**Written by Doug Powers

President Obama has said “pass this jobs bill” dozens if not hundreds of times over the past several weeks, and still Congress hasn’t passed the bill. Now a frustrated Obama has decided to kick it up a gear by invoking a higher authority:

He also sought to shame the Republican-controlled House by accusing its leaders of wasting time during a jobs crisis with debates over commemorative baseball coins and reaffirming “In God We Trust” as the country’s motto. The House has refused to consider Obama’s jobs bill.

“That’s not putting people back to work,” Obama said. “I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work. There’s work to be done. There are workers ready to do it. The American people are behind this.”

God wants to see us help ourselves? Is this the same President who just warned of a painful era of self-reliance if he’s not re-elected?

Until action is taken on the jobs bill, apparently God also wants to see a slew of executive orders signed in order to work around Congress.

Update: Just got this Tweet speculating that Obama was merely speaking in the 3rd person.

Update II: WH Press Secretary Jay Carney tried to back up Obama on this and ended up serving himself a helping of fail.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Read original post.

Obama’s presidency lurches from fad to fad — from gays in the

military to “green jobs” to the “Buffett rule.” Hyped as a profound
presidency, it has turned out to be an embarrassingly frivolous
one. Sober historians of the future, not cowed by political
correctness, will no doubt look back and say that Obama fiddled
while America burned, indulging his sophomoric socialism,
environmentalism, and social engineering at a time of terrorism and
economic crisis.

The weighty and thoughtful orator of Democratic mythology
looks more like a glib used car salesman, and in his case most of
the used cars are electric. It is fitting that his hawking of cheap
environmentalist propaganda would lead him into the first major
scandal of his presidency. The Solyndra debacle is exactly what one
would expect from an administration determined to push the politics
of environmentalist conjecture at the expense of the American
taxpayer and economy.

Out of Obama’s implausible ideological insistence that
“green jobs” would bolster the economy, and the political need to
prove that claim, came a hasty loan to a dubious solar panel maker
that promised to create them. Obama leaves the American taxpayer
with a bill of over half a billion dollars for this environmental
lark, and it is only the most recent bill. His “green jobs” loan
guarantee program has been a bust, costing taxpayers tens of
billions for the creation of a pitifully small number of
jobs.

The Solyndra scandal stands as a symbol of the
administration’s reckless and unserious approach to the economy,
undermining job creators while propping up job destroyers. Needing
to divert people’s attention from the greed and irresponsibility on
display in the scandal, Obama now turns back to raw class warfare,
hoping to egg the poor and middle class into an idle hatred of the
rich. The great unifier seeks to set secretary against
boss.

Obama says his gimmicky “Buffett rule” is not class
warfare but simple math. Maybe he means the “new math” taught in
public schools. Senator Charles Schumer of New York must not have
received the “simple math” talking point; he admits openly that
Obama’s proposal is timed to capitalize on potential class
resentments in a bad economy. “When everybody went up, it was a lot
harder to make this argument,” he told the press. “I think the time
is ripe again. And I think the president sensed that.”

Obama’s half-baked Marxist musings with Joe the Plumber
remain his deepest thoughts on the purpose of taxation. He still
feels entitled to seize wealth and “spread” it around. When he says
that the rich aren’t paying their “fair share,” all he is saying is
that their money belongs to the government automatically for
redistribution. But that’s just theft masquerading as taxation. The
true principle of taxation is not the redistribution of wealth but
the financing of legitimate government activity, and under that
principle the rich are paying more than their fair share, as they
carry a disproportionate amount of those costs. Republicans should
resist the Buffett rule not just because it will inhibit job
creation and consumption but because it is a bald act of
theft.

America’s “jobs president” is more like a crooked Robin
Hood. Economic decline is not so much a crisis for him as a policy
and a pretext for ideological opportunism. Given the choice between
liberal ideology and the creation of jobs, he consistently selects
the former. He chooses unions over jobs, environmental regulations
over jobs, and trivial tax-hike gimmicks over jobs.

Obama’s blasé attitude about Solyndra, shrugging off an
enormous loss to taxpayers as no big deal, is part of this
ideological blindness and complacency. No failure ever prompts any
reflection on the wisdom of a liberal scheme; he just moves
forward, trying out new ways to present failed ideas as a boon to
the common good.

A popular slur among liberal pundits is to say that
Republicans oppose Barack Obama’s economic ideas because they want
the economy to stay sluggish before the election. The slur makes no
sense. If that were the Republicans’ crass calculation, they would
be supporting his ideas, as they are sure to make a bad economy
worse.

