“Ignoring the core problem will only cause more hardship”
For the Washington Times, Jennifer Harper reports: Critics say Texas Gov. Rick Perry is trying to politicize the border crisis only to bolster a potential White House run in 2016. Yes, there could be some of that going on, but Mr. Perry also has a succinct reason for speaking out, loudly and often, about the surge of young illegal immigrants: The Lone Star State has already spent a half-billion dollars on the situation. Read the rest of this entry »
“We can talk about what happened for two days in 2005 and we should. We can talk about levees that couldn’t hold, a FEMA that seemed not just incompetent but paralyzed and powerless, about a president who only saw the people from the window of an airplane instead of down here on the ground. Trying to provide comfort and aid.”
“This isn’t theater. This is a problem. I’m not interested in photo-ops. I’m interested in solving a problem.”
President Obama pushed back against repeated calls, including from members of his own party, for him to visit the southwestern border during his fundraising trip to Texas.
…Aberly, the hostess, has been a top bundler for Obama, raising more than $1 million for his two White House runs. She also has given roughly $500,000 over the last decade to assorted Democratic causes, plus $100,000 last fall to Planned Parenthood.
Obama spoke in a grand two-story dining room at the Aberly-Lebowitz home, a 12,000-square-foot, northwest Dallas mansion that’s appraised on the tax rolls for $10.1 million. Read the rest of this entry »
Krauthammer on Homeland Security intentionally misapplying a sex-trafficking law to justify retaining children who have illegally come to the country.
“Obama is clearly been making the statement . . . that he is opening the doors of America to this influx — it will double, it will triple.”
Krauthammer continued…
“He obviously was never serious. I don’t think he is lost on this — I think he knows what to do, he wants to win the political argument with Hispanics and other pro-immigration groups, and he’s doing it for political reasons very very cynically.”
Thanks to their cozy relationship with the Obama administration, a new class of super-wealthy oligarchs keeps getting more powerful while the country’s middle class shrinks.
For The Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin writes: When our current President was elected, many progressives saw the dawning of a new epoch, a more egalitarian and more just Age of Obama. Instead we have witnessed the emergence of the Age of Oligarchy. The outlines of this new epoch are clear in numerous ways. There is the diminished role for small business, greater concentration of financial assets, and a troubling decline in home ownership
[Also see A Glimpse into the Political Future – city-journal.org]On a cultural level, there is a general malaise about the prospect for upward mobility for future generations.Not everyone is suffering in this new age. For the entitled few, these have been the best of times. With ever more concentration of key industries, ever greater advantage of capital over labor, and soaring real estate values in swanky places such as Manhattan or San Francisco which , as one journalists put it, constitute “vast gated communities where the one percent reproduces itself.” The top hundred firms on the Fortune 500 list has revenues, in adjusted dollars, eight times those during the supposed big-business heyday of the 1960s.
This shift towards oligarchy well precedes President Obama’s tenure. It was born from a confluence of forces: globalization, the financialization of the economy, and the shift towards digital technology. Obama is not entirely to blame, it is more than a bit ironic that these measurements have worsened under an Administration that has proclaimed income inequality abhorrent.[Check out Joel Kotkin‘s book The New Class Conflict at Amazon.com]
Despite this administration’s occasional rhetorical flourishes against oligarchy, we have seen a rapid concentration of wealth and depressed conditions for the middle class under Obama. The stimulus, with its emphasis on public sector jobs, did little for Main Street. And under the banner of environmentalism, green cronyism has helped fatten the bank accounts of investment bankers and tech moguls at great public expense.
