US reversing itself on missile defense … again?

Again: Axelrod, Emanuel attack Fox News on morning shows

Impeach Obama?

Brown’s best argument for impeaching Barack Obama was his reliance on Federalist 65 to claim that impeachment was a mechanism to express political dissent from the executive.  Unfortunately, Federalist 65 is a philosophical, not legal, document.  The language of the Constitution is pretty clear: impeachment is reserved for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” not political dissent.  Contra Brown, the US is not set up to be a parliamentary democracy with votes of no confidence, because the President does not derive his powers from Congress in our system as the Prime Minister does from Parliament in those systems.  Presidents get elected by the states through popular votes in our constitution.  Congress has no jurisdiction to issue no-confidence votes, and to arrogate that role would be a usurpation of power from the people and the states.

The Constitution includes impeachment for Congress to remove corrupt Presidents, and other federal officials as well.  Even then, it uses a large amount of political capital, which usually comes to the detriment of those pursuing it, especially when the effort is seen as partisan.  Floyd Brown not only missed this, he fundamentally misrepresented the impact of the impeachment of Bill Clinton.  Brown claims that before Clinton’s impeachment, he was pursuing a radical agenda on health care and foreign policy, and that the impeachment left him a lame duck and compliant to a Republican Congress.  Unfortunately, he’s completely wrong about this history.  The impeachment came in 1998, long after Clinton lost Congress to Republicans in 1994 and successfully tacked back to the center.   The impeachment effort left Republicans on the defensive, somewhat divided, and provided enough momentum for Democrats to keep the GOP from gaining seats in both the House and Senate, as had been expected in the last Clinton-era midterms.

Buying seniors for $250 for ObamaCare

Dems worried low turnout among black voters will lose them the House

Foreign banks dumping the dollar?

This could not come at a worse time, as the current American administration busies itself with massive new spending — and massive new debt.  The weaker dollar will make the sale of Treasuries that much more expensive, which should warn the US government away from further deficit spending.  The biggest problem afflicting the dollar, Bloomberg reports, is that there is just too much of it on the market, thanks to the increased need to cover deficit spending and the monetary policy that accompanies that need.

However, Obama’s fiscal policies are the worst we’ve seen in a generation.  In a crisis which demands a return to fiscal sanity, the White House has instead become the asylum, as these deficit projections show — even without ObamaCare and cap-and-trade:

Instead of finding new ways for the federal government to spend money, Congress and the President should be finding new ways to curtail it and demonstrate that we intend to end our irresponsible spending and massive government overreach into the private sector.  In that sense, we can blame Obama for losing the opportunity to stop the dollar crisis before it reaches a tipping point.

Obama WH falsely downplaying risks of retreat in Afghanistan: Military, intel sources

The Peace Of The Grave

I’m not really surprised by the Nobel committee’s decision to grant the Peace Price to Barack Obama. I assumed they would give it to him at the earliest opportunity. I forgot the award had not been given for this year. It would have been slightly better for their credibility if the Nobel committee had waited until next year, but perhaps they didn’t want to take the chance that current events would make that impossible by the end of 2010. The kind of “peacemaking” favored by the Nobel committee is the kind that usually gets innocent people killed, and frequently ends in the kind of war that comes as an even bigger surprise than Obama’s award.

Obama had been in office for less than two weeks before the Nobel nominations were finalized, so his nomination was not based on anything he had done as President. The Nobel Price long ago became a joke, and an insult to the people who suffer under terror and tyranny around the world, but I don’t think the committee just threw Obama the award because he’s so wonderfully special,. . .

Barack Obama’s America, mortgaged to the hilt and several trillion dollars beyond broke, with a stagnant economy trapped in government amber, will no longer be such a nation. The Nobel committee is pleased to reward him for that, because a muscular United States rocks a lot of boats. The “international community” has never forgiven George W. Bush for backing it into a corner over Iraq, and forcing the United Nations to enforce its own resolutions. “Resolution” is harmless and exciting when it’s a word spoken by important diplomats, and scribbled into strongly-worded letters. It’s scary when backed up by forceful leaders who take it seriously.

Obama WH bought COIN without understanding the cost: WaPo

If nothing up to this point convinced people of the amateurish and bungling nature of Barack Obama and his administration, this Washington Post story makes the case all by itself.  For two years, Obama campaigned on changing the strategy in Afghanistan to a more effective counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, claiming that the Bush administration had dropped the ball in the Af-Pak theater in large part by not committing the resources needed for an effective battle plan (an assessment shared by John McCain).  On taking office, Obama quickly increased troop levels in Afghanistan and appointed COIN strategist Gen. Stanley McChrystal to lead the mission.