It is fitting that presidents give farewell messages. But given the venue and setting President Obama had chosen, it was fairly easy to surmise that this would be a final political rally and national lecture. I will simply recount the one la...
January 12, 2017
The one act that defined President Barack Obama
By Peter Heck
It is fitting that presidents give farewell messages. But given the venue and setting President Obama had chosen, it was fairly easy to surmise that this would be a final political rally and national lecture.
I will simply recount the one lasting legacy of Barack Obama that will always be emblazoned in my memory. When I think of him, I will think of this. When I reflect on his promised era of hope and change, I will be drawn to this image.
Despite your personal feelings on his coolness, his character, his charisma, or his competence, Barack Obama will forever be the president who worked diligently to put the gun of government to the heads of the Little Sisters of the Poor, demanding that they either pay to destroy children in the womb or be crushed.
You can't candy-coat that. You can't hide it. You can't pretend it wasn't what it was. For 177 years, the Little Sisters of the Poor has been a large Roman Catholic religious ministry that takes vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and hospitality. Serving the Kingdom of God on earth in over 30 countries, they have one stated mission: to care for impoverished people as they near the end of their lives. As Ashley McGuire describes it, "The only fight they go looking for is to make the last days of some very downtrodden people brighter and happier, to send as many people into the next life surrounded by love, not garbage."
Barack Obama knew that, personally. Regardless, he instructed his administration to rewrite executive regulations nine separate times to ensure these nuns be forced to either violate their conscience by helping distribute abortifacients or be fined $70 million a year and out of existence. Their beliefs, their ministry, their cause, and even the incredible work that they do were secondary to President Barack Obama's devotion to funding and expanding the destruction of infants with tax dollars.
The president's own lawyers admitted in court that there were compromises available that would have met their objectives while sparing the Sisters' consciences. But President Obama refused. Using the coercive power of the state to compel nuns to pay for abortion drugs became an issue of pride for this small man.
His obsession was so out of touch that the Supreme Court, divided as it is, issued a unanimous ruling telling Obama he must find another way. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg joins hands with Clarence Thomas to rebuke your fixation with forcing nuns to violate their conscience, you have reached the pinnacle of ideological extremism.
After 22 years of torture in a Cuban prison for his refusal to sign a government document supporting Fidel Castro, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel became a Nobel Laureate and advocate for human rights. Before his death, he said of the Little Sisters of the Poor, "They know what my body knows after 22 years of cruel torture: that if they sign the form … they will be violating their conscience and would commit spiritual suicide. If they did this they would forfeit the true and only wealth they have in abandoning the castle of their conscience."
That President Obama failed to ever respect that eternal truth is both pitiful and shameful. And it's why I'm beyond elated to bid him a permanent farewell.
Peter Heck is a speaker, author, and teacher. Follow him @peterheck, emailpeter@peterheck.com, or visit www.peterheck.com.
january 11, 2017
Obama's 'farewell' speech proves he is out of touch with reality
By Ed Straker
President Obama gave his farewell address last night, touting his great accomplishments as if his audience had returned from living on another planet and were unaware of the events of the past eight years.
For 240 years, our nation's call to citizenship has given work and purpose to each new generation. It's what led patriots to choose republic over tyranny, pioneers to trek west, slaves to brave that makeshift railroad to freedom. It's what pulled immigrants and refugees across oceans and the Rio Grande[.]
Obama has just compared patriots to illegal aliens.
It's why GIs gave their lives at Omaha Beach and Iwo Jima; Iraq and Afghanistan – and why men and women from Selma to Stonewall were prepared to give theirs as well.
Obama has just compared soldiers who died for their country to people having sex at a gay bar.
[I]f I had told you that we would open up a new chapter with the Cuban people, shut down Iran's nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, and ... win marriage equality, and secure the right to health insurance for another 20 million of our fellow citizens – you might have said our sights were set a little too high.
Islamic nukes, unconstitutional redefinition of marriage, flirting with a Cuban dictatorship, and driving insurance premiums so high that people can't afford it...that's not "setting sights too high"; that's setting sights on the American people.
Understand, democracy does not require uniformity[.]
Except in health care. And education. And environmental regulation. And overtime wage laws. And putting boys in girls' bathrooms.
[D]emocracy does require a basic sense of solidarity – the idea that for all our outward differences, we are all in this together; that we rise or fall as one.
Obama never talked about rising or falling as one when he vilified the police, or identified with black crime victims but never white ones.
