Obama speaks!

Obama finally shared his opinion on the ongoing Israeli conflict.

"I am being fully briefed and monitoring the situation on a day-to-day basis. The loss of civilian life in Gaza and in Israel is a source of concern to me. ... I am not backing away at all from what I said during the campaign, that starting at the beginning of our administration we are going to engage effectively and consistently in trying to resolve the conflicts that exist in the Middle East," Obama said. "I think it's not only right for the people of that region, it's right for the national security of the American people."

So after 11 days, his only opinion is that the loss of life is concerning. Well, no kidding!? Unfortunately that is all we have, Obama prefers to be mum on the matter and is waiting until he is dubbed king..err president to make a final statement. This is consistent with Obama's previous history of shying away from difficult choices. This assessment of the conflict can be best described as 'Present'.

Obama also made an interesting promise:

"Speaking to reporters from his transition office in Washington, Obama also addressed the dismal economic conditions in the U.S. He said he didn't want to get into specific budget numbers because the proposal is still being worked out with lawmakers and has yet to be submitted for debate, but he expects a trillion-dollar deficit before the next fiscal-year budget is even proposed.

He also pledged his stimulus plan, which many others have pegged at about $775 billion, will not include pork-barrel projects.

The package will set a "new higher standard of accountability, transparency and oversight. We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert projects without review," he said. "We're not having earmarks in the recovery package. Period."


The first obvious and glaring issue is that proposing 775 billion in a stimulus plan while warning of a trillion dollar deficit is slightly contradictory. Obama plans to fully pile on to our national debt in ways that are astonishing. Americans have probably become a bit numb to the hundreds of billions being spent, but to give it a perspective - 775B is about as much as we have spent in Iraq.

Secondly, promising NO pork on a 775B bill is extremely courageous. There is no chance in hell this will ever happen. Even the bloody TARP designed to bailout the financial industry contained numerous pork - how can he make such promises? I will be eagerly watching, perhaps I can be proven wrong.

I will also be creating an Obama Promise Watch page to keep track of all the promises made by Obama. I will keep track of them during his presidency.


Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/06/obama-discusses-gaa-massive-stimulus-plan/

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