By Joe Newby
During the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia,
NBC whitewashed 70 years of brutal Communist rule when Game of Thrones
actor Peter Dinklage called the Soviet era "one of modern history's
pivotal experiments," Newsbusters reported Friday.
"Russia overwhelms. Russia mystifies. Russia transcends. Through
every stage of its story, it's resisted any notion of limitation.
Through every re-invention, only redoubling its desire to cast a
towering presence," Dinklage said.
"The empire that ascended to affirm a colossal footprint; the
revolution that birthed one of modern history's pivotal experiments. But
if politics has long shaped our sense of who they are, it's passion
that endures," he added.
Dinklage ignored the history of the totalitarian regime that slaughtered tens of millions of people between 1917 and 1991.
Matthew Balan said it's not the first time NBC lionized the brutal dictatorship.
In 2004, Balan said, Matt Lauer suggested Russians were actually better off living in the far-left regime.
"We're gonna be talking about the New Russia, how a few people are
doing very well and the fear that others are being left very far
behind....Russia's rush to capitalism left the vast majority scrambling
to survive. For many, life is worse than it was in Soviet times," he
said.
Russia's anti-gay laws
have been a major focus in the lead-up to the Olympic Winter Games in
Sochi, and during his address at today's opening ceremony IOC president
Thomas Bach made a strong statement against "any form of discrimination"
and in favor of tolerance. Viewers worldwide heard the statement; NBC
viewers in the U.S. did not, because the network edited it out.
By James Pethokoukis
...Here is a stat, reflected in the above chart, to think about: Before the
Great Recession, there were 122 million full-time jobs in America. Now 4
1/2 years after its end, there are still just 118 million full-time
jobs in America despite a labor force that is 1.6 million larger and a
nonjailed, nonmilitary adult working-age population that is 14 million
larger.
By Walter Hudson
Since he first took office in 2009, President Barack Obama has
consistently invited comparisons between his vision for America and the
world of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
In particular, the president has frequently attracted references to
Directive 10-289, a government edict in the novel which forbids hiring
and firing, mandates production, and seizes patents.
The explicit realization of that directive approaches with each new
abuse and usurpation committed by the administration. Now, after the
president brazenly declared his intention to defy the rule of law and
craft legislation from the Oval Office via executive order, Democratic
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee conspires with fellow members of a
“Full Employment Caucus” to tee up the tyranny. This from the Washington Times:
She said at a recent press conference reported by The
Daily Mail that the caucus members will work hard to “give President
Obama a number of executive orders that he can sign with pride and
strength. In fact, I think that should be our number one agenda. Let’s
write up these executive orders – draft them, of course – and ask the
president to stand with us on full employment.”
It’s about time. The only real question is why it has taken so long
for the president to come to our aid with the stoke of his magic pen.
That might have been sarcasm, which might have been funny were its
object not so deadly serious. We have a sitting president and a caucus
of congresspeople who believe jobs may be royally decreed.
True, this does not represent an ideological shift from the past. The
Left has always asserted that government can create jobs. However, this
new tact of stripping the process down to an executive order leaves the
folly more naked than before.
Indeed, if jobs come from executive orders, what have we been waiting
for? How bad was the president going to let things get before rescuing
the economy with a piece of paper?
After Sheila Jackson Lee secures full employment, perhaps she can ask the Wizard for a brain.
By James Longstreet
If you are making an income that is low enough, you are entitled to a substantial health insurance
subsidy. But don't seek any more income, for it may cost you dearly.
Stay put, be static. If for example, you are making 29K a year, and
are getting free health insurance and you make the mistake of making
36K, you will have actually hurt your condition. Though you have earned
7K more, you have lost your 10K a year insurance subsidy. You now pay
for what you had for free, and you are now in a higher tax bracket.
You
have gone backwards. Is that some type of "freedom"? It seems a
ceiling on achievement or at least an impediment in any attempt to
advance oneself.
Freedom indeed.
Like the freedom of being forced to join a union, or at least have your
dues extracted from your check? Freedom to choose your health insurance...from four metallic choices?