But it is not enough for Obama to damage the economy. He’s
also proud of shaking up the military. Just as he is making life
harder on businessmen through new taxes and regulations, so he now
makes life harder on generals through social engineering. The
media’s coverage of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been
laughably propagandistic, designed to leave the impression that
everyone is thrilled with the change. The reality is that it
creates new headaches for generals who already have too many of
them. And there is no end in sight to the politicized struggles to
come. According to the Washington Post, gay activists have
a new cause to press upon a hidebound military — the “unknown
number of transgender troops serving in uniform without formal
recognition.” Perhaps this cause will dovetail with Obama’s next
likely innovation for the military, a full-blown women in combat
policy.

After all, he owes feminists a favor, having allowed,
according to author Ron Suskind, a “hostile workplace” for women to
fester in the White House. One would have thought Bill Clinton’s
presidency might have triggered that complaint. Instead, “I feel
like a piece of meat”-style complaints comes from Obama’s. Life in
the workplace has grown difficult everywhere under Obama, including
in his.

View original article.

If you want proof that President Obama’s Executive Order on taxpayer-funded abortion was a sham, look no further than Pennsylvania, says House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio).

Boehner and other Republicans point to reports that the Health and Human Services Department is giving Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new high-risk insurance pool that will cover any abortion that is legal in the state.

“The fact that the high-risk pool insurance program in Pennsylvania will use federal taxpayer dollars to fund abortions is unconscionable,” Boehner said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Just last month at the White House, I asked President Obama to provide the American people with a progress report on the implementation of his Executive Order, which purports to ban taxpayer-funding of abortions. Unfortunately, the President provided no information, and the American people are still waiting for answers.”

President Obama pledged that under his health care plan “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.”

In a May 13 letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Boehner asked if her department has provided guidance to the states on how to implement the president’s Executive Order on abortion funding. Boehner also asked Sebelius if the new federal high-risk pools would exclude abortion coverage.

He says his questions remain unanswered.

“Millions of Americans care deeply about this aspect of the new law and its implementation, and no progress report is complete without detailed information about it,” Boehner wrote to Sebelius.

The conservative Family Research Council says the $160 million in taxpayer funds for Pennsylvania is the first known instance of direct federal funding of abortions through the new high-risk insurance pools.

The abortion funding for pool participants validates the arguments pro-life groups made throughout the health care debate – that taxpayer dollars will fund abortions, said Tom McClusky, senior vice president of the Family Research Council’s political action arm.

“For our efforts to remove the bill’s abortion funding, we were called ‘deceivers’ by President Obama and ‘liars’ by his allies. Now we know who the true deceivers and liars really are,’ McClusky said.

“This action by the Obama Administration also exposes the worthlessness of President Obama’s Executive Order that supposedly would prevent federal funding of abortion, but which both sides, including Planned Parenthood, agreed was unenforceable.

“While the American people deserve an apology from President Obama for his deception, we should only be satisfied when this Pennsylvania abortion funding is rescinded and the health care law repealed.

McClusky noted that the new health care law also includes $12.5 billion for community health centers, and $6 billion for co-ops, both of which can fund abortions. And some people will use tax credits to help them pay for plans that cover abortion.

Even before it’s fully implemented, the Democrats’ health care plan “is already being exposed as a high-taxing, poorly thought-out, and taxpayer-funding-of-abortion monstrosity,” McClusky said.

Republican leader Boehner says House Republicans would codify the Hyde amendment, thus prohibiting all authorized and appropriated federal funds from being used to pay for abortion. Under the Republican plan, any health plan that includes abortion coverage would not receive federal funds.

Oil industry executives on Tuesday sharply criticized President Barack Obama’s six-month ban on deepwater drilling, saying the world did not have enough other sources of oil to eliminate using deepsea rigs.

The massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico and the moratorium imposed by Obama dominated discussions at the World National Oil Companies Congress in the British capital, and a BP executive standing in for embattled BP CEO Tony Hayward was heckled by protesters.

Transocean Ltd. president and CEO Steven Newman, owner of the destroyed Deepwater Horizon rig that has spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, said Obama’s ban, which is currently being reviewed by a U.S. federal judge, was unnecessary.

“There are things the administration could implement today that would allow the industry to go back to work tomorrow without an arbitrary six-month time limit,” Newman told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting.

Obama’s ban reflects growing unease about oil companies seeking to drill farther out to sea and deeper than ever before. The process is expensive, risky and largely uncharted, highlighted by the April 20 explosion at the BP-operated rig that killed 11 workers and set off worst oil spill in U.S. history.

But the U.S. moratorium has been challenged in court. Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans has said he will make a decision on it by Wednesday.

Chevron executive Jay Pryor, also at the London conference, said the U.S. government’s move would “constrain supplies for world energy.”

“It would also be a step back for energy security,” said Pryor, global vice president for business development at the U.S. company.

