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Posts Tagged ‘obama’

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Let’s return to the golden years of the Clinton presidency

Posted by Richard on March 6, 2014

On Tuesday, President Obama unveiled his Fiscal Year 2015 budget proposal, for what it’s worth (not much, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, which describes it as “[i]ncomplete, inconclusive, and indecipherable”). He proposes to spend $3.901 trillion (that’s $3,901,000,000,000), almost $1 trillion (33%) more than in 2008. The Obama administration describes this budget as ending the “era of austerity.” The “era of austerity” is apparently FY2012 and FY2013, when actual outlays declined by a whopping 4% from the stimulus-swollen FY2011 level.

Me, I’d rather look back at a different “era.” Remember Bill “the era of big government is over” Clinton? He’s revered by the Socialist Democrats, and his eight years in office are viewed as some kind of golden age. Let’s set the Wayback Machine to FY1999, the last full fiscal year of the Clinton presidency.

Actual FY1999 outlays were $1.702 trillion. According to this price deflator calculator, that’s $2.266 trillion in 2013 dollars. About 42% lower than Obama’s proposed FY2015 budget. Now that’s what I call austerity — or at least a good start.

My memory isn’t what it used to be, but I don’t recall children starving, bridges collapsing, and old people dying in the streets during the Clinton years.

If we had a decent opposition party in this country, it would demand a return to Clinton-era spending levels, adjusted for inflation. Heck, I wouldn’t even mind too much if they threw in an adjustment for the 14% population growth since 1999 (even though there’s no logical reason why all federal spending should rise with population). That would still leave the budget 28% lower than Obama’s proposal.

Actually, it’s pointless spending a lot of time on the Obama budget proposal since it’s going nowhere. The Senate’s Socialist Democrats have already made it clear that they won’t be considering a budget resolution this year. Doing so would force all those vulnerable senators up for reelection to choose between rebuffing their president or going on record supporting higher taxes, more spending, and an ever-growing debt burden. This budget proposal is purely PR and talking points.

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Yet another executive decree coming

Posted by Richard on March 4, 2014

The Chavinista who occupies the White House is about to change the law by executive decree yet again. Ed Morrissey:

How blatant is this latest unilateral change from the Obama administration on the law they claim is working well? The Hill can’t avoid connecting the dots in its lead sentence:

The Obama administration is set to announce another major delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act, easing election pressure on Democrats.

As early as this week, according to two sources, the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet ObamaCare’s minimum coverage requirements.

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Prolonging the “keep your plan” fix will avoid another wave of health policy cancellations otherwise expected this fall.

The cancellations would have created a firestorm for Democratic candidates in the last, crucial weeks before Election Day.

Actually, HHS thought they had already avoided that outcome with its previous extension. That pushed off the deadline for plans to meet the requirements of ObamaCare until January 1, 2015, which is after the midterms. However, none of the geniuses at HHS seemed to know that insurers have to send out cancellation notices 90 days in advance, which would mean that letters would go out no later than October 1 … five weeks or so before the vote.

D’oh!

There seems to be wide agreement among legal scholars — even staunch liberals such as Jonathan Turley — that the President’s executive decrees are unconstitutional and undermine the separation of powers. Yet everyone seems to agree that nothing can be done about it because no one has “legal standing” to challenge these edicts — they don’t “create a sufficiently concrete injury for standing.”

Personally, I think that destroying my right to live under a government of laws, not of men, and to have those laws made by my elected representatives as mandated by the Constitution is a pretty significant injury. But I’m not a legal expert with an Ivy League degree.

Dr. Larry Kawa is arguing, with the help of Judicial Watch, that he does have standing, having spent significant time and money to ensure that his orthodontics practice is in compliance with the law as written. He has appealed the district court’s dismissal of his lawsuit to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. More power to him.

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Obama skipped today’s national security meeting on Ukraine

Posted by Richard on March 1, 2014

This news is causing a lot of reaction across the interwebs:

WASHINGTON — President Obama had no public events on his schedule today, yet skipped a meeting of his national security team at the White House today as they huddled over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Seen leaving the meeting at the White House were Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper,  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, and CIA Director John Brennan.

Vice President Joe Biden reportedly joined the meeting via videoconference, while Obama was briefed later by National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

No biggie. Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett will tell him what to do and say. As usual.

