The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama

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Photo Credit: The Federalist The events of the past week illustrate the degree to which Barack Obama has become a failed president.

When Obama burst onto the national scene, he almost immediately became an inspirational figure. His promise spoke to our hearts as Americans and our desire for dramatic change in the wake of the fractious Bush years. His personal story and his optimism about the future sounded an affirming and uplifting note at a time when Americans were losing their hope for what tomorrow could bring. For a moment, it seemed like the promise of a uniter, not a divider, could provide leadership which – whatever Obama’s personal ideology – could lead to a healthier politics and a less fractured society.

Obama’s tenure in office has turned all these hopes into despair – despair in the corruption of our institutions, in the capability of our government, in our ability to manage large systems and more. Consider just the events of the past few days: the slow-rolling scandal of how we care for our Veterans, full of mismanagement, denials, and a growing awareness that this problem was shoved under the rug for years; the White House’s decision to embark on a top-down monopartisan environmental policy which will squeeze the working class and make energy more expensive; and of course, Obama’s decision to trade five high ranking terrorists for an apparent American deserter in Afghanistan, a decision which directly ignores the law of the land and will almost certainly lead to future deaths.

In these arenas, we see the Obama administration at its worst: willing to engage in irresponsible and occasionally illegal acts, bowling their way through mismanagement and cronyism and the rule of law to achieve their aims, no matter the cost. It is the same approach they used in his single domestic policy achievement – Obamacare – and they have not stopped using it since.

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10 Reasons You Should Oppose Common Core (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeBelow are ten more reasons from Freedom Works on why Common Core education standards are an absolute disaster for our country’s children, parents, and teachers.

1. Common Core is a federal takeover of education

The ultimate goal of Common Core is to have every school district follow the same national standards. This is a failed educational approach that will undermine educational quality and choice. States and local communities better know how to design standards based on their students and parents’ needs than Washington bureaucrats.

2. Common Core is Bad for Parents

Parents will not have a say in their child’s education under Common Core. They will not be able to suggest changes to their local school’s standards or enroll their child in another public school with better standards. Common Core would limit parental choice and shut their voices out of their child’s education.

3. Common Core is Bad for Teachers

Teachers would have little control over their classrooms under Common Core. They will be forced to comply with standards decided upon by federal bureaucrat. This leaves little to no room for teachers to innovate to meet the unique needs of their students.

4. Common Core is Bad for Taxpayers

Common Core has a hefty price tag that will be paid by taxpayers in states. Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction estimates that Common Core will cost the state$300 million. California Department of Education estimates it will cost $759 million to implement the nationalized standards. Common Core will cost taxpayers a lot of money while not improving education quality.

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The Democratic Party’s War On Women

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHoteyWhile his poll numbers have plummeted and a midterm election nears, President Obama is dusting off the old women’s issues playbook of his party and is basing his speeches on its anachronistic rhetoric. They are attempting to once again portray themselves as the only political party that serves women. They are doing this by attacking Republicans as the party that wants to abolish birth control and tolerate lower incomes for women.

The plain fact is, the rhetoric of birth control and income equality are relics of the 1960s and 1970s and are not directly relevant to the issues of adult women living under the Obama economy. It is the changes in their lives that have occurred since Obama took office that are on their minds.

When it comes to an examination of the behavior of Democrats toward women, however, what they have actually done, and what Obama has done, is far more damaging and revealing of their war on women. While Democrats might predict that women will suffer if Republicans are elected, it is easy to cite those things that are already happening to women under Obama’s rule that are hurting them.

The issues of reproductive freedom have their roots in Feminist activism of the 1960s. The driving concept of that movement was that men controlled the family, dominated women, and extended that domination to the workplace. Consequently they earned more money and held more wealth. If women had reproductive choice, feminists asserted, then they would no longer be bound by the old-fashioned chains of pregnancy and motherhood.

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Welcome to Obama’s America — Where Corruption, Scandal and Lawlessness Reign (+video)

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / KEVIN LAMARQUE…Welcome to Barack Obama’s America — where corruption, scandal and lawlessness reign, where truth, justice and integrity went right into that same garbage can and make no mistake, you’re next. Folks, it ain’t going to get better. Get ready because ObamaCare will do the same to you. Yesterday, VA Secretary [Eric] Shinseki resigned. So do I feel better? No. Will it bring back our dead veterans? No. Will it bring solace to their families? No. But, not to worry. The president is on it. He’ll make everyone accountable. He will take away their 2014 bonuses. Really? God help us.

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Obama Admin Willing to Hand Over Terrorists But Has “No Time” for Christian Meriam Ibrahim

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Photo Credit: LifeNewsWhile the weekend headlines were dominated by one American’s release, the world still waits for news on Sudan’s Meriam Ibrahim and her two little children, still imprisoned in Sudan.