BP chief of staff Steve Westwell, who was heckled during a speech in which he stood in for Hayward, said “regulators around the world will obviously want to know what happened” to cause the blown-out well in the Gulf and change their procedures accordingly.

But he said deepwater drilling is needed as supplies of land and shallow water oil diminish.

“The world does need the oil and the energy that is going to have to come from deepwater production going forward,” Westwell said. “Therefore, the regulatory framework must still enable that to be a viable commercial position.”

Hayward pulled out of the conference Monday after stinging criticism for spending Saturday at England’s Isle of Wight to see his yacht compete in a famous race, an outing that drew outrage on the Gulf coast and an acerbic response from the White House.

Westwell was interrupted twice during his address by protesters from Greenpeace shouting “we need to end the oil age!” The hecklers were escorted out of the central London hotel by security.

Shukri Ghanem, the head of Libya’s National Oil Corp. who serves as the North African nation’s de facto oil minister, said he was happy for BP to continue to operate in his country’s territorial waters despite the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ghanem, who said he planned to meet with Hayward while in London, said the spill is “a real tragedy, but in a way it’s exaggerated.”

“It is unfortunate, but it is an opportunity to be more careful in the future,” he said.

BP signed an exploration and production deal with Libya’s National Oil Co. — worth at least $900 million — in June 2007, going back into Libya for the first time in more than 30 years.

Libya’s proven oil reserves are the ninth largest in the world, while vast areas remain unexplored for new deposits.

Outside the conference, one of the protesters, Emma Gibson, called on BP to end its investment in a controversial Canadian tar sands project and end deepwater drilling.

“We really need to speed up progress to end the oil age,” Gibson told reporters.

Westwell declined to comment on BP’s public battle with Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which has a 25 percent stake in the well, over who is responsible for the catastrophic failure of the Deepwater Horizon well, which has leaked more than 120 million gallons of oil already, according to the most pessimistic U.S. government estimates.

“We will need to wait for the investigation to conclude,” Westwell said.

Westwell also declined to comment on what assets BP might sell off if the cost of the cleanup and the relief effort in the Gulf takes too heavy a toll. The company, which turned a $16 billion profit last year, has spent $2 billion fighting the spill for the last two months. It has also set up a $20 billion fund to compensate victims.

Oil from the blown-out undersea well has been washing up from Louisiana to Florida, killing birds and fish and coating marshes, wetlands and beaches with tar balls and oily debris. A pair of relief wells considered the best chance at a permanent fix won’t be completed until August.

Westwell said Hayward was “genuinely sorry” not to be at the conference, where he had been due to give a keynote address on about the global responsibilities of international oil companies.

“He and I both hope you understand his schedule is under incredible pressure at the moment,” Westwell told delegates.

“He is the CEO,” Westwell said when questioned about Hayward’s position and whereabouts, adding that Hayward was in London attending to other company matters.

France’s tricolor, Britain’s Union Jack and even Croatia’s coat of arms have been lifted above those nation’s installations in Haiti. But in the United States camp, “whose contributions dwarf the rest of the world’s,” no flag is allowed to fly. Why? The Obama administration has forbidden it. USA Today reports:

The lack of the Stars and Stripes does not sit well with some veterans and servicemembers who say the U.S. government should be proud to fly the flag in Haiti, given the amount of money and manpower the U.S. is donating to help the country recover from the Jan. 12 quake.

The Obama administration says flying the flag could give Haiti the wrong idea.

“We are not here as an occupation force, but as an international partner committed to supporting the government of Haiti on the road to recovery,” the U.S. government’s Haiti Joint Information Center said in response to a query about the flag.

It used to be that Americans serving abroad were proud to serve oversees under our nation’s flag. Not the Obama administration.

And this is not the first time President Obama has sought to distance himself from our nation’s past. Let us not forget last year’s world wide apology tour, including:

10. Apology for Guantanamo in Washington: “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. … Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies.”

9. Apology for the Mistakes of the CIA: “So don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks. Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes.”

8. Apology for U.S. Policy toward the Americas: “Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas.”

7. Apology before the Turkish Parliament: “The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. … Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.”

6. Apology for Guantanamo in France: “I don’t believe that there is a contradiction between our security and our values. And when you start sacrificing your values, when you lose yourself, then over the long term that will make you less secure.”

5. Apology for the War on Terror: “Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. … In other words, we went off course.”

4. Apology at the G-20 Summit of World Leaders: “I would like to think that with my election and the early decisions that we’ve made, that you’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world.”

3. Apology to the Summit of the Americas: “While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms. … So I’m here to launch a new chapter of engagement that will be sustained throughout my administration. The United States will be willing to acknowledge past errors where those errors have been made.”

