Obama on Iran

President Obama is trying very hard to promote diplomacy as our primary, if not only, foreign policy. He is stretching out a hand to Iran, as well as North Korea and Russia. Attempts at diplomacy with Iran, if done correctly, can have no worse outcome than having no communication with them, as was the policy under the Bush administration. But the way in which President Obama is going about it is naïve and misguided. Iranian leaders do not expect to be dealt with diplomatically, they are an extremist group and they know it. Obama’s vow to pursuing diplomacy solely, at all costs, is being met with surprise and amusement by the Iranian government. They have no interest in diplomacy, because that would entail them making some concessions, which they have no plan of doing. This is the Obama administration’s way of dealing with all hostile countries. Though I think that attempts at diplomacy should be taken, as it would make us more favorable to both the countries we are dealing with and European countries, it can have no worse diplomacy at all costs is the wrong way to approach it. The leaders of these countries strong men, when they see the way in which Obama is going about his attempts at diplomacy they see one thing, weakness. Obama needs to take a harder stand with them, as force is the only thing they understand. He needs to tell them that we are the strongest and greatest country in the world, we want to sit down and talk with them, but there will be consequences for their actions, and that we are in no way afraid of them. President Obama is taking the greatest diplomacy incentive, the power of America, and throwing it away through limp-wristed attempts at appeasement. Though this might make the European countries happy, it is not an effective way to deal with these countries. I was talking to my Russian friend yesterday about this issue and his analysis of it was as follows, “Obama is *weak*, Putin is strong; Putin will crush Obama.” I think this pretty much sums up how these hostile nations view our new presidents attempts at diplomacy.

*Note: the quote was edited for content, indicated by the “*…*”

Bernanke Banking Proposal

The upcoming stress test of the financial industry was discussed by Ben Bernanke today. One thing he emphasized was regulators focusing on executive compensation in the banks. For banks that received bailout money, this is understandable, but he does not want to end here. Bernanke wants the government to stick its nose in these private banks and mandate their pay structure. He claims that it is to guard against payment policies that could have adverse effects on the banks long term health. But here is the beauty of capitalism, if this is the case, then these inferior institutions will fail, others will learn from the mistakes made, and create a new, smarter business to take its place. This is just another attempt to increase the size of government, with the assumption that government knows much more about how run a bank than the actual bankers, and the bankers who would take place of bankers who have proven themselves incompetent. Another disturbing proposal is to give the Treasury secretary the power to decide which troubled banks are to be fully taken over. Looking past the obvious irony that Bernanke thinks that the man who could not even figure out how to pay his personal taxes is qualified enough to decide which institutions are on the verge of failure and then be able to run them, this puts a political appointee in the president’s administration in the role of judge, jury, and executioner over private sector banks.

Obama on leno

President Obama appeared on Jay Leno tonight, the first time a sitting president has gone on a talk show. Personally I don’t think that a sitting president should be going on a late night talk show, it seems like he is still in campaign mode. But something that caught my attention is a comment President Obama made during the show. I will admit that I have not seen the taping yet, but I have heard that the president made a joke which included the Special Olympics. Conservative commentators will undoubtedly, as I have already seen, try to make a big fuss about this. Their main argument, as far as I can tell, is that if former president Bush had said this he would have been crucified by the media. I believe this to be true, but as I think it would be unjust to crucify Bush if he had made this same comment, I in the same way think that it would be unjust to hold President Obama to this imaginary standard that conservatives think that Bush would be held to in the same situation, while thinking that Bush was mistreated by the media. Conservatives need to understand that the way in which liberals treated Bush the past 8 years is unacceptable, but the last thing they should do is treat Obama the exact way that liberals treated Bush. This takes away any sense of moral high ground, and the fantasy that they are offering something different to the American people (ie. Conservative principles) and makes them just as petty as the liberals they have been criticizing for the past 8 years.

Marijuana

The issue of marijuana is a difficult one for me. I am personally against all drugs including marijuana. That being said, I applaud Eric Holder and the Obama Administration in their new direction of the federal drug policy. Medical Marijuana has been passed by state law in California, and seeing how the Constitution says nothing at all about marijuana, this is very much a state issue. The federal raids on California Marijuana dispensaries were blatantly unconstitutional, and even though I don’t think that the Obama administration had states rights in mind when they made this decision, I applaud them for this one concession of federal power back to the states.

The AIG Bailout-Bonuses

The AIG bailout-bonuses fiasco has sparked a lot of “outrage” from politicians. Now since these bonuses were contractually obligated before the bailout was given by these very same politicians who are now outraged, I don’t understand where they get the nerve to pretend like this actually upsets them. This is clearly just an attempt to take focus off the massive expansion of government, through bailouts, new and expanded government programs, and a 3.55 trillion dollar budget, and onto something that everyone can act like they are mad about. The facts of this case remain clear; congress approved a program that would give hundreds of billions of dollars to AIG, which had these bonuses contracted to its executives. In the words of the great Andy Levy, “what is the difference in AIG giving out these bonuses and Congress giving themselves a raise this year?” If anyone can answer this I will withdrawal my complaint.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509687,00.html

All the facts of this case are not known. What is known is that these children were homeschooled by the mother, before the father, admittedly had an affair. Now I don’t know a lot about the intricacies of the court system, but I do know that courts generally side with the mother in domestic disputes, especially ones which are brought on by an affair by the husband. The children were thriving in the home school setting, achieving marks on their tests two years above their grade levels. This judge is ordering these children, against the will of the lady who has coached them to unusually high levels of achievement in academics, into the North Carolina public school system, one of the worst in the country. The judge and the father say that this will challenge what they are taught at home (Christianity) and that they will be able to make their own decision, but in reality the only thing that this will challenge is their learning. Despite all the negatives this cheating “husband” says about his former wife, the fact that her homeschooling is exceptional is undeniable. This is just a case of the court system meddling in peoples lives, forcing their love for public schooling, no matter how inferior to other options, onto the general public. The judge said the decision had nothing to do with her religious beliefs, yet the husband’s lawyer had former members of the church testify against the church and its leaders, describing it as a cult as just one example. Whether or not this church is a cult, which from my brief research on it it doesn’t appear to be, the fact of the matter is that the court system is vastly overstepping its boundaries. The children will be exposed to the beliefs of the mother whether it is through their schooling or through their time spent with her at home. Forcing them to go to public school will simply decrease the quality of their education greatly.

The government should not force their views on education onto these children. Government officials stress the importance of [government controlled (public)] education, but if this is the best option, then they are admitting that nearly half of the students should not graduate from high school, and a large portion of those who do should be solidly below their grade level. This is another example of government rewarding incompetence and failure.