Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Election 2008, Intelligence, National Security, Politics, Progressivism, Regulation, Terrorism, The Constitution | Tags: Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates
“Bret Baier talks with Mr. Obama’s three former defense secretaries, who all agree: inexperienced paranoid Obama staffers tried to micromanage the war on terror from the White House, believing that the military had it in for Obama, and shade their views to please the president. Taken together, it’s quite a damning portrait of a president deeply in over his head, and a world out of control as a result:”
In an interview with the New Yorker in 2008, the new President Obama said confidently:
I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.
That’s a quote that will continue to haunt him. But he hasn’t done a very good job of hiring aides and advisors. He has ignored the advice of the most capable, and paid too much attention to the sycophants. It’s all to easy to lap up the flattery from those who want to please, but when capable advisors tell you that you’re making a mistake — you’d better listen.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Election 2008, Foreign Policy, Immigration, Law, National Security, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: President Barack Obama, The Laws About Refugees, The War on Republicans
President Obama is accustomed to admiring treatment from most of the media most of the time. He was asked repeatedly at a press conference in Turkey on Monday why he continues to insist that he never underestimated ISIS, and his strategy, he believes, is working. Oddly enough, in the wake of terrorist attacks, and the Parisian roundup of the remaining terrorists who were responsible for ISIS attack on Paris, Obama has reserved his most intense anger for the Republicans. He says we’re playing into the hands of ISIS with our “anti-refugee hysteria.”
We are not well served when, in response to a terrorist attack, we descend into fear and panic,” Mr. Obama said at a summit in Manila, the Philippines. “We don’t make good decisions if its based on hysteria or an exaggeration of risks.”
Mr. Obama said some of the same people who have suggested stopping refugees from coming into the country also have suggested that they are tough enough to just stare down Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Apparently they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America,” Mr. Obama said. “At first they were too scared of the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are scared of three-year-old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me.”
“Three-year-old orphans,” Mr. President? We just watched a massive attack by ISIS, the organization you claim is controlled, on civilians in Paris. I would suggest that Americans are not terrified by refugees, but just want them thoroughly vetted, and afraid you are incapable.
Europe is now dealing with the European Union policy on open borders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in the name of wikkommenskkultur ( a culture of welcoming) suspended restrictions on refugees seeking asylum. Unchanged, Germany would have a million refugees by year’s end. Last week the interior ministry re-imposed the very restrictions Ms. Merkel had lifted. Germans are calling for her resignation.
Mr. Obama misunderstands. Americans are far more afraid of the administration’s lack of resolve, arrogance, and failure to understand the nature of the threat. The dreadful Iran Deal gives Iran the time and funding to complete their development of nuclear weapons, the desultory effort to contain ISIS in Iraq has such restraint on targeting that nothing is accomplished in fear that we might possibly hit a civilian or anything else that might elicit disapproval.
Veteran journalist Sharyl Attkisson said that her sources have told her that President Barack Obama does not want and will not read intelligence reports on groups “he does not consider terrorists,” despite being on a U.S. list of designated terrorists.
“I have talked to people who have worked in the Obama administration who firmly believe he has made up his mind. I would say closed his mind, they say, to their intelligence that they’ve tried to bring him about various groups that he does not consider terrorists, even if they are on the U.S. list of designated terrorists. He has his own ideas, and there are those who’ve known him a long time who say this dates back to law school. He does not necessarily—you may think it’s a good trait you may think it’s a bad trait—he does not necessarily listen to the people with whom he disagrees. He seems to dig in. I would suppose because he thinks he’s right. He is facing formidable opposition on this particular point.”
In his latest harangue against Republicans and other American opposed to his insistence on continuing to import thousands of Muslim refugees from Syria and other parts of the Middle East and Africa, Obama said:
When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted … that’s shameful…. That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.
We have noted that Obama has often tried to insert the idea of empathy or compassion into Constitutional law and federal law.
The law is about justice, and supposedly is blind to tests of compassion. Andy McCarthy wrote today: (Do read the whole thing)
Under federal law, the executive branch is expressly required to take religion into account in determining who is granted asylum. Under the provision governing asylum
(section 1158 of Title 8, U.S. Code), an alien applying for admission must establish that … religion [among other things] … was or will be at least one central reason for persecuting the applicant. …The law requires a “religious test.” And the reason for that is obvious. Asylum law is not a reflection of the incumbent president’s personal (and rather eccentric) sense of compassion. Asylum is a discretionary national act of compassion that is directed, by law not whim, to address persecution.