2. Apology to the Muslim World: “We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.”

1. Apology to France and Europe: “Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”

Now we are apologizing for saving lives in Haiti!

More from BigGovernment.com:

t’s bad enough that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is giving short shrift to American manufacturers and our economy by ordering extravagant new crystal stemware from Sweden to make the crystal cabinets in America’s embassies sparkle impressively, but now we learn that Barack Obama has told the U.S. relief forces in Haiti not to fly the U.S. flag over its own military compounds. He says that it will “send the wrong message.”

Never mind that all the other nations have their flags proudly flying above their military relief installations in Haiti. Even Croatia has its coat of arms flying outside its base. Yet not the U.S. Army. No U.S. flag fliesanywhere despite the fact that we are far and away the largest force and have supplied the most relief supplies and money to the earthquake recovery effort.

According to USAID, as of January 19, 2010 the U.S. had spent $130,864,571 on aid to the Haitian people to help them recover from the devastating earthquake. By Jan. 25 that number had alreadyincreased to $179,883,065. It is only going up from there.

So why did the Obama administration forbid flying our own flag in Haiti?

“We are not here as an occupation force, but as an international partner committed to supporting the government of Haiti on the road to recovery,” the U.S. government’s Haiti Joint Information Center said in response to a query about the flag.

If it is so important to be seen as just another member of that international force, then why are all the other nations still flying their flags? Oh, I remember now… unlike the U.S. they don’t have a president that is more comfortable apologizing for his country than being proud of it, even when it is engaged in saving lives through relief work.

As far as Obama is concerned, we should be ashamed of our nation even when we are digging children and the aged out of mounds of crumbled ruins, even when we are feeding the hungry, and administering life saving medicines — all for free mind you. Even those efforts aren’t good enough for us to be proud to fly our flag above them, apparently.

The NavyTimes.com report reveals a craven attempt by the Obama Administration to pin this no-flag decision on our troops, too. Obama’s Army flak, Colonel Billy Buckner, spokesman for Joint Task Force-Haiti — “a group representing various Obama administration agency heads” the NavyTimes.com report tells us — says that our commanders are “smart” not to fly the flag.

“Our commanders are smart and intuitively understand their mission here in Haiti, and clearly the sensitivities that come with supporting the mission,” Buckner said.A U.S. flag went up at a temporary consular station set up in the first few days on the airport tarmac, according to Charles Luoma-Overstreet, a State Department spokesman in Haiti.

“Apparently, the prime minister (Jean-Max Bellerive) saw this” and thought it appeared as if the United States were taking over the airport, Luoma-Overstreet said.

He said Bellerive said something to U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten, who agreed that flying the flag wasn’t a good idea and told the consular officials to take it down.

Notice how it went from “the commanders” being “smart” enough to understand the situation to Obama’s Ambassador to Haiti ordering the flag be removed? In other words, despite the Colonel trying to make it seem as if the commanders on the ground are all for this dearth of Old Glory, it really ends up being a political decision by Obama and his cohorts who are ashamed of America and willing to let anyone denigrate her.

Does anyone really think that PM Bellerive would have persisted in his loose observation that the U.S. was an “occupying force” amidst all the aid flowing into his country? And even if he did, so what? The aid we were supplying is obviously far more important than a cheap political maneuver by Bellerive.

Still, this shows the lack of spine Obama has when standing up to foreign criticism. Even this offhanded comment from Bellerive was enough for Obama to slight his own army and his own countrymen by removing Old Glory from sight in Haiti.

If Obama is this much of a linguini-spined sort of a leader, what will happen to us if he faces a real foreign crisis?

At ThreatsWatch.org, Steve Schippert and Clyde Middleton have dug up the bizarre and unsettling issuance of an executive order recently signed by President Barack Obama. Executive Order — Amending Executive Order 12425, signed December 16 and released a day later, grants the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) rights on American soil that place it beyond the reach of our own law enforcement agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Schippert and Middleton note that Obama’s order removes protections placed upon INTERPOL by President Reagan in 1983. Obama’s order gives the group the authority to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests — which means this foreign law enforcement organization can operate free of an important safeguard against governmental abuse. “Property and assets,” including the organization’s records, cannot be searched or seized. Their physical locations and records are now immune from U.S. legal or investigative authorities.

If the president of the United States has an aboveboard reason for making a foreign law enforcement agency exempt from American laws on American soil, it wasn’t shared by the White House.

Andy McCarthy, former assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, notes at National Review that the limitations that Obama removed are “what prevents law-enforcement and its controlling government authority from becoming tyrannical.”

A paragraph later, McCarthy describes Obama’s actions in the starkest of terms:

This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.

Some bloggers covering this story are noting that the law enforcement agency to which Obama has extended such extraordinary powers to has had a dismal past.

