Free Republic

According to POLITICO, Obama’s fans in the Beltway are shocked, shocked that he and his White House minions scapegoat White House General Counsel Greg Craig for Obama’s failed promise to close Guantanamo in one year. The closing of Guantanamo – as Obama’s critics have long predicted – ain’t gonna happen, because there’s no place else to put the hardcore terrorists currently housed there. When Obama announced his dubious executive order closing Guantanamo by January 2010, the Kool-Aid drinkers were ecstatic. “See?” they said, “This is why we elected him. We were so right.” No, they were so wrong. It was...

"(Japan Prime Minister) Hatoyama Vs.Obama -- The Scandal That Nobody Will Report" (由紀夫 vs オ�マ「書�れ�るスキャンダル�）Reporters at the weekly Shukan Bunshun news magazine here in Tokyo, Japan have written a rather caustic report about President Obama's 23 hours in Tokyo last week, from a frank Japanese perspective, exclusively in the Japanese language, and released to the newstands just now. In that sense this is more or less an *FR Exclusive*. A number of eye-opening claims, pieces of information and details emerge about Obama's brief stay in Japan as part of his disastrous Asian trip--over and above the very controversial, near-"dogeza"...

Officials tell ABC News so far, they found 700 mistaken Congressional districts out of more than 130,000 stimulus grants. On Monday night, ABC reported on errors found on the website set up by the White House to track the number of jobs created or saved by the economic stimulus program. The website was riddled with reports of jobs in places that didn't even exist. That report prompted anger on Capitol Hill, and defensiveness at the White House. On Tuesday night's broadcast, ABC's Chief Congressional Correspondent Jon Karl took another look at the stimulus confusion (link) LINK White House Vows to...

From Article Some of the president's critics are giving him a hard time, and it's true that this president seems never to have studied much American history. Not bowing to foreign potentates was what 1776 was all about. His predecessors learned with no difficulty that the essence of America is that all men stand equal and are entitled to look even a king, maybe particularly a king, straight in the eye. Can anyone imagine George Washington, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson making a similar gesture of servile submission? Or Harry Truman? Or FDR, who famously served the lowly hot dog,...

So much of an idiot, in fact, that according to Tapper’s source, at least one Japanese paper isn’t running the photo out of embarrassment. This tool actually groveled himself into a minor international incident. The good news for O-bots? It wasn’t unprecedented. Nixon evidently made a modest bow to Hirohito in the early 70s. The bad news? “Obama’s handshake/forward lurch was so jarring and inappropriate it recalls Bush’s back-rub of Merkel. “Kyodo News is running his appropriate and reciprocated nod and shake with the Empress, certainly to show the president as dignified, and not in the form of a first...

Politico: A senior administration official said President Barack Obama was simply observing protocol when he bowed to Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko upon arriving at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on Saturday.

Bad enough that Obama bowed down to another head of state yesterday. Even worse, he did not bother to learn how one bows in Japan, and just winged it. I agree with Scott Johnson, Steve Gilbert, Andrew Malcom, and many others that the President of the United States should not be bowing before any head of state. But unlike these astute observers, I actually know a little something about the art of the bow in Japan, having lived in Japan four different times on a resident visa, taught East Asian Studies at Harvard, and counseled many hundreds of American, European,...

As the war between the White House and Fox News escalates, it might be insightful to take a look back and see the path which led to Thursday’s attempt by the White House to completely shut off Fox News. The first skirmish was back in August, when people were complaining about having received unwanted emails from the White House...

The Obama administration was elated a month ago when the Russian president said sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program could become "inevitable." Washington's reaction may have been significantly premature. Dmitry Medvedev's words were seen as a major Kremlin shift and one that would buttress U.S. attempts to combine renewed negotiations with Tehran and a united front that threatened Iran with punishing global sanctions for failure to come clean about its nuclear ambitions. The United States, Britain, France and Germany believe Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon behind the cover of what Tehran says is a program designed...

Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, today urged President Obama to move with "deliberate speed" on a decision to increase troops in Afghanistan as his generals have requested, saying that to disregard their advice would be an "error of historic proportions." McCain said on CNN's State of the Union that Obama should back General Stanley McChrystal's proposal for an increase of 40,000 troops and resist a "half measure" aimed at placating political opponents of deeper U.S. involvement. " McChrystal, the top general in Afghanistan, warned last month that the conflict would likely end in...