There is no right to emigrate to the United States. And the fact that one comes from a country or territory ravaged by war does not, by itself, make one an asylum candidate. …
Other lawyers have noted today that the president doesn’t get to decide who is a refugee and who is not. John Hinderaker wrote:
There are strong practical as well as legal reasons for distinguishing between Islamic applicants for asylum and similar applications by Christians or others. We know that ISIS is trying to infiltrate terrorists into groups of migrants leaving Syria; there is some evidence that they have succeeded. As McCarthy says, no one has a right to emigrate to the U.S. The government’s first duty is to protect the American people, not to extend favors to foreigners. Moreover, Obama’s “compassion” argument falls flat. A recent Center for Immigration Studies report found that, for the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, we could instead care for 12 refugees overseas. That is a much more cost-effective approach, and one that will not impose needless dislocation either on us, or on the refugees.
It would be interesting to know just who Obama considers “real terrorists,” and which advisers he actually listens to — but everybody says that he has only a very narrow group of people that he associates with. His selection of advisors seems to be confined to those who will do exactly as they are told and don’t even think of disagreeing. The rest have resigned, or left for other ventures. He doesn’t even seem to be particularly impressed with the attack on Paris. After all the more important big climate meeting is coming up, and there’s a world to be saved from the horrors of carbon dioxide.
Filed under: Blogging, Cool Site of the Day, Election 2008, Election 2016, Humor, Politics | Tags: Good Humor, John Flowers, McSweeney's
Donald Trump
Through the Ages
By Jonathan Flowers
The ancestry of Donald Trump stretches back to the Ancient World. Listen, as several of Trump’s forebears recount some of the most famous moments in history.
The Death of Julius Caesar
So this is, maybe, a week after the Ides of March. I’m in Rome. I got a new coliseum there. Great coliseum. I build a lot them. Make a lot of money. Very successful.
So I’m in Rome. And Brutus and his cabal ask me to say a few words about Caesar. Really, begging me to say something about him. And Brutus is an honorable guy. So, I’m like, “Sure. Whatever.”
But then right before my speech, Brutus comes up to me — he’s real nervous, Brutus — and he says, “Whatever you do in your speech, don’t blame me for Caesar’s death.”
The whole thing is here, and Funny! He captures “the Donald” to perfection.
(h/t: Powerline, and thanks)
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Election 2008, Election 2010, Election 2012, Election 2014, Foreign Policy, Law, Politics, Regulation, Taxes, The United States | Tags: Election Day Is Special, Vote Fraud Is Real, Why Do They Cheat?
A video has emerged from Illinois (why am I not surprised?) that a “calibration error” that just happens to cause voting machines to switch votes from Republican to Democrat. You punch the box to vote for the Republican candidate, and it registers that you voted for the Democrat candidate. The video purportedly shows voting machines in the Moline, Illinois public library registering votes for the Democrat candidate when the Republican is the intended choice.
That makes it nice and simple, doesn’t it? Doesn’t even have to be somebody there miscounting ballots, or hiding some — just program it into the voting machine, just enough to win the election, but not enough that anybody would immediately call FRAUD!
Same thing is happening in Maryland. “Calibration Errors” that cannot be replicated. People with fat fingers, or long nails perhaps? I get suspicious of anything that involves changing the vocabulary from a simple and straightforward “vote fraud” to a broad generalization like “calibration error.” I have never read anywhere of a ‘calibration error’ changing a Democrat vote to a Republican vote, but perhaps that’s just a coincidence?
We’ve had a lot of vote fraud here in Washington State, and the people have not forgotten. Governor Christine Gregoire was not elected until they recounted the votes enough times to find just enough to give her a small margin of victory. She had lost in the first count, and in the second, but by the third count they found some votes in a box in the back room or left in somebody’s car — something like that.
The pro-amnesty Hispanic-activist organization the National Council of La Raza has been promoting a Washington Post article explaining in which states “undocumented” people can vote without having to present photo ID. Most states request some form of ID but don’t require it. Another 20 states don’t require identification. The Washington Post has a handy graph outlining the requirements.
Democrats scoff that vote fraud is merely a figment of Republican imagination, but serious survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study produced estimates of 1,408.000 non-citizens voting in 2008, and 484,000 voting in the off-year election in 2010. That’s enough to decide an election.
