Posts

Obama’s ’1 Percent’ Get Best Seats on Parade Route

WASHINGTON — The “one percent” have been allocated the best seats in the inauguration parade — right across the road from President Barack Obama’s seat, and well below the TV cameras’ angle of view.

The roughly 300 donors are wealthy, well-dressed and mostly white. They were bussed down from Capitol Hill, where they have viewed the inauguration, and were given hand-warmers and packaged lunches by staff as they arrived in their seating area.

Most were wearing a large square pin, carrying a gold symbol on an orange background. The pin allowed them their entree into the best-in-the-house seating area, just below the media’s four-story riser.

Their location gives them a level-eyed view of Obama as he reviews the parade from his heavily protected viewing stand in front of the White House grounds.

It also gives Obama a straight-ahead view of his primary donors.

Read more from this story HERE.

Class: Paul Ryan Booed at Inauguration

Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan was met with boos as he left the Capitol for President Obama’s second inauguration ceremony Monday, according to news reports.

The former Republican vice presidential nominee last week had said it was his “obligation” to attend Obama’s public swearing-in and on Monday congratulated Obama on his Facebook page . . .

Obama spoke against “name calling” and “spectacle” during his inaugural speech.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Levin’s Message to Conservatives for Obama’s Second Term — Fight!

As President Barack Obama prepares for his inauguration, Breitbart News sat down with radio talk show host Mark Levin, the bestselling author of the blockbusters Liberty and Tyranny, Ameritopia, Men in Black, and Rescuing Sprite. Levin painted a stark picture of the reality facing the country – the rise of tyranny – but he also offered hope in one word: “fight.”

“I don’t think Obama knows exactly what he’s going to go for in his second term,” Levin said, “as he will look for opportunities to exploit as events unfold. I am sure they’ve drawn up a partial a list, and we already know that it includes, but is not limited to, gun control; attacks on the First Amendment such as religious liberty; amnesty for illegal aliens; union expansion; institutionalizing Obamacare; institutionalizing voter corruption; de-industrialization via the EPA; destroying the capitalist-based economy via tax increases, smothering regulations, massive deficit spending, and endless borrowing; and hollowing out our military; etc. This will effect all of us. It will do extreme damage to the nation in many respects. I think Obama sees himself as correcting historic wrongs in this country, as delivering the fruits of the labor of other people to people who he believes have historically been put upon. I think there’s a lot of perverse thinking that goes on in his mind, radical left-wing thinking. He was indoctrinated with Marx and Alinksy propaganda. You not only see it in his agenda but in his words — class warfare; degrading successful people unless, of course, they help finance his elections, causes, and organizations; pretending to speak for the so-called middle class when, in fact, he is destroying their jobs, savings, and future. Obama’s war on our society is intended to be an onslaught in which the system is overwhelmed.”

How to fight that agenda? Levin said the answer certainly doesn’t lie in the current Republican Party leadership. “I think the Republican Party, its apparatus, its so-called leadership, the parasitic consultants, represent an institution that is tired, old, almost decrepit, full of cowardice and vision-less. It has abandoned the Declaration of Independence and any serious defense of constitutional republicanism. The Democrat Party is now a radical 1960s party; it’s the anti-Constitution, anti-capitalism, anti-individual party. It largely controls the federal government, including the massive bureaucracy and much of the judiciary — what I call the permanent branches of the federal government. The Democrat Party represents the federal government, and the federal government expands the power of the Democrat Party. They’re appendages of each other. On the other hand, the GOP today stands for capitulation, timidity, delusion — so mostly nothing. Republicans may speak of the Constitution, limited government, low taxes, etc., but what have they done about them? Next to nothing if not nothing. Even when Bush 43 was president and the Republicans controlled Congress. What did they do? They went on a spending binge. They expanded Medicare, the federal role in local education, drove up the debt, etc. Meanwhile, we are lectured by putative Republicans like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Tom Ridge, and a conga line of others trashing often viciously NOT Obama and what the Democrats are doing to our nation, but conservatives, constitutionalists, and tea party activists who are the only people left standing for liberty against tyranny in this country.”

