RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Obama's Broken Promises

I didn't read any of that.

Two things happen anytime the president speaks. One is that the average IQ of America drops about five points and the other is that is brings out all the right wing nut jobs who make obama look better than he is.

I've got nothin'.

I disagree with Pariah's comment that Obama should be shot.

WASHINGTON — Memo to President Barack Obama: It's a tax. Obama insisted this weekend on national television that requiring people to carry health insurance — and fining them if they don't — isn't the same thing as a tax increase. But the language of Democratic bills to revamp the nation's health care system doesn't quibble. Both the House bill and the Senate Finance Committee proposal clearly state that the fines would be a tax.

And the reason the fines are in the legislation is to enforce the coverage requirement.

"If you put something in the Internal Revenue Code, and you tell the IRS to collect it, I think that's a tax," said Clint Stretch, head of the tax policy group for Deloitte, a major accounting firm. "If you don't pay, the person who's going to come and get it is going to be from the IRS."

Democrats aren't the first to propose that individuals be required to carry health insurance and fined if they refuse. The conservative Heritage Foundation called for such a mandate in the 1990s' health care debate, although its proposal differed from the ones pending in Congress. Heritage has since dropped the idea and now favors using tax credits to encourage people to buy coverage — carrots and not sticks.

During the 2008 political campaign, Obama opposed making coverage mandatory because of the costs. His position has shifted now that it's becoming clear such a requirement will be part of any legislation that Congress sends him. Conservative activists are calling it a violation of his pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class.

"This is exactly what George Bush Sr. did when he said he wouldn't raise taxes, and it cost him the next election," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "Obama is doing the same thing, but he's insulting people by telling them that if you don't call it a big purple banana, somehow it wouldn't be a tax."


In an interview that aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Obama insisted that the insurance requirement is not a tax.

"For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase," the president said. "What it's saying is...that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore.

"Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance," Obama added. "Nobody considers that a tax increase.

"You just can't make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase," he added.

But a Democratic staff description of Sen. Max Baucus' bill calls the proposed fines an "excise tax." Initially, the Montana Democrat's plan called for penalties of up to $950 for individuals and $3,800 for families. But Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said Monday he expects the family penalty to be slashed in half to $1,900.

The House bill uses a complex formula to calculate the penalties, calling them a "tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage." People would report their insurance coverage on their tax returns.

The coverage mandate is part of a political bargain in which the insurance industry would agree to take all applicants, regardless of prior medical history.

"If we're going to have coverage without regard to pre-existing conditions, it makes sense," said economist Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center. "Otherwise people will come in the door the day they get sick." He sees no distinction between the requirement to get coverage and the fines themselves.

"The fact that it is imposed on people and they have no choice in paying it, and the fact that it's administered through the tax system all make it look like a tax," Williams said. The center is a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.

It wouldn't be the first asterisk added to Obama's campaign pledge on taxes. Earlier this year, he signed a tobacco tax increase to pay for children's health insurance. Even that can be read as a violation of his expansive campaign promise.

"I can make a firm pledge," he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12, 2008. "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

That guy used to talk like Obama, I wonder why he doesnt do the voice anymore?

I think he stopped after the election because he's a pussy.

BERLIN -- Midway through a propaganda video released last month by a group calling itself the German Taliban, a surprise guest made an appearance: a cleanshaven, muscular gunman sporting the alias Abu Ibrahim the American.

The gunman did not speak but wore military fatigues and waved his rifle as subtitles identified him as an American. The video contained a stream of threats against Germany if it did not withdraw its troops from the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. Although the American's part in the film lasted only a few seconds, it has alarmed German and U.S. intelligence officials, who are still puzzling over his background, his real identity and how he became involved with the terrorist group.

U.S. and European counterterrorism officials say a rising number of Western recruits -- including Americans -- are traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend paramilitary training camps. The flow of recruits has continued unabated, officials said, in spite of an intensified campaign over the past year by the CIA to eliminate al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in drone missile attacks.