As Johan Goldberg notes,
"Government
gives you freedom by giving you stuff. This is the logic that says a
refusal to subsidize art is censorship; that the failure to provide
housing is the same as denying it; that people have a right to have
things provided for them they are unwilling to earn themselves. Or as
FDR said "necessitous men are not free men." So when the government
gives you stuff you need (or merely want) it is setting you free."
...Nancy
and Harry and Carney and the like are pleased that what they refer to
"job lock" has been lifted from the citizenry. What has been
implemented, however, is "subsidy lock". Don't move, don't
advance.....it will cost you. Subsidies will make you free. Stay put,
the gifts are in the mail box (or auto deposit). Paint, write poetry and
vote Democratic. Feel free yet?
The Chicago professor examined the law's
incentives for the poor not to get a job or work harder, and this week
Beltway budgeteers agreed.
By Joseph Rago
...[economist
Casey Mulligan] adds: "I can understand something like
cigarettes and people believe that there's too much smoking, so we put a
tax on cigarettes, so people smoke less, and we say that's a good
thing. OK. But are we saying we were working too much before? Is that
the new argument? I mean make up your mind. We've been complaining for
six years now that there's not enough work being done. . . . Even before
the recession there was too little work in the economy. Now all of a
sudden we wake up and say we're glad that people are working less? We're
pursuing our dreams?"
The larger
betrayal, Mr. Mulligan argues, is that the same economists now praising
the great shrinking workforce used to claim that ObamaCare would expand
the labor market.
He points to a 2011
letter organized by Harvard's
David Cutler
and the University of Chicago's
Harold Pollack,
signed by dozens of left-leaning economists including Nobel
laureates, stating "our strong conclusion" that ObamaCare will
strengthen the economy and create 250,000 to 400,000 jobs annually. (Mr.
Cutler has since qualified and walked back some of his claims.)
"Why
didn't they say, no, we didn't mean the labor market's going to get
bigger. We mean it's going to get smaller in a good way," Mr. Mulligan
wonders. "I'm unhappy with that, to be honest, as an American, as an
economist. Those kind of conclusions are tarnishing the field of
economics, which is a great, maybe the greatest, field. They're sure not
making it look good by doing stuff like that."
....One major risk is slower economic growth
over time as people leave the workforce and contribute less to national
prosperity. Another is that social programs with high marginal rates end
up perpetuating the problems they're supposed to be alleviating.
So
amid the current wave of liberal ObamaCare denial about these
realities, how did Mr. Mulligan end up conducting such "unconventional"
research?
"Unconventional?" he asks with
more than a little disbelief. "It's not unconventional at all. The
critique I get is that it's not complicated enough."
Well, then how come the CBO's adoption of his insights is causing such a ruckus?
"I
would phrase the question a little differently," Mr. Mulligan responds,
"which is: Why didn't conventional economic analysis make its way to
Washington? Why was I the only delivery boy? Why wasn't there a laundry
list?" The charitable explanation, he says, is that there was "a general
lack of awareness" and economists simply didn't realize everything that
government was doing to undermine incentives for work. "You have to dig
into it and see it," he explains. "The Affordable Care Act's not going
to come and shake you out of your bed and say, 'Look what's in me.' "
Judging
by their reaction to the CBO report, the less charitable explanation is
that liberals would have preferred that the public never found out.
By Robert Berry
Having
been dormant for centuries, a potent section in the U.S. Constitution
is now in the minds and on the lips of a new generation of reformers who
are determined to keep the nation out of an abyss. As America stares
hard at the darkness ahead, the new reformers have begun to popularize
this forgotten constitutional provision that might well become Official
Washington's undoing.
The problem, which hardly needs stating, is that the federal
government has become the very monster the founders anticipated. Quite
likely, the beast we face is far beyond anything that could have been
imagined by the founding generation. Even today it is hard to
adequately comprehend the omnipresent and, thanks to the NSA, omniscient
federal menace that overhangs every aspect of life in 21st-century America.
The founders' concern that power would be consolidated at the federal level is dealt with in Article V of the U.S. Constitution.
...In 2009, an academic from the University of Montana was surveying opportunities for research. Of particular interest to Professor Robert G. Natelson were areas of constitutional scholarship characterized by a scarcity of research, poor research, or, optimally, both.
