Barack Obama is entirely predisposed to claiming that he inherited a an economic mess, and it in truth, he did. He did assert that he could fix the economy in three years and implied that he perhaps ought to be limited to one term if he did not deliver.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Back then he said he should be held accountable but today wants to be accountable for absolutely nothing save for killing Bin Laden.

As democrats controlled the entire Congress for the first two years of Obama’s term and were able to shove pretty much anything they wanted down the throat of the country it seems appropriate to judge this administration by the effects of the policies put in place by Obama and the democrats from after the time they were enacted.

Democrats labeled last year “the recovery summer” but it did not pan out that way. Obama’s election campaign theme seems to be “It could be worse” but the fact is things are not getting better- especially not for the middle class.

Sentier Research has published data that show the middle class to be losing ground consequent to Obama’s policies.

Between June 2009 and June 2011:

- Real median annual household income for family households with a male or female head and no spouse present (many with children in the household) declined by 7.3 percent (from $39,321 to $36,465) compared to a decline for married-couple households of 4.5 percent (from $76,783 to $73,324).

- Real median annual household income for households with a head under 25 years old declined by 9.5 percent (from $32,123 to $29,060) compared to a decline for households with a head 45 to 54 years old of 5.5 percent (from $65,911 to $62,315).

- Real median annual household income for households with a head looking for work or on layoff (unemployed) declined by 18.4 percent (from $41,037 to $33,487) compared to a decline for households with a head working full-time of 5.1 percent (from $72,104 to $68,454).

- Real median annual household income for households with a Black (not Hispanic) head declined by 9.4 percent (from $35,072 to $31,784) compared to a decline for households with a White (not Hispanic) head of 4.7 percent (from $59,111 to $56,320). The decline for households with a Hispanic head was 4.9 percent (from $41,945 to $39,901).

Michael Barone points out that Obama knows how to do nothing other than rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic:

So why should voters be leery of economic redistribution in times of economic distress?

Perhaps because they realize that they stand to gain much more from a vibrantly growing economy than from redistribution of a stagnant economic pie. A growing economy produces many unanticipated opportunities. Redistribution edges toward a zero-sum game.

They miss growth when it is absent. They don’t appreciate it so much when it is happening.

Roosevelt’s 1934 and 1936 victories were won in periods of growth. After the economy shifted into recession in 1937, New Deal Democrats fared much worse, and Roosevelt won his third and fourth terms as a seasoned wartime leader, not an economic redistributor.

Lesson: If you want redistribution, you’d better first produce growth. Which the Obama Democrats’ policies have failed to do.

Barack Obama is a community organizer. He knows how to grow division and class warfare. He knows nothing of growing economies. Left alone in control, democrats created policies that were not only not helpful to the economy and the middle class, they are harmful. The so-called “obstruction” by the GOP may be the only thing saving the middle class from Obama and the democrats.

When is anyone going to start getting concerned?

President Obama used his recess appointment powers Wednesday to name a head for the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three new members to the National Labor Relations Board — moves Republican lawmakers said amounted to an unconstitutional power grab.

The president acted just a day after the Senate held a session — breaking with at least three different precedents that said the Senate must be in recess for at least three days for the president to exercise his appointment power. Mr. Obama himself was part of two of those precedents, both during his time in the Senate and again in 2010 when one of his administration’s top constitutional lawyers made the argument for the three-day waiting period to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Obama tapped former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the CFPB, and named three others to the labor board — all of which had been stymied by congressional Republicans who said Mr. Obama is accruing too much power to himself through those two agencies.

In strikingly sharp language, Republicans said the Senate considers itself still in session for the express purpose of blocking recess appointments, and the move threatened to become a declaration of war against Congress.

“Although the Senate is not in recess, President Obama, in an unprecedented move, has arrogantly circumvented the American people,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican.

It kind of ignores the word “Recess” as well as Obama’s own stated adminstration policy.

It turns out that the action not only contradicts long-standing practice, but also the view of the administration itself. In 2010, Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal explained to the Supreme Court the Obama administration’s view that recess appointments are only permissible when Congress is in recess for more than three days. Here’s the exchange with Chief Justice John Roberts:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: And the recess appointment power doesn’t work why?

