Russophobia and Islamophilia

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Photo Credit: American Thinker It’s hard to believe that it has been a quarter of a century since Ronald Reagan began to dismantle the ideological wall that divided Europe. Harder still to believe that American politicians, Right and Left, are trying to resuscitate the Cold War — or something hotter. Recent events in the Ukraine seem to be giving the citizens of Europe and America hot flashes of deja-vu.

At the tactical level, US policy has devolved to “regime change.” At the strategic level, US policy is simply incoherent, if not nihilistic; swapping corrupt oligarchs for neo-fascists or religious zealots. The logic for supporting recent coups have little to do with common sense — or democracy. And with Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, and now the Ukraine, language needs to be coined to avoid words like coup.

By any other name, a coup is still a coup. And using a post-facto election to legitimize a coup is a little like putting a new hat on a dead cat. The Kerry/Obama team is giving subtlety and sovereignty bad names.

When Vladimir Putin, tongue in cheek, says there are no Russian troops in the Ukraine, he mocks John Kerry and Victoria Nuland who orchestrate dissidents in Maidan square, in some cases neo-fascists who did not get their way on the bail-out treaty with the EU.

The auction for the Ukraine is now closed. The price doubled overnight, from 16 to 35 billion dollars and counting. Politicians break it, now the taxpayer gets to pay for it. Kerry is now offering to buy the next Ukrainian election too.

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Disasters Cost More Than Ever — But Not Because of Climate Change

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Photo Credit: NICOLAS ASFOURI / AFP / GETTY IMAGESIn the 1980s, the average annual cost of natural disasters worldwide was $50 billion. In 2012, Superstorm Sandy met that mark in two days. As it tore through New York and New Jersey on its journey up the east coast, Sandy became the second-most expensive hurricane in American history, causing in a few hours what just a generation ago would have been a year’s worth of disaster damage.

Sandy’s huge price tag fit a trend: Natural disasters are costing more and more money. See the graph below, which shows the global tally of disaster expenses for the past 24 years. It’s courtesy of Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance companies, which maintains a widely used global loss data set. (All costs are adjusted for inflation.)

In the last two decades, natural disaster costs worldwide went from about $100 billion per year to almost twice that amount. That’s a huge problem, right? Indicative of more frequent disasters punishing communities worldwide? Perhaps the effects of climate change? Those are the questions that Congress, the World Bank and, of course, the media are asking. But all those questions have the same answer: no.

When you read that the cost of disasters is increasing, it’s tempting to think that it must be because more storms are happening. They’re not. All the apocalyptic “climate porn” in your Facebook feed is solely a function of perception. In reality, the numbers reflect more damage from catastrophes because the world is getting wealthier. We’re seeing ever-larger losses simply because we have more to lose — when an earthquake or flood occurs, more stuff gets damaged. And no matter what President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron say, recent costly disasters are not part of a trend driven by climate change. The data available so far strongly shows they’re just evidence of human vulnerability in the face of periodic extremes.

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America Has A Constitutional Crisis

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Photo Credit: teaparty.orgIt is not a president’s job to decide the merits of the Constitution but rather to enforce it as it is, or convene enough states to call for a constitutional convention and change it. It is not in his purvey or power to decide whether to enforce and defend it, it is in his oath of office and when he in any way refuses to abide by every sentence in the document, he violates his oath.

When an Attorney General decides he will ignore the Constitution and selectively enforce the duly legislated laws of the land, it is the job of the president to fire him, but when the president himself goes along with this unlawful violation, in my opinion, America has a constitutional crisis.

How does an Attorney General have more right to choose the laws he’ll enforce than private citizens have the right to decide which ones they’ll obey. What’s the difference?

When a president changes a piece of duly passed legislation that has become law, supposedly using the latitude afforded him by executive privilege, is he not circumventing the Congress and Senate and violating the process set forth in the Constitution?

The Constitution guarantees private citizens the right to keep and bear arms. There are those who will claim that this provision speaks to maintaining a militia, but keeping and bearing arms and maintaining a militia are two separate sections and never meant to be construed as one being dependent on the other.

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Obama as Imperial President

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Photo Credit: WNDEver since President Obama was elected in 2008, his administration has taken on the appearance of an “imperial presidency” while Congress has acted as a tableau of figureheads. Americans need look no further than Obama’s executive actions concerning the delay in the ObamaCare mandates, the recess appointments, and his changes in the immigration laws. President Obama had no qualms in his recent State of the Union address in declaring that he will use the power of the pen and will sidestep Congress whenever and wherever possible. American Thinker interviewed Constitutional scholars, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and law professor Elizabeth Price Foley about this Constitutional crisis.

Both feel that what President Obama has been doing regarding his executive actions is unprecedented, not so much for the quantity of executive orders issued but the quality. He is using his power to change laws and amend legislation, which is completely unconstitutional. Senator Lee noted that it is important to make a distinction on the type of executive orders, since many are benign and do not violate any principle of Constitutional law. Professor Foley agrees, pointing out that this president is willing to act “directly contrary to what the law says. You can have 10,000 executive orders and every one of them can be perfectly constitutional or conversely you can have two that are totally unconstitutional. Which presidential action is worse? Of course, the latter.”

