Don’t Like ObamaCare? Stay Poor

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Some of us have long argued the Obama administration is pushing a two-track system of financial bondage for the nation: tremendous profits and options for the ruling class, with cradle-to-grave socialism for the penniless underclass. In between, the middle class will be squeezed into non-existence.

Enter Neal Kumar Katyal, the acting Solicitor General and former assistant to Elena Kagan. Katyal told the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Wednesday that there is a simple way to avoid being forced to purchase individual health care insurance or being penalized for failing to do so: make less money.

The federal government is being sued by the Thomas More Law Center to prevent the implementation of ObamaCare. (You can listen to the oral arguments here.) Judge Jeffrey Sutton, who was appointed by George W. Bush, asked Katyal how the government could justify forcing people to purchase any good or service. Katyal stated Congress had this authority under the “necessary and proper” clause and the Commerce Clause.

Judge James Graham, who is part of the three-judge panel, said, “I’m having difficulty seeing how there is any limit to the power [of Congress under the Commerce Clause] as you’re defining it.”

Sutton said, correctly, that current law allows someone to avoid onerous government regulations by going out of business. However, Obama’s health care plan would force people to participate in commerce, then regulate those decisions.

Read More at Floyd Reports By Ben Johnson, the White House Watch

Kagan Assigned DOJ Lawyer Who Argued Obamacare Cases In Appeals Courts

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On Wednesday, Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal did what his job called for: He traveled to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, located in Cincinnati, Ohio, and defended President Barack Obama’s health-care-reform law against a challenge that had been filed by the Thomas More Law Center.

The challenge claims Obamacare’s individual mandate is unconstitutional.

Back on May 10, Katyal also argued for the administration in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Va., against challenges to the constitutionality of the health-care law. There the suit had been brought by the state of Virginia and Liberty University.

Katyal has also signed multiple briefs and legal documents that the administration has filed in various federal courts in defense of the constitutionality of the health-care law.

What makes this noteworthy is that in defending the administration’s position on the constitutionality of President Obama’s health-care law, Katyal is not only doing his job, he is also doing something he was first assigned to do in early 2010 by then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

Read More at CNS News By Terence P. Jeffrey, CNSNews.com

Primetime Propaganda

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Ben Shapiro has a new book out, called  Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV.  It chronicles the very deliberate insertion of leftist thought into television programming, and leaves no doubt this is far more than simply a case of people with similar world-views allowing their biases to seep unconsciously into their work.

Shapiro took an interesting approach to preparing his book: he arranged interviews with Hollywood liberals and politely asked them about their biases, while wearing his Harvard Law baseball cap.  They assumed he was a friendly liberal interviewer and let it all hang out.  (Sorry, I haven’t made an Anthony Weiner joke yet today, and that just bubbled out of me.)

The flavor of the resulting interviews is captured in a few videos created to promote the book.  Here’s a little pinch of hatred from George Schlatter, creator of the biggest comedy of the 60s, Laugh-In:

And here’s a primer in hidden-agenda programming from Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry:

Conservatives often wonder how even the lowest-information voter could believe some of the colossally silly things they believe.  It’s not that mysterious.  They believe those things because they have been programmed to believe them, or at least reject alternative ideas with knee-jerk reflexes.  Primetime Propaganda offers a series of frank interviews with the people who wrote the cultural operating system for American decline.

Read at Human Events by John Hayward, Human Events

 

Former U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller brings grassroots PAC to Fairbanks

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Joe Miller told supporters there is no truth to rumors that he’s living in either Nevada or Arizona or Wasilla during a launch barbecue Friday at Pioneer Park for his new political action committee.

Although he works for another PAC with a Nevada address, he and his family have been living in Fairbanks, he said.

His new political group, Restoring Liberty Alaska, will work to support his limited government platform in Alaska.

“We’re going to restrain activist judges, and we’re going to get good people elected,” he said.

One politician he said needs more help in Juneau is Sen. John Coghill, who also spoke at the barbecue.

Read More at newsminer.com

Pro-Abortion Obama Judge Pick Goodwin Liu Withdraws Nomination

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Following a Senate vote upholding the filibuster Republicans mounted against the nomination of pro-abortion activist Goodwin Liu for a federal appeals court position, Liu has submitted a letter to President Barack Obama withdrawing his nomination.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Liu’s nomination for the federal appeals court in the western United States in April on a 10-8 party line vote. Last week, the Senate voted 52-43 against stopping the Republican filibuster with Republican senators Lindsay Graham, Dick Lugar, John McCain, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Scott Brown all voting to stop the nomination from moving forward. Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska joined them while “pro-life Democrats” Bob Casey and Joe Manchin voted to allow the nomination of the abortion activist to move ahead.

Lisa Murkowski, a pro-abortion Republican, was the lone GOP vote for ending the filibuster.

“In light of last week’s unsuccessful cloture vote … I respectfully ask that you withdraw my nomination from further consideration by the United States Senate,” Liu wrote to Obama in his letter, according to Politico. “With no possibility of an up-or-down vote on the horizon, my family and I have decided that it is time for us to regain the ability to make plans for the future.”

“In addition, the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit has noted the ‘desperate need for judges’ to fill current vacancies, and it is now clear that continuing my nomination will not address that need any time soon,” he said.

Read More at Life News by Steven Ertelt, Life News

LEFT-LEANING MEDIA OUTLETS WILL MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO READ PALIN’S E-MAILS

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Think you know everything there is to know about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin? Think again.