Here in Washington State, we have switched to Mail In Ballots, which are much more conducive to vote fraud than plain old voting at your local school or retirement home with a hand marked ballot. Those people saw to it that you showed ID, signed in, and there were election judges there. Now we just do it any old-time prior to the election, fill them out at home, and hope they get counted. I liked the formal trip to the polls, greeting poll workers that I hadn’t seen since the last election — it was inconvenient, but a small price to pay for executing my civic duty. It felt good.
Do you remember in 2012, there was a thing about military ballots. Republicans were trying to make sure that soldiers got their ballots and that their votes were recorded. Then there was something in the news about the plane going down in Afghanistan, and too late to get more ballots or something, but there was never any report of the crash, or about survivors, or a death toll. Curious.
Discover the Networks has a section intended to refute, with hard evidence, the foregoing assertions of the Left. The section consists of excerpts from hundreds of news stories reporting on fraud and improprieties in the voter-registration process as well as at the ballot box. Do take the time to visit and see for yourself the extent of the fraud that Democrats claim does not exist. If you are really curious, enter the “Secretary of State Project” in the search function there. Now supposedly discontinued, there could have been no other purpose for the project than to elect Democrats to control the State office that oversees elections.
Obama came from the Chicago political machine. It’s the only kind of politics he knows.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Election 2008, Election 2010, Election 2012, Election 2014, Law, Politics, The United States | Tags: Are Clean Elections Possible?, How Much is Too Much?, Many Ways of Vote Fraud
I got a little curious today, about the prospects for vote fraud in the upcoming election, so I did what we all do when we’re curious, I went to Google for a cursory search. What I found was fascinating. The websites I consider reliably Left, reliably said— nothing to see here, move right along. No such thing, proclaimed large numbers. Republican claims of vote fraud are untrue. Real but rare, they insist. Oh come on. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Chicago? In two elections, Barack Obama fortuitously managed to get court-sealed divorce records of his opponent opened just before the election. My next door neighbors for many years were from Illinois, and they had some remarkable stories. We had some real vote fraud here in Washington State. Military ballots gone missing. Documented. The arguments will continue — there’s a great deal at stake, and Democrats will continue to insist it is all figments of the Republican imagination.
The Washington Post asked a few days ago “Could non-citizens decide the November election?” They went to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) for answers.
How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.
Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.
Estimated Voter Turnout by Non-Citizens 2008 2010 Self reported and/or verified 38 (11.3%) 13 (3.5%) Self reported and verified 5 (1.5%) N.A. Adjusted estimate 21 (6.4%) 8 (2.2%)
The study did not indicate any advantage coming from Photo ID, because illegals were able to vote anyway. The researchers say that perhaps the United States should move to legalize some electoral participation by non-citizens as many other countries do—though they offer no justification for so doing. Election rules in Kansas and Arizona are set to bar thousands of people in coming weeks from casting ballots in state primaries even as the federal government allows some of them to vote in congressional races. The comments in the article are about what would be expected:
“There is a very real problem with aliens being registered to vote,” said Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who said about a dozen states are likely to pass such measures in coming years.
Democrats have countered that there are few examples of fraud at the polls and that such steps suppress the vote of such groups as minorities and women.
So there you go. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Filed under: Election 2008, Europe, Foreign Policy, History, National Security, The United States, United Kingdom | Tags: A Blog in The Telegraph, Obama Foreign-Policy Tour, The G20 Meeting in Europe
Sorting out a stack of old stuff, I ran across a couple of 5½ year old pieces that I saved for one reason or another. A little history. This one came from a blog in the Telegraph (UK) on April 10, 2009, by Gerald Warner. ________________
“President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you’d notice.
Barack is not the first New World ingenue to discover that European leaders will load him with praise, struggle sycophantically to be photographed with him and outdo him in Utopian rhetoric. But when it comes to the critical moment of opening their wallets—suddenly it is flag-day in Aberdeen. Okay, put the G20 down to inexperience, beginner’s nerves, what you will.
On to Nato and the next big objective, to persuade the same European evasion experts that America, Britain and Canada should no longer bear the brunt of the Afghan struggle virtually unassisted. The Old World sucked through its teeth, said that was asking a lot—but, seeing it was Barack, to whom they could refuse nothing, they would graciously accede to his wishes.
