MADDOG10's Blog

It's time to revisit the widely disseminated myth that compromise in politics and governance is the highest virtue.

 

Recently, I heard a television host whom I like and respect lament that Congress left town without taking action on our border crisis. Members of Congress, the argument goes, just need to get together, put aside their partisanship and get something done. After all, even couples going through an acrimonious divorce can sit down in the same room, close the doors and work out some agreement.

But getting something done isn't always preferable to doing nothing, especially if the proposed action would make things worse. Would this host, for example, say that granting instant amnesty to every one of the people who have crossed our border illegally in this latest surge would be preferable to not acting? I pray not.

I think part of the problem is that this host assumes that President Obama shares the host's good faith -- that he wants to work with Republicans in Congress to enforce the border and properly deal with those who have entered illegally.

How do you compromise with someone who doesn't even share your goals and who has no intention of compromising with you, even if he pretends otherwise? President Obama arguably brought on this invasion himself by issuing his lawless executive order in 2012 declaring that he would stop deporting young illegal immigrants if they met certain requirements. He sent an unmistakable signal that children entering the nation illegally would receive amnesty -- and we have concrete evidence that this was a driving factor in the current border invasion.

That aside, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognize that Obama's other behavior and actions, despite his rhetoric, make clear that he has little, if any, interest in enforcing the border. He has vigorously attacked border states, such as Arizona, that have tried to enforce their borders because Obama's federal government refuses to do its duty. He refuses to work with Congress to take action to enforce the border, always insisting that as a condition to doing so, Congress agree to his version of "comprehensive immigration reform." It's not just Obama. For decades, Democrats have been promising Republicans they will cooperate to enforce the border, but they've steadfastly obstructed all efforts to do so.

Truth be told, Democrats mainly want to accomplish two things with respect to immigration policy: 1) to grant amnesty to as many illegal immigrants as possible because they are confident they will ultimately be Democratic voters and 2) to use the issue to slander Republicans as anti-Hispanic. If you doubt this, do a Google search sometime using the search word "nativism" -- barely a euphemism for racism.

If Democratic leaders don't actually want to protect the border, what room is there for compromise on this issue?

Most people who tout compromise and bipartisanship as wonderful goals in general are liberals, people who think like liberals or those not particularly on top of politics.

Democrats, under cover of liberal media distortion, routinely condemn the alleged partisanship of Republicans while exhibiting their own partisanship and uncompromising attitude. Obama demands that Republicans "stop just hatin' all the time" and work with him, all while mocking their proposals and fomenting public hatred against Republicans.

Obama casts Ronald Reagan conservatives as extremists, ridicules and taunts them, and then demands they work with him -- to achieve his ends, not theirs.

On this very border issue, Obama berated Republicans for not working with him and in the next breath said that all they need to do is pass his $3.7 billion bill to deal with the problem. He did not say, "We can start with my proposal, listen to the Republicans' suggestions to modify it and agree on a compromise." His idea of compromise is that Republicans accept his proposal in full, no changes. This is the type of man we are dealing with. There is no compromising in him.

Obama and his party use demands for compromise as a weapon against Republicans to achieve their own political ends -- without compromise. Just this week, Obama repeated that he doesn't want to issue executive orders on immigration but that he will be forced to if Republicans won't work with him. Has any other president advanced this absurd argument that Congress' refusal to bend to his dictates would justify his usurpation of Congress' Article 1 legislative authority? This is breathtaking in its transparent cynicism.

President Obama is anything but a bipartisan politician interested in compromise. He is an ideologue determined to accomplish his policy goals by whatever means it takes, including using compromise as a blunt propaganda tool to achieve his way -- period, rather than as a process to meet his political opponents halfway.

Compromise, especially when dealing with an unbending ideologue and propagandist like Obama, is no virtue.

Republicans should pursue what is best for America and the American people, and that means working within the system and rule of law -- though Obama refuses to -- to defeat and thwart Obama's destructive agenda.

