The People Surrounding Obama

[Zarathustra]

During the 2008 Presidential campaign Barack Obama told audiences, 'Judge me by the people with whom I surround myself.'

OK, we will.

And that is precisely the problem with Obama.

In order to understand Barack Obama one must look beyond the official, Congressional-approved Cabinet choices to the truckload of unofficial 'czars,' 'special advisor's,' and 'officers' he has chosen to come to the White House to have direct access to him.

If one uses the criterion Obama laid out by which to judge his character, political ideology, and plans for the country, we can only conclude that the President is a far-Left extremist who disdains capitalism and free commerce, free speech in the open marketplace of ideas, Caucasian people who have accumulated wealth, and any dissent from the concepts propounded by his 'regime.'

How do we know this? Look at his czars, special advisers, and officers. These are the ones closest to Obama.

John Holdren, science czar, advocates for population control using the most extreme measures, such as mandating the number of children Americans can have. He is also a proponent of 'de-developing' the United States, sending its agricultural practices and technology back to the 19th century. Holdren has also suggested that infants and chronically ill elderly do not fit his definition of 'human,' and therefore can be expendable.

Cass Sunstein, regulatory czar and Harvard law professor, believes that animals should have the right to legal representation. If you try to get rid of rats in your home, a 'concerned citizen' could bring a lawsuit, with the rat as the plaintiff, to sue you for endangering a species. He also believes that if bloggers post something that turns out to be false, they should be prosecuted. In short, Sunstein is a Leftwing moonbat with Fascist leanings. Remember, Obama said to judge him by the people around him.

Ezekiel Emanuel, healthcare czar, believes in using cost-benefit and comparative-benefit analysis to allocate healthcare resources. This means the fewer years you have left to live, the less cost-effective it is to treat you. Thus, most of those resources should be diverted from the elderly to younger people. This is the 'rationing' portion of ObamaCare that many of us have warned about. And this will be done even without the so-called 'public option,' which is not really what the debate about government control of healthcare is about in the first place. Even without the public option, the provision for rationing is inherent in the provisions of the bill, thanks to advisers such as Emanuel.

Van Jones, green jobs czar, is perhaps the most extremist of the extreme in the entire lot. As a self-avowed, self-identified Communist, Jones abhors liberty, the Constitution, the American way of life, and seeks to change it from top to bottom. Here is more on Van Jones.

Mark Loyd, FCC 'diversity czar,' supports Communist Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and believes that what Chavez did to squelch free speech in the media and seize the means of communication is a good model for the United States. His plan is to silence conservative talk radio by forcing ownership to change hands to minorities and by implementing a fee structure for licensing that will put most private broadcasters out of business. At that point, Loyd would make PBS, or NPR on the radio, the most powerful forces in broadcasting--controlled by the government, of course.

Due to the areas over which they have jurisdiction, the above-named 'special advisers' to Obama are the key players. Jobs, communication, healthcare, agriculture, population control--all of these amount to a major shift in the way America has operated as a Free Republic for over 200 years.

Questions for consideration: Given these czars and special advisers who have offices in the White House with easy access to the President, how, then, should we judge Barack Obama's ideas and plans for the country, just as he asked us to do? Why is a Communist operating out of the White House as one of Obama's closet advisers? What can Americans reasonably expect over the next few years if the policies espoused by Loyd, Jones, Sunstein, Emanuel, and Holdren are implemented?

link

It's time we start talking about this.

Let the excuses begin.

[Plissken]

When you find me a (just for instance) "green jobs czar" position in the Cabinet, we'll talk.

[Zarathustra]

Pliss, you put your finger on a big part of the problem: these aren't cabinet members subject to Congressional oversight in order to appoint them.

[Lord Mhoram]

Hugo Chavez is a Communist? Where do you find this stuff?

[Zarathustra]

Hugo Chavez is a Communist? Where do you find this stuff?

I provided the link. Are you going to dismiss the entire article because of one word? Can we call Chavez a socialist, admit that this isn't the same as a communist, and move on to the other aspects of the piece? What about the part that directly followed:

. . . believes that what Chavez did to squelch free speech in the media and seize the means of communication is a good model for the United States. His plan is to silence conservative talk radio by forcing ownership to change hands to minorities and by implementing a fee structure for licensing that will put most private broadcasters out of business.

[Lord Mhoram]

So let's see. John Holdren, a public policy professor at Harvard, wrote an academic textbook on overpopulation that referred to extremist suggestions on dealing with the problem, but advocated soft family planning himself.

More importantly, Holdren stated during the Senate hearing that he does not support or endorse these ideas. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) asked him: “You think determining optimal population is a proper role of government?” to which Holdren replied: “No, Senator, I do not.”