So The One retired triumphant, having secured a massive contribution of 5,000 extra troops— all of them non-combatant, of course —which must really have put the wind up the Taliban, at the prospect of 5,000 more infidel cooks and bottle-washers swarming into the hazardous regions of Afghanistan.
Then came the dramatic bit, the authentic West Wing script, with the President wakened in the middle of the night in Prague to be told that Kim Jong-Il had just launched a Taepodong-2 missile. America had Aegis destroyers tracking the missile and could have shot it down. But Uncle Sam had a sterner reprisal in store for li’l ole Kim…a multi-megaton strike of Obama hot air.
“Rules must be binding,” declared Obama, referring to the fact that Kim had just breached UN Resolutions 1695 and 1718. “Violations must be punished.” (Sounds ominous) “Words must mean something.” (Why Barack? They never did before for you—as a cursory glance at your many speeches will show).
President Pantywaist is hopping mad and he has a strategy to cut Kim down to size: he is going to slice $1.4bn off America’s missile defence programme, presumably on the calculation that Kim would feel it unsporting to hit a sitting duck, so that will spoil his fun. Watch out, France and Co, there is a new surrender monkey on the block and, over the next four years, he will spectacularly sell out the interests of the West with every kind of liberal-delusionist initiative on nuclear disarmament and sitting down to negotiate with any power freak who wants to buy time to get a good ICBM fix on San Francisco, or wherever. If you thought the world was a tad unsafe with Dubya around, just wait until President Pantywaist gets into his stride.
Filed under: Election 2008, History, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: A Gush of Feelings, Riding a Wave of Emotion, The Inaugural Glow
Going through a bunch of stuff I had saved for one reason or another, I ran across this, which I offer up without comment:
Over at National Review, in 2009, a reader wrote to Jay Nordlinger, sending him something that had appeared in his inbox that morning.
It is Sunday evening about 9:30. [So-and-so] and I were just watching the pre-inaugural events in Washington and were quite moved by the purity and optimism being expressed. So I came up with an idea, and a request. Please know that this has no political agenda. I want to appeal to that inner dimension of you/us that runs deeper than politics or religion or race or nationality or gender or sexual orientation or age or body size or physical abilities or whatever else we can use to keep ourselves lost in the painful illusion that we are separate from one another and from our own divinity and from Mother Earth. The following is an invitation to participate in a collective visualization that could help turn the course of the human race and of Mother Earth
So here goes:
On Tuesday morning, during the swearing-in ceremony of Barack Obama, let’s constructively use the energy of the love that will be flowing in abundance all around the world during the whole morning, especially during his speech. The invitation is to first feel into the energy and inspiration that is being touched in you by watching the morning’s events.
Then, at some moment during Obama’s speech, close your eyes and begin to visualize these very moments are literally the turning point in world history. Know that this speech will be referred to by future generations as the defining moment that everyone had been waiting for. See people all over the world be inspired by Obama’s kind heart and his safe presence and his uncanny intelligence.
Then allow your heart to become even more tender and allow yourself to be gently touched and moved that, at last, there is an end to the fear and hatred in our hearts. The fear and hatred that have perpetuated the recent downward spiral of violence, wars and economic contraction. Literally, close your eyes and visualize this very moment as the beginning of the emergency of a new level of harmony within yourself, with your family and neighbors, and with all human beings no matter what their race, religion, nationality, sexual preference, body size or capabilities, or any other way we see ourselves as separate or different, rather than looking to the deeper levels where we are all the same. We just want to love and be loved.
The environment is recovering as human beings are at last attuned to Nature’s beauty and sensitive balance. We are taking the dramatic steps necessary to reverse the violence we have done to her. See people’s priorities shifting to simply enjoying Nature and one another, living in the abundance created by loving one another.
If this suggestion feels right to you, tune in on Tuesday and play your part in allowing Obama’s inauguration to be a turning point in human history. You and I have the power to change the world with our hearts.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Election 2008, Liberalism, Politics, Progressivism, Statism, The Constitution | Tags: Blaming Bush Forever, Faultless Lawless Obama, Lies and Corruption
What politicians have not learned is that their words and faces will be preserved on YouTube or another of the many, many video sources, and the videos will be dug up, and when you say something really stupid, hoping people will believe it in spite of all evidence to the contrary — there you are, preserved for all time. Bwa-haha-ha-ha-ha.