Besides, they were just talking about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not any of the really important national security concerns — like obesity, climate change, and an obstructionist Congress.

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Palin’s prescience

Posted by Richard on March 1, 2014

During the 2008 campaign, Sarah Palin predicted that if the weak and feckless Sen. Obama were elected President, Vladimir Putin might invade Ukraine. She was laughed at by foreign policy experts.

Palin said then:

After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.

For those comments, she was mocked by the high-brow Foreign Policy magazine and its editor Blake Hounshell, who now is one of the editors of Politico magazine.

…

Hounshell wrote then that Palin’s comments were “strange” and “this is an extremely far-fetched scenario.”

“And given how Russia has been able to unsettle Ukraine’s pro-Western government without firing a shot, I don’t see why violence would be necessary to bring Kiev to heel,” Hounshell dismissively wrote.

Oops. Palin is now having the last laugh. Hounshell has acknowledged her prescience:

I didn’t see anything resembling an apology, however, although Moe Lane for one suggested it was due:

I’m reminded of how the left mocked Palin for telling Tea Party groups to “party like it’s 1773” — blissfully unaware that that was the year of the Boston Tea Party. When you repeatedly make fun of someone for being a stupid yahoo, and they’re repeatedly proven wiser and more knowledgeable than you, shouldn’t you feel some embarrassment and shame?

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Vodkapundit is drunkblogging the SOTU

Posted by Richard on January 28, 2014

Go here to follow Stephen Green’s drunkblogging of the State of the Union address/speech/harangue. Believe me, it’s a lot more entertaining than listening to the Prez.

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Barry explains Cloward-Piven Strategy

Posted by Richard on January 18, 2014

From Lt. Col. Allen West:

This brilliantly simple review of the Obama administration’s plan for our nation via Cloward-Piven was emailed to me by a fellow Georgian, retired Marine fighter pilot Colonel Orson Swindle who was John McCain’s roommate at the Hanoi Hilton.

It all makes perfect sense. … Read. Then weep.

Young Barry Soetoro explains Cloward-Piven

(HT: Doug Giles)

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Obama Justice Department organized and promoted anti-Zimmerman protests

Posted by Richard on July 10, 2013

Wow. Just wow. Venezuela ain’t got nothin’ on us. We’ve truly become a banana republic (emphasis in original):

Document: DOJ Community Relations Service was deployed to Sanford, FL, “to provide technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies related to the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old African American male.” 

Washington, D.C. – Judicial Watch announced today that has obtained documents in response to local, state, and federal records requests revealing that a little-known unit of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Community Relations Service (CRS), was deployed to Sanford, FL, following the Trayvon Martin shooting to help organize and manage rallies and protests against George Zimmerman.

JW filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requested with the DOJ on April 24, 2012; 125 pages were received on May 30, 2012. JW administratively appealed the request on June 5, 2012, and received 222 pages more on March 6, 2013. According to the documents:

  • March 25 – 27, 2012, CRS spent $674.14 upon being “deployed to Sanford, FL, to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.”
  • March 25 – 28, 2012, CRS spent $1,142.84 “in Sanford, FL to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.
  • March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent $892.55 in Sanford, FL “to provide support for protest deployment in Florida.”
  • March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent an additional $751.60 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance to the City of Sanford, event organizers, and law enforcement agencies for the march and rally on March 31.”
  • April 3 – 12, 2012, CRS spent $1,307.40 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance, conciliation, and onsite mediation during demonstrations planned in Sanford.”
  • April 11-12, 2012, CRS spent $552.35 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies related to the fatal shooting of a 17 year old African American male.” – expenses for employees to travel, eat, sleep?

No, the documents reveal that the employees were “Thomas Battles, Regional Director, and Mildred De Robles, Miami-Dade Coordinator and their co-workers at the U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Service,” so they were already stationed in the area, not “deployed” from Washington. The expenses (admittedly small potatoes as far as government expenditures go; but still …) were probably for things like meeting rooms, “working lunches,” and maybe sign printing.

