Being a New Yorker is no excuse. This is the degradation of the presidency. This is what we have come to. None of us have ever seen this. The reason is, it’s not to be done. That type of language is not to be used, particularly when it’s infighting in the White House. The fact that the president is allowing all this to go on, I think it means it rests with him. He’s the only one who can actually restrain this. He appears not to. Perhaps he believes Scaramucci is the guy who will clear the swamp in the White House, but this is really disgraceful.
The fact that the most popular politician, particularly among Democrats, is Bernie Sanders, who’ll be 78 in 2020, gives you an idea of the extent of the devastation Obama has left behind in the Democratic party. In his eight years he did okay in ‘08 and ’12, but they have lost, as you enumerated before, the House, the Senate, the presidency, two-thirds of the governorships, two-thirds of the statehouses. He has torched their entire minor-league system. AAA, AA, single-A — there’s nothing left, and that’s why the leadership is in their 70s. It’s the old progressive, Bernie Sanders, vacationing-in-the-Soviet-Union hard Left, which energizes a lot of students. I don’t think it’s going to carry the party anywhere. Ask yourself, what do they stand for? Higher minimum wage? Fine, but that’s not a program. I think what they have lost is kind of an ideological center. Remember, the real problem in the Clinton campaign was: What was her message? What does she believe? She had to farm it out to 20 people, and nobody had an answer. I don’t know what the party stands for other than it’s right now anti-Trump and it will thrive on that, but beyond that, there’s nothing on the positive side other than the hard Left, and that’s got no appeal beyond these university towns and some cities.
Charles Krauthammer discusses Donald Trump’s call for Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, and how the Clinton campaign’s response belies a total contradiction.
Charles Krauthammer argues that the Obama administration is fanatical about trying to hide the relationship between the Orlando shooting and radical Islam.
“I thought he had a phone. How about picking up the phone and talking with the allies? You know the phone is a way to communicate rather rapidly.”
From The Corner: On Thursday’s Special Report, Charles Krauthammer reacted to President Obama’s statement, “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse—we don’t have a strategy yet,” about the United States’ effort against the Islamic State. Krauthammer said he was shocked by Obama’s statement, especially considering the context in which the comment was made.
“Look I thought that the president could no longer surprise me,” Krauthammer said. “I was wrong. He shocked me today. The President of the United States, in the middle of a real crisis, a few days after the beheading of an American, deliberately sort of spitting in the face of the country and demonstrating his cruelty, the president gets in front of the world and says, ‘I don’t have a strategy.'”
But even worse than the president’s statement that he had no strategy to defeat the Islamic State, Krauthammer said, was his comment about Ukraine. Read the rest of this entry »
…The “calculation” that this executive action could be “impeachment bait,” “a way to make the Republicans do the one that could save [the Democrats] in this election,” seems to have failed, says Krauthammer…
“I do think that if the president were to legalize 5 million illegal immigrants by fiat, that is a violation of the constitution that I think would reach the level of impeachable…”
Charles Krauthammer thinks that a two-year-old video of one of Obama’s chief architects is proof that the denial of subsidies through federal exchanges was not a drafting error…
“This is absolute proof…It was a deliberate political strategy by the Democrats in drafting the law.”
…It is not the role “of any court to overturn an obvious provision in a law, simply because the strategy of those who drafted it didn’t succeed.”(read more)
“What is the president’s reaction? You say what matters is not where he is. He’s had no reaction — he’s had no reaction to anything that I can tell in the last six months.”
Via The Corner: Charles Krauthammer harshly criticized President Barack Obama for his reaction, or lack thereof, to the news that an airliner was shot down in Ukraine today. The president needs to ”make a damned decision for once in his life,” Krauthammer said, and agree to help arm the Ukrainian military.
“The rebels and the Russians are killing the Ukrainians in large numbers by shooting them out of the sky. The least the president can do is . . . announce that we are now going to supply lethal weapons to assist the Ukrainians in defending themselves..”
