, daughters, mother-in-law and her friend to tour South America.

It's another to wait nine whole days to bother explaining the unexpected combat to a puzzled nation. Or nearly two months to arrange an Oval Office address on the country's worst environmental disaster ever.

Malcolm concluded that "the public is left to focus on Obama's frequent vacations, golf outings, celebrity gatherings and proclivity to give a speech at the first whiff of trouble. With no real opposition, Chicago's Democrat pols care little about how insensitive things look. Any one of these apparent missteps is inconsequential. However, accumulated over his 118 weeks in office, they create the impression of carelessness at best or, worse, arrogance."

I think that little jabs about Obama's taxpayer-funded breaks and vacations are perfectly fine, because we know that sooner or later, Obama will react with an indignant, "I'm entitled to this!" response.

MARCO RUBIO IS NOT A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN

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I have nothing but great admiration for Marco Rubio.  I hope and pray that he will continue to mature as a Senator and that he will play an important role in shaping the future of the United States.   HOWEVER, I also hope and pray that everyone who is pushing him as a Vice-Presidential candidate will STOP.  

My reason for opposing Marco Rubio as a candidate for the Vice-President is that he is NOT A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES within the meaning of that term as defined by the United States Supreme Court in Minor v Happersett.  

It would be very sad indeed if conservatives had to fight Marco Rubio's selection as Vice-President in the same way we are now fighting for the defeat of Barack Hussein Obama the Usurper.

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PADDY POWER PRESS RELEASE

MITT ROMNEY – WHO’S HIS VICE?

(4 April 2012) With last night’s primary wins adding to Mitt Romney’s commanding lead over his Republican rivals, Paddy Power, Europe’s largest betting company, have today opened the betting on who will join him as the Vice Presidential candidate on the Republican ticket.

Paddy Power make Florida Senator Mark Rubio the favourite to be the Republican Vice Presidential candidate at 2/1, followed by Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie and Governor of New Mexico Susana Martinez who are considered to be his nearest rivals at odds of 5/1 and 11/2 respectively.

Also available in the betting are current Presidential candidates Rick Santorum at 20/1, Newt Gingrich at 40/1 with Ron Paul available at 50/1. Amongst the outsiders in the betting are Sarah Palin at 66/1, Donald Trump at 80/1 and Herman Cain at an unlikely 100/1

Paddy Power a spokesperson for Paddy Power said “Romney’s latest victories have put him in a very strong position and with his focus now turning to Obama I wouldn’t be surprised if he already had his running mate in mind.”

Republican Vice Presidential Candidate
2/1        Marco Rubio
5/1       Chris Christie
11/2      Susana Martinez
15/2      Rand Paul
9/1       Paul Ryan                
10/1      Bob McDonnell
20/1      Rick Santorum
20/1      Rob Portman
20/1      Nikki Haley
20/1      Mitch Daniels
20/1      John Thune
25/1      Tim Pawlenty
25/1      Jon Huntsman
25/1      Bobby Jindal
25/1      Condoleezza Rice
25/1      Kelly Ayotte
33/1      Haley Barbour
33/1      Jim DeMint
40/1      Newt Gingrich
50/1      Ron Paul
50/1      Meg Whitman
66/1      Rick Perry
66/1      Sarah Palin
66/1      Colin Powell
80/1      Michele Bachmann
80/1      Donald Trump
100/1    Herman Cain

Ends

All prices remain subject to fluctuation.

Paddy Power is Ireland’s largest bookmaker and a leading provider of gaming services in the UK, Australia and Ireland. Founded in 1988 Paddy Power is a publicly quoted company and is listed on both the Irish and London Stock Exchanges (www.paddypowerplc.com)

 

SHOWDOWN AT NOON ON THURSDAY: GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL

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Appeals court fires back at Obama's comments on health care case

By

Jan Crawford

Topics

Supreme Court

(Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Updated 6:55 p.m. ET


(CBS News) In the escalating battle between the administration and the judiciary, a federal appeals court apparently is calling the president's bluff -- ordering the Justice Department to answer by Thursday whether the Obama Administration believes that the courts have the right to strike down a federal law, according to a lawyer who was in the courtroom.