•    

In January, Barack Obama promised that he’d use “a phone and a pen” to institute presidential executive actions presumably on important issues like immigration reform, tax reform, Obamacare, the Progressive Global Issue-of-the-Day, and gender reassignment surgery in the military.

It’s now August, and right on cue, Obama’s beginning to research the federal statutes to figure out how to do it, especially in regards to illegal immigration, which Capt’n Obvious now says is a broken system.

Duh. He’s the one who broke it…more.

“In the face of that kind of dysfunction, what I can do is ... scour our authorities to try to make progress,” said Obama according to the Columbus Dispatch.

As usual our backward president has it backwards…again.

Fire! Ready! Aim!

No wonder the guy hates guns.

It’s a little late in the game to start researching options for executive action when you promised bold actions back in January…of 2009. But if we’ve learned to expect one rule from Obama that’s never broken, it is this: it’s never too early—or too late-- to pander to your base.

And that’s actually what’s going on here. No one is really burning the midnight oil reading laws in the White House. This White House? Reading laws? I don’t think they even know how to find the federal code, yet alone read it. They might be the only humans in existence who have mastered the art of not even reading the words they write and read aloud-- if one can judge from intel talking points, laws they’ve written, treaties they negotiate, and speeches the teleprompter gives.

Obama sucks as president, but he’s not a bad campaigner, assisted as he is by the almost Pavlov-type response he gets from the people he exploits. I’m not saying that Obama doesn’t love his base. He just loves his base like an alcoholic loves liquor: he abuses it.

In fact, constituent abuse is Obama’s favorite method of governing.

He abuses blacks, he abuses Hispanics, and he abuses women.

The statistics don’t lie. By almost every measure the only constituency that Obama doesn’t abuse are the backroom billionaires trying to get rich on crony energy deals…or richer, rather…again.

It’s harder today to make ends meet as a woman, as a black, or as an Hispanic than ever before if you look at the employment numbers, which is the only indicator that really matters.

I have this quaint notion that blacks, Hispanics, women, Iraqis, Syrians and Ukrainians care a lot more about things like, um, eating, educating their kids, and being safe in their communities—the normal impulses of normal humans-- than they do the burning issues that drive Obama every day.

But here’s the bigger point: I’m not sure, besides campaigning, what are the burning issues of the day for Obama.

If it’s immigration reform, there are easier ways of doing it; if it’s healthcare reform there are easier ways of doing it; if it’s soaking the rich, ask him about his billionaire friends.

Some are convinced that Obama’s real aim is a hidden one, like the collapse of the financial and governing system. It’s a normal reaction to the gothic stupidity that comes daily from the White House.

People just don’t want to believe that the group of men and women who make up Obama could be this dumb, this off target.

Not me.

For Obama it’s always: Fire! Ready! Aim!

The fact that innocent bystanders bear the brunt of the damage is just the cost of firing off his mouth, his policies, his teleprompter.

It’s a cheap cost for him too.

It’s only people, after all.

In the summer of 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama was asked if he was worried that his proposed withdrawal from Iraq would result in ethnic cleansing or even genocide.

He scoffed at the premise.

"By that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now -- where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife -- which we haven't done," he told the Associated Press. "We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea."

Obama glossed over a crucial distinction. The slaughter in Congo wasn't caused by our actions. The assumption behind the AP's question -- backed by countless experts -- was that a withdrawal from Iraq at the time would almost certainly lead to slaughter. Obama's remarkable answer was that even if you accepted the premise that leaving would ignite mass slaughter, it would still be right to bug out of Iraq.

Of course, as is his wont, Obama covered all of the rhetorical bases. He acknowledged that leaving prematurely would be bad.

"Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously. There are still going to be U.S. forces in the region that could intercede, with an international force, on an emergency basis," he insisted. "There's no doubt there are risks of increased bloodshed in Iraq without a continuing U.S. presence there."