“What is the president’s reaction?” Krauthammer asked fellow panelist Juan Williams, who expressed skepticism that the president’s continuing with his normal schedule today was blameworthy…(read more)
“Privacy? If you tell a governor that a certain number of illegal alien children are coming to a certain facility, there is no issue of privacy involved. He’s not naming names. He’s not putting a photograph on the internet.
On Wednesday evening’s Special Report, Charles Krauthammer discussed the effects of an influx of immigrant children on even Eastern states, such as Maryland and Massachusetts….Krauthammer noted that complaints from the mayor of Lynn, Massachusetts about an overwhelmed school system and health department that weren’t prepared for the influx was just one example of unfair stress on even non-border towns.
“This is clearly an attempt of the administration to try to handle a problem by concealing it from the people who most have to know–meaning the governors, the mayors, and the American people.”
Krauthammer continued on to explain that the administration is intentionally hiding the border problem from those who most need to be made aware…(read more) The Corner
As is his wont, President Obama is treating the border crisis — more than 50,000 unaccompanied children crossing illegally — as a public-relations problem. Where to photo op and where not. He still hasn’t enunciated a policy. He may not even have one.
Will these immigrants be allowed to stay? Seven times was Obama’s homeland-security secretary asked this on Meet the Press. Seven times he danced around the question.
“The only question is: How long until Obama is forced to do the obvious?”
— The Hammer
Presidential press secretary Josh Earnest was ostensibly more forthcoming: “It’s unlikely that most of those kids will qualify for humanitarian relief. . . . They will be sent back.” This was characterized in the media as a harder line. Not at all. Yes, those kids who go through the process will likely have no grounds to stay. But most will never go through the process.
“Where’s Obama’s immigration policy? Did he leave it in the other pants?”
— The Butcher
Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
These kids are being flown or bused to family members around the country and told to then show up for deportation hearings. Why show up? Why not just stay where they’ll get superior schooling, superior health care, superior everything? As a result, only 3 percent are being repatriated, to cite an internal Border Patrol memo.
Repatriate them? How stone-hearted, you say. After what they’ve been through? To those dismal conditions back home?
“Why do they come? The administration pretends it’s because of violence and poverty. Nonsense. When has there not been violence and poverty in Central America?”
— The Hammer
By that standard, with a sea of endemic suffering on every continent, we should have no immigration laws. Deny entry to no needy person.
But we do. We must. We choose. And immediate deportation is exactly what happens to illegal immigrants, children or otherwise, from Mexico and Canada. By what moral logic should there be a Central American exception?
“That’s a very good point, Dr. Krauthammer. You should write an article that says that.”
— The Butcher
There is no logic. Just a quirk of the law — a 2008 law intended to deter sex trafficking. It mandates that Central American kids receive temporary relocation, extensive assistance and elaborate immigration/deportation proceedings, which many simply evade.
“I did. Pay attention.”
— The Hammer
This leniency was designed for a small number of sex-trafficked youth. It was never intended for today’s mass migration aimed at establishing a family foothold in America. Read the rest of this entry »
Charles Krauthammer said that the Obama administration must use their authority to let veterans seek civilian healthcare.
“It turns out the VA has had the authority to issue out vouchers, to allow a vet who has been waiting forever to go out and get private care, they should have done that on day one when the scandal broke.”
Putin “has to calculate: is it going to be worth an invasion?” Krauthammer said. “In that calculation you want to inject the fact that the Ukrainians are not going to sit by as in the Crimea.” Armed with U.S. weapons, the rest of Ukraine may be out of Putin’s reach, for now. But absent the weapons, we “are not giving [Putin] anything to alter his calculation,” Krauthammer said, “and that’s the scandal about our inaction.”
Posted: March 21, 2014| Author:Pundit Planet|Filed under:Politics, Russia, War Room, White House | Tags:Krauthammer, Putin, Ukraine|1 CommentThe increasingly annoyed Charles Krauthammer writes: Early in the Ukraine crisis, when the Europeans were working on bringing Ukraine into the EU system and Vladimir Putin was countering with threats and bribes, one British analyst lamented that “we went to a knife fight with a baguette.”That was three months ago. Life overtakes parody. During the Ukrainian prime minister’s visit to Washington last week, his government urgently requested military assistance. The Pentagon refused. It offered instead military ration kits.