Our new research shows no evidence of a Keynesian 'multiplier' effect. There is evidence that tax cuts boost growth. The global recession and financial crisis have refocused attention on government stimulus packages. These packages typically emphasize spending, predicated on the view that the expenditure "multipliers" are greater than one—so that gross domestic product expands by more than government spending itself. Stimulus packages typically also feature tax reductions, designed partly to boost consumer demand (by raising disposable income) and partly to stimulate work effort, production and investment (by lowering rates).

Someday this country will have a health-care debate that's not abject in its idiocy. It will involve a term used by Congressional Budge Office chief Doug Elmendorf, who has become a notoriety for harping on the word "incentives." The same word was used the other day by Warren Buffett, about what's missing from the health-care plan on Capitol Hill. We actually prefer the formulation of Duke University's Clark Havighurst, who speaks of restoring the "price tags" to health care. Now that's a concept that the public could actually make sense of. President Barack Obama made a "public option" his centerpiece...

The press is all agog over the President leading the UN security council which came out with extremely artfully worded resolution that endorses the eventual goal of "a world without nuclear weapons". That document is so carefully wordsmithed that the 2 most obvious violators of the UN's non proliferation treaty Iran and North Korea weren't mentioned by name. A vaguely worded document from an dysfunctional international agency and the press tells us how much progress is being made. The facts tell a different story, a story of a rookie in way over his head.

— OK, can you do some more probing? New York will want to know frank's out today. i checked already, and so did zurich. they say the question is irrelevant. he answered me with the quote i used, about we knew when he was coming this time. he's been here many times in the past, we think. thx brad. aptn is aware, but unfortunately won't make it in time, but is hoping to catch tail end. i'm pushing out another writethru with some more background details before press conference. no surprise, new york is really hot on this. they particularly...

Obama screwed Chicago yesterday, saying Michelle would lead the US delegation in Copenhagen the day Olympic bid is decided for 2016 games on October 2. He used the excuse of work on health care reform. Some speculate he will fly in at last moment and create an even bigger buzz. But if he does not show, I think Chicago loses, a real kick in the rear to Daley, who has done much for him (starting with gift of Axelrod in 2004 senate campaign). I do not believe Chicago could lose if he were there, and looked delegates in the eye,...

I don’t believe them. Or rather, I don’t believe that this is some innocent blind spot in the vetting process. An administration official said special advisers to the president, or czars, are not required to fill out the questionnaire that runs 7 pages and contains 63 questions. The entire questionnaire, the official said, is reserved for appointees who must win Senate confirmation… Question 61 reads as follows: “Have you had any association with any person, group or business venture that could be used - even unfairly - to impugn or attack your character and qualifications for government service?”… An administration...

WASHINGTON – The U.S. military is bungling its outreach to the Muslim world and squandering good will by failing to live up to its promises, the nation's highest-ranking military officer wrote Friday. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there is too much emphasis on telling the U.S. story and not enough on building trust and credibility. "We hurt ourselves and the message we are trying to send when it appears we are doing something merely for the credit," Mullen wrote in an essay published in a military journal. "We hurt ourselves more when our words...

After a rough week for health care reform, Democratic leaders appear to be pulling back on their demand for a public option. It remains to be seen whether liberal Democrats, especially in the House where they are more numerous, will go along with this. But this is still a step in the right direction to get something passed this year. The public option was an overreach. The White House's erroneous belief that it could get it through the legislature - or at least that it could let four out of five congressional committees push it - was a misinterpretation of...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Former Air Force reservist Gale Reid received a letter from the Veterans Affairs Department that told her she had Lou Gehrig's disease, and she immediately put herself through a battery of painful, expensive tests. Five days later, the VA said its "diagnosis" was a mistake.

If the left wing of the left wing of the left wing in American life doesn't control most of the Obama farmstead's best and richest acreage, it could be time for new spectacles -- since things surely look that way. Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to go after the CIA has all the earmarks of policy designed to make left-wing hearts palpitate. What other purpose could it possibly serve? Not that of national security or common sense. I have written deliberately "go after the CIA," notwithstanding the demurral of newly appointed special prosecutor John Durham, which concerns the supposedly "preliminary"...

