Tag Archives: Bill Clinton

The Price Of Governing As A Leftist In A Center-Right Country

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Despite what you may hear in the media, politically America is a center-right country. Generally speaking, as Americans we lean toward the middle. The middle has moved slightly to the left, but it is still more conservative than liberal. When America elects a President who moves farther left than the country, interesting things happen. The latest event in this saga was the special election in Florida’s 13th Congressional District.

Commentary Magazine posted an article about the election on Friday. The article stated:

It’s a district Ms. Sink carried in her unsuccessful race for governor against Rick Scott, a district that Barack Obama carried in his two elections, and a district that demographically now favors Democrats. In addition, Ms. Sink raised more money and ran a better campaign than Jolly. Even Bill Clinton lent his efforts to her campaign. And yet she lost.

…The American people, having lived with the Obama presidency for more than five years, have come to the conclusion–later, I think, than they should have–that he is incompetent, weak, and untrustworthy. And that judgment is directed not just at Mr. Obama; it is implicating his entire party.

Barack Obama produced a health-care proposal that was a liberal dream for a half-century. It is a bitter irony for him, and a predictable result for many of us, that having achieved it, it may well set back the cause of liberalism for years to come.

Bill Clinton has the same problem at one point in his presidency. Democrat candidates did not want to campaign with him. Now candidates prefer campaigning with former President Clinton to campaigning with current President Obama.

I am not ready to declare that the Republicans will sweep the 2014 mid-terms, but I do believe that unless they shoot themselves in the foot, the Republicans will do well in 2014. Meanwhile, ObamaCare has illustrated the fact that although some liberal ideas may sound good on paper, that does not mean that they are good ideas that will workd well.

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What Is Appropriate To Discuss In A Campaign?

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Byron York posted an article at the Washington Examiner today discussing what is appropriate to bring up in a political campaign. There has been some recent discussion as to whether or not it would be appropriate if Hillary Clinton runs for President to bring up the Clinton scandals prior to and during President Clinton’s presidential term.

The article points out:

…Of course Clinton’s recent experiences are relevant to a presidential run. But so are her actions in the 90s, the 80s and even the 70s. It’s not ancient history; it reveals something about who Clinton was and still is. And re-examining her past is entirely consistent with practices in recent campaigns.

In the 2012 presidential race, for example, many in the press were very interested in business deals Mitt Romney made in the 1980s. In the 2004 race, many journalists were even more interested in what George W. Bush did with the Texas Air National Guard in 1968, as well as what John Kerry did in Vietnam that same year. And in 2000, a lot of journalists invested a lot of time trying to find proof that Bush had used cocaine three decades earlier.

So by the standards set in coverage of other candidates, Clinton’s past is not too far past.

Turn-about is, after all, fair play. The article points out a few other reasons why past events might be relevant to the discussion. Younger voters know Hillary Clinton as President Obama’s Secretary of State. They might be aware of some of the problems surrounding Benghazi, but generally they have no idea of the Clinton’s history. Other than the Lewinsky scandal, there is the problem of firing the White House travel office personnel in order to give the job to some friends. There is also Hillary’s rather successful attempt to divert attention away from the Lewinsky scandal by claiming a ‘vast right-sing conspiracy.’ The truth might have never come out without the blue dress and Matt Drudge.

Mrs. Clinton does not have a wonderful track record when it comes to telling the truth. Even if the scandals of the Clintons are in the past, Mrs. Clinton’s pattern of behavior has continued. That is what voters need to know.

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Connections Americans Need To Know About

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Yesterday the Washington Free Beacon posted a story about Gehad El-Haddad, a former employee of the William J. Clinton Foundation. Mr. El-Haddad was arrested in Cairo on Tuesday and charged with inciting violence.

The article reports:

Gehad el-Haddad served as one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s top communications officials until Egyptian security forces seized him as part of a wider crackdown on officials loyal to ousted former President Mohamed Morsi.

Before emerging as a top Brotherhood official and adviser to Morsi, el-Haddad served for five years as a top official at the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit group founded by former President Bill Clinton.

…He was raised in a family of prominent Brotherhood supporters and became the public face of the Islamist organization soon after leaving his post at the Clinton Foundation.