The order, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, appears to be in direct response to the president's comments yesterday about the Supreme Court's review of the health care law. Mr. Obama all but threw down the gauntlet with the justices, saying he was "confident" the Court would not "take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."


Overturning a law of course would not be unprecedented -- since the Supreme Court since 1803 has asserted the power to strike down laws it interprets as unconstitutional. The three-judge appellate court appears to be asking the administration to admit that basic premise -- despite the president's remarks that implied the contrary. The panel ordered the Justice Department to submit a three-page, single-spaced letter by noon Thursday addressing whether the Executive Branch believes courts have such power, the lawyer said.


The panel is hearing a separate challenge to the health care law by physician-owned hospitals. The issue arose when a lawyer for the Justice Department began arguing before the judges. Appeals Court Judge Jerry Smith immediately interrupted, asking if DOJ agreed that the judiciary could strike down an unconstitutional law.


The DOJ lawyer, Dana Lydia Kaersvang, answered yes -- and mentioned Marbury v. Madison, the landmark case that firmly established the principle of judicial review more than 200 years ago, according to the lawyer in the courtroom.


Smith then became "very stern," the source said, suggesting it wasn't clear whether the president believes such a right exists. The other two judges on the panel, Emilio Garza and Leslie Southwick--both Republican appointees--remained silent, the source said.


Smith, a Reagan appointee, went on to say that comments from the president and others in the Executive Branch indicate they believe judges don't have the power to review laws and strike those that are unconstitutional, specifically referencing Mr. Obama's comments yesterday about judges being an "unelected group of people."


I've reached out to the White House for comment, and will update when we have more information.
UPDATE 6 p.m. ET: The White House is declining to comment on the 5th Circuit's order, but the president today did clarify his comments that it would be "unprecedented" for the Court to overturn laws passed by a democratically elected Congress. During a question-and-answer session after a luncheon speech in Washington, a journalist pointed out "that is exactly what the Court has done during its entire existence."


Mr. Obama suggested he meant that it would be "unprecedented" in the modern era for the Court to rule the law exceeded Congress' power to regulate an economic issue like health care.


"The point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it, but it's precisely because of that extraordinary power that the Court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature, our Congress. And so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this," Mr. Obama said.
"Now, as I said, I expect the Supreme Court actually to recognize that and to abide by well-established precedence out there. I have enormous confidence that in looking at this law, not only is it constitutional, but that the Court is going to exercise its jurisprudence carefully because of the profound power that our Supreme Court has," he said.


And now DOJ gets to write three single-spaced pages expounding on that. Due at high noon on Thursday.


UPDATE 6:55 p.m. ET: Audio from the 5th Circuit hearing, with Judge Smith's order to DOJ, is available here.


In the hearing, Judge Smith says the president's comments suggesting courts lack power to set aside federal laws "have troubled a number of people" and that the suggestion "is not a small matter."
The bottom line from Smith: A three-page letter with specifics. He asked DOJ to discuss "judicial review, as it relates to the specific statements of the president, in regard to Obamacare and to the authority of the federal courts to review that legislation."


"I would like to have from you by noon on Thursday -- that's about 48 hours from now -- a letter stating what is the position of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice, in regard to the recent statements by the president," Smith said. "What is the authority is of the federal courts in this regard in terms of judicial review?"


Smith made his intentions clear minutes after the DOJ attorney began her argument, jumping in to ask: "Does the Department of Justice recognize that federal courts have the authority in appropriate circumstances to strike federal statutes because of one or more constitutional infirmities?"


Kaersvang replies yes, and Smith continues: "I'm referring to statements by the president in past few days to the effect, and sure you've heard about them, that it is somehow inappropriate for what he termed 'unelected' judges to strike acts of Congress that have enjoyed -- he was referring to, of course, Obamacare -- to what he termed broad consensus in majorities in both houses of Congress."
In asking for the letter, Smith said: "I want to be sure you're telling us that the attorney general and the Department of Justice do recognize the authority of the federal courts, through unelected judges, to strike acts of Congress or portions thereof in appropriate cases."