Putin mobilizes thousands of troops, artillery and attack helicopters on Ukraine’s borders and Washington counters with baguettes, American-style. One thing we can say for sure in these uncertain times: The invasion of Ukraine will be catered by the United States.
Why did we deny Ukraine weapons? Because in the Barack Obama-John Kerry worldview, arming the victim might be taken as a provocation. This kind of mind-bending illogic has marked the administration’s response to the whole Crimea affair.
Why, after all, did Obama delay responding to Putin’s infiltration, military occupation and seizure of Crimea in the first place? In order to provide Putin with a path to de-escalation, “an offramp,” the preferred White House phrase.
An offramp? Did they really think that Putin was losing, that his invasion of Crimea was a disaster from which he needed some face-saving way out? And that the principal object of American diplomacy was to craft for Putin an exit strategy?
“…To invade Crimea is a huge step and he would only have done it with a president who has shown from the very beginning that he’s living in a fantasy world.”
[Dr. Krauthammer’s critique of Obama is identical to the recent harsh assessment by the Editorial Board of the Washington Post, in their first outright mutiny since Obama’s been in office. The Hammer, on the other hand, has been doing this for years…]
President Bambi contemplates dreams of a global, interconnected, multi-polar, power-sharing, cooperating, interdependent, non-competitive 21st century fantasyland…
“Remember the speech he gave at the U.N. when he started his administration? He said no nation can or should dominate another. I mean, there’s not a 12-year-old in the world who believes that. And he said the alignment of nations rooted in the cleavages of the long ago Cold War make no sense in this interconnected world. As our Secretary of State said today, or yesterday, after all this, this is a 19th century action in a 21st century world. As if what he means is actions where governments pursue expansion, territory domination, no longer exist in this century, as if that hasn’t been a constant in all of human history since Hannibal. They imagine the world as a new interconnected world where climate change is the biggest threat and they are shocked that the Russians actually are interested in territory.”
Will is uncharacteristically restrained here, avoiding blaming Obama’s obvious weaknesses. Though it’s tempting to see this latest eruption of international catastrophes as shaped by avoidable foreign policy failures, the direct result of Obama’s poor judgement and unrealistic goals, I’m inclined to agree with George Will’s larger point. That it can be self-serving, even self-flattering, to think the U.S.’s influence (or lack of influence) is a primary determining factor in world events.
“We have to avoid . . . narcissistic policy disorder — that is the belief that everything in the world happens because of something we did or didn’t do or said or didn’t say.”
While we can still put pressures on Russia, Will said, “we are not in a position of strength.”
“We are in a position of extraordinary weakness,” Will said, “and I’m not sure it’s Obama’s fault…”
A fair point. However, I don’t agree that the events would have unfolded this way regardless of U.S. policy, or leadership. President Obama’s wishful-thinking, inexperience, and amateurism as an international leader can only be provocative to more aggressive personalities in Syria, Iran, and Russia. We’re paying the price for Obama’s lack of strength and experience. And increasingly, everyone knows it.
President Obama has “never been interested in lowering the deficit,” Charles Krauthammer said on Special Report. “It contradicts the reason he ran for president: It’s to change a lot of things in society, to give people stuff like health care.”
“On this idea of austerity…we’ve talked about Obama’s assaulting the Constitution…”
“It’s whatever he thinks. He wakes up in the morning and decides what the law is going to be…”
“… remember how Democrats were complaining that when Republicans were trying to overturn Obamacare it was somehow unpatriotic because it was an attack on the law of the land?”
Krauthammer said.
“This ‘law of the land’ doesn’t even exist. It exists in Obama’s head.”
Even the Washington Post, “not exactly a right-wing rag,” as Krauthammer put it, is saying that Obama has crossed a line…
David Wildstein, the Port Authority official who oversaw the George Washington Bridge lane closures, wrote in a letter today that Governor Chris Christie knew about the closures when they were happening.
“So what if he knew?” Charles Krauthammer asked on tonight’s Special Report.
“…Everyone in New Jersey knew. It was on the news.”
