Obama's 100 Day Full-Court Press

Keep the pressure on......
(Saul Alinsky, "Tactics For Radicals" 1972)


"When seeking office, the aspirant must pretend to be what he is not.  After seizing power, he should impose his agenda quickly and ruthlessly, before his subjects realize what he is doing and have time to react." (Niccolò Machiavelli, 16^th century author of "The Prince" a treatise on the pragmatic use of power)

President Obama, not only a student of Alinsky's tactics, but an accomplished Community Organizer practitioner of his tactics, also seems to effectively channel Machiavelli....

Like the Dark Lord Sauron sending Orcs and Ringwraith's streaming out of Mordor's Mount Doom to lay unremitting siege on Gondor, Obama has closely followed Saul Alinsky's and Machiavelli's tactics by having his operatives open a relentless stream of divergent issues to sap his opposition's resources and obscure the public's attention to what he's really doing.

• Eliminated bi-partisanship by signing a unilateral Democrat $750 Billion "Stimulus Plan" that won't take effect until long after it might have been helpful
• Ditto the above by allowing the Democrats to unilaterally craft a "Sticker shock" $3.5 Trillion budget that will balloon to a $9+ Trillion over the next ten years
• Eliminated eliminating "Earmarks" as one of his campaign promises.
• Saving the Auto Union's contracts by taking over GM & Chrysler, instead of letting them be revitalized by the normal bankruptcy process
• Fanned anti-capitalism by his use of the Alinsky tactic of "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it" (Alinsky, 1972), ie: Auto exec's use of corp. jets, Bank meeting in Las Vegas, and Wall Street bonuses. Of course by doing so also he helped to cause unemployment in the airplane industry, Las Vegas hotels, and a significant number of NYC businesses.  
• Authorized Federally funded Embryonic Stem Cell research the day before it was announced that more effective capabilities can be created by skin cells.  Further reducing common ground with Pro-Life Americans.
• Announced plans to rescind protection for health workers who refuse to provide care that they find morally objectionable.  Further reducing common ground with even more Americans.
• Proposed changes to tax code to reduce deductions for charities and non-profit's, making them more dependent on, and directed by governmental funding.
• Effectively killed public service and volunteerism while creating another branch of the "Democrat Army" with the signing of the Serve America Act, basically a public jobs program that provides "Progressive" indoctrination to our youth.  
• Politicized the National Census by proposing it be managed under Rahm Emanuel and using ACORN to get out the vote count.
• Proposed the ultimate election rigging and gerrymandering scheme (see item just prior)
• Re-Defined a number of things: War on Terror now "Overseas Contingency Operation", Terrorism now "Man-caused Disasters", and Free-Market Capitalism by saying "when we all work together and look beyond our own short-term interests to a wider set of obligations we have towards each other, that's when we succeed, that's when we prosper".  That last one would make Karl Marx smile.
• Stopped all activity to explore for, and source, new domestic oil to ensure our dependance on foregn oil and help increase fuel prices as a way to make "green" technology cost competitive.
• Offered up Ukraine and our European missile defense capability in a Chamberlain-esque deal with Russia.
• In another look backwards to the '30's, and as a pay-back to the Unions for their support, promoted the Orwellian "Card-Check" legislation that would have strong-armed workers into unions (and still may....Arlen Specter just changed Party labels)
• Payed back the teacher's unions and set back real education reform by killing the Washington D.C. voucher program.
• Has attempted Harry Potter-like economic magic by simultaneously attempting to spur U.S. economic revitilization, while at the same time proposing the largest and most regressive tax legislation ever imposed on the country, Carbon Cap-and-Trade.  If he can't get it legislatively, his EPA has now threatened that it will regulate it in. (Despite the fact that the science ruse it's being promulgated by is rapidly unraveling.  But, then again, science was never really the genesis of this tax concept.) 
• Continues to be unsuccessful in resolving the basic issues underlying the banking industry's capital problem, with TARP and the Geithner's nonsensical PPIP continuing to hinder the market's inherent self-healing capability.  (By the way, the whole sub-prime loan mess is almost completely linked to five States: California, Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and Michigan.  It's also not widely known that the Sub-Primes loans are primarily second mortgage equity loans, not initial mortgages. The problem was people biting off more than they could handle, not greedy businesses)
• Rescinded limitations on support for the Castro brother's dictatorship, thus ensuring not only their continuance, but the continued suffering of the Cuban people.
• Traveled the world and apologized for anything that the United States has ever done, since whatever it was that we did, it was bad.
• Not satisfied with creating havoc in the banking industry, Obama has now decided that the credit-card industry needs to be destroyed and has proposed a "Credit Card Bill Of Rights". Quickly and conveniently forgetting the elements of the existing sup-prime loan problems, and overlooking the inherent high risk in these unsecured consumer loans so that he could demagogue another business, Obama's action are guaranteed to invoke the law of unintended consequences. We'll be back to a cash only society and local loan sharks soon.
• Proposed "Cyber Security Act of 2009"  This gives the President the power to shut down the internet traffic in any "critcally" important network, and access all data without regard to any law.  This should get us to "Big Brother" really quickly.
• Obama has reversed other long-standing policies.  We're now dissing the UK and Israel, while hugging all the bad guys.....this should really work well.
•  His Defense Secretary is the only agency head that's proposing cutting spending.  Obama's budget proposes cutting both Defense and Space: cutting F-22's and getting the Navy below 313 ships.  All this while the usual suspects are building up their capabilities.  Seems that he never noticed that when we build they build, and when we cut, they still build....this should really work well too.
• Obama seems determined to emulate Jimmy Carter in taking a strong US ally, Iran, and turning into a virulent anti-American enemy.  Obama's apparent target - Pakistan.
• He's had his Homeland Security Czarina cut back on enforcing immigration regulations, and while doing so she's managed to add Canada to the list of "Best Friends" country's we disrespect.  
• Speaking of Homeland Security, Conservatives, Pro-Life advocates, and Veterans are all suspected terrorists.
• Appointed Harold Koh, an avowed "Trans-Nationalist" to the top State Department legal post.  He'll be able to work hand in hand with the Spanish judge who want's to prosecute our Justice Department lawyers who authored the memos on enhanced interrogation techniques.  His appointment probably presages the type of nominee Obama will present for the Supreme Court when the opportunity occurs.
• But the most egregious action that Obama has taken has been the release of the Justice Department memos on CIA interrogation techniques.  This act has made us less secure as a nation, aided our enemies, demoralized our CIA, will inhibit all future legal advice opined by government lawyers, and significantly politicized our historical transfer of power from one Administration to the next.  This cynical act on Obama's part will have significant consequences for this nation, and not all of them are unintended....

