It’s interesting to see the contrast between former President George W Bush and President Barrack Obama in the way that they handle crisis.  After September 11, 2001 Bush squarely lays the blame at the feet of the terrorists who carried out the attack along with some blamed reserved for the bureaucracy of government.

President Obama lays the blame for this UNSUCCESSFUL terrorist attack not on the terrorists and counties that aided them.  No he lays the blame on the intelligence community, the very people who are not allowed to defend themselves.  He takes no blame himself, he pins no blame on the bureaucrats he has leading those intelligence agencies.

President Obama is proving constantly what conservatives knew before he was elected.  He, and the Democratic Party, are only interested in power and are more concerned in bestowing rights on terrorists than protecting the American People.

The title of President of the United States has long been referred to as the most powerful man in the world.  This was largely based on the persons role as Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in the world and the fact that this person holds the keys to the deadliest nuclear arsenal ever conceived by man.

 

In ten short months though it is apparent that Obama is bent on consolidating his political power. He maintains an enemies list that dwarfs the one that drove Nixon from office.  He appoints Czars that seem to have unchecked power over all aspects of the private sector.  His pay Czar is asserting that he has the power to force private businesses to pay their employees what ever he thinks is “fair”.  His minions at the FCC propose to take over control of the internet.

 

It is clear that Obama strives to control his population in ways that even Hugo Chavez would envy.  When will we have a media Czar?  He already controls 90% of the media, he has al but declared war on FoxNews.  How long before he decides that FoxNews is “threat” to his security and orders them shut down?

 

How long before he decides what phones you can have, how long before he orders phone companies to remove access to websites that he thinks are against his message, he already has a rubber stamp congress that is telling car makers what cars they can build and sell.  He already owns two of the three car companies in the US.

 

There is no industry that he doesn’t seek to regulate.  The price of oil is headed back up again, when it reaches $150 a barrel again next spring we’ll be treated to the obligatory stories about how obscene the oil companies profits are and probably have an energy Czar to determine what is an acceptable level of profit for oil companies as well as the pay for oil company executives.

 

There will always be certain segments of the population who think that just because it doesn’t affect them it’s ok to regulate it.  Sooner or later it affects everyone.

It comes as no surprise that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.  This committee of socialists has a long rich history of rewarding the intentions of socialists rather than their results.  After all this is a committee that has ignored true efforts towards peace exhibited by US Presidents such as Reagan, Truman, and Bush 43 in favor of those American Presidents and Vice Presidents that have proven to make things worse, Carter, Gore, and now Obama.

 

Our path to peace in first nine months of the Obama administration has led us to increasing failure in Afghanistan.  The Taliban has managed to gain strength; Obama has weakened the CIA more in nine months than Clinton did in his first four years.  Iran has been able to accelerate its nuclear program to a point where it is now a serious threat and all Obama can do is throw away the missile defense plan for Eastern Europe.  North Korea has thumbed its nose at us again knowing full well that Obama doesn’t have the stones to confront them in a serious way.

 

These are not paths to peace; these are paths to more severe conflicts in the future.  This is a “bury your head in the sand approach to foreign policy” that will result in larger conflicts down the road.  Never mind the disaster that is the Obama domestic policy, Obama hasn’t succeeded at anything other than getting elected and collecting awards based on “Hope” not results.

Hillary opening a trip to India illustrates the weakness of the Obama foreign policy by demanding other nations start battling terrorism.

 

via FoxNews

"It must be stopped," she said, adding that the United States cannot do it alone.

Do it alone?  What planet is Hillary on?  Obama has gone out of his way to close down the war on terror.  He has weakened our position in Iraq and Afghanistan.  His policies in closing Guantanamo are putting terrorists back on the front lines to kill more innocent civilians as well as American soldiers.  Hillary says the US can’t do it alone?  I would suggest that the policies of Obama are to not do it at all…

 

As if that wasn’t enough Hillary didn’t have the sense to stop there.

 

"The bottom line for me is, our government is committed in the fight against terrorism,"

"And we expect everyone" who shares the American desire to end violent extremism "to take strong action to prevent terrorism from taking root on their soil and making sure that terrorists are not trained and deployed — and we believe that around the world."

Really, what American desire?  America went out of it’s way to elect the antithesis of ending violent extremism.  The voters took the bailout and elected a Commander in Chief who in the first six months weakened our country and took us right back to the mentality and circumstances that led to the attacks on September 11, 2001.

 

Mrs. Clinton maybe you and the President should concentrate on what America can do to fight terrorism rather than berate our allies for not doing enough.

It’s been sixteen years since Hillary’s assault on healthcare.  That assault led in part to the Republican takeover in 1994 but one has to look at the differences between today and sixteen years ago.

 

In 1993 Bill Clinton ran on the economy and succeeded in beating George HW Bush on that issue in spite of the fact that Bush had in fact led the country out of the recession by the election.  Clinton felt he was invincible so he let his wife take on the issue of healthcare.  The thing that Clinton underestimated was that the economy was already rebounding and people were positive on the economic situation.  As such people didn’t see healthcare as that big a problem that required a government takeover and as such it went down to defeat.

 

So we move forward to the last eight years where we have had a drumbeat of Democrats, in congress and the media, telling people just how bad everything was.  This in spite of the fact that for much of the George W Bush years the economy has been booming.  The media succeeded in talking the economy into recession in late 2008 along with a democrat controlled congress that created the mortgage mess.

 

We now have the perfect storm for Democrats.  They have created circumstances where we have unemployment near 10%, we have healthcare costs through the roof mostly because trial lawyers have driven the cost of malpractice insurance through the roof.  We have government takeovers of the auto industry, and the banking industry.  We haven’t seen misery like this since the days of Jimmy Carter.

 

So now there is a narrow window of opportunity for Obama and Democrats to pass socialized medicine.  i call it a narrow window because the have to be careful, they have to orchestrate this takeover and spin it so it appears that they are helping everyone.  If people perceive this for what it is, another power grab by liberals and Obama then they could see a backlash.  People are already weary of the takeovers they’ve seen in the automotive and banking sectors.

 

The Democrats running congress are talking of big tax increases, the global warming bill isn’t widely supported by voters but congress is beholden to the environuts that elected them.  The more they force this stuff down the throats of the American people the greater the consequences in 2010 and 2012.

 

So in the end it appears that Democrats have created the circumstances under which socialized medicine may be possible.  Maybe they learned from 1994 but will the country be better off from the lessons learned?  I doubt it.

With President Obama’s selection of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice has shown what we can expect over the next four years in terms of Judicial appointments.  It’s all about race, it’s all about style over substance.  I had no idea that being overturned by the Supreme Court was a glowing example of the qualifications needed to sit on the highest court in the land.

 

Reading some of the media’s reaction though you would think she was a great jurist rather than someone who has been on the wrong side of constitution most of her career.  I love the headline by the Wall Street Journal “Record Shows Rulings Within Liberal Mainstream” excuse me?  Liberal and Mainstream are two words that very rarely should be used in the same story let alone in the same sentence.  Liberalism by it’s defined ideals is outside the mainstream.  The media is running around stating that she has had a pro business ruling, one, big deal.  If you dig deep into Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s record you can probably find one instance when she made a ruling that was pro business.  Doesn’t make her mainstream.

 

Republicans predictably don’t know what to do yet other than say that they will be fair but are going to ask tough questions.  Yeah right, forgive me if I am not a believer, Senate Republican’s likely do what they do best, roll over and play dead.  It will be up to the grass roots to get this nomination killed and it won’t be done with republicans only because let’s be real.  In the end we know that Obama can depend on McCain, Lindsay Graham, Susan Collins, etc to give in.  No if America has any hope of killing this it will be Democrats in largely conservative states that have a reelection coming in 2010.  Harry Reid being at the top of the list.

This being the inaugural post of the Blog Conservative Matters I feel to need to ask the question above.  Now for those of you who are inherently liberal you will no doubt find several examples of when government was the solution to a problem.  However being conservative I will first likely debate who created the problem in the first place and with that most of the time if you remove the liberals in government who created the problem then you have solved the problem. 

 

In fact I can only think of war against our aggressors as a problem government can solve and most of the time even that is necessary because we listened to liberals and allowed history to repeat itself thus forcing us to take some military action against some aggressor that has done or means to do us harm.

 

Take for example the current recession.  This recession was brought about by mismanagement of the mortgage markets particularly Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.  Now for some strange reason most of the people in this country think that those two entities are private banks or privately owned institutions.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  Freddie and Fannie are creations of government charged with making loans to those with a questionable ability to repay.

 

In 2003 the Bush Administration seeing a crisis on the horizon asked for an overhaul of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by creating an oversight agency within the Treasury Department that would have oversee Freddie and Fannie.  Would that have fixed the problem, probably not but Senator Chris Dodd, and Congressman Barney Frank insisted there was nothing wrong and wouldn’t allow even discussion of further oversight.

 

Now we have Obama acting as chairman and ceo of General Motors, Chrysler, Bank of America, and several other banks and insurance companies.  Where is the constitutional authority to take over private business, where does it stop, what businesses are deemed ok to fail?  Why do taxpayers have to fund this boondoggle?  We already know it doesn’t work, when President Bush initiated this bailout last fall we were told that GM and Chrysler couldn’t be allowed to go through bankruptcy that it would put too many people out of work yet where are we today?  Chrysler has already entered bankruptcy, GM will within days, they have closed down plants, suppliers are going under at an alarming rate, dealerships are going under.  And where have the billions of dollars gone?

 

Obama has yet to fully take on HealthCare, his other attempts being a guide I don’t think Obama can handle 3 1/2 more years of him “fixing” things.  It’s clear that he has dropped the ball on North Korea and Iran.  We are a weaker nation today than we were four months ago, unfortunately thanks largely to his socialist policies we are also a poorer nation as well.