Intrigued
by the vestigial Convention for Proposing Amendments mentioned in
Article V, Natelson was struck by the paucity of modern-day scholarship on the topic despite an abundance of original source material.
Quietly, he set to work.
Before
long, Natelson had acquired nearly all of the journals of founding-era
conventions. This was added to his existing collection of material from
each state's ratification convention as each considered whether or not
to approve the proposed 1787 constitution. A picture of early American convention tradition began to emerge.
Casting
a wider net, he pulled in over 40 generally neglected Article V court
decisions, some of which had been argued before the Supreme Court. In a
series of publications, Natelson churned out his findings (here, here, and here), which surprised many -- including himself.
The research quickly became the gold standard of scholarship about the process, known formally as the "State-Application-and-Convention" method of amending the Constitution.
Natelson
held that, far from being a self-destruct mechanism, the founders meant
for the process to be used in parallel to the congressional method as
yet another "check and balance" within the framework of the newly
constituted federal government.
Most
importantly, Natelson drew a strong distinction between the assembly
mentioned in Article V and the oft-mentioned Constitutional
Convention. For this reason, he is quick to correct anyone mistakenly
referring to the Convention for Proposing Amendments as a
"Constitutional Convention."
Natelson's
research trove smashed the conspiracy theories of the 1980s and has
become the intellectual base of the resurgent Article V movement that
has been joined by Levin and other prominent reformers. When the
history is written, it will record that this was the moment the Article V
movement achieved critical mass.
The
new reformers would do well to press on with the case for
state-initiated amendments and ignore the tired conspiracy theories of
the past. Having been marginalized to an almost comic degree, the foes
of yesterday have been effectively dispatched.
When a battle is won, it is wise to move to the next battle, for the waiting opponent is formidable and lives on Capitol Hill.
By George F Will
Barack Obama, the first president shaped by the celebratory culture in
which every child who plays soccer gets a trophy and the first whose
campaign speeches were his qualification for the office, perhaps should
not be blamed for thinking that saying things is tantamount to
accomplishing things, and that good intentions
are
good deeds. So, his presidency is useful after all, because it
illustrates the perils of government run by believers in magic words and
numbers.
...Many of the words and numbers bandied by Obama and his administration may reflect an honest belief that the world
is
whatever well-intentioned people like them say about it. So, Obama’s
critics should reconsider their assumption that he is cynical. It is his
sincerity that is scary.
A Beltway cliché becomes an ObamaCare excuse.
By James Taranto
...But we want to focus on that "more time with your family." Krugman's voice turns out to be but one in a vast chorus of ObamaCare apologists singing that refrain.
E.J. Dionne,
Washington Post: "Oh my God, say opponents of the ACA, here is the
government encouraging sloth! That's true only if you wish to take away
the choices the law gives that 64-year-old or to those moms and dads
looking for more time to care for their children. Many on the right love
family values until they are taken seriously enough to involve giving
parents/workers more control over their lives."
Ron Fournier,
National Journal: "The GOP has seized on CBO's conclusion that the
equivalent of more than 2 million Americans would use Obamacare
subsidies to leave the workforce. No longer tied to jobs merely to cling
to health insurance, some people will retire early, work part time,
start a business, or spend more time with their families."
Eric Boehlert,
MediaMutters (on Twitter): "CBO: Obamacare will give workers more
choices; some workers might chose [sic] to work less to spend more time
w/ families....RW condemns as awful?" (Beats us what radiological
warfare has to do with anything.)
Salon's Alex Pareene
is so excited, he wants to expand the welfare state even more:
"Universal income and healthcare won't create a Marxist (or even
Keynesian) utopia of leisure. . . . But it'd give people the ability to
spend more time with their families, to enrich themselves, to get
educated, and even to just [futz] around a little more."
In January 2012, Bill Daley resigned after a year as White House chief of staff. In explaining his departure, the Washington Post
noted that he "never seemed comfortable in the job," that he "struggled
to develop relations with members of both houses of Congress," and that
"after he [had] relinquished day-to-day operations to senior adviser
Pete Rouse in the fall, his role seemed significantly reduced."