And it's only been 100 days!

CIA Memo's & Obama's Kangaroo Court

Kangaroo court

"An unfair trial in which the rights of the accused and precepts of justice are ignored and the outcome is usually known beforehand." (Cornell Univ. Law School)

Obama's unnecessary release of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel memo's to the CIA offering legal guidance on harsh interrogation techniques, and his comments that "We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.", are nothing less than a summary judgement of "guilty of torture" on the Bush Administration by the Obama Kangaroo Court.

In addition to Obama's tactic of unilaterally deciding what torture is (face slaps, pushing, sleep deprivation, waterboarding) as yet again, another attempt to disparage George Bush, his action does great harm to his own, and future Administrations.  The revelation of these tactics effectively makes permanent his Executive order suspending them.  As a result we now have the Army Field Manual tactics, intended only to be used by our military as a first line of interrogation on captured uniformed military opponants, as the only source of interrogation tactics available to use with hardened and determined professional terrorists.

Despite his statement that CIA interrogators who followed those guidelines would not be prosecuted, Obama's action will have a chilling and crippling effect on the CIA's effectiveness in extracting critical information from our adversary's, who now know exactly what to expect in their interrogation (they won't even be slapped, pushed, kept awake or waterboarded). What CIA operative in the future would be comfortable following new guidelines that could themselves be easily declared illegal by the next antagonistic Administration, potentially subjecting them to prosecution.  I'm sure the guys who behead, stone, eviscerate, poison and blow people up, will be severely anxiety-ridden and reduced to fingernail biting while in the fetal position, if facing interrogation by our new CIA tickle interrogators, Rocky and Bullwinkle.  

Obama's action in releasing these memos will create the exact same institutional timidity that led up to our inability to secure effective information prior to 9-11-2001.  And unfortunately, probably with the same results.