Showing posts with label Democrats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democrats. Show all posts

Monday, August 03, 2015

WELFARE STATE SUCCESS STORY #8,091: More Kids Living In Poverty Now Than During Great Recession

By Nick Sorrentino

A picture from an Indian reservation in South Dakota. American Indians have gotten the rawest deal in America as a group, and the US government has managed their affairs to a large degree since conquering them. So what does that tell you?
This is what happens when government layers regulations on top of regulations. When it makes it very difficult to start businesses. When it encourages government dependence for electoral reasons. (It does. I hate that it does, but it does.) When government rewards companies which partner with politicians with taxpayer money and favors.This is what happens when the people running the show in Washington abandon the spirit of free enterprise, the spirit of freedom, and instead embrace the languid mediocrity of the welfare state.

No child should be hungry. But the welfare state is not the way to keep bellies full. Non-profits need to be empowered, and government and the dependence it creates must be reduced in a real way. (This must be done over time but with tangible and verifiable milestones. Corporate dependence needs to be cut tomorrow however.)

Cue this story in USA Today:

NEW BOOK BY OBAMA’S PARTNER IN PEACE: Denies Holocausts, Calls for Destruction of Israel

By The Tower

A new book by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei refers to the Holocaust as “a propaganda ploy” and promotes the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, Iran expert Amir Taheri wrote Saturday for The New York Post.

Taheri wrote that he received a copy of the book, currently available only in Iran, from a friend living there. In the book, Khamenei writes that his plan does not involve a plan to “massacre the Jews” or engage in “classical wars” to destroy Israel. Rather, his goal is to engage Israel in a long period of “low-intensity warfare,” which would prompt most Israeli Jews to leave for the safety of other countries.

Khamenei boasts about the success of his plans to make life impossible for Israelis through terror attacks from Lebanon and Gaza. His latest scheme is to recruit “fighters” in the West Bank to set up Hezbollah-style units.

“We have intervened in anti-Israel matters, and it brought victory in the 33-day war by Hezbollah against Israel in 2006 and in the 22-day war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip,” he boasts.

Khamenei describes Israel as “a cancerous tumor” whose elimination would mean that “the West’s hegemony and threats will be discredited” in the Middle East. In its place, he boasts, “the hegemony of Iran will be promoted.”

Khamenei’s plan would allow Jews with “genuine roots” to remain in Israel as “protected minorities.” At some point, Israel would revert to United Nations control, and a referendum of Palestinians and their descendants and any remaining Jews would be held “to create the new state of Palestine.”

Khamenei wrote that his proposal is not based on anti-Semitism, which he claimed was a European phenomenon, but on “well-established Islamic principles.” One of those principles is that any land that was once under Muslim control – which includes large chunks of Europe, China, and India – can never be ruled by non-Muslims.

John Kasich Has a $14 Billion Obamacare Problem

By Jason Hart, Ohio Watchdog

Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s habit of telling voters “Ohio money” pays for his Obamacare Medicaid expansion is about to catch up to him.

To silence conservative critics, Kasich says Obamacare expansion is bringing $14 billion of Ohio money back to Ohio from the federal government.

But that’s not how the expansion works — a fact Kasich’s opponents in a crowded Republican presidential primary are certain to point out.

There is no vault of “Ohio money” set aside to pay for Kasich’s Obamacare expansion, which has already increased federal welfare spending by $4 billion.

Matt Mayer, president of free-market think tank Opportunity Ohio, expects the governor’s message to fall apart when it’s challenged by other presidential candidates.

Sunday, August 02, 2015

OBAMA’S BIOGRAPHY: Some Assembly Required

By Lawrence Sellin

Bottom line up front: The political establishment and the media are hiding the greatest fraud and Constitutional crisis in American history to protect a hopelessly corrupt status quo.

