President Obama is seeking power the Constitution has assigned to Congress. Soon, he will formally ask Congress to surrender its constitutional authority and grant him “Fast Track” Trade Promotion Authority.
And House Republicans are inexplicably ready to give it to him.
...Under Fast Track, Obama would be able to sign commercial trade agreements before Congress votes on them. Congress would not even be able to amend the agreements in any way -- it would only have an up-or-down vote when the president says so, before members could even read it.
...President Obama wants fast track power so he can conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an expansive system of global governance that would deal a mortal blow to American sovereignty and our Constitution.
Fast track overrides the Constitution once -- the Trans-Pacific Partnership overrides it forever.
TPP is billed a free trade agreement, but it is actually protectionism for Wall Street bailout banks, insurance and drug companies profiting off Obamacare, and the corporatists pushing open borders and amnesty under the rubric of “immigration reform.” The cronies with “access” in Washington are writing the deal while the rest of us are shut out.
More on the ObamaCare Cronies
By Carol Platt LiebauIn the real world, those making decisions like choosing which company to hire had better do it based on the company's technical expertise and its ability to deliver a good product cost-efficiently. Otherwise, the company will lose money and heads will roll.
In government, by contrast, every prejudice, however irrational -- doing business only with "friendlies", for example -- can be indulged. There is no "bottom line," and (especially now) the chief executive couldn't care less about safeguarding the money that's spent (it's only the taxpayers' after all!). Failure carries no penalty; even after a debacle like the web site, every administration official's job seems secure.
Drown the Racist Terrorists!: Media Ramp Up Rhetoric Against Right
By John NolteWith the government shutdown now entering into its third week, the frustration and rage among the media elite is manifesting itself in ways above and beyond the usual-usual hostile coverage. Just two years after launching the New Tone-era, media elites are now openly wishing conservatives dead while comparing them to terrorists, criminals, and segregationists.
The Louisiana Heist
By Charles C W Cooke
...Uttering what has become the most widely reprinted quote from the scene, a witness told local television station KSLA that stealing food when presented with the opportunity was a “natural human” reaction. If this is true, it should serve as an indictment of the society that Washington, D.C., has created, and of the vastness of a government that has disconnected so many people from the real world. We are not talking here about a moral grey area, in which starving people saw and took a rare chance to feed themselves. Instead, we are talking about people who, over and above their normal allowance, elected to steal from the millions of people from whose paychecks the food-stamp program’s funds are forcibly taken — and on whose beneficence they rely.
...Conservatives are fond of repeating the old line that the republic “can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.” In Louisiana this weekend, many citizens got the opportunity to do this without even having to bother to vote — and they took it. Whatever legitimate disagreements there are about the role of democracy in a free society, there should be none here. This was theft, pure and simple, and its perpetrators should be treated as any other thief would be.
Ty Doohen, Another Victim of Single Motherhood: Fatherless and Beaten to Death
By Megan Fox
Sports media is in an uproar about the horrific murder of Ty Doohen, Vikings’ running back Adrian Peterson’s two-year-old son. Unfortunately, they’ve got the angle all wrong. This is not a story about a father’s loss and brave return to the field. It is a story of a sick culture, of a man who reportedly didn’t even know he had fathered a son until three months ago and never looked on Ty’s face until the boy was in a hospital bed, dying.
It’s a story of the woman who birthed this child. Ann “Ashley” Doohen reportedly had the child tested for paternity and the results came as a surprise to her. She thought the child was her ex-boyfriend’s (not current boyfriend and alleged assailant Joseph Patterson). This makes three men Doohen was (allegedly) having sex within a relatively short time period. She was not married to any of them.
This is a story of a woman who left her baby in the care of a person who had a criminal record of child abuse that anyone with $30 and a computer could have uncovered. But most importantly, this is a story of a child with no father, with no hero and no advocate to protect and shield him from the evil around him.
Children suffer cruelly when a society devalues traditional families by accepting any combination of idiocy, accepting any moral standard and throwing out any sense of what is good for children. It isn’t a lone, once-in-a-while incident to be swept under the rug, talked of as “tragic” and then forgotten. It is an epidemic that is subjecting children to abuse and death, but if you speak out about it, you’re a hater, prejudiced against single mothers and a jerk. But staying silent only gags the victims who are suffering. It’s too late for Ty, but perhaps someone out there might hear this story and rethink her lifestyle and save her innocent child from the same fate.
HHS Spent $1.5M in FY2012 on TV Studio Used to Promote Obamacare
Nearly all videos produced by HHS-TV relate to Obamacare
“The success or failure of government initiatives rests on the timely and accurate communication of information,” HHS said in its justification for the order.
Obama shutdown of CatholicMass sparks reaction
In what has been described
as “an astonishing attack on religious freedom,” Catholics at a Navy base were
banned from attending worship services because of the partial shutdown of the
federal government.
In response, the Thomas More Law Center announced it
has filed a lawsuit over the orders at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia.
The legal team said a Catholic priest who serves the community on the military
base “has been prohibited from even volunteering to celebrate Holy Mass without
pay and was told that if he violated that order, he could be subject to
arrest.”
Without explanation,
however, Protestant services continued....
Another ObamaCare ‘Glitch’: $30B blown on non-operational medical record system
By Dominic Di-Natale...Unfortunately for patients -- and taxpayers -- the long-running project has produced tangibly few results despite costing the government, so far, at least $30 billion.
Under a George W. Bush-era executive order, all Americans should have access to their medical records by the end of 2014, part of a concept referred to as e-health. President Obama then made electronic medical records (EMRs) central to the success of the Affordable Care Act.
