Obama shows clear break with Bush policies
Barack Obama is wasting no time in breaking with George W. Bush’s policies and making sure there is a clear distinction between how he is going to operate and how the Bush administration operated. Here is a list of some of the things he has already ordered.
- Anyone who works for his administration has to agree to not seek employment for two years with any executive agency they lobby.
- Issued new guidelines to federal workers that require them to favor the Freedom of Information Act and to adopt a “presumption in favor of disclosure” policy.
- Plans to end the military trials at Guantanamo Bay and to close the camp in one year.
- Directed the military to draw up plans for a responsible troop withdrawal from Iraq.
- Issued an order freezing salaries for those who work in the White House and make over $100,000 per year.
These are all in direct response to some of the promises he made while campaigning. He has said he wants to open up the way our government makes it’s decisions and let everyone know what is being done and why.
There are also some very major changes to the official White House website, especially under the Civil Rights heading. It is clear that Barack Obama is going to support the homosexual movement in any way he can. From the above mentioned Civil Rights page:
Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples: President Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.
I have no problem with homosexuals having the right to civil unions, as I have made clear in other articles and I do not believe we should discriminate against them, but why do they have to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act to get that right or prevent discrimination? If Obama enacts everything he has listed on the White House website, then we are going to be in for a long four years. Every gain we have made in the defense of traditional marriage is going to go up in smoke, all in the name of civil rights.
Larry, I don’t really think Mr. Obama cares about traditional marriage; he seems to favor pushing every state to adopt the “anything goes” policy in relation to gay marriage.
Here’s a thought: let Nancy Pelosi take all those terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay to her district. She’s all about their rights and such. What about letting Harry Reid take them where he lives? I’m being facetious, obviously, but it doesn’t detract from the disaster awaiting us if some of his proposals become matter of record.
Ron’s last blog post..The Obama Presidency – Controversy Begins
Larry, I am assuming you did not mean to say this?
do believe we should discriminate against them, – you meant to say we should NOT discriminate?
Dominique’s last blog post..Day One: DECEPTION Realized
“Every gain we have made in the defense of traditional marriage is going to go up in smoke, all in the name of civil rights.” As well as end up with a defunct military as a result of the mass exodus that will result from the military law that outlaws homosexuality.
Dominique’s last blog post..Day One: DECEPTION Realized
Thanks, Dominique. I wrote that article early this morning and I didn’t proof read it as I should. I have fixed now.
So far, I am not encouraged at all by the moves Obama seems to be making on his social policy. I am afraid we are in for a long four years.
This is nothing less than what Obama promised in his campaign so there are no surprises nor anything especially radical. I do agree Larry that this will be a long four years for you (in fact, I beleive it will be a long eight years for you!) but, after those four years have passed, I beleive you will be able to go back to your postings and conclude that things weren’t nearly as bad as you expected them to be. The stem cell announcement yesterday could be an incredible breakthrough for helping the sick but I expect Dominique will not agree. There are simply things that not everybody will be comfortable with. I am not at all happy with his wealth redistribution proposals though I understand and sympathise with the intention to bolster the middle and lower classes who have been so decimated economically while the most wealthy Americans have prospered inordinately. But at the end of the day, while I complain about some of his actions, I think he will be a shot in the arm for our country internationally and restore domestic confidence that suffered so dreadfully under Bush.
Mike – am I to understand that you will embrace socialism then? Because that is where we are headed if Obama continues down this path. This is about taking America down the Progressive/Liberal/Socialist road. It is NOT about what is best for the lower half of Americans.
For me, it isn’t really about Obama. It is about truth and what is right and wrong. Spending trillions of dollars in a RECESSION is wrong and it will do major damage. All we have to do is look at history to see the consequences. For someone to deliberately spend in the trillions during a recession tells me they have a different agenda then what is coming out of there mouth. I still believe this is about bringing America to her knees. If I am wrong in 4-8 years, I will gladly say so. I just don’t feel that way now with what I am witnessing here in America and in the world abroad.
Dominique’s last blog post..U.S. ECONOMIC Crisis also a LEADERSHIP Crisis
Mike,
No, these moves do not come as a surprise. In fact, I would have been in major shock if he didn’t make them. One thing we can say about President Obama, he is a man of his word. He is doing exactly what we thought he would do. I seriously doubt I will be able to go back in four years and say it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
As for the stem cell research, I simply do not understand why we have to create a life, just so it can be destroyed, all in the name of medical research. I thought scientists had already perfected a way to create stem cells without having to do that.
Especially is we can do the same research with adult stem cells. There is no scientific reasons to use stems cells we create and then destroy. There is a large body of evidence that has come out that shows adult stem cells are working and perhaps even better.