They continue the charade while desperately trying to run out the clock on Obama because they know if the full truth about him was ever told, the American people would rise up with uncontainable anger against the permanent political class and their collaborators in the media. The vast majority of the members of our lawless one-party, political-media state would lose their jobs and many would go to prison.

Such a description would go a long way towards explaining why Obama, who never lets facts or logic get in the way of his political agenda, is undeterred by any legal constraints and why the Republican leadership is so submissive and cooperative. There may be subtle policy differences among them, but one thing is palpably clear to the political-media establishment - if he goes down, they all go down.

There is, in fact, no credible evidence that Obama was actually born anywhere.

The official version is that Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961 at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother was Stanley Ann Dunham, born in Wichita, Kansas, and his father, Barack Obama, Sr., from Kenya.

Neither Kapiʻolani nor Queens Medical Center, both in Honolulu, Hawaii have ever confirmed from their hospital records that Obama was born in either hospital.

It is worth noting that Hawaiian law allows the state to issue a certificate of live birth even if the child is born outside of Hawaii, provided that the parents have been legal residents for at least one year immediately preceding the birth. Many of those have been published in Hawaiian newspapers as local births.

At times during his life, Obama designated his birthplace as Kenya, and Joel Gilbert has presented a convincing account that his real father was Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party USA member and propagandist.

Who knows? Obama's life is a biographical jigsaw puzzle of poorly-fitting and missing pieces.

Display this one weird bumper sticker and watch liberal heads explode!

Spotted at Sobieski's feed:


Absolutely perfect.

Hat tip: BadBlue News.
 

Saturday, August 01, 2015

Obama Hiding Text of Iran Nuclear Deals And Unclassified Documents From the American People and... Congress

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism

Crucial aspects of the Iran nuclear deal remain hidden from the public, and in some instances, from the American government, Bloomberg reports.

In a closed-door session with House members Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that two side deals between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were reached. Kerry said he neither read nor possesses the secret agreements.

According to U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., a member of the House Intelligence Committee who attended the closed-door session, Congress also is in the dark on these agreements.

"Kerry told me directly that he has not read the secret side deals. He told us the State Department does not have possession of these documents," Pompeo told Bloomberg View columnists Josh Rogin and Eli Lake.

Furthermore, other secret agreements kept from the public were presented to Congress on Monday – part of 18 documents the White House were required to disclose – including secret letters of understanding between the U.S., France, Germany , and the United Kingdom that outline some of the ambiguous aspects of the nuclear deal.

Seventeen of these documents are unclassified, yet they are stored in ultra-secure facilities intended for top-secret information, the Daily Beast reports. These extraordinary precautions indicate that the Obama administration is seeking to keep unclassified documents from reaching the public.

*CRUNCH* THIS POPCORN IS GETTING GOOD! Federal Judge Slaps Hillary and Huma With Full Disclosure Demands

By Judicial Watch

(31 July 2015, Washington DC) – Today U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the U.S. State Department to request that Hillary Clinton and her top aides confirm, under penalty of perjury, that they have produced all government records in their possession, return any other government records immediately, and describe their use of Hillary Clinton’s email server to conduct government business. The court issued the ruling late today after holding a status hearing in a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information lawsuit that sought records about Huma Abedin, the former Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). The lawsuit reopened last month because of revelations about Hillary Clinton’s email records.

The text of Judge Sullivan’s minute order, which was issued at 5:46 pm:

As agreed by the parties at the July 31, 2015 status hearing, the Government shall produce a copy of the letters sent by the State Department to Mrs. Hillary Clinton, Ms. Huma Abedin and Ms. Cheryl Mills regarding the collection of government records in their possession. These communications shall be posted on the docket forthwith. The Government has also agreed to share with Plaintiff’s counsel the responses sent by Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Abedin and Ms. Mills. These communications shall also be posted on the docket forthwith. In addition, as related to Judicial Watch’s FOIA requests in this case, the Government is HEREBY ORDERED to:

Friday, July 31, 2015

Improbable Dialogue Comix

Masterfully illustrated by our year-round summer intern, Biff Spackle (follow Biff on Twitter at @BiffSpackle).

