barry Chooses Decline for America

[chefdennis]

Both of these articles seem to show barry as a "appeaser"..willing to let our country decline to nothing more then a 3rd world country....both are worth the read...


President Obama Chooses Decline for America

By Peter Ferrara
10.21.09 @ 6:08AM
The American Spectator : President Obama Chooses Decline for America

"Decline Is a Choice: The New Liberalism and the End of American Ascendancy." That was the title of the devastating critique of Obama Administration foreign, defense, and domestic policies delivered by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer at the annual Wriston Lecture at the Manhattan Institute in New York City on October 5.

Krauthammer responds to commentators arguing that America is suffering overdue, inevitable decline, saying, "For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline -- or continued ascendancy -- is in our hands."

And what are our leaders deciding? Krauthammer quite correctly explains, "The current liberal ascendancy in the United States -- controlling the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture -- has set us on a course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies."

President Obama and the ultraliberal leadership of Congress are now pursuing policies that will by design produce major declines in the standard of living of the American people. They are pursuing a foreign policy of worldwide retreat. They are actively tearing down our nation's defenses. Krauthammer is sounding the alarm for the American people to wake up.

America: Just Another Country

In pursuit of this policy of decline, President Obama is traveling the world over denying the fundamental morality of American world leadership. Krauthammer said:

The current foreign policy of the United States is an exercise in contraction. It begins with the demolition of the moral foundation of American dominance. [P]resident Obama was asked about American exceptionalism. His answer? "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Interesting response. Because if everyone is exceptional, no one is.

Translating Obama's quoted language into plain English, what he is saying is that there is nothing special about America. Everything he says and does is consistent with that view.

Krauthammer continues:

[A]s he made his hajj from Strasbourg to Prague to Ankara to Istanbul to Cairo and finally to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama drew the picture of an America quite exceptional -- exceptional in moral culpability and heavy-handedness, exceptional in guilt for its treatment of other nations and peoples….Obama indicted his own country for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness (toward Europe), for maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo, for unilateralism, and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world. Quite an indictment, the fundamental consequence of which is to effectively undermine any moral claim that America might have to world leadership.

Krauthammer further notes that in denouncing the idea that any nation or group of nations should be elevated above any other, Obama has effectively dismissed as well the moral standing and leadership of the UN Security Council, the G-20, and the Western Alliance. In denouncing "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of the long gone Cold War" as making "no sense in an interconnected world," Obama has effectively dismissed any moral authority or leadership for NATO as well.

Krauthammer concludes:

"This is nonsense. But it is not harmless nonsense. It's nonsense with a point. It reflects a fundamental view that the only legitimate authority in the international system is that which emanates from 'the community of nations' as a whole," of which America is only one nation among many. In other words, the only legitimate moral authority for world leadership is a body like the UN General Assembly, with its assorted tyrants and kooks, where America is just another country. This is the moral vision of the man we elected President, Barack Hussein Obama.

As Krauthammer further explains:

For what might be called the New Liberalism, the renunciation of [American] power is rooted…in the conviction that America is so intrinsically flawed, so inherently and congenitally sinful that it cannot be trusted with, and does not merit, the possession of overarching world power. For the New Liberalism, it is not just that power corrupts. It is that America itself is corrupt -- in the sense of being deeply flawed, and with the history to prove it.

Indeed, Obama showed disdain for America before the whole world when he said in his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 24, "For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." So in America's entire history, from Washington to Jefferson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, what is praiseworthy about America for the whole world to see is the last nine months under the Glorious Leadership of Our Dear Leader, the Messiah. Of course, the humble Obama said at the beginning of that speech, "I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world."

President Obama then goes on in that speech seemingly to renounce America, quoting FDR approvingly as saying, "We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community." In other words, Obama views himself as a citizen of the world, which is not the same thing as being an American in that world.

America's Worldwide Retreat

Ideas have consequences, and the notion that America is just another country among all the others with no moral basis for world leadership leads to concrete changes in policy. Krauthammer explains:

Operationally, this manifests itself in various kinds of strategic retreat, most particularly in reversing policies stained by even the hint of American unilateralism or exceptionalism. Thus, for example, there is no more "Global War on Terror." It's not just that the term has been abolished or that the secretary of homeland security refers to terrorism as "man-caused disasters." It is that the very idea of our nation and civilization being engaged in a global mortal struggle with jihadism has been retired as well….In our reversion to pre-9/11 normalcy…anti-terrorism has reverted from war fighting to law enforcement.