After conflicting reports, one of which implied that Meriam’s release was imminent, no one seems to know the status of the mother, whose American husband is desperate to free his family from the brutal conditions in the Khartoum prison. According to the Sudanese government, comments about the trio’s discharge were taken out of context. Hours after hopes were raised, officials backpedaled and insisted the family would have to await the court’s verdict.

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‘I. Am. The. Mom.’: It Didn’t Go Over Well When a Hospital Allegedly Told a Mother They’d Need to Have a ‘Private’ Conversation With Her Teenage Daughter

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Photo Credit: Christy Duffy / Creative Commons We will be discussing this story and all the day’s news on our live BlazeCast with Editor-in-Chief Scott Baker (@bakerlink) beginning at 3:00pm ET:

When Christy Duffy took her 17-year-old daughter to her local hospital in Michigan, she was stunned to see a notice posted alerting parents that a nurse will need to “have a short 5 minute private conversation with your child.”

In a fiery blog post published on Monday, Duffy took a bold stand in favor of parental rights. She explains how the situation unfolded:

I was there last week for an appointment for Amy. She hurt her foot, which makes dancing difficult, so we had to get that checked out. Amy is 17; I asked if this policy was in effect and if so, how could I opt out. The receptionist told me it’s a new law and there is no opting out. Working to keep my cool, I said, “I’m sure there is.” She said, “No, there isn’t.” At which point I asked if I needed to leave and go to the urgent care center because I was not submitting my daughter to such a conversation.

That did not go over well

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Oregon School District to Offer Condoms to Students Starting in 6th Grade

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Photo Credit: ben swannAn Oregon school district plans to offer condoms to students starting in sixth grade as part of an updated sex education policy aimed at decreasing teen pregnancy, sparking debate over whether 11-year-olds are too young for such a program.

The plan by the rural Gervais School District comes after a 2013 survey by nursing students found that 7 percent of district high school girls had experienced pregnancy and 42 percent of students reported “never” or “sometimes” using protection.

“Over the past few decades, teen pregnancy in our community has remained somewhat constant, but higher than the board felt comfortable with,” Superintendent Rick Hensel said in a blog post dated Monday.
The district school board approved the sex education policy earlier this month for sixth through 12th graders in the tiny town north of Salem, and Hensel said administrators would hash out details this summer to be implemented in the fall.

The board decided to include middle school students because the middle and high schools are close in proximity and run by the same administration – and because middle school girls are getting pregnant too.

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One-Fourth of Total Obamacare Enrollees Have “Data Discrepancies”

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Photo Credit: TownHallThe president’s much-assailed health care law is once again roiled in controversy. According to a government document obtained exclusively by the Associated Press, a reported two million Affordable Care Act “enrollees” have signed up for the program even though their personal information is incorrect. As a result, some consumers might find themselves owing money to the government if they received overly generous subsidies. Others still might find themselves without coverage entirely. The AP reports:

A government document provided to The Associated Press says more than 2 million people who got health insurance under President Obama’s law have data discrepancies that could jeopardize coverage for some.

Two million people works out to about one out of four who signed up, creating a huge paperwork headache for the feds, and exposing some consumers to repayment demands if they got too generous a subsidy — or even loss of coverage.

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Obama’s War on the Constitution

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Photo Credit: TownHall “You know I taught constitutional law for 10 years, I take the Constitution very seriously,” then-Sen. Barack Obama said while campaigning in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on March 31, 2008.

“The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all,” Obama continued, “and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America.”

More than six years later, we now know that Obama never had any intention of taking the Constitution seriously. Instead, he has violated its core provisions at every turn, launching unauthorized wars, rewriting legislation without Congress’ input, and even creating brand new laws out of whole cloth.

When Obama first uttered the phrase, “If Congress won’t act, I will,” he functionally declared war on the U.S. Constitution. And unless Republicans start standing up to Obama’s lawlessness, our republic may never be the same.

EMBRACING BUSH’S WAR POWERS
Obama made his 2008 promise to “reverse” Bush’s power grab after a supporter questioned why Obama had voted for reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2006 after he had promised to vote against the legislation when he was a U.S. Senate candidate in 2003.

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Treason Trifecta: Bergdahl is a Deserter, Defector, and Collaborator

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Photo Credit: Fox News ‘Lopsided’ Deal with Enemy for Bergdahl in Sharp Contrast to Inaction on Tahmooressi

By Joseph J. Kolb.

The Obama administration’s extraordinary effort to free Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has some wondering why the president can’t make a simple phone call on behalf of a former Marine being held in a Mexican prison after mistakenly driving across the border with registered guns.

Obama announced Saturday in a dramatic Rose Garden news conference that five Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay would be exchanged for Bergdahl, a 28-year-old infantryman held captive for five years by the terrorist group. The swap angered many in the military and on Capitol Hill, because it went against long-standing policy of not bargaining with terrorists.

“He wasn’t forgotten by his country, because the United States of America does not ever leave our men and women in uniform behind,” Obama said.

