Woe to Our Allies

America’s new policy of retreat is leaving our friends exposed.

By Charles Krauthammer
Three crises, one president, many bewildered friends.
The first crisis, barely noticed here, is Ukraine’s sudden turn away from Europe and back to the Russian embrace.
...This is no trivial matter. Ukraine is not just the largest country in Europe, it’s the linchpin for Vladimir Putin’s dream of a renewed imperial Russia, hegemonic in its neighborhood and rolling back the quarter-century advancement of the “Europe whole and free” bequeathed by America’s victory in the Cold War.
The U.S. response? Almost imperceptible...
...The second crisis is the Middle East — the collapse of confidence of U.S. allies as America romances Iran.
The Gulf Arabs are stunned at their double abandonment. In the nuclear negotiations with Iran, the U.S. has overthrown seven years of Security Council resolutions prohibiting uranium enrichment and effectively recognized Iran as a threshold nuclear state. This follows our near-abandonment of the Syrian revolution and de facto recognition of both the Assad regime and Iran’s “Shiite Crescent” of client states stretching to the Mediterranean.
Equally dumbfounded are the Israelis, now trapped by an agreement designed less to stop the Iranian nuclear program than to prevent the Israeli Air Force from stopping the Iranian nuclear program.
Neither Arab nor Israeli can quite fathom Obama’s naïveté in imagining some strategic condominium with a regime that defines its very purpose as overthrowing American power and expelling it from the region.
...The third crisis is unfolding over the East China Sea, where, in open challenge to Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” China has brazenly declared a huge expansion of its airspace into waters claimed by Japan and South Korea.
Obama’s first response — sending B-52s through that airspace without acknowledging the Chinese — was quick and firm. Japan and South Korea followed suit. But when Japan then told its civilian carriers not to comply with Chinese demands for identification, Washington told U.S. air carriers to submit.
Which, of course, left the Japanese hanging. It got worse. During Vice President Biden’s visit to China, the administration buckled. Rather than insisting on a withdrawal of China’s outrageous claim, we began urging mere nonenforcement.
Again leaving our friends stunned. They need an ally, not an intermediary. Here is the U.S. again going over the heads of allies to accommodate a common adversary.

The Minimum Wages of Politics

‘Economic inequality” is to be the great theme of the remainder of the Obama administration, the president announced in a speech that combined rank economic ignorance with shallow demagoguery. And the first item on Barack Obama’s new economic agenda is an increase in the federal minimum wage to $9, higher than the minimum wage in any state excepting Washington.
President Obama can reliably be counted upon to ignore elementary economics — which is to say, reality — when it is politically attractive to do so, and this case is no exception. A wage is a price — the price of labor — and raising prices lowers demand, other things being constant. The effects of a minimum-wage increase probably would not be dramatic on their own, since relatively few employed Americans make the minimum wage, though it will raise the bottom rung of the economic ladder another few inches out of the reach of those without sufficient skills or education to command a higher wage in the marketplace.
...In any case, the main problem facing poor families is not a low minimum wage, but high unemployment. While the president likes to cite poorly understood income figures (which tell us little or nothing about the incomes of actual households at any given economic level, because the people who are in the top 20 percent or bottom 20 percent change from year to year and significantly from decade to decade), he ought to be looking instead at the data concerning household net worth and continuity of employment, which reveal problems connected tangentially at most with statutory wage floors.
There is a way to increase wages while increasing overall employment, and that is to raise the demand for labor. Unfortunately for the planners and schemers in Washington, doing so requires more than simply passing a law. Higher demand for labor is the result of a growing and productive economy, which requires substantial capital investment, innovation, entrepreneurship, and — worst of all from the White House’s perspective — time.

Obama whines about media not paying enough attention to government 'successes'

By Rick Moran

President Obama wants the media to stop covering stuff like the IRS scandal and failed Obamacare rollout and start highlighting the great things government does.

Politico:

President Barack Obama criticized the media's focus on the failures of government like the IRS scandal and the botched HealthCare.gov rollout - saying that not enough attention is paid to quiet successes.
Things like the IRS scandal is what drives news, the president said in a Thursday interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, despite the fact that Obama said that people on both sides of the aisle were outraged by the accusations that the IRS singled out tea party groups for bureaucratic reasons.
You've got an office in Cincinnati ... in the I.R.S. office that, I think, for bureaucratic reasons is trying to streamline what is a difficult law to interpret about whether [a] nonprofit is actually a political organization [that] deserves a tax exempt agency. And they've got a list," Obama said. "And suddenly, everybody's outraged."
"That is what gets news," Obama said. "That's what gets attention."
Obama cited his first defense secretary Robert Gates, who told him: "you got a lot of people working for you. Somebody somewhere at this very moment is screwing something up."
"That's true," Obama said. "I have to consistently push on every cabinet secretary, on every single agency, 'How can we do things better?' And we can do things better."
"When it comes to the management of government- part of the reason people are so skeptical is that- when we do things right, they don't get a lot of attention," Obama said.
Obama cited Craig Fugate's stewardship of the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an example of an important government agency functioning as expected in relative obscurity. Fugate "has managed as many natural disasters over the last five years as just about anybody and has done a flawless job," Obama said.
"Nobody knows who this guy is," Obama said of Fugate. "And if, in fact, we go in after Sandy or after the tornadoes - in Oklahoma or - or Missouri and we're helping a lot of people effectively and quickly. And they're getting what they need. Nobody hears about that."

