150 Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History (16 page)

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When Israel tried to stop Hamas from firing rockets from Lebanon into Northern Israel, Hagel condemned President Bush for not stopping Israel.

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In April of 2010, he made the absurd accusation that Israel is becoming an apartheid state.
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When Hagel testified before the Senate for his confirmation, he revealed himself ignorant of the workings of the Department of Defense and woefully unprepared to take on one of the hardest jobs in government. Hagel was confirmed, but had an unprecedented forty-one Senators voting against him. Prior to Hagel, no other Defense Secretary has ever been confirmed with so many votes in opposition.
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In picking Hagel for Secretary of Defense, Obama endorsed his faulty foreign policy and stalwart anti-Semitism.

144.
The Nomination of John Brennan

John Brennan served as Obama’s Homeland Security Advisor during his first term. He had been Obama’s original pick for CIA Director back in 2009, but was forced to withdraw because of Democrat opposition. Liberated by his reelection, Obama nominated him for the position again in 2013. But Brennan’s road to heading the CIA would still not be easy. Brennan, the architect of Obama’s controversial drone program, also “helped construct and justify the administration’s claim that it can kill people, including American citizens, abroad on its own authority, even when those people are not in countries with which we are at war.”
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During his Senate Committee Hearing, Brennan claimed that due process is not necessary to kill Americans for their potential future acts.
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There are other reasons why Brennan was a bad choice for the job. According to Steven Emerson, the executive director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Brennan has “shown a tendency to fall for the bait from radical Islamists.”

Globally, [Brennan] repeatedly expressed a hope that “moderates” within Iran and its terror proxy Hezbollah would steer their respective constituencies away from terrorism.
Domestically, he claims that radical Islam does not pose its own, unique threat to American security. He has helped strip language about “radical Islam,” “jihad” and similar terms from government vernacular, choosing instead to refer to “violent extremism” in an attempt to deny terrorists religious credibility. 
When it comes to jihad, he stubbornly maintains the word does not belong in conversations about terror, no matter what terrorists themselves say.
Likewise, he also yielded to demands from American Islamists to purge law enforcement and intelligence training material of the terms “jihad” and “radical Islam.”
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Brennan has also claimed that terrorists are motivated by economic and political factors, not religious ones, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
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Brennan’s political correctness has undoubtedly blinded him to potential threats. In 2010, Brennan allowed a sheik linked to Hamas to participate in an FBI-hosted “Citizens Academy” which gave him a tutorial on National Counterterrorism Center and other secure government facilities.
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Brennan was confirmed by the Senate, but received a record breaking 34 votes against his confirmation.
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145.
Selling Access To The White House

Shortly before his second inauguration, Obama made the stunning announcement that his presidential campaign was not going to disband. Instead it would be re-launched as a non-profit organization called Organizing for Action (OFA), which would mobilize support of his agenda during his second term.

The newly launched organization is run by former Obama White House and campaign staffers, with Obama’s 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina serving as national chairman. Despite claims that the organization would be the next step of a grassroots movement, there is clearly something more sinister going on. With OFA not subject to campaign finance laws, the organization can accept unlimited personal and corporate donations.
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And, as the
New York Times
reported in February 2013, big donations are rewarded with big influence:

Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr. Obama’s group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House. Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obama’s top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to administration jobs or ambassadorships.

“It just smells,” said Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause, which advocates tighter regulation of campaign money. “The president is setting a very bad model setting up this organization.”

Mr. Obama’s new organization has drawn rebukes in recent days from watchdog groups, which view it as another step away from the tighter campaign regulation Mr. Obama once championed. Over the past two years, he has reversed course on several campaign finance issues, by blessing a super PAC created by former aides and accepting large corporate contributions for his second inauguration.
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While technically legal, this group enables Obama to skirt campaign finance and ethics regulations designed to prevent outside influence from government officials. Obama may claim to be an advocate for the little guy, but it’s the folks who can write the big checks who will now have a ticket to Obama’s inner circle, and the ability to influence the White House agenda.

146.
Inability to Compromise

After he was reelected, Obama decided that compromise was no longer necessary, so much so that even when Republicans gave him something he wanted, he wouldn’t have to meet them halfway.

Obama has oft repeated that “the rich pay their fair share,” and had promised to end exemptions and deductions for high-income earners. He was unable to fulfill this promise before the election, but with the “fiscal cliff” looming at the end of 2012, Obama was offered precisely this by Republican House leaders, who had hoped Obama would accept their concession and offer one of his own to complete the deal.

The GOP had offered a balanced compromise: reduce or eliminate various exemptions and deductions for high-income earners; in exchange for making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent.
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With this deal, Obama could finally keep his promise, and could do so with bipartisan support! But this wasn’t good enough for Obama, who rejected the deal because he still wanted an increase in tax rates.
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There would be no halfway with him. No compromise. No concessions. Just
his
way or the highway. Obama may have been reelected, but he was reelected with divided government, and instead of being the unifying politician he claimed he would be, he established, once and for all, without any ambiguity, that compromise just wasn’t a word in his vocabulary, despite his rhetoric for a “balanced approach” to solving the country’s fiscal problems.