MR. KATYAL: The — the recess appointment power can work in — in a recess. I think our office has opined the recess has to be longer than 3 days. And — and so, it is potentially available to avert the future crisis that — that could — that could take place with respect to the board. If there are no other questions –

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Thank you, counsel.

Back in 2005, President Stinking Hypocrite had a different opinion on recess appointments in general:

“To some degree, he’s damaged goods,” said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I think that means we’ll have less credibility and, ironically, be less equipped to reform the United Nations in the way that it needs to be reformed.”

The anencephalic Harry Reid applauded Obama’s power grab despite of a history of blocking Bush from doing the same:

Iain (here and here) and Dan (here) are right to be outraged at President Obama’s brazenness (if not lawlessness) on the recess appointments, but it is not like he lacks accomplices. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has backed the president’s play, according to the Hill. Senate Democrats will no doubt echo that support.

The hypocrisy here is blatant, even by congressional standards. In 2007, Reid kept the senate in pro forma session in order to block President Bush from making recess appointments — particularly, the eminently qualified Steve Bradbury’s appointment to head DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel. “I had to keep the Senate in pro forma session to block the Bradbury appointment,” Reid recounted in 2008. “That necessarily meant no recess appointments could be made.

Obama is out of control. He is dangerous. We are headed toward a Constitutional crisis. Thus I feel a need to reiterate Andy McCarthy’s plea:

So my question is: are Republicans just going to grouse about this, or are they actually going to do something about it?

Ben Franklin warned government with his clever sayings. I expect several would apply to Obama devastating the military ground forces today. We may be saving a few billion dollars now, but is may cost us 100’s of billions in the near future.

The current administration currently plans to reduce US Army ground forces by as much as 20 Brigade Combat Teams. This is the equivalent of 5-6 Divisions. To put this in perspective, this is more combat power than the US had in Iraq at any one time.

So, what does this mean to non military people? It means we cannot sustain a ground battle like Iraq unless the US keeps the troops in theater until the fighting is complete. There will only be enough troops to replace them with no reserve. In the event there is fighting in Korea and somewhere in the middle east, the US will not have the capability to fight and win in both theaters.

While Obama explains he is planning on increasing air and sea power, history has showed that no war has ever been won without taking and holding the ground. Air and sea power project power but cannot by themselves win.

I remember the Carter military reductions. There was no money to maintain the bases. At FT Benning, there was money for painting buildings, but not repairing buildings. Remember the Clinton “peace dividend”? The Democratic Congress and Clinton made major force reductions to pay for domestic programs. A great number of excellent soldiers were released. After 9/11, their expertise was needed but absent.

If the US must fight a foreign war, will there be adequate assets left to defend the homeland? There are currently more than known 80 Hezbollah cells already in the US. Only God knows how many terrorist cells there really are in the US. Can we fight China’s expanding military and the terrorists at home? If the military is so greatly reduced, will there be the capability for them to “defend the country against all enemies foreign and domestic”? Just like the Carter and Clinton administration, it looks like we again are using a strategy that is penny wise and pound foolish!

Worst. President. Ever.

In an ironic counterpoint to the extra-Constitutional power grab he used to get an unlimited new bureaucracy up and running, President Obama popped into the Pentagon on Thursday to announce massive military cuts – grabbing some new cash for social spending by cutting back on one of the few duties Washington is actually supposed to perform.  This will effectively spell the end of the traditional U.S. military doctrine that our armed forces must be able to fight two enemies at once, which is okay, because that has never ever happened before, and anyway the world is nice and peaceful now.

At least we can be confident that America’s potential enemies don’t factor the size of our military into their strategic calculations when they contemplate aggression.  Besides, if we need more troops, we can just hire them real quick, toss them some rifles, and load them into planes.  War is easy nowadays.

…It’s funny how liberals think the military is the one and only sector of the U.S. government that should get “leaner” and more “flexible” or “agile.”  Is there a single other endeavor of the government that Obama thinks could be improved by having fewer federal employees?  Doesn’t the urgency of eliminating men and women in uniform to hit that $450 billion target say something about the high cost of labor that liberals are usually uncomfortable discussing?

