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President Crisis and the Wishful Thinking Brigade

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Photo Credit: ReutersThe hallmark of the Obama era is government of, for and by crisis. Elected amid (or possibly because of) a financial crisis, the Panic of 2008, President Obama has spent his time in office lurching from disaster to disaster.

Obama’s reflexes, praised instinctive timing and audacious as a candidate, turn out to be poorly suited to high office. Obama has been mostly reactive and mostly captive to events. Veering here and there is part of being president. The world is big and dangerous and governance is hard. But watching Obama govern is like watching a distracted man flipping through television channels and all of it bad.

“If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”(flip) Never mind. (flip) We must bomb Syria now! (flip) Er, scratch that. (flip) Al Qaeda is on the run. (flip) It depends on what you mean by “core al Qaeda.” (flip)

Some of the crises have been self-inflected, and sometimes even intentional. Obama’s signature health law, for example, was born of a crisis in Congress. As support for the entitlement long sought by liberals was fracturing, even with Democrats in complete control of Washington, the president jammed the throttle down. The crisis of confidence demanded that a poorly constructed law be passed. Now! Now! Don’t think. Don’t read. Just vote.

That decision, of course, has led to other crises. The one playing out now is the risible implementation of the law. Democrats are all dripping with glib swipes about how Republicans have been waging a very messy civil war amid the partial government shutdown. But the Democrats are pushing their confident chuffles through gritted teeth. They know that the launch has been damaging, and if unrepaired, possibly fatal to the law. However the current budget debacle ends, the ObamaCare debacle has just begun.

Read more from this story HERE.

High Stakes for Obama: No Deal Means First Modern President to Default

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Photo Credit: APFor President Barack Obama, the outcome of this week’s fiscal fights with Republicans could have broad consequences for his stalled second-term agenda.

A favorable deal for the White House might give Obama an opening to marginalize the tea party Republicans who have tried to win concessions from him in order to reopen the government and raise the nation’s debt ceiling. But if no agreement is reached by Thursday’s debt limit deadline, Obama will become the first modern president to preside over a government default, a dubious distinction with potentially calamitous economic consequences that could consume the White House for the foreseeable future.

Another, perhaps more likely, option: Obama ends up signing short term bills that keep Washington in the never-ending cycle of deadline-driven budget battles. For Obama, that would mean fiscal issues would keep consuming the oxygen in the nation’s capital at a time when he is already watching his window for passing significant domestic legislation close.

“It’s a ticking clock,” Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University, said of presidential second terms. “He’s already into the red zone in terms of getting things done.”

On Monday, Obama and Senate leaders indicated they were optimistic that an agreement might be at hand to prevent a national financial default and reopen the government after a two-week partial shutdown. Officials in both parties were discussing a proposal to raise the debt ceiling through the spring, as well as a shorter deal to fund the government for several weeks.

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Republicans Can Say “We Told You So” as Obamacare is Inflicted on America

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Photo Credit: Irish Central President Obama and his Democrat colleagues must take all of the credit as Nancy Pelosi’s promise: “we will find out what is in Obamacare after it is passed,” starts to become reality.

Since not one Republican voted for Obamacare and Republicans were shut out of putting any input into Obamacare, the credit and or blame will fall appropriately

The President made all kinds of promises as he sold Obamacare to the people of the United States.

But Seems like most of them have fallen by the wayside as promises face the dawning of reality.

Were these claims the President made, honest miscalculations? Or were they cynical lies designed to get a gullible public to accept a government takeover of our healthcare system?

According to the latest estimates, Obamacare will cost around $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years, nearly $1.7 trillion more than Obama’s initial promise of $900 billion.

President Obama’s claim that if you like your existing healthcare plan, you can keep that plan is proving utterly false as Obamacare gets unveiled. Millions of Americans are getting rude shocks as employers start to drop their plans and force employees into the new healthcare exchanges.

He also promised if you liked your doctor, you could keep your doctor…Period! But of course that whopper has fallen to the wayside as people are kicked off their existing healthcare plans and new plans don’t include their doctor.

