Sequester? What Sequester? Obama bringing $500 million to the PA, while trying to cut $300 million mil aid to Israel.

Sequester? What Sequester? Obama bringing $500 million to the PA, while trying to cut $300 million mil aid to Israel.(AA).In a meeting with a group of Arab Americans this week, U.S. President Barack Obama revealed that he will not push the Israelis and Palestinians toward restarting negotiations or outline a new peace initiative during his upcoming visit to the region, but he will take with him a cash infusion of $500 million – which Congress will soon release – of much needed financial aid to the Palestinian Authority.
Obama met at the White House with members from the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Arab American Institute, the Arab Federation of Ramallah, the American Task Force for Palestine and other individuals and groups.

“Obama said that since the Israeli government has not been willing to make concessions, there is no point in pushing [for negotiations] right now,” one participant at the meeting with Obama said on condition of anonymity.
“He said the goal of his trip was to speak to the Israeli people directly,” said another participant. “He thinks it was a mistake that he didn’t address the Israeli public in his first term.”

Obama’s planned speech to the Israeli public, which has yet to announced, will be complementary of Jewish and Israeli history and accomplishments and Israelis’ hopes of maintaining a democratic Jewish state, said three participants who were at the meeting.
“He said he wanted to see what kind of concessions the Israelis are willing to make and push them in that direction, that’s why he wants to give the speech to the Israeli people,” said one source.

But Obama warned that the speech to the Israeli public might not have what the Arab participants in the meeting were looking for. “But he implored us to give them a pass on this one,” the source said.

Obama told the group he will speak to Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas separately during his planned visit to Ramallah. Obama wants his plans to include another West Bank stop, though what he will do is still unclear. “He said ‘I don’t want the trip to be a drive by,’” according to a participant “but they haven’t figured out how to do it yet.”

Obama will also tell the Palestinians that “going the way of the United Nations is not the right way. The right way is negotiations,” according to a source.

Obama also expressed his frustrations with the lack of progress on the negotiations. “He was highly engaged but realistic. He understands the community was frustrated; he said he was very frustrated. ‘The only people more frustrated than me,’ Obama said, were the ‘Palestinians living in West Bank and Gaza – it’s a legitimate frustration,’” the source quoted Obama as saying.

One of the participants also said that Obama expressed his frustration with Congress. “Every time the pressure gets to the Israelis they go to Congress,” said the source. “He wants to find a way around that, that’s why he wants to talk to the Israeli public directly.”

Obama had a last message to the participants. “He said ‘this trip is not going to give you everything you want’,” a source said.Hmmmm......Obama: "But I’m also mindful of the proverb, “A man is judged by his deeds, not his words.” So if you want to know where my heart lies, look no further than what I have done — to stand up for Israel."Read the full story here.

"I Love the smell of Blood?" Bob Woodward Agrees With Hannity: Journalists Should Ask Obama About Bill Ayers.

"I Love the smell of Blood?" Bob Woodward Agrees With Hannity: Journalists Should Ask Obama About Bill Ayers.(Fox).The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward appeared on Fox News’ Hannity on Thursday evening to complain about National Economic Council director Gene Sperling’s email disputing his characterization of the White House’s role in shaping the mechanism known as the sequester — the automatic across-the-board budget cuts that will go into effect on Friday.

Over the weekend Woodward claimed that the White House was trying “to move the goalposts” by replacing sequestration with a deficit reduction package that includes new revenues, a notion Sperling disputed in emails with the famed Watergate journalist. “I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post,” Sperling wrote to Woodward. “I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.”

During his interview with Sean Hannity, Woodward claimed that he had been “roughed up” by Sperling and agreed with the host’s characterization of the Washington journalists as liberals who are disinterested in challenging the president with Bill Ayers, an education advocate who was part of the group the Weather Underground:

HANNITY: The fact that the president was never asked a lot about the 6 trillion in debt that he accumulated prior to this election, in this first election wasn’t asked about his association with Bill Ayers was troublesome to me, I think we’ve got a media that’s not as critical as perhaps it once was in, for example, the days of Watergate.

WOODWARD: Well, I agree with that. We need to be very aggressive and it’s one of the judges that said democracies die in darkness and I really think that’s true.

Obama 'admin' freed over 2,000 illegal immigrants since February, 3,000 more to be 'unleashed' on the U.S. in March.