[I thought these guys weren't accountable to Congress!]

Cass Sunstein advocates for animal rights; I don't see this as a problem. He is also an advocate of judicial minimalism in the John Roberts (whose nomination he supported btw), Clarence Thomas mold:

The current Supreme Court embraces such "judicial minimalism," Sunstein says, focusing on the specific cases at hand and avoiding a position as America's moral compass. "Indeed," he says, "judicial minimalism has been the most striking feature of the last decade of American law."

In his book Judicial Minimalism: Constitution and Court at Century's End, forthcoming from Harvard University Press in early 1999, Sunstein defends the court's controversial method of proceeding as "admirably well-suited to a number of issues on which the nation is currently in moral flux."

Judicial minimalism, Sunstein says, enhances democratic self-government by letting public debates stay in the political realm, rather than the court providing broad, sweeping judgments on contentious issues. Sunstein also emphasizes the need for the court to be alert to the unintended bad consequences of its rulings and to its own lack of relevant information.

"My particular areas of concern include affirmative action, discrimination on the basis of sex and sexual orientation, the right to die and new issues of free speech raised by the explosion of communications technologies," he said. A Supreme Court that limits its decisions just to the questions at hand "might promote a democratic nation's highest aspirations without preempting the democratic process."

Van Jones is not a communist; he has admitted he was when he was young, but he seems to have Truther connections (now disavowed) which is no good. But his ideas on green jobs is to...stimulate private-sector job growth; seemingly he is no longer a communist in theory or practice. His abhorrence for the "American way of life" seems difficult to substantiate.

Mark Lloyd seems to advocate a softer fairness doctrine, which I'm not really in favor of. But trying to paint him as a Communist is nonsense.

[wayfriend]

I don't think you can fairly judge someone by the people who he surrounds himself with by cherrypicking five out of potentially thousands of people, then cherrypicking facts about those people, and then generalizing from there.

So the article begins with a very deceitful premise, to be sure.

I don't think ANYONE who has a large staff could hold up to such scrutiny.

[edit] Actually, now that I think about it, if after an exhaustive search, this is the most damaging stuff they can come up with, I'm fairly impressed by Obama. And not even one terrorist!

[Zarathustra]

Wayfriend, the "judging Obama by the people around him" idea was a convenient, playful, and ironic way to introduce this subject by tying it to something he said himself. As the title of my thread indicates, this is more about those specific people themselves than Obama.

However, just because this list is cherrypicked (and yes, it is), doesn't mean that is says *nothing* about Obama. At the very least, it says something about his vetting process. I personally think it says a lot more, but that's a matter of interpretation, which you don't have to debate if you don't want. But considering his troubling associations during his candidacy (Wright, Ayers) which people said didn't reflect on his values and were isolated incidents, I wonder how many more "isolated incidents" it takes before we notice a pattern in his associates--especially the ones he specifically chose after he became our leader, and those who aren't merely associates but now have offices in the White House and direct access to and influence upon the President of the United States.

I didn't present deceitful information. You are free to cherry pick and produce your own list. Stop accusing me of presenting deceitful information, arguments, etc. I believe this violates Tank rules on accusing people of lying. [Avatar? A little help here?]

[Lord Mhoram]

Even if the list was cherrypicked (it was), what it "says about" President Obama seems pretty weak to me.

[wayfriend]

Even if the list was cherrypicked (it was), what it "says about" President Obama seems pretty weak to me.

Yes. If this is the best that his enemies could find, then he's fared fairly well. (Or faired farely well. Whatever.)

[Plissken]

You know, back in the day, folks'd be embarrassed to start a thread with such a blatant piece of OpEd.

[Loredoctor]

In defence of Malik23's attack on Holdren, the man did actually write a book Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment where he stated (along with Anne Elhrich) that there should be forced sterilisation of women after they give birth to a designated number of children and other enforced population controls. Now, I don't see a problem with population control . . .

[Lord Mhoram]

In Ecoscience, Holdren and the Ehrlichs explain that their section on overpopulation offers an overview of population control measures suggested by other writers, and some of these are extreme and coercive, including forced abortions and sterilization. But the text makes clear that Holdren does not support these measures, referring to the “obvious moral objections” on page 787 of the book. [Me: he also refers on that same page to the "questionable desirability" of such a program.]

More importantly, Holdren stated during the Senate hearing that he does not support or endorse these ideas. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) asked him: “You think determining optimal population is a proper role of government?” to which Holdren replied: “No, Senator, I do not.” The exchange begins at 122:30 here; transcript here. As well, three months passed between the President’s announcement that he intended to nominate Holdren and the hearing itself—ample time to investigate his past and raise any salient concerns.