Then came the patented Obama take-back. "It is my assessment that those risks are even greater if we continue to occupy Iraq and serve as a magnet for not only terrorist activity but also irresponsible behavior by Iraqi factions," he said.

As grotesque as Obama's moral argument was, it was unknowable at the time whether his analysis was correct. It's now pretty clear he was wrong on all counts.

When Obama pulled American troops out of Iraq, they were not serving as a magnet for terrorists; they were acting as a deterrent not only to terrorists but to "irresponsible" Iraqi factions.

(By the way, what is it with Obama and the word "irresponsible"? In Wednesday's press conference, Obama said that by targeting civilians, Hamas was behaving "extraordinarily irresponsibly." This is only slightly less condemnatory than "inadvisable" or "unproductive" -- and far more conciliatory than the language he uses about Republicans daily.)

Admittedly, he couldn't have predicted the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2007 any more than he could have predicted the debacle of his Syria policy and his vacillating "red line" rhetoric, which partly led to the rise of ISIS.

But as recently as last November, Obama dismissed ISIS and other al-Qaeda affiliates as nothing more than a jayvee squad. While interviewing Obama, The New Yorker's David Remnick noted that "the flag of al-Qaeda is now flying in Fallujah, in Iraq, and among various rebel factions in Syria," and that "al-Qaeda has asserted a presence in parts of Africa, too."

The president shot back: "If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant."

Now, that same junior varsity team controls more territory than any terrorist organization in history, has some 5,000 battle-hardened jihadists with Western passports, hundreds of millions of dollars at its disposal, and is earning millions more every day by selling oil on the black market. It is slaughtering Shiites, Christians and other "infidels" with a medieval abandon that makes the alleged A-team of al-Qaeda blanch with horror. At this moment it has cornered tens of thousands of Yazidi villagers on a mountaintop. ISIS presents them with a choice: convert to Islam at gunpoint or die of thirst.

To its credit, the Pentagon is reportedly contemplating airlifting food and water to the Yazidis, though you wouldn't know that from anything the president has said.

You have to give Obama points for consistency. He remains as blasé about mass slaughter today as he was in 2007. Back then he presented our options as a choice between doing nothing and "deploying unilaterally" to put American troops in harm's way. He plays the same rhetorical games today, insisting that critics who want to provide military aid to, say, the Kurds or the Ukrainians are really proposing war. And since no one wants war, we should accept our new role as bystander to slaughter.

It's quite a legacy you're working on there, Mr. President.

WASHINGTON - President Obama's last gasp strategy in this year's midterm elections is to paint the Republicans in Congress as obstructionists, accusing them of playing politics with America's economic welfare.

In his news conference last week, he insisted he had offered a number of new proposals to boost low-to-middle incomes, create jobs and strengthen the economy. But, he said, they had been stubbornly blocked by Republicans in the House and Senate.

In Obama's deeply partisan world, there aren't two sides to the legitimate policy issues that now divide Congress. There's only one side: his side. And anyone who opposes him and his party is doing it solely for political gain.

That's the whining, lame-duck message he's taking out on the campaign trail this fall in a rear-guard political bid to prevent the GOP, which now runs the House, from getting control of the U.S. Senate, too.

But Obama faces huge challenges with his petulant, sophomoric complaints. First and foremost, a majority of Americans no longer look to him as the answer to the many economic problems that still plague our country.

He's had five and a half years to get the economy fully back on track, but with very mediocre results at best, and that's why his job approval polls are among the lowest of his presidency.

A growing number of Americans no longer believe that he can ever deliver on his promises and with good reason.

Take family incomes. They've fallen from $55,600 in 2007 to $51,000, while the gap between families at the top and the bottom has widened.

About one-third of Americans have debts that were sent to collection firms, according to a new report last week by the Urban Institute and Encore Capital Group's Consumer Credit Research Institute.

"It's a stunning number. And it threads through nearly all communities," said Caroline Ratcliffe, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, who wrote the report.