INTERPOL’s senior leadership was flush with Nazis from the late 1930s all the way into the 1970s. That fact allowed, going Godwin isn’t necessarily relevant to today’s organization. Khoo Boon Hui of Singapore is the current president of the organization, and the current secretary general is American Ronald Noble. Noble is perhaps best known in America for overseeing the Treasury Department’s review of the disastrous 1993 raid and siege of a Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, that left nearly 80 people dead. Noble had cautioned against the initial raid plan as being too dangerous, but the lack of any significant ramifications for federal officials that approved of the raid and allegations of a cover-up have inspired conspiracy theorists to derisively dub Noble “the Enforcer.”

But INTERPOL’s past isn’t what concerns us at this moment. Its current actions and the actions of our president are those that we question.

With the flourish of a pen and no warning at all, Barack Obama surrendered American sovereignty to an international force with a checkered past. To what end?

The consensus opinion among those commenting on this development is that the most radical president in American history seems to be intent on submitting American citizens to the whims of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Previous administrations have been very leery of signing onto agreements that would make citizens susceptible to the ICC, due to the possibility that U.S. servicemen could be dragged into show war crimes trials. Such events are obviously heavily politicized, and demands for war crimes arrests can come from any government, even those that sponsor terrorism or genocide themselves.

No finer point can be made about the endemic problems of the INTERPOL/ICC than that made by a recent diplomatic incident that erupted in Great Britain, where an Israeli government official had to cancel travel plans to England because of an arrest warrant issued by an English judge — because of Iranian charges of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. The brief but intense conflict was one Iran helped instigate, as the Persians supplied the terrorists in Gaza with the rockets they used against Israeli civilians, triggering an inevitable Israeli response.

If President Obama and his radical allies in the Democratic leadership have their way, American soldiers could presumably be brought up on charges as war criminals by enemy nations and marked for arrest and deportation by an international police force on American soil. They would face charges in a foreign land without the constitutional protections they fought and bled to protect. The White House seems to be on the bewildering path of giving al-Qaeda terrorists who murder innocent women and children more legal protection than the very soldiers that risk their lives trying to bring terrorists to justice. The asinine court-martial charges being brought against three Navy SEALs based upon the word of a terrorist they captured suddenly make a sickening kind of sense.

It also stands to reason that Obama’s seeming willingness to put American soldiers’ lives in the hands of a corrupt international community could also be brought to bear against his political enemies. Foreign investigators of dubious intent, and our own left-wing extremists, have long branded officials of the previous administration “war criminals” for actions they’d taken in the war on terror. It is entirely conceivable — perhaps even likely — that these same organizations and enemy governments that went after 25 Israeli government officials through INTERPOL and the ICC would quickly move to indict a wish list of current and former U.S. government officials for alleged “war crimes.” Former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney would obviously be at the top of such a list of politically motivated suspects, but such a list could just as easily include General David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressmen, and senators.

As the Iranian gambit has shown, Obama’s bizarre assault on U.S. sovereignty could have disastrous repercussions. We can only hope that his fetish for weakening this nation can be stopped before American politicians and servicemen are made pawns by our enemies.

The Obama Administration announced this morning that it intends to ship five Guantanamo Bay detainees to New York to be tried in civilian federal court. One of those men is the September 11th mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad.

This decision will be seen by many liberals as paving the way for closing the Guantanamo Bay facility. It is also an olive branch by an Administration facing growing criticism from its own party for its failure to move forward on closing the facility by its January 22nd deadline. In fact, the President has been battered lately by the left for staying too close to Bush Administration terrorism policies. So close in fact, that the Obama Administration had announced its intent to continue to use military tribunals despite Obama’s feverish opposition to such an idea during the Presidential campaigns.

Obama tried to make his case today for this decision by stating that Khalid Sheik Mohammad, one of the four set to be tried, would be subject to “the most exacting demands of justice.” But this move would be anything but justice.

Civilian courts are horribly situated to handle the prosecution of these types of detainees. Not only there potential security concerns associated with transporting such high-value detainees thousands of miles away, but these five men, charged with crimes related to the attacks of 9/11 would be tried in New York City, the very same location of the attacks. Defense lawyers are sure to argue that the venue is prejudicial paving the way for multiple due process challenges.

While this decision will certainly appease those seeking to erode America’s ability to prosecute war criminals under a military tribunal, there is no reason to believe a military tribunal isn’t capable of exacting justice on these four suspects. Placing these detainees in a domestic criminal proceeding creates evidentiary, security, and procedural issues. These detainees are not common criminals—but individuals that committed an act of war against the United States. Not only does the law sufficiently provide for use of military tribunals, common sense demands it.