You can see some of our all-time best comic strips here.
 

CHANGE, PART 1,803: Obama Edits Oath of Allegiance for New Americans, Deletes Pledge to Defend the U.S.

By Warner Todd Huston

Newly naturalized Americans will no longer have to pledge to defend the USA thanks to the Obama administration’s decision to remove the lines requiring new citizens to bear arms on behalf of the United States or perform noncombatant duties in the armed forces in times of war.

Obama’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ruled that effective on July 21 of this year, some candidates for naturalization will skip the services clause while taking the oath to become Americans.

So that means that in an age when people are streaming here to pretend to become Americans in order to commit acts of terror, now Obama won’t even ask them to voice the words that they will defend the USA.

The current oath reads as follows:

Here is the Ironclad Case for Impeaching IRS Head John Koskinen

By Logan Albright

Key members of the House Freedom Caucus are demanding that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen be removed from office. In an op-ed written for the Wall Street Journal, Reps. Jim Jordan and Ron DeSantis told President Obama that if the Commissioner is not removed, they will begin the proceedings to impeach him.

Modern Americans view impeachment with a sort of awe and reverence. To most, it seems like an inconceivably drastic thing to do. But it was not always this way, nor was it the intention of the founders. Impeachment has always been a practical tool for getting rid of bad actors in government and, given the amount of government corruption we see today, a tool that should be used with much greater frequency.

If there is any doubt that Koskinen is a worthy target for impeachment, let’s run down a few of his misdeeds since he assumed the office in 2013.

First, the IRS targeting scandal. In 2013, it emerged that the IRS had been targeting conservative non-profit groups, delaying their applications, demanding ridiculous amounts of paperwork including highly invasive personal questions, and general obstructing conservative grassroots activities. The American Enterprise Institute estimated that this depressed Republican voter turnout in the 2012 elections, and could have even made the difference between Barack Obama winning or losing.

Of course, this was all before Koskinen became commissioner, so what does it have to do with him? Koskinen assumed office in December 2013, during the ongoing investigation into the scandal. Any serious public servant would have done everything possible to clean up the agency and get to the bottom of the wrongdoing. Koskinen instead chose to obstruct. Koskinen responded to subpoenas for emails regarding the scandal with the unbelievable claim that all the emails from the specified time period had suddenly gone missing.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

DEMOCRAT POLICIES WORK! Which country is out of food, pays doctors $15 a month, and has no beer?

By Daniel Greenfield

Venezuela used to have oil literally coming out of the ground. Then the Socialists took over and under Hugo Chavez made it a model for the world... to run away from. Here's what's going on in Venezuela now.

Universal Health Care - Venezuela's widely praised government health care system is doing great. Doctors are being paid $15 a month

In some hospitals, they had less than a third of the medical supplies they require. Almost every patient told me they had to buy at least some of their drugs on the street.

Oncologists said that people who were diagnosed with breast cancer sometimes had to wait more than 18 months for treatment, while surgeons said that other patients often die while waiting for operations.

It's not just a lack of medicines that is making life difficult. Spiralling inflation, which topped 600 percent in July 2015, has meant that doctors' salaries are now worth less than £10 per month.

That's about $15 a month. But even that may be optimistic because Venezuelan currency is monopoly money. Obama had to bail out Cuba because Venezuela couldn't keep carrying Castro.

 It’s taken what, no more than a couple of decades, to turn an oil rich middle income country into something worse than most sub-Saharan economic wastelands (the minimum manufacturing wage in Ethiopia is currently $21 a month or so).

Minimum wage in Venezuela is now about $11 a month. But that's okay because there's no food to buy so the government is just confiscating it from farmers, Bolshevik style.