KENNY MacAskill's political career was on the line last night after the head of the FBI said that his decision to free the Lockerbie bomber had "made a mockery" of justice. FBI director Robert Mueller wrote to MacAskill to tell him he had given "comfort to terrorists" around the world as opposition MSPs planned to force a vote of censure that could result in his departure as justice secretary. Mueller called the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi "inexplicable and detrimental to justice" as international fury grew over MacAskill's decision to free the mass-murderer convicted of killing 270 people two decades...

The Obama Meltdown—Symptoms/Diagnosis/Prognosis Strange things are happening to the Obama administration and quickly so. His polls are diving and may not stop at 50/50, the most precipitous drop in approval of a first-year President since Bill Clinton in 1993 (cf. Hillary care). First, here are some of the problems the President faces: Symptoms and Diagnosis 1) Health Care. Health-care take overs and socialized medicine have terrified not just the right and conservatives, but the elderly of all persuasions who fear their shaky Medicare funds will be diverted to Obama’s new plans. In short, they believe their care will be rationed...

(IsraelNN.com) Rubin Margules, a member of the Zionist Organization of America’s National Executive Board, told Israel National News that American Jews have begun to realize they made a mistake by voting for U.S. President Barack Obama. Margules, who accompanied former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on his trip to Judea and Samaria Tuesday, said Israel should learn to find alliances outside of the U.S. and act in its own best interests.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs conceded Wednesday that the Obama administration has made some missteps while promoting its healthcare overhaul, but warned doubters that the legislative debate is far from over. "I don't think anybody here believes we've pitched a no-hit game, or a perfect game," said Gibbs, who was bombarded again with questions about whether President Barack Obama will attempt to strip a public insurance option from the final bill or move the overhaul without Republican votes. "I think we just have to continue to be out there," he said. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on...

Three former CIA directors have privately told their successor he had his facts wrong when he revealed an illegal assassination program, reports Joseph Finder, and his spies will suffer for it. according to a half-dozen sources, including several very senior, recently retired CIA officials, clandestine-service officers, and Cabinet-level officials from the Bush administration, the real story is at once more innocent—Panetta was mistaken; no law was broken—and far more troubling: an inexperienced CIA director, unfamiliar with how his vast, complicated agency works, unable to trust senior officials within his own agency, and desperate to keep his hands clean, screwed up....

A president famous for his campaign skills has let the opposition define the debate on health care reform, the central issue of his party and his presidency. As Democrats faced raucous town halls across the nation this week, President Obama labored to squelch doubts about draft health legislation rather than tout its virtues. He must turn the debate around by next month, when Congress returns to Washington, many analysts say, or repeat the fate of the last Democratic president who tried to reform health care 16 years ago. "Obama has lost control of the debate, and when that happens, it's...

We now have the diametrical opposite of the famous "Peter Schiff Was Right" video (a compilation of 2006 and 2007 clips in which Schiff, a financial expert who subscribes to Austrian economics, predicted the deep recession that would follow the bursting of the housing bubble). The new, opposite video is a compilation of the 2005–2007 prognostications of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. In it, Bernanke is shown to have been just as embarrassingly wrong as Schiff was uncannily right. Could their differences in economic understanding have anything to do with this remarkable dichotomy? I have transcribed most of the video,...

The Barack Backlash: How Obama's Presidency Has Gone From Deity To Doubtful MAX HASTINGS 01st August 2009 On Thursday night, the most powerful man on earth spent 55 minutes of his priceless time simply sharing a beer with a police officer from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Harvard professor. This minutely orchestrated media event was designed to rescue Barack Obama from the most idiotic, yet nonetheless damaging, row of his presidency. The American people are convulsed, not with laughter, because the story touches the obsessive issue of racism. It began a fortnight ago, when Professor Louis Gates locked himself out of...

Responding to dozens of requests from the public, the Defense Department has released 146 more photos from the infamous Air Force One flyover that struck fear in thousands of unsuspecting New Yorkers in April. The photos are posted right on the Pentagon's Website, defense officials said today. The Pentagon also released a heavily redacted flight manifest. The April 27 photo-op caused quite a fright in Lower Manhattan and New Jersey, as many people who had lived through the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks thought the city was again under siege. Workers poured out of office buildings as the planes buzzed the...

Responding to dozens of requests from the public, the Defense Department has released 146 more photos from the infamous Air Force One flyover that struck fear in thousands of unsuspecting New Yorkers in April. The photos are posted right on the Pentagon's Website, defense officials said today. The Pentagon also released a heavily redacted flight manifest. The April 27 photo-op caused quite a fright in Lower Manhattan and New Jersey, as many people who had lived through the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks thought the city was again under siege. Workers poured out of office buildings as the planes buzzed the...