President Obama claimed the average healthcare premium savings would be 2,500 per family. That claim is proving to be bogus as families get sticker shock from the new healthcare plans with Obamacare mandates. To add insult to injury, many of these plans have huge deductibles that must be paid before the insurance kicks in.

Most Americans will soon forget this latest budget impasse and the resultant government “shutdown.” The negativity directed toward the Republicans who tried to block or make changes to Obamacare before it gets implemented will swiftly pass in the coming weeks and months.

But in a little over a year, the all important midterm elections will occur; with House and Senate seats up for grabs…

The quotes below from two naive supporters of Obamacare just discovering huge increase in healthcare premiums may prove ominous for Democrats trying to retain their seats:

“Of course, I want people to have health care I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.” Or: “I was laughing at Boehner until the mail came today.”

What will be fresh on American workers and voters minds as the November elections arrive, will be who has raised their taxes and who is responsible for the huge increases in their healthcare costs…..They will also remember who tired to keep their taxes lower and tried to warn them about Obamacare.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Catholic Priest Threatened with Arrest If Voluntarily Conducts Mass On Navy Base During Shutdown

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Photo Credit: WNDIn what has been described as “an astonishing attack on religious freedom,” Catholics at a Navy base were banned from attending worship services because of the partial shutdown of the federal government.

In response, the Thomas More Law Center announced it has filed a lawsuit over the orders at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia.

The legal team said a Catholic priest who serves the community on the military base “has been prohibited from even volunteering to celebrate Holy Mass without pay and was told that if he violated that order, he could be subject to arrest.”

Without explanation, however, Protestant services continued.

“This is an astonishing attack on religious freedom by the federal government and the latest affront toward the military since the beginning of the shutdown,” said a report by the Thomas More Law Center.

Read more from this story HERE.

I’ll have my Way — or America will Suffer!

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No, this is not a direct quote from Barack Obama, but it is an interpretation derived from every statement he has made of late, and his decision-making regarding what will be funded, and what will not, during the present partial government shutdown.

Since he was first elected in 2008, journalists and pundits have repeatedly exclaimed that Barack Obama is the first president in our history who does not love our country. Being a minister, I always initially refuse a bad report about anyone until there is ample proof; it is the benefit of the doubt. That day has come and gone and I am now among those who believe that Obama actually hates America.

He has smashed traditional marriage, exalted homosexual perversion, used the IRS like a battering ram, left border agents, ambassadors, and good soldiers to die without help, raised the debt to unimaginable heights and now is selectively battering various citizens and veterans with his shutdown. All for his pet legislation, hated by most Americans, the personal idol of his life — ObamaCare!

In fact, I waited a full two years as Mr. Obama harrassed various governors on voting laws and immigration enforcement before concurring with those who say he hates America.

In 2010 in an article entitled “Obama Courts Latino Votes at Arizona’s Expense” I was forced to say “Every time the president speaks, makes another appointment or ramrods a new bill through the democratically controlled congress, he reinforces what millions of Americans now feel; this president does not love America.”

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Boehner says Obama Rejected GOP Plan to End Shutdown as Negotiations Shift to Senate

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Photo Credit: Getty Images By ASSOCIATED PRESS and DAILY MAIL REPORTER.

House Speaker John Boehner today told fellow Republicans that his talks with President Barack Obama have stalled.

‘The Senate needs to hold tough,’ Representative Greg Walden said Boehner told House GOP lawmakers. ‘The president now isn’t negotiating with us.’

Obama rejected the speaker’s effort to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopen government in exchange for a budget negotiating process.

Attention now turns to the Senate, where a bipartisan group of Senators are working on a separate plan to reopen the government.

Word of the negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and the top Republican, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, emerged as the Senate, as expected, rejected a Democratic effort to raise the government’s borrowing limit through next year.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APFocus on Senate after Obama rejects House plan

By JAKE SHERMAN, JOHN BRESNAHAN and BURGESS EVERETT.