CBSNews.com Special Report: Health Care Reform

• Jan Crawford
  Jan Crawford is CBS News Chief Political and Legal Correspondent.

HE IS AN OPERATOR WHO IS NOT OPERATING IN GOOD FAITH

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Not-So-Smooth Operator

Obama increasingly comes across as devious and dishonest.

• By PEGGY NOONAN

• THE WALL STREET JOURNAl
• MARCH 31, 2012

Something's happening to President Obama's relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say, "Nothing new there," but actually I think there is. I'm referring to the broad, stable, nonradical, non-birther right. Among them the level of dislike for the president has ratcheted up sharply the past few months.
It's not due to the election, and it's not because the Republican candidates are so compelling and making such brilliant cases against him. That, actually, isn't happening.


What is happening is that the president is coming across more and more as a trimmer, as an operator who's not operating in good faith. This is hardening positions and leading to increased political bitterness. And it's his fault, too. As an increase in polarization is a bad thing, it's a big fault.

Enlarge Image

Getty Images

The shift started on Jan. 20, with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide birth-control services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? "You're kidding me. That's not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact, it's not even constitutional!" Faced with the blowback, the president offered a so-called accommodation that even its supporters recognized as devious. Not ill-advised, devious. Then his operatives flooded the airwaves with dishonest—not wrongheaded, dishonest—charges that those who defend the church's religious liberties are trying to take away your contraceptives.


What a sour taste this all left. How shocking it was, including for those in the church who'd been in touch with the administration and were murmuring about having been misled.
Events of just the past 10 days have contributed to the shift. There was the open-mic conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in which Mr. Obama pleaded for "space" and said he will have "more flexibility" in his negotiations once the election is over and those pesky voters have done their thing. On tape it looked so bush-league, so faux-sophisticated. When he knew he'd been caught, the president tried to laugh it off by comically covering a mic in a following meeting. It was all so . . . creepy.

Related Video

Best of the Web columnist James Taranto on whether voters who favored Obama in 2008 think the President is naïve.

Next, a boy of 17 is shot and killed under disputed and unclear circumstances. The whole issue is racially charged, emotions are high, and the only memorable words from the president's response were, "If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon." At first it seemed OK—not great, but all right—but as the story continued and suddenly there were death threats and tweeted addresses and congressmen in hoodies, it seemed insufficient to the moment. At the end of the day, the public reaction seemed to be: "Hey buddy, we don't need you to personalize what is already too dramatic, it's not about you."
Now this week the Supreme Court arguments on ObamaCare, which have made that law look so hollow, so careless, that it amounts to a characterological indictment of the administration. The constitutional law professor from the University of Chicago didn't notice the centerpiece of his agenda was not constitutional? How did that happen?


Maybe a stinging decision is coming, maybe not, but in a purely political sense this is how it looks: We were in crisis in 2009—we still are—and instead of doing something strong and pertinent about our economic woes, the president wasted history's time. He wasted time that was precious—the debt clock is still ticking!—by following an imaginary bunny that disappeared down a rabbit hole.
The high court's hearings gave off an overall air not of political misfeasance but malfeasance.
All these things have hardened lines of opposition, and left opponents with an aversion that will not go away.


I am not saying that the president has a terrible relationship with the American people. I'm only saying he's made his relationship with those who oppose him worse.


In terms of the broad electorate, I'm not sure he really has a relationship. A president only gets a year or two to forge real bonds with the American people. In that time a crucial thing he must establish is that what is on his mind is what is on their mind. This is especially true during a crisis.
From the day Mr. Obama was sworn in, what was on the mind of the American people was financial calamity—unemployment, declining home values, foreclosures. These issues came within a context of some overarching questions: Can America survive its spending, its taxing, its regulating, is America over, can we turn it around?


That's what the American people were thinking about.