…

Set up under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the DOJ’s CRS, the employees of which are required by law to “conduct their activities in confidence,” reportedly has greatly expanded its role under President Barack Obama. Though the agency claims to use “impartial mediation practices and conflict resolution procedures,” press reports along with the documents obtained by Judicial Watch suggest that the unit deployed to Sanford, FL, took an active role in working with those demanding the prosecution of Zimmerman.

On April 15, 2012, during the height of the protests, the Orlando Sentinel reported, “They [the CRS] helped set up a meeting between the local NAACP and elected officials that led to the temporary resignation of police Chief Bill Lee according to Turner Clayton, Seminole County chapter president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.” The paper quoted the Rev. Valarie Houston, pastor of Allen Chapel AME Church, a focal point for protestors, as saying “They were there for us,” after a March 20 meeting with CRS agents.

Separately, in response to a Florida Sunshine Law request to the City of Sanford, Judicial Watch also obtained an audio recording of a “community meeting” held at Second Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Sanford on April 19, 2012. The meeting, which led to the ouster of Sanford’s Police Chief Bill Lee, was scheduled after a group of college students calling themselves the “Dream Defenders” barricaded the entrance to the police department demanding Lee be fired.  According to the Orlando Sentinel, DOJ employees with the CRS had arranged a 40-mile police escort for the students from Daytona Beach to Sanford.

“These documents detail the extraordinary intervention by the Justice Department in the pressure campaign leading to the prosecution of George Zimmerman,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “My guess is that most Americans would rightly object to taxpayers paying government employees to help organize racially-charged demonstrations.”

I wonder if Department of Justice Community Relations Service employees will be “providing support” for the riots that many in the media are expecting when George is Zimmerman is (quite properly) acquitted.

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A boundless imperial presidency

Posted by Richard on March 6, 2013

I feel like I’ve been transported to an alternate universe. Sen. Rand Paul asked Obama administration officials repeatedly over a period of weeks whether “the President has the power to authorize the use of lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial.” After stonewalling for weeks, they finally responded by saying essentially that they haven’t assassinated anyone yet, they currently have no plans to do so, but they might in the future if an American posed, in the President’s judgment, an “imminent threat.”

AG Eric Holder maintained that “[a]s a policy matter” the administration rejects the use of military force against Americans on US soil when it isn’t necessary, and rejected Sen. Paul’s question as “entirely hypothetical.” In other words, they think the President has the authority to order Hellfire missile strikes on Americans in the United States if he decides it’s necessary.

Sen. Paul is filibustering the nomination of John Brennan as CIA Director. He offered to end his filibuster if the Obama administration submitted a clear, concise statement outlining its position regarding the President’s authority and the legal basis for its position. No response. Earlier this evening, he offered to end his filibuster if the Senate by unanimous consent suspended the rules and voted on a “sense of the Senate” resolution declaring that the President may not use drones to assassinate  Americans on US soil who don’t pose an imminent threat. Sen. Dick Durbin (who during a previous administration compared the guards at Gitmo to Nazis, Stalinists, and the Khmer Rouge) objected. Senate Democrats refuse to say that killing Americans on US soil who pose no threat is wrong; in fact, they refuse to go on record one way or the other on the question.

Does that sound like we’re still a free people? Does that sound like we still have the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Does that sound like we’re still a government of laws and not of men?

I fear for my country. The spirit of Hugo Chavez is alive and well in Washington, D.C.

I can only hope that the outrage over this assertion of unlimited Presidential power and the support for Sen. Paul continue to grow and have significant and lasting effects. I #StandWithRand.

And I may have to go ahead and buy an AR-15 now, regardless of price.

UPDATE: As of 11:20 PM (MT), the top trend on Twitter is no longer #StandWithRand (it had been for much of the day). It’s dropped to second — behind Sen. Rand Paul and just ahead of #filibuster.

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Spending problem? What spending problem?

Posted by Richard on February 12, 2013

On Fox News Sunday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who thinks that increasing unemployment benefits is the best way to grow the economy, insisted that we don’t have a spending problem, we merely have a “budget deficit problem.” In other words, the current spending level is just fine, but the federal government needs a lot more revenue. This is apparently the official Socialist Democrat position:

Pelosi’s motion was seconded by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) on NBC’s Meet the Press, where Durbin laughably explained that the sequester was “designed as a budget threat, not as a budget strategy” – and stated that the only approach to solving the budget problem was to raise taxes again.