Dominique’s last blog post..U.S. ECONOMIC Crisis also a LEADERSHIP Crisis
Dominique, you speak of the stimulus package as if it’s Obama shoving a plan down the throat of an resistant country. This began under the Bush adminstration and has broad bipartisan support. The numbers, though not the speciifc allocation of those resources, are widely supported and not a sign of a liberal/socialist agenda. And the plan certainly cannot be held up as a specific criticism of Barack Obama mandating socialism. If that’s what you believe then you are certainly miles away from reflecting mainstream politcal thought in either the Republican or Democratic party.
I’m not a scientist and can’t speak to the efficacy of cord blood stem cells versus embryonic stem cells. But as someone who’s father spent his entire adult life in a wheelchair and who has seen the devastating impact of Alzheimers I support the research to find answers for debilitating disease. The thing is, Larry, by sympathising with Carolyn McCarthy’s objections to Gillibrand’s pro gun view you acknowledge that personal experience rightly can and would color a person’s perspective. I wonder if your views would change on gun control or stem cell research if, God forbid, someone in your family was paralyzed in a random gun incident by a former convict who bought it unchallenged at a gun show?
I have witnessed Alzheimers at very close range. Both of my father’s parents had it in the worse kind of way and it is a dreadful thing to suffer and to witness. However, there have been substantiated reports that scientists have discovered a way to make embryonic stem cells from cord blood cells. If that is the case, then there is no reason to be creating and destroying human life.
If that science is proven then I will absolutely concede the argument and concede the point.
Mike said, “you speak of the stimulus package as if it’s Obama shoving a plan down the throat of an resistant country. This began under the Bush administration and has broad bipartisan support. The numbers, though not the specific allocation of those resources, are widely supported and not a sign of a liberal/socialist agenda. And the plan certainly cannot be held up as a specific criticism of Barack Obama mandating socialism. If that’s what you believe then you are certainly miles away from reflecting mainstream political thought in either the Republican or Democratic party.”
Mike – I will humbly agree to disagree with you. I do not believe for one minute that the stimulus plan has broad support amongst the American people. I have not met any conservative that wants this stimulus plan. And why can’t the plan not be a “specific criticism of BO?” We are in a recession and he is wanting to spend in the trillion dollar range (above and beyond what Bush did)? How in the heck is that helpful and who will pay it back? You, me and my grandchildren. I, for one, do not want to pay any of it back and I haven’t met many other people who do either.
This is a quote from my post on my blog from Paul Craig Roberts who was Reagan’s Secretary of Treasure for today. He says,
” The US budget deficit for fiscal year 2009 already appears to be on a path to $2 trillion, and that is before Obama’s stimulus program. What we are looking at is a $3 trillion budget deficit if Obama’s program is enacted in time to impact the economy this year.
Foreign countries can finance a $500 billion US budget deficit out of their trade surpluses with the US. But foreigners do not have the funds to finance a US budget deficit in the trillions of dollars, and they would not finance such a deficit even if they had the funds. Foreigners are over-weighted in dollar holdings and prefer to lighten their holding than to add to them. America’s economic prospects are dim as are the dollar’s prospects as reserve currency. An annual budget deficit in the trillions of dollars makes the dollar’s prospects appear even dimmer.”
I don’t know about you Mike, but this is not the course that I want to see America take. I actually prefer Mr. Robert’s suggestions in how to get us out of this mess of bailouts and stimulus plans. Enough is enough already!
Dominique’s last blog post..U.S. ECONOMIC Crisis also a LEADERSHIP Crisis
Mike – I am posting this here for you to read so you can see I am not the only who sees things as I do. Enjoy!
“This will end in tears. The Obama hysteria is not merely embarrassing to witness, it is itself contributory to the scale of the disaster that is coming. What we are experiencing, in the deepening days of a global depression, is the desperate suspension of disbelief by people of intelligence – la trahison des clercs – in a pathetic effort to hypnotise themselves into the delusion that it will be all right on the night. It will not be all right.
We have been here before. In the spring of 1997, to be precise, when a charismatic, young prime minister entered Downing Street, cheered by children bussed in for the occasion waving plastic Union Jacks. A very few of us at that time incurred searing reproaches for denouncing the Great Charlatan (as I have always denominated Tony Blair) and dissenting from the public hysteria. Three times a deluded Britain elected that transparent fraud. Yesterday, when national bankruptcy became a formal reality, we reaped the bitter harvest of the Blair/Brown imposture.
The burnt child, contrary to conventional wisdom, does not fear the fire. After the Blair experience there is no excuse for anybody in Britain falling for Obama. Yet today, in this country, even some of those who remained sane during the emotional spasm of the Diana aberration are pumping the air for Princess Barack. At a time of gross economic and geopolitical instability throughout the Western world, this is beyond irresponsibility.
