None of the excuses make any sense -- 'he's too busy campaigning,' 'he can talk to them on the phone anytime,' 'he can't meet with everyone, so he's meeting with no one.' Everyone is missing the point. In an election year, if the president meets with world leaders, his opponent has the right to ask for meetings, too. And no world leader, who might be facing a President Romney in just a few weeks time, dares to refuse that request.
And that is exactly what President Obama wants to avoid -- doing anything that lets Romney look presidential. Obama and his surrogates have been quick to criticize Romney as lacking foreign policy experience. It's hard to make that point if there is photo after photo of Romney grinning and shaking hands with one world leader after another. So from Obama's perspective, there is nothing to be gained by meeting with those leaders in New York. He's already met with them; he's got those photo ops. But there is everything to be lost -- because Romney does NOT.
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/2012/09/25/executive-order-on-cybersecurity-planned-by-white-house/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NationalTerrorAlertResourceCenter+%28National+Terror+Alert+Response+Center%29
The “controversy” has piqued the interest of liberals, including Slate’s Eric Posner who wonders if the United States “overvalues” the free speech rights enshrined in the Constitution’s First Amendment: “Even other Western nations take a more circumspect position on freedom of expression than we do, realizing that often free speech must yield to other values and the need for order. Our own history suggests that they might have a point.”
Posner, who is a University of Chicago law professor argues that government should have the ability to restrict the distribution of ”a video that causes violence abroad and damages America’s reputation.” Since when does a video cause violence? And to what end should the government have the ability to control such speech?
Posner eloquently exemplifies the flaws in modern liberalism and its limited protection of America’s traditional & constitutional values — Free speech is only free when liberals agree with it.
http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2012/09/26/liberals-decry-overvalued-first-amendment-in-violent-wake-of-anti-islam-film/
A college professor has been placed on leave after she allegedly forced her class to sign a pledge to vote for President Obama in the upcoming elections. Early last week Professor Sharon Sweet at Brevard Community College (BCC) allegedly told students to sign a pledge that reads: “I pledge to vote for President Obama and Democrats up and down the ticket.” The pledge was printed off of GottaVote.org, a website funded by the Obama campaign.
Sweet’s actions may have also violated Florida’s election laws. Section 104.31, of Title IX in chapter 104, states that “no officer or employee of the state... shall... use his or her official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election or nomination of officer or influencing another person’s vote or affecting the result thereof.”
http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=4364
Team Obama is laying it on heavy that the president may be the less-prepared candidate because of the demands of his office. “The President will have a little bit of time to review and practice before the debates, but he has had to balance the management of world events, governing, time out campaigning and will have less time than we anticipated to sharpen and cut down his tendency to give long, substantive answers,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told ABC News. One official, lowering the expectations bar even further for Obama, went so far as to note to ABC News that five out of the last six presidential challengers were judged to have won the first debate.
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski countered what she called the Democrats’ spin, calling the notion that the president will not be ready for the debates “ridiculous.” “The idea a president who is known for his world class oratory, is a world-class debater who laid waste to Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and John McCain, will be unprepared debates is absurd,” she said in a statement to ABC News. “The only handicap he has are his policies that have failed Americans that past four years.”
Management of world events? Governing? When? In between going on The View and fund raising events?
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/obama-to-crash-debate-prep-in-nevada-as-campaigns-lower-expectations/
From Heritage Foundation:
"60
Minutes" Contrast Between Romney, Obama on Entitlements
The official, head-to-head debates begin
next week, but Sunday’s “60 Minutes” appearances by President Barack
Obama and Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) provided a contrast in the ideas offered
on the nation’s entitlements and spending crisis.
For his part, the President punted on a serious question about the nation’s concern over spending—blaming everything on President George W. Bush. Instead of addressing the spending question, he waited for the next question about the national debt, which has increased more than 50 percent since he took office. Then came the familiar refrain of why he’s not responsible for Washington’s overspending or the country’s abysmal fiscal situation:
For his part, the President punted on a serious question about the nation’s concern over spending—blaming everything on President George W. Bush. Instead of addressing the spending question, he waited for the next question about the national debt, which has increased more than 50 percent since he took office. Then came the familiar refrain of why he’s not responsible for Washington’s overspending or the country’s abysmal fiscal situation:
When I came into office, I inherited the
biggest deficit in our history. And over the last four years, the deficit has
gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren’t
paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a prescription
drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the
Great Depression.
These continued excuses ignore the massive increases since the President took office. According to Heritage expert Emily Goff: By fiscal year 2008, the deficit had reached $458.6 billion. The deficit was increasing as Obama came into office, mainly driven by the recession and the first wave of TARP bailouts. But his Administration’s massive stimulus bill sent spending into overdrive and led to a record $1.4 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2009. Deficits have stayed at more than $1 trillion each year since then.
America’s entitlement programs are the major driver of out-of-control spending. Without reform, they would push federal spending to nearly 36 percent of the economy within a generation. Debt held by the public would explode to nearly 200 percent. Serious structural reforms are inevitable—it is merely a question of how we change what we are doing.
In his “60 Minutes” interview, Obama glossed over Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare and the resulting costs for seniors.
Romney, when asked how he would change Social Security, first made clear there should be no changes to benefits for those in or near retirement.
But he went on:
What I’d do with Social Security is say
this: that again, people with higher incomes won’t get the same high growth
rate in their benefits as people with lower incomes. People who rely on Social
Security should see the same kind of growth rate they’ve had in the past. But
higher income folks would receive a little less.
As Heritage expert Alison Fraser explains, Social Security is already income-adjusted today. This is called means testing. Benefits are capped for high-income earners, and the calculation of initial benefits a new retiree receives is based on his or her past income. Upper-income retirees pay a much higher tax than those with lower incomes. Romney proposes to extend this income adjusting so that upper-income retirees receive a bit less than they do now.
While many politicians claim that the only way to address entitlements is to raise taxes or cut benefits, expanding means testing is a serious and sound way to pursue reform.
These kinds of solutions can be found in Saving the American Dream, Heritage’s blueprint for solving our spending and debt crises. Saving the American Dream lays out solutions like slowly moving to a flat Social Security benefit that keeps seniors out of poverty, means testing Social Security so that very affluent seniors have a reduced benefit, and moving to a more robust means-tested premium support mechanism for Medicare that offers seniors choice and control over their health dollars and better health outcomes.
Without reforms, entitlement programs will push spending to untenable levels and put undue pressure on vital areas of government such as national defense. The Obama Administration’s comments about reform, like "now is not the time" for fixing Social Security and the need for a "balanced approach," have been proven hollow by its push for tax hikes on job creators. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem, and the longer Washington wastes time, the harsher the changes will have to be.
This debate is vital. To save the American economy and sustain the safety net for those who need it, spending must be reined in and entitlement programs must be reformed.
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