Obama to the Vineyard: America Is Monarchy in All but Name

Will New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie go to Kennebunkport, Maine, on his summer vacation? You know he would like to. You can tell by the way he thumps his foot when Jeb Bush scratches his neck.

Obama goes directly to Camelot’s spa on The Cape. “Camelot” is what we unabashedly called the place when Jack Kennedy was the first king of America, because it reminded Jackie Kennedy of King Arthur. Really.

Frankly, I did not think my aunties were ready for democracy; even the televised “Wheel of Fortune” type we play in our time, pretending we are still a republic. They’d only been one generation from the Old Sod and nothing there in their previous 900 years in the rainy moss prepared them for Jeffersonian principles. The only thing that prepared them for America was hunger.

Possibly Obama goes to the Cape so that his little doggie can bond with its ancestors over at the Camelot compound. Does Barbara Bush have an extra doggie she might want to pass on to Christie to make him feel at home in Kennebunkport? Make him feel part of the family?

Trouble is, he is not; not now, not ever will Christie ever be a Bush. He should realize right away that he is a front for the Bush/Kissinger legacy and their policy dictators, now at risk of losing their jobs at The Washington Post, thank you, Jesus. Trouble is, he does. So his dilemma is personal, existential. He needs to ask himself, what kind of a man am I, and skulk off for a month of long solitary walks on the beach, but not in Maine.

It is what we have come to in America at least since the early ‘90s. I felt the first chill when a prominent Democratic fundraiser and diplomat said of Bill Clinton and the missus: “I guess this is the closest thing we will ever have to a king and a queen.” Wow.

My guess, no. The closest thing we will ever have to a king is King George; not the Kennebunkport serial mediocrities, but the one born last month. They have a plan, you see, called The Commonwealth, and a model, that booming wilderness and responsible banking wunderkind above us. I asked a well-known Canadian scholar what Canada would do if America fell apart. Canada was and is the plan, he said — just joking — but you know what Freud said.

Visualize this: That which circles around and above us like a large intestine, from Australia to Gibraltar finding its center in Ottawa by the time the wee one is old enough to serve in battle like his ancestors, real monarchs. And ask our fledgling monarchs — Obama, Christie, Bush, the Clintons — did you serve? Do you know what percentage has served in New Jersey and Massachusetts?

But will Kennedy, Bush, Obama, Christie, basically the monarchist families of Massachusetts (plus the Clintons), satisfy once they stop blasting that tedious crap from the ’60s and ’70s in grocery stores? I can’t imagine.

Consider George Kennan’s plan. The great ambassador of late felt we had come pretty much to the end of it and proposed devolving much federal law to more manageable regional circles and advancing likewise compatible state law to the same dozen circles and bringing in a Council of Elders — say a “supercommittee of governors” — to modulate. That’s food for thought for Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Nancy Mace and the rising generation.

Start again with Jefferson, but not in Massachusetts.

Obamacare Installs New Scrutiny, Fines for Charitable Hospitals that Treat Uninsured People

Charitable hospitals that treat uninsured Americans will be subjected to new levels of scrutiny of their nonprofit status and could face sizable new fines under Obamacare.

A new provision in Section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code, which takes effect under Obamacare, sets new standards of review and installs new financial penalties for tax-exempt charitable hospitals, which devote a minimum amount of their expenses to treat uninsured poor people. Approximately 60 percent of American hospitals are currently nonprofit.

Charity for the uninsured is one of the factors that could discourage enrollment in Obamacare, which requires all Americans to purchase health insurance or else face new taxes themselves from the IRS.

“It requires tax-exempt hospitals to do a community needs survey and file additional paperwork with the IRS every three years. This is to prove that the charitable hospital is still needed in their geographical area — ‘needed’ as defined by Obamacare and overseen by IRS bureaucrats,” said John Kartch, spokesman for Americans for Tax Reform.

“Failure to comply, or to prove this continuing need, could result in the loss of the hospital’s tax-exempt status. The hospital would then become a for-profit venture, paying income tax — hence the positive revenue score” for the federal government, Kartch said. “Obamacare advocates turned over every rock to find as much tax money as possible.”

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Iowa Evangelical Leader: Ted Cruz Is ‘A Liberal’s Worst Nightmare’

In an interview you will only see on The Brody File, influential Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, head of The Family Leader organization says that Sen. Ted Cruz, “is a liberal’s worst nightmare.”

He goes on to say that Cruz has unlimited potential to energize the GOP base.

“I haven’t seen anything like it for a long time, probably ever,” Vander Plaats tells The Brody File.

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US Shale Oil Threatens to Derail OPEC’s Future: IEA

The rise of North American oil supplies could test the future of OPEC which may have to curb supply to accommodate rising shale oil volumes, a new report has found.

The increase in U.S. output is a “defining feature of tomorrow’s market” according to International Energy Agency’s oil market report and could test the producer group’s share of the global oil market.

“The producer group, ineluctably faces the test of having to rein in supply and accommodate rising volumes of shale oil – unless falling prices curb shale oil production first,” the report found.