But the new president wasn't thinking about that. All the books written about the creation of economic policy within his administration make clear the president and his aides didn't know it was so bad, didn't understand the depth of the crisis, didn't have a sense of how long it would last. They didn't have their mind on what the American people had their mind on.


The president had his mind on health care. And, to be fair-minded, health care was part of the economic story. But only a part! And not the most urgent part. Not the most frightening, distressing, immediate part. Not the "Is America over?" part.


And so the relationship the president wanted never really knitted together. Health care was like the birth-control mandate: It came from his hermetically sealed inner circle, which operates with what seems an almost entirely abstract sense of America. They know Chicago, the machine, the ethnic realities. They know Democratic Party politics. They know the books they've read, largely written by people like them—bright, credentialed, intellectually cloistered. But there always seems a lack of lived experience among them, which is why they were so surprised by the town hall uprisings of August 2009 and the 2010 midterm elections.

If you jumped into a time machine to the day after the election, in November, 2012, and saw a headline saying "Obama Loses," do you imagine that would be followed by widespread sadness, pain and a rending of garments? You do not. Even his own supporters will not be that sad. It's hard to imagine people running around in 2014 saying, "If only Obama were president!" Including Mr. Obama, who is said by all who know him to be deeply competitive, but who doesn't seem to like his job that much. As a former president he'd be quiet, detached, aloof. He'd make speeches and write a memoir laced with a certain high-toned bitterness. It was the Republicans' fault. They didn't want to work with him.


He will likely not see even then that an American president has to make the other side work with him. You think Tip O'Neill liked Ronald Reagan? You think he wanted to give him the gift of compromise? He was a mean, tough partisan who went to work every day to defeat Ronald Reagan.

But forced by facts and numbers to deal, he dealt. So did Reagan.
An American president has to make cooperation happen.
But we've strayed from the point. Mr. Obama has a largely nonexistent relationship with many, and a worsening relationship with some.


Really, he cannot win the coming election. But the Republicans, still, can lose it. At this point in the column we usually sigh.

A version of this article appeared Mar. 31, 2012, on page A13 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Not-So-Smooth Operator.

SANTORUM SUPPORTS OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT OVER ROMNEY

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Don't Play the 'Might as Well' Game

Rick Santorum (Getty)

NRO Newsletters . . .

Morning Jolt

. . . with Jim Geraghty

March 23, 2012

Oh, Rick. Rick, Rick, Rick. As they say on ESPN, "Come on, man!"

Our Katrina Trinko spotlights a comment by Rick Santorum to NBC News reporters:

Rick Santorum today suggested it would be better to stick with President Obama over a candidate that might be "the Etch A Sketch candidate of the future" -- a shot at chief rival Mitt Romney.

"You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who's just going to be a little different than the person in there," said Santorum. "If you're going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk with what may be the etch a sketch candidate of the future."

In response, Mitt Romney issued a statement criticizing Santorum.

"I am in this race to defeat Barack Obama and restore America's promise," Romney said. "I was disappointed to hear that Rick Santorum would rather have Barack Obama as president than a Republican. This election is more important than any one person. It is about the future of America.

"Any of the Republicans running would be better than President Obama and his record of failure," he added.

Whom does this statement help? For starters, does Santorum really believe it? Are we really to believe that if, as it appears likely at this point, Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee, Rick Santorum would not vote, leave the ballot blank, or vote for some third-party candidate? (We know he won't be voting Libertarian.) Really? You want to lead the Republican party, but you won't commit to supporting the party's nominee in November if it's not you?

"Take a risk with the Etch A Sketch candidate of the future"? Just how risky does he think a second term of Obama would be?