However, much of his official work with the Brotherhood took place while he was still claiming to be employed by the Clinton Foundation.

“It was only a matter of time before Gehad el-Haddad was arrested,” Egypt expert Eric Trager told the Washington Free Beacon. “Many of the other Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen have been apprehended, and in addition to decapitating the organization, the military-backed government has been specifically targeting the Brotherhood’s media wing, including by shutting down its T.V. stations at the time of Morsi’s ouster on July 3.”

This is not the only connection between the Clintons and the Muslim Brotherhood. Huma Adedin, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top adviser, has strong family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The article further reports:

El-Haddad represented the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Climate Initiative in Egypt during his overlapping tenure, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He additionally “setup the foundation’s office in Egypt and managed official registration,” “supervised policy-making workshops & presented foundations views,” and “presented projects to high-level government officials,” among many other duties.

El-Haddad left the Clinton Foundation in August 2012, two months after Morsi assumed the Egyptian presidency.

He was appointed a “senior adviser and media spokesman” to the Muslim Brotherhood in January 2013 and served in that role until his arrest.

It seems as if the military rulers in Egypt are more aware of the threat to democracy represented by the Muslim Brotherhood than our own elected officials.

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Mark Sanford Has Won The South Carolina Special Election

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Tonight the Washington Post is reporting that former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has been elected to the House of Representatives.

The article reports:

Mitt Romney won this district by 18 points last fall, but Sanford’s personal history made the seat competitive. Democrats poured money into the race while national Republicans abandoned their candidate, giving Colbert Busch a 5-to-1 advantage in outside spending.

If the American people can forgive Bill Clinton for his indiscretions, I guess they can forgive Mark Sanford for his. There are two things in this election that bode well for the Republicans in 2014–the amount of money poured into the coffers of Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch did not make a difference, and a seriously flawed candidate whose positions on issues are in line with the voters can win an election despite his flaws.

As the House of Representatives considers the immigration bill that the Senate will hand them in the near future, they would do well to keep this election in mind–issues won–money did not.

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Three Pinocchios To Bill Clinton For His Comments On Mass Shootings

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As the debate on gun safety continues, it is wise to listen carefully to evidence cited on either side of the argument. On Friday, the Washington Post awarded three Pinocchios to Bill Clinton for his recent ‘facts’ on mass shootings.

Bill Clinton stated, “Half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of the country.”

That is not totally true. The article reports:

With gun shootings, you immediately get into some definitional issues. Depending on how one defines a “mass public shooting,” the answers might turn out to be different. There is also surprisingly little historical data about mass murder in the United States to go back all the way to the nation’s founding.

Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, assembled a data set going back 100 years for a 2007 book titled, “Mass Murder in the United States: A History.” He used the FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports, which date from 1976, and then supplemented the FBI reports with news reports (principally The New York Times) dating from 1900.

Duwe says the Times turned out to be a relatively reliable guide for mass murders across the country, since much of the post-1976 information also turned up in the contemporaneous FBI reports. As far as he knows, he is the only person who has assembled such a historical data set.

According to his research, he has identified 156 mass public shootings in the United States in the past 100 years.

…Since 2005, when the assault ban expired, there have been 32 such mass public shootings, including seven in 2012, Duwe said. So that’s just over 20 percent of all mass public shootings, which is much less than Clinton’s 50 percent.

There are a few things to keep in mind as this discussion continues. First of all, how many of these murders were committed by people who legally owned the guns they used? How many of these mass murders were committed in ‘gun free’ zones? How many of these murders had a past history of mental illness or had people around them who were not shocked at what they had done? How does our society treat and handle the mentally ill? Can any government stop an insane person from doing something insane?

Stay close to a good fact checker as the debate continues.

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The Questionable Value Of Awards

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Scott Johnson at Power Line posted an article today about a recent award received by former President Bill Clinton. The National Father’s Day Council has chosen President Clinton as a recipient of its Father of the Year award. Huh??!!

The article reports:

The not-for-profit group awards Father of the Year to “contemporary lifestyle leaders of our culture” and raises money for its philanthropic efforts. Past recipients from the world of politics have included Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Cuomo and his father, Mario Cuomo, and Rudy Giuliani.