Reuters is reporting this is a cut of 10′s of thousands of troops. As John Hayward wrote above, Obama is so naive, so utterly clueless, he believes our wars (and there will be future ones) can be fought long distance….or does he?

In the president’s signing statement issued Saturday in passing into law the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill, Mr. Obama said restrictions aimed at protecting top-secret technical data on U.S. Standard Missile-3 velocity burnout parameters might impinge on his constitutional foreign policy authority.

As first disclosed in this space several weeks ago, U.S. officials are planning to provide Moscow with the SM-3 data, despite reservations from security officials who say that doing so could compromise the effectiveness of the system by allowing Russian weapons technicians to counter the missile. The weapons are considered some of the most effective high-speed interceptors in the U.S. missile defense arsenal.

There are also concerns that Russia could share the secret data with China and rogue states such as Iran and North Korea to help their missile programs defeat U.S. missile defenses.

Maybe not. I suppose he is just happy knowing we are now no longer a superpower. No longer a threat to anyone. Because then everyone will leave us alone right?

Where will that money go, the money that was supposed to go to the only real job a President has?

To pay for 110,000 unpaid jobs and other entitlement program he can muster up.

In Obama’s world higher taxes creates jobs, throwing free money around makes better citizens, and a smaller military makes stronger.

Worst. President. Ever.

The Obama debacle continues on…

Iran has threatened to halt traffic through the strait if the West moves to toughen sanctions including an oil embargo to pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear program. The strait is the passageway for about a third of the world’s seaborne-traded oil last year, according to US Energy Department data.

“Iran has total control over the strategic waterway,” Iranian Naval Commander Admiral Habibollah Sayari told Iran’s Press TV yesterday as the Iranian navy conducted a 10-day exercise in international waters. “Closing the Strait of Hormuz is very easy for Iranian naval forces.”

“The free flow of goods and services through the Strait of Hormuz is vital to regional and global prosperity,” said Lieutenant Rebecca Rebarich, a US Navy spokeswoman in Bahrain, site of the 5th Fleet headquarters, in an e-mail. “Any disruption will not be tolerated.”

It’s obvious that the Iranians view Obama as a weak leader. Someone who likes to order predator strikes of single individual terrorists rather than making the tough, bold decisions. They understand the man will back down to Iran’s saber rattling. The rest of the western world would have something to say about the closing of the strait, that’s for sure, but with Obama’s jelly backbone it won’t be the US they will be worried about.

John Bolton:

His failure to secure an agreement with the Iraqi government is, as Bolton said, “catastrophic”. It has emboldened the Iranian government who is, and will be, a great threat to the western world.

While I agree with some that sooner or later the Iraqi’s were going to have to take control of their future it’s obvious that they were not completely ready at this point. The Iranian threat to the western world is too great to have not worked night and day to secure a diplomatic agreement on the extension of the SOFA. Honestly, we all know why this administration didn’t work too hard in securing an agreement that was palatable to both sides…his re-election.

He wanted to be able to say that he ended this war, and now the Iranians are even more emboldened, and even more a threat.

Stephen Hayes on Tuesday (skip to the 4:30 minute mark)

Anyone remember this from 2008?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Q: When Congress offers you a bill, do you promise not to use presidential signage [sic] to get your way?

OBAMA: Yes. [Applause] Let me just explain for those who are unfamiliar with this issue. You know, we’ve got a government designed by the founders so that there’d be checks and balances. You don’t want a President that’s too powerful or a Congress that’s too powerful or courts that are too powerful. Everybody’s got their own role. Congress’ job is to pass legislation. The President can veto it, or he can sign it. But what George Bush has been trying to do is part of his effort to accumulate more power in the Presidency, is, he’s been saying, “Well, I can basically change what Congress passed by attaching a letter that says ‘I don’t agree with this part’ or ‘I don’t agree with that part.’ I’m going to choose to interpret it this way or that way.” Uh, that’s not part of his power. But this is part of the whole theory of George Bush that he can make laws as he’s going along. I disagree with that. I taught the Constitution for ten years, I believe in the Constitution, and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We’re not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around Congress.