To anyone who kept his head, the string of Christmas cracker mottoes booming through the public address system on Washington’s National Mall can only excite scepticism. It is crucial to recall the reality that lies behind the rhetoric. Denouncing “those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents” comes ill from a man whose flagship legislation, the Freedom of Choice Act, will impose abortion, including partial-birth abortion, on every state in the Union. It seems the era of Hope is to be inaugurated with a slaughter of the innocents.
Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is like one of those toxic packages traded by bankers: it camouflages many unaffordable gifts to his client state. With a federal deficit already at $1.2 trillion, Obama wants to squander $825 billion (which will undoubtedly mushroom to more than $1 trillion) on creating 600,000 more government jobs and a further 459,000 in “green energy” (useless wind turbines and other Heath-Robinson contraptions favoured by Beltway environmentalists).
It is frightening to think there is a real possibility that the entire world economy could go into complete meltdown and famine kill millions. Yet Western – and British – commentators are cocooned in a warm comfort zone of infatuation with America’s answer to Neil Kinnock. We should be long past applauding politicians of any hue: they got us into this mess. The best deserve a probationary opportunity to prove themselves, the worst should be in jail.
It is questionable whether the present political system can survive the coming crisis. Whatever the solution, teenage swooning sentimentality over a celebrity cult has no part in it. The most powerful nation on earth is confronting its worst economic crisis under the leadership of its most extremely liberal politician, who has virtually no experience of federal politics. That is not an opportunity but a catastrophe.
These are frank, even ungracious, words: they have the one merit that, unlike almost everything else written today about Obama, they will not require to be eaten in the future.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/gerald_warner/blog/2009/01/20/barack_obama_inauguration_this_emperor_has_no_clothes_it_will_all_end_in_tears
Dominique’s last blog post..U.S. ECONOMIC Crisis also a LEADERSHIP Crisis
Mike – here is an article about the problems with stem cell research -
“Today the biotech company Geron will make an unprecedented announcement: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has agreed to allow the company to conduct human trials utilizing human embryonic stem cells.
Ironically (or perhaps not), the FDA’s decision came right after President Obama’s inauguration. It is just one of the many steps planned by the new administration to tear down the walls protecting human life.
Geron plans to conduct its trial on 8 to 10 people with spinal cord injuries. The embryonic stem cells will be injected into the spinal cord at the injury site. Geron has emphasized that the focus of this first trial will be safety (rather than efficacy), but it’s difficult to see how Geron can “safely” protect patients from the disastrous effects embryonic stem cells have had in mice, as well as the devastating results we have seen in the use of more advanced fetal stem cells in human trials.
For example, in animal testing, embryonic stem cells cause a significant number of recipients to develop tumors. Using more developed fetal stem cells, a 52-year-old man died when the cells implanted in his brain became hair, cartilage, and connective tissue. In another case, a group of patients with neural degenerative diseases with violent, uncontrollable shaking received fetal cell transplants into their brains. Rather than improving, 15-25 percent developed severe dyskinesia (worse shaking than they had before). This failure of more specialized fetal cells is an indicator of how much more difficult it likely will be to get less specialized embryonic stem cells to work.
Furthermore, as we report in Defending Life:
One of the inherent problems in using embryonic stem cells in therapies is the problem of transplantation. If a transplanted cell’s DNA is even minorly different from the person’s being treated, the body usually sees those cells as an invader and kills them off-much like what happens when whole-organ transplants are rejected due to an immune system response. Without the use of drugs to depress the patient’s immune system, transplanted tissue generally doesn’t survive but a few hours or days.
– Daniel McConchie, “Working for Cures, Not Clones,” Defending Life, available at http://www.aul.org/Cures_Not_Clones.
Even other researchers in the industry are skeptical of the safety and effectiveness of Geron’s first trial. See Andrew Pollack, “F.D.A. Approves a Stem Cell Trial,” New York Times (Jan. 23, 2009), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/business/23stem.html.
The lack of success in animal trials, the lack of success in human trials using more advanced fetal cells, and the skepticism of researchers in the field beg the question: Why, in this time of economic trouble, is the FDA allowing clinical research that is dangerous and ineffective? All the while, more prominent research using adult stem cells-which has already helped human patients with over 70 different conditions and diseases-remains underfunded and underutilized.
Perhaps the answer lies in the timing of the decision — on the inauguration of the most pro-abortion President in U.S. history.”
http://blog.aul.org/2009/01/23/fda-begins-tearing-down-walls-protecting-human-embryos/
Dominique’s last blog post..U.S. ECONOMIC Crisis also a LEADERSHIP Crisis