So the War on Terrorism that banished al Qaeda to hiding in caves with dead leaders has now reverted to the same after the fact police tactics that left us with 3,000 dead on 9/11. We are back to where they are fighting a war against us, but we are not fighting a war against them, as the 9/11 Commission noted.

Another retreat is the "Unilateral abrogation of our missile-defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic -- a retreat being felt all through Eastern Europe to Ukraine and Georgia as a signal of U.S. concession of strategic space to Russia in its old sphere of influence," as Krauthammer said. It was thought that by America making this concession, Russia would cooperate with us on sanctions against Iran's nuclear program, and so maybe the missile defenses would not be necessary. But President Obama now has the Russian answer to his flower child foreign policy gambit. As Garry Kasparov wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, "Last Wednesday in Moscow, the remaining illusions the Obama administration held for cooperation with Russia on the Iranian nuclear program were thrown in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's face. Stronger sanctions against Iran would be 'counterproductive,' said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov." Putin himself said in Beijing at the same time that sanctions against Iran would be "premature." I guess they will be premature until Israel gets nuked.

But Eastern Europe isn't the only place where America's missile defense is in retreat. Krauthammer reports:

Take, for example, missile defense, in which the United States has a great technological edge and one perfectly designed to maintain American preeminence in a century that will be dominated by the ballistic missile. Missile defense is actually being cut. The number of interceptors in Alaska to defend against a North Korean attack has been reduced, and the airborne laser program (the most promising technology for a boost-phase antiballistic missile) has been cut back -- [while] the federal education budget has been increased 100 percent in one year.

This is how President Obama reacts to North Korea's repeated ballistic missile launches.

The cutback in missile defense reflects a general cutback in national defense. "At a time when hundreds of billions of dollars are being lavished on stimulus and other appropriations in an endless array of domestic programs," Krauthammer said, "the defense budget is practically frozen. Almost every other department is expanding, and the Defense Department is singled out for making 'hard choices' -- forced to look everywhere for cuts, to abandon highly advanced weapons systems, to choose between readiness and research, between today's urgencies and tomorrow's looming threats."

During the campaign last year, Obama celebrated what he communicated as his own brilliance in planning to talk directly with Iran's dictators about ending their nuclear program, as if no American administration had talked directly to Iran before. Many simple-minded voters fell for this false posturing, even though it should have been obvious that this soft-headed approach wouldn't achieve anything. Now in the era of American decline, the Iranians refuse to engage in talks with us about ending their nuclear program, so we have begun talks with them about ending our nuclear program.

America's Nuclear Disarmament

In the most prominent and dangerous example of American retreat, Obama is crusading around the world promising termination of America's nuclear deterrent in pursuit of the flower child dream of a world without nuclear weapons. Of course, America's dominant nuclear deterrent is a central component of America's superpower status, and that deterrent has served America and the world well in preventing the outbreak of another world war for 65 years now. But being a superpower is immoral in President Obama's view, so we are planning to give this us up too. The strategy is if we give up our nuclear weapons, then our enemies will also. If we don't do so, then we don't have the moral standing to ask Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons either.

But, as Krauthammer explains, the notion that American nuclear disarmament "will lead to reciprocal gestures from the likes of Iran and North Korea is simply childish. They are seeking the bomb for reasons of power, prestige, intimidation, blackmail, and regime preservation….Indeed, both Iran and North Korea launched their nuclear weapons ambitions in the 1980s and 1990s -- precisely when the United States and Russia were radically reducing their arsenals."

As for Russia's response to Obama's nuclear concessions and retreats, Kasparov writes in the Journal,

On Wednesday, a top Russian security chief, Nikolai Patrushev, said in an interview in Izvestia, one of the main Kremlin propaganda papers, that Russia was planning to reshape its policies on nuclear force to allow for preemptive strikes and use in regional conflicts. Since it cannot be a coincidence that this news leaked while Mrs. Clinton was still in Moscow, it can be considered a response to Mr. Obama's talk of a world without nuclear weapons and rescinding the deployment of missile defenses.