George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley, who self-identifies as a liberal and has supported President Barack Obama on numerous issues, argued that that the president’s attempts to expand the power of the executive branch will “cause serious problems,” and will “start to lose Democrats.” …(read more)Breitbart.com
Noting that polls consistently show the majority of Americans don’t support Obama’s foreign policy, Stephanopoulos asked the president, “Are you failing by your own standard?” (read more) The Corner – NRO
For National Review Online, Kevin D. Williamson writes: You may recall that when the IRS political-persecution scandal first started to become public, the agency’s story was that the trouble was the result of the misguided, overly enthusiastic actions of a few obscure yokels in Cincinnati. That turned out to be a lie, as we all know. But the IRS made a similar case successfully in the matter of its criminal disclosure of the confidential tax records of the National Organization for Marriage, whose donor lists were leaked to left-wing activists in order to use them against the Romney campaign. The IRS admitted that an employee leaked the information, but said it was an accident, that it involved only a single employee making a single error, etc., and the court agreed that NOM could not show that the leak was the result of malice or gross negligence. Read the rest of this entry »
“How can the president say that the VA’s problems had not reached the White House, when the president himself says he’s been working on this for six years?”
The lobby of the CIA Headquarters Building in McLean, Virginia (Reuters/Larry Downing)
For The Washington Post, Greg Miller, writes: The Obama administration said Tuesday it will seek to determine how the identity of the CIA’s top spy in Afghanistan was exposed in an embarrassing slip by the White House press office during President Obama’s surprise visit to the country on Sunday.White House Chief of StaffDenis McDonough has instructed the president’s chief counsel, W. Neil Eggleston, to examine how the CIA officer’s name ended up on a list of U.S. officials who met with Obama in Afghanistan, a document that was then distributed to thousands of journalists and other recipients.
Eggleston has been asked “to look into what happened and report back to [McDonough] with recommendations on how the administration can improve processes and make sure something like this does not happen again,” said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council. Read the rest of this entry »
Krauthammer found it contemptible that Obama would orient military plans around the timing of his departure from office, merely to make himself look better…(read more)
Via the Free Beacon, watch to the very end for the crucial counterpoint to Obama’s nonsense this morning. Namely, the VA’s problems are very well documented.
Marine One-to-be: An artist’s rendering shows what Sikorsky’s proposed ‘VXX‘ presidential helicopter might look like
For Mail Online,David Martosko reports: The Department of Defense awarded a contract on Wednesday to a Connecticut company that will build a fleet of helicopters to replace the Marine One fleet that ferries U.S. presidents short distances.
The contract, given to Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, will cost an initial $1,244,677,064 ‘for the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the Presidential Helicopter Replacement program.’ For that price the U.S. Navy will get six test aircraft and all the necessary research & development.
The Pentagon made a similar attempt to replace the aging fleet of Sikorsky choppers, spending $3.2 billion on a landing pad to nowhere.
Adding in the likely $17 billion price tag for the new project – a numberestimated by the Congressional Budget Office – the $20 billion total makes the fleet the most expensive helicopters ever built.
Seeing double? If the current fleet of presidential choppers looks a lot like the new one, it’s because the same company will build them, and it was the only firm to bid on the project
The CBO reports that the projected cost also ‘does not include costs to keep the 19 existing presidential helicopters in operation until they are replaced by new helicopters.’ Read the rest of this entry »
Except during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when Obama projected a seductive, false image of a pragmatic, hopeful, rational candidate, promising to unite a divided nation, Obama has governed on one principle: destroy the Republican party. Anyone who disagrees can go screw themselves. Even if it means sacrificing fellow Democrats along the way, fully at ease Abusing executive power in order to achieve a partisan political agenda, and masquerading as an egalitarian, while governing as an elitist. So it’s no surprise that as President, he makes no effort to hide his deep, unwavering contempt for his opposition. And contempt for half of the population of the country he was elected to lead.
“Democrats should forcefully defend and be proud of the fact that millions of people . . . we’re helping, because of something we did.”
He also said that Republicans are going through “stages of grief” over Obamacare.
“Anger, denial, and all that stuff — we’re not at acceptance yet.”
After five years, the president’s health care agenda is as unwelcome and unpopular that it was the day it was signed. No matter how many speeches, no matter how many Democrat seats must be sacrificed. Clearly, the president is suffering from anger, denial, and all that stuff.
After Pope Francis met with President Obama, each leader had a different take on their conversation…
“On the one hand you’ve got the Bishop of Rome, the Holy See, of whom a billion co-religionists believe in his infallibility…”
According to The Hammer, it’s easy to choose who to believe.
“…On the other hand you’ve got a man who said, ‘If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.’ So who are you going to choose?”