It was also reported just last week that homeownership fell to a 19-year low in the last three months, as shrinking incomes and tighter finances forced more Americans into rentals. That's the lowest U.S. homeownership level since 1995.

Yet, in a speech at a Democratic fundraiser last month, Obama was boasting, with a straight face, that "There's almost no economic measure by which we are not better off now than we were when I took office."

A hefty majority of Americans know better. The Gallup Poll said last week that 57 percent of Americans now say the economy is getting worse.

At his news conference last week, Obama ran through a litany of long-ignored proposals he's sent to Congress, including the Democrats' widely-discredited idea of raising the minimum wage.

When Republicans gave it an immediate thumbs down, saying his proposal was dead on arrival because it was "a job killer," the White House accused the GOP of playing politics with the issue.

Obama is still peddling the idea in speeches, despite a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that said his minimum wage hike would eliminate between half a million and one million jobs, as small businesses would be forced to cut their payrolls just to survive. The president never mentions the CBO report.

Obama is having a very difficult time accepting divided government as an often necessary part of our democratic, two party system of competing political philosophies. In large part, because he has been unable to get his way, but also because he believes government is the solution to all of our problems, when, as President Reagan reminded us in his first inaugural address to the nation, "Government is the problem."

Congress is divided, as it's often been throughout our history, because the American electorate is deeply divided. This election isn't about petty politics. It is about the proper role of government in our society and whose policies will result in a prosperous, full employment economy and a wise and frugal government.

Obama, judging by all the polls, is on the losing side of that argument. And his constant complaints that he can't get what he wants out of Congress because of mean, old Republicans, looks immature.

Ronald Reagan swept into office with an agenda that called for lowering income tax rates across the board, beefing up our tattered defenses, expanding global trade, and cutting needless, wasteful and excessive spending.

Reagan faced a fiercely determined foe in House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill and a liberal Democratic majority. But instead of bemoaning the opposition, he formed alliances on Capitol Hill, rallied Americans to his cause, and won the legislation he needed to pull the country out of a deep recession in just two years.

He faced similar Democratic opposition in his second term against his plan to overhaul the tax code, clean out its needless loopholes and exemptions, and further lower the tax rates.

Reagan not only got much of what he wanted, he did it with the support of liberal Democrats like Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri and Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey.

Reagan came into office after two successful terms as governor of California. Obama took office with virtually no experience after just two years as a freshman senator who had never run anything. And it shows.

Reagan and his army of allies on Capitol Hill, led by tax cut crusader Jack Kemp, said they got their tax cut ideas from President John F. Kennedy whose tax cuts resulted in a decade of strong economic growth and, eventually, a budget surplus.

Obama drew his $800 billion big spending stimulus plan and higher taxes from FDR's New Deal agenda to pull the country out of the Great Depression which lasted 10 long years until we entered World War II.

 

I wonder how the Ebola doctor feels now that his humanitarian trip has cost a Christian charity much more than any services he rendered.

What was the point?

Whatever good Dr. Kent Brantly did in Liberia has now been overwhelmed by the more than $2 million already paid by the Christian charities Samaritan's Purse and SIM USA just to fly him and his nurse home in separate Gulfstream jets, specially equipped with medical tents, and to care for them at one of America's premier hospitals. (This trip may be the first real-world demonstration of the economics of Obamacare.)

There's little danger of an Ebola plague breaking loose from the treatment of these two Americans at the Emory University Hospital. But why do we have to deal with this at all?

Why did Dr. Brantly have to go to Africa? The very first "risk factor" listed by the Mayo Clinic for Ebola -- an incurable disease with a 90 percent fatality rate -- is: "Travel to Africa."

Can't anyone serve Christ in America anymore?

No -- because we're doing just fine. America, the most powerful, influential nation on Earth, is merely in a pitched battle for its soul.