After my election, there was talk of a post-racial America. Such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic. For race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society.
And who has made it more divisive?
After all, if every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hardworking white middle class and undeserving minorities, then workers of all shades will be left fighting for scraps[.]
Obama prefers to frame every economic issue as a struggle between hardworking minorities and an undeserving white middle class.
If we decline to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don't look like us ...
Or what if they looked exactly like us but came into the country illegally and demanded our tax dollars?
... those brown kids will represent a larger share of America's workforce.
Do minorities like being called "brown kids"? It sounds derogatory to me. Have you ever seen anyone call a Hispanic a "brown kid"?
But stark inequality is also corrosive to our democratic principles.
Why? Stark equality is even more corrosive to our democratic principles. To have everyone earn the same money regardless of talent, regardless of how hard they work, smacks of totalitarian communism.
[T]oo many families, in inner cities and rural counties, have been left behind – the laid-off factory worker; the waitress and health care worker who struggle to pay the bills – convinced that the game is fixed against them, that their government only serves the interests of the powerful – a recipe for more cynicism and polarization in our politics.
Is this a jab at Hillary for failing to campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin?
Going forward, we must uphold laws against discrimination – in hiring, in housing, in education and the criminal justice system. That's what our Constitution and highest ideals require. But laws alone won't be enough.
Laws were never enough for Obama. That's why he ignored them so frequently.
For white Americans, it means acknowledging that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow didn't suddenly vanish in the '60s; that when minority groups voice discontent, they're not just engaging in reverse racism or practicing political correctness; that when they wage peaceful protest, they're not demanding special treatment[.]
When do they ever wage peaceful protest? When do they ever not demand special treatment?
How can elected officials rage about deficits when we propose to spend money on preschool for kids, but not when we're cutting taxes for corporations?
How did our elected president rage about deficits when talking about raising taxes on individuals, but not when spending money on a useless $1-trillion stimulus?
How do we excuse ethical lapses in our own party, but pounce when the other party does the same thing?
I don't know. How did Obama excuse all of Hillary Clinton's ethical lapses, or the work of his minions prosecuting conservative groups at the IRS?
Take the challenge of climate change. In just eight years, we've halved our dependence on foreign oil, doubled our renewable energy, and led the world to an agreement that has the promise to save this planet. But without bolder action, our children won't have time to debate the existence of climate change; they'll be busy dealing with its effects: environmental disasters, economic disruptions, and waves of climate refugees seeking sanctuary.
Isn't it a little concerning that for eight years the man in charge of our country believed in these things? What's most frightening is that he talks like a fanatic but doesn't even realize it.
[O]rder is now being challenged – first by violent fanatics who claim to speak for Islam; more recently by autocrats in foreign capitals who see free markets, open democracies, and civil society itself as a threat to their power.
Wow. The words "violent" and "Islam" in the same sentence. Surely a first. But what autocrat is Obama thinking of, who governed this country for eight years by bypassing Congress and making his own laws, when it came to the environment, immigration, Obamacare, and workfare laws?
[F]or the past eight years, I've worked to put the fight against terrorism on a firm legal footing. That's why we've ended torture, worked to close Gitmo, and reform our laws governing surveillance to protect privacy and civil liberties. That's why I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans.
Instead of putting the fight against terrorism on a "firm legal footing," what about a fight against terrorism that protected Americans? At the rate Obama is importing Muslims, he'll soon be able to create a caliphate the size of Vermont.
Our Constitution is a remarkable, beautiful gift. But it's really just a piece of parchment. It has no power on its own.
Now for once Obama is being honest. He has disregarded the Constitution on numerous occasions, most notably when he ignored the treaty clause to give Iran a big payoff for its nuclear weapons program without getting the approval of Congress, granting mass amnesty without enabling legislation, and bullying the Congress to let him write his own budgets without interference.
Exit question:
1) It is customary to name something important after a departing two-term president. What do you think would best bear the Obama name, a prison, a nuclear waste repository, a mosque, a disease, a violent crime, or something else?
Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.
"Hardly a week goes by without a new report on signs of extreme social crisis or ever-more obscene levels of wealth among the financial elite. "
Obama’ farewell address: One last round of clichés and lies
By Niles Niemuth
11 January 2017
President Barack Obama capped his eight years in office with a vacuous and hypocritical farewell address Tuesday night delivered at the McCormick Place convention center in downtown Chicago.