The president’s blatant action can be viewed in the context of ObamaCare, his recess appointments, and his “Dream Act” implementation. Those interviewed cite Obama’s unilaterally altering the Affordable Care Act over twenty times, for blatant and obvious political reasons. Just recently he delayed the employer mandate on ObamaCare as long as an employer does not lay off or reduce the hours of workers in order to avoid the burdensome regulation. The Obama administration says it will require employers to certify, under penalty of perjury, that they have not taken an action that they have every legal right to take, a breathtaking abuse of power.

Foley says there are a number of abuses, “In the announcement to delay the mandate this administration specifically thanked the efforts of various Democrats who are facing very difficult elections. Obama also defied the language of the law because the act states, ‘The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013.’ In other words, the provisions of Obamacare become fully effective in 2014, as a matter of duly enacted federal law. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so. These rules, including the requirement that an employer must sign under the penalty of perjury that they have not reduced their workforce to avoid obligations of the law are rules that ‘King Obama’ has set down. He is preventing employers from engaging in perfectly lawful behavior, the hiring and firing of employees. Look at this scenario: an employee who just lost their job complains to the Department of Justice. The DOJ can then intimidate a business and even file criminal contempt charges. This intimidation and cost factor to defend oneself is huge.”

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Obama and The Democrats Plot To Control America

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Photo Credit: WNDBarack Obama’s presidency will come to an end. The legacy of pain he will leave behind will not — at least for years to come. He and his fellow Democrats plan to keep their grip on the levers of power-even if they lose control of Congress and the White House. And they will do so with “invisible hands” gone but not forgotten.

Every first-term president has a single compelling desire: to win a second term. But for Obama and his liberal allies to accomplish a second major goal, to “fundamentally transform America,” requires more than two terms. Their agenda depends on fundamentally transforming our government and how its vast powers will be deployed.

How was this done?

The trillion-dollar so called “stimulus” bill was the first major step to vastly increase our spending and deficits. It was a sign of things to come. Budget-breaking binges have followed with no serious efforts to control our massive federal debt. The Democrats have run up more red ink than all previous administrations combined.

The entitlement crisis has been a crisis that has not been allowed to go to waste. Under Obama’s feeble economy and sputtering “recovery” (the weakest in modern history), spending on welfare, food stamps, and disability payments have soared. Hooking people onto the government IV line is an excellent way to increase dependency and the number of future dependable Democrats. It is also an excellent way to bankrupt America.

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It is Time to Remove the Persian Mask

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Photo Credit: Jeanne Menjoulet & Cie / Creative Commons Iran is a threat to the United States, not just her allies abroad. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, one of the first things the new Iranian government did was seize the American Embassy, taking 52 of our embassy officials hostage and holding them for 444 days. This is commemorated every year on November 4th, by the annual “Death to America Day,” replete with chanting and burning of the America flag. It is Iran that bombed our Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983, killing 241 sleeping American Marines. It is Iran that maimed and killed thousands of American servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan with their IEDs. It is Iran that has constantly armed Hizb’allah and Hamas, and it is Iran that this month sent a ship bound to Hamas-controlled Gaza that had within it containers of long-range missiles that could easily reached much of Europe and the Arab states, let alone all of Israel.

By framing the conversation as involving Israel alone, which the Iranian regime regards as only “the Minor Satan”, focus has been taken off of the very real threat that Iran poses to the United States, which they regard as “the Great Satan.”

Many in the international community have been willfully taken in by the duplicitous strategy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a merciless, brutal regime has executed close to 95 people in the last few months, and over 500 in this past year for the “crimes” of being a member of a religious minority, for being against the regime, or of being accused of homosexuality. In June of 2009, millions of beautiful, freedom-loving dissidents took to the streets, and were bludgeoned to death or mysteriously disappeared into the notorious Evin Prison, never to be heard from again.

As the late Soviet dissident Andre Sakharov once said, “If you want to understand what a nation’s foreign policy will look like, look at the way, they treat their dissident population.”

The threat posed by a nuclear Iran is real and it is imminent, even to us, here in the United States. This holiday of Purim, it about time we remove their masks.

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‘It’s Not About the Food, It’s About Islamic Supremacism’

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Photo Credit: Sham Hardy / Creative Commons The relentless push to Islamicize the public square, and in this case the public school, escalates in New York City. Fresh on the heels of Muslim school holidays comes this demand for halal food in the New York City public schools.

According to the well-coached children making the demand, the vegetarian option is not sufficient because “we don’t get the protein that we need.” Yet these kids looked hardly undernourished, and, frankly, if protein is your thing, then why not bring hard-boiled eggs to school or beef jerky?

Because it’s not about the food, it’s about Islamic supremacism.