Since 2008, Mother Jones‘ David Corn has been actively petitioning for access to and public release of Palin’s e-mails. Following in the footsteps of Corn’s initial request, other media outlets subsequently began formally asking the Alaska government to release the e-mails Palin sent during her term. Mediaite sheds additional light on the scenario:

The state of Alaska initially told Corn that they had located 26,552 pages of emails, but are redacting 2,353 pages for unspecified reasons. Along these same lines, Palin apparently also used a personal email address for some of her official correspondence, and while the Alaskan government recovered some of these by looking through the official inboxes of some top officials, it’s possible that some communication was done among Palin’s personal account and the personal accounts of other State officials.

In sum, 24,199 pages will be presented for public viewing. In fact, Yahoo! reports that “Mother Jones, MSNBC.com and ProPublica“ are preparing to make the documents available for mass consumption ”in a searchable archive.”

In an op-ed for the Anchorage Daily News piece, Paul Jenkins writes that the e-mails may paint Palin in a very negative light:

The emails are going to be — if released in readable form after passing through lawyers‘ hands and being scrubbed by the governor’s office — delicious. There likely will be little good news in them for her. Having read only snippets of emails in Palin staffer Frank Bailey’s book, “Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin,“ or ”Hey, I Got Emails Nobody Else Can Get and I Can Make Some Dough,” the venom, bullying, intimidation, absolute paranoia and craziness of the Palin administration spins off the pages.

What do you think about this? Should Palin’s e-mails be released by major media outlets in a “searchable database?” Once public, the media will surely find appealing tidbits to feature and focus upon for some time to come.

Read More at the Blaze By Billy Hallowell, the Blaze

Prez on Bibi – Will the Real Barack Obama Please Stand Up?

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As yet there is no category for most amazing backtracking done by a president in the Guinness Book of World Records but there is little doubt that Barack Obama would beat all other entrants to the category hands down.

Using words and phrases like Obama changes stance, clarifies or explains what he really meant are rife across the news cycle of the mainstream media including the internet. Explanations, gyrations and backtracking notwithstanding the rest of America is not going to be fooled as in, they know exactly what they heard the first time. If the audacity of dumb Americans was not already the thorn in Obama’s side for far too long now they are told they are people who, ‘just don’t listen.’

On May 19, 2011 the president clearly said these words to the entire world, no spin attached, nothing added.

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

To say that this statement was just a onetime event that may have been either misread or misspoken is countered by the fact that Obama said the same thing on more than one occasion.

In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee the president said he was misunderstood and what he really meant was, “By definition, it means that the parties themselves – Israelis and Palestinians – will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.”

Read More at American Prophet by Rev. Michael Bresciani, American Prophet

Obama’s “Animal House” Policy for Medicare

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The trustees of the Medicare system recently reported that the program will go broke in the year 2024—five years sooner than was projected just last year.

The millions of Americans who have been counting on Medicare to be a reliable, stable guarantor of affordable health care in their senior years should be asking themselves, “Who is responsible for this predicament?” The short answer is “lots of people,” but let’s start by looking in the mirror.

The shameful status of Medicare brings to mind a sequence in the movie Animal House. A freshman pledge, Flounder, let some upperclassmen in the fraternity use his brother’s brand-new Lincoln for a road trip. Naturally, the brothers trashed the car. As Flounder wept in regret, the suave, smooth-talking senior, Otter, put his arm around Flounder’s shoulder and explained the facts of life to him: “You [goof]ed up; you trusted us.” (“Goof” replaces the original R-rated verb.)

“We the people” have goofed up big time, trusting a government bureaucracy to oversee our health care.

When will we learn that gigantic bureaucracies—undisciplined by the profit-motive and insulated from the normal competitive pressures of the marketplace—are inherently inefficient?

Read More at Floyd Reports By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson, Floyd Reports

The Hispanic Vote in 2010

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Before the 2010 election some commentators argued that the failure to address immigration would increase Hispanic turnout, while others argued it would cause them to stay home. New Census Bureau voting data show that neither of these predictions was correct. Hispanic turnout conformed to the pattern of recent mid-term elections.

Among the findings:

Prior to the 2010 election, the Center for Immigration Studies projected that Hispanics would comprise 6.8 percent of the national electorate in congressional elections. The new data from the Census Bureau almost exactly match this projection, with Hispanics comprising 6.9 percent of the vote.

Our projection was correct because it was based on the assumption that Hispanic turnout would follow past patterns for mid-term elections and that Hispanics would neither be especially animated nor especially disengaged in 2010.

The 31.2 percent of Hispanic citizens who voted in 2010 matches the 31.2 percent who voted in the 2002 mid-term election, and is very similar to the 32.3 percent who voted in 2006. All of these values fall within the margin of error of ± 1.7 percentage points and indicate that 2010 was not unusual.

In addition to the 6.9 percent of voters who identified as Hispanic in the 2010 election, 77.5 percent of voters identified as non-Hispanic white, 11.5 percent as non-Hispanic black, and 2.4 percent identified as non-Hispanic Asian.

Read More at CIS Steven A. Camarota, Ashley Monique Webster,Center for Immigration Studies

Obama’s top dog: Pat Robertson is like Osama bin Laden

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President Obama’s faith adviser, Eboo Patel, likened television evangelist Pat Robertson to Osama bin Laden, calling both “totalitarians” who worked collectively against coexistence.

The statements by Patel mark the latest in a series of controversial remarks by the faith adviser to be reported by WND, including comments against the U.S. and Christianity.

In February 2010, Obama named Patel to his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Patel, a Muslim activist, is the founder and executive director of Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core, which says it promotes pluralism by teaming people of different faiths on service projects.

In his 2007 book, “Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation,” reviewed by WND, Patel compared Robertson to the now late al-Qaida chief.

Read More at WND By Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily