http://bit.ly/HPUuX - - - Throughout his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama excoriated Mr. Bush's counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, insisting it could not succeed. Earlier this year, facing increasing violence in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama rejected warnings of a "quagmire" and ordered more troops to that country. He isn't calling it a "surge" but that's what it is. He is applying in Afghanistan the counterinsurgency strategy Mr. Bush used in Iraq.
As a candidate, Mr. Obama promised to end the Iraq war by withdrawing all troops by March 2009. As president, he set a slower pace of drawdown. He has also said he will leave as many as 50,000 Americans troops there. These reversals are both praiseworthy and evidence that, when it comes to national security, being briefed on terror threats as president is a lot different than placating MoveOn.org and Code Pink activists as a candidate. The realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning. We are also seeing Mr. Obama reverse himself on the domestic front, but this time in a manner that will do more harm than good. Mr. Obama campaigned on "responsible fiscal policies," arguing in a speech on the Senate floor in 2006 that the "rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy." In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he pledged to "go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work." Even now, he says he'll "cut the deficit . . . by half by the end of his first term in office" and is "rooting out waste and abuse" in the budget. However, Mr. Obama's fiscally conservative words are betrayed by his liberal actions. He offers an orgy of spending and a bacchanal of debt. His budget plans a 25% increase in the federal government's share of the GDP, a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a near tripling of it in 10 years. On health care, Mr. Obama's election ads decried "government-run health care" as "extreme," saying it would lead to "higher costs." Now he is promoting a plan that would result in a de facto government-run health-care system. Even the Washington Post questions it, saying, "It is difficult to imagine . . . benefits from a government-run system." Making adjustments in office is one thing. Constantly governing in direct opposition to what you said as a candidate is something else. Mr. Obama's flip-flops on national security have been wise; on the domestic front, they have been harmful. - - - Obama's far left domestic policies are what he really cares about... the rest was rhetoric and posturing. He is hoping nobody will notice the profound irony that his fiscal policies make Bush's budgets look prudent and restrained by comparison, but at the end of the day he doesn't care -- once you have the power, it's hard to lose it, especially when people are so committed emotionally to your success for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with results. Just pretending to be who and what he appears to be is enough for most of his supporters to rate him a smashing success---indeed, even before his 100 days were up, they were already trying to put his mug on Mt. Rushmore, in terms of gushing praise. If Bush's fiscal policies were wrong, Obama's are wrong cubed. His reckless deficit spending eclipses anything Bush ever did, and will inflate our debt well beyond what he could bring in if he confiscated all wealth and ran every industry personally. It will do irreparable harm to our economy for a generation or more. You can't blame Bush for Obama's budgets, and Obama's budgets are clearly based on the idea that there is this giant credit card in the sky that never maxes out, and that the way out of crushing debt is more crushing debt at higher interest rates. So his speech last week warning, like the perpetual campaigner that he is, that our spending levels were unsustainable were remarkable for their schizoid nature: Is he not aware of his own governing policies? Or is his unarticulated intent to force confiscatory taxation at levels that would otherwise be totally unpalatable as soon as possible? - Bob _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