But, said Levin, the answer isn’t to start a third party – “The problem is a practical one. If we go third party, I can see the Democrats winning elections for a generation. Given the radicalized character of that party, that would seal our fate, and the fate of our children and grandchildren to, as Reagan put it, 1000 years of darkness. The day may come, perhaps soon, when abandoning the GOP for a new party is the best way to deal with events and stop the rise of tyranny. I think the answer at this moment is for conservatives to retake the Republican Party. Reagan did it, and Reagan was opposed by the Republican establishment every step of the way, including the Bush family. But this is a constant fight, just as fighting the Democrats is a constant fight. After the Reagan presidency, Bush 41 and Bush 43, who’d opposed the Reagan Revolution, immediately dragged the nation back into the Republican mush. In fact, they sought to distance themselves from Reagan and his achievements, using such silly phrases as “a kinder and gentler” conservatism or “compassionate conservatism,” as if all the opportunities, wealth, jobs, and enterprises Reagan’s policies launched were neither kind nor compassionate. There is an intransigence in the Republican Party that sabotages and obstructs those who have answers for this nation based on our founding principles. And so we had a brief eight-year period where Reagan showed us the way and created a foundation on which future Republican presidents could build, and they haven’t. They invoke Reagan because he is beloved by the American people, but they reject his principles and policies. Keep in mind, George W. Bush was the most profligate spender in world history until Obama came along; the Tea Party grew out of the last months of Bush 43 and the early months of the Obama presidency. Yet Bush administration staffers are everywhere today: the media, advising candidates, leading fundraisers, etc. And they arrogantly and condescendingly lecture conservatives about responsible, moderate governance. They also cheerlead for more establishment candidates, like John McCain, Mitt Romney, and the like, who are not only sure losers, but have no grasp of the urgency of our times and the principled agenda necessary to address it. Meanwhile, the Reagan and traditional conservatives, the constitutionalists and the tea party leaders, are all but unheard and unseen on TV, even some of our favorite outlets.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Golfer Phil Mickelson May Call It Quits Due To Climbing Tax Rates

Word is, Phil Mickelson is mad as hell about rising tax rates, and he’s not going to take it anymore. What follows is a brief portion of an interview Mickelson gave earlier today after carding a final-round 66 at the Palmer Course at PGA West in La Quinta – which I assure you, is not associated with the La Quinta next door to your local Denny’s – in which the golfer hinted that he is considering drastic career changes because of a combined tax rate nearing “62, 63 percent:”

Q. When you’re asked about Stricker’s semi-retirement, with the political situation the last couple months, blah, blah, blah, what did you mean by that? Do you find it an unsettling time in a way? PHIL MICKELSON: Well, it’s been an interesting offseason. And I’m going to have to make some drastic changes. I’m not going to jump the gun and do it right away, but I will be making some drastic changes.

Q. Meaning leaving from California? PHIL MICKELSON: I’m not sure.

Q. Moving to Canada? PHIL MICKELSON: I’m not sure what exactly, you know, I’m going to do yet. I’ll probably talk about it more in depth next week. I’m not going to jump the gun, but there are going to be some. There are going to be some drastic changes for me because I happen to be in that zone that has been targeted both federally and by the state and, you know, it doesn’t work for me right now. So I’m going to have to make some changes.

To be honest, it’s hard to blame Mickelson – who has compiled a net worth approaching $180 million by repeatedly striking a tiny white ball until it falls into a hole — for putting all options on the table, which according to some, include the possibility of prematurely shutting down his career to avoid his rising tax burden.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Final ‘Coming Out’ of the Communist Left in America

In the book, “1984,” George Orwell wrote that “the most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” Even more compelling, Orwell said of the future: “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

It is hard to dispute that the progressive left has a stranglehold on pop culture in America. Firmly entrenched in media, academia and the entertainment industry, and more emboldened than ever, it controls the present.

Our history has long been under assault, particularly in universities, but never as aggressively as we see in a 10-part Showtime documentary produced by Oliver Stone, “Untold History of the United States.”

Commenting on Stone’s latest work in a FrontPage column, David Horowitz calls it “a ludicrous encapsulation of the Kremlin’s view of the Cold War, amplified by the Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, Hamas version of the post-Communist decades.”