Or Neener, Neener, Neener, whichever you prefer.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2008, Politics, Taxes | Tags: Billions Wasted, Taxpayers' Money, Waste and Fraud
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Election 2008, Freedom, Politics, The United States | Tags: A Conflict of Visions, Old Ideas, The Nineteen Thirties
This is from 2008, before the election, but I ran across it and it’s interesting how prescient Tom Sowell is. And it seemed to fit with my previous post.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Election 2008, Politics | Tags: Not "For the Kids", Unrepresented Taxpayers, Wisconsin 's Screaming Mob
Wisconsin Republican Senator Glenn Grothman was chased and trapped by an out-of-control mob as he tried to enter the Wisconsin capitol building. It was a remarkably ugly scene. He had to be rescued by one of his Democrat colleagues who was with the demonstrators.
The nation is facing a fiscal crisis of historic proportions, and the big spending Democrats who were removed from office in November are still refusing to acknowledge that there is a debt crisis. In state after state, even normally Democratic states like Wisconsin, voters sent Republicans into office to put things in order. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker faces a $3.6 billion budget shortfall over the next two years. He is required by law to balance the budget. The interesting thing is that the unions would prefer to lay people off than lose power. We have Democrats desperately defending the status quo. Republicans trying to rescue the state from a fiscal meltdown.
Walker faces tough choices. He proposed that state workers contribute a little more to their pension and health-care benefits, and started a revolution. Teachers called in sick, schools closed, demonstrators massed at the capitol and moved into the capitol building. Democrat legislators, who didn’t have the votes, left the state to prevent the legislature from having a quorum.
The public quickly came to understand that although they were expected to pay the bill for public workers’ benefits, they were unrepresented at the bargaining table. The deal is that public employees pay their dues to the union, the union spends the dues on campaign funds to elect their preferred Democrat candidate to office, where he will bargain with the union on their benefit package which he hopes will be generous so the union will again support his campaign. A cozy and corrupt game, and one that cash-strapped states can no longer afford.
Democrats have chosen not to recognize the results of the election in Wisconsin. They may insist loudly that they are “doing it for the kids,” but as usual, it merely proves that what they care about is control and power. Democrats have tried to whip up the mob with claims that the Libertarian Koch brothers — well, it’s entirely unclear exactly what they are trying to blame on the Koch brothers — but it’s clear that the Kochs are guilty because they are very rich. And “the rich,” by definition, deprive the poor of their money unjustly. How that works is also unclear.
Since the teachers had to go back to school, we don’t know just who comprises the screaming mob. President Obama has sent in volunteers from Organizing for America, private sector unions are there in solidarity with the public unions, and there seems to be a number of students. Madison is a university town.
The usual rabble-rousers have turned up to rouse the rabble. The President is improperly siding with the unions, but that is nothing new. His Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, believes that her job is to support the unions rather than American workers That they understand neither tradition or propriety is not surprising. That they deny there is a fiscal crisis is not really surprising either, but it is a very big problem.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2008, Energy | Tags: China, Creating Jobs Abroad, Stimulus Bill
The “Stimulus Bill” (the American Recovery and Investment Act) allocated around $2 billion to support wind power, thus promoting American energy independence while creating American jobs of the very best “green” kind.
Last October, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University reported that a consortium of U.S. and Chinese companies announced a deal to build a $1.5 billion wind farm in Texas, using imported Chinese turbines.
The project is expected to create some temporary construction jobs in America, but some 2,000 manufacturing jobs will be created in China. Of the 1,807 turbines that will be erected on 28 wind farms receiving grants, foreign owned manufacturers built 1,219, according to the workshop report. The installation of these turbines may have created as many as 6,838 manufacturing jobs overseas.
In its 2009 year-end report, the American Wind Energy Association acknowledged that despite billions in stimulus spending, there had been a net loss in manufacturing jobs. CEO Denise Bode estimates the manufacturing job loss at 1,500.
Investors Business Daily notes that:
Last March, a cargo of steel towers was unloaded at the port of Vancouver, Wash. They were made in Vietnam for a Danish wind company and destined for a Portuguese wind farm in Indiana that got a stimulus grant.
If we were allowed to drill for our own oil and gas, and bring in the offshore oil that we know to be there, we would be creating thousands of high-paying permanent jobs.
But China isn’t beholden to the environmental lobby for electoral campaign money. They are working hard and successfully to develop their manufacturing sector and searching for the energy supplies to support that sector.
American Elephants 