2016 Sept 10^th

What little news has happened today hardly deserves a comment. Trump continues his lies about being opposed to the Iraq War before it began; a couple of his surrogates now tell us that they believe that President Obama was, really and truly, born in the united States. Trump has not agreed with them and still claims he “doesn’t want to discuss it.”

Trumpeters believe unanimously that Putin is a stronger leader than President Obama; they would agree that Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin were also “stronger” leaders. None of them, including Putin, had to deal with a hostile Congress.

Obama’s hostile Congress was confronted with “Executive Actions” so at least some things the government was responsible for could be accomplished. This irritated Mona Charen all to pieces and, in response to her column about it, here is my blog.

Mona Charen, 2015, Sept 2^nd

Mona is just beside herself (whatever that means) today about the utter, complete and unmitigated lawlessness of President Obama. She has many, many complaints and any of them could lead to impeachment except that “impeachment would tear the country apart” not that this possibility has previously concerned any conservatives. What is she so upset about? Her major complaint is President Obama granting legal status to 4 million, plus or minus, undocumented aliens. (It happens that SCOTUS invalidated this attept.)

What’s the background here? A comprehensive immigration reform bill had passed the Senate 68 to 32 with 14 Republicans crossing party line to vote with the Democrats. Then the bill went to the Republican-dominated House which refused to take it up and there it languished. These undocumented people were in limbo because any employer could take advantage of them and they couldn’t complain for fear of deportation, so President Obama granted them “Green Cards” which meant that they were now here legally.

The President did this by executive action, another very sore point for Charen. She believes that using executive action is very naughty. During his Presidency Ronald Reagan used executive action 381 times; President Obama in six years has used it 191 times. He’ll have to hurry to catch up with Reagan. Then President Reagan used executive action to defer the deporting of 100 thousand undocumented aliens; this isn’t mentioned by Charen. President G.H.W. Bush used executive orders to defer the deporting of 1.5 million undocumented aliens; this isn’t mentioned by Charen. Perhaps it isn’t so much what the President does but the party the President belongs to that influences Charen? Surely not!

President Obama has had to deal with a recalcitrant Congress ever since he took office. Most recently we have the case of the Attorney General Loretta Lynch. This woman’s appointment was held up for 166 days for purely political reasons. Her qualifications were never in dispute. Finally an embarrassed Senate managed to approve her. The Republican leadership opposed anything President Obama wanted to do and they opposed it even before he became President.

What follows is an excerpt from Robert Draper’s book, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the House of Representatives.”

“It reveals some of my reporting on the Republican plot to obstruct President Obama before he even took office, including secret meetings led by House whip Eric Cantor (in December 2008) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (in early January 2009) in which they laid out their daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance to a popular President-elect during an economic emergency. “If he was for it,” former Ohio Senator George Voinovich explained, “we had to be against it.”

It is obvious that for this President to accomplish anything he would have to control Congress or he would have to bypass it. He did what he had to do and Republicans and their crony columnists can’t stop screaming about it.