Iraq Comes Back to Haunt Obama

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Photo Credit: Greg NashAn explosion of violence in Iraq risks turning the troubled country into a political liability for President Obama.

During last year’s reelection campaign, the president managed to both earn credit for withdrawing all U.S. troops and avoid blame for the deteriorating security situation.

But a surge in terror attacks this year that has left more than 7,000 people dead has drawn bipartisan concerns about Obama’s Middle East policies — concerns that broke out into the open during Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s visit to the White House this week.

“By nearly every indicator, security conditions in Iraq have dramatically worsened over the past two years,” a bipartisan group of Senate leaders on national security issues wrote to Obama on Tuesday. “What’s worse, the deteriorating conflict in Syria has enabled al Qaeda in Iraq to transform into the larger and more lethal Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which now has a major base for operations spanning both Iraq and Syria.”

The Senate letter was signed by the chairmen and top members on the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations panels: Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

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Remington Arms Co. Unveils Clothing Line for the ‘Gun-Toting Crowd’

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Photo Credit: Reuters/CaterpillarCall it concealed-carry chic: With all 50 U.S. states now permitting people to pack pistols in public, it was only a matter of time before some company came to market with an apparel line targeting the gun-toting crowd.

Remington Arms Co, which has been making firearms for nearly 200 years, has just unveiled a collection of clothing and accessories, including the “Smoothbore Field Coat” ($1,295) and the “Double Derringer Leather Vest” ($300).

In drawing a bead on the apparel market, Remington becomes the latest U.S. manufacturer to try reinventing itself as a “lifestyle brand” as a way to bolster its bottom line.

Next up is Winnebago Industries Inc, the U.S. maker of motorhomes and trailers. In October, the Forest City, Iowa-based motorhome maker announced an agreement with Brandgenuity, a New York-based licensing agency, to put the Winnebago name on a range of outdoor fashions and camping gear.

“We stand for quality products and a fun lifestyle,” Randy Potts, the company’s chairman, chief executive and president, told Reuters. “We think there’s an opportunity to leverage that beyond RVs.”

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Common Core Causes Georgia Teacher to Walk Away from Her Job

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Photo Credit: Common Core/Examiner A Georgia teacher, Meg Norris, who is a doctoral candidate in education and a certified teacher in Georgia walked away from her dream job in one of Georgia’s schools because of the controversial Common Core curriculum and wrote an apologetic and explanation letter to her former students on Saturday.

Common Core, a federal education mandate program under the Obama administration, describes itself as internationally bench-marked, aligned with college and work expectations, and states that it is evidence-based.

Teachers like Norris and other opponents say that it is not true, it’s only a government takeover of education and according to Norris, a money making proposition for businessmen.

Norris said in her letter to her students, “Common Core is the first time in the history of this country that a privately written and copyrighted plan has become public policy. There is no research to back it and it has never been tested. Politicians are pushing it because these corporations are giving them money to push it.”

“I saw you struggling with Common Core skills. Even with the new curriculum from the district, no matter how I broke it down for you I could see you didn’t understand. I saw the frustration on your faces… and when time ran out and we had to take the county’s test (on the county’s schedule), I saw the tears roll from your eyes. You failed. I saw you missing school more days than normal. You came early every day for homework help, but it didn’t make any difference. You still could not understand,” Norris said.

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Death by Drone Turns a Villain Into a Martyr

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Photo Credit: A Majeed/AFP/Getty In life, Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was Public Enemy No. 1: a ruthless figure who devoted his career to bloodshed and mayhem, whom Pakistani pundits occasionally accused of being a pawn of Indian, or even American, intelligence.

But after his death, it seems, Pakistani hearts have grown fonder.

Since missiles fired by American drones killed Mr. Mehsud in his vehicle on Friday, Pakistan’s political leaders have reacted with unusual vehemence. The interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, denounced the strike as sabotage of incipient government peace talks with the Taliban. Media commentators fulminated about American treachery. And the former cricket star Imran Khan, now a politician, renewed his threats to block NATO military supply lines through Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa — a province his Tehreek-e-Insaf party controls — with a parliamentary vote scheduled for Monday.

