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Thomas Frank: When Clinton, Obama Sold ‘Hope,’ They Sold Out Rank-and-File Democrats

What’s the Matter With Kansas? author Thomas Frank believes the matter with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as presidential campaigners was that they spent too much time “selling tidy homilies” about “hope” and too little advocating ideas such as single-payer health care. Frank stated his case Sunday in his latest weekly column for the liberal online magazine Salon.

Frank suggests that all the non-ideological rhetoric of hope from Clinton and Obama presaged the sort of lefty-disappointing policies they’ve often yielded (e.g., “Clinton’s deregulations [and] Obama’s spying program”). In that regard, he comments, they’re typical of Democrats over the past three-plus decades:

…Maybe [‘hope’] and these two presidents’ fecklessness actually complement and explain one another. Maybe ‘hope’ is the ideal philosophical doctrine for a party determined to dump its old constituents and chart a brave new course in a marketized world. As a slogan, ‘hope’ is vague and ethereal…but perhaps that is what makes it the consummate brand identity for a party that so often triangulates away the concerns of its rank and file…

Moreover, declares Frank, “this particular platitude is not harmless…To describe politics in terms of ‘hope’…allows [Democrats] to sell us out over and over.”

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President Obama’s Overtime Pay Gambit

Photo Credit: APIf you take an economics course, you may learn about the different events that can cause an increase in workers’ pay. The demand for the product a worker makes may rise, causing the demand for workers to go up. The supply of workers may decline, causing employers to bid up wages to keep the ones they have.

But there’s one event the textbooks don’t cover: The president of the United States gives you a raise. Many workers will get news to the effect that he has done just that. But it’s not as simple as it sounds.

President Obama thinks American companies are not paying their employees as much as they deserve. A White House fact sheet asserts that he intends to “make sure millions of workers are paid a fair wage for a hard day’s work.”

So he’s proposed an increase in the minimum wage, which Congress is not likely to approve. He’s also decided that more workers are entitled to time-and-a-half pay when they work overtime — a decision he can implement without legislation.

A 1938 law stipulates that hourly employees who put in more than 40 hours a week have to get a 50 percent premium for the additional hours. Under current rule, those making less than $455 a week are automatically covered, even if they are on salary. The president, however, plans to raise that threshold to expand the number of salaried workers who are guaranteed extra compensation.

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GOP, Democrats Spar Over Obama’s Foreign Policy, Amid New Fears of Putin Takeovers

Photo Credit: REUTERSTop Democrats and Republicans squared off Sunday over President Obama’s foreign policy, in the aftermath of Russia taking over part of Ukraine and amid new fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin is just getting started.

The deepening dispute between East and West is expected to dominate Obama’s visit to Europe, which begins Monday in the Netherlands. Obama will join world leaders at the Nuclear Security Summit and head a hastily arranged meeting of the Group of Seven – the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney delivered perhaps the most stinging criticism of Obama’s handling of the Ukraine crisis.

He accused Obama of being naïve about Putin’s world views and “lacking the judgment” and foresight to perhaps have stopped the Russian president from taking over Ukraine’s Crimea region before he even ordered troops across the border.

“There’s no question but that the president’s naiveté with regards to Russia, and his faulty judgment about Russia’s intentions and objectives, has led to a number of foreign policy challenges that we face,” Romney, also a former Massachusetts governor, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

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Is Obama Too Busy to be President?

Photo Credit: American ThinkerIs Barack Obama simply too busy to be Chief Executive of the United States? Apparently. One of the primary functions of the president is to keep the nation safe, to preserve it from its enemies. To do that effectively, one would actually have to maintain something of a consistent level of attention to the moving pieces that directly influence how future events will unfold.

None other than the truly sycophantic thinks for a second that President Obama cares a whit for anything that does not involve fundamentally altering the social composition of this country. Or golf. During the five-plus years that we have been without a real president, meaning one who actually was aware of all aspects of the position and tried, even just a little, to perform them, everything that was predicted to occur during his tenure has materialized. We are weaker, less respected, less feared, less liked and, well, just less. No surprise there, really. Conservatives had this guy figured out early in the first campaign, and they were spot on. No record, no experience, no consistency, no integrity, no background, no evidence of morals, no normal friends or associates, and no supporters who cared more about their country than about their silly self-congratulation over electing the first black man who seemed just like them: unserious.

If we assume that the president is even half as smart as we’ve been told he is, which would still make him the smartest person ever to live, you’d think he would have picked up some skills along the way, or gained some firsthand experience that might come in handy. You know, maybe how to read the tea leaves to foresee the bad things that could happen if you take a certain action, or what might happen if you decide to take no action at all when action is necessary. Perhaps you’d think that someone that smart would be open to what more informed people in fields like intelligence and foreign relations have to say, and would use his smarts to discern which advice seemed most sage to plot his course, and ours. He could still claim credit for the successful final decision, after all, which is really all that matters.