But Daley's public explanation cited none of those reasons. Instead, as the Post's Karen Tumulty wrote at the time, "we have once again been handed the cliched spend-more-time-with-his-family rationale":
When
did this start? As best I can tell, it goes at least as far back as
Watergate, when John Mitchell used it as his reason for resigning from
the Committee to Re-elect the President. And we all know how that one
ended up . . .
In all the years I've been in
Washington, the only person I can remember sounding even remotely
credible saying that was George W. Bush adviser Karen Hughes.
Her colleague Melinda Henneberger
replied by listing nine others who'd offered the same excuse without
credibility, from then-Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, an almost certain
2012 loser owing to his vote in favor of ObamaCare, to Claude Allen,
"the George W. Bush White House staffer who was arrested for felony
theft soon after announcing he was leaving to spend more time with his
nearest and dearest."
Henneberger came
up with a few counterexamples, people who really did seem to be leaving
their jobs to spend more time with their families: astronaut Mark Kelly
(Gabrielle Giffords's husband), Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (whose
husband was in a nursing home) and Anna Quindlen, a long-ago New York
Times columnist.
"People
who really do decide, as Quindlen put it, that you might be able to
have it all, just not all at the same time, are undermined by the
fibbers," Henneberger observed back in 2012. Most of the time when
someone says he's leaving a job to spend more time with his family, he
does so in order to avoid acknowledging that, for one reason or another,
he has failed.
It is therefore
reasonable to construe the deployment of this excuse by Krugman, Dionne,
Fournier and the others as further evidence that ObamaCare is a failing
policy.
By Austin Hill
“Completing this form is a critical start to completing your
education,” noted First Lady Michelle Obama. It was Wednesday February
5, and she had traveled from the confines of the White House to a nearby
Virginia high school to lecture students on applying for “free” federal
financial aid for college.
“You don’t have to be the valedictorian” Mrs. Obama continued. “You
don’t have to major in a certain subject. You don’t even have to be at
the very bottom of the income ladder to receive the money. It’s the
single most important thing you can do for your future.”
Determining the “single most important thing” for a young person’s
future is a task that might otherwise make parents, teachers and
counselors pause and contemplate. But for the wife of our current
President the answer is obvious: get your “free” government handout.
The First Lady’s lecture came at an appropriate time. One day prior
to her Virginia jaunt a report was released from the Congressional
Budget Office (“CBO”) estimating that over the next decade the
President’s signature healthcare reform law will likely incentivize some
2.4 million Americans to take on a lifestyle of no longer working,
preferring instead to enjoy Obamacare’s expanded Medicaid and insurance
subsidies (and perhaps enjoying “free” food stamps, subsidized mobile
phones, and a bevy of other perks from our government).
White House Press Spokesperson Jay Carney announced at his daily
briefing “Claims that the Affordable Care Act hurts jobs are simply
belied by the facts…” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada)
celebrated people leaving the workforce noting, “we live in a country
where we should be free agents. People can do what they want.”
Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Wisconsin) assured MSNBC viewers that the
only problem with Obamacare is that “Republicans are pathetic.”
Purveyors of the Obama agenda will continue defending and dismissing.
That doesn’t change America’s reality: the President that we, the
people have twice elected has implemented domestic policies that will
eventually bankrupt us. No individual or family or household or company
can consume more than it spends. No national government can do that
either, yet American voters have continued to elect public officials -
the President among them - who neither believe this nor understand it.
Our current trajectory will lead all of America to a place of greater
despair and less prosperity for all.
By Kevin McCullough
...In the age of modern media, it wasn't even 24 hours before we knew that Putin had been snowed. And the producers have
since confessed to sending the rehearsal footage to the Russian feed
the second they realized the malfunction was occurring in the Olympic
stadium.
The obvious questions come to mind, "Why did they send the altered
feed to Putin's suite? Why did they fear Putin would see the actual
truth? And what did they fear would happen if he did?"
The idea in the modern era, that members of a state run media group
would live in fear for their life or livelihood because of something
that could easily be a mechanical error harkens us back to Cold War era
Soviet stories of people who merely "disappeared."