President Obama himself agreed with that perspective in his weekly online address. The budget sequester he signed off on – the sequester proposal he insisted upon – is now the Republicans’ fault. Obama claims that if the sequester goes through, “firefighters and food inspectors” will bear the brunt of the cuts, as well as cancer research and people with disabilities. It’s the usual liberal demagogic approach to any problem: world to end tomorrow, minorities hit hardest.

Obama’s solution: tax increases. Again. “Congress should pass a similar set of balanced cuts and close more tax loopholes until they can find a way to replace the sequester with a smarter, longer-term solution,” said Obama.

Of course, Obama has been on this “not a spending problem” kick for months. He infamously informed House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) that there is no spending problem back during the fiscal cliff debate.

This morning on CNBC, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer joined the “no spending problem” chorus and, when pressed on the issue, yelled “Bush!”:

“Sir, does the country have a spending problem?” Caruso-Cabrera asked.

“Does the country have a – the country has a paying-for problem,” Hoyer replied. “We haven’t paid for what we’ve bought.”

“Are we promising too much?” Caruso-Cabrera pressed.

“Absolutely,” Hoyer agreed. “If we don’t pay, we shouldn’t buy.”

“How is that different from a spending problem?” She followed up.

“We spent a lot of money when George Bush was President of the United States,” Hoyer replied.

At a press briefing, Hoyer reinforced the “we need more revenue” message:

“It’s not a question of a spending problem. Nobody has a spending problem if they have the resources to pay for what they spend. No family, if they can afford what it buys, has a spending problem. The problem becomes when you spend, buy and don’t pay,” the Maryland Democrat told reporters at a pen-and-pad briefing Tuesday.

Deficits, on the other hand, “are destabilizing to the economy and dangerous for future generations and rob generations,” he added. “When they say we have a spending problem — we have a paying problem.”

Expect to hear the word “invest” on multiple occasions during tonight’s SOTU speech. That’s the President’s code for “spend more, not less.”

The Socialist Democrats aren’t satisfied with a federal budget that’s almost 25% of GDP. They’re shooting for 30%, 40%, … I suspect that to the Socialist Democrats, the lowest acceptable level of federal spending is always more than whatever the current level is.

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Alinskying Obama

Posted by Richard on February 4, 2013

By now, you’ve probably seen the picture released by the White House of the President allegedly skeet shooting. Did you know that the White House has strict rules limiting how such official photos can be used and prohibits altering them in any way? Of course, this edict has failed to deter countless wielders of PhotoShop. Resistor in the Rockies, citing Rule #5 from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (“Ridicule is Man’s Most Potent Weapon”), has collected a ton of them. Prepare to ROTFL.

Carl Bussjaeger has some, too, along with a good analysis of the original White House photo. His conclusion, which I find persuasive, is that it’s a fake. Obama may have posed with the shotgun on his shoulder, but the smoke plumes were PhotoShopped in afterwards to make it look like he was firing. Steve Sheldon, a “lifelong shotgunner,” came to the same conclusion. The administration is just trying to persuade the bitter clingers and other rubes that Obama isn’t really anti-gun, despite a political lifetime of statements and actions to the contrary.

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Screwed-up cabinet choices

Posted by Richard on January 31, 2013

Nearly unanimously, the Senate confirmed one of its own, John Kerry, as the next Secretary of State. Kerry accused American soldiers in Vietnam of raping, torturing, and murdering innocent men, women, and children and accused American soldiers in Iraq of “terrorizing kids and children [sic], you know, women …”

Now the Senate is getting ready to confirm a former member of that formerly august body, Chuck Hagel, as Secretary of Defense. Hagel has criticized “the Jewish lobby,” supported negotiating with Hamas and Hezbollah, opposed sanctions against Iran and the labeling of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, defended the Iranian regime countless times, and described the United States as “the world’s bully.”

Something is seriously wrong here. Even from the “diminish America” perspective of the Obama administration.

Shouldn’t Obama have nominated Kerry as Secretary of Defense and Hagel as Secretary of State?

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They have to change

Posted by Richard on December 17, 2012

Sunday evening, President Obama said in reaction to the NewTown, Connecticut, massacre that “we have to change.” He was right.