John Edwards was given the award in 2007. I don’t mean to be difficult, but it would seem to me that in order to be “father of the year’ some degree of faithfulness and commitment to your wife might be necessary. If the group giving the award were truly encouraging family values, there are many political (and other) figures who better exemplify the total responsibilities of fatherhood.

Bill Clinton may be a wonderful father, but the example he set for his daughter of how a man should treat his wife is not one that should be applauded. That example is part of his legacy both as a father and a husband.

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The Problem With The Internet (If You Are A Politician) Is That Everything You Have Said Or Done In The Past Is Easily Accessed

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National Review Online posted an article today about some inconvenient history that seems to have been overlooked in the current debate about gun control. NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre was denounced, ridiculed, and called all sorts of names for suggesting that we put policemen in our schools. Although his statement, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” makes sense, he was ridiculed for stating the obvious.

Oddly enough, President Clinton did put policemen in our schools as a response to the April 1999 shooting at Columbine High School.

The article lists some of the supporters of President Clinton’s program to put guns in the school:

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district was one of the first to receive funding through the program: $3.25 million for 26 new police officers, to be exact. As a whole, California, also home of Dianne Feinstein, received $5.6 million in grants from the COPS in Schools program in 1999 alone.

Touting the grants set to be distributed to several New York state school districts in 2004, Senator Chuck Schumer acknowledged that “we live in a different world now than we did 20, 30, or even three years ago” and said that the new realities are forcing parents to think constantly about the safety of their children. “Getting more police officers on school grounds will go a long way toward making sure our kids stay out of harm’s way,” he said. Schumer assailed the Bush administration’s 2005 budget for doing away with the COPS in Schools program and, in doing so, attested to its efficacy. “Thanks to COPS, people feel safer with their children on the streets today,” he said in a press release in May 2004. “But now the Administration has proposed ending the program and taking away funding to hire thousands of police officers just when they are needed most. Why the Administration would want to rip a hole in that sense of security by slashing COPS funding is beyond me.”

It’s amazing to me that the history of guns in our schools is being overlooked in the current effort to take guns away from private citizens.

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Some Wisdom Regarding The Fiscal Cliff

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Marc Thiessen posted an article at the Washington Post on Monday which provided a way forward for the Republicans in the budget debate.

Mr. Thiessen states:

So what should Republicans do? Resist the call for a down payment, and insist on real tax reform as the price for any new revenue from limiting deductions. If both sides can’t agree on such reforms this year, they can do it next year. The Post reports this morning that “with tax rates set to rise automatically in January . . . Democrats say they have little incentive before then to cut a deal that falls short of their revenue goals. That means going over the cliff, at least for a short time, remains a possibility, they say.”

If Obama and the Democrats want to take us over the fiscal cliff, let them lead the way. Once the Bush tax cuts expire, every American will pay higher taxes — which means the pressure for tax reform on both sides will be even greater. By contrast, if Republicans give away the revenues from deductions and loopholes today, they will alleviate that pressure and have no revenues left to pay for a simpler, fairer, pro-growth tax code next year.

Guy Benson at Townhall.com has a different approach that also might work:

Short on good options, here’s one play GOP leaders might be able to make to regain some of the high ground and throw the White House back on its heels: Embrace Simpson/Bowles.  President Obama established a bipartisan debt commission with great fanfare in 2010.  Its leaders were Alan Simpson, a former Republican Senator, and Erskine Bowles, President Clinton‘s former Chief of Staff.  The panel was tasked with engineering a solution to right America’s fiscal ship.  In the end, they produced a set of recommendations that received the blessing of a majority of its members.  The commission’s blueprint drew a fair amount of criticism from conservatives, but was roundly blasted by liberals.  Liberal malcontents like Paul Krugman torched the plan with noteworthy ferocity.  The president shelved the recommendations, and they’ve been collecting dust ever since.

Bringing back Simpson/Bowles is not a great idea, but it is a good starting point for the debate.  Simpson/Bowles calls for a 3-to-1 ratio of real spending reductions to tax increases and caps federal spending as a percentage of GDP at 21 percent. This is a great place to start.

