Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6213R520100310

On May 25, 2009, President Obama and Congressional Democrats set a deadline for the end of July for passage of a health care bill.

On July 23, 2009, when lawmakers said they could not get it done by the August recess, President Obama set a deadline for December. “I want it done by the end of this year,” Obama said. “I want it done by the fall.”

Democrats lost the ability to pass bills in the Senate without Republican support after Scott Brown was elected U.S. Senator from Massachusetts on January 19.

Yesterday, President Obama set a deadline of March 18 for Congress to find some way to push a Frankenstein bill through without Republican support.

The linked Reuters article shows how this deadline is being received by his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D, MD) said, “None of us have mentioned the 18th other than [Obama Press Secretary] Mr. Gibbs". No Democratic lawmaker even gave lip service to upholding the deadline.

Dick Durbin, the John Madden of politics:

“Deadlines are both a blessing and a curse,” said Richard Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat. “They are a blessing because they get you focused on making a decision but they are a curse if you can’t make them, and this has happened over and over again.”

Nancy Pelosi, a progressive for progress:

“We’re making good progress and if we get some final figures from the Congressional Budget office we can even make more progress,” she said.

Of course, health care reform is not the only area where Barack Obama has set deadlines and let them lapse. The closing of Guantanamo Bay was supposed to happen within a year of taking office, and it’s still open. A decision on the augmentation of troop levels in Afghanistan was supposed to come in July, then November, but wasn’t made until December. And of course, Iran passed its September and December deadlines to make concessions on its nuclear program without any consequences whatsoever.

With all these fake deadlines, what respect does this Democratic Congress have for our Democratic president? About the same respect that foreign leaders have for him.

Back in July of last year, asked why he felt so strongly about his deadline for the end of that month, Obama replied, “because if you don’t set a deadline in this town, nothing happens.” Someone needs to explain the difference between setting a deadline, and enforcing it.

After one or two empty threats, people get wise to the fact that you can walk all over someone. Children figure this out with soft parents. So after three missed health care deadlines (and various others), what have the sharp minds on Capitol Hill figured out? What have the American people figured out? What have our allies and enemies abroad figured out? That like much of his rhetoric, Obama’s deadlines are meaningless.

If President Obama can not stand up to Congress and show that missed deadlines have consequences, how can we expect that he will stand up for our country?

In fact, liberal policies are all inherently acquiescent. If someone fails to pay their mortgage, liberals demand banks give them time and taxpayers give them money. If automakers can’t sort out their own problems and hurl themselves toward bankruptcy, liberals bail them out with our earnings. If a welfare recipient screws up and has a fourth child, liberals give them even more of other people’s money. If foreign nations fail to live up to their diplomatic agreements, liberals pursue … more diplomacy. In every case it is about (supposedly) solving the problem in the moment, rather than seeing how such acquiescence creates the problems in the first place. They may claim it is about forgiveness. It is not. It is about weakness.

Link: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/politics/2010/Jan/14/promises__promises__many_obama_pledges_unkept.html

The Associated Press better be careful, or liberals will start saying they’re a subsidiary of Fox News.

In the attached article, AP reporter Philip Elliott details the unkept promises of President Obama. Or at least the big ones. And it still makes for a long article.

The last line of the article is telling. In response to a question about the failure to ban lobbyists from serving in the administration, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says, “Even the toughest rules require reasonable exceptions.” A presidency of principle, this is.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/us/politics/08terror.html?hp

The link is for the New York Times story on Obama’s comments Thursday introducing a report on improving airport security and the Christmas Day terrorist attack over Detroit. The Times reports:

The president said the missteps were not the fault of one individual or agency. He took responsibility for the failures, saying, “The buck stops with me.”

Obama’s actual comments were the following:

… I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer. For ultimately, the buck stops with me. As President, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people. And when the system fails, it is my responsibility.

In the United Kingdom, or in other countries where honor has real meaning, actually taking responsibility does not just mean saying, “I take responsibility,” or the more wishy-washy “it is my responsibiilty.” It means you take the consequences. It means that you resign.

Link: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29716.html

Sometimes the inside baseball stuff is quite revealing.

This Politico article from veteran commentator Elizabeth Drew intimates that a lot of the professional people in Washington are only just now becoming wise to the fact that Obama is, at best, no better than any other typical politician. To put it crudely, his beauty is only skin deep. Of course, I could care less about his political skills and personnel decisions. But if this removes a gilded, hagiographic layer from Obama the person, it makes people view his policies with less summary acceptance.

Before so many people were pulling for Obama’s policies, whatever their merits, because that was the same as pulling for him. Now the policies themselves will need to lead, to pull Obama with them. And given their objectively odious lack of intellectual value, without the goggles on the prince looks just like a frog.

Link: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/nov/11/stimulus-dishonesty/

From the attached editorial:

With U.S. unemployment now topping 10 percent, the Obama administration is struggling more than ever to fashion credible counterarguments to the assertion made by this editorial page and many pundits and economists that the massive stimulus measure was a poorly thought-out pork fest that wouldn’t work. What’s the easiest way to defend the stimulus? Make up claims about its glorious results.

What are some of these claims?

AP reported that “some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two, three, four or even more times.” The Bee reported that California State University said “the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees” – more than half its statewide work force. The Tribune reported that Illinois education officials grossly inflated job-saved numbers, sometimes saying school districts had saved more jobs than their total number of employees.

Either the White House should immediately repudiate those claims found through investigative reporting to be misleading and demand an investigation, or we must assume that their reticence indicates that the White House itself intends to mislead the public for political ends. And if that is true, then the public should not take any assertion by the White House at face value—not on stimulus spending, not on health care, not on energy, not on diplomatic talks, nothing— without getting confirmation from a reputable source. President Obama and his policy team can not deflect this issue with a grumble. He is using these figures in his claims about the stimulus effort, and if the evidence shows that his sources are flawed, it is up to him to disown those sources to save his own reputation.