What matters is not whether Christie knew about the closures, but whether he ordered the closures, Krauthammer said. “There’s nothing in the letter that says that Christie had knowledge of how and why, or that he gave the order, or that he knew that the order had come out of his office,” Krauthammer said.
“Here we are, two days before the Super Bowl, in New Jersey, first time…the lawyer releases the letter precisely on the eve of the big day to ruin him.”
“You can have executive orders that implement already existing laws, but what Obama has done in the DREAM Act . . . is unbelievably unconstitutional,” Charles Krauthammer said on Special Report last night.
“He’s done that over and over again on immigration, drug laws, climate change, and, of course, on Obamacare, which he has unilaterally altered lawlessly at least 15 times”
While Republicans met today at a retreat in Maryland and debated immigration reform — with many worrying that, no matter what Republicans pass, President Obama will not enforce it faithfully — Krauthammer looked back on the times the president has failed to faithfully uphold the law.
Two weeks ago, President Obama signaled that he would not be waiting for congress to legislate, saying, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions.” With Tuesday’s State of the Union address fast approaching, Charles Krauthammer said on Special Report tonight that:
“…this is all just empty rhetoric.”
“They know they aren’t going to achieve anything, surely not in Congress,” Krauthammer said. “The reason is that under the constitution — I know that it often gets in the way of the president — it’s the congress that appropriates the money and he can’t do anything without appropriations.”
From NRO: The Department of Health and Human Services says that the demographics it released today about Obamacare enrollees aren’t a cause for concern; Charles Krauthammer says:
“…sounds like a lot of happy talk.”
John Shinkle/POLITICO
With 2.1 million Americans enrolled in Obamacare so far, only 24 percent are in the key 18–34 age bracket — fewer “young and healthies” than expected, Krauthammer noted. But insurance companies aren’t especially worried because, if they suffer huge losses, Obamacare provides for a government bailout that will save them from raising their premiums and beginning a “death spiral,” Krauthammer said.
“That’s why Republicans ought to pass within a week or two or three — right now — a provision to abolish the bailout, and then you will see insurers speaking in a completely different way”
When asked what the biggest story of 2013 was, besides Obamacare, Charles Krauthammer said it is how American social attitudes are becoming more libertarian.
“The swiftness with which attitudes have changed on gay marriage is simply astonishing,” Krauthammer said. Beyond marriage, Krauthammer was also surprised by the advances of the marijuana legalization movement.
The only social issue bucking the libertarian trend is abortion, “in part because of the Gosnell trial, the fact that people are becoming aware that late term abortions are so near to infanticide,” Krauthammer said. “With everything else heading left, with this issue the movement has stopped and has reversed, especially among young people.”
Dr. Charles Krauthammer on the December 3rd edition of The O’Reilly Factor, discussing The White House’s renewed campaign to promote the Administration’s troubled Health Care Agenda.
Krauthammer’s Take: HealthCare.gov Report ‘Makes You Wonder if These Guys Even Read Their Own Stuff’
Charles Krauthammer blasted the federal healthcare exchange Monday evening, especially the administration’s boast that the site’s team was operating “with private sector velocity and effectiveness.”
“It makes you wonder if these guys even read their own stuff,” Krauthammer said, especially as the website represents a “de-privatization, a nationalization of . . . one-sixth of the economy.”
“It could take eons to actually undo the bad information” insurance companies have received from the site’s backend, he said, “or [the info] is not reaching the insurers at all, in which case someone is going to show up on January the first thinking he has insurance who doesn’t and we’re going to have all hell break loose.”
The administration’s 2010 prediction of forthcoming insurance policy cancelations for employers undermines President Obama’s defense that they did not foresee so many people losing their insurance policies, Charles Krauthammer said Monday night.
“[Obama] said ‘well, we didn’t really know this was going to happen, but it was a result of poor crafting of the law.’ Now, in fact, what it was is a result of the fundamental principle of the law,” Krauthammer said.
The principle of Obamacare, Krauthammer said, is to subsidize the uninsured by kicking people off of their plans and making them pay “excessively” for things they don’t need.