About 15,000 people are murdered in the U.S. every year. More than 38,000 die of drug overdoses, half of them from prescription drugs. More than 40 percent of babies are born out of wedlock. Despite the runaway success of "midnight basketball," a healthy chunk of those children go on to murder other children, rape grandmothers, bury little girls alive -- and then eat a sandwich. A power-mad president has thrown approximately 10 percent of all Americans off their health insurance -- the rest of you to come! All our elite cultural institutions laugh at virginity and celebrate promiscuity.

So no, there's nothing for a Christian to do here.

If Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood power-broker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything he could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia. Ebola kills only the body; the virus of spiritual bankruptcy and moral decadence spread by so many Hollywood movies infects the world.

If he had provided health care for the uninsured editors, writers, videographers and pundits in Gotham and managed to open one set of eyes, he would have done more good than marinating himself in medieval diseases of the Third World.

Of course, if Brantly had evangelized in New York City or Los Angeles, The New York Times would get upset and accuse him of anti-Semitism, until he swore -- as the pope did -- that you don't have to be a Christian to go to heaven. Evangelize in Liberia, and the Times' Nicholas Kristof will be totally impressed.

Which explains why American Christians go on "mission trips" to disease-ridden cesspools. They're tired of fighting the culture war in the U.S., tired of being called homophobes, racists, sexists and bigots. So they slink off to Third World countries, away from American culture to do good works, forgetting that the first rule of life on a riverbank is that any good that one attempts downstream is quickly overtaken by what happens upstream.

America is the most consequential nation on Earth, and in desperate need of God at the moment. If America falls, it will be a thousand years of darkness for the entire planet.

Not only that, but it's our country. Your country is like your family. We're supposed to take care of our own first. The same Bible that commands us to "go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel" also says: "For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.'"

Right there in Texas, near where Dr. Brantly left his wife and children to fly to Liberia and get Ebola, is one of the poorest counties in the nation, Zavala County -- where he wouldn't have risked making his wife a widow and his children fatherless.

But serving the needy in some deadbeat town in Texas wouldn't have been "heroic." We wouldn't hear all the superlatives about Dr. Brantly's "unusual drive to help the less fortunate" or his membership in the "Gold Humanism Honor Society." Leaving his family behind in Texas to help the poor 6,000 miles away -- that's the ticket.

Today's Christians are aces at sacrifice, amazing at serving others, but strangely timid for people who have been given eternal life. They need to buck up, serve their own country, and remind themselves every day of Christ's words: "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you."

There is also the issue of the financial impact this has on our country. More than a decade of war and trillions more in debt lands us in a precarious economic position no matter what the Democrats and liberal economists might say to the contrary. The United States government must, hopefully sometime very soon, start paying back the trillions we have borrowed against the country’s future. The only way to do this is to stop spending more than it receives in revenue. Perhaps not in our lifetime, but as conservatives, our calling is to leave the world better than we found it. Entitlements are obviously the largest part of the equation, but that is a subject for another column.

And finally, there are the obvious geopolitical implications, as China and to a lesser extent Russia stand on the sidelines with Cheshire cat grins on their face, hoarding resources for the future, loaning us money to fight the permanent war, waiting for the right time to turn off the faucet of easy money, and watch the illusion come to an end.

McCain has an admirable record of service and a great life story. But every great life story includes a chapter where the torch is passed. McCain is up for reelection in 2016. It is never too early to begin identifying a real conservative in Arizona who recognizes both the value of our men and women in uniform and that a conservative defense policy doesn’t include American boots on every inch of land across the planet. It is about time McCain take a bow and exit stage left, I hear Arizona is nice this time of year. •

•  

Tell me: Has any other United States president ever goaded the opposition party to bring impeachment proceedings against himself? Has any other so sneeringly mocked and taunted the other party?

 

President Obama is not only not the uniter he promised to be; he is the agitator in chief. Just consider the contrast with President George W. Bush, who didn't even defend himself often, much less deride, needle and dare Democrats to oppose him.

It's just like Obama, the dutiful disciple of 1960s leftist radical Saul Alinsky, to divert our attention from his official misconduct by demonizing Republicans and conservatives rightfully challenging his lawlessness.