The first-ever presidential farewell address delivered outside of Washington, DC had the atmospherics of an overblown, cheap spectacle. Obama strode onto the stage like a rock star, flanked by oversized American flags, a massive illuminated presidential seal and an introductory soundtrack by the rock band U2.
As with every address Obama has delivered over the last eight years, his speech in Chicago was full of clichés, his rhetoric padded with empty phrases and delivered with a false gravitas, signaled by his trademark pursed lips and affected whisper.
The speech was rife with contradictions, the starkest being the juxtaposition of Obama’s boasting of the great social progress achieved by his administration and his warning of threats to American democracy arising from ever-growing social inequality and economic insecurity.
The president declared: “If I had told you eight years ago that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history… if I had told you that we would open up a new chapter with the Cuban people, shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, and take out the mastermind of 9/11… if I had told you that we would win marriage equality, and secure the right to health insurance for another 20 million of our fellow citizens—you might have said our sights were set a little too high.
“By almost every measure, America is a better, stronger place than it was when we started.”
He made no attempt to explain why, given this impressive record of social progress and foreign policy success, his party was routed in the elections and the billionaire demagogue Donald Trump was preparing to succeed him in the White House.
A basic component of the answer, of course, is the grotesquely false rendering of his record and the state of American society as he leaves office. Hardly a week goes by without a new report on signs of extreme social crisis or ever-more obscene levels of wealth among the financial elite. Just in the past month, studies have been published showing the first decline in US life expectancy in 23 years, plunging pay for young adults, a 72 percent surge in deaths from synthetic opioids, and home ownership rates at historic lows for young people.
Other surveys have documented a $237 billion increase in the wealth of the world’s richest 200 billionaires, driven largely by the US stock market boom under Obama, and an acceleration of the transfer of wealth from the bottom half of the US population for the top one percent.
In boasting of presiding over a record number of consecutive monthly job increases, Obama neglected to mention that 94 percent of the new jobs created in the last eight years have been either part-time or temporary.
Noticeably absent from Obama’s remarks was any mention of the social conditions in the city where he was speaking, which is ravaged by high levels of poverty and unemployment, an epidemic of police killings and violence, and a skyrocketing homicide rate.
He lamented in general terms the growth of social inequality and the dangers it poses to American democracy—that is, the threat of a social explosion in the United States.
“While the top one percent has amassed a bigger share of wealth and income, too many families, in inner cities and rural counties, have been left behind—the laid-off factory worker; the waitress and health care worker who struggle to pay the bills—convinced that the game is fixed against them, that their government only serves the interests of the powerful—a recipe for more cynicism and polarization in our politics.”
As always, he spoke as if none of these social ills had anything to do with the policies pursued by his administration, including severe cuts in social spending on the one side and the bailout of the banks and flooding of money into the stock market on the other.
Another piece of monumental hypocrisy was Obama’s pose of fighting to defend democracy when he has done more to destroy it than perhaps any other US president.
“Democracy can buckle when we give in to fear,” he declared. “So just as we, as citizens, must remain vigilant against external aggression, we must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are. That’s why, for the past eight years, I’ve worked to put the fight against terrorism on a firm legal footing. That’s why we’ve ended torture, worked to close Gitmo, and reform our laws governing surveillance to protect privacy and civil liberties.”
This is from a president who has personally authorized the assassination of American citizens and thousands of others around the world with drones-fired missiles, protected and promoted those in the CIA responsible for torture, kept the prison at Guantanamo Bay open, persecuted journalists and jailed whistleblowers, militarized the police, and expanded the illegal surveillance of electronic communications.
Obama also used his farewell address take parting shots at Russia and China, lumping the war against ISIS with efforts to counter both countries, and arguing that aggressive action against the world’s second- and third-largest nuclear-armed powers was the only way to avoid war.
“[T]he fight against extremism and intolerance and sectarianism are of a piece with the fight against authoritarianism and nationalist aggression,” he said. “If the scope of freedom and respect for the rule of law shrinks around the world, the likelihood of war within and between nations increases, and our own freedoms will eventually be threatened.”
Obama spent his eight years in office waging war abroad and war on the working class at home. With Tuesday’s speech, he passed the reigns to Trump with a shrug.
Wikileaks exposes Obama’s bankster-infested
administration!
BARACK OBAMA …… the banksters’ RENT BOY!
“Citigroup’s recommendations came just three days after then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks. The single biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45 billion in cash in the form of a government stock purchase, plus a $306 billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related assets.”