Krauthammer: Matt Drudge is a ‘genius,’ ‘greatest headline writer in the history of mankind’
“I always marvel at people who can sort of see the future or see what it is in your time that there is a need for and create it,” Krauthammer told The Daily Caller. ”Like Amazon or, you know, Apple. But here it’s without having to write an algorithm just to figure it out. He’s the greatest headline writer in the history of mankind. That’s what he does.”
Drudge has “tremendous influence over the culture,” Krauthammer added.
It’s remarkable how President Obama “discovers” things so late in his tenure, Charles Krauthammer said Tuesday night.
“Remember at the beginning [of his administration], he spends a near trillion dollars on the stimulus and then discovers afterward that ‘shovel ready’ really doesn’t exist?” Krauthammer said. “And then he told us just a few days ago, he discovered how, you know that, purchasing health insurance is not easy, it’s rather difficult.”
“…the so-called civil war among conservatives is vastly overblown and promoted mostly by liberal and the mainstream media [because] they want to see the divisions exacerbated.”
John Shinkle/POLITICO
Today’s Daily Hammer: Politico’s article “Krauthammer on Krauthammer” tells us less–considering its length–than I hoped. But that may only be true for the over-saturated news junkies among us, already exposed to much of this material. What is original here I believe, are the quotes from various players. Confirmed in these quotes: Krauthammer is widely admired and respected, by allies and opponents alike. Almost universally so. (I have my own list of disagreements, but they’re usually minor)
One comical exception stands out (not counting fellow conservatives who have a legitimate beef with Charles, like Limbaugh and Levin) The NYT’s insulated Queen of Clueless, Paul Krugman. Krugman’s quote is juvenile, petulant, condescending. He couldn’t be bothered. It’s an embarrassing comment, unintentionally revealing. I highlighted it. So, from last week’s Politico, enjoy today’s edition of The Daily Hammer:
Charles Krauthammer was surprised when President Barack Obama invited him to the White House last month.
Since Obama took office, the columnist and Fox News contributor has been among the most forceful critics of the president’s policies. Krauthammer’s long been widely read among conservatives, but has recently raised his prominence with unrelenting and searing attacks on the president’s health care plan, proclaiming earlier this month that the “unraveling” of Obamacare, the administration, and the Democratic Senate majority could amount to nothing less than “the collapse of American liberalism.”
With Obama’s approval rating at an all-time low, and the Republican establishment at odds with the conservative base, Krauthammer had become more than “critic in chief.” Blending high-mindedness with strong conservative values, he has commanded respect on both the extreme and moderate sides of the spectrum, becoming the closest thing the factionalized GOP could have to a spokesperson, a de facto opposition leader for the thinking right.
A new collection explains why Charles Krauthammer turned right at the crossroads
Stefan Kanfer writes: TGIF has assumed a new meaning for Charles Krauthammer’s ever-growing legion of fans. Every Friday, with the regularity of a metronome, his column appears in the op-ed section of the Washington Post. It is immediately discussed and analyzed, sent to friends via e-mail and fax, snipped out and attached with refrigerator magnets, and widely quoted in the media.
A famously liberal newspaper would seem an unlikely home for conservative opinion. But the Post has its whimsical side, and so does Krauthammer. Tracking the course of his career, for example, he recalls the question of a wide-eyed reporter: “How do I get to be a nationally syndicated columnist?” The reply: “First go to medical school.” In fact, that’s how the commentator did start on his epic journey. What he neglected to mention, however, were the detours encountered en route to the Post and Fox News.
Educated at McGill University and Oxford, the young Canadian entered Harvard Medical School in 1970. His first year at Harvard had barely begun when he was severely injured in a diving accident. The spinal damage was irreparable; he would never walk again. For a lesser soul this would have meant, at best, years of rehabilitation and a change of profession. But Krauthammer was fiercely ambitious and academically brilliant. Confined to his bed for 14 months, he stayed the course and graduated with his class. After that came a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, followed by a move to Washington, D. C. In the early 1980s, while engaged in medical research, he began writing speeches for Vice President Walter Mondale and contributing essays to the New Republic and Time. At that point, Time was at its most schizophrenic. In one issue, readers would find Strobe Talbott writing “How Israel Is Like Iraq.” In another, Krauthammer would object to “the conscious deployment of a double standard directed at the Jewish state and at no other state in the world.”