The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday, July 22-26. Among those interviewed on Wednesday and Thursday, 53 percent of whites approved of Obama's job performance. This slipped to 46 percent among whites interviewed Friday through Sunday as the Gates story played out. Obama made his comments the night of July 22 — a Wednesday. In polling of racial minorities and Hispanics, Obama's approval with that group of respondents rose from 63 percent among those interviewed Wednesday and Thursday to 74 percent among those interviewed Friday through Sunday. Obama's overall job approval in the poll was 54 percent, down from 61...

WASHINGTON – Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of how President Barack Obama dealt with the racially tinged dispute between a white Cambridge, Mass., police officer and a well-known black Harvard scholar — with disapproval especially strong among white voters, according to a poll released Thursday. The July 16 arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. for disorderly conduct in his own home sparked a national debate over racial profiling and police conduct. The controversy intensified after Obama last Wednesday said police "acted stupidly" when they arrested Gates, who is a friend of his. The poll by the nonpartisan...

In light of a series of blunders, errors, mistakes and downright lies about history, one has to wonder about Barack Obama's grasp of the historical narrative that should inform many of his decisions as leader of the free world. He doesn't seem to have that information.An early indication is the initial selection of location for a speech in Germany of the Brandenburg Gate which Angela Merkel found odd, her spokesman saying that she has "little sympathy for the Brandenburg Gate being used for electioneering and has expressed her doubts about the idea."............In June, CNN estimated Obama's reading pace to be...

President Barack Obama has strained through his career in national politics to embrace nuance in all things, and never more than when the subject is race. But an off-the-cuff remark at the end of a news conference designed to further his health core agenda put him at the center of a familiar public melodrama of white cop and black victim in which big-city mayors — never mind presidents — tread with the greatest of caution. The White House spent Thursday trying to both defend Obama’s words and to soften his position from the night before, when the president departed from...

Once again, as he has in every available opportunity since he usurped the presidency, Barack Obama has sided with dictators, would-be dictators, and despots, to the detriment of those who love freedom and justice. His latest western hemisphere foreign policy blunder...as opposed to his more recent blunders in Italy, Russia, and Ghana...involved his unqualified support for the ousted would-be socialist dictator of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya was elected to a four year term as president of Honduras in November 2005 and, under the one-term limit imposed by the Honduran Constitution, was scheduled to leave office in January 2010. However, having...

(CNN) — President Barack Obama can't have it both ways on his economic stimulus package, the man he defeated in last year's election said Sunday. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, told the NBC program "Meet the Press" that Obama either got it wrong when he predicted the benefits of his $787 billion economic stimulus package in February, or he's wrong now in saying the stimulus is working as intended. "He's either not leveling now or he wasn't leveling at the time they passed the stimulus package," McCain said.

The Obama administration seems to have gotten just about everything wrong about the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. Wrong on the law. Wrong on the politics. Wrong on the foreign policy. On the law, Miguel Estrada, the brilliant attorney whose nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was blocked by those who abhor a truly wise Latino conservative, actually has read the Honduran constitution. He finds that it specifies that it cannot be amended to change the limit on a single four-year term for the president. And it further provides that trying to amend the constitution “constitutes treason.”...

July 6, 2009 Barack Obama makes basic error over balance of power in Kremlin Tony Halpin. President Obama has made his first mistake in Russia even before he arrives in Moscow today. His attempt to cast Vladimir Putin as yesterday’s man and to drive a wedge between the Prime Minister and President Medvedev demonstrates a misreading of relations in the Kremlin. Mr Medvedev is in office but not in power and whether he becomes President in more than name depends on Mr Putin’s support and intentions. Mr Medvedev may represent a more accommodating face of Russia but this is only...

US President Barack Obama made his first mistake in Russia even before he arrived last night. His attempt to cast Vladimir Putin as yesterday's man and to drive a wedge between the Russian Prime Minister and President Dmitry Medvedev demonstrates a misreading of relations in the Kremlin. Medvedev is in office but not in power and whether he becomes President in more than name depends on Putin's support and intentions. Medvedev may represent a more accommodating face of Russia but this is only because Putin wants him to. Obama declared on Friday: "I think that it's important that even as...