[Loredoctor]

In Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, they wrote, “t has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society,” though adding that the current population didn’t justify the practices. The textbook also calmly discussed the option of adding sterilization drugs to drinking water.

The authors continued: “Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce.”

Later they wrote, “The forced bearing of unwanted children has undesirable consequences not only for the children and their families, but for society as well, apart from the problems of overpopulation.”

The book’s content was not discussed in Holdren’s Senate confirmation process in March, which he breezed through, but FrontPage magazine unearthed the passages about population control.

Holdren’s office immediately released a statement saying he does not and has never advocated forced sterilization, forced abortions, or any coercive population control: “This material is from a three-decade-old, three-author college textbook. Dr. Holdren addressed this issue during his confirmation when he said he does not believe that determining optimal population is a proper role of government.”

Holdren’s more recent speeches show some tempering of his anti-population views, but he affirmed one out-of-the-mainstream position at his confirmation hearing by saying that 1 billion people could die by 2020 as a result of climate change.

One critic of Holdren’s conclusions on climate change, University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke Jr., defended him on the recent furor over the textbook. “Holdren [and his colleagues] turned [out] to . . . be wrong on this issue. So what?” he wrote on his blog. “The important thing is that Holdren seems to have learned from that experience and now holds different views. Good for him.”

But some critics say the textbook sheds light on a man who is so pro-environment that he is anti-human.

From the 1977 textbook: “Studies have indicated that the larger the family, the less healthy the children are likely to be and the less likely they are to realize their potential levels of achievement.”

The number of children a family has, they wrote, is a matter of public concern: “Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?”

The authors went further in advocating a “Planetary Regime”—a global authority under the United Nations to regulate trade, natural resources, pollution, and population.

“The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits,” they wrote.

[Cybrweez]

I agree, sounds like cherry picking, and hard to get an overall sense of all the people surrounding Obama.

However, it is useful to get such a sense, b/c it does reflect what he wants to hear. These are advisers, and what they are advising him on is important. To say just b/c they are not Cabinet members, it doesn't matter, is nonsense, they are handpicked advisers, and they do say something about the man picking them (I just don't know what).

But the end result is probably Obama supporters dismissing any messy issues (legit or not), and Obama opponents crying foul over those issues (legit or not).

[finn]

Surely there is far more danger in surrounding yourself with a cadre of like minded people who constantly reinforce only one viewpoint, one which you conveniently agree with!

Alternate views are fine as long as there is balance and the final decisions are taken sensibly, however closing eyes and ears to suggestions from 'outside of the box' serves no-one and limits potential.

[Avatar]

What's wrong with being a communist?

--A

[Kinslaughterer]

There is nothing wrong with being a communist. Anatomically modern humans spent about 100k years being communists...luckily for us.


It's very interesting the number of conservatives that Obama has in his administration. He has several Bush holdovers and quite a few moderates. Very unlike the pervious administration.

[Cail]

Mal, you forgot all the tax cheats he nominated to various positions.

It's an op-ed piece that supports itself relatively well. Obama's got issues with the people he surrounds himself with, and it would appear that it's been a common issue for a while.

[Zarathustra]

You know, back in the day, folks'd be embarrassed to start a thread with such a blatant piece of OpEd.

Back in the day, folks would be embarrassed defending such decisions by our President.

There are plenty of OpEd pieces in this forum. It's a freakin' political forum. It doesn't make any difference where those OpEd pieces are in the thread. Unless I've violated some rule here, why--as a moderator--do you think it's appropriate to insinuate I should be ashamed of my thread? Are you trying to shame me from your position of power? If you want to address the points, address them. There is no need to speculate on what kind of emotional state I should have in regards to my own thread. This seems like a thinly veiled personal attack, especially since "embarrassed" (a comment on me, not the content of my thread) was the one word you chose to empahsize. The standards you set as a moderator in this forum, frankly, are pretty low. With all the sarcastic, belittling posts you make, you definitely do not set any kind of example to be proud of.

I will not be shamed into making the kinds of posts you want me to make, Plissken.

[Edit: Apparently, this mythical "day" when people would be embarrassed to start threads with OpEd pieces weren't these days:

Wed Jul 22, 2009 5:39 am Post subject: Umpires and Activists - What Do We Want In Our Judges?


Mon Oct 13, 2008 3:23 pm Post subject: Government spying on innocent Americans

Mon Sep 03, 2007 3:33 pm Post subject: Republican Fiscal Responsibility

Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:18 am Post subject: Gonzales Says That Habaus Corpus Doesn't Exist

Mon Nov 06, 2006 4:05 pm Post subject: Throw the Truthiness Bums Out

Those were just the ones I found started by Plissken. I didn't bother checking all the other members here because none of them suggested some mythical new standard for opening posts that they never employed themselves.]