The thing to remember here is that it is not in the interest of Washington bureaucrats to cut spending at all–their power comes from growing the budget. Unless the Congress and the President are backed into a corner with no escape route, they will not cut spending. They will pledge to cut spending down the road, but it will never happen. Going over the fiscal cliff or passing Simpson/Bowles may be our best options at this time. Elections have consequences. Until we elect people who actually want to cut spending, spending will not be cut.

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I Don’t Know Why This Makes Me Crazy, But It Does

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Military.com reported last Thursday that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review ethics training and to brainstorm on ways to steer officers away from trouble. This is the same Leon Panetta that was President Bill Clinton‘s White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997. One wonders if he every made a similar recommendation for ethics training for Presidents.

The article reports:

Panetta told Dempsey to work with the chiefs of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to review ethics training for officers to determine whether they are adequate, and to provide views on “how to better foster a culture of value-based decision-making and stewardship” among senior officers and their staffs. That is another way of saying Panetta wants a game plan for ending the string of bad behavior.

He said the initial results of the chiefs’ review, along with their recommendations, should be ready in time for Panetta to report to President Barack Obama by Dec. 1. The text of the Panetta memo, which he signed on Wednesday, was provided Thursday to reporters traveling with the Pentagon chief, who was in Bangkok for talks with senior Thai government officials in advance of Obama’s visit here this weekend.

I probably need to apologize for my cynicism, but how come the Defense Secretary, the State Department, and the CIA can’t get a report on Benghazi on the President’s desk by December 1? It would seem to me that Benghazi would have a higher priority?

The article further points out:

Panetta also told reporters he could not rule out the possibility that the Taliban in Afghanistan would try to use Petraeus’ admission of an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, for propaganda purposes. Petraeus, who resigned Friday from his post as CIA director, was Allen’s predecessor as top commander in Afghanistan, leaving in summer 2011.

I am sorry that General Petraeus and General Allen did not behave appropriately while they were in Afghanistan. However, I need someone to explain to me why the head of the CIA had to resign over an extra-marital affair and the President of America (Bill Clinton) remained in office after an extra-marital affair. I am more than a little confused.

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When Dealing With The Clintons Always Read The Fine Print

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This story is based on two sources, a Power Line article posted yesterday by Paul Mirengoff and an article posted yesterday at Hot Air.

Both articles pointed out the small print.

Power Line stated:

Similarly, Clinton reportedly told Fox News that she is “responsible for the State Department, for more than 60,000 people around the world.” But she added that “the decisions about security are made by security professionals.”

This statement appears to shift blame to these professionals. And Clinton again invoked them when she said that the June explosion in Benghazi “was taken into account by security professionals as they made their assessments” about what kind of security was required thereafter.

Hot Air says the same thing in different words:

Fearless prediction: With Hillary having now formally accepted blame, President Above The Fray will magnanimously volunteer at tomorrow night’s debate that, no no, it is with him that the buck ultimately stops. The White House has been holding off on doing that because they’re desperate to frame this as an internal problem at State. Now that Clinton’s gone and done that, Obama can pose as a stand-up guy and loyal boss by symbolically accepting responsibility on behalf of the people who are really at fault.

…She’s not claiming actual responsibility in the excerpt above, just symbolic responsibility as the head of the Department that’s at fault. Given how the public generally respects showy professions of blame, it’s really the easiest thing in the world to make a “buck stops here” statement. The One himself would have done it weeks ago, I’m sure, if not for the fact that he’s caught in an election death struggle and knows the GOP would have hammered him with it.

Note that HIllary said that the decisions about security are made by security professionals. Really? So she is actually saying that she had nothing to do with the ultimate decisions, so how is that taking responsibility?

The Power LIne article further points out:

Second, Clinton did not, and cannot, take the fall for the false statements by the Obama administration about what happened in Benghazi. The State Department, which was following events there in real time, knew that this was a terrorist attack, not a protest. Yet, days after the attack, the administration mischaracterized it as a protest that spun out of control against a movie. That’s on Obama, not Clinton.

Third, Clinton cannot take the fall for our failure, to date, to strike back at those responsible for the Benghazi attack. This too is on Obama.