There's something that's been bugging me about the Etch A Sketch metaphor that allegedly wounds Romney so badly. The central feature of the Etch A Sketch is its impermanence: It displays an image of something, and the image disappears once shaken. But the criticism of impermanence is different from the criticism implied by, say, "a wolf in sheep's clothing." There, the charge is that a candidate appears to be one thing, but is another thing entirely. The candidate cannot be the sheep because his true nature is that of the wolf. But an Etch A Sketch displays whatever you want it to display. Sure, if it displays something you like, you shouldn't grow attached to it, because after a few shakes it will be gone. But that also applies to the images you don't like. Calling Romney an Etch A Sketch is comparing him to the weather in Chicago: If you don't like it, just wait, because it will change quickly. In this metaphor, a President Romney would please conservatives, then displease them, then please them, then displease them, etc. That's not something terribly appealing, but it's also not what we're getting right now from our current president. Right now we're getting a seemingly endless cavalcade of outrages, insults, excuses, sneers, and rounds of golf.

None of this is to say it's really good for a candidate to be compared to an Etch A Sketch. But it feels as if some political observers are reacting as if it's the most devastating comparison ever when it really isn't. I mean, you could say every Etch A Sketch image comes with an expiration date or something. The idea of political figures doing what's expedient is . . . not exactly unprecedented.

(Oh, one other wrinkle in this comparison? Almost everybody loves the Etch A Sketch. Almost everybody remembers it, almost everybody had one, and almost everybody laughs at how hard it was to draw anything with just horizontal and vertical lines. Why do you think the stock jumped? Nostalgia.)

How far out was this statement? Well, exhibit A:

Newt Gingrich: "Rick Santorum is dead wrong. Any GOP nominee will be better than Obama."

Albert Martinez: "Recap: Jeb Bush & DeMint are excited about Romney being the nominee. Rick Santorum is okay [with] Obama being President."

ROMNEY, LIKE A DEAD MACKEREL ON THE BEACH, BOTH SHINES AND STINKS

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AN ATTACK OF THE FRUIT FLY


By Wesley Pruden


It’s not the wasps, bees and mosquitos, though stingers all, that bedevil presidential candidates. It’s the fruit flies. Insignificant in their own right, they nevertheless have the ability to damage and even sink a campaign.

That’s the lesson for Mitt Romney, as taught by Eric Fehrnstrom, his once-anonymous “top aide” who confided to a CNN interviewer that Mr. Romney is not really a born-again conservative, that he’s only pandering to the unwashed crazies on the right. As soon as he locks up the nomination, he’ll hit the re-set button to emerge as the RINO – Republican in name only – he really is, to appeal to independent voters. Mr. Fehrnstrom didn’t say it quite like that (fruit flies never light long enough to make anything clear), but that’s the clear message he intended to send.

In case he had not left a strong-enough sabotage of Mitt Romney’s courtship of the unwashed, Mr. Fehrnstrom, feeling his self-importance, made sure no one could miss his point: “I think you hit the re-set button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-a-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.

Mr. Romney knew at once there was a problem, potentially such a game-changer that he overcame his reluctance to talk to reporters and emerged to offer an explanation, sort of. He talked in the marketing-speak dear to CEOs and business-school professors. He explained the obvious, that “organizationally” a general-election effort is very different from a primary campaign. Staffs are larger and the focus is on raising money (isn’t it always?).

Then he lapsed into the boilerplate that raises the hackles of the evangelicals and the tea-party partisans who can’t quite take Mitt Romney at his word. “I am running as a conservative Republican,” he said. If he had someone on his staff conversant in precise English, he would have been warned to avoid the words “running as a conservative,” because that’s exactly what the unwashed think he’s doing. He plowed on: “I was a conservative Republican governor. I will be running as a conservative Republican nominee, at that point hopefully for president. The policies and positions are the same.”

His usually happy face did not radiate much happiness, and he seemed to understand that he was not persuading anyone that he was angry about the undisciplined fruit fly infestation. He could have emphasized how seriously he was taking the subverting of his message by swatting and sacking the guilty fruit fly on the spot. He didn’t, and leaves Republican voters with the impression that maybe the offense was not so great, after all. Maybe it would only be a two-day media sensation. Maybe it would be forgotten by week’s end.