Joe Biden told "This Week" that the Obama administration "misread how bad the economy was." He also the administration made this mistake because they just looked at the consensus forecasts at the time...and they proved to be wrong. If the latter is true, the administration deserves the crap it has been getting. In the months leading up to Obama's inauguration, the economy fell off a cliff. The credit markets seized up. Several major investment banks went bust. The Fed and Treasury talked of an apocalypse. Everywhere you looked, you heard one analyst after another saying the country was plunging toward...

WASHINGTON - Vice President Joe Biden said the Obama administration "misread how bad the economy was" but stands by its stimulus package and believes the plan will create more jobs as the pace of its spending picks up. Biden, in an interview airing Sunday on ABC's "This Week," said the nation's 9.5 percent unemployment rate is "much too high." "The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there," Biden said. "We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery...

Here is video of Vice-President Joe Biden admitting today on This Week with George Stephanopoulos that the Obama Administration "misread" the economy earlier this year when the pushed the stimulus bill. The administration thought Unemployment would not exceed 8% this year, and it is now 9.5%. They also discussed some economists who say there is a need for another stimulus package! Oh brother - if the first one did not work, do it again! . . . . (Watch Video)

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Joe Biden said the Obama administration "misread how bad the economy was" but stands by its stimulus package and believes the plan will create more jobs as the pace of its spending picks up. Biden, in an interview airing Sunday on ABC's "This Week," said the nation's 9.5 percent unemployment rate is "much too high." "The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there," Biden said. "We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery...

Big admission from Vice President Joe Biden today. "The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy," Biden told me during our exclusive "This Week" interview in Iraq. Biden acknowledged administration officials were too optimistic earlier this year when they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at 8 percent as part of their effort to sell the stimulus package. The national unemployment rate has ballooned to 9.5 percent in June -- the worst in 26 years.

A Letter to Our Readers By Katharine Weymouth Sunday, July 5, 2009 Dear Reader: I want to apologize for a planned new venture that went off track and for any cause we may have given you to doubt our independence and integrity. A flier distributed last week suggested that we were selling access to power brokers in Washington through dinners that were to take place at my home. The flier was not approved by me or newsroom editors, and it did not accurately reflect what we had in mind. But let me be clear: The flier was not the only...

I want to apologize for a planned new venture that went off track and for any cause we may have given you to doubt our independence and integrity. A flier distributed last week suggested that we were selling access to power brokers in Washington through dinners that were to take place at my home. The flier was not approved by me or newsroom editors, and it did not accurately reflect what we had in mind. But let me be clear: The flier was not the only problem. Our mistake was to suggest that we would hold and participate in an...

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said yesterday that a hasty time frame, haphazard planning and miscommunication led to the release of a promotional flier that inaccurately described the newspaper's plans for a series of sponsored "salons" with influential insiders. "We decided to throw this particular event very recently," Weymouth said in an interview. "We said, 'Let's not wait. Let's pick a date and let's go for it.' When you rush like that, you make mistakes." Weymouth said she takes responsibility for the controversy, and she took the rare step of writing a letter to readers, which appears today on the...

On its current course, the Middle East is headed for nuclear war. The only question is whether someone will act to take history off that course. That won't be the left wing extremist/narcissist we now have in the White House, who is lost in his own dream world. Like Adolf Hitler, the theocrats who run Iran have told us exactly what they plan to do. They plan to build nuclear weapons, and use them to "wipe Israel off the map." They have said this plan is rooted in their fundamental religious beliefs and doctrines regarding the return of their God...

The Republican leadership (whoever that is) has a problem. The party has lost power across the board in Washington D.C. and in many states. The politicians in the party are divided over what needs to be done to regain power. Some advocate a return to conservative principals, neocons still push national defense as the primary issue, and still others believe the party must take a small turn to the left. The top of the party is clearly divided, and the Democrats love to talk about it. The media is also reporting on this divide and the lack of a clear...

The British Government responded with ill-disguised fury tonight to the news that four Chinese Uighurs freed from Guantanamo Bay had been flown for resettlement on the Atlantic tourist paradise of Bermuda. The four arrived on Bermuda in the early hours, celebrating the end of seven years of detention after learning that they were to be accepted as guest workers. But it appears that the Government of Bermuda failed to consult with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the decision to take in the Uighurs – whose return is demanded by Beijing – and it could now be forced to send...