...Doctors have so far received $14 billion in sweeteners, and hospitals have been handed more than $16 billion. Officials indicate that incentives could eventually reach $45 billion, though there is no universally integrated system anywhere in sight.
...A large proportion of the overall money paid out has gone to a group of leading health IT specialists, some of which have close connections to the Obama administration. Cerner board member Nance DeParle became the director of the White House Office of Health Care Reform. Epic’s CEO, Judith Faulkner, is a highly influential Obama donor and was given a key role on a federal health IT committee. While these big companies have tinkered with their systems, none has reached comprehensive inter-operability.
Last year, after Congress launched an investigation over why so little progress had been achieved, members of both the House and Senate called on Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to cease and desist EHR incentive payments and demand more scrutiny on those who had received money. Sebelius publicly disregarded their requests.
How the Left Treats Obama Like a Child
By Kevin Jackson...Meddling Liberals believe they need to protect a man who volunteered to be the Chief Executive of the United States....
...Shouldn't America's black chief executive be held to the same standards as others? Or is it ok to treat Obama worse than you would treat a child?
At least children are taught lessons and consequences. Liberals won't allow Obama to learn from mistakes. In fact, they continue to encourage his mistakes, because they don't want to appear to the racists that most are. It's an elaborate system of cover-up, the irony being that the cover-up emphasizes their racism: the racism of low expectations, and their incessant need to coddle blacks...for profit.
Obama represents Frankenstein's monster of Liberalism, an experiment gone bad. The monster unfortunately has been unleashed on America.
Banging the Drum for Default
By Jon N Hall....Actually, default is not paying the interest/principle on what one has borrowed. Current federal revenue is way more than enough to easily pay what we owe on federal notes, bills, and bonds.
If the feds do indeed have enough revenue pouring in to meet their obligations, then actual default would be an act of volition, a decision by the president. The president would have to decide to squander the full faith and credit of the nation. Such an action would be an impeachable offense.
...Democrats cannot be trusted with our money. They cannot prioritize; every program is necessary, every employee essential. "[T]here's [sic] no more cuts to make." The subtext of what the Democrats are saying, their subliminal message, is that there is nothing wrong with going further into debt. Actually, it's monstrous, unpatriotic, to even consider not going further into debt. Indeed, it's simply unthinkable that the federal government not go another trillion bucks into debt over the next year.
The "cupboard is bare," all right, and devoid of reason.
It's Not Just Failed ObamaCare
By Christopher ChantrillPolitics offers two temptations. It offers power to the ruling class, and it offers loot to its supporters. It's just like the Middle Ages. Or the Conquistadors. Or the absolute monarchs. Or the modern big-city machine.
Notice the difference between politics and capitalism. In politics the ruling class succeeds by offering free stuff to its supporters. In business the CEOs win by offering good products that consumers want to pay for. You tell me which is morally superior.
Bernardine Dohrn claims Ann Coulter 'committed violence'
By Thomas Lifson....Dohrn's slander exhibits a characteristic of the left, equating the holding of conservative views to violence. Make no mistake, this is a conscious effort aimed at justifying repression of dissent against their own orthodoxy. Just yesterday, Senator Barbara Boxer, for instance, uttered this outrage:
"When you start acting like you're committing domestic abuse, you've got a problem," Boxer said, as first reported by The Hill. " 'I love you dear, but I'm shutting down your entire government. I love you dear, but I'm going to default.'"
Boxer should be publicly shamed for such slander, though she is protected from legal action by uttering her calumny on the Senate floor. She has trivialized domestic violence with her rhetoric, but remains serene in the knowledge that the feminist movement, normally protective of the domestic violence victims she insults, wilol remain silent, because she shares their leftist ideology.
The Threat of Al-Shabaab: Not an Illusion
By Matthew Ernst...Most concerning is that AS has likely allied with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). AQAP is currently considered the group most capable of attacking the U.S. homeland. Given the number of AS members who are U.S. citizens, a merger between AQAP and AS would be alarming, as it would combine the group most capable of successfully attacking the U.S. with the group who has the most extensive network within the U.S.
...
In the case with AS, many analysts claim that we have been successful because of the territory gained in Somalia, thus forcing AS underground. More likely, however, the AS fighters simply left Somalia and went to neighboring countries, giving us a false sense of victory. This is also what happened in Afghanistan, and in Mali last summer.
AS doesn't need to have more territory, or more soldiers than the U.S., in order for them to remain a threat. Rather, AQ has remained significant due to its ability to form alliances with regional terrorist groups, such as AS. With this approach, "Al Qaeda can effectively influence any conflict, be the major stakeholder across a variety of regions and represent a diverse range of interests. This allows it to stay in control of the global war[.]"
America Is Intervened Out
Our security interests have changed, along with our sense that we can make a difference.
By Victor Davis Hanson...There is not much optimism left that either of those two nations will, over the coming decades, evolve along the lines of South Korea, from a stable free-market authoritarianism to true consensual government. Endemic ingratitude also seems to matter to the public. Most Americans don’t feel that either Iraqis or Afghans appreciated us very much for ridding them of Saddam Hussein or the Taliban. For that matter, do Egyptians, Jordanians, or Palestinians seem thankful for U.S. aid?
We are broke and owe $17 trillion in long-term debt, which makes it harder, psychologically, to borrow the money to intervene in Syria. The lack of money, like mental exhaustion and ingratitude, is an additional catalyst for inaction. Obama certainly is not just an isolationist who welcomes a U.S. recessional; he is also an isolationist who understands that his do-nothing policy is not all that unpopular with a broke and underemployed public.
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