The Obama Administration’s scattered counterterrorism policies, littered with efforts to placate the left while recognizing the legitimacy of some Bush era policies, are an invitation for terrorists to take advantage of America’s divisions. Obama needs to be clear, forceful, and direct, sending the message that America won’t stand for terrorism.

Read More:

• GOPUSA.com: Gitmo 9/11 suspects to NY for trial
• CNSNews.com: Sept. 11 Mastermind, 4 Other Gitmo Detainees to Be Tried in Federal Court in NYC
• Michelle Malkin: Bombshell: Obama bringing KSM to NYC for trial; former Bush AG Mukasey responds: “High risk of attack”
• Right Wing News: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to Stand Trial in New York: Attorney General Holder Gets Some Satisfaction for Terror-Backing Democratic-Left
• PrisonPlanet.com: Fury at plan to try September 11 mastermind near Ground Zero
• HumanEvents.com: Al-Qaeda Varsity Moved to NY
• NewsMax.com: McCain Rips Obama Over NYC Terror Trial

When President Barack Obama was pitching his $787 billion economic stimulus package, the White House produced a report ^[2] claiming their plan would keep unemployment under a peak of 8%.

Reality has not been kind to President Obama’s promises. On November 6, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released their Employment Situation Summary ^[3] showing that the nation’s unemployment rate had soared from 9.8% to 10.2% in October. You can see how President Obama’s promises compare to reality to the right.

Reading the BLS report more closely, Heritage fellows Rea Hederman and James Sherk note ^[4]:

Jobs losses in October–190,000–were higher than expected. … The unemployment rate for males is 10.7 percent while the teenage unemployment rate is 27.6 percent. These are the highest levels of unemployment for these groups since the Great Depression.

The unemployment rate increased even as 31,000 potential workers left the labor force. The labor force participation rate has now fallen to 65.1 percent–the lowest since 1986. When people reenter the labor market to find work, the unemployment rate will further increase.
…
Despite this ongoing deterioration in the job market, the Obama Administration continues to argue that the $800 billion stimulus bill has improved the economy. On October 30, the Administration released data claiming that the stimulus has created or saved 640,000 jobs. These claims are mistaken, as demonstrated by the 2.8 million jobs that have been lost since the stimulus became law. The Administration’s figures greatly exaggerate the positive effect of the stimulus for two reasons:

1. The data used to create these estimates contains serious flaws. The Administration provided unclear guidelines for how to report jobs created or saved. Media analyses of these jobs reports have found severe errors. For instance, the Associated Pres ^[5]s found that two-thirds of the 15,000 jobs one agency reported creating or saving did not really exist. Rather, the agency reported workers who received raises with stimulus funding as having their jobs “saved.” In another case ^[6], a shoe store in Kentucky that provided nine pairs of boots to the Army Corps of Engineers for $889.60 reported saving nine jobs. Such errors pervade the stimulus job creation estimates.
2. A deeper problem with the Administration’s numbers is that they estimate the wrong figures. The Administration estimates the jobs directly funded by stimulus spending. However, they ignore the jobs that the money spent on the stimulus would have otherwise created. Congressional spending does not create wealth; it redistributes it. Had Congress not passed the stimulus bill, the private sector would have used those funds on other projects that would have also created jobs.

The White House Pay Czar late yesterday set pay levels of private citizens in the financial industry at companies receiving TARP funding.  In most instances, executive compensation packages would be cut in half while in one instance the pay cut is 90 percent — which will virtually guarantee a brain drain at companies where taxpayers are on the hook for billions of dollars.

The seven companies are AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, General Motors Co., GMAC Inc., Chrysler Group LLC and Chrysler Financial.

Rep. Tom Price, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, denounced the unprecedented government intrusion into private industry and the fundamental changes to our free market system.

“Where does this inane government intervention end?” Price asked. “This move, along with the original decision to bailout these companies, contradicts the fundamental principles that have provided us unparalleled prosperity. When the government can create powers out of thin air and set arbitrary pay standards for private citizens, we have told the world that politicians now drive the American economy, not people and markets.”

“This issue strikes at a fundamental question of the role of government,” Price continued.  “While history and principle have long proven that private markets are where prices are most efficiently set, this administration has decided that there is no question which bureaucrats cannot answer.”

“Executives who violate the trust of their shareholders and make reckless decisions should face the consequences of their actions,” Price said.  “Yet the unprecedented bailouts and interventions into private companies that we have witnessed over the last year have removed all consequences for putting short-term gain over long-term stability. Rather than perpetuating political control over the economy, we must restore the free market forces that keep companies honest.”