Non‐OPEC supplies rose by 570,000 barrels per day in July to 54.9 million barrels a day, with North America providing around 40 percent of the growth, said the IEA, with Canada rather than the U.S. responsible for most of this increase.

However, OPEC’s imminent challenge is less future demand issues and more practical difficulties in bringing production to market, the IEA said, as domestic developments in member countries continue to cause production strife.

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Media Fail: 63% Want Congress to Keep Going After ObamaCare

One of the new talking points we are seeing throughout the mainstream media is a mocking “Here we go again” attack-narrative against the Republican Congress as they maneuver to defund ObamaCare, or work to kill various parts of ObamaCare. But a new poll shows that almost two-thirds of the American people want Congress to keep at it.

Fox News notes that when asked if the “health care law needs to be changed and Congress should keep at it, 63% said yes. That is up from 58% a year ago.”

Only 31% oppose.

Watching the news coverage these days, you get the sense that America is tired of Congress going after ObamaCare. But just the opposite is true.

Read more from this story HERE.

Goldwater Institute to Durbin: ‘Have you no decency?’

Conservative groups lambasted Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) after the lawmaker sent a letter to hundreds of alleged donors to the American Legislative Exchange Committee (ALEC) asking if they still supported ALEC and so-called “stand your ground” laws.

Durbin sent a letter to hundreds of suspected ALEC donors asking “whether companies that have funded ALEC’s operations in the past currently support ALEC and the model ‘stand your ground’ legislation.”

“Have you no sense of decency?” the Goldwater Institute responded in a letter to Durbin echoing a famous question posed to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

“It is the same question we pose to your office today in response to your effort to intimidate us for daring to associate with the free market, limited government organization known as the American Legislative Exchange Council,” the Goldwater Institute continued.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Offers Up Surprise Benghazi Revelation During Presidential Press Conference (+video)

President Barack Obama revealed for the first time the existence of a sealed indictment in the Benghazi terror attack, a move that would mean legal trouble for anyone other than the commander-in-chief.

During a presidential press conference on Friday, Obama was asked why justice has been slow in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack that left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

“[W]e have informed, I think, the public that there’s a sealed indictment,” the president said. “It’s sealed for a reason. But we are intent on capturing those who carried out this attack, and we’re going to stay on it until we get them.”

While it was widely reported that the first “charges” in the Benghazi investigation had been filed, Obama’s comments marked the only official confirmation on record of a sealed indictment. Administration and intelligence officials have repeatedly refused to confirm reports of a sealed indictment.

There’s a reason no one has been willing to talk. Under federal law, “no person may disclose [a sealed] indictment’s existence,” and a “knowing violation … may be punished as a contempt of court,” ABC News reports.

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‘We’re Ready for Battle’: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Arms Officers With AR-15-Style Rifles After Comrade Was Killed in Driveway (+video)

PHOENIX (TheBlaze/AP) — A detention officer with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office died Thursday after being shot in the driveway of his Arizona home while he prepared to head to work. Now, all officers in the department are being armed with rifles by the direction of Sheriff Joe Arpaio for added protection.

Jorge Vargas, 27, was rushed to a hospital after the 4 a.m. attack and died a short time later, Phoenix police Sgt. Trent Crump said.

No one was in custody yet and there was no information on a motive.

“It’s really a whodunit,” Crump said, adding that investigators are looking into whether the shooting was connected to the victim’s job.

“Anytime we have a homicide and the suspect is unknown, we start with our victim,” Crump said. “But we can’t rule out a random act.”

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CIA Official Warns of Syrian Jihadist Threat to US

JERUSALEM – At least 6,000 jihadist rebels in Syria, many affiliated with al-Qaida, now pose a major security risk to the United States and Europe, according to Obama administration officials and Mideast experts.

Most of the news coverage of the emerging threat fails to mention U.S. and Western support, including weapons transfers, to the Syrian rebels. Al-Qaida-linked groups reportedly are prominent among the rebel ranks.

On Tuesday, Michael Morell, the Central Intelligence Agency’s second-in-command, warned in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that al-Qaida groups in Syria, along with the civil war itself, pose the greatest threat to U.S. national security.

The Wall Street Journal reported Morell said there are now more foreigners flowing into Syria each month to fight with al-Qaida-affiliated groups than there were going to Iraq to fight with al-Qaida at the height of the war there.

Meanwhile, according to UPI, Matthew G. Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, stated Syria “has become really the predominant jihadist battlefield in the world.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Tim Scott Denounces Harry Reid’s Remarks on Race

Sen. Tim Scott, the U.S. Senate’s only black lawmaker, said Friday he is “disappointed” in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s “offensive” comments about race made during a call-in radio show in Nevada.

Reid, a Democrat, said Friday he “seriously” hopes that Republicans are not blocking President Obama’s initiatives because he is black.

Reid was was responding to a caller who asked him if he believes Republicans are working to make President Obama a failure, which some Republicans had signaled they would do when he was first elected . . .

Reid paused, then added, “I say this seriously. I hope it’s based on substance, and not the fact that he is African American.”

Read full story HERE.