Or as NBC's Matt Lauer kept saying "were lost" in the "era of industrialization." Yeah... speaking of snow-jobs...
No Matt Lauer, the Soviet Union didn't "lose" people or "misplace" them or "forget where they were."
A hardened leftist tyrant who came to power in the 1920's, spent a
few years consolidating power into the hands of a very limited few, who
also "fundamentally transformed" his nation had those people extradited
to regions of Russia that were otherwise uninhabitable, or he had them
executed.
People that didn't conform to his ideas, realities, and "facts" were marginalized, isolated, and eventually dealt with.
Evidently that strict fear of shaking the good will or reality of Russia's top leadership still exists.
But is America that far behind them?
We have a media complex that reports the administration's view on
almost all things without much variance. The handful of actual outlets
that report actual facts that vary from the administration's talking
points are isolated and marginalized.
...Putin is a former KGB agent and soviet era operative. A believer in
centralized control, state-based control over the ways and means of
life, not truly accountable to the people, and one that sees his role as
vital to the advancement of a state-centric system to "solve" the
"problems" his people face. Wildly so does President Obama and his
operatives.
They neither feel responsible to tell their people the truth, nor do
the people who are their subjects believe such leaders are capable of
being told the truth.
This is certainly true about federally controlled healthcare programs
that fail on every level. It's true about protecting our ambassadors
when under attack by terrorist operatives in the Middle East. And
evidently it's true about much smaller things.
Even about things as insignificant as an Olympic snowflake that doesn't quite open.
It’s no surprise that cronyism is alive and well in the Obama
administration, despite the president alleging there hasn’t been a
“smidgen of corruption” under his watch.
President Obama’s latest example of unethical behavior falls within his appointments.
Obama has recently appointed 23 ambassadors with significant ties to
his presidential election campaigns. News outlets have spotlighted the
hasty appointments as many confirmation hearings showed the ambassadors
had little to no qualifications for the positions.
Noah Bryson Mamet raised $500,000 for Obama and was recently
appointed as ambassador to Argentina. Today, news emerged that Mamet has
never even been to Argentina.
Likewise, George Tsunis was tapped for the ambassadorship in Norway
after raising $1.3 million for Obama and Colleen Bradley Bell, who
raised, $800,000 for the president, was appointed for the position in
Hungary.
Last week, former Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) was appointed ambassador to China and in his
confirmation hearing said, “I’m no real expert on China.”
According to the Center for Public Integrity, the 23 ambassadors
Obama has chosen have raised a combined total of $16.1 million for him
since 2007.
Do you happen to smell a “smidgen of corruption?” I DO.
PK'S NOTE: Reminder: ...how many liberal groups were “targeted” like Tea Party groups?
There were 20 liberal groups who applied for tax-exempt status during
the period of time in question and only six were singled out for special
treatment.
Meanwhile, all 292 conservative groups came in for special scrutiny.
Tax attorney Cleta Mitchell absolutely destroys Obama’s lies to the
American people when he claimed that bone-headed bureaucrats in some
remote office was responsible for the targeting of Tea Party, Patriot
and conservative groups by the IRS.
She makes three clear points, then expands and proves her case in front of Congress in the video below.
Everything Obama has uttered in regards to this massive IRS targeting
scandal has been a huge lie and the people of the US need to hear it,
know it and act accordingly.
Via the video details:
“I want to make three primary points here. First, the IRS scandal is
real. It’s not pretend, it’s real. Number two, the IRS scandal is not
just a bunch of bone-headed bureaucrats in some remote office contrary
to what the President of the United States told the American People on
Sunday. And, number 3, the IRS scandal is not over. It is continuing to
this day. And, the Department of Justice Investigation is a sham. It is a
nonexistent investigation.”
Dems Trying to Blame IRS IG for Targeting Scandal
By Rick Moran
This is really quite the novel approach to the IRS targeting scandal by congressional Democrats.
Seeking to change the narrative in order to get on top of scandal,
Democrats have hit upon the idea to blame the IRS Inspector General,
Russell George, for the scandal getting out of hand.
