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U.S. Acquiescence to a Bad Iran Deal Was No Mistake [+video]

Obama Hosts Gulf Cooperation Council Summit at Camp DavidThere is no shortage of critics of the recently concluded nuclear agreement that President Obama has reached with the evil Iranian theocracy. All the “known concessions” by the Obama administration should come as no surprise. Make no mistake — these concessions were not due to incompetence nor the inability to negotiate. They are part of the president’s planned agenda to fundamentally transform America by diminishing our stature and credibility. It is another example of his misguided view that America must be humbled for the many “problems” we have caused throughout the world.

Mr. Obama’s game plan on how to negotiate with the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had its genesis in the summer of 2008. According to scholar and author Michael Ledeen, around the time when candidate Barack Obama received the Democratic Party’s nomination, he opened a secret communication channel with the Iranian theocracy. The go-between was Ambassador William G. Miller, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who spoke fluent Farsi from his previous tours of duty in Tehran.

The message was, “Don’t sign an agreement with the Bush administration. Wait until I am president — you will get a much better deal! You will like my policies. I am your friend.” Here is a country that has cost thousands of American lives. Furthermore, all Americans should never forget that it was Iran that provided the key material and training support to the September 11 hijackers. Without that support the attack could not have been carried out, and some 3,000 innocent Americans who were doing nothing more than going to work would be alive today. Yet our president told this regime that he was their friend.

This borders on treason and most certainly violated the Logan Act, which forbids private citizens from interfering in government diplomacy.

The endless Kabuki dance that went on in Geneva and Vienna was not only an embarrassment for all Americans, but more importantly, it “conceded America’s honor,” an honor that has stood on bedrock principles which hundreds of thousands of Americans have paid the ultimate price to protect. Our nation was humiliated. This treaty must be rejected.

While being challenged throughout the world, the Obama administration continues with its senseless unilateral disarmament of our military forces, thereby jeopardizing our national security. As if disarmament were not enough, our military is being forced to train the military forces of our potential enemies. Specifically, Chinese infantry troops are being trained in the United States. Moreover, the Chinese navy was invited to participate in the 2014 Rim of the Pacific fleet exercise and has been invited again to participate in the 2016 fleet exercise to be held off the coast of Hawaii, alongside all of our major Pacific allies. We clearly are compromising our tactics, techniques and operations.

Compounding the problem is the use of our military as a social engineering laboratory to advance Mr. Obama’s political and social agenda. With regard to the promotion of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender lifestyle, my late friend M. Stanton Evans in his monumental 1994 book “The Theme is Freedom” had it right when he called it a return to the “pagan ethic.”

Clearly, the Obama administration is attacking the American way of life from all aspects. Our open border policy makes absolutely no sense. We have anywhere from 11 million to possibly as many as 30 million illegal immigrants within our borders. Sanctuary cities are also in clear violation of immigration laws. The welcome mat has been put out by the administration so that the more recent illegal immigrants are able to draw upon a wide range of taxpayer benefits, including food stamps, health care and earned income tax credit for three years, all at the American taxpayers’ expense. However, the overwhelming majority of immigrants come here as the result of our visa policies. The U.S. issues the treasured “green card” to approximately 1 million immigrants per year, most of whom are unskilled. They are immediately entitled to numerous benefits at taxpayers’ expense. Congress must act to limit the number of green cards issued.

Releasing illegal immigrants from jail with criminal records is a deliberate affront to all Americans. Seeding throughout the country Muslim immigrants who have no intent to assimilate is another affront and tears at the fabric of our society.

Compounding the immigration crisis, is the Obama administration’s inclination to divide Americans by race and class. This is unconscionable. You are either an American entitled to all the benefits that being an American conveys, or you are not. Those are the only two classes. The first one is sacred.