Although Tahmooressi is not a prisoner of war, he served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, and now suffers post-traumatic stress disorder, according to his mother, Jennifer Tahmooressi. Friends who have visited him in prison say he has been tortured and threatened with rape and death, and they question whether the administration is doing enough to help him.

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Photo Credit: Fox News Bergdahl wrote of being ‘ashamed’ to be an American in emails

By Fox News.

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl left a letter the night he disappeared from his base in Afghanistan saying he wanted to renounce his citizenship, according to sources, and previously expressed his disillusionment with the Army, telling his father in an e-mail he was “ashamed” to be an American.

That account, though, is being called into question amid conflicting claims over whether Bergdahl left a note behind. U.S Army officials who have read the investigation document said there was no reference in that report to a letter.

While Bergdahl remained at a U.S. military hospital in Germany following a swap for five high-level Taliban members — dubbed a jihadist “Dream Team” — two of Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers told Fox News Channel that the 28-year-old Idaho native willingly walked away from his post in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. Their claims that Bergdahl’s departure from the base was premeditated jibes with emails published in 2012, in which he told his father of his growing disenchantment with the Army’s mission in Afghanistan.

“The future is too good to waste on lies,” Bergdahl wrote his parents. “And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting.”

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Photo Credit: Joe Raedl – Getty Images
White House Overrode Internal Objections to Taliban Prisoner Release

By Massimo Calabresi.

To pull off the prisoner swap of five Taliban leaders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the White House overrode an existing interagency process charged with debating the transfer of Guantanamo Bay prisoners and dismissed long-standing Pentagon and intelligence community concerns based on Top Secret intelligence about the dangers of releasing the five men, sources familiar with the debate tell TIME.

National Security Council officials at the White House decline to describe the work of the ad hoc process they established to trade the prisoners, or to detail the measures they have taken to limit the threat the Taliban officials may pose. They say consensus on the plan was reached by the top officials of Obama’s national security team, including representatives from the Pentagon, State Department, intelligence community and Joint Chiefs of Staff. “These releases were worked extensively through deputies and principals,” says National Security Counsel Deputy for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes. “There was not a dissent on moving forward with this plan.”

But officials in the Pentagon and intelligence communities had successfully fought off release of the five men in the past, officials tell TIME. “This was out of the norm,” says one official familiar with the debate over the dangers of releasing the five Taliban officials. “There was never the conversation.” Obama’s move was an ultimate victory for those at the White House and the State Department who had previously argued the military should “suck it up and salute,” says the official familiar with the debate.

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Treason Trifecta: Bergdahl is a Deserter, Defector, and Collaborator

By Russ Vaughn.

Forgive the cynicism of this old infantry sergeant when it comes to media depictions of anyone and anything associated with the military. But they inevitably get it wrong: ranks, unit designations, and terminology. And most of all, what they never seem capable of comprehending is the military mindset regarding loyalty to your brothers in arms and the importance of successfully completing the mission. Except for the minuscule few veterans among them, journalists just don’t get it.

Let us hope that in the case of this recently apprehended deserter, Bowe Bergdahl, they will resist their natural compulsion to brand another American traitor a hero. Several liberal media outlets appear to be taking a balanced position rather than swallowing whole the Obama administration’s propaganda.

Notice that I do not use the term “POW” for the simple reason Bergdahl disgraces that description of his captivity. He is a wartime collaborator, or more precisely, a collaborationist, the term applied to treasonous soldiers who defected to the enemy in earlier wars. And apprehended is the correct term to apply to a deserter/defector now back under U.S. Army control in Germany.

Bergdahl deserted his platoon to fulfill what may turn out to be a family-concocted book-deal plan to undermine the mission of American troops in Afghanistan. His recorded words and those of his father indicate their sympathies to those Islamists we are fighting. PFC Bergdahl’s fuzzy, feel-good airs and mysterious conversations may well have been contrived to justify and camouflage his true intent to desert his post and go over to the enemy.

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U.S. concluded in 2010 that Bergdahl walked away

By Ken Dilanian and Deb Riechmann.

A Pentagon investigation concluded in 2010 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his unit, and after an initial flurry of searching the military decided not to exert extraordinary efforts to rescue him, according to a former senior defense official who was involved in the matter.

Instead, the U.S. government pursued negotiations to get him back over the following five years of his captivity — a track that led to his release over the weekend.

Bergdahl was being checked and treated Monday at a U.S. military hospital in Germany as questions mounted at home over the swap that resulted in his freedom in exchange for the release of five detainees who were sent to Qatar from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo, Cuba.

Even in the first hours of Bergdahl’s handoff to U.S. special forces in eastern Afghanistan, it was clear this would not be an uncomplicated yellow-ribbon celebration. Five terrorist suspects also walked free, stirring a debate over whether the exchange would heighten the risk of other Americans being snatched as bargaining chips and whether the released detainees — several senior Taliban figures among them — would find their way back to the fight.

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