How do they figure that? It appears that many Democrats were unhappy
with Mr. George’s initial report on the scandal, believing it to be
“misleading.” Mmmkay, whatever. But now they’ve got a mind to file an
ethics complaint against George because they think he is conspiring with
Darrell Issa’s oversight committee to make the Democrats look bad and
the IRS scandal worse than it really is.
...The Democrats might have a point about George meeting separately with
Issa and the Republicans. But I’ll bet it’s not unprecedented for an IG
to discuss his report with the majority alone.
The Obama administration has well-documented problems
with assertive inspector generals, so this kind of pushback is to be
expected from Hill Democrats. It’s an attempt to smear the IRS inspector
general and only shows how desperate the Democrats have become. It’s a
hail mary pass that is going to fall incomplete in the end zone.
By Katie McHugh
North Carolinians marching to protest voter-ID laws must
present a valid photo ID to participate in an NAACP-hosted protest
against voter-ID laws in Raleigh on Saturday.
The central claim among the protesters is that the
voter-ID laws disenfranchise certain segments of the voting population,
particularly minority voters and poor voters.
According to official NAACP flyers passed out at the rally, protesters must carry the precise kind of ID that they would be expected to present at the voting booth.
...Chairman of the House Elections Committee and North
Carolina Republican state Rep. David Lewis criticized the protesters
for their “hypocrisy.”
“I find it extremely hypocritical that when nearly 70
percent of North Carolinians across all political spectrums support the
idea that one present photo identification when going to the polls, the
NC NAACP has filed suit in court to block this common-sense idea,” said
Lewis in a statement to The Daily Caller. “However, the NC NAACP
requires their protesters to maintain valid photo identification on
their person throughout the march. The idea that Chairman William Barber
and his followers find it more important to carry their photo
identification with them when marching than when electing the President
of the United States is reprehensible.”
By Jason Howerton
During a tense exchange on Friday’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” Geraldo
Rivera accused Bill O’Reilly of stripping President Barack Obama of his
“majesty” during his highly-watched Super Bowl interview.
Rivera said the president wasn’t given the respect he deserves and as
a result the interview came off as the “President of Most of the White
Guys of America,” O’Reilly, versus the president of “almost everyone
else.” He also criticized the TV host for referring to Obama as a
“community organizer.”
“It’s not my job to be a social scientist or please you, Geraldo
Rivera, who’s looking more like a cartel member every day,” O’Reilly
joked. “My job is to get information. That’s my job. I got it. And I
asked him the tough questions that nobody else — no one — has asked
him.”
“What you did was strip him of his majesty, so to speak,” Rivera replied.
“I don’t think he has majesty! He’s not a king!” O’Reilly said,
adding that he respects the office of the presidency but presidents
still need to be held accountable.
By Sharona Schwartz
The American delegation attending a ceremony in honor of Tunisia’s
new constitution walked out after Iran’s parliament speaker called
Israel a “cancer” of the region and accused the U.S. of devastating
so-called Arab Spring revolutions.
“Even after the revolutions that happened in the region, the US and
Israel tried to divert and devastate some of the revolutions so that
Israel can benefit,” speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani said according to Iran’s official Press TV
The U.S. embassy in Tunis said in a statement after the delegation left in protest.
“What was intended to be a ceremony honoring Tunisia’s achievements
was used by the Iranian representative as a platform to denounce the
United States,” it said.
...At his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that the decision by the Obama
administration and European allies to ease sanctions on Iran have
emboldened Iran to ratchet up its belligerent stance.
“The international easing of the sanctions against Iran have not led
Iran to moderate its international aggression, the complete opposite has
occurred,” Netanyahu said.
“The Iranian Foreign Minister recently met with the head of Islamic
Jihad, Iran is continuing to supply terrorist organizations with deadly
weapons, Iran continues to be complicit in massacres in Syria and to all
this may be added the leader of Iran’s crude and sharp attack against
the US, alongside sending warships to the Atlantic Ocean,” Netanyahu
said according to a transcript posted on the Prime Minister’s Office website.
“What is happening here is that the international community has reduced
the sanctions on Iran and Iran is stepping up its international
aggression. This is the real result of the steps up until now.”
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