I’m really not sure Hillary’s statement actually makes things any better. Her motive? I wonder if President Obama has paid off the campaign debts of Hillary’s campaign that he promised to pay if she dropped out of the race.

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Why Are We Giving Money To Egypt ?

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Why are we giving money to Egypt? The short answer is very simple–it keeps the Suez Canal open. However, giving Egypt aid is beginning to look look like a losing proposition.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article yesterday about an interview the New York Times did with Egyptian President Morsi. It is no secret that President Morsi is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Has the press bothered to see what the Muslim Brotherhood stands for? The creed of the Muslim Brotherhood is: “God is our objective; the Koran is our law; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.” The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood is a world-wide caliphate under sharia law. According to the documents introduced in the Holy Land Foundation Trial (the first part of the documents are in Arabic, the second part is the English translation), the Muslim Brotherhood has a plan to turn America into an Islamic state (part of the world-side caliphate). Part of that plan is to bring Muslim Brotherhood leaders (known and unknown) close the the centers of power in America. Please note the following:

Breitbart.com reported on Friday that Bill Clinton will be hosting Egyptian President Morsi at the eighth annual meeting of Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative in New York next week. President Morsi will be a ‘featured participant’ in the event.

The article at Power Line reports:

Morsi told the Times that it is up to Washington to repair relations with the Arab world and to revitalize its alliance with Egypt. Morsi added that the U.S. needs to fundamentally change its approach to the Arab world, showing greater respect for its values and helping build a Palestinian state. “Successive American administrations essentially purchased with American taxpayer money the dislike, if not the hatred, of the peoples of the region,” he explained.

If American taxpayer money has caused the Arab world to dislike us, why are we still giving them money?

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What In The World Are We Thinking ?

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Bill Clinton’s relationship with the truth has not changed since the 1990’s. Breitbart.com posted a video of Bill Clinton on CNN yesterday explaining that the American people are easily confused by plans of lower taxes and lower spending. In the video he cited a few facts that were simply not true. See the numbers below taken from the National Taxpayers Union to see who actually pays income taxes in America.

Who Pays Income Taxes and How Much? 

                                Tax Year 2009
 
Percentiles Ranked by AGI AGI Threshold on Percentiles Percentage of Federal Personal Income Tax Paid
Top 1% $343,927 36.73
Top 5% $154,643 58.66
Top 10% $112,124 70.47
Top 25% $66,193 87.3
Top 50% $32,396 97.75
Bottom 50% <$32,396 2.25
Note: AGI is Adjusted Gross Income
Source: Internal Revenue Service

Lower taxes and smaller government allow the private sector to grow. There is nothing confusing about that, and the American people are not confused. We are reaching the point where more people are taking money out of government that are putting money in. At that point the system totally breaks down and America as we have known it disappears. This election may be our last chance to prevent that.

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One Of The First Casualties Of The Democratic Convention Is Truth

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The Foundry at Heritage.org posted an article today about President Clinton’s remarks in his speech last night that President Obama has not gutted the work requirements passed in the Welfare Reform Act during the Clinton Administration.

The article reminds us:

Last night, in his nationally televised speech, former President Bill Clinton said the charge that President Obama has gutted welfare reform was “a real doozy.”

The Heritage Foundation pointed out some basic facts that contradict this statement.

The article quotes Robert Rector, who helped write the 1996 law:

The Obama Administration will put in mothballs the formal purpose of welfare reform—to reduce the number of people dependent on government benefits. The Administration will abandon the legislative performance goal that encourages states to reduce welfare caseloads. It will weaken the “work participation” standards that require some 30 percent of able-bodied Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients to engage in work activities for 20 to 30 hours per week.

The changes that the Obama Administration has made to welfare reform will create more dependency–not encourage people to find work and contribute to society rather than take from it.

Mr. Rector further explains:

In the typical state, 1.5 percent of the TANF caseload leaves welfare and obtains work each month. Thus, any state can be fully exempted from the TANF work requirements if it raises the number of exits to 1.8 percent. This is a miniscule change. What will the other 98.2 percent of the caseload be doing? No one knows for sure. But one thing we do know for certain: They will be exempt from the federal “work participation” requirements established in the welfare reform law.