Since January, at least 30 recruits from Germany have traveled to Pakistan for training, according to German security sources. About 10 people -- not necessarily the same individuals -- have returned to Germany this year, fueling concerns that fresh plots are in the works against European targets.

"We think this is sufficient to show how serious the threat is," said a senior German counterterrorism official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

German security services have been on high alert since last month, when groups affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda issued several videos warning that an attack on German targets was imminent if the government did not bring home its forces from Afghanistan.

There are about 3,800 German troops in the country, the third-largest NATO contingent after those of the United States and Britain. German officials say Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders are trying to exploit domestic opposition in Germany to the war; surveys show that a majority of German voters favor a withdrawal of their soldiers.

The videos all featured German speakers who urged Muslims to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan to join their cause.

"They're doing such good business that they are dropping a new video every week or so," said Ronald Sandee, a former Dutch military intelligence officer who serves as research director of the NEFA Foundation, a U.S. group that monitors terrorist networks. "If I were a young Muslim, I'd find them very convincing."

Last week, German officials disclosed that a 10-member cell from Hamburg had left for Pakistan earlier this year. The cell is allegedly led by a German of Syrian descent but also includes ethnic Turks, German converts to Islam and one member with Afghan roots.

Other European countries are also struggling to keep their citizens from going to Pakistan for paramilitary training.

In August, Pakistani officials arrested a group of 12 foreigners headed to North Waziristan, a tribal region near the Afghan border where many of the camps are located. Among those arrested were four Swedes, including Mehdi Ghezali, a former inmate of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Meanwhile, three Belgians and a French citizen are facing trial in their respective home countries after they were arrested upon their return from Pakistani camps last year. The suspects deny they were part of a terrorist conspiracy or plotting attacks in Europe. But one defendant has admitted to French investigators that the group received explosives training while in Waziristan. Three other Belgian and French members of the alleged cell are still believed to be at large in Pakistan or Afghanistan.
Recruiting networks

European security officials have warned for many years of the threat posed by homegrown radicals who have gone to Afghanistan and Pakistan to wage jihad. Officials in some countries, such as Britain, said they have successfully cracked down on the number of would-be fighters going to South Asia. But others, such as Germany, are seeing a significant increase and struggling to contain it.

In the past, such volunteers were largely self-motivated and had to find their own way to South Asia. Today, however, al-Qaeda and its affiliates have developed extensive recruiting networks with agents on the ground in Europe, counterterrorism officials said. The agents provide guidance, money, travel routes and even letters of recommendation so the recruits can join up more easily.

In a recent report, the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service said there were a "growing number of indications" that more Europeans were attending camps in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Obama administration has said that al-Qaeda's command structure and operations wing have become weaker in the past year because many of its leaders have been killed in drone missile attacks. But in its report, the Dutch intelligence agency offered a different assessment, saying that al-Qaeda's ability to carry out attacks has generally improved in recent years largely because it has successfully bolstered its alliances with other terrorist groups.

"With the jihadist agenda of those allies becoming more international, at least at the propaganda level, the threat to the West and its interests has intensified," the Dutch report found.

German officials said they have discovered multiple recruitment networks that work for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other groups, such as the Islamic Jihad Union, which has been issuing many of the online threats against the German government. But they said the recruiting networks often operate independently, making it difficult for the security services to detect or disrupt them.

"In Germany, we don't have a uniform structure that recruits people," another senior German counterterrorism official said in an interview. "We have a wide variety of structures."
U.S. residents detained

Another sign of the internationalization of the recruitment networks is the small but growing participation of U.S. residents.

Abu Ibrahim the American, the gunman in last month's German Taliban video, is also being touted as a poster boy for jihadi recruitment on a Turkish-language Web site. The site, Sehadet Zamani, issues propaganda on behalf of the Islamic Jihad Union, an offshoot of an Uzbek terrorist group that now counts Turks, Germans, Arabs and Chechens among its members.