Virtually nobody openly welcomed the demise of Mr. Mehsud, who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Pakistani civilians. To some American security analysts, the furious reaction was another sign of the perversity and ingratitude that they say have scarred Pakistan’s relationship with the United States.

“It’s another stab in the back,” said Bill Roggio, whose website, the Long War Journal, monitors drone strikes. “Even those of us who watch Pakistan closely don’t know where they stand anymore. It’s such a double game.”

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Report: Ted Cruz could ride Tea Party support to White House

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photo credit: gage skidmoreThe friendly fire directed at Sen. Ted Cruz from establishment Republicans is giving the Texan first-in-line status among Tea Party supporters and building a base for him to run for president, according to a new analysis from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

“To the establishment, Cruz is the embodiment of all the forces conspiring to threaten the GOP’s long-term viability. And, on a personal level, they also just can’t stand Cruz: He drives them crazy,” wrote Kyle Kondik in Center Director Larry Sabato’s popular Crystal Ball.

But, added Kondik, the “venom” directed at Cruz, whose effort to defund Obamacare led to a 16-day government shutdown, makes him an oversized hero to Tea Party supporters.

“Not pleasing the establishment is music to the ears of Tea Party activists, and if anything the shutdown has endeared Cruz even more to them. Assuming Cruz mounts a presidential bid in 2016 — he’s headed to South Carolina next week after his Iowa appearance last Friday (hint, hint) — the Tea Party could be a potent base,” he said.

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Health Care Shoppers Aren’t as Dumb as Obama Thinks

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Photo Credit: ReutersPresident Obama calls them “substandard” insurance plans. But to many of the people who bought individual insurance policies that are now being canceled under the Affordable Care Act, their choice of insurance was a prudent decision that met their needs at a price that will be hard to beat under the ACA.

Jim Stadler is one of the “5 percenters”—the 5% of Americans with health insurance policies they purchased on their own—who got notified recently that their carrier was canceling coverage because it didn’t meet the tougher new minimum requirements of the ACA. Stadler, a freelance writer who lives outside of Charlotte, N.C., was laid off from a full-time job at an ad agency in 2009, at which point he became a freelancer and bought individual health coverage for him and his two kids.

Under Stadler’s expiring policy, his premiums are $411 a month, for coverage that always seemed adequate to him. “It’s not a substandard policy,” he says. “I thought it was a great deal.” The premium for the new policy offered by his insurer will be $843 a month, with coverage that’s more or less the same as far as he’s concerned. But new policies are required to include free preventive services such as mammograms and colonoscopies, and they can’t be canceled or priced higher for sicker people, which is why the cost of some policies is going up.

Since Stadler’s family’s income is too high to qualify for federal subsidies, he’s considering putting his kids on the policy his wife, a teacher, gets through her job. But that would be expensive, too. “The thing that gets me,” says Stadler, who voted for Obama in the 2012 presidential election, “is I thought Barack Obama was the only guy I could trust in Washington. He ended up lying to me because he said, if I like my insurance, I could keep it.”

The 5-percenter problem could end up being a much more serious albatross for Obamacare and its mostly Democratic supporters than the notorious web site snafus and other temporary snags, which can mostly be fixed. Obama did, in fact, say repeatedly, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” But policies held by as many as 10 million Americans don’t meet the minimum requirements of the law and are now being canceled. Obama this week added a “vast majority” clause to his earlier claim: “For the vast majority of people who have health insurance that works, you can keep it,” he said in a recent speech on health-care reform.

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House Ways and Means Committee Threatens Subpoena to Access Obamacare Enrollment Figures

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Photo Credit: AFPThe House Ways and Means Committee Friday threatened to subpoena the Obama administration to access enrollment figures for health care exchanges.

“The failed launch of the exchanges, combined with the millions of cancellation notices, is putting Americans’ healthcare coverage at risk,” Michigan Republican Rep. Dave Camp wrote in a letter to Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner, Fox News reports.

He asked Tavenner that enrollment figures be released immediately, saying the nation is facing a crisis.

Media reports show the administration has access to daily enrollment figures, but Tavenner would not provide the committee with signup numbers during a meeting with the committee this past week.