Kasparov adds quite rightly, "Washington's conciliatory steps have given the Kremlin's rulers confidence they have nothing to fear from Mr. Obama on anything that matters." With nothing to fear from Obama's policy of Peace Through Weakness, don't be surprised if the Kremlin decides to invade Georgia, or even Ukraine.

But such foreign policy failures "will not deter the New Liberalism because the ultimate purpose of its foreign policy is to make America less hegemonic, less arrogant, less dominant. In a word, it is a foreign policy designed to produce American decline—to make America essentially one nation among many," as Krauthammer puts it.

Democrats for American Decline

But why would anyone in America want such decline? Because to the American left, including President Obama as its leader, it is unfair and immoral for America to be so much more powerful than anyone else. It is a moral embarrassment to them. Why should we have so many nuclear weapons, and Iran and North Korea none? How can we ask Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons, if we don't give up ours?

President Obama and the American Left can't think of a good answer to that question. That comes from viewing the issue as a citizen of the world, rather than from an American perspective. As an American, I am concerned about the defense and safety of America and its people. I am not interested in being fair to murderous foreign dictators, and their inhuman, immoral regimes, from the rightly deposed Saddam to Kim Jong Il to Ahmadinejad to Putin. What is best for the American people is such overwhelming American military dominance that no one would ever dare attack us, which is where we were before President Obama, and what we are busily trashing now.

This strategy for American decline is what your modern Democrat party in Washington, from the ultraleft Barack Obama to the ultraleft Nancy Pelosi to the ultraleft John Kerry, is pursuing today. If you are a Democrat, this is what you are supporting.

But if America abdicates global leadership, what will replace us? Power abhors a vacuum. Some other power, or combination of powers, will take over global leadership. Will it be radical Islam? Or perhaps Islam in combination with reemergent communist dictatorships in Russia and China, portending the same fundamental threat to the survival of democracy we saw in World War II? Will Obama and the American Left reverse the result of the Cold War?

Or will it be a new world government established by the UN? Is this Obama's ultimate plan? After a glorious reelection in America, will Obama seek to become the King of Kings as head of a new world government established through the UN that he has already touted as the only moral basis for global governance?

Next week, in part II, we will discuss President Obama's choice of decline for America in domestic and economic policy, which involves a sharp decline in the standard of living of the middle class in America, and the end of the American Dream.

 

[chefdennis]

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Determined to Decline

By Peter Ferrara
10.28.09 @ 6:07AM
The American Spectator : Determined to Decline

President Obama is leading a worldwide retreat for America on foreign policy, and slashing our nation's defenses, including adoption of policies for nuclear disarmament, as we discussed last week. That is being done to deliberately reduce America to the status of "just another country," because President Obama and his ultraliberals think it is immoral for any one nation to be elevated above the others. That discussion last week was based on Charles Krauthammer's Wriston Lecture given at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, "Decline Is a Choice: The New Liberalism and the End of American Ascendancy."

American Economic Decline

President Obama and his fellow ultraliberal Democrats now in complete control in Washington are choosing decline for America on domestic policy and the economy as well. The recession has dragged on into its 23rd month now under the leadership of Obamanomics, and its wooden, ideological devotion to old-fashioned, long discredited, Keynesian doctrine. The longest previous recession since World War II, 65 years ago, was 16 months, with the average at 10 months. Another 3 million jobs have been lost since President Obama took office, with unemployment now at almost 10%.

Even the Chairman of President Obama's own Council of Economic Advisors testified before Congress last week that the outlook for unemployment remains grim. Christina Romer admitted that "the unemployment rate is predicted to continue rising" to over 10%. She added,

[T]he unemployment rate typically falls when GDP growth exceeds its normal rate of roughly two and a half percent per year and rises when GDP growth falls short of this pace. With predicted growth right around two and a half percent for most of the next year and a half, movements in the unemployment rate either up or down are likely to be small. As a result, unemployment is likely to remain at its severely elevated level….Thus, while job losses will likely end early next year, robust job gains may still be several quarters away.

Moreover, Romer admitted that the vaunted Obama stimulus, which was sold on the claim that it would prevent unemployment from rising above 8%, will not change this grim scenario. She testified:

Fiscal stimulus has its greatest impact on growth around the quarters when it is increasing most strongly. When spending and tax cuts reach their maximum and level off, the contribution to growth returns to roughly zero….Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009. By mid-2010, fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to growth.

Note that the third quarter of 2009 ended a month ago.