So that's what the IRS scandal was all about; just some government flunkies in Cincinnati who had the best of intentions but suddenly - omigod - people got outraged! No mention of all those IRS chiefs in DC who knew about it and didn't stop it. Or his own counsel who was informed of the targeting and never bothered to tell her boss - supposedly.
And when was the last time Obama talked with anyone in his cabinet outside of defense and state? Kathleen Sebelius had no meetings with the president in the 6 months prior to the Obamacare rollout. So the idea he has been consistently pushing on cabinet secretaries to "do things better" is a lie.
Bottom line; this is an executive who is lost and hasn't a clue what's gone wrong or why. When he complains that the press doesn't report it when government bureaucrats do their jobs and don't screw up too much, you recognize the chasm in his understanding between the reality of governance and his illusory notion of the great job he's doing.
Sad - and frightening.

Obamacare's Perilous Protection Plan for Debtors

By Michelle Malkin
"Uh-oh." That's the sound being uttered in doctors' offices and hospitals across the country as medical providers realize they're getting stuck with another bottomless Obamacare bill. While the White House desperately tries to pivot from the havoc wrought by the "Affordable Care Act," its hidden regulatory bombs keep exploding.

....Here's the raw deal: The Affordable Care Act created a 90-day grace period before insurers can drop patients who fall behind on premiums. So, delinquents who obtain tax-subsidized health insurance through an Obamacare health insurance exchange have three months to settle up their bills prior to their policy being canceled. As written, the law puts insurers on the hook for the grace period.
But the bureaucrats at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decided to issue a rule in March making insurers responsible only for paying claims during the first 30 days of the debtors' grace period. Who's on the hook for the other two months? Well, customers are entrusted to foot the bills for additional services. But if they blow off the payments, it's up to physicians and hospitals to collect.
...Think such nefarious behavior won't occur? Then you haven't been paying attention to the data manipulators and con artists in the Obamacare navigator program. As I reported earlier this year, the seedy nonprofit Seedco secured multimillion-dollar navigator contracts in Georgia, Maryland, Tennessee and New York to recruit Obamacare recipients into the government-run exchanges -- despite settling a civil fraud lawsuit for faking at least 1,400 of 6,500 job placements under a $22.2 million federally funded contract with New York City a year ago.
Additionally, investigative journalist James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas team have caught Obamacare navigators on tape advising health insurance exchange customers to under-report their income and lie about their health status in order to cheat the system.
CMS has made no effort to repeal its cost-shifting rule or to do anything to address the concerns of providers who will be left holding the bag. As one hospital rep told me: "It's potentially catastrophic." Private practices are already being hit hard with slashed reimbursements, the electronic medical records mandate, ICD-10 medical diagnostic code changes, and increasing federal intrusions on how they provide care. In yet another entry on the laundry list of Obamacare's unintended consequences, this regulation will hurt patients by dissuading doctors from participating in exchange plans.
In short: less choice, higher prices, increased potential for fraud, more bureaucratic headaches and more disincentives to enter or stay in the medical profession. When the government grants "grace," everyone must watch their wallets. It's always easy to afford compassion when someone else is paying for it

Five Times Obama Made It All About Himself

By Christine Rouselle

President Obama has many talents. One of them is injecting himself into places he certainly doesn't belong.

1. The Selma Marches

source

The president claimed to have been conceived following the civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama. This is impossible as the marches occurred in 1965 and the president was born in August of 1961.

2. Rosa Parks

source

On the anniversary of Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a bus, the president tweeted a picture of himself. We all know how hard it must have been for the president to fight segregation during his youth in Alabama...just kidding, he went to an exclusive private school in Hawaii.

3. Presidential Biographies

source

President Obama made some cameo appearances in the biographies of other presidents. For instance, never mind the fact that Coolidge was the first president to use radio--Obama was the first to use Twitter!

4. The JFK Assassination Anniversary

source

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, the White House tweeted a picture of President Obama looking sadly at Kennedy's portrait.

5. Nelson Mandela's Death

source

True to form, the official White House Twitter account tweeted a picture of the president hugging his daughter in Mandela's prison cell following his death. Because Obama personally worked really hard to end apartheid, or something.

Someone should let the president know that sometimes, it's okay to let others take the spotlight.