Obama 'admin' freed over 2,000 illegal immigrants since February, 3,000 more to be 'unleashed' on the U.S. in March.(MH). Homeland Security Department released from its jails more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation in recent weeks due to looming budget cuts and planned to release 3,000 more during March, The Associated Press has learned.

The newly disclosed figures, cited in internal budget documents reviewed by the AP, are significantly higher than the "few hundred" illegal immigrants the Obama administration acknowledged this week had been released under the budget-savings process.

The government documents show that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement released roughly 1,000 illegal immigrants from its jails around the U.S. each week since at least Feb. 15. The agency's field offices have reported more than 2,000 immigrants released before intense criticism this week led to a temporary shutdown of the plan, according to the documents.

The release of thousands from immigration jails is consistent with Napolitano's early warnings on Monday - hours before anyone knew publicly that any illegal immigrants had been released - that the pending, automatic budget cuts known as the sequester would limit the government's ability to maintain enough detention center beds for at least 34,000 immigrants.

"We're doing our very best to minimize the impacts of sequester, but there's only so much I can do," Napolitano said Monday. "You know, I'm supposed to have 34,000 detention beds for immigration. How do I pay for those?"

The senior Homeland Security Department official in charge of arresting and deporting illegal immigrants announced his retirement to his staff on Tuesday, the same day the administration first openly confirmed the release of what it called several hundred immigrants.

The states where immigrants were released include Arizona, California, Georgia and Texas.Hmmmm........3 out of 4 Republican states......Coincidence?Yeah whatevah.Read the full story here.

"Dead in the water" : Obama’s military, no chance of a strike against Iran.

"Dead in the water" : Obama’s military, no chance of a strike against Iran.(LibertyUnyielding).Great piece By J.E. Dyer.
Two to three years ago, the United States Department of Defense had enough military forces on station in, or readily deployable to, the Persian Gulf region (the “CENTCOM AOR” – area of responsibility – or Southwest Asia, as it is called in the military) to execute a limited strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities without asking Congress for special funding. The military could have performed such an operation “out of hide,” as quickly and seamlessly as the president wanted it to.

Four to five years ago, moreover, the U.S. had the regional political capital to use our bases in the local nations (e.g., Qatar and Bahrain) to launch and direct such a strike campaign.

Both of these conditions have now changed.

But as of 2013, with the funding issues inherent in the long-term budget stand-off, that option can no longer be performed out of hide. The Navy has already had to cancel a carrier strike group deployment that it couldn’t project being able to pay for, and we can no longer assume that the Air Force will have the ready aircraft and aircrew – not to mention the fuel – to perform a bomber campaign against Iran.

These are the questions raised by a Times of Israel report from today (which, of course, may or may not be valid). Quoting a TV segment from Monday, it says that the Obama administration will tell Israel next month that it is gearing up for a “window of opportunity” to strike Iran in June.

Gearing up with what? The carrier that isn’t deployed? The Air Force aircraft that will run out of flying hours in May?

We don’t have the forces deployed to conduct this strike campaign, nor can they be deployed – assuming the sequester kicks in, and/or that there is no comprehensive continuing resolution agreed to in the next couple of months – without Obama making a big political noise, by running the whole plan through Congress and asking specifically for money to fund it. What are the chances Obama is going to do that?

I’m betting Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t think he will. If the quoted claim really did come from the Obama administration, it is an egregious instance of promising to do something we obviously are making no preparations to do. (I am reminded – painfully – of a press interview Obama did almost exactly a year ago, when he said, on the topic of the Iran nuclear threat: “As president of the United States, I don’t bluff.”)

Even if the claim about the U.S. administration’s intentions in Israel is invalid, the TOI report is as good a pretext as any for making it clear to the American people that our defense situation has already changed. We cannot do today what we could have done three years ago. As long as Obama makes no provision for conducting a crippling strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the threat of doing so carries no weight. That is today’s reality – and it is Obama’s legacy.

But it is unconscionable of Obama to handle the sequestration threat the way he has. The sequester was, we should remember, Obama’s idea. Republicans have offered him flexibility in tailoring the cuts to minimize the worst impacts on defense, and Obama has rejected the proposal. The president also declined in September 2012 to meet the sequestration plan’s deadline for reporting out on how the cuts would be taken in the federal departments. According to official testimony in July 2012, DOD had been given no directive to plan for the cuts imposed by the sequester. This was months after Leon Panetta described the sequestration cuts, in November 2011, as “devastating” to the military – suggesting a minimal competence question, at the very least, regarding the Obama administration.