“By all media accounts, enrollment in the exchanges is thus far significantly behind the administration’s projections, Camp said. But the Obama administration said its first numbers will be released in mid-November after the Department of Health and Human Services collects information.

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After ObamaCare, Barack Obama’s Encore Performance

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While all eyes are on the Obamacare roll-out debacle, the establishment in Washington has been quietly working behind the scenes to cut a deal on amnesty for millions of illegal aliens.
 
The Senate measure passed earlier this year with the full support of Senator Begich is almost certainly dead in the House, but many fear that a deal is in the works to push a House bill through that will be gutted in conference committee and turned into an amnesty bill.
 
The Democrat machine is working overtime to create public pressure, while big business puts the full-court press on House Republicans to acquiesce.

Once again, just as with Obamacare, Senator Begich has chosen the agenda of the President and his party bosses over the interests of ordinary Alaskans. It’s time to hold him accountable.
 
And I intend to do exactly that! 
 
If you stand with me, I pledge to oppose amnesty and put Alaskans first.
 
Amnesty would be devastating to the American worker. With high unemployment, stagnant wages, and low economic growth, Americans seeking work can ill afford to compete with foreign workers who will undercut their earning potential and continue a long-term trend of wage suppression.
 
Amnesty also threatens the American economy by racking up more debt, overwhelming our social safety nets, and creating new demands on our already beleaguered health care system.
 
A study by the Heritage Foundation released earlier this year found that the net cost to the American taxpayers of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants would be a staggering $6 trillion. This figure is a conservative estimate, subtracting projected tax revenues from granting citizenship from the costs of Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, welfare, and other government programs. 

But that’s not all. There is a growing body of evidence that the porous southern border is being used by Islamic radicals and Chinese nationals who are a grave threat to our national security. The virtual open border policy of the Obama administration has imperiled the nation, and it is unconscionable to allow these dangerous elements permanent legal status, and even citizenship.
 
We must stop amnesty dead in its tracks!
 
It’s bad for American workers. It’s bad for national security. And it’s bad for the future of the country.
 
If you agree with me, I need your help today.

Together, we can save the country we love for future generations.
 
Yours for the Future,

Joe

Sen. Dan Coats: Americans Will Be Stuck on ‘Titanic’ Obamacare (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube The problems with Obamacare run much more deeply than the glitches on its expensive, faulty website — and fixing the site’s technological problems won’t heal the wounds being caused by the health insurance law, says Indiana Sen. Dan Coats.

“The failure of [the] Obamacare launch is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Coats, giving Saturday’s GOP weekly address. “Unless we act, Americans will be stuck on board this Titanic.”

Obamacare launched one month ago, on Oct. 1, and many Americans still can’t go online and sign up, despite promises by the White House and congressional Democrats that the insurance exchanges would be ready to go.

“The president even told the American public that signing up online would be as easy as a few simple keystrokes,” said Coats. “Perhaps the President hasn’t tried logging onto the website himself because he and his political appointees are not required to join Obamacare.”

But the rest of the country doesn’t have that choice, and the few that have been able to access the online exchanges are “experiencing sticker shock,” Coats said.

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Panetta: US May Have to Use Military Force Against Iran

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Photo Credit: REUTERSWhile the US has “implemented unprecedented sanctions and pressure on Iran, we may very well have to use military force to back up our policy,” Leon Panetta said on Thursday night.

The former US defense secretary and CIA director made the remarks while addressing around 600 people at the Anti-Defamation League’s 100th annual meeting.

Panetta, who was receiving the ADL’s William and Naomi Gorowitz Institute Service Award, said the US needs to “maintain a healthy skepticism” when negotiating to suss out Iran’s true level of commitment to negotiations over its nuclear program.

“It is the Supreme Leader [Ali Khamenei] who is key, and he is not likely to give up [uranium] enrichment,” Panetta warned. “We have to remain strong. We have to remain consistent.”

Panetta reiterated the American line that the US has “no friend, no better ally in the world than Israel,” but he expressed concern over the “growing sense of isolationism in this country [the US]” over the last 10 years of fighting two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the shifting power dynamics among world leaders.

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