Hypocrisy….thy name is Obama.

President Obama said Friday he will not be bound by at least 20 policy riders in the 2012 omnibus funding the government, including provisions pertaining to Guantanamo Bay and gun control.

After he signed the omnibus into law Friday, the White House released a concurrent signing statement saying Obama will object to portions of the legislation on constitutional grounds.

Signing statements are highly controversial, and their legality is disputed.

“I have advised the Congress that I will not construe these provisions as preventing me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibility to recommend to the Congress’s consideration such measures as I shall judge necessary and expedient,” Obama said in a statement as he signed the bill into law.

So no end round Congress there? The worst Attorney General in history, Eric Holder, said:

“So we are in a better place, I think the regulations, procedures that will help, and we’ll also have a signing statement from the president” which will help clarify how they view the law, Holder said.

Yup, that’s called doing a end run around Congress Mr. President.

Where are they cries from the MSM and the Democrats? Or do they only cry when a Republican is in the White House? Hell, Charlie Savage at the New York Times won a Pulitzer for his work on Bush’s “abuse” of signing statements. The American Bar Association denounced Bush’s use of signing statements. Democrats called Bush’s use of signing statements as the beginning of a dictatorship. Not a peep about Obama’s.

I’m shocked!

Well now we see the results of our President leaving Iraq. The mission wasn’t complete but when one only cares about his re-election, about himself to be more accurate, then completing the mission doesn’t enter into the equation.

And the Iraqi’s are paying for our President’s selfish behavior:

A wave of bombings ripped across Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing at least 63 people and injuring almost 200 in the worst violence Iraq has seen for months. The bloodbath comes just days after American forces left the country.

The blasts also came on the heels of a political crisis between Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite factions that erupted this weekend.

The political spat has raised fears that Iraq’s sectarian wounds will be reopened during a fragile time when Iraq is finally navigating its own political future without U.S. military support.

Without our backing this country WILL disintegrate. But Obama based his decision to pull out because of politics, not the future of the Iraqi people.

And those thousands of American troops will have died in vain.

A leading Iraqi politician has accused the country’s prime minister of acting like Saddam Hussein in trying to silence opposition, saying he risks provoking a new fightback against dictatorship.

Iyad Allawi — a former prime minister who leads the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc — also claimed the United States had pulled out its troops “without completing the job they should have finished.”

Allawi said that the current premier, Nuri al-Maliki, had used fabricated confessions to demand the arrest of the country’s Sunni Muslim vice president, Tareq al-Hashemi.

…Iraq sits on a sectarian, Sunni-Shiite faultline that is generating conflict throughout the region, notably between Iran and Sunni-ruled Arab states like Saudi Arabia. While the overthrow of Saddam in Iraq bolstered Shiites, the uprising against Iran’s Syrian ally President Bashar al-Assad could lead to power in Damascus shifting toward Syria’s Sunni majority.

“The rise of sectarianism is already there,” Allawi said. “We are witnessing the beginning of it and the influences of what is happening in the region is only adding fuel to the fire. My fear is that the Iraqi people will lose faith in the political process and sectarianism will prevail.

“Unless the international community and the region get involved and unless sense prevails, Iraq is heading towards a very big conflict.”

Krauthammer:

Iraq will become Barack Obama’s Vietnam. Not in the boogieman sense that the left has been using the Vietnam War for the last 40 years where every American use of force is the “next Vietnam” but rather in its aftermath.

The Vietnam War ostensibly ended in ended in early 1973 with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. The agreement was based upon an agreement by all sides to stop hostile activities and for American troops to depart. The Americans would continue to supply the South Vietnamese military. In addition, the SVN leadership was explicitly assured that were the North Vietnamese to resume hostilities the United States would begin bombing Hanoi and other targets in the North.

Unfortunately for the South Vietnamese, the promises of arms and support were mirages. In 1974 Congress cut military aid to Vietnam from $2.3 billion to $1 billion and then in 1975 to $300 million. Thanks to the Democrat’s Case-Church Amendment, when the North had resupplied and resumed hostilities, the promised US bombing never came. In April 1975 Saigon fell and the South surrendered.