The president has had the authority all along to guard the defense capabilities he considers most important, and Congress has offered to bolster – even expand – that authority. If the ability to credibly threaten Iran is not one of those priorities, I don’t know what is. No one wants to attack Iran, but a key component of the strategy to avoid doing it is to ensure that the threat is credible. Today, it’s not. Obama is playing too many games of “chicken” – and he hasn’t been guarding defense capabilities. What that means is that at the moment, vis-à-vis Iran, he’s not carrying a big stick.Hmmm.......If he really wanted to destroy America as a 'superpower' would he do anything different?Read the full story here.

Sequestration is 'The Sky Falling'?

Sequestration is 'The Sky Falling'?(CATO).By Christopher A. Preble.

Will sequestration undermine U.S. national security? Hardly. Today, the Cato Institute released a new info graphic putting these minor cuts in perspective.

Military spending will remain at roughly 2006 levels—$603 billion, higher than peak U.S. spending during the Cold War. Meanwhile, we live in a safer world. The Soviet Union has been dead for more than two decades; no other nation, or combination of nations, has emerged since that can pose a comparable threat. We should have a defense budget that reflects this reality.

Hmmm.....I'm sorry but with all due respect 'We do not live in a 'safer' world and the 'Soviet Union' might be 'dead' but the remains are getting up and showing their teeth!Read the full story here.

Download and share this infographic on your blog, Twitter, or Facebook.
My thanks go out to Harrison Moar and Zach Graves for conceiving this, pulling the data together, and making it look really cool.

Video - Woodward: 'The White House Threatened Me'.

Woodward: 'The White House Threatened Me'.HT: WhiteHouseDossier.By KeithKoffler. 
 Legendary Washington reporter Bob Woodward said a “very senior person” in the White House threatened that he would “regret” reporting that has been critical of White House handling of the sequester. Normally this doesn’t surprise me, it’s how the White House operates, bullying reporters who write things it doesn’t like. Frankly, it’s Nixonian. This is suppression of speech. Maybe this will finally shine a seriously bright light on scurrilous Obama White House tactics.

That they would go after Woodward is a bit of a surprise, both because of the respect he commands and because if he decided to really focus his journalistic talents on Obama, we would find out all sorts of things the White House doesn’t want us to know.

In a piece running Thursday evening, Politico describes the exchange that led to the threat:

Bob Woodward called a senior White House official last week to tell him that in a piece in that weekend’s Washington Post, he was going to question President Barack Obama’s account of how sequestration came about – and got a major-league brushback. The Obama aide “yelled at me for about a half hour,” Woodward told us in an hour-long interview yesterday around the Georgetown dining room table where so many generations of Washington’s powerful have spilled their secrets.

Digging into one of his famous folders, Woodward said the tirade was followed by a page-long email from the aide, one of the four or five administration officials most closely involved in the fiscal negotiations with the Hill. “I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today,” the official typed. “You’re focusing on a few specific trees that give a very wrong impression of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here. … I think you will regret staking out that claim.”

. . . A White House official said: “Of course no threat was intended.”

Woodward, as you may know, has been correcting the White House as it has tried to deny responsibility for the sequester, which it created. Woodward has said Obama “moved the goalposts” on Republicans by insisting tax increases be part of a deal to avoid the automatic spending cuts.

Earlier Thursday, Woodward said it was a “kind of madness I haven’t seen in a long time” for Obama not to deploy an aircraft carrier because of the looming sequester.

The pressure will now be on for Woodward to name the official who threatened him, or for the White House to fess up.

Governing by intimidation. Suppressing speech. It took 40 years, but Woodward once again is facing off against Richard Nixon in the White House.Hmmmm.....Only this time it is not Richard Nixon. Read the full story here.

Video - Amazing – Obama Caught in Bald-Faced Lie on White House Sequester.

Greta Van Susteren played a montage of political statements on the Obama sequester. From the video it is clear that the sequester cuts were a product of the White House. It is also clear that Barack Obama continues to get away with a bald-faced lie that the idea was something Congress proposed.HT: Gateway Pundit.

Obama Already Banking on Sequestration?