In July, U.S. officials announced that they had apprehended Bryant Neal Vinas, 25, a resident of Long Island, N.Y., who has confessed to traveling to al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan and firing rockets at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan.

Vinas, the son of immigrants from Peru and Argentina, is cooperating with U.S. and European authorities. He has testified about his interaction with the six-member cell of recruits from Belgium and France. Vinas has also told the FBI that he spent time in Pakistan with another New York resident, whose identity and whereabouts are unknown.

Last month, the FBI arrested yet another U.S. resident, Najibullah Zazi, and accused him of plotting a bombing in New York. Zazi, 24, an Afghan national who has lived in New York since he was a child, traveled to Pakistan last year.

U.S. intelligence officials have said that he made contact with a senior deputy to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and learned how to make homemade bombs. Zazi said he went to Pakistan to visit his wife but has denied going to a training camp.

Terrorism analysts said the CIA campaign to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders had been generally effective, but warned that the strategy had its limitations and that missile attacks alone would not put an end to the training camps.

"The drone attacks seriously weaken these organizations, but you can't rely on that alone," said Guido Steinberg, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "They obviously have no problem recruiting new members. In the long run, they won't have any problem replacing the leaders who have been killed."

On Saturday, the Pakistani military deployed 30,000 troops into South Waziristan as part of a broad offensive against the Taliban and other militant groups. U.S. and European officials have said they hope the mission will force many of the training camps to shut down.

But analysts said the camps, which offer basic lessons in homemade explosives and countersurveillance as well as weapons training, could easily relocate elsewhere in Pakistan or even back across the border in Afghanistan, where they operated before the U.S. invasion in 2001.

"We're talking about much smaller, much more mobile camps that don't train by the hundreds, but by the handful," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "They can be repacked and set up again fairly easily and quickly."

According to a report from the Agence France Press agency this week President Obama did not win the confidence of a majority of the five member panel before being awarded the Nobel Committee's Peace Prize late last week. Even though the committee's secretary told the press on Friday that the committee's decision had been unanimous, it appears that the members of the committee have a different recollection of how the decision unfolded.

The representatives of the Norwegian Conservative, Progress, and Socialist Left parties all objected to the Obama nomination. The two votes of support on the committee came from the nation's Labor Party.

The primary concerns of the objecting parties were Obama's lack of experience on issues related to the objectives of the prize, as well as his "inability to keep his promise."

As I noted in this editorial space only a few weeks ago, President Obama's inability to keep his promises will be one of the key reasons I believe his administration will implode this fall.

Presently the president faces opposition from the left for broken promises to the radical anti-war and homosexual activist communities. He faces opposition from the political right for his determination to break a "no tax increase" burdening families with health care reform, as well as cap-and-trade legislation, not to mention bailouts, stimulus, and budget concerns.

He's promised a public option for the uninsured, but then told politicians it would not be required for final passage.

He's promised to win the "right" war in Afghanistan but is wavering on his support for his own military adviser's request for resources.

He's promised to close Gitmo but it sits open today.

He's promised to create millions of jobs and not allow the unemployment rate to exceed 8%, but today it sits at higher than 15% in Detroit and is at nearly 10% nationally.

He's promised to be the most transparent president in history but is conducting the final rounds of talks in the push for health care reform entirely behind closed doors.

He's promised to put all legislation on the Internet for at least five days before he signs it into law but has not done this on any of the legislation he's signed in the first year of his administration.

I'm not sure why the majority of the Nobel Committee thought he wouldn't keep his promises, do you?

Which is just one more reason why we shouldn't be paying much if any attention to what five politicians from Norway have to say about the condition of world affairs anyway.

I promise you... it really is meaningless.

The White House has told Congress it will reject calls for many of President Obama's policy czars to testify before Congress - a decision senators said goes against the president's promises of transparency and openness and treads on Congress' constitutional mandate to investigate the administration's actions.

Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, said White House counsel Greg Craig told her in a meeting Wednesday that they will not make available any of the czars who work in the White House and don't have to go through Senate confirmation. She said he was "murky" on whether other czars outside of the White House would be allowed to come before Congress.

Miss Collins said that doesn't make sense when some of those czars are actually making policy or negotiating on behalf of Mr. Obama.

"I think Congress should be able to call the president's climate czar, Carol Browner, the energy and environment czar, to ask her about the negotiations she conducted with the automobile industry that led to very significant policy changes with regard to emissions standards," Miss Collins said at a hearing Thursday that examined the proliferation of czars.

The debate goes to the heart of weighty constitutional issues about separation of powers. The president argues that he should be allowed to have advisers who are free to give him confidential advice without having to fear being called to testify about it. Democrats and Republicans in Congress, though, argue that those in office who actually craft policy should be able to be summoned to testify because they do more than just give the president advice.

At issue are the 18 positions Miss Collins says Mr. Obama has created since he took office. Of those, she says 10 - the White House says eight - are in the executive office and not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests or requests for testimony.

Czar is an informal term given to the positions.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent and chairman of the government affairs committee, asked the White House to provide a witness for Thursday's hearing but it did not send one.

In a letter last week to Miss Collins, though, Mr. Craig explained that the White House is not trying to circumvent Congress.

"We recognize that it is theoretically possible that a president could create new positions that inhibit transparency or undermine congressional oversight. That is simply not the case, however, in the current administration," Mr. Craig wrote.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that the land of the permanent campaign has produced a president like Barack Obama. During his White House bid, Mr Obama's staff argued that his masterful oversight of the machinery that ultimately got him elected was his highest achievement.

In many respects this was true, though Mr Obama was more chairman than CEO. Even Republican political operatives acknowledge that the Obama '08 campaign was a thing of beauty.

Essentially, however, Mr Obama won because of his persona – post-racial, healing, cool, articulate and inspirational. In a sense, therefore, his greatest achievement in life is being Barack Obama. Or the campaign version, at least.

Therein lies the problem. While campaigning could centre around soaring rhetoric, governing is altogether messier. It involves tough, unpopular choices and cutting deals with opponents. It requires doing things rather than talking about them, let alone just being.

Mr Obama is showing little appetite for this. Instead of being the commander-in-chief, he is the campaigner-in-chief.

After a disastrous summer that saw his approval rating drop more than any other president at the same stage since Harry Truman in 1953, Mr Obama has temporarily abandoned the campaign-style events promoting his stalled health-care reform initiative.

Now, he is stumping for Democratic candidates in states he won last year but which are now in danger. Last Wednesday in Hackensack, Mr Obama took to the stage to proclaim: "Your voice can change the world. Your voice can elect Jon Corzine, governor once again of New Jersey." Change the world? Mr Corzine is a former Goldman Sachs executive whose political career was launched when he spent $57 million of his own money on a Senate seat in 2000.

The rally was an attempted 2008 reprise. There was the spontaneous (or not) cry of "I love you!" bashfully acknowledged by Mr Obama with a "I love you back."

There were the Obama-led chants of "Fired up! Ready to go!" and the ubiquitous "Yes We Can" signs.

And as he always does, Mr Obama blamed every economic woe on the Bush years, conveniently forgetting that Republicans are no longer in office and it's been his mess for nine months now.

Campaigning and raising cash is what Mr Obama does best. Next week's fundraising events in Florida and Virginia will bring to 24 the number of such functions he had headlined since entering office in January. During his first year in office, Mr Bush attended just six fundraisers.

Just as instructive is Mr Obama's war on the cable channel Fox News.

Everyone knows that Fox leans Right and contains some of the most virulent critics of the president. Most prominent is Fox's weeping, ranting Glenn Beck, who fulminated bizarrely in July that Mr Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people".