I realize this may seem a little trivial, but it is not–for two reasons. First of all, the change in the law encourages dependency on the government–never a good thing, and second of all, it is obvious that President Clinton was lying. It is also obvious that the mainstream media is not going to report that President Clinton was lying.

It is truly time for a housecleaning in Washington. At the same time we initiate housecleaning, we need to impose term limits, end retirement pay for Congressmen (put them under Social Security or other programs they have to contribute to), and refuse to pay Congress if they do not pass a budget. These ideas may seem a little drastic, but these are drastic times.

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The Contrast Is Obvious

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I haven’t watched a lot of the Democratic convention–I have been tied up with more important family things, but I have seen the highlights. As you can assume from the name of this blog, I am a conservative, and I am not a young voter. I have watched a number of conventions over the years, and I am somewhat amazed at the direction of this year’s Democratic convention.

The opening video proclaimed, “The government is the only thing we all belong to.” I am more in line with Mitt Romney‘s tweet in response to that statement, “We don’t belong to the government, the government belongs to us.”

Think about that for a minute. If we belong to the government, the government is responsible for us–our successes, our failures, our prosperity, our poverty, our children’s behavior, etc. If the government belongs to us, we are responsible for the government and for ourselves. It seems to me that we have a choice to make here–are we going to grow up as a country and take responsibility for who we are (and what we need to do to make ourselves better) or are we going to sit back and wait for the government to do everything for us.

I have one more simple observation on the convention. There has been an awful lot of emphasis on the so-called ‘Republican war on women,’ and the Democrats seem to be trying to prove that their ideas are much better for women. Well, wait a minute. The convention has already honored Ted Kennedy, and Bill Clinton is the major speaker. How did these women treat the women in their lives? The Democrats seem to think that the essence of treating women well is defined as paying for them to kill their children and giving them free birth control (regardless of whether of not that is against their religion). There is more to woman than birth control. The women speaking at the Democratic convention are demanding things from the government–the women who spoke at the Republican convention were women of power. They had achieved success in their own lives–they were not taking from government–they were giving. Which image is more flattering to women?

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Rats Deserting A Sinking Ship

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As the Republicans hold their convention in Tampa, the Democrat convention to be held next week is taking shape. Mostly it seems as if major Democrats are choosing not to attend.

The Daily Caller reported yesterday that although Bill Clinton will be speaking at the Democrat convention, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be out of the country. She will be visiting the Cook Islands, Vladivostok, Russia, and Manchuria, China.

The article reports:

U.S. unemployment, debts and deficits are at record heights, while wages and investment are in decline.

Clinton’s departure prevents Obama from using her popularity to boost his outreach to swing-voting unmarried and married women.

Instead, Obama has awarded a speaking slot to her husband, former President Bill Clinton. That could be risky, because relations between the two presidents have been frosty, and the former president may subtly undercut the current president.

Clinton’s high-profile exit from the country and from party politics forcefully underlines her effort to distance herself from Obama’s waning political fortunes.

But it also protects her fortunes, just in case she decides to run in 2016.

On July 18, Hot Air quoted Representative Nancy Pelosi:

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi says that Democratic members should stay home and campaign in their districts rather than go to the party’s national convention in North Carolina.

“I’m not encouraging anyone to go to the convention, having nothing to do with anything except I think they should stay home, campaign in their districts, use their financial and political resources to help them win their election,” Pelosi said in an exclusive interview for POLITICO Live’s On Congress, a new weekly show to be streamed live on POLITICO’s website and broadcast on NewsChannel 8 on Wednesdays. …

“We nominated a president last time. We have an incumbent President of the United States. We’re very proud of him. There certainly will be enough people there to express that pride, but I’m not encouraging members to go to the convention no matter what the situation was, because they can be home. It’s campaign time. It’s the first week in September,” she said.

That really doesn’t sound like a comment made by a winning team. At this rate, I wonder how many average Americans will be able to get into the Democrat convention just to fill the seats!

 

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An Interesting Development In The Presidential Race

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Today’s Washington Examiner is reporting that Hillary Clinton has rejected the idea of running as Vice-President on President Obama’s re-election ticket in order to prepare for her own 2016 run for President.