The New York City school system is 10 percent Muslim (if that). If food choice is so important to them, why not bring their own food? One young Muslima featured in a news story about the demand claims that not having halal food and having to eat peanut butter and jelly makes her “feel different.” But the fact is, she is choosing to be different. And her community is forcing the general population to conform to their ideology.

One parent said (with a straight face, no less): “As a parent, it is your duty to ensure your child does not go without food the whole day, and if that makes him weak and inattentive maybe he will lose interest in going to school.” You can’t make this stuff up. Now poor parenting is the lunch lady’s fault. Forgive me if I don’t buy the poor malnourished child propaganda. Growing up, there was never a hot lunch option in my public school, and we all did rather well. It’s just another way of imposing Islam on the secular marketplace.

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Sshhh… ObamaCare’s Secret Mandate Exemption

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Photo Credit: APObamaCare’s implementers continue to roam the battlefield and shoot their own wounded, and the latest casualty is the core of the Affordable Care Act—the individual mandate. To wit, last week the Administration quietly excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty.

This latest political reconstruction has received zero media notice, and the Health and Human Services Department didn’t think the details were worth discussing in a conference call, press materials or fact sheet. Instead, the mandate suspension was buried in an unrelated rule that was meant to preserve some health plans that don’t comply with ObamaCare benefit and redistribution mandates. Our sources only noticed the change this week.

That seven-page technical bulletin includes a paragraph and footnote that casually mention that a rule in a separate December 2013 bulletin would be extended for two more years, until 2016. Lo and behold, it turns out this second rule, which was supposed to last for only a year, allows Americans whose coverage was cancelled to opt out of the mandate altogether.

In 2013, HHS decided that ObamaCare’s wave of policy terminations qualified as a “hardship” that entitled people to a special type of coverage designed for people under age 30 or a mandate exemption. HHS originally defined and reserved hardship exemptions for the truly down and out such as battered women, the evicted and bankrupts.

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Turley Op-Ed: The President’s Power Grab

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Photo Credit: Alex Wong / Getty ImagesRecently, a bizarre scene unfolded on the floor of the House of Representatives that would have shocked the framers of the Constitution. In his State of the Union address, President Obama announced that he had decided to go it alone in areas where Congress refused to act to his satisfaction. In a system of shared powers, one would expect an outcry or at least stony silence when a president promised to circumvent the legislative branch. Instead, many senators and representatives erupted in rapturous applause; they seemed delighted at the notion of a president assuming unprecedented and unchecked powers at their expense.

Last week, Obama underlined what this means for our system: The administration unilaterally increased the transition time for individuals to obtain the level of insurance mandated by the Affordable Care Act. There is no statutory authority for the change — simply the raw assertion of executive power.

The United States is at a constitutional tipping point: The rise of an uber presidency unchecked by the other two branches.

This massive shift of authority threatens the stability and functionality of our tripartite system of checks and balances. To be sure, it did not begin with the Obama administration. The trend has existed for decades, and President George W. Bush showed equal contempt for the separation of powers. However, it has accelerated at an alarming rate under Obama. Of perhaps greater concern is the fact that the other two branches appear passive, if not inert, in the face of expanding executive power.

James Madison fashioned a government of three bodies locked in a synchronous orbit by their countervailing powers. The system of separation of powers was not created to protect the authority of each branch for its own sake. Rather, it is the primary protection of individual rights because it prevents the concentration of power in any one branch. In this sense, Obama is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he has become the very danger that separation of powers was designed to avoid.

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Goldberg: The Most Cynical Generation – How are the Obama Years Workin’ Out for Ya?

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Photo Credit: National Review In case you hadn’t heard, young people these days — a.k.a “the Millennials” — are the most cynical and distrusting generation ever recorded. Only 19 percent think most people can be trusted. According to a big study from the Pew Research Center, they are less attached to marriage, religion, and political institutions than Gen Xers, Baby Boomers, and the other demographic flavors journalists love to use. They like their friends, their digital “social networks,” and their toys, and that’s about it. Not even a majority will call themselves “patriotic.” Probably more dismaying for liberals: Of any living generation, they are the least likely to call themselves environmentalists.

Now, I should say that I often find generational stereotyping pretty annoying. For instance, there was no “greatest generation.” Sure, there were a bunch of great Americans who stormed the beaches of Normandy. But is some guy who was in jail in 1943 for petty larceny deserving of special respect because he was born around the same time as a guy who won the Medal of Honor during WWII?

Honor, glory, and respect are earned individually, not collectively.

Politicians pander to young people, and lots of young people fall for it. And that speaks well of neither. Politicians pander to “youth” because it’s a time-saving way to trawl for votes and volunteer door-knockers wholesale. It’s the difference between using a gill net and a fishing pole. “You’re great because you were born more recently than other people” is the lamest form of flattery I can think of.

When politicians invoke generational stereotypes, what they are really doing is saying, “Act your age.” What’s pathetic is when young people unwittingly follow that advice.

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