Sanctuary Cities Represent Naked Crimes against the American people

Testimony of Jessica M. Vaughan before Congress:

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the public safety problems created when local governments adopt policies that obstruct immigration enforcement, commonly known as sanctuary policies. According to ICE records, as of October 2014 there were 276 such jurisdictions in the United States. Over an eight-month period in 2014, more than 8,100 criminal aliens who were the subject of detainers were instead released back to the streets as a result of local non-cooperation policies. Approximately two-thirds of these individuals had a serious criminal history at the time of their release. Nearly 1,900 have subsequently re-offended. Only 28 percent have been re-apprehended by ICE.

Sanctuary policies do nothing to build trust between immigrant communities and local law enforcement. They do not improve access to law enforcement services for immigrants; nor have they been shown to increase the likelihood that more immigrant crime victims will report crimes. On the contrary, they destroy the trust of the community at large that the laws will be faithfully enforced to preserve the quality of life for all.

Despite widespread public outrage at the San Francisco Sheriff’s policies that caused the release of a man with five prior deportations and seven felony convictions, and who was the subject of an ICE detainer, who then went on to kill Kathryn Steinle, it is clear that some jurisdictions will not budge from their criminal alien sanctuary policies. To make matters worse, the Obama administration’s new Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) explicitly allows local jurisdictions to obstruct ICE – and also establishes the entire country as a sanctuary for nearly all illegal aliens by further narrowing enforcement priorities and severely restricting the ability of ICE officers to deport removable aliens, including many with criminal records. Therefore, Congress must step in to correct the situation by a) clarifying in the law that local law enforcement agencies are expected to comply with ICE detainers; b) establishing that local law enforcement agencies will have qualified immunity when cooperating in good faith; c) implementing sanctions for those jurisdictions that continue to refuse to obstruct enforcement; and d) reversing the Obama administration’s non-enforcement policies.

Where Have All the Bullets Gone?

By James Simpson

Since the day President Obama was elected, gun owners have been on an unprecedented buying spree, purchasing everything from .22 ammunition to every kind of semi-automatic firearm available.

Their fears are not unwarranted — especially because, for a while, the federal government seemed to be racing private owners to buy the ammo first.

Closer examination shows that some fears of federal activity on this front are overblown. Others, though, are deeply rooted in legitimate concerns.

While Obama claims to support “common-sense” gun laws, he has made high-profile public announcements telegraphing his anti-gun intentions and engaged in behind-the-scenes gun control — tweaking government regulations to deny gun rights to veterans, seeking the same for Social Security recipients, and using the ATF to ban certain types of popular ammo. Calling guns more dangerous than terrorism, Obama recently indicated he’ll devote the rest of his time as president to gun control.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

John Kerry’s War: Nuclear Shot and Chaser

John Kerry yesterday in the House of Representatives:
REP. REID RIBBLE: For 228 years, the Constitution allowed treaties to [pass] with the advice and consent of 67 U.S. Senators. Why is this not considered a treaty?

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Well Congressman, I spent quite a few years trying to get a lot of treaties through the United States Senate, and it has become physically impossible... That's why. Because you can't pass a treaty anymore. It has become impossible to schedule, to pass, and I sat there leading the charge on the Disabilities Treaty which fell to basically ideology and politics. So I think that is the reason why.
John Kerry today in the Senate:

THUNDER: Federal Judge Threatens to Hold IRS Chief and DOJ Attorneys in Contempt of Court Over Lerner Cover-Up

By Judicial Watch

U.S District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan today threatened to hold the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court after the IRS failed to produce status reports and newly recovered emails of Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS, as he had ordered on July 1, 2015.

During the a status hearing today, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow his order was serious and the IRS and Justice Department’s excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.” He asked the IRS’ Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas, “Why didn’t the IRS comply” with his court order and “why shouldn’t the Court hold the Commissioner of the IRS in contempt.” Judge Sullivan referenced his contempt findings against Justice Department prosecutors in the prosecution of late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and reminded the Justice Department attorney he had the ability to detain him for contempt. Warning he would tolerate no further disregard of his orders, Judge Sullivan said, “I will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt.”