Speaker John Boehner told House Republicans Saturday morning that his efforts to strike a deal with President Barack Obama are at a standstill.

There is no agreement, Boehner said in a room in the Capitol Saturday, and there are no negotiations between House Republicans and the White House, since Obama rejected the speaker’s effort to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopen government while setting up a budget negotiating process.

With that, a familiar dynamic has resurfaced 12 days into the government shutdown and five days before Treasury says the nation runs out of borrowing authority: The pendulum has swung back to Senate Republicans, who now look more likely to cut a deal with Obama to end the first government shutdown since 1996, and avoid the first default on U.S. debt in history.

After the news that talks between Boehner and Obama have broken down, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) emerged on the floor to emphasize that the nation’s eyes are firmly fixed on the chamber.

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GOP Meets with Obama: Deal or No Deal?

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By Fox News.

Republican lawmakers scrambled back to the drawing board late Thursday to modify their plan for a short-term increase in the debt ceiling, after President Obama apparently pushed back on the proposal during a high-stakes White House meeting.

The meeting broke up with no deal announced, despite optimism earlier in the day that the two sides might agree. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid also cast doubt on House Speaker John Boehner’s plan. The day ended like it began, with Americans still unsure when the partial government shutdown will end, and the financial markets still uncertain as to whether the country might miss next week’s deadline to raise the debt ceiling.

Nevertheless, both sides claimed to be working together, describing the initial meeting as positive as they worked toward a possible agreement.

A statement from House Republicans said Obama and GOP leaders agreed to continue talking “throughout the night.”

Another key meeting, between Obama and Senate Republicans, is scheduled for Friday morning.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICOBarack Obama to GOP: ‘What’s it going to take?’

By JAKE SHERMAN, BURGESS EVERETT and JOHN BRESNAHAN.

President Barack Obama and House Republicans clashed in a meeting Thursday afternoon over how soon the government can be reopened, even as the GOP offered to lift the debt limit for six weeks, according to sources familiar with the session.

House Republicans told Obama at the White House that they could reopen the federal government by early next week if the president and Senate Democrats agree to their debt-ceiling proposal. After the debt ceiling is lifted, a House GOP aide said they would seek some additional concessions in a government funding bill.

Obama repeatedly pressed House Republicans to open the government, asking them “what’s it going to take to” end the shutdown, those sources said. He questioned why the government should remain closed if both sides agreed to engage in good-faith negotiations on the budget, according to a Democratic source briefed on the meeting.

The meeting was described by both sides as cordial but inconclusive. Obama acknowledged to Republicans that notable progress had been made. Sources described the meeting without attribution, because the meeting was private.

Aides will continue the discussion through the night to see if they could find common ground on how to move forward on the debt limit and government funding. The short-term debt hike — which was originally proposed at the closed GOP meeting Thursday — did not include plans to reopen the government.

Read more from this story HERE.

Allen West: Obama Acting Like ‘Spoiled Brat’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty ImagesFormer Rep. Allen West of Florida said President Barack Obama’s refusal to negotiate with Republicans is tantamount to the behavior of a “spoiled brat.”

“I can put it very basic Southern terms: a spoiled brat child,” West told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.

“We have been giving Barack Obama everything that he has wanted. We gave him a state senator position in Chicago, we gave him a U.S. Senate position out of the state of Illinois, unproven, untested, no resume, we gave him the presidency twice.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Just Made a Terrible Mistake Regarding Egypt

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Photo Credit: Ozan Kose | AFP | Getty ImagesIn a certain sense, the Obama administration’s decision to withhold much of the $1.3 billion in annual aid given to Egypt isn’t surprising. U.S. law mandates cutting off aid to countries in which a coup has taken place, and the Egyptian military’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi this summer was, analytically speaking, exactly that. Moreover, the Egyptian military’s behavior during the three months since Morsi’s removal has made Egypt’s slide towards enhanced autocracy impossible to ignore: Over 1,000 people have been killed in the military-backed government’s crackdown on pro-Morsi protests; journalists who criticize the military have been prosecuted in military courts; and the new constitution will likely further shield the military from any kind of civilian oversight.

