With President Obama off on vacation, his second in two weeks, unofficial Acting President Joe Biden has stepped into the vacuum, claiming credit Thursday for the successes of the administration's $787 billion stimulus package and fielding questions on health care reform -- something his boss hasn't done in nearly two weeks.
The vice president, borrowing Mr. Obama's teleprompter for a speech before a friendly audience at the Brookings Institution, said "I" more than a dozen times as he pointed repeatedly to progress on the economy and to his lofty role in the process.
"Every week -- with notable exceptions -- I hold a Cabinet meeting. And most of the Cabinet secretaries attend," he told the audience in Washington.
If we survive the Obama administration without a civil war, it will be because insiders within the permanent government -- people who remember their oaths or just men and women who are frightened at what might happen to the prospect of their pensions -- used leaks and calculated PR weapons of selective destruction to bring down the players, one by one.
For this reason we should celebrate the Obama Administration's decision to attack the CIA.
Not a single politically aware person does not remember John McCain’s surprise announcement of Sarah Palin as his running mate on August 29, 2008. The Democrat National Convention was wrapping up, Obama had made his grand speech, but all the political world was abuzz over the impending selection of Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty as McCain’s running mate. The surprise and expertly choreographed announcement of Sarah Palin was one of a few grand McCain campaign moments.
One year later, Sarah Palin continues to be a top news maker and symbol of hope for many conservatives. Yet her reputation was damaged by the manner in which the McCain campaign handled her rise from obscurity.
I make no attempt to hide that I am a Palin fan. And I hope she can bring conservatives of all stripes together to topple the Obama regime.
Ramadan Kareem (White House.gov)
Remarks of President Barack Obama
Ramadan Message
Washington, DC
On behalf of the American people – including Muslim communities in all fifty states –
I want to extend best wishes to Muslims in America and around the world. Ramadan Kareem.
Ramadan is the month in which Muslims believe the Koran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, beginning with a simple word – iqra. It is therefore a time when Muslims reflect upon the wisdom and guidance that comes with faith, and the responsibility that human beings have to one another, and to God.
The U.S. government’s long-term budget outlook is darker than expected, with projected deficits over the next 10 years totaling $2 trillion more than had been forecast, according to an Obama administration official.
A White House budget review set for release Aug. 25 will show cumulative deficits over the next decade amounting to $9 trillion, up from $7.1 trillion that the administration predicted in May, the official said on condition of anonymity because the figures haven’t been made public.
The rest of the story is at Bloomberg.
Of course, the upshot of this is that the economy is in much worse shape than anyone in the Obama administration was willing to acknowledge. Yet Obama continues to push programs that spend taxpayers' money like a drunken gang of juvenile delinquents who just stole a billionaire's credit card.
This week we discovered that we have been deceived. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's principled rejection of US President Barack Obama's bigoted demand that Israel bar Jews from building new homes and expanding existing ones in Judea and Samaria does not reflect his actual policy.
Construction and Housing Minister Ariel Attias let the cat out of the bag.
Attias said that the government has been barring Jews from building in the areas since it took office four months ago, in the hopes that by preemptively capitulating to US demands, the US will treat Israel better.
It is important to note from the start that the struggle between liberty and socialism will never end, at least not in our lifetimes. If by chance it does, it will be because evil has triumphed. As long as people are free to make their own choices, some of those choices will always be for self-destruction or slavery (moral masochism). That is just the nature of human beings. However, once the slavery of socialism is self-imposed through trickery or stealth, there are no more choices. That is the weakness of a free people. The weakness of socialism is that it cannot be revealed for what it truly is until it is too late to stop it. Like all things evil, it cannot stand the light of day.