Or maybe not. Rick Santorum’s press spokesman hurried out to say the obvious, that the top aide’s remark “confirms what a lot of conservatives have been afraid of. He used to be pro-abortion, he used to be pro-gay marriage, he used to be pro-Wall Street bailouts, he used to [embrace] the climate-change [scam].”

A feast of the most succulent bowl of fruit, lush mangoes, ripe pears, and bananas at their peak, can be spoiled by the tiny squeak and flutter of an ambitious fruit fly in heat. The night of the Illinois primary was just such a feast for Mitt Romney. He had won the most telling primary of the season, falling just short of his first majority this year, and he gave his best speech of the season. He put the campaign focus on Barack Obama, his mismanagement of the economy, his clumsy adventures abroad and his dismal misunderstanding of what makes America exceptional.

The greatness of America begins with a dream, “and nothing is more fragile than a dream. The genius of America is that we nurture those dreams and dreamers. We honor them. That’s part of what is uniquely brilliant about America. But day-by-day job-killing regulation, bureaucrat by bureaucrat, this president is crushing the dream and the dreamers, and I will make sure that finally ends.” Here was a touch of poetry that might have come from the Gipper himself, a tribute to the America that was and must be again.

Mitt Romney looks ever more like the inevitable nominee. He has nearly half of the 1,144 delegates he will need in Tampa. He got an important endorsement from Jeb Bush this week. Tea-party organizations are finally coming around, persuaded that he’s the conservative who can beat Barack Obama. If only he can control the fruit fly.


Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

BILL AND HILARY STILL REACH FOR IMMORTALITY IN ARKANSAS SINCE THEY WILL NOT FIND IT NATIONALLY OR INTERNATIONALLY

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BONNIE AND CLOD IN THE AIR AGAIN

 


By Wesley Pruden


Good ol’ Bubba. He never disappoints.

He’s always reaching for something new to feed his ravenous ego, now that age has withered, among other things, his ravenous libido.

 He has persuaded the real-estate hustlers, small-town hucksters and dime-store merchants who mismanage things in Little Rock to rename the municipal airport to carry his name – and Miss Hillary’s, of course – unto the next millennium. Or at least until someone else runs things.

The Little Rock Airport Commission has been trying to clean up, or at least hide, scandal and mismanagement. Now the commission thinks it would be cool to erase the name of a hometown Air National Guard pilot killed in the line of duty, which has adorned the airport for 75 years, and replace it with the name of the nation’s most celebrated draft-dodger.

Adams Field would become the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport, though neither Bonnie nor Clod is even from Little Rock. Hillary’s a yankee to boot. Capt. George Geyer Adams, the dumpee, was born into an old Little Rock family and was a National Guard pilot who died when a propeller exploded in his face. The airport was named to honor him on the eve of World War II, when sacrifice in arms was valued above all else, and celebrity was mere afterthought.

The press agent for the airport commission – Hillary was once the commission’s lawyer – insists that the idea “originated” with the commission, and only after that did the commission “reach out” to the Clintons on “appropriate naming options.” Nobody in Little Rock believes that. Bonnie and Clod have tried for years to get the airport named for one or the other of them, and the commission concedes that a sketch for the new airport sign, to be bathed in a blue light reminiscent of the Hot Springs bordellos of Bubba’s youth, was some time ago submitted to Bubba and the missus for their approval.

Bubba is worried that he will eventually be remembered only as a stain on a little blue dress or as a president impeached for lying under oath, since the impeachment trial was the highlight of his eight years in the White House. Worse, perhaps, he was not even the first president to be impeached. He has to share that distinction through the ages with a president who hung out with Republicans. The ignominy of it.

Nobody has ever accused the Clintons of good taste and a cultured sense of occasion and propriety, and not everyone in Little Rock is happy about switching such a signal honor from military hero to draft-dodger. “A pretty high-handed bunch runs things here,” a prominent Democratic lawyer from an old-line family says, begging anonymity. “Mike Huckabee once described Arkansas as a banana republic, and maybe that was harsh, because he was talking mostly about Little Rock. The good ol’  boys think Bubba is good for business.”