The corruption of our government agencies, fostered by the Obama administration, should not be overlooked. The selective enforcement of our laws and traditions has lowered Americans’ respect and trust of those agencies. However, taken in the aggregate, the fundamental transformation of America is taking place with no objections from Congress and the Supreme Court, which are supposed to prevent illegal and unconstitutional acts by an out-of-control president. Congress and the high court, and for that matter, our military leadership, are complicit in these illegal actions by not faithfully executing their oaths of office. This cannot stand. As Thomas Paine stated, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” With our corrupt leadership, it is now time to take back America.

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Former Pentagon Official: Obama Is Working Against the U.S.

scary obamaA former Pentagon official is slamming Obama administration policies on ISIS and Cuba as the terrorists reportedly deploy chemical weapons against Kurdish enemies and the United States re-opens its embassy in Cuba, saying the president and his team are deliberately working against the best interests of the country.

“They’re eager to do this because no one else believes that it is in the United States’ best interest. They want to go against the United States’ best interests,” said Jed Babbin, who served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration. He is now an author and columnist.

When pressed to explain that comment, Babbin doubled down.

“I mean what I said. These people, this administration, has a track record of doing a lot of things that are not in the United States’ best interests,” he said, asserting that American policy on ISIS and Cuba are two prime examples.

Late in the week, reports suggest ISIS used chemical weapons, mustard gas in particular, against Kurds in northern Iraq. Babbin believes the weapons could have been obtained in several different ways. (Read more from “Former Pentagon Official: Obama Is Working Against the U.S.” HERE)

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Here’s a Look Inside of Obama’s $22.5M Vacation Mansion

Barack ObamaPresident Obama and his family are currently residing in a $22.5 million vacation home complete with six bedrooms, five bathrooms, and two half-bathrooms on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

The Huffington Post reported that the nearly 7000-square-foot Chilmark mansion, positioned on nine-and-a-half-acres, houses a sunken living room with double-height windowed walls that allow the first family a view of the heated infinity pool . . .

Despite the estate’s amenities, Obama has been spending plenty of time on the golf course. On Wednesday, the president played a game of golf with NBA stars Alonzo Mourning and Ray Allen.

The group played through the course at the Farm Neck Golf Club in Martha’s Vineyard. Days earlier, Obama was spotted on the same course playing a round with comedian Larry David and others.

President Obama and his family departed the White House for the Massachusetts getaway on August 7, a day earlier than their scheduled departure date. Their 17-day vacation is more than four times the length of the average American vacation. (Read more from “Here’s a Look Inside of Obama’s $22.5M Vacation Mansion” HERE)

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Obama: Approve Iran Nuclear Deal or We’re Going to War [+video]

1188By Steve Guest. President Barack Obama told an audience at American University that the only option aside from Congress approving the Iran nuclear deal is war.

“Rejection of this deal leaves any U.S. administration that is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with one option — another war in the Middle East,” Obama declared Wednesday. “I say this not to be provocative. I am stating a fact.”

(Read more from “Obama: Approve Iran Nuclear Deal or We’re Going to War” HERE)
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The President Gets Personal About the Iran Deal

By Alan M. Dershowitz. President Obama, in his desperation to save his Iran deal, has taken to attacking its opponents in personal ways. He has accused critics of his deal of being the same Republican warmongers who drove us into the ground war against Iraq and has warned that they would offer “overheated” and often dishonest arguments. He has complained about the influence of lobbyists and money on the process of deciding this important issue, as if lobbying and money were not involved in other important matters before Congress.

These types of ad hominem arguments are becoming less and less convincing as more Democratic members of Congress, more liberal supporters of the President, more nuclear experts and more foreign policy gurus are expressing deep concern about, and sometimes strong opposition to, the deal that is currently before Congress.