After the hearing, Judge Sullivan issued the following “minute order”:

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

MARTIN PERETZ: The Democrat Party is on the Edge of the Abyss

By Martin Peretz, Editor-in-chief of The New Republic, 1974-2013

How the party of FDR and JFK deals with the Iran agreement will determine its credibility on foreign policy for decades to come.

Two of the most powerful members of the Democratic Party, former and current senators from New York, now hold the fate of the putative deal with Iran in their hands. Because they alone can overturn it, this means that presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and presumptive Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer carry a heavy burden that will deeply affect their personal reputations and, most probably, the trustworthiness of the Democrats in foreign policy for at least a generation.

Their former senatorial colleagues Barack Obama, Joe Biden and John Kerry already own their decision, though their logic still remains unclear to both the most diligent and the most casual observer. The president asserts that his piece of paper will prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, presuming both the honesty of a regime that has displayed mendacity and hostility for 35 years as well as the existence of a wide-ranging verification capability that his own agreement has fatally compromised. And then, of course, there is the sunset provision that enables Iran to acquire nuclear weapons anyway. As they congratulate themselves on the hard work that produced this bizarre document—Bloomberg News related that “[a]ll present were in a kind of awe”—have these former Solons stopped to wonder why Iran negotiated in the first place when their leaders still insist on claiming they don’t want nuclear weapons? The entire process is built on lies. If the Iranians didn’t want nukes, then why would they want a time limit?

Of course the Iranians are dissimulating—they want the funds that come from sanctions relief, the legitimacy that comes from press conferences with great powers in central Europe, and, finally, an eased path to nuclear weapons. They have managed to achieve all three, without having to pause their “Death to America” street rallies, return their American hostages, curb their aggression in the Middle East, or release their defrauded presidential candidates from house arrest. (Nor has the U.S. President seen fit to even mention these ongoing depredations.) On the U.S. side, the assertion is that Iran will modify its irredentist behavior, even as its last demand (to which Obama and Kerry shamefully caved) was to lift the arms and ballistic missile embargos. Not exactly evidence-based decision-making when you consider the Ayatollah Khamenei’s comment just this weekend: “Our policies toward the arrogant government of the United States will not be changed at all.”

PLUNDER AND DECEIT: Mark Levin Pulls Back the Curtain on an Ominous Future for America’s Next Generation

Author, radio show host and Constitutional attorney Mark R. Levin has written a fifth consecutive bestseller. Entitled Plunder and Deceit, it serves as a comprehensive guide to one of the nation's great mysteries.

Why, for the first time in modern history, do the majority of Americans now believe that their children will be worse off than they are?

The reasons are manifold. Consistent with his prior works on topics of law and government, Levin describes a national political system that has completely unshackled itself from the Constitutional bonds that were intended to limit its scope and power. The hundred-year effort by the progressive movement to implement socialism in America has finally reached a terminal stage.

Americans are no fools; they know that, despite the government's best efforts to position economic data as good news, the future is very bleak indeed.

It is not simply the fact that the federal government is borrowing, spending and printing currency on a scale never before seen in world history. Its debts and unfunded obligations are, by some estimates, over $200 trillion and have accelerated from merely insane under George W. Bush to flatly suicidal at the direction of Barack Obama. It is certain that, without a rapid course correction, the economy is on the road to long-term collapse.

And, ominously enough, that is the assessment not of a right-wing pundit, but the very government auditors and trustees charged with fiscal oversight. The CBO, the OMB and the Trustees of Social Security have all sounded the alarm as the metrics that underpin government solvency rapidly unwind.

The financial health of the federal government aside, Levin points to a series of poor -- and, in all likelihood, unconstitutional -- decisions that have stolen powers from the states, localities and people and instead placed them in the hands of central planners in Washington.

More "Deleted" Lois Lerner Emails Revealed...

