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We Actually Got Away With It……

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., second from left, shares a laugh with, from left, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., and Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Feb. 13, 2009, during a news conference after the House passed the stimulus legislation.

The Rhetorical President

They are making terrible mistakes – scary – stupid – mistakes. Don

The Rhetorical President

By: Janice Shaw Crouse (CWA)

The use of language to persuade is a skill much admired since ancient times. Few people become leaders without the ability to move others to agree with their arguments. Rightly understood, rhetoric is only one of the tools of persuasion; the other two, logic and dialectic, are required to truly change peoples’ minds. During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama awed the media and voters alike with his rhetorical skills. He continues to awe as he uses rhetorical manipulation to sell the stimulus package to the American public.

Legitimate rhetoric balances the skills of public speaking with sound logic and appeals to commonality with the audience on the issue at hand. It is an understatement to say that Barack Obama is skilled at using the language of his opponents to sell his ideas. During the 2009 campaign, he convinced a significant number of evangelicals that he was one of them. He convinced people of polar opposite points of view that he was on their side. Now, as the nation’s top snake oil salesman, he is working the room to sell his stimulus package — a package that experts agree will stimulate the Democratic constituency groups more than the economy.

The snake oil is especially obvious in his slick salesmanship as well as his shrewd manipulation of rhetoric.

SPECTOR + COLLINS + SNOWE = SPECOLSNOW –

“SPECKLED SNOW”

Starting on Capitol Hill, he brought Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania), the most gullible of the GOP senators, into the Oval Office to overwhelm them with his dialectic; he shrewdly played on his commonality with them on specific ideas and people they mutually admired. One at a time, he worked his charm by stroking each one at their vulnerable points, and all three caved. They undermined their party’s hope for leverage, stomped on the principle of checks and balances, and ended the need for any future attempts for genuine bipartisanship. They also gave Obama the cover he needed during his first major political crisis and gave momentum to a massive trillion dollar plan that could burden the nation for the foreseeable future!

Emboldened by his success with the Three Stooges of Capitol Hill, the president shrewdly staged his first prime-time presidential news conference using all the gravitas of the White House East Room as a backdrop. I say “shrewdly” because the president rearranged seating of the White House Press Corp to give deference to the left. The major network stars were seated behind Ed Schulz, a liberal radio talk show host (Note that this administration plans to push the “Fairness Doctrine”), and reporters from the black media outlets. He shrewdly gave international exposure to media most friendly to his administration. Al Jazeera, Essence, and the Saudi Press Agency were given seats. Sam Stein, a leftist blogger from the Huffington Post, was recognized for a question, thus getting international exposure. No wonder there were no follow-up questions or challenges to the president’s remarks. The mainstream media, whose worshipful coverage assured him the White House, couldn’t have liked the new arrangement, but apparently decided that the slight didn’t warrant legitimate grilling of the president during his first press conference.

Mr. Obama was also shrewd in his use of rhetorical devices that many consider demagogic and are, at a minimum, deceptive and misleading. For instance, he frequently used generalization and polarization:

• The stimulus bill would mean the difference between catastrophe and creating four million jobs
• Liberal Democrats just want to spend more money, but the GOP vetoes all progress
• Everything was the fault of the Bush administration, so Obama’s administration is facing “unprecedented” problems
• Everything the new administration is doing has never been done before
• Republican leaders are doing “nothing,” while his team is producing plans that will perform miracles

He conveyed a distortion of what the ancient rhetoricians called “ethos.” The ancient concept includes the image that is conveyed by the person trying to persuade. Obama almost never smiles, and during the press conference he projected, as usual, the image of self-control, maturity and deliberation. His suits are always impeccable, and his informal wear is “cool.” His demeanor projects a seriousness that is softened by his picture perfect family life. During the press conference, he seemed utterly sincere, honest and candid, while dishing out statements that could be thoroughly discounted by any first-year reporter pounding a beat. He skillfully turned to humor in order to disdain and dismiss the only penetrating question of the whole press conference. When Major Garrett of Fox News asked the president about Vice President Joe Biden’s comment regarding the administration having a 30 percent chance of failing on any given initiative, the president did not hesitate to make Biden the butt of his joke. The end result was to convey the impression that he is the savior of the nation, while everyone else, including his party and his vice president, stands as a barrier to progress.