The article reports:

But Clinton, exhausted from four years of international travel and diplomacy, shrugged off the suggestion to lay the groundwork for her own 2016 bid with her husband at her side, according to author Ed Klein.

“As recently as a couple of weeks ago, the White House was putting out feelers to see if Hillary Clinton was interested in replacing Joe Biden on the ticket,” Klein told Secrets. “Bill Clinton, I’m told, was urging his wife to accept the number two spot if it was formally offered. Bill sees the vice presidency as the perfect launching pad for Hillary to run for president in 2016.”

I think Hillary made the right decision. If the polls are any indication of anything, there is no way President Obama wins a second term in an honest election. It would not do Hillary any good to be on a losing ticket. If President Obama wins a second term, it is quite possible that some of his policies would be well outside the mainstream of America. President Obama’s comment to Russian President Medvedev (rightwinggranny.com) about having more flexibility during his second term is not comforting.

The video included in the article adds some details:

There are only 20-some days to change the ticket. This may be interesting.

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The End Of Welfare Reform

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Yesterday the welfare reforms of the 1990’s ended. There was no note, there was no trumpet fanfare, and I haven’t seen it on the news. What happened? An executive order by President Obama cut out the heart of the welfare reform bill passed during the Clinton Administration.

The Corner at National Review reported:

The welfare reform law was very successful. In the four decades prior to welfare reform, the welfare caseload never experienced a significant decline. But, in the four years after welfare reform, the caseload dropped by nearly half. Employment surged and child poverty among blacks and single mothers plummeted to historic lows. What was the catalyst for these improvements? Rigorous new federal work requirements contained in TANF.

Contrary to some perceptions, the formula that made welfare reform a success was not giving state governments more flexibility in operating federally funded welfare programs. The active ingredient that made the difference was requiring state governments to implement those rigorous new federal work standards.

The article explains how the work requirement was changed:

…the Obama administration issued a dramatic new directive stating that the traditional TANF work requirements will be waived or overridden by a legal device called a section 1115 waiver authority under the Social Security law (42 U.S.C. 1315).

Section 1115 allows HHS to “waive compliance” with specified parts of various laws. But this is not an open-ended authority: All provisions of law that can be overridden under section 1115 must be listed in section 1115 itself.

The welfare reform bill was vetoed by Bill Clinton twice before he signed it.

The article concludes:

Obama’s new welfare decree guts sound anti-poverty policy. The administration tramples on the actual legislation passed by Congress and seeks to impose its own policy choices — a pattern that has become all too common in this administration.

The result is the end of welfare reform as we know it.

This is another example of executive overreach. All this does is create more government dependency, increase the size of government, and change a policy that was successful. It is time to elect a new President.

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With Friends Like These…

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One of the things that we all need to remember (not necessarily happily) about the November election is that on November 7, 2012, the 2016 presidential campaign begins. Obviously, one of the major players in that campaign on the Democrat side will be Hillary Clinton. Hillary has kept her head down during the past three years and behaved very well. Predictably, her husband has not.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted a story today about some of President Clinton‘s recent statements. President Clinton remarked that Mitt Romney had a ‘sterling’ record when he ran Bain Capital. President Obama has used attacks on Bain Capital and Mitt Romney’s record there as a major part of his campaign. Unfortunately, Bill Clinton was not the only Democrat who felt the attacks were not helpful.

Mr. Morrissey explains the problems with the attacks:

While Obama attacked Romney for normal private-equity management, he’s been trying to raise money hand over fist from the same industry.  In fact, a Bain executive, Jonathan Lavine, is one of Obama’s major bundlers and was with the company (and Romney was not) when GS Industries shut down the steel plant, a decision used to slam Romney in an Obama campaign ad.

I am not sure the average voter is aware of the hypocrisy here, but at suspect at some point the Romney camp will point it out.

The article rightly concludes:

However, it’s also just as true that Clinton waited for quite a while to defend Romney’s business record, and his advice in this case — to find another line of attack — is probably a lot smarter than Simon’s advice to keep beating a very dead horse.

Expect to see a lot more of Bill Clinton in the next four years.

 

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