Obama knows he has habitually exceeded his executive authority, but it's not so much the frequency of his overreaches that is unique. He boastfully claims he hasn't issued so many executive orders as his predecessors did. But that's just more of his misdirection.

It's not unlike his absurd statement that there has been more oil drilling under his administration than under others. What tripe. He conveniently omits that most of the drilling has occurred on private, not government-owned, land.

It's the substance of his executive orders -- their dangerous scope and magnitude -- that makes them so dangerous and troubling. Even liberal law professor Jonathan Turley notes that it is not the number of his executive orders that matters but their content and reach.

We must recognize that he is doing this premeditatedly. Shortly before issuing his executive order to implement parts of the Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, he openly acknowledged -- in lobbying for passage of the DREAM Act -- that he had no constitutional authority to do it on his own. But when he couldn't get Congress to go along with his ill-advised bill, he issued the order anyway, in total defiance of Congress' legislative prerogative and of his own admission that he couldn't do so.

The law is no obstacle to him. He will not be denied. His latest ploy is to ridicule Republicans for blocking his various amnesty schemes, which he euphemistically describes as "comprehensive immigration reform." He says he wouldn't have to act on his own if Congress would do its job. His adviser Dan Pfeiffer said, "The president has no choice but to act" on immigration.

Excuse me? Congress' job is not to rubber-stamp his statist policies. It is not to get along with him. Its duty is not to President Obama, his agenda or his legacy. It is to do what it believes is best for America and to check his power when he is acting beyond his authority.

There is nothing in the Constitution or case law that empowers a president to act unilaterally when Congress won't go along with him. If this were the case, the Constitution and its entire system of separation of powers would be meaningless.

How cynical this man is to tell the American people that he has a right to act outside the scope of his authority if his intention is "to help people" -- as if to turn lawlessness into a virtue. How can members of his own party not be sickened by his contemptuousness toward the Constitution? This isn't just a matter of Obama's jabbing the Republican Party. It's a calculated assault on the Constitution that transcends partisan politics and will come back to haunt all Americans.

Obama realizes that his egregious record in office has finally come home to roost and that in November, assuming things continue on their current course, his party is going to receive a shellacking at the polls because of him.

This is why he is willing to go to any lengths to distract attention from his failures. He figures the best way he can do that is by further vilifying Republicans as irresponsible extremists, racists, bigots, homophobes and the rest, hoping that he can dupe Americans into ignoring his disastrous record by convincing them that Republicans would be even worse.

He desperately needs to gin up his base and energize his own extremists, and his tried-and-true method for the past six years to accomplish that has been to use fear-mongering against Republicans.

So he is not only ratcheting up his rhetoric to accuse Republicans of a plot to impeach him, though House Speaker John Boehner has clearly indicated that is not in the cards, but also trying to force their hand into .actually impeaching him. To this end, he is planning on upping the ante by issuing a far-reaching unilateral order granting amnesty to millions

That's right. The leader of the Free World is trying to provoke Republicans into impeaching him or otherwise stirring a constitutional crisis.

This is stunningly unprecedented. But more and more people are wising up to his serial abuses of power and his partisan agitation.

I don't have a great track record as a prognosticator of elections, but I am strongly sensing his party, as a direct result of his policies and lawlessness and its shameless refusal to rein him in, is going to get a titanic comeuppance in November.

In the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf lays out both the reasons why President Obama should fire CIA director John Brennan, and the reasons why it would be dangerous for him to do so. Essentially, they’ve both been doing some really shady stuff, regarding both the US Constitution and international law, which they’ve both been covering up and lying about. Firing Brennan could bring more of these activities into the light, which would hurt Obama’s reputation. However, what we already know about Obama should eviscerate any shred of respectability he might have in anyone’s mind.

