Photo Credit: NewsBusters Bill Maher said something on HBO’s Real Time Friday that Barack Obama’s fans in the media didn’t consider when they promoted the former junior senator from Illinois to the White House.
“This president wouldn’t be president if they had caught him” smoking pot. “He’d still be a community organizer” (video follows with transcript and commentary):
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Photo Credit: Don Johnson 395Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) jokingly labeled President Obama “the worst socialist ever” in a tweet deleted from her official account Friday.
The post, which was archived by the Sunlight Foundation, linked to an article noting that the Dow Jones Industrial Average had touched 15,000 for the first time ever Friday.
The stock gains were fueled by a jobs report from the Department of Labor showing the nation added 165,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell to 7.5 percent. The new report also revised March’s disappointing 88,000 new jobs to 138,000, buoying economic models.
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Photo Credit: VisitOSLOFate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments and rethink its principles lest it go the way of the Whigs. And where the victor is hailed as the new Caesar, facing an open road to domination.
And where Barack Obama, already naturally inclined to believe his own loftiness, graciously accepted the kingly crown and proceeded to ride his reelection success to a crushing victory over the GOP at the fiscal cliff, leaving a humiliated John Boehner & Co. with nothing but naked tax hikes.
Thus emboldened, Obama turned his inaugural and State of the Union addresses into a left-wing dream factory, from his declaration of war on global warming (on a planet where temperatures are the same as 16 years ago and in a country whose CO2 emissions are at a 20-year low) to the invention of new entitlements — e.g., universal preschool for 5-year-olds— for a country already drowning in debt.
To realize his dreams, Obama sought to fracture and neutralize the congressional GOP as a prelude to reclaiming the House in 2014. This would enable him to fully enact his agenda in the final two years of his presidency, usually a time of lame-duck paralysis. Hail the Obama juggernaut.
Well, that story — excuse me, narrative — lasted exactly six months. The Big Mo is gone. It began with the sequester. Obama never believed the Republicans would call his bluff and let it go into effect. They did.
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Photo Credit: APThousands of people with serious medical problems are in danger of losing coverage under President Obama’s health care overhaul because of cost overruns, state officials say.
At risk is the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, a transition program that’s become a lifeline for the so-called uninsurables — people with serious medical conditions who can’t get coverage elsewhere. The program helps bridge the gap for those patients until next year, when under the new law insurance companies will be required to accept people regardless of their medical problems.
In a letter this week to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, state officials said they were “blindsided” and “very disappointed” by a federal proposal they contend would shift the risk for cost overruns to states in the waning days of the program. About 100,000 people are currently covered.
“We are concerned about what will become of our high risk members’ access to this decent and affordable coverage,” wrote Michael Keough, chairman of the National Association of State Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans. States and local nonprofits administer the program in 27 states, and the federal government runs the remaining plans.
“We fear…catastrophic disruption of coverage for these vulnerable individuals,” added Keough, who runs North Carolina’s program. He warned of “large-scale enrollee terminations at this critical transition time.”
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Photo Credit: jurvetsonAfter President Obama’s upbeat speech in Mexico on Friday, many in attendance said they were flattered by the description of their country, but others said they hardly recognized the place he had just described.
“[That was] a really good speech by President Obama, but what Mexico was he talking about?” said Jose Carlos Cruz, 24, a graduate student in international relations. “Unfortunately in our country, the situation is terrible: There’s poverty, unemployment, and even worse, the future is anything but promising.
“How nice that he came to give inspiring speeches, but what’s happening in Mexico is far from what he talked about today,” Cruz said.
Alberto Rios Lara, 26, who is studying to be an economist, said: “Obama is a great speaker — it’s really impossible not to feel excited. However, the reality is different in Mexico. We need more action and fewer speeches.”
In the speech, delivered at National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, Obama described Mexico as a nation that is “creating new prosperity,” has “lifted millions from poverty” and has institutions that are “more accountable to you.”
Watch video here:
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Photo Credit: Greg GroeschBenghazi may turn out to be President Obama’s Watergate. The scandal is a growing cancer on the administration, threatening its very existence. The more information comes out, the more damning it is. This is why Democrats — and their media allies — are desperately trying to sweep the truth under the rug. Mr. Obama’s political survival is at stake.
High-profile lawyers Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing are in touch with State Department whistleblowers who were on the ground in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, when our diplomatic mission was attacked by jihadists. Mr. diGenova says they can no longer remain silent. The whistleblowers want to testify before a House congressional committee. There is only one problem. According to Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing, the whistleblowers are being prevented — and intimidated — from speaking out by the Obama administration. Vindictive State Department officials are denying their request for legal representation. Since the whistleblowers’ potential testimony relates to classified information, they refuse to go forward in public without effective legal representation. The possible personal and professional consequences are immense.