Indeed, the generals are not democrats, and never have been. They are bureaucratic actors who selfishly guard their bureaucratic privileges, which include autonomy over their internal affairs and control over vast economic assets (for example, among other consumer products, the Egyptian military produces bottled water), and they know that true democracy could cost them these perquisites. But cutting off aid won’t make the military democratic, and it will come at a substantial cost: namely, the ability to encourage the military in a more progressive direction down the road, when the environment might be riper for a more assertively pro-democratic U.S. policy in Egypt.

The calls to cut off military aid in the aftermath of Morsi’s ouster reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of what transpired in Egypt this past summer. To say, as is frequently said, that the military removed a democratically elected president from office is to overlook a very basic reality: that by the time unprecedentedly mass protests against the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule commenced on June 30, Mohamed Morsi was a president in name only. Morsi’s November 2012 constitutional declaration, which put his own edicts above judicial scrutiny, and his subsequent ramming of an Islamist constitution through to ratification, severely undercut his popular legitimacy, and shrunk his support in a country of 85 million people down to the Brotherhood’s base of approximately 500,000 members. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision to dispatch its cadres to brutally attack and torture protesters outside the presidential palace on December 5 led many Egyptians to view the Brotherhood—an organization that they had elected only months earlier—as an emerging fascist regime. From that point forward, protests against Morsi’s rule became so frequent and destabilizing that by late January, the military—at Morsi’s request—assumed control over the three major Suez Canal cities.

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Limbaugh: Obama’s Approval Down to 37% and Republicans Still Think They’re Losing?

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Photo Credit: Rush Limbaugh RUSH: So Bo Snerdley walks into my compound here, broadcast facility, oh, I guess about an hour ago. And he’s somewhat stuttering, trying to pay me a compliment. He says, “How did you… I mean, well, I know you know, but how did you… how did you…” I said, “What are you talking about?”

“How did you know we were winning this?” He had just seen the AP story with Obama’s approval rating at 37%. Grab sound bite number two. Barack Obama’s approval rating at 37%. That fact is in an AP story. Would you like to hear the headline of that AP story? I have it right here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. “Poll: GOP Gets The Blame In Shutdown.” And then if you read the story, you find out that as an incidental item, the president of the United States’ approval number is at 37%.

This is before that insulting, juvenile, petulant, spoiled-rotten little kid press conference from yesterday, about which there was not one question asked about Obamacare and its rollout. Not one question in that presser yesterday. We have also learned that the Park Service and Obama okayed a pro-amnesty immigration reform rally on the National Mall that is closed to everybody else, including World War II vets. Nancy Pelosi and a number of Democrats, who are, I think, in a time warp, a bunch of them went over there and got arrested as though this is still the 1960s. John Lewis got arrested. Charlie Rangel got arrested, as though it’s some badge of honor to get arrested. These people are totally tone-deaf.

The president’s at 37%. The shutdown is going on. Now we learn that five military families were insulted profoundly with the way the deaths of their service member relatives were treated. Folks, it is obvious that this administration is acting purposely to inconvenience and to harm people it considers its political enemies. Why in the world, in the middle of this, when you’re losing, why call that press conference yesterday and why go out there and keep saying, “I’m willing to negotiate” and this sort of thing, why do that on the same day that you are permitting — I mean, you talk about a thumb in the eye. You talk about almost being spat upon to allow the closed — because of the shutdown — National Mall to open up for a pro-amnesty immigration rally. The people allowed in there were illegal. They were not American citizens.

Meanwhile, outside the fences, not permitted in, American citizens, World War II vets and their families are not allowed to go to the World War II Memorial. And the Democrats and the media and the president somehow think that this is adding up to their benefit? Here’s Pelosi yesterday. Grab sound bite 13. This is Pelosi yesterday on the National Mall during a rally in favor of amnesty, comprehensive immigration reform.

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