For a man who promised bipartisanship by “working with the majority for change,” he makes ample use of what he claimed to despise, “the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for too long have strangled our politics.”

Several of President Obama’s appointments have been controversial because of the nominees’ tax problems.  One nominee, however, is grabbing attention for another kind of ethical problem.  Dr. Janice Crouse, Director and Senior Fellow of Concerned Women for America’s (CWA) Beverly LaHaye Institute, wrote about the radical viewpoints of David Ogden, who is the nominee for Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice (DOJ).  Mr. Ogden would be second in command at the DOJ, and his apparent qualification for the position is a troubling 20-year career defending the rights of pornographers over the rights of women and children. He also has a disturbing record of defending abortion and promoting international laws over our own national laws. You can read Dr. Crouse’s article at www.cwfa.org and at www.townhall.com.

· Arie Hoekman, a representative of the United Nations Population Fund, recently declared at a colloquium in Mexico City that family breakdown is a triumph for human rights. Dr. Crouse responded, “How ironic that those who created the crisis are denying that crisis.  The data is in, and the experts agree that single-mother families and father absence have created a family structure that is detrimental to women and dangerous for children’s well-being.”  You can read about Hoekman’s remarks and Dr. Crouse’s response in a press release at www.cwfa.org.

· For the first time ever at a presidential press conference, a president made clear that he had a pre-approved list of questioners, most of them friendly to his administration.  More importantly, for his first prime-time press conference, Mr. Obama shrewdly pushed the proposed “Fairness Doctrine” by seating major network stars behind Ed Schulz, a liberal radio talk show host. He also gave seats to Al Jazeera and the Saudi Press Agency. Dr. Crouse discusses the press conference and analyzes the President’s use of rhetorical skills in trying to persuade the public to support his economic stimulus package in her article, “The Rhetorical President,” at www.AmericanThinker.com.

· We appreciate all you do to help us protect and defend Christian values in today’s society.  Our partnership will bear much fruit.

1,073 Pages

1,073 Pages

A stimulus bill that’s anything but transparent.

In his closing remarks on the stimulus bill yesterday, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey called it “the largest change in domestic policy since the 1930s.” We’d say more like the 1960s, which is bad enough, but his point about the bill’s magnitude is right. The 1,073-page monstrosity includes the biggest spending increase since World War II, but more important is the fine print expanding the role of the federal government across the breadth of American business, health care, energy and welfare policy.

Given those stakes, you might think Congress would get more than a few hours to debate it. But, no, yesterday’s roll call votes came less than 24 hours after House-Senate conferees had agreed to their deal. Democrats rushed the bill to the floor before Members could even read it, much less have time to broadcast the details so the public could offer its verdict.

So much for Democratic promises of a new era of transparency. Only this Tuesday the House unanimously approved a resolution promising 48-hour public notice before holding a roll call. Even better, the bill could have been posted on the Internet, as candidate Barack Obama suggested during the campaign. Let voters see what they’re getting for all this money. Not a chance.

This high-handed endgame follows the pattern of this bill from the start, with Republicans all but ignored until Democrats let three GOP Senators nibble around the edges to prevent a filibuster. With their huge majorities, Mr. Obey and Democrats got their epic victory. But far from a new, transparent way of governing, this bill represents the kind of old-fashioned partisan politics that Tom DeLay would have admired.

Cartoon: Obama Stimulus Bill

Markets Fell After Obama Plan

How about if they all shut up?  – will the market stop falling?

“Market’s Fell after Treasure Timothy Geithner Announced the Obama administration’s bailout plan in the department’s Cash Room.”

The Fierce Urgency of Pork

WHERE’S THE HOPE – Obama’s policy of Hope? – –

Obama: “We have chosen hope over fear.” Until…you need fear to pass a bill.  Then it is catastrophic! – if you don’t vote for my bill!

The Fierce Urgency of Pork
By Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared “we have chosen hope over fear.” Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill. And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn’t understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.=