“This action today should concern every single American, as the administration moves ever further down a very slippery slope,” Price concluded.  “While it is bailed out firms today, it could be any industry that falls out of political favor next. Our focus should be on removing the claws of the federal government and taxpayer dollars from these private companies, not settling in for the long haul. We cannot restore the robust economic system we seek until we remember that markets, not government, are what hold our economy together.”

From GOPUSA.com:

Obama to slash bailout exec pay by 90 percent
Associated Press
October 22, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Obama administration will order companies that received huge government bailouts last year to slash the salaries of their top executives by an average of 90 percent and cut their total compensation in half, a person familiar with the decision said Wednesday.

The cuts apply to the 25 highest paid executives at the seven companies that received the most assistance, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been announced. Smaller companies and those that have repaid the bailout money, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., are not affected.

The Treasury is expected to announce the cuts within the next few days.

Kenneth Feinberg, the special master at Treasury appointed to handle compensation issues as part of the government’s $700 billion financial bailout package, is making the pay decisions.

The seven companies are Bank of America Corp., American International Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., General Motors, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial.

It was unclear exactly how much the executives would be allowed to make, or how that would be determined.

However, at the financial products division of AIG, the giant insurance company which has received taxpayer assistance valued at more than $180 billion, no top executive will receive more than $200,000 in total compensation, the person familiar with Feinberg’s plan said.

The administration also will warn AIG that it must significantly reduce the $198 million in bonuses promised to employees in its financial services division, the arm of the company whose risky trades caused its downfall.

The pay restrictions for all seven companies will require any executive seeking more than $25,000 in special benefits – things such as country club memberships, private planes and company cars – to get permission for those perks from the government.

Until now, these companies were only required to provide guidelines for the use of such luxuries. The inspector general at Treasury who oversees the bailout program found a range of standards. GM, for instance, generally prohibits employees from flying in private jets for business travel. Bank of America, on the other hand, encourages senior management to use corporate aircraft “for safety and efficiency purposes.”

Feinberg’s decisions come days after administration officials voiced sharp criticism of plans by some firms, particularly those on Wall Street, to pay huge bonuses even as the country continues to struggle with rising unemployment and the effects of the recession.

Goldman Sachs, which has paid back its bailout money, has said it earmarked $16.7 billion for compensation so far this year, more than $500,000 per employee. Citigroup is paying $5.3 billion in bonuses to its employees and Bank of America $3.3 billion.

Elsewhere, Freddie Mac is giving its chief financial officer compensation worth as much as $5.5 million, including a $2 million signing bonus. The government-controlled mortgage finance company doesn’t have to follow the executive compensation rules because it is being paid outside the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

Congress passed legislation in February requiring Treasury to oversee pay at companies that took bailout money. Treasury created the pay czar’s office in June as one means of implementing that law.

Treasury’s rules requires the special master to review pay for the 25 top earners at companies that received “exceptional assistance,” examining overall pay structures and recapturing payouts that go against taxpayers’ interests.

Feinberg on Tuesday told a Washington audience that negotiating with the companies was a study in contradictions.

“Perfect metrics, competitive pay, no excessive risk, loyalty to the company,” he said. “What I have to do under the law – and everyone’s waiting” is to create compensation packages “reflecting those often conflicting principals.”

Feinberg has until Oct. 30 to design pay packages for top earners.

Tom Wilkinson, a GM spokesman, said Wednesday that the auto company was “currently in discussions with Mr. Feinberg’s office regarding executive compensation. We will have further information once those discussions have concluded.”

Gina Proia, a spokeswoman for GMAC, said the finance company has “been working on a proposal that aims at embodying the principles set forth for compensation along with balancing the need to retain critical talent necessary to execute our turnaround. Until we receive notification about that plan, we have no further comment.”

Chrysler Group issued a similar statement.

Representatives for Chrysler Financial, Citigroup and AIG declined to comment. A spokesmen for Bank of America did not return calls for comment Wednesday evening.

But company officials and lobbyists earlier this month said Bank of America, Citigroup, GMAC Financial Services and others were reworking their pay plans to ensure compensation reflects executive performance. They’re giving executives more of their compensation in stock and stock options, and spreading pay over a longer period. They are also adopting plans to recapture some pay when bets go bad.

The changes are not limited to those on Feinberg’s list. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. also are compensating senior employees with more stock and less cash.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, a Republican member of the congressional panel that oversees the $700 billion fund, said the only way taxpayers end up “subsidizing offensive executive salaries is when the government bails out the executives and the companies they run in the first place.”

Hensarling called again Wednesday for terminating the bailout program at the end of this year.

From The Heritage Foundation:

At Marginal Revolution George Mason University economics professor Alex Tabarrok comments on Obama administration’s pay czar Kenneth Feinberg’s decision to cut bailed out firm executive pay by an average of about 90 percent from last year:

There is no way this will work as advertised. If the administration actually follows through, most of these executives will quit and get higher paying jobs elsewhere. Executives not directly affected by the pay cuts will also quit when they see their prospects for future salary gains have been cut. Chaos will be created at these firms as top people leave in droves. Will the administration then order people back to work?

