The British Aren’t So Special to Obama

Barack Obama, it was claimed, would “repair” our reputation both with our enemies and our friends. So how has he done? Let’s take Britain for example. Has he “fixed” our special relationship with the British Isles? Well, if by fixed you mean he has fastened that relationship to a negative track, well then “fixed” it is.

Let’s review some of the slights that Barack Obama delivered to our closest allies, the British.

In February, immediately after he entered office, President Obama summarily rejected the most famous bust of Winston Churchill in England loaned to the U.S. for display in the Oval Office by the people of England. The bust was sent to us by the people of the U.K. as a gesture of solidarity and friendship in the aftermath of 9/11. Despite their generosity, Obama returned the generously loaned statuette without alerting the Brits that he intended to do so, blindsiding Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government.

Then in March Obama slighted the British once again by refusing to meet PM Brown at the airport in the previously arranged welcome-to-America press conference when the Brown’s came for a state visit.

During that same visit Obama callously gave Brown, a man who is nearly blind, a set of American DVD movies as an official gift from the U.S.A., movies that won’t even play on English DVD machines (America is “Region 1” while England is “Region 2” in DVD formats). To add insult to injury Mrs. Obama gave the Brown’s boys a few cheap toy helicopters from a Washington gift shop — likely made in China. On the other hand PM Brown gave some significant and thoughtful gifts to the Obama’s and our nation.

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Tags: Akihito, Barack Obama, D-Day Anniversary, Emperor of Japan, Gordon Brown
Posted Feb 28th 2010 at 6:01 am in Culture, Defense, Featured Story, Obama, Politics | 81454160 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/wthuston/2010/02/28/the-british-arent-so-special-to-obama/The+British+Aren%27t+So+Special+to+Obama2010-02-28+14%3A01%3A27Warner+Todd++Huston

Michelle Obama, Liberal Government and Obesity

First Lady, Michelle Obama, has decided to take a whack at solving the American obesity epidemic. Splendid.

She should start by looking at one of the biggest roots of the problem: liberal government and its most favorite project of the past 40 years, the welfare state.

There is a surprising, yet undeniable, correlation between skyrocketing obesity rates and race and socioeconomic status. The group most disproportionately affected by obesity is poor black women.

A survey of the available research on obesity was conducted in 2004 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Human Nutrition. Among the results:

• The U.S. obesity prevalence increased from 13 percent to 32 percent between the 1960s and 2004.
• Women 20–34 years old had the fastest increase rate of obesity and overweight.
• 80% of black women aged 40 years or over are overweight; 50% are obese.
• Less educated people have a higher prevalence of obesity than their counterparts.
• 16% of children and adolescents are overweight and 34% are at risk of becoming overweight in 2003-2004.
• White children and adolescents had the lowest prevalence of overweight and being at risk of overweight compared with their black and Mexican counterparts.

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Tags: agribusiness, CDC, childhood obesity, Food Industry, Michelle Obama
Posted Feb 10th 2010 at 12:17 pm in Culture, Healthcare, News, Obama | 73338253 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/kashiver/2010/02/10/michelle-obama-liberal-government-and-obesity/+Michelle+Obama%2C+Liberal+Government+and+Obesity2010-02-10+20%3A17%3A01Kyle-Anne+Shiver

What Was Missing from the SOTU Address

Wednesday nights, I usually watch “Ghost Hunters” on the SyFy Channel. Yes, I am one of those geeks. But this week, I set the DVR so that I could watch President Obama give the annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress and the American people.

I might as well have watched a bunch of people using high-tech gadgetry to try to make contact with the other side, because I certainly didn’t learn anything new in this world.

Anyone who has paid even scant attention to Obama over the past year or two has heard it all before. We heard about the need to act “boldly” and “aggressively” in a crisis, the need to pass climate change legislation, the need to pass the health care boondoggle, the requisite bashing of banks and Wall Street, and, lest we forget, blaming Bush for everything except ABC’s cancellation of the show “Ugly Betty.”

In the private sector, constant passing of the buck gets you fired. In government, it earns you points with your base.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Diane Sawyer, Frank Luntz, Joe Biden
Posted Jan 28th 2010 at 1:03 pm in Congress, News, Obama | 66402121 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/pmeister/2010/01/28/what-was-missing-from-the-sotu-address/What+Was+Missing+from+the+SOTU+Address2010-01-28+21%3A03%3A11Pam+Meister

Tiger and Barack

Pictures are, they say, worth a thousand words – and sometimes this is really so.

Do you remember the photograph of Bill Clinton on the cover of Cigar Aficionado, brandishing a stogie?  If you do, my bet is that you are laughing now. At the time of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, that photograph got a lot of mileage.

Well, on the cover of this month’s Golf Digest, there is another photograph well worthy of attention.