Brennan is currently under fire for bugging the computers of the Senate committee tasked with investigating the legality of CIA “enhanced interrogation” techniques. The CIA was mining Senators’ computers and emails to gather information on the investigation so they could begin working to discredit their reports. Brennan also lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee about it, saying, “That's just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.”

Now he’s apologized, weeks ahead of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report. It’s expected to be a scathing indictment of the CIA, showing that they exaggerated the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques to the public, fed journalists fake “leaks” and lied to members of Congress, downplaying the brutality of their information extraction practices and the extent to which they used them.

Now several Senators and even the New York Times editorial board is calling for his resignation. As Friedersdorf points out, Brennan's CIA “broke laws and undermined the separation of powers core to our democracy.”

While firing Brennan would be the best thing for the American people, it would also open up the possibility that he would start talking. He could talk about Obama’s secret drone killing program.

The President has repeatedly illegally used the state secrets justification to prevent information about extrajudicial killings from coming out into the public. Even Congress isn’t properly briefed on who Obama is killing or why. Obama blocked the release of a memo on the justification for killing two American citizens without trial, even though upon its eventual releaseit became clear that the information posed no threat to US safety. So the President is trampling on the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution and then refusing to acknowledge it or explain what the legal justification might be.

The latest abuse of the state secrets privilege is Obama’s DOJ refusing to explain why they’re refusing to allow a PhD student back into the US. And what was the reason both for the refusal to let Rahinah Ibrahim back in the country and for refusing to acknowledge why she wasn’t allowed? An FBI agent had checked the wrong box. The “state secret” was a coverup for incompetence.

The entire drone war in Pakistan could only be legal if the country consented to the killings, and there’s little evidence it has, and public statements indicate it hasn’t.

NSA spying has far exceeded its legal and Constitutional bounds and President Obama has lied about both the scope of the spying and what he knew and when. Trade alliances with allies such as Germany are in jeopardy because of NSA spying, and along with them billions of dollars in economic growth.

In fact, as NSA director James Clapper has repeatedly lied to Congress, with zero reproach from the Obama Administration, the only way anyone knows anything about just how far illegal NSA wiretapping and surveillance of American citizens who have not been accused of any crimes has gone is due to whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. And how has the Obama Administration, the “most transparent administration in history” dealt with these heroic individuals, the only check against lying and law-breaking government agencies? The Administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any administration in US history.

I guess what I don’t get is what in the world John Brennan could reveal about President Obama which could possibly tarnish his reputation any further. He’s literally trampling on the Constitution, killing citizens without trial, disregarding the Fourth Amendment and allowing his goons to lie about it with zero consequences. And that’s what we know about! Fire John Brennan, Obama. You can’t get any lower

I'm not a psychologist, but I'm intrigued by the work of those who study the mind and behavior, especially when it accurately explains why people do what they do -- or can't do what they would like or are expected to do. Case in point, President Barack Obama.

 

In 2008, I wrote a column titled "A Personality Profile of Barack Obama's Leadership." The warnings of mental health professionals then have come to fruition today. And other brain and personality experts, many of whom cast their votes for Obama at the ballot box, have since learned the nation appointed a man to the highest position in the land who cannot lead in or out of crisis, especially in the face of opposing forces.

Six years ago, I pointed to the research of the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, at St. John's University and the College of St. Benedict, which did a professional personality profile "for anticipating Obama's likely leadership style as chief executive, thereby providing a basis for inferring the character and tenor of a prospective Obama presidency." The study concluded: "The combination of Ambitious, Accommodating, and Outgoing patterns in Obama's profile suggests a confident conciliator personality composite. Leaders with this personality prototype, though self-assured and ambitious, are characteristically gracious, considerate, and benevolent. They are energetic, charming, and agreeable, with a special knack for settling differences, favoring mediation and compromise over force or coercion as a strategy for resolving conflict. They are driven primarily by a need for achievement and also have strong affiliation needs, but a low need for power."

Samuel Barondes, a leading psychiatrist and neuroscientist, explained in his 2011 expose of President Obama: "Obama's temperament, his combