from Flopping Aces

Hope, Change and a Nobel Peace Prize don’t cut the mustard with the Mullahs!

It was supposed to be Obama’s first big achievement in foreign affairs. Michael Adler, who has been gushing about a new age of diplomacy and peace called it possibly “an “Audacity of Hope” moment in foreign diplomacy, a potentially transformative development.” That was 12 days ago. Thursday, the Iranians announced that they rejected the deal to ship uranium out of the country for processing and asked instead for a new round of negotiations which can have only one purpose: to stall for more time as Iran works to build a bomb.

Look back over the past nine months since Obama took office. He’s gone out of his way to be nice to the mad Mullahs who run Iran. He found it difficult to condemn Iran even as it was butchering it’s citizens in the streets of Tehran. He bashed his own countries “arrogance” and offered to reset relations with the world. All that hope and change with nothing to show for it.

The day before Michael Adler gushed about Obama’s “transformative development” Charles Krauthammer showed his prescience once again:

What’s come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its nuclear program.

What’s come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking human rights off the table on a visit to China and from Obama’s shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postponement, we are told)? China hasn’t moved an inch on North Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed, it’s pushing with Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

What’s come from the new-respect-for-Muslims Cairo speech and the unprecedented pressure on Israel for a total settlement freeze? “The settlement push backfired,” reports The Post, and Arab-Israeli peace prospects have “arguably regressed.”

And what’s come from Obama’s single most dramatic foreign policy stroke — the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.

But maybe not gratuitous. Surely we got something in return for selling out our friends. Some brilliant secret trade-off to get strong Russian support for stopping Iran from going nuclear before it’s too late? Just wait and see, said administration officials, who then gleefully played up an oblique statement by President Dmitry Medvedev a week later as vindication of the missile defense betrayal.

The Russian statement was so equivocal that such a claim seemed a ridiculous stretch at the time. Well, Clinton went to Moscow this week to nail down the deal. What did she get?

“Russia Not Budging on Iran Sanctions; Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart.” Such was The Post headline’s succinct summary of the debacle.

Note how thoroughly Clinton was rebuffed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that “threats, sanctions and threats of pressure” are “counterproductive.” Note: It’s not just sanctions that are worse than useless, but even the threat of mere pressure.

Yes, we even trashed politically difficult agreements with our Polish and Czech allies hoping for Russian help with Iran and we got nothing. It’s actually worse than nothing. We’re back to square one with Iran and we’ve squandered what little diplomatic and political capital we have while at the same time giving Iran’s rogue regime legitimacy through high profile negotiations in Geneva.

The Iranians know that Obama is a pussycat, or as Gerald Warner at the U.K. Telegraph describes him: “President Pantywaist: the new surrender monkey on the block.” Our allies know Obama won’t be providing the strong leadership which most of them complain about in public but demand in private (except in the case of the French President who demanded it at the UN Security Council in September). Strategic competitors like Russia and China know all they have to do is string the Obama Administration along all the while asking and most likely receiving gifts like the termination of the Polish/Czech missile deal while giving up nothing in return.

The Obama Administration demonstrates such naive incompetence on foreign policy that it’s actually making Jimmy Carter’s disastrous presidency look good by comparison. As an example of the idiocy which pervades Obama land, take that of Scott Gration, Obama’s envoy to Sudan:

“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration, who was
appointed in March. “Kids, countries, they react to gold stars, smiley faces,
handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.”!

Meanwhile, the Iranians proceed on their way to building an atomic bomb and the kiddies running the White House take a break from bashing Fox News and send Iran’s Ahmadinejad cookies and smiley faces!

also:

Anti- Free Speech Hate Crime Legislation Attached to the Defense Spending Bill

Matthew Shepard’s death was a tragedy. But I think it’s a shameful political hoax to make him the poster boy for the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

President Obama signed this into law Wednesday:

This year, with enlarged majorities in Congress, Democrats attached the hate crimes law to a $681 billion defense spending bill this month over GOP objections. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said the approach put “radical social policy” on the “back of our soldiers.”

The legislation extends provisions first passed in 1968 that make it a federal crime to target individuals because of their race, religion or national origin. Under the law, judges can impose harsher penalties on crimes that are motivated by such animus, and the Justice Department can help local police departments investigate alleged hate crimes.

I truly do not understand the redundancy of hate crime laws- especially at the federal level. Why punish the thoughts behind crimes rather than just the action of the crime itself?

But, it’s one of those things that make liberals feel good about themselves; that they are fighting the good fight. President Obama’s remarks:

Now, speaking of that, there is one more long-awaited change contained within this legislation that I’ll be talking about a little more later today. After more than a decade of opposition and delay, we’ve passed inclusive hate crimes legislation to help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray, or who they are. (Applause.)

I promised Judy Shepard, when she saw me in the Oval Office, that this day would come, and I’m glad that she and her husband Dennis could join us for this event. I’m also honored to have the family of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, who fought so hard for this legislation. And Vicki and Patrick, Kara, everybody who’s here, I just want you all to know how proud we are of the work that Ted did to help this day — make this day possible. So — and thank you for joining us here today. (Applause.)

So, with that, I’m going to sign this piece of legislation. Thank you all for doing a great job. All right.