And he is qualified to make such a judgment. A self-proclaimed “red-diaper baby,” Horowitz was one of the founders of the “New Left” in the 1960s and an editor of its largest magazine, Ramparts. In his memoir, “Radical Son,” Horowitz traces his odyssey from an angry far-left activist to conservative writer and policy advocate. He is now president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and editor of FrontPage Magazine.

Read more from this story HERE.

China Poised to Play Debt Card – for U.S. Land

NEW YORK – Could real estate on American soil owned by China be set up as “development zones” in which the communist nation could establish Chinese-owned businesses and bring in its citizens to the U.S. to work?

That’s part of an evolving proposal Beijing has been developing quietly since 2009 to convert more than $1 trillion of U.S debt it owns into equity.

Under the plan, China would own U.S. businesses, U.S. infrastructure and U.S. high-value land, all with a U.S. government guarantee against loss.

Yu Qiao, a professor of economics in the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsighua University in Beijing, proposed in 2009 a plan for the U.S. government to guarantee foreign investments in the United States.

WND has reliable information that the Bank of China, China’s central bank, has continued to advance the plan to convert China’s holdings of U.S. debt into equity owned by China in the U.S.

Read more from this story HERE.

Inauguration Day: Obama Vows Aggressive Second-Term Agenda

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama began his second term Monday by setting an agenda for the next four years built on bedrock Democratic social policies, in a provocative speech coming at a time of deep partisanship in the capital and lingering economic uncertainty across the country.

With specifics not usually offered in inaugural addresses, Mr. Obama promised to preserve government health-care programs, expand rights for women and gay couples, and press for gun controls, overhauls of the tax code and immigration laws, as well as climate-change measures.

His priorities sent a message to Washington’s leaders that he is looking beyond the fiscal battles set to dominate the coming weeks, while signaling to the nation that he sees a large part of his legacy to be advocacy for underprivileged Americans.

“For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it,” Mr. Obama said in a 15-minute speech that drew repeatedly on the opening phrase of the Constitution.

Mr. Obama laid out a governing agenda rooted in Democratic policy goals and equal rights, citing Seneca Falls, N.Y., Selma, Ala., and New York City’s Stonewall Inn, birthplaces of the movements for women’s equality, civil rights and gay liberation, respectively. “That is our generation’s task—to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American,” the president said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s ATF Nominee on DOJ’s ‘Fast and Furious’ Design Team

As part of President Barack Obama’s 23-point gun control plan, he nominated Minnesota U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones–who currently doubles right now as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives–to be the ATF director.

Jones was personally a part of the high-ranking Department of Justice unit that first met on October 26, 2009, to create the new DOJ policy that was used to justify “gunwalking” in Operation Fast and Furious. In Fast and Furious, the ATF “walked” roughly 2,000 firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. That means through straw purchasers the agency allowed sales to happen and didn’t stop the guns from being trafficked, even though they had the legal authority to do so and were fully capable of doing so.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens–estimates put it around at least 300–were killed with these firearms.

Obama nominated Jones after he said in his gun control plan that the “ATF has not had a confirmed director for six years. There is no excuse for leaving the key agency enforcing gun laws in America without a leader. It is time for Congress to confirm an ATF director.”

According to a congressional report from House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley, Jones was one of several senior DOJ officials in the meeting. Before the meeting, then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden disseminated a strategy that became the new law enforcement platform on which gunwalking was based.

Read more from this story HERE.

A ‘Fast and Furious’ Foreign Policy

photo credit: al jazeera english

Let’s get this straight: Guns are too dangerous to be left in the hands of ordinary Americans. But guns in the hands of unknown rebels, who may turn out to be violent extremists, are just fine.

At the same time the Obama administration is threatening to curtail access to firearms in order to prevent gun violence at home, the president is channeling Warren Zevon abroad: “Send lawyers, guns, and money.”

And send them to the most dangerous, unstable places in the world.

The United States armed the rebels who overthrew Qaddafi in Libya. The administration is at least contemplating arming anti-Assad rebels in Syria. And although France balked at the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we will be providing logistical support to our freedom-fries friends in Mali.

What could possibly go wrong?

Read more from this story HERE.