Rather than ignoring or even repudiating Fox commentators, the White House has instead sought to marginalise Fox News in its entirety. Top Obama aide David Axelrod even lectured that Fox was not a news organisation and the rest of the media "ought not to treat them that way".

This was the same Mr Axelrod who advised Mr Obama in a 2006 campaign memo: "You care far too much what is written and said about you."

Also in the doghouse is the US Chamber of Commerce, which Obama aides have branded as representing "special interests" and a Bush agenda. Never mind that moderate Democratic candidates across the country proudly tout endorsements for the Chamber, which is hardly part of any radical Republican fringe.

All this says much about Mr Obama's priorities at a time when he is sitting on an urgent request for 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, seemingly unsure about whether the counter-insurgency strategy he announced in March is the right one.

Late-night comics, although unabashedly liberal and at a loss last year as to how to poke fun at the rather humourless Mr Obama, are having a field day portraying him as a do-nothing prevaricator obsessed with his own image.

"President Obama agreed to commit an additional 40,000 troops to help fight Fox News," quipped NBC's Jay Leno. "Senior White House adviser David Axelrod told reporters that Fox News is just pushing a point of view. Well, yes, but at least they've got a point of view." Mr Obama was elected on a promise of being post-partisan to Washington and transforming the country. Thus far, he has won the support of only a single Republican for his health-care plan and has shown himself to be as aggressive a Democratic partisan in office as anyone in the fabled Clinton war room.

Beyond the grand announcements, fine speeches and his eager acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr Obama has yet to achieve anything of substance. It is time for the campaign to end.

Remember when Barack Obama was running for president and he promised that, unlike secrecy-obsessed George Bush and Dick Cheney, he would insist on a “transparent” administration that wouldn’t hide information from the American people unless it was absolutely necessary?

That would have been nice. But of course it turns out it was just talk. Obama has only been president for 10 months and already he is just as casual as his predecessors about demanding secrecy for things that have no good reason to be kept secret at all.

Why, for instance, is the Obama White House fighting so hard to prevent the release of documents about who lobbied Congress to give immunity to the telephone companies that cooperated with Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program?

A federal court concluded that there is no reason for the administration to keep that information from the public. It’s not classified. There aren’t precious national security secrets at stake. It’s a list of names of those who spent money to influence our elected officials into voting their way on the passage of a law.

The names on that list might somehow turn out to be politically embarrassing to some members of Congress, or even to some members of the Obama administration—remember, as a Senator Obama voted in favor of giving telecom companies immunity from prosecution. But embarrassment shouldn’t be a good enough reason to keep something secret, especially not in Obama’s new promised land of transparency.

Yet the administration has refused to obey the court’s order. First the White House asked for a 60-day delay. The court knocked that down. Then they tried for a 30-day delay. Again, the court said no. So they then filed an emergency motion to prevent the release of the documents. Once more, the court turned them away.

But this week, after administration lawyers tried yet again, the court finally caved and agreed to postpone the order to make the documents public.

A proud day for democracy. High fives all around at the White House.

Eventually, we’ll find out what’s going on here. Or, maybe we won’t. Cheney pulled all kinds of tricks like these to forever keep secret the names of the big oil lobbyists experts who dictated the outcome he consulted on his energy task force.

Back then, of course, Democrats were outraged that the Bush White House would try to hide that information from the public. One of the angriest was Rahm Emanuel, then a congressman and now Obama’s chief of staff.

“The vice president’s willingness to ignore the rules remains just as strong as ever,” Emanuel fumed. “Democrats are prepared to hold the vice president accountable and ensure that no one in our government is above the law.”

So why isn’t Rahm just as furious at his own boss, seeing how he is doing the same thing?

Anonymous 47 seconds ago Reading a post
Forum: Politics and Current Events
Thread: Obama's Broken Promises

welcome back Jason Perkins!