Almost one trillion to be spent on the Obama stimulus, all to little or no good, with unemployment stuck at 10%. That has to be one of the greatest wastes of taxpayer funds in world history, brought to you by the Messiah and his ultraliberal Congressional majorities. Yet, with his ideological blinders on, President Obama rigidly refuses to change course. Instead of considering the cuts in marginal tax rates, spending cuts, strong dollar policies, and deregulation that worked so spectacularly under President Reagan, we now hear talk of another stimulus package, which would be the third Keynesian failure supported by Obama in less than two years. Moreover, Obama still insists on raising marginal tax rates in 14 months, if not sooner, still more federal regulation, and continued weak dollar policies.

The Decline of the Dollar

Yet the trillion dollar deficits brought to us by the Obama stimulus and budget are now threatening the world currency status of the dollar. As Krauthammer said at the Manhattan Institute's Wriston Lecture:

The effect on the dollar [of Obama's policies] is already being felt and could ultimately lead to a catastrophic collapse and/or hyperinflation. Having control of the world's reserve currency is an irreplaceable national asset. Yet with every new and growing estimate of the explosion of the national debt, there are more voices calling for the replacement of the dollar as the world currency -- not just adversaries like Russia and China, Iran and Venezuela, which one would expect, but just last month the head of the world bank.

If the dollar is replaced as the world currency, then when we want to buy oil or anything else from the rest of the world, we will have to buy some other currency to do so. Any weakness in the dollar will then immediately impose a higher cost on us at the time.

Yet, raising income and capital gains tax rates as President Obama still plans will cause the dollar to decline still more, as it will discourage overseas investment in the U.S., which requires purchase of dollars by foreigners. The continued weak dollar policies Obama demands from the Fed will also cause further dollar declines. So will Obama's deliberate high deficit (Keynesian economics), runaway national debt policies. As Judy Shelton wrote in The Wall Street Journal on October 14:

By the end of 2019, according to the administration's budget numbers, our federal debt will reach $23.3 trillion -- as compared to $11.9 trillion today. To put it in perspective: U.S. federal debt was equal to 61.4% of GDP in 1999,…70.2%...in 2008 (under the Bush administration),…an estimated 90.4% this year and…[will] touch the 100% mark in 2011, after which the projected federal debt will continue to equal or exceed our nation's entire annual economic output through 2019. The U.S. is thus slated to enter the ranks of those countries -- Zimbabwe, Japan, Lebanon, Singapore, Jamaica, Italy -- with the highest government debt-to-GDP ratio (which measures the debt burden against a nation's capacity to generate sufficient wealth to repay its creditors). In 2008, the U.S. ranked 23rd on the list -- crossing the 100% threshold vaults our nation into seventh place.

So America under President Obama's Keynesian budget policies is headed to the seventh-highest national debt relative to GDP in the world. No wonder the credit rating agencies are talking about downgrading the AAA rating for U.S. government bonds. Shelton continues:

The U.S. has long served as the world's "indispensable nation" and the dollar's primary role in the global economy has likewise seemed to testify to American exceptionalism. But the passivity in Washington toward our dismal fiscal future, and its inevitable toll on U.S. economic influence, suggests that American global leadership is no longer a priority and that America's money cannot be trusted.

America's Energy Decline

It doesn't have to be this way. As Krauthammer said in the Wriston Lecture:

Take, for example, the threat to the dollar (as the world's reserve currency) that comes from our massive trade deficits….In fact, fully two-thirds of our trade imbalance comes from imported oil. This is not a fixed fact of life. We have a choice. We have it in our power…to reverse the absurd de facto 30-year ban on new nuclear power plants. We have it in our power to release huge domestic petroleum reserves by dropping the ban on offshore and Arctic drilling.

In other words, the clampdown on America's energy production imposed by liberal environmentalists like President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is further contributing to the decline of the dollar. But it also contributes directly to the decline of American wealth and prosperity, and to our power relative to other, threatening nations in the world. As Krauthammer adds, "By prohibiting the drilling of offshore and Arctic deposits, the United States is voluntarily denying itself access to vast amounts of oil that would relieve dependency on -- and help curb the wealth and power of -- various petrodollar challengers, from Iran to Venezuela to Russia."