No, not by the feckless boobs John Boehner and Darrell Issa.

But by Judicial Watch, again. There's copy of the dump here.

It's long past time to impeach John Koskinen.
 

CURRENT OBAMA PLAN TO CLOSE GUANTANAMO BAY HAS ONE TINY FLAW: It’s Illegal

Not that appears to have ever stopped this particular president. That said, Molly O'Toole at DefenseOne describes yet another bizarre White House plan to endanger Americans.

White House officials say they’re getting close to delivering a plan to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as Congress has demanded for years. There’s one problem: a key part is illegal — at least for now.

Current U.S. law forbids the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to prisons on U.S. soil — and yet there are some prisoners who cannot be sent anywhere else, Deputy National Security Advisor Lisa Monaco said Saturday.

“We are going to whittle down this group to what I refer to as the irreducible minimum, who would have to be brought here to a secure location, held under the laws of war, continuing under military detention, and that’s the only way we’re going to be able to close Guantanamo,” Monaco said at the Aspen Security Forum. These prisoners would be prosecuted in the military justice system or federal courts and subjected to a “supermax cell,” Monaco said. “Ultimately, that’s the way we’re gonna do it.”

“We gotta work with Congress,” she said, “but right now we aren’t even able to put that facility together because of the legal restrictions.”

Not only is it currently illegal to bring Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S. for prosecution or detention, the federal government is forbidden to spend any money to “assist” in doing so. This means no funding to build a U.S. prison to hold them, or improve an existing one, or even to perform an in-depth study on related options. This has left national security leaders to plan the future of U.S. detention while trying to avoid the appearance of spending taxpayer-funded time on options for moving detainees to U.S. soil.

Say, I've got an idea: let's have Lois Lerner and John Koskinen do all the planning for this patently illegal operation and the cover-up which is sure to follow. They appear to have all of the necessary experience.
 
 
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
 

HOUSE CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS: Top 5 Reasons IRS Commissioner John Koskinen Must be Impeached

In the wake of the Obama administration scandal that saw the IRS illegally targeting conservatives and pro-Israel groups for daring to oppose Democrat policies, little has been done. The administration appears to be in full cover-up mode, with "crashed" hard-drives, missing emails, and lost backup tapes.

Hoping to jumpstart scrutiny of the IRS's plainly illegal activities, House representatives Jim Jordan and Ron Desantis offer a powerful argument that IRS chief John Koskinen should be immediately terminated by the President. And, if Mr. Obama refuses, that Congress should impeach the head of the troubled agency. Writing at the Wall Street Journal, Jordan and Desantis offer five clear reasons for their recommendation (emphases mine):

Destruction of evidence. Lois Lerner, at the time the director of the IRS’s exempt-organizations unit, invoked the Fifth Amendment on May 22, 2013, when appearing before Congress; her refusal to testify put a premium on obtaining and reviewing her email communications. On the same day the IRS’s chief technology officer issued a preservation order that instructed IRS employees “not to destroy/wipe/reuse any of the existing backup tapes for email, or archiving of other information from IRS personal computers.”

Several weeks later, on Aug. 2, the House Oversight Committee issued its first subpoena for IRS documents, including all of Ms. Lerner’s emails. On Feb. 2, 2014, Kate Duval, the IRS commissioner’s counsel, identified a gap in the Lerner emails that were being collected. Days later, Ms. Duval learned that the gap had been caused in 2011 when the hard drive of Ms. Lerner’s computer crashed.

Despite all this—an internal IRS preservation order, a congressional subpoena, and knowledge about Ms. Lerner’s hard-drive and email problems—the Treasury inspector general for tax administration discovered that the agency on March 4, 2014, erased 422 backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 emails. (Congress learned of the discovery only last month.)

Ms. Duval has since left the IRS and now works at the State Department, where she is responsible for vetting Hillary Clinton’s emails sought by congressional investigations of the Benghazi attacks.