Obama Already Banking on Sequestration?(Heritage).By Brian Slattery.When the topic of sequestration arose during the final presidential debate Monday, President Obama declared, “It will not happen.”
Considering that Obama has also previously declared that he would veto any bill attempting to get rid of the defense portion of the cuts unless it includes tax increases, many were surprised by the President’s reversal. Yet merely hours after the debate, the President indicated not only will he not act to stop sequestration, but that he is actually factoring the cuts into his fiscal plans for the future.
Sequestration is a budgetary measure that will automatically cut $1.2 trillion over 10 years—nearly half of which comes from defense accounts—beginning on January 2 if Congress and the Administration do not agree on a plan to stop them. The President has routinely pointed the finger at the Republican-controlled House of Representatives for causing this doomsday scenario by passing the Budget Control Act of 2011, which mandated that the automatic cuts occur if the “super committee” could not find $1.2 trillion in additional savings.
Nevertheless, investigative journalist Bob Woodward has indicated that the Administration was pressuring congressional leadership throughout the process to create this budgetary measure. The President assumed that Congress would either cut defense spending dramatically or agree to tax increases to avoid such cuts. A transcript from a Des Moines Register interview with the President, however, reveals that he accounted for both scenarios in his fiscal plan.

Obama said to the Iowa paper, “So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, the commitment of both myself and my opponent—at least Governor Romney claims that he wants to reduce the deficit—but we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business.”

This statement ignores not only congressional objections to sequestration and its devastating effect on national security but even the warnings of his Secretary of Defense and military service chiefs. President Obama is willing to put national security at risk for fiscal goals that are questionable at best.
During the tenure of this Administration, defense spending has absorbed roughly half of deficit reduction efforts, yet it accounts for only a fifth of total federal spending. The fact is that America could zero out its defense accounts entirely and the true debt drivers—entitlement programs—would continue on spending autopilot and eventually consume the entire federal budget.

Regardless of what the President says, the fact remains that the debilitating defense cuts under sequestration will accomplish nothing more than reducing the military’s ability to protect America. As commander in chief, Obama should understand this and not use security as a bargaining chip. With the January 2 deadline drawing near, Congress should uphold its constitutional responsibility to provide for the common defense and work to stop these cuts without raising taxes.Read the full story here.

Obama Cuts Defense Programs, Claims They “Weren’t Working Very Well”.

Obama Cuts Defense Programs, Claims They “Weren’t Working Very Well”.(Heritage).During last week’s debate, President Obama made an intriguing statement while explaining his deficit hawk credentials. In referencing the programs he cut, he mentioned “aircrafts that the Air Force had ordered but weren’t working very well.” This is a rather vague reference, leaving up for speculation just what aircraft he had in mind.
A quick rundown of some of the aircraft programs terminated in the last four years: the F-22A Raptor stealth fighter, the Combat Search and Rescue helicopter, the C-17 transport aircraft, the C-27J Spartan transport aircraft, and the Global Hawk Block 30 unmanned aerial surveillance aircraft. All programs eliminated under President Obama, none of them due to performance issues.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) has not been left unscathed, either. After singing the praises of the JSF and affirming that “this supportable, state-of-the-art aircraft commands and maintains global air superiority,” the President’s fiscal year 2013 budget request then cuts 13 aircraft for that year and 179 aircraft between 2013 and 2017.
The termination of so many aircraft programs indicates the Administration’s wider approach to the defense budget. The President goes on to say:

I worked with Democrats and Republicans to cut a trillion dollars out of our discretionary domestic budget. That’s the largest cut in the discretionary domestic budget since Dwight Eisenhower.

Obama’s reference to Eisenhower implies that defense spending is becoming problematic and that in addressing the issue he is being fiscally responsible while at the same time mindful of national security needs. As Baker Spring of The Heritage Foundation wrote:

He is not a national security hawk precisely because he intends to impose the low defense spending caps. He is not a deficit hawk because he plans to use the savings from the defense cuts to increase spending on domestic programs.

Air Force chief of staff General Norton Schwartz referred to the defense cuts when talking about the tough choice he made to eliminate the C-27 transport aircraft. He had an agreement with the Army chief of staff to keep the program in the Air Force, “but that was $487 billion ago.”
These cuts come before accounting for sequestration. Designed to force Congress to compromise on a reduction in discretionary spending, sequestration stipulates $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts. Defense programs absorb nearly half this amount.
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has said of sequestration, “It was designed as a meat ax. … It would be a disaster.”
Since the President has already stated that he will exempt personnel accounts, sequestration will fall heavier on research and development, procurement, and operations and maintenance budgets. Which programs will future Pentagon officials refer to while explaining “that was $1 trillion ago”?
The defense budget should not be the scapegoat for the problems of runaway entitlement spending. The President should instead focus on providing for robust national security forces. Hmmmm......I wonder if those ObamaPhones work very well?Read the full story here.