I, myself, am a liberal Democrat who twice voted for President Obama and who was opposed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Part of the reason I was opposed was because I considered, and still consider, Iran a much greater threat to the security of the world and to the stability of the Middle East than Iraq ever was. In my newly published e-book The Case Against the Iran Deal: How Can We Now Stop Iran From Getting Nukes?, I make arguments that I believe are honest, fair and compelling. I recognize some advantages in the deal, but strongly believe that the disadvantages considerably outweigh them and that the risks of failure are considerable. My assessment is shared by a considerable number of other academics, policy experts and other liberal Democrats who support President Obama’s domestic policies, who admire Secretary Kerry for his determination, and who do not see evil intentions in the deal.

The President would be well advised to stop attacking his critics and to start answering their hard questions with specific and credible answers. Questions that need answering include the following:

Even after the expiration of the nuclear agreement, will American policy remain that Iran will never under any circumstances be allowed to develop nuclear weapons? Or is it now our policy that Iran will be free to do whatever it wants to do once the deal expires?

(Read more from this story HERE)

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Obama’s TPP Trade Deal Hits the Wall [+video]

images (70)President Obama’s hopes for a globalist pact integrating economies on four continents ran aground in Hawaii on Friday.

Trade negotiators from 12 nations announced Friday they failed to reach a deal on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP.

TPP would be the largest-ever economic regulatory treaty, encompassing more than 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Secretary of State John Kerry said the pact will merge the U.S. economy with Mexico and ten others nations, including Canada, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Islamic Sultanate of Brunei.

The latest round of talks in Hawaii had been expected to yield an agreement to conclude the TPP. The president pressed Congress to surrender its ability to amend the pact, saying that would enable him to quickly wrap up the negotiations. The House and Senate agreed, and gave President Obama the enhanced power, known as trade promotion authority, after a series of controversial votes in June.

But the president’s promises proved false.

Negotiations stalled when national governments failed to accede to corporatist demands to open their borders and allow “people, goods, capital and information to flow freely through the zone,” as Japanese Trade Minister Akira Amari described TPP’s goals at a news conference Friday evening.

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said he agreed with Amari on what “we’ve been trying to achieve in these negotiations” and “the larger exercise here of integrating the Asian Pacific region.”

A key sticking point in the negotiations was pharmaceuticals, reported Associated Press.

Striking a deal over how long to protect data used to develop biologic drugs was described as the biggest source of frustration by a source from a non-U.S. negotiating nation.

U.S. drug manufacturers want 12 years, but Australia wants five. A compromise of seven or eight years is seen as a possible compromise.

“The US was on one side of the issue, while practically every other country were on the other side,” the source told Associated Press.

“Neither side was prepared to move and all claimed it as a red-line issue.”

That proposed pact would integrate the U.S. economy with one of the world’s most notorious slave states, Malaysia, where millions of men women and children are routinely sold into forced labor and the sex trade. WND has reported the administration came under fire for issuing a human rights report that critics say whitewashed Malaysia’s record in order to expedite the TPP negotiations.

The failure to reach an agreement assures TPP will be an issue in next year’s presidential contest. Insurgent candidates Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left oppose the deal, pressing establishment candidates to take a stand on a pact that is deeply unpopular with voters across the political spectrum. (Re-posted with permission from the author, “Obama’s TPP Trade Deal Hits the Wall”, originally appeared HERE)

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Senator Catches Obama Red-Handed Violating the Law He JUST Signed

Freshman Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., found that President Barack Obama is already in direct violation of a law he just signed in late May regarding the Iran nuclear deal.

The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act specifically provides that Congress must receive “all nuclear agreement documents, including any related to agreements ‘entered into or made between Iran and any other parties.’ It expressly includes ‘side agreements.’ This requirement is not strictly limited to agreements to which the U.S. is a signatory,” Sen. Cotton and Rep. Mike Pompeo wrote in a joint op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week.

Cotton and Pompeo recount that they traveled to Vienna a few weeks ago to meet with officials of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). There, they learned “that certain elements of this deal are—and will remain—secret.” They further discovered that those involved with the talks, including the Obama administration, specially allowed the IAEA and Iran to have two side deals.