147.
Making The Sequester As Painful As Possible

It became clear in the early months of Obama’s second term that even though the election was over, the campaign was not, and that governance was a lower priority than politics.

The Obama Administration, hoping that the American people would blame Republicans for the sequester cuts, instructed various agencies to ensure that the sequester spending cuts would be as painful as Obama promised they would be. The
Washington Times
reported:

The Obama administration denied an appeal for flexibility in lessening the sequester’s effects, with an email this week appearing to show officials in Washington that because they already had promised the cuts would be devastating, they now have to follow through on that.

In the email sent Monday by Charles Brown, an official with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Brown asked “if there was any latitude” in how to spread the sequester cuts across the region to lessen the impacts on fish inspections.

He said he was discouraged by officials in Washington, who gave him this reply: “We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”
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A whistleblower in the National Parks Service also revealed that supervisors denied plans to deal with budget cuts in manner that would minimize impact on the public, and were instead instructed to cancel special events, tours, and educational services provided by park rangers.
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There were also reports that several hundred immigrants who had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were released, and that their release was “to ensure detention levels stay within ICE’s current budget,” according to an ICE spokeswoman.
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Many saw the move as politically motivated to increase public opposition to sequestration, with the hope that Republicans would be blamed.

Is this what an administration does when it’s looking out for the best interests of the American people?

148.
Drone Killings… Even In The United States?

Drones have proven an effective weapon in fighting terrorist groups around the world. The advantages of speed and stealth in attacking the enemy with the absence of American lives being put at risk are undeniable, even if controversial. Drone strikes often come with collateral deaths among non-combatants. Further adding to the controversy is the deaths of American citizens by drone attacks overseas.
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But what of their use inside the United States, against American citizens?

Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder asserted in Congressional testimony on March 6, 2013 that under “extraordinary” circumstances, the President has the legal authority to use drones to kill Americans
inside
the territory of the United States.
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Drones are risky enough as a tactic overseas, but to use them on Americans in America is a denial of a whole series of rights we are guaranteed by the Constitution. Americans are guaranteed the right to due process.

How can it possibly be constitutional for the President of the United States to kill Americans without giving them due process? The architect of Obama’s drone policy, Obama’s new CIA Director John Brennan, argued that due process is not necessary to kill Americans if they are being targeted for potential future acts of terrorism against the United States.
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Holder eventually stepped back from his claim after Senator Rand Paul filibustered Brennan’s confirmation.
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But given Obama’s record of indifference to the law and the Constitution, one can only guess if Obama will in fact assert an authority to kill Americans on American soil during his second term. Even if he doesn’t, the fact remains that he claimed he could.

149.
The Four Trillion Dollar Man

Towards the end of his first term, Obama told House Speaker John Boehner, “We don’t have a spending problem.”
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This unfortunate denial of our country’s economic dire straits has continued unabated in his second term. In his 2014 budget proposal, Obama became the first president in history to propose more than $4 trillion in spending in a single year.

The White House Office of Management and Budget’s figures are quite disturbing.
CNS News
broke down the information:

According to OMB’s tables, the federal government would spend $3.7778 trillion in fiscal 2014 under Obama’s budget proposal. It would then spend $3.9801 trillion in fiscal 2015; $4.0898 trillion in fiscal 2016; and $4.2474 trillion in fiscal 2017.

Obama will leave office on Jan. 20, 2017, about four months into fiscal 2017.

In fiscal 2007, according to the OMB’s tables, the federal government ran a deficit of $160.7 billion. In fiscal 2008, that climbed to $458.5 billion.

President Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, about four months into fiscal 2009. A Congress in which Obama sat had already enacted the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to bailout the financial industry. But, during the first month of Obama’s first term, he signed an $830 billion stimulus bill.
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According to the OMB, Obama will never balance a budget, and will not run an annual deficit as low as FY2008, the year before he took office. Yet, Obama doesn’t think we have a spending problem.

150.
The Boston Marathon Bombing

As of the writing of this book, the Boston Marathon bombing is still under investigation, and it will likely take some time to put all of the pieces together. But, what we do know at this time suggests that the Obama Administration could have prevented the tragedy that occurred on April 15, 2013.

Less than two months before the bombing, Obama had issued a “National Policy for Countering Improvised Explosive Devices,” in which he wrote “we must not become complacent,” over the threats of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at home and abroad.
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However, the day after the bombing, it was revealed that the budget for domestic bomb prevention had been cut to $11 million by the Obama Administration. The budget was $20 million during the Bush Administration.