Then came the nightmare. Upwards of a million South Vietnamese found themselves in prisons, “re-education camps” or other tropical outposts where they were treated to starvation, torture and murder. Hundreds of thousands more braved the oceans in order to escape, a quarter of them never reaching shore. The effects of this nightmare reached into Cambodia and Laos as well.

And now there is Iraq.

The war in Iraq was obviously far different from the one in Vietnam. Unfortunately however, the aftermath may be similarly unpleasant.

While Iran will not invade Iraq anytime soon, the country could still become a vassal of the ayatollahs. If Iraq escapes that fate it may well collapse into a civil war that eventually draws not only the involvement of the Iranians, but of the Saudis, the Turks and other neighbors as well. Oh, and, yes, perhaps eventually the Americans again.

However one feels about the war in Iraq in the first place, the manner of the exit ensures one thing, that the American blood and treasure spent toppling Saddam Hussein and seeking to establish a viable democracy in the Middle East will likely be for naught.

Not that Saddam Hussein will be coming back anytime soon, he won’t… but the country he once ruled will likely become a basket case or a failed state.

The writing on the wall has been there for years. Candidate Obama had been a critic of the Surge and President Obama’s only priority in Iraq seemed to be leaving.

Iran was paying close attention. Although they had been heavily arming insurgents and Shia militants during the dark days of 2005-2007, by 2009 their efforts had largely been defeated with the establishment of a fledgling but credible Iraqi government infrastructure.

However, the national elections of 2010 opened the door to Iran once again. Barack Obama was inexplicably a proponent of a laissez faire policy in reference to the dysfunction in the formation of the Iraqi government following the 2010 elections. To anyone looking (and there were many) it was clear that the United States was disengaged and focused on wrapping up the operation.

Such chaos invites the efforts of a strong horse. Iran was willing to play. With an ambiguous constitution and a Chief Justice carrying Prime Minister Maliki’s water, the Iranians became the power brokers behind the new government, forcing Mr. Maliki into a coalition that included the Sadrists, erstwhile insurgents led by cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. This was only possible because of the vacuum left by the Obama administration. Had the Iraqis been confident that the United States would be standing with them until they could stand on their own, there would have been no vacuum for the Iranians to fill.

As things stand today, Iraq sits on a precipice of disaster. Within the last three months terrorist attacks have increased, sectarian infighting has escalated and two of the country’s eighteen provinces have sought semi-autonomous status, seeking to enjoy the autonomy the Kurds enjoy. Other provinces will surely follow. For a country with a weak central government and deep divisions amongst its population, such a centrifugal force is not exactly helpful. This will be particularly problematic as the national government seeks to collect and distribute oil revenues, bolster the power grid and perform other traditional tasks. Apart from the growing separatism at the local level, the federal government is a patchwork of alliances, most of which are held together by Iranian influence. That influence comes in various forms, from their covert (but hardly secret) support of terror groups Khataib Hizballah and Asaib Ahl al-Haqq, who are not only responsible for killing US troops but for targeted assassination across the country, to their overt economic, diplomatic and religious ties. As if to put a cherry bomb on the top of this powder keg, the day after the last American troops left the country, the Shiite-led government issued a warrant for Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, the country’s highest ranking Sunni official, on terrorism charges.

Of course it did not have to be this way. American Military planners had long sought to leave a force of between 20,000 to 30,000 troops to provide continued security, run counterinsurgency operations and to focus on training of the Iraqi military. Most analysts believed that number was the minimum number necessary to maintain many of the hard fought gains won over the last four years.

While 20,000 troops may sound rather small in terms of maintaining gains achieved in a country of 30 million people, the message they would have sent to the Iraqis, and equally importantly, to the Iranians, would have been crystal clear: The United States will not allow a democratically fragile Iraq to become an battleground of the Middle East or an Iranian puppet.