Former Obama-Zombie Kicks POTUS to the Curb like a Bad Boyfriend
Tom Tillison reports: Saying she was once among President Obama‘s “most hysterical supporters,” Carey Wedlerwants the world to know she has come to see the president in a different light these past five years.
Here’s the good news. You know that term that pops into your head when you hear a president offering an all-too-perfect anecdote of an all-too-perfect ordinary American writing in to him, offering a comment that just happens to perfectly illuminate the point he wants to make? Like when Bill Clinton gave his 1994 State of the Union Address? Well, someone within the White House — perhaps Bill himself! — had the same thought, too:
Article II of the U.S. Constitution vests the “executive” power of the United States in the “president” and charges him with the “execution” of “federal law”, alongside the “responsibility” of appointing federal “executive”, diplomatic, regulatory, and judicial officers, and concluding treaties with foreign powers, with the advice and consent of the Senate. The “president” is further empowered to grant federal pardons and reprieves, and to convene and adjourn either or both houses of Congress under extraordinary circumstances. Since the founding of the United States, the power of the “president” and the federal government have grown substantially and each modern “president”, despite possessing no formal legislative powers beyond signing or vetoing congressionally passed bills, is largely “responsible” for dictating the legislative agenda of his party and the foreign and domestic “policy” of the United States. The “president” is frequently described as the “most powerful person in the world”.
“I Dont Have Time to Waste. The Clock Is Ticking…”
The Weekly Standard‘s Daniel Halper reports: President Obama knows that his time is almost up. It’s a point he’s making to liberal Democratic donors to get them to donate generously in this year’s mid-term election.
“We have our blind spots and we have our dogmas and we’ve got our crazy folks…”
At a Democratic fundraiser last night in New York City, President Obama said, “I hope you will all step up because, although I’m very optimistic about our long-term trends, the notion that we would waste two years in further inaction rather than move boldly on a path that I think all of us in this room agree on — we don’t have time to waste.”
Oh, wait. That’s not President Obama. It’s that other president who stonewalled Congress, lied to the press, deceived the American public, kept enemies lists, spied on reporters, used the IRS to harass political opponents, rigged his second-term election victory, and spent his last days in office engulfed in corruption, scandal, and disgrace.
Though, it could be interpreted by some as an example of the kind of mean, unpatriotic criticism that Republicans indulge in that risks “undermining” President Obama. So if you laugh, please, do so quietly, and respectfully.
June 07, 2009 – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday took back what was arguably her toughest criticism of her former presidential primary foe, saying President Obama is entirely capable of handling the so-called “3 a.m. call.”
“The president in his public actions and demeanor, and certainly in private with me and with the national security team, has been strong, thoughtful, decisive…I think he is doing a terrific job. And it’s an honor to serve with him.”
The hypothetical phone call was the centerpiece of one of Clinton’s most powerful primary campaign ads. The ad, which raised the question of whether her one-time opponent could handle an international crisis in the middle of the night, complemented her criticism on the trail that Obama was naive and untested.
Now that Clinton serves in Obama’s Cabinet, Clinton said Obama “absolutely” has answered that question — in the affirmative.
It isn’t “absolutely false.” That particular woman got an insurance cancellation letter because of the implementation of Obamacare — and apparently that’s the Koch brothers’ fault.
But are we going to believe Harry Reid, or our lying eyes, ears and millions of cancellation notices?
We now have an early nominee for the 2014 Lie of the Year.
President Obama has “never been interested in lowering the deficit,” Charles Krauthammer said on Special Report. “It contradicts the reason he ran for president: It’s to change a lot of things in society, to give people stuff like health care.”
“On this idea of austerity…we’ve talked about Obama’s assaulting the Constitution…”
We’re just inviting you to take a timeout into the rhythmic ambiance of our breakfast, brunch and/or coffee selections. We are happy whenever you stop by.
At a Democratic fundraiser last night in New York City, President Obama said, “I hope you will all step up because, although I’m very optimistic about our long-term trends, the notion that we would waste two years in further inaction rather than move boldly on a path that I think all of us in this room agree on — we don’t have time to waste.”
pundit from another planet 