But you’d be wrong. In every single crisis that has arisen since the beginning of Obama’s reign of error, he has had something else to do, something that was so much more important than the grenade going off behind him that he just could not find the time to address the crisis of the moment. The celebrity and the trappings of the position have always been vastly more important to this man than the responsibilities, so much so that when faced with the choice of focusing on something hard requiring judgment and decisiveness, and giving in to something easy and self-indulgent, he always goes with easy and self-indulgent.

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Vatican Chief Justice: Obama’s Policies ‘Progressively More Hostile Toward Christian Civilization’

Photo Credit: AP / Charles DharapakPresident Barack Obama’s policies “have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization,” Cardinal Raymond Burke, head of the highest court at the Vatican, said in a recent interview.

Cardinal Burke added that Obama wants to restrict religious freedom and force the individuals, outside of his or her place of worship, “to act against his rightly-formed conscience, even in the most serious of moral questions.”

In an interview first published in Polish in Polonia Christiana magazine and republished exclusively in English at LifeSite News, Cardinal Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis, was asked about President Obama’s policies towards Christian civilization and if there are any “Catholic reactions against this policy? If yes, what are they, [or] if not, why?”

Cardinal Burke, who heads the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court at the Vatican, said: “It is true that the policies of the president of the United States of America have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization. He appears to be a totally secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life and anti-family policies.”

“Now he [Obama] wants to restrict the exercise of the freedom of religion to freedom of worship; that is, he holds that one is free to act according to his conscience within the confines of his place of worship but that, once the person leaves the place of worship, the government can constrain him to act against his rightly-formed conscience, even in the most serious of moral questions,” said Cardinal Burke.

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Steven Spielberg to Honor President Obama at USC Shoah Gala

Photo Credit: Hollywood Reporter President Barack Obama is set to deliver remarks and receive an honor presented by Steven Spielberg at a USC Shoah Foundation event, the organization said Friday.

The event, the 20th Anniversary Ambassadors for Humanity Gala, will be held May 7 in Los Angeles. The president is also expected to attend at least one fundraiser for the Democratic party while he is in town, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

“President Obama’s commitment to democracy and human rights has long been felt,” said Spielberg in a statement announcing the news. “As a constitutional scholar and as president, his interest in expanding justice and opportunity for all is remarkably evident.”

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Obama Likens Himself to Abraham Lincoln…

Photo credit: Breitbart Appearing on ESPN Radio’s The Herd with Colin Cowherd, President Obama explained that his pop cultural tour to push Obamacare – a tour that has spanned from The Ellen Degeneres Show to the Funny or Die! sketch Between Two Ferns – was actually Lincolnesque. He stated:

First of all, if you read back on Lincoln, he loved telling the occasional bawdy joke, and he went out among regular folks. One of the hardest things about being President is being in a bubble that is artificial. Unless you make a conscious effort, you start to sound like some Washington stiff. So you got to consciously try to get out of that, if you want to remind yourself of the wonderful people you are supposed to be serving with a sense of humor and aren’t thinking every day of position papers.

Obama’s words were actually a rip-off of a defense used by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes shortly after Obama’s appearance on Between Two Ferns. Undoubtedly, the MSNBC-watching president parroted the Hayes line.

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‘Constitutional Madness’ Bracket To Highlight Obama’s Lawlessness

Photo Credit: Breitbart Conservative Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse, who has been surging since being labeled the anti-Obamacare candidate, has released a “Constitutional Madness” bracket to highlight the lawlessness of the Obama administration.

“Which is President Obama’s worst constitutional violation?” the bracket says. “Make your picks!”

Here are the “Constitutional Madness” regionals:

EAST REGION

ROUND ONE

Allowing congressional Obamacare subsidies.
VS
Forcing taxpayers to violate religious conscience by funding abortion through Obamacare.
Two-year delay in Obamacare individual mandate.
VS
Empowering IPAB to govern health care without Congress.
One-year delay to make health plans Obamacare-compliant.
VS
One-year delay in Obamacare’s employer mandate.
Implementing the DREAM Act without legislation.
VS
Changing welfare work rules without legislation.

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Obama’s Paper-Tiger Presidency

Photo Credit: National Review Most Americans who are dissatisfied with Barack Obama’s leadership are thinking about the poor economy and the misbegotten health-care law. That disillusionment is justified — if tardy. But the foreign-policy failures of this administration are likely to be far more consequential, lasting, and possibly catastrophic.

What we are seeing is the collapse of American influence in the world.

Permitting people like Obama, Clinton, Hagel, and Kerry to deal with the brutal realities of world politics is like putting Richard Simmons into the ring with Muhammad Ali.

On Sunday, reflecting an innocence that really ought to be prosecutable, John Kerry announced that the U.S. would impose sanctions on Russia if it annexes Crimea and continues to threaten the rest of Ukraine. But, he hastened to add: “We hope President Putin will recognize that none of what we’re saying is meant as a threat, it’s not meant in a personal way.”

Frankly, credible threats might restrain Putin, but it’s way too late for that. By threatening Syria on the use of chemical weapons and then collapsing like a cheap tent when Bashar Assad called Obama’s bluff, the president turned himself into a paper tiger. John Kerry’s blatant groveling to Putin — his obvious fear of offending the little Moscow thug — is a new standard of cravenness.

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America Has A Constitutional Crisis

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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