Newt Gingrich and Steve Everley explain the vast riches of untapped oil and natural gas reserves available to America in an October 8 article for Investor's Business Daily. They write,

Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey concluded earlier this year that there are massive amounts of oil and natural gas in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's coast. They estimated that there could be as much as 157 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic, or nearly twice as much oil as was previously known to exist in that part of the world. The natural gas discovery is also greater than all of the previously known reserves in the Arctic. Last year the USGS had to increase its estimate of oil reserves in the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana by 2,500%. The area is now estimated to hold more than 4 billion barrels of oil."

Gingrich and Everley continue:

In the United States, we have a 100 year supply of natural gas. Last year, geologists discovered that gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale formation in Appalachia are actually 250 times larger than they estimated in 2002. And recently, in the Gulf of Mexico, BP announced they had made a huge new discovery of oil, estimated to be as large as the biggest oil producing spots in the Gulf, which means it could supply as much as 300,000 barrels of oil per day."

Yet, Gingrich and Everley note that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has kept offshore energy exploration and production shut down even though Congress allowed the ban on offshore drilling to expire last fall before the election. Unleashing the private sector to tap these vast oil and natural gas reserves would produce thousands and thousands of high paying jobs, and vastly increase America's wealth as we once again become a top oil power. But President Obama and his ultraliberal extremists say no.

Decline of American Living Standards

This is all part of a general assault on American living standards by President Obama's economic policies. Today Americans enjoy the most advanced, cutting edge, high tech health-care system in the world by far. But when President Obama and the ultraliberal Democrats get done imposing their fairness, rationing, and cost reductions on it, it will be just a shadow of its former self, like the second rate, behind the times health care systems of other countries around the world.

Similarly, the clampdown on energy production and proposed cap and trade policies will greatly constrict the supply, and raise the cost, of the energy and electricity that powers America's high standard of living, with all of its modern appliances, conveniences, and technologies. Today, Americans enjoy high powered, spacious, luxurious automobiles, by far the best in the world overall. But by the time President Obama and his ultraliberals get done redesigning and remaking them, we will be driving little more than tiny, electric lawnmowers.

American economic decline is further documented by Steve McCann in an October 22 article at American Thinker. McCann writes:

R]eviewing the actual and projected GDP data by the Congressional Budget Office, combined with the actual and projected spending by the Federal, State and local governments for the period 2009 to 2014 shows negative private wealth growth [over this period] due to dramatic increases in government spending. The Net GDP per Person is predicted to be below calendar year 2000 for this 6 year period (2014 last available spending projection).

And even this is based on overoptimistic economic assumptions. McCann writes, "[T]he CBO predicts an average GDP growth rate of 4.4% and an average unemployment rate of 6.8% for the years 2010 to 2014. However, a consensus of private economists reveals an estimate of average GDP growth at 3.0% (2010 to 2014) and an unemployment rate in the double digit range through at least 2012." McCann continues:

During the Bush presidency the country went through a recession and the devastating economic impact of 9/11 in 2001. Yet, due to pro-growth policies, the inflation adjusted Net GDP per Person showed overall growth during Bush's time in office. The apologists for the Obama Administration may try to say they are simply trying to work their way out of the economic debacle left them by the Bush Administration; however, the government's own optimistic projections show their efforts will not work even over a six year period.

He concludes, "The country will never see the net GDP per person experienced in 2000 if policies such as Health Care Reform and Cap and Trade are enacted, taxes raised dramatically and nearly trillion dollar annual deficits are experienced for the next ten years. For the first time in our history future generations will be worse off than present ones. The Bush presidency could mark the peak of economic growth and prosperity in the 21st century."

McCann offers some wise political advice for those looking out for the future of America, and their own families,

This can be reversed, but it can only happen if the voting public becomes more aware of the current and prospective situation. With that awareness, become more engaged in the political process, [and] stop being single issue voters and falling prey to the maxim that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. Those current elected Republicans who fail to address the future of our country should be challenged in primaries. There is not the time for third parties to ascend to power sufficient to change the course we are on. The next election cycle in 2010 may be the most little of. important off-year election in our history. Time is something we, as a nation, have little of.

Again, all these policies for American economic decline, and declining American living standards, are what your modern Democrat party is pursuing today, from the ultraleft Barack Obama to the ultraleft Nancy Pelosi to the ultraleft Barney Frank to the ultraleft Henry Waxman, etc., etc. If you are a Democrat, this is what you are supporting.