Bubba and his pals stirred up folks several years ago when he tried to get Markham Street, one of the longest and most prominent streets in town, renamed President Clinton Avenue. He finally settled for a small stretch of the street which runs a few blocks through a lively riverfront honkytonk district to his new presidential library, perched above the south bank of the Arkansas River like an imposing double-wide mobile home lifted out of a trailer park. The architect who designed it clearly had a taste for wit and irony.

The good ol’ boys take good care of each other. Last year Ron Mathieu, the executive director of the airport, allocated $40,000 to the private school his son attended to pay for a new surface on the football field. The airport in return was to get an advertisement painted on the grass. The stink that followed forced the return of the money, and Mr. Mathieu was denied a pay raise. This year the commission raised his pay and gave him a $10,000 bonus.

The good ol’ boys fear a new controversy once the public gets on to the dumping of Capt. Adams to make room for interlopers and outlanders. The airport spokesman says the renaming is meant to celebrate four new gates and ticketing and baggage-handling improvements. And there’s finally going to be a direct flight from Little Rock to Reagan National Airport in Washington, to “serve as a unique and symbolic link between two of our nation’s great presidential administrations.” Better honor by association than no honor at all.



Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

HECTOR QUIAMBAO COMMENTED ON THE POST "NEWT GINGRICH IS THE BEST QUALIFIED CANDIDATE"

The GOP's Candidates and Who Would Do the Best Job

Hector Quiambao, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Dec 19, 2011 

There is massive media coverage about the GOP's candidates and their pontification. Their is no lack of opinion from the political pundits. The history of these debates and primaries have shown the unpredictability of these proceedings. One day's unknown underdog is suddenly today's top gun. Just as quickly though there can be a clear leader who by a quick stroke of misfortune has to fall out of the race.

It is amazing to watch all these candidates put forth their best description of themselves and the careers in the private sector and politics. You have to admit that there has to be some truths in their claims to qualify for the presidential office based on their body of work. The media and the technology that accompanies it will make mince meat out of a candidate that somehow has the temerity to concoct stories in their resumes. Oh what a firestorm in the national media if for some reason your name makes it to the ballot and they find out that you have been lying on your curriculum vitae.

So even if the person is the most qualified there is the possibility that they may never make it to the presidential elections. I am pretty sure this has happened before and it will happen again So if I may be so bold let me side step the question of who will ultimately win the election. Just let me declare who I think will do the best job.

Let us address the candidates and try to access them as effectively as we can. Let us start with Mitt Romney who as we know has wonderful ideas for the economy. I even believe he would be a capable man in handling our foreign affairs. He is being touted by some polls as the leading candidate based on the latest results from Iowa. However we already know how out of touch he is with the common man. That $10,000 dollar bet might have wiped him out. Michelle Bachmann as we can see can hold her end against the leaders Mitt and Newt. As much as sometimes the other debaters condescendingly put her down as just a peripheral candidate she has held her own. The website Politifact though seems to think at one time that 59% of her claims were inaccurate. Paul,Huntsman, Santorum and Perry are all very distinguished gentlemen and again quite capable.

The one that is most capable of running the country in my humble opinion is Newt Gingrich. Mind you may I disclose that I am not a big fan of the man. If it was up to me I would outright appoint Ron Paul for president. Here are my reasons though for picking Newt. First he has tons of experience. In this job experience does count. He has served as Speaker. He has also cheated on his wife. However he repented of his actions and rather than gloss over his indiscretions. He has shown persistence. This quality is a must for the presidency. Any married person you talk to knows that getting married is easy. Staying married however requires hard work. Despite and because of that I gauge him electable by the American public. We love our comeback heroes as long as they are contrite in accepting their past wrongs. The truth is there is probably some dark side hidden away by each candidate. Let us be reminded that it is still human nature we are dealing with. If everything was transparent none of the candidates will ever qualify for anything.

That last statement about Newt's marriage can be construed as a negative but I believe it is really now a positive. We Americans respect the bad boy that recovers from the battle. Yes he is scarred but we consider those scars as just speaking points to be used in teaching our grandchildren the finer points in life and living.