President Obama’s decision to tell people they could keep the healthcare they liked was not only unwise, it was untrue and the president knew it, Charles Krauthammer said Friday night.
“So now, it resolves the issue — was he himself deceived or ignorant of the law? Or did he know?” Krauthammer said.
Krauthammer went on the blast Obama for saying that only those who the CBO said it would get a better deal would get forced off their plans.
“I mean, this is compounding his problem of saying the truth,” he said.
President Obama flat-out lied when he told people that they could keep their insurance if they liked it, Charles Krauthammer says.
“When you add the word ‘period’ [to that statement], what you mean is there’s no context, there’re no percentages . . . there’s no extenuation, there’re no explanations — it’s ‘period.’ . . . and that’s the reason it passed,” Krauthammer said during his panel appearance on Special Report.
Krauthammer went on to accuse the president of believing that his rhetoric supersedes reality.
“He gives a speech a couple of weeks ago . . . in which he gives out the 800 number . . . and today he did the same thing, telling people whose policies are cancelled that they’re going to get improvements,” Krauthammer said. “He actually imagined [that] if he says something, it trumps reality.”
Sterling Beard writes: The cancellation of health-insurance policies is the first blow to Obamacare after the launch of the glitch-ridden federal health exchange, Charles Krauthammer said Monday night.
“I mean, it’s almost a parody of the definition of a liberal…”
Speaking during a panel appearance on Special Report, Krauthammer criticized the minimum coverage requirements for plans, deriding those rules for causing the cancellations. “You have a plan, you like the plan, you want the plan, but [the government calls] it substandard because some expert in Washington had written a regulation which it doesn’t meet or fit, and we’re going to cancel it on you,” he said.
“…which is: somebody who doesn’t care what you do as long as it’s mandatory.”
Read his writings, and you’ll see a man whose conservatism echoes the late British philosopher Michael Oakeshott more than Ted Cruz: conservatism as a disposition rather than an ideology. (Photo by Michael Temchine)
TIMOTHY P. CARNEY writes: Republican disarray and infighting ate up most conservative commentary in the first few weeks of October. What was Ted Cruz thinking? Will John Boehner show some backbone? Can anyone lead this party?
But the Right’s most prominent commentator kept his eye trained on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. “For all the hyped indignation over GOP anarchism,” Charles Krauthammer’s Oct. 10 Washington Post column began, “there has been remarkable media reticence about the president’s intransigence.”
Krauthammer isn’t a Ted Cruz cheerleader — he’s knocked Cruz and his allies as the “Kamikaze Brigade.” Krauthammer also isn’t above intra-Republican fighting — he spearheaded the 2002 campaign to oust Trent Lott from the Senate majority leader job after Lott’s offhand praise for Strom Thurmond’s segregationist presidential campaign.
Krauthammer just believes that President Obama deserves more scrutiny and criticism than he’s getting — that Obama’s leftward pull on the country poses real danger. And nobody is in a better position to provide that criticism than Krauthammer.
Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell’s declaration that there will be no “climate change deniers” in her department is not totalitarian, but it is arrogant and anti-scientific, Dr. Charles Krauthammer said on Special Report.
“The entire idea of science is that you are open to contrary evidence—it’s the definition of a scientific theory,” Krauthammer said, and he declared the fact that government bureaucrats and “political hacks” are calling climate change a settled science “scandalous.”
We’re just inviting you to take a timeout into the rhythmic ambiance of our breakfast, brunch and/or coffee selections. We are happy whenever you stop by.
said, and agree to help arm the 
The increasingly annoyed Charles Krauthammer writes: Early in the Ukraine crisis, when the Europeans were working on bringing Ukraine into the EU system and Vladimir Putin was countering with threats and bribes, one British analyst lamented that “we went to a knife fight with a baguette.”That was three months ago. Life overtakes parody. During the Ukrainian prime minister’s visit to Washington last week, his government urgently requested military assistance. The Pentagon refused. It offered instead military ration kits.
pundit from another planet 