The first has to do with the IAEA’s inspection of the controversial Parchin military complex. The site is a suspected location of Iran’s long range missile and nuclear development. The second side deal has to do with what the nation must reveal about its nuclear program to date.

The legislators argue that both are vital issues if the deal will have any chance of success. They also make clear that the administration has been inconsistent in its responses regarding the existence of these agreements and whether Congress will have access to review them. (Read more from “Senator Catches Obama Red-Handed Violating the Law He JUST Signed” HERE)

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“SHAMEFUL”: Obama Administration Deliberately Covered-Up Human Trafficking in Muslim, Communist Countries

Several U.S. politicians sharply criticized the Obama administration on Monday over an annual global report on human trafficking in response to a Reuters article chronicling how senior U.S. diplomats had watered down rankings of more than a dozen strategically important countries.

Democratic Senator Bob Menendez called the account “alarming & unacceptable if true”, tweeting that “we must get to the bottom of this” at a Senate hearing set for Thursday to review the 2015 Trafficking in Persons report.

A Reuters examination, based on interviews with more than a dozen people in Washington and foreign capitals, showed that the State Department office set up to independently grade global efforts to fight human trafficking was repeatedly overruled by senior diplomats and pressured into inflating assessments of 14 countries in this year’s report.

Among the countries that received higher rankings than recommended by the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons were Malaysia, Cuba, China, India, Uzbekistan and Mexico, the sources said.

“It’s shameful that President Obama allowed a bunch of political hacks to alter the administration’s human trafficking report to the benefit of perennial violators like Cuba and Malaysia,” said U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, who is also a Republican presidential candidate. (Read more from “Obama Administration Faces Criticism Over Human Trafficking Report” HERE)

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Obama Remakes the DNA of American Capitalism, GOP Yawns

Once again, Obama is delivering on a promise from his 2008 campaign to necessarily skyrocket the cost of electricity by regulating power plants out of existence. Despite the fact that Obama could not pass Cap and Trade out of a Democrat-controlled Congress in 2009, his EPA is threatening to write a rule forcing power plants to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 32% unless the states submit a plan to do so first.

And once again, Republicans are failing to deliver on their promise to block the war on coal. During his contested primary and general election campaign, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) produced ad after ad promising to fight back against the war on coal. But aside from some pro forma maneuvers and general bluster, McConnell has done nothing. He has called for states to fight back against the EPA; he has called for a judicial battle in the courts. However, he will never use the one recourse he has to redress this grievance – the power of the purse over the EPA.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the top EPA appropriator in the Senate, has already made it clear she will oppose any effort to defund Obama’s energy regulations. Oh, and McConnell sits on that same appropriations subcommittee.

Much like the battle over immigration, Iran, and Planned Parenthood, Republican leaders will huff and puff but they will not blow down Obama’s administrative empire by collapsing the funding edifice on the bureaucrats.

And speaking of punting the legislative powers to the courts, what ever happened to the Court’s ruling against Obama’s mercury regulation in Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency?

Writing for the majority in one of the few major cases the administration lost this term, Justice Scalia ruled that the EPA lacks the authority to regulate power plants under §7412(n)(1)(A) of the Clean Air Act without “considering cost—including cost of compliance—before deciding whether regulation is appropriate and necessary.” Keep in mind that the cost of the mercury regulations at issue in the Michigan case, were infinitesimal compared to the projected cost of the carbon regulation. According to the Chamber of Commerce (Obama likes to cite their work when it comes to the corporate subsidy side of the federal ledger), the proposed regulation will cost the industry as much as $51 billion a year. The mercury rule would have cost an estimated $9.6 billion a year.

What gives?