MUCH MORE HERE:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-bankster-owned-president-citigroup.html
“As president, Obama not only funneled trillions of dollars to the banks, he saw to it that not a single leading Wall Street executive faced prosecution for the orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the financial collapse and Great Recession, and he personally intervened to block legislation capping
executive pay at bailed-out firms.”
“So when Clinton was hobnobbing with Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein in 2013, while investigations of wrongdoing by Goldman and the other Wall Street banks were still ongoing, she was consorting with a man who belonged in prison.”
"Hardly a week goes by without a new report
on signs of extreme social crisis or ever-more
obscene levels of wealth among the financial
elite. "
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/01/obamas_legacy_lies_with_a_side_of_weakening_our_national_security.html
January 10, 2017
Obama's legacy: Lies, with a side of weakening our national security
By J. Marsolo
In 2008, Obama promised to fundamentally transform our country. He has accomplished much of his promise.
He has abandoned and betrayed our most reliable ally, Israel, the only democratic country in the Middle East. According to Bibi Netanyahu, Obama orchestratedthe U.N. vote to condemn Israel on its settlement policy.
He empowered and rewarded our principal enemy, Iran, the principal supporter of Islamist terrorism since 1979, by allowing Iran to continue its nuclear development program, and he gave Iran 150 billion dollars plus another billion in ransom money. Iran is using and will use this money to fund and support terrorism. To reward Iran, Obama bypassed the constitutional provision requiring a two-thirds vote to approve a treaty, by terming it an "agreement" with Iran. Congress abdicated its role by voting 98-1 to allow it to be called an agreement.
He lied about the cause of Benghazi to blame the attack on a video when he knew it was Islamist terrorism. He did this to win the 2012 election. Obama went onthe David Letterman show, a noted journalist on foreign affairs, to say:
OBAMA: Making fun of the Prophet Mohammed. And so, this caused great offense in much of the Muslim world. But what also happened, extremists and terrorists used this as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies, including the one, the consulate in Libya.
He passed Obamacare with only Democratic Party votes, thus extending federal control over one seventh of the economy. He lied when he said you could keep your doctor and your premium would be reduced. He is lying now when he says Republicans did not offer any proposals about health insurance. He refused to listen or accept any Republican proposals or input.
He ruled by issuing executive orders and having agencies issue regulations, thus damaging the separation of powers under our federal system.
He has worsened race relations by dividing the nation by race and income. Hemocked many rural Americans by saying they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."
His main legacy is that he did not govern in the best interests of the country, but he campaigned for eight years as a polarizing Democratic Party community organizer.
He campaigned furiously and daily to help Hillary, but she lost. He told voters his agenda was on the ballot and that he would take it as a personal insult if his base did not turn out to vote for Hillary. When she lost, instead of accepting the will of the voters, he started the campaign to discredit Donald Trump's election and presidency by blaming the Russians for "interfering "with the election. This is now the narrative with his cheerleaders in the mainstream media: Trump won because the Russians "interfered."
He does not say the truth that the supposed interference is that John Podesta's emails were hacked when Podesta opened a phishing email. The emails disclosed that Hillary lied, that she sold access to the State Department, and that Obama lied when he said he did not know Hillary used an unsecure private email server. Obama then started the campaign to de-legitimize the Trump election by blaming the Russians for "helping" Trump win. The Obama-Democrat-MSM narrative is that disclosure of the truth, disclosed by the emails, is interference.
Obama endangered our national security by abandoning Israel at the U.N. resolution to condemn Israel, and by allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons and giving Iran $150 billion plus another billion for ransom, which money will be used to further fund terrorism, such as Hamas and Hezb'allah.
The worst element of Obama's legacy is that he has shifted the focus from Iran, our real enemy, to Russia strictly for political purposes to damage Trump. He is using national security strictly for political purposes to explain away his proxy Hillary's loss. Obama is not truthful about Russia because in 2008 he mocked Mitt Romney when Romney said Russia was our main geopolitical enemy.
But now, for domestic political purposes, to explain away Hillary and his loss, he is trying to restart the Cold War.
This endangers our national security because it strengthens Iran and weakens Israel, and it increases the risk of an attack on Israel. We will defend Israel, which will draw us into war.
Obama's legacy of war, repression and inequality
Obama's legacy of war, repression and inequality
By Joseph Kishore
10 January 2017
US President Barack Obama’s “farewell address to the nation,” scheduled for tonight, has been preceded by a concentrated media buildup on the theme of Obama’s legacy. This has included fawning tributes portraying the president as a brilliant orator, progressive reformer, visionary and man of the people.