Senate rebukes Obama, blocks Guantanamo shutdown
By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press
May 21, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a rare, bipartisan defeat for President Barack Obama, the Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to keep the prison at Guantanamo Bay open for the foreseeable future and forbid the transfer of any detainees to facilities in the United States.

Democrats lined up with Republicans in the 90-6 vote that came on the heels of a similar move a week ago in the House, underscoring widespread apprehension among Obama’s congressional allies over voters’ strong feelings about bringing detainees to the U.S. from the prison in Cuba.

The president readied a speech for Thursday on the U.S. fight against terrorism.

Obama has vowed to close the prison by January 2010, and the Senate’s vote was not the final word on the matter. It will be next month at the earliest before Congress completes work on the legislation, giving the White House time pursue a compromise that would allow the president to fulfill his pledge.

But Obama’s maneuvering room was further constrained during the day when FBI Director Robert Mueller told a congressional panel that he had concerns about bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to prisons in the United States. Among the risks is “the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States,” said Mueller, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001 and is serving a 10-year fixed term in office.

Additionally, U.S. District Judge John Bates ruled this week that some prisoners — but not all — can be held indefinitely at Guantanamo without being charged, thus increasing the pressure on the administration to develop a plan for the men held there.

After the Senate vote, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “The president understands that his most important job is to keep the American people safe and that he is not going to make any decision or any judgment that imperils the safety of the American people.”

He added Obama has not yet decided where some of the detainees will be sent. A presidential commission is studying the issue.

There was no suspense in the moments leading to the Senate vote, although Democrats maneuvered to take political credit for denying Obama funds he sought to close the prison. They hoped to negate weeks of Republican warnings about the danger involved.

Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, favors closing Guantanamo, and the legislation his panel originally sent to the floor provided money for that purpose once the administration submitted a plan for the shutdown.

In changing course and seeking to delete the funds, he said, “The fact that the administration has not offered a workable plan at this point made that decision rather easy.”

The administration asked for $80 million to close the facility. Obama promised repeatedly as a presidential candidate to shut down the prison, calling it a blot on the international image of the United States.

Even in voting to deny him the funds, Obama’s Democratic allies insisted the president was fundamentally correct.

“Guantanamo is used by al-Qaida as a symbol of American abuse of Muslims and is fanning the flames of anti-Americanism around the world,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.

And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who had said on Tuesday he opposed allowing detainees to be transferred to U.S. prisons, signaled he might change his mind on that point. “If the administration proposes a plan that recommends the transfer of some detainees to American prisons, he will evaluate it carefully and make a judgment at that time,” said spokesman Jim Manley.

The lopsided vote was a victory for the Senate Republicans, who have recently turned their attention to Obama’s policies on foreign policy and terrorism after failing to make headway in criticizing his economic program.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has delivered numerous speeches in recent weeks raising pointed questions about Obama’s plans to close the prison without first explaining where the men held there would be sent. “For months, we have been saying what Senate Democrats now acknowledge: that because the administration has no plan for what to do with the 240 detainees at Guantanamo, it would be irresponsible and dangerous for the Senate to appropriate the money to close it,” McConnell said shortly before the vote.

Obama came to office pledging a dramatic change in George W. Bush’s terrorism policy. In the months since, he has woven an uncertain course, occasionally angering liberals.

He first backed the cancellation of military tribunals for prisoners, then announced he wanted them resumed with greater legal protections for the accused. Last week, he reversed course on another issue, deciding to appeal a court-ordered release of prisoner-abuse photos taken at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

Several Republicans praised Obama for those very steps.

“I commend him for being very willing to change his opinion in light of having access to the intelligence he didn’t have access to” as a candidate, said Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah.

FBI Director Mueller made his comments before the House Judiciary Committee.

Prodded by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., to agree that Guantanamo detainees could be kept safely in maximum security prisoners in the United States, Mueller declined. He noted that in some instances gang leaders have run their gangs from inside prisons.

If Reid has appeared equivocal on the possible transfer of prisoners, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the second-in-command among Democrats, pointed out that no one has ever escaped from a federal “supermax” prison and that 347 convicted terrorists are among those held in them.

That drew some support from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “The idea that we cannot find a place to securely house 250-plus detainees within the United States is not rational,” he said.

Not all Republicans were thinking along the same lines.

“No good purpose is served by allowing known terrorists, who trained at terrorist training camps, to come to the U.S. and live among us,” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas. “Guantanamo Bay was never meant to be an Ellis Island.”

More.