Notice how, unlike Republicans, Obama has no problem ignoring the courts and pursuing an even more brazenly unconstitutional legislative agenda via administrative fiat. Contrast his behavior to that of the GOP leadership following the marriage decision in which they all declared the redefinition of marriage “the law of the land.” There is no mention of marriage in the Constitution, yet Republicans treat the court decision as inviolable law. But when it comes to regulatory power, it is explicitly vested in Congress’ Article I powers. Accordingly, in this case the court was justified to step in and call a strike on Obama’s usurpation of power. As Justice Thomas noted in his concurrence, “if we give the ‘force of law’ to agency pronouncements on matters of private conduct as to which “ ‘Congress did not actually have an intent,’” Mead, supra, at 229, we permit a body other than Congress to perform a function that requires an exercise of the legislative power.”

And who are these individuals supplanting Congress’ power to regulate? As Mark Levin details, in what is perhaps the best chapter in his new book Plunder and Deceit, these are administration officials who believe in a “degrowth agenda” as an ends to itself. Hence, the massive cost of these regulations is not merely an unintended casualty of their environmental agenda; it is the raison d’etre of their green economic agenda to, in the words of former EPA official John Beale, “modify the DNA of the capitalist system.”

Obama has shown an unyielding desire to fulfill every one of his campaign promises by using all legal and unconstitutional tools. Why won’t Republicans at least use the constitutional tools they possess to block this? Is it too hard to blame Obama for shutting down the government in order to destroy jobs and raise the cost of the most vital goods and services?

Notice how John Boehner conveniently leaves out any mention of the power of the purse in his press release railing against the carbon regulation. And while McConnell uses the words “power of the purse,” he is referring to the phony appropriation bills he has abandoned and not the Continuing Resolution he plans to pass in September. Moreover, his promises are meaningless after he already announced to the country in no uncertain terms after the November election that he will not use must-pass government funding bills as leverage.

Add Obama’s war on energy, which is the lifeblood of the economy, to the growing list of kill shots on our nation’s foundation that will go unanswered by the GOP majority – so long as the conservatives refuse to push for new leadership. Nothing short of “the DNA of our capitalist system” is at stake. (Re-posted with permission from the author, “Obama Remakes the DNA of American Capitalism, GOP Yawns”, originally appeared HERE)

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Obama Says He Could Win Again – True or False?

In a recent speech criticizing African political leaders who stay too long in office, President Obama said he could win a third term if he ran for president again but acknowledged that U.S. law does not allow it. Could Obama win again?

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% of Likely U.S. Voters say they would vote for the president if he ran for a third term. Sixty-three percent (63%) would not. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Most Democrats (57%) would vote to give Obama a third term. Ninety-three percent (93%) of Republicans, 68% of voters not affiliated with either major party – and 32% of Democrats – would not.

Obama defeated Republican nominee John McCain by a 53% to 46% margin in 2008 and was reelected with 51% of the vote against GOP candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.

An amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits presidential candidates from being elected to more than two four-year terms. Nineteen percent (19%) of all voters believe that amendment should be changed so presidents can serve longer. Seventy-eight percent (78%) oppose such a change. (Read more from “Obama Says He Could Win Again – True or False?” HERE)

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Obama’s Flight to Africa Cost – By Itself – Almost $6 Million!

President Obama’s five-day trip to Africa cost taxpayers more than $5 million in flight time alone for Air Force One, according to a study released Tuesday.

The National Taxpayers Union said Mr. Obama is spending about 29 hours of flight time on the trip that began Thursday, taking him to Kenya and Ethiopia. Operating Air Force One costs $206,337 per flight hour, for a total of $5,983,773.

The total cost of the trip will easily reach into tens of millions of dollars. In the summer of 2013, Mr. Obama took his family on a weeklong trip to sub-Saharan Africa that was estimated to cost taxpayers between $60 million and $100 million.

On that earlier trip, the Secret Service’s hotel costs alone totaled $953,788, or about $136,255 per day.

The president is returning to Washington early Wednesday, after a refueling stop in Germany. (Read more from “Obama’s Flight to Africa Tops $5 Million: Study” HERE)

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