In it, thanks to the wonders accomplished by Photoshop, Tiger Woods appears dressed as a caddy, bending over Barack Obama as the latter squats and considers a putt. In the magazine itself, Mr. Woods provides the President with golfing advice.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, Joe the Plumber, mainstream media, Michelle Obama
Posted Dec 16th 2009 at 3:32 pm in Culture, Obama, Politics | 4749055 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/prahe/2009/12/16/tiger-and-barack/Tiger+and+Barack2009-12-16+23%3A32%3A07Paul+A.++Rahe

Rep. Steve King Discusses White House Advisor Valerie Jarrett

Washington News Observer interviewed Congressman Steve King (R-IA) on Obama’s senior advisor – Valerie Jarrett.

Ms. Jarrett has known President Obama for several decades and moved to Washington, DC following the successful election of her candidate. Currently, Ms. Jarrett is is a senior advisor and assistant to the president for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Chicago machine, Mayor Daley, Michelle Obama, Richard Daley
Posted Nov 12th 2009 at 10:32 pm in Obama | 2979038 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/wno/2009/11/12/rep-steve-king-discusses-white-house-advisor-valerie-jarrett/Rep.+Steve+King+Discusses+White+House+Advisor+Valerie+Jarrett2009-11-13+05%3A32%3A53Washington+News+Observer

Obama vs. The American Businessman

Okay, it’s time to finally admit it:  Barack Obama hates businessmen.  Not just certain businessmen, mind you, but the entire profession.

Of course President Obama will deny this.   He told Businessweek magazine in a recent interview that he is not anti-business and that he believes in the private sector.  But the evidence is overwhelming,  and it helps explain why he is pursuing kamakazi-like economic policies that will damage the private sector in America.

Obama has demonized just about every business sector in America.  Through the 2008 campaign to the present,  he has gone after credit card companies, the coal industry, mortgage companies, real estate companies, steelmakers, utilities, drug companies, doctors, oil companies, Wall Street, defense contractors, and health insurance companies, just to name a few.  In each case he has dinged them for greed, taking excessive profits, and failing to put people first.  His criticisms have not been over minor matters but over their basic core functions, and their values or lack of them.

Obama demonstrates almost complete ignorance about the private sector and it’s no wonder:  he has so little experience in it.  He has spent his adult life in college, teaching college, and organizing communities.  The one private sector job he has held, for a consulting firm in New York, he recounts as a terrible experience.  In his memoirs he describes the experience as working for a private business “like a spy behind enemy lines.”  He also recounts in his memoirs that the multinational corporations in the Indonesia of his youth were propelling the average worker “into deeper despair.”  He likened the presence of corporations in his native Africa to a form of “neocolonialism.”  Michelle Obama has beseeched young people, “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we are asking young people to do.  Don’t go into corporate America.  You know, become teachers, work for the community,  be a social worker, be a nurse….move out of the money-making industry, into the helping industry.”

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Tags: anti-business, Barack Obama, business sector, businessman, community organizer
Posted Oct 24th 2009 at 7:00 am in Culture, Featured Story, Obama, Politics | 18950139 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/pschweizer/2009/10/24/obama-vs-the-american-businessman/Obama+vs.+The+American+Businessman2009-10-24+14%3A00%3A54Peter+Schweizer

$373 Million to Stimulate Vending Machines

Byron York, in today’s Examiner:

First Lady Michelle Obama visited the headquarters of the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington Tuesday. She devoted much of her talk to “the growing threat of obesity, particularly childhood obesity” in the United States, and she touted HHS’s recently-announced plan to spend $373 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on plans to, among other things, improve the healthfulness of foods in vending machines.

The first lady did not discuss how such work might stimulate the economy or speed economic recovery. But she had glowing praise for the stimulus’ role in fighting obesity. “Congress and the president included $1 billion for prevention and wellness programs in the Recovery Act,” she told the crowd of cheering DHS workers, “and that includes funding for initiatives that will give communities the resources they need to address the obesity epidemic in their communities. This includes $373 million announced last month that would be available for communities that put together comprehensive plans to reduce obesity –- $373 million — and that would include everything from incentivizing grocery stores to locate in underserved areas; it could include improving meals at school; to getting more healthy, affordable foods into vending machines; to creating more safe, accessible places for people to exercise and play; and a whole lot more.”

 Read the whole thing here. File this away as further evidence, if possibly needed, that the ’stimulus’ bill mostly just funded a grab-bag of long-wished-for lefty government programs.

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Tags: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, childhood obesity, HHS, Michelle Obama, stimulus spending
Posted Oct 14th 2009 at 6:17 am in Congress, Healthcare, News, Obama | 1621872 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2009/10/14/373-million-to-stimulate-vending-machines/%24373+Million+to+Stimulate+Vending+Machines2009-10-14+13%3A17%3A06Publius