If — and I stress if — they testify, then the Obama presidency is in mortal jeopardy. Mr. diGenova stresses that the whistleblowers possess information that will expose the administration’s lies and cover-up. Republicans on Capitol Hill should pursue this scandal to the end.
Benghazi should have been prevented. During the summer of 2012, al Qaeda thugs were roaming the streets of the city. The Red Cross and the British diplomatic mission pulled out. Our consulate had been physically attacked several times. This is why U.S. officials there repeatedly asked the State Department for bolstered security. It was denied.
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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama used a speech at Mexico’s Museo Nacional de Antropología – the National Anthropology Museum – to claim that ‘most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.’
‘I think many of you know that in America, our Constitution guarantees our individual right to bear arms,’ Obama said. ‘And as president, I swore an oath to uphold that right, and I always will.’
‘But at the same time, as I’ve said in the United States, I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people.’
‘That can save lives here in Mexico and back home in the United States,’ Obama added. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’
‘So we’ll keep increasing the pressure on gun traffickers who bring illegal guns into Mexico. We’ll keep putting these criminals where they belong: behind bars.’
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Photo Credit: gunowners.orgRemember when Senators Pat Toomey, Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer formed an unholy alliance during the recent gun battle on Capitol Hill? Remember how their amendment would have encouraged your psychiatrist to turn you in to the FBI’s gun ban list?
And you remember how we stopped that provision, because over 40 senators found it to be odious and a violation of the Second Amendment?
Well, guess what? Barack Obama has just concluded that “he don’t need no stinkin’ Senate.”
Instead, Secretary Kathleen “ObamaCare” Sebelius – and her Department of Health and Human Services – has promulgated regulations which would, by executive fiat, waive all federal privacy laws and encourage you doctor to report you to the FBI.
Understand a couple of things: First, the standard which your doctor would use to turn you in is embodied in Clinton-era ATF language and in the anti-gun Veterans Disarmament Act of 2007. Specifically, you doctor would “drop a dime” on you if he suspected you were even a slight “danger to yourself of others” or were “unable to manage your financial affairs.”
So if they say you can’t balance your checkbook, then you lose your constitutional rights.
But there’s another problem: The day these regulations become law, lawyers will be lining up to sue “deep-pocket” psychiatrists for every case where they failed to turn in a patient to NICS – if the patient subsequently engages in a horrific act.
The bottom line? Any psychiatrist who failed to report all of his patients to the NICS system risks losing everything if any of them engages in harmful conduct. Soon the rule of thumb will be: See a shrink; lose your guns.
And the regulations will apply to private, as well as government-employed psychiatrists.
The bad news is that 165,000 military veterans have already lost their gun rights because of the “see a VA shrink, lose your gun rights” precedent from the Clinton-Bush era.
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The percentage of Americans that are working for themselves has never been lower in the history of the United States. Once upon a time, the United States was a paradise for entrepreneurs and small businesses, but now the control freak bureaucrats that dominate our society have created a system that absolutely eviscerates them. This is very unfortunate, because by murdering small business, the bureaucrats are destroying the primary engine of job growth in this country. One of the big reasons why there are not enough jobs in America today is because small business creation is way down. As I mentioned yesterday, entrepreneurs and small businesses are being absolutely devastated by rules, regulations, red tape and by oppressive levels of taxation. If anyone doubts that small business in the United States is dying, just look at the charts below. Sadly, this is what the bureaucrats that run things want. They don’t want us to be independent of the system. Instead, they are much more comfortable when as many of us as possible are heavily dependent on the system in one way or another. If all of us have to go running to the government or to one of the big corporations for a job, then we are much easier to control. But as the control freaks continue to construct their bureaucratic utopia, they are also killing off what once made the U.S. economy so great.
The other day I came across the following two charts in an article by Charles Hugh Smith, and I was absolutely stunned by what I saw. This first chart shows that the number of unincorporated self-employed Americans has dropped back to levels that we have not seen since the mid-1980s even though our population has increased by tens of millions of people since that time…
At this point, only about 7 percent of non-farm workers are self-employed. That is depressingly low. That means that an overwhelming majority of those that are employed in America are working for the system in one capacity or another.
But isn’t that what we pound into the heads of our children these days? We teach them to work hard in school so that they can “get a good job” when they grow up. From a very early age we train our children to plug themselves into the system.
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Photo Credit: Breitbart Next week, the Senate will vote on Obama’s nominee to Chair the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, David Medine. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, followed up the confirmation hearing with a list of questions for the nominee. (The complete questionnaire is posted below.)
In his answers to Grassley’s question about profiling for terrorism among foreign nationals, Medine wrote, “In general, profiling of foreign nationals based solely on their point of departure to the United States is inappropriate.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on February 28 of this year, approving the nomination of Medine. A vote will be held in the Senate next week. The other four nominees to the board have already been confirmed. They were asked to respond to the same questionnaire.
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