That however was never Barack Obama’s message. His campaign would later reveal his message: “Ending the War in Iraq: A Promise Kept”

For some perspective, one might observe that leaving sizable troop levels in a theater for a period of time after a conflict in order to maintain hard fought gains is nothing new. A quarter century after the end of WWII there were 260,000 American troops in Germany and today, sixty years after the Korean War there are 30,000 US troops in South Korea. Obviously the Korean peninsula and Western Europe are different than Mesopotamia, but the notion remains that leaving troops to midwife a long term positive outcome is far from foreign. At least to most people not named Barack Obama.

Instead, the message the Iraqis and their neighbors received from the United States was one of detachment driven by a President with little interest in anything other than ending “Bush’s War”. Whereas Bush talked with Prime Minister Maliki on a weekly basis, President Obama spoke with him rarely and not at all between February 13 and October 21 of this year, critical days in the period leading up to the end of the American presence in Iraq.

After months of doing nothing the administration finally proposed in August of this year to leave 3,000-5,000 troops, far below what most believed was necessary to secure the peace. Those numbers, far too small to fulfill its mission did prove helpful to the administration however: it provided a fig leaf behind which it could hide its retreat. This fig leaf came in the form of a lack of immunity for American troops on Iraqi soil. While Mr. Maliki and other members of the government may have been willing to go to the mattresses to secure such immunity for a substantial force that demonstrated a serious American commitment to Iraq, they were not willing to do so for a token force that would provide little support or security. Even that fig leaf was too small to provide true cover because the administration could have easily put any forces in Iraq on the diplomatic rolls, which would have provided such immunity.

At the end of the day, Iraq will be Barack Obama’s Vietnam in the sense that not only will most of the hard fought gains be lost, but there will be thousands who will pay the price for his choice, starting with the innocents who will be caught in the sectarian crossfire. They will not be the only ones however. So too will a price be paid by neighbors who fear an emboldened Iran as well as freedom advocates across the region who might have sought replicate Iraq’s success and build secular, democratic governments. And then there is the world’s confidence in the United States as a long term ally in the fight for regional stability and a bulwark against Iranian intervention.

Of course all of this comes on the heels of another futile round of sanctions seeking to keep the Iranians from developing or delivering a nuclear weapon. Barack Obama has certainly conveyed a message of strength and stability to the region. “Ending the War in Iraq: A Promise Kept” Indeed.

And Obama again proves that only gullible, stupid people vote for him.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Posted on the pomposity that is the site of the “Office of the President Elect” it says this:

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

That, as is just about everything else about Barack Obama, is chock full of manure. It is as phony as he is.

Baack Obama promised to protect whistleblowers and instead has done absolutely the opposite. This must have come as quite a shock to the liberal media. Tears likely washed on the fingers of Jane Mayer as she wrote:

When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as “often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government.” But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama’s Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a conservative political scientist at the Hudson Institute, who, in his book “Necessary Secrets” (2010), argues for more stringent protection of classified information, says, “Ironically, Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history—even more so than Nixon.”

“More than Nixon”

In the Atlantic Wire John Hudson writes:

The Justice Department’s subpoena of New York Times reporter James Risen Monday was the latest sign of how aggressive the Obama administration is being in its campaign against government whistle-blowers. The purpose of Risen’s subpoena is to force him to testify that Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent, gave him confidential information about the CIA’s efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. The extent to which the administration is prosecuting leakers has troubled those who see leakers as speakers of truth to power. “In President Obama’s 26 months in office, civilian and military prosecutors have charged five people in cases involving leaking information, more than all previous presidents combined,” reports the Times. Here’s a list of prominent leakers with various agendas currently under pressure from the government.

Obama’s war on whistleblowers also includes those who would tell us the truth about Fast and Furious:

Senator Grassley pointed out that the documents DOJ released to smear Dodson were actually supposed to be so sensitive that the DOJ wouldn’t provide them to congressional investigators. But then, to harm a whistleblower, someone from the DOJ provided these specifically selected documents to the press. In fact, the name of the criminal suspect in the documents was redacted, but Agent Dodson’s name was left for all to see. “This looks like a clear and intentional violation of the Privacy Act as well as an attempt at whistleblower retaliation,” said Grassley.