Seeking to mold the narrative of Obama’s presidency, the White House put out a video over the weekend featuring comedians Ellen DeGeneres and Jerry Seinfeld, actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, former basketball star Michael Jordan and other celebrities extolling the “historic moments that prove, yes, we can create progress.” Such absurd and nauseating effusions testify not to the qualities or accomplishments of the 44th president, but to the intellectual, political and moral debasement of the American cultural establishment.
For Obama and the privileged social layers that surround the Democratic Party, a legacy can be crafted with honeyed phrases and clever marketing. Millions of people, however, will judge the administration by its actions.
It would take far more space than is available here to outline in detail the real record of the Obama White House. However, any objective appraisal of the past eight years would have to include the following elements:
1. Unending war
Obama is the first president in American history to serve two full terms in office with the nation at war. This includes the continued bloodletting in Afghanistan and Iraq, the bombing of Libya, the six-year-long war for regime change in Syria, and support for the Saudi-led destruction of Yemen. A recent survey reported that in 2016, US Special Operations forces were deployed in 138 nations, or 70 percent of the countries of the world.
The “wars of the 21st century,” begun under Bush and expanded under Obama, have killed more than a million people and driven millions more from their homes, producing the worst refugee disaster since the Second World War. Obama’s “pivot to Asia” has inflamed tensions from the South China Sea to India and Pakistan. The current president will leave the White House as NATO troops deploy to Eastern Europe in the midst of an anti-Russia war hysteria stoked by the media and the Democratic Party.
Obama is the “drone” president, supervising the killing of some 3,000 people in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya by means of unmanned aerial vehicles, along with several thousand more in Iraq and Afghanistan.
2. Democratic rights
At least three of the individuals killed in drone strikes were US citizens. The declaration of the Obama administration in 2011 that the president has the authority to assassinate anyone, including US citizens, without due process sums up the attitude of the former constitutional law professor to basic democratic precepts.
The US detention and torture center in Guantanamo Bay, which Obama pledged on his inauguration day to close, remains open. Chelsea Manning, who courageously exposed war crimes in Iraq, is serving a 35-year prison sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the Obama White House has prosecuted more whistleblowers for espionage than all previous administrations combined. Edward Snowden was forced into exile in Russia under threat of prosecution or worse, while WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remains trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
The massive spying programs of the National Security Agency exposed by Snowden remain in place, and not a single individual has been prosecuted for clearly illegal and unconstitutional activity. Proclaiming the need to “look forward, not backwards,” Obama gave a free pass to Bush administration officials who institutionalized torture, with some of them, including current CIA Director John Brennan, finding top posts in Obama’s administration.
Obama has expanded the militarization of police departments and intervened in court to uphold police abuses that violate the Constitution.
3. Social inequality
Obama came into office in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, and the focus of his administration has been to restore the wealth of the financial aristocracy. Since their low point in March of 2009 (two months after Inauguration Day), stock values—fueled by the “quantitative easing” policies of the US Federal Reserve—have more than tripled, with the top one percent the overwhelming beneficiary of this new orgy of speculation. Aggregate quarterly corporate profits rose from $671 billion at the end of 2008 to $1.636 trillion in 2016, and the wealth of the richest 400 Americans increased from $1.57 trillion to $2.4 trillion.
At the other pole, eight years of the Obama administration have produced declining wages, rising living costs and growing indebtedness. Nearly 95 percent of all jobs added during the Obama administration’s “recovery” have been temporary or part-time positions, according to a recent study by Harvard and Princeton, with the share of workers in temporary jobs rising from 10.7 percent to 15.8 percent. Obama presided over the bankruptcy of the auto companies early in his administration (imposing an across-the-board 50 percent cut in wages for new-hires). He supported the bankruptcy of Detroit and slashing of city workers’ pensions. In the name of education “reform,” he oversaw a wave of public school closures and attacks on teachers, who were laid off in the hundreds of thousands.
As for Obama’s principal domestic initiative, the Affordable Care Act, its intended and actual outcome has been the shifting of health care costs from corporations and the state to individuals, with corporations slashing coverage and workers forced to pay exorbitant prices for substandard care. One statistic sums up the consequences: For the first time since the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1993, life expectancy fell in the US between 2014 and 2015 due to rising adult mortality from drug overdoses, suicides and other manifestations of social distress.
No account of the legacy of Obama would be complete without noting two additional statistics. Since 2009, approximately 10,000 people