Obama and those who think like him have to change.

They have to abandon their irrational belief that laws are magic.

They have to realize that making someplace a “gun-free zone” doesn’t make the people there safer — it makes them less safe, because it only affects the peaceful, law-abiding, and harmless.

They have to admit that banning some weapon or weapons won’t deter madmen, terrorists, or other predators because it only affects the peaceful, law-abiding, and harmless.

Three decades ago, after a series of PLO terrorist attacks on schools, the Israelis realized that the only way to stop such attacks was to arm the adults at those schools. Are we too stupid to learn the lesson learned by those Israelis — that you stop someone from shooting your children by shooting back?

The problem at Sandy Hook Elementary school wasn’t too many guns — it was too few. The only guns in the school were in the hands of the deranged predator, Adam Lanza.

School principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach rushed Lanza in an attempt to stop him, but they were unarmed and defenseless. Lanza shot them down. Teacher Victoria Soto stood between Lanza and the door behind which her students were hiding. She too was gunned down.

What if Hochsprung, Sherlach, or Soto had had a .38 revolver and had been trained to use it? Could one of them have put two slugs center-mass into Lanza before he shot anyone else? We’ll never know.

But we do know this: the only way Lanza could have been stopped is if someone in that school had shot him.

Obama and those who think like him have to change.

They have to recognize that laws won’t keep weapons out of the hands of the bad guys. And they have to recognize that weapons in the hands of the good guys, and the will to use them, will save lives.

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McCain: “one of the dumbest questions I’ve ever heard”

Posted by Richard on November 14, 2012

The Blaze:

Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C), and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H) during a press conference on Wednesday called for an deeper investigation into the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans. But During the “Q&A” portion of that press conference, a reporter asked Sen. McCain whether he thought David Petraeus’ sex scandal posed a greater threat to national security than the Benghazi attack.

…

“Senator,” the reporter began, “do you think there’s a potentially greater national security threat in, apparently, nearly thousands of pages of classified documents ending up on the personal computer of a Tampa socialite … do you think that’s a potentially greater national security threat than what we’re talking about?”

“Well, I say with great respect,” Sen. McCain answered, “that’s one of the dumbest questions I’ve ever heard. Okay? There’s four dead Americans. Four dead Americans. Not a socialite.”

It’s not such a dumb question if you’re an Obamamedia reporter whose goal is not to report what’s most newsworthy, but to divert attention away from the terrorist attack on the consulate. It’s not such a dumb question if you want the nation to focus on the salacious details of a stupid extramarital affair by someone who might, if not discredited or intimidated into toeing the administration line, reveal embarrassing information about Benghazi-gate.

Remember the 90s, when extramarital affairs by high-ranking officials were “just sex” and unworthy of our attention?

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Obama wins, future looks bleak

Posted by Richard on November 6, 2012

My optimism of the past few months was sadly mistaken. I had this gut feeling that, when push came to shove, the majority of Americans would choose freedom, opportunity, and growth over entitlement, redistribution, and stagnation. I was wrong. Voters have chosen to emulate the sinking ship that is Europe (to borrow a metaphor from Dennis Prager).

If the President sticks by his campaign promise to continue doing what he’s been doing, the best-case scenario is that the United States will become France. The worst-case scenario is that we’ll become Greece.

I predict bull markets in guns, gold, and silver.

Assuming that the economy manages to limp along OK for another four years, I’ll be ready to retire around the end of the second Obama term. I don’t look forward to becoming a frail old man living in a major metropolitan area when the monetary system collapses and the social order breaks down. I may have to consider Plan B (“B” for Belize) or Plan C (“C” for Costa Rica). Assuming they don’t confiscate my wealth if I try to leave the country.

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Obama Jobs Council member backs Romney

Posted by Richard on November 2, 2012

According to the White House:

The President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness (Jobs Council) was created to provide non-partisan advice to the President on continuing to strengthen the Nation’s economy and ensure the competitiveness of the United States and on ways to create jobs, opportunity, and prosperity for the American people.

But the President hasn’t met with his Jobs Council since January. And he sure hasn’t followed the advice of Jobs Council members like Intel CEO Paul Otellini. Maybe that’s why Otellini has joined an impressive group of business leaders supporting Romney.

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