Now Obama trains his sights on those who would uncover the biggest fraud of our times- climate change. Obama is joining the British government in trying to identify the leaker of the climtategate emails. Christopher Horner in the Washington Examiner:

I have seen apparent proof that the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), Criminal Division, is working with United Kingdom police to pursue the leaker of the 2009 and 2011 “Climategate” emails.

I have learned that last week DOJ sent a search-and-seizure letter to the host of three climate-change “skeptic” blogs. Last night, UK police raided a blogger’s home and removed computers and equipment.

The leaked records derailed “cap-and-trade” legislation in the U.S. and, internationally, as well as talks for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The emails and computer code were produced with taxpayer funds and held on taxpayer-owned computers both in the US and the UK, and all were subject to the UK Freedom of Information Act, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and state FOIA laws.

They also were being unlawfully withheld in both the UK (by the University of East Anglia) and the U.S. (Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including stonewalling me for two years, and three other requesters for longer).

The hunt involving U.S. and UK law enforcement agencies is now escalating. On Wednesday night UK time, six detectives with the UK police (Norfolk Police Department) raided the home of at least one blogger, removing his equipment to look for clues to the identity of leaker “FOIA 2011.”

……..

To review: The UK police and the US DOJ, Criminal Division, are pursuing a leaker of public records subject to one or more FOIA, records that were unlawfully withheld under those laws, which leaks indicate apparent civil violations (tortious interference by seeking dismissal of certain “skeptics”), and raising reasonable questions of fraud against taxpayers.

And they are pursuing the leaker.

This is the President who promised to protect whistleblowers but now pursues them with a vengeance. This is the President who refuses to prosecute those who break the laws and promises to prosecute those who enforce the laws. This is the Preisdent who demanded all Americans be subject to indefinite detention without trial.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obama has proven that not only is he was awful as many of us thought him to be, not only has he brought the slime of Chicago to Washington, not only has he stripped all the dignity from the office of the Presidency, he has become a monster. If he is re-elected, he will likely remain in office for the rest of his life.

In June of 2008 Barack Obama hinted that we had the opportunity to vote not simply for a President, but for a Messiah:

…We will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.

It took a year, but Evan Thomas was to join the Obama-as-God theme:

“I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”

The media continued to perpetuate the theme through ethereal images of a higher being:

And the execrably obsequious

Obama was so convinced of his omniscience that he boldly predicted he would turn the country’s woes around in three years.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

One of the most profound observations of the decade has come from Jim Geraghty:

All statements from Barack Obama come with an expiration date. All of them.

Obama does not disappoint, and the false god is knocked from his celestial perch.

In an interview with 60 minutes Obama does his best to disabuse us of his promises:

STEVE KROFT: Do you think that you might have the unemployment rate down to 8 percent by the time the election rolls around?

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I think it’s possible. But…I’m not in the job of prognosticating on the economy. I’m in the job of putting in place the tools that allow the economy to thrive and Americans to succeed. Sometimes when I’m talking to my team, I- describe us…as…I’m the captain and they’re the crew on a ship, going through really bad storms. And no matter how well we’re steering the ship, if the boat’s rocking back and forth and people are getting sick and…they’re being buffeted by the winds and the rain and…at a certain point– if you’re asking, “Are you enjoying the ride right now?” Folks are going to say, “No.” And are they going to say, “Do you think the captain’s good—doing a good job?” People are going say, “You know what? A good captain would have had us in some smooth waters and sunny skies, at this point.” And I don’t control the weather. What I can control are the policies we’re putting in place to make a difference in people’s lives.

STEVE KROFT: Did you overpromise? Did you underestimate how difficult this was going to be?

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I didn’t overpromise. And I didn’t– underestimate how tough this was going to be. I always believed that this was a long-term project…And– you know, for individual Americans, who are struggling right now, they have every reason to be impatient. Reversing structural problems in our economy that have been building up for two decades, that was going to take time. It was going to take more than a year. It was going to take more than two years. It was going to take more than one term. Probably takes more than one president.

“I’m not in the job of prognosticating on the economy.”

“I didn’t overpromise.”

“I always believed that this was a long-term project”

“It was going to take more than one term.”

You are an idiot to believe anything Barack Obama says.

This time, I believe we ought to hold Barack Obama to his word.

His original word, that is.