I guess the Nobel Peace Laureate has now officially accomplished something this year. Still amounts to a big nothing for me, though.

Incidentally, also attached to the bill was a revival of military trials for Guantanamo detainees, expanding their legal rights, but not to the extent that the ACLU would have liked.

Update: This is a reprint of an article from Laryn on the same legistislation:

Democrats to Curtail Free Speech

by Laryn

Byron York blows the whistle on Democratic legislation, about to be enacted by Congress, which purports to partially repeal the First Amendment:

The [hate] crime bill — which would broaden the protected classes for hate crimes to include sexual orientation and “gender identity,” which the bill defines as a victim’s “actual or perceived gender-related characteristics” — passed the House earlier this year as a stand-alone measure. But it’s never had the votes to succeed by itself in the Senate. So over the summer Democrats, with the power of their 60-vote majority, attached it to the defense [appropriations] bill.

Republicans argued that the two measures had nothing to do with each other. Beyond that, GOP lawmakers feared the new bill could infringe on First Amendment rights in the name of preventing broadly defined hate crimes. The bill’s critics, including many civil libertarians, argued that the hate crimes provision could chill freedom of speech by empowering federal authorities to accuse people of inciting hate crimes, even if the speech in question was not specifically related to a crime.

Republican Sen. Sam Brownback offered an amendment saying the bill could not be “construed or applied in a manner that infringes on any rights under the First Amendment” and could not place any burden on the exercise of First Amendment rights “if such exercise of religion, speech, expression, or association was not intended to plan or prepare for an act of physical violence or incite an imminent act of physical violence against another.”

The Senate passed Brownback’s amendment. After that, several Republicans, their fears allayed, voted for the whole defense/hate crimes package, which passed the Senate last July. …

Then it was time for the House and Senate bills to go to a conference committee, where the differences between them would be ironed out. That’s where the real action began.

First, the committee — controlled by majority Democrats, of course — inserted the hate crimes measure into the House bill, where it had not been before. Then lawmakers made some crucial changes to Brownback’s amendment. Where Brownback had insisted, and the full Senate had agreed, that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights, the conference changed the wording to read that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights “unless the government demonstrates … a compelling governmental interest” to do otherwise.

That means your First Amendment rights are protected — unless they’re not.

Needless to say, the First Amendment does not contain a “compelling governmental interest” exception. Legally, of course, no statute can trump the Constitution. But that doesn’t mean the Democrats can’t try, and it doesn’t mean that Barack Obama’s intensely politicized Justice Department won’t try to bring criminal prosecutions against the administration’s political opponents. Indeed, that appears to be the destination the Democrats have in mind when they continually try to demonize opposition to left-wing policies as “hate speech.

New Federal Hate Crime Statute Still Allows Free Speech, to the Extent Government Deems It Prudent

They’ve attached new hate crime categories and penalties to a military budget bill, trusting that Republicans won’t vote against it, and if they do, they’ll have ads taken out against them for doing so.

To make sure that Republicans were damned if they do, damned if they don’t, our civil libertarians and First Amendment fans in the Democratic Party made sure they drafted the provisions as odiously and as unconstitutionally as humanly possible.

First, the committee — controlled by majority Democrats, of course — inserted the hate crimes measure into the House bill, where it had not been before. Then lawmakers made some crucial changes to Brownback’s amendment. Where Brownback had insisted, and the full Senate had agreed, that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights, the conference changed the wording to read that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights “unless the government demonstrates … a compelling governmental interest” to do otherwise.

That means your First Amendment rights are protected — unless they’re not.

Finally:

AP Uncovers Stimulus Jobs Created Are a Fiction

Associated Press confirms what we first reported a few days ago…

Stimulus jobs overstated by thousands
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and MATT APUZZO
Associated Press
Oct 29,2009

WASHINGTON (AP) – An early progress report on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.

The government’s first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

For example:

- A company working with the Federal Communications Commission reported that stimulus money paid for 4,231 jobs, when about 1,000 were produced.

- A Georgia community college reported creating 280 jobs with recovery money, but none was created from stimulus spending.

- A Florida child care center said its stimulus money saved 129 jobs but used the money on raises for existing employees.

There’s no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers in the report. But administration officials seized on the 30,000 figure as evidence that the stimulus program was on its way toward fulfilling the president’s promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

The reporting problem could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.

~~~

…

Here are some of the findings:

- Colorado-based Teletech Government Solutions on a $28.3 million contract with the Federal Communications Commission for creation of a call center, reported creating 4,231 jobs, although 3,000 of those workers were paid for five weeks or less.

“We all felt it was an appropriate way to represent the data at the time” and the reporting error has been corrected, said company president Mariano Tan.

- The Toledo, Ohio-based Koring Group received two FCC contracts, again for call centers. It reported hiring 26 people for each contract, or a total of 52 jobs, but cited the same workers for both contracts. The jobs only lasted about two months.

The FCC spotted the problem. The company’s owner, Steve Holland, acknowledged the actual job count is closer to five and blamed the problem on confusion about the reporting.

The AP’s review identified nearly 600 contracts claiming stimulus money for more than 2,700 jobs that appear to have similar duplicated counts.

Where are the three million plus jobs that Obama promised?

Should we trust the same government officials when they promise health care will cover more people and cost less?

What a laugh!