The Republicans better hope their best candidate comes out of this process. For their sake I hope it is the Newt.

MITT ROMNEY IS THE GODFATHER OF OBAMACARE

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On the health-insurance mandate, Romney plays both sides

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
March 18, 2012

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/11375/on-the-health-insurance-mandate-romney-plays-both
 

THEY SAY all things must end, but the wrangling over Mitt Romney's support for an individual health-insurance mandate persists without letup.

It has been nearly six years since Romney, with much fanfare, signed the Massachusetts health-care overhaul into law. On the eve of the signing ceremony he had praised the bill's requirement that every resident obtain health insurance, and suggested with pride that the rest of the nation might want to follow the Bay State's lead. "How much of our health-care plan applies to other states?" he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. "A lot."

It was a message he would reiterate time and again.

"I'm proud of what we've done," Romney told a Baltimore audience in February 2007. "If Massachusetts succeeds in implementing it, then that will be a model for the nation." In Iowa that summer, he waxed enthusiastic about the new law and its mandate: "We have to have our citizens insured," he insisted. "What you have to do is what we did in Massachusetts. Is it perfect? No. But we say, let's rely on personal responsibility.... No more free rides."

In the spring of 2009, as congressional debate over ObamaCare intensified, Romney was asked on CNN's "State of the Union" whether his 2006 law was a good model for the nation. His answer: "Well, I think so!" A few weeks later he again touted the Massachusetts scheme for "getting every citizen insured" as one Washington should heed: "Using tax penalties, as we did … encourages 'free riders' to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. "

If anything should be uncontested by now, it is Romney's faith in the wisdom of a Massachusetts-style mandate for health insurance. Yet the debate rages on.

Rick Santorum last week accused Romney of not telling the truth when he claimed "that somehow or other he was not for mandates on a federal level." Romney's spokeswoman fired back, accusing Santorum of "exaggerations and falsehoods," and avowing that her boss never backed a federal individual mandate. The Democratic National Committee weighed in with an ad mocking Romney as being "against individual mandates -- except when he's for them." Glenn Kessler cried foul in The Washington Post, noting that Romney has often expressed support for a state-by-state approach to health insurance. Nonsense, replied Reason magazine's Peter Suderman. "If you look at [Romney's] record, it's hard to conclude that he did not support copying the Massachusetts plan at the federal level, including the mandate."

What's really going on here, it seems to me, is not disagreement over what Romney has said, but a quarrel over what he believes. No one disputes that he has praised RomneyCare's individual mandate, extolled it as "conservative," and pronounced it a success lawmakers elsewhere should emulate. Nor is there any doubt that he has repeatedly invoked the value of state-by-state reforms. Romney often draws a distinction between a state-level mandate like the one imposed in Massachusetts and the unconstitutional mandate imposed nationally by ObamaCare.

But the problem has never been that Romney yearns to force a Massachusetts-style insurance mandate on the nation. It's whether he still thinks such mandates are a good idea. "When it's all said and done," he told Tim Russert in December 2007, "after all these states that are the laboratories of democracy … try their own plans, those who follow the path that we pursued will find it's the best path, and we'll end up with a nation that's taken a mandate approach." Romney has never disavowed that attitude. And for many liberty-minded GOP voters, that's not a minor issue.

RomneyCare grows steadily more onerous -- the annual penalty for not buying health insurance in Massachusetts now runs as high as $1,260. ObamaCare remains far from popular. Naturally Romney now prefers to emphasize the part of his health-care plan that would let states decide these issues for themselves. And to be sure, a president who respected federalism would be an improvement.

But far better would be a president who understood that it is not government's job at any level to coax or compel everyone to get medical insurance. Better yet would be a president who resisted, instead of encouraging, our overreliance on insurance to pay for routine health care. Romney salutes free-market principles, yet he continues to hail RomneyCare as a success. The two positions are incompatible. So long as Romney lays claim to both, the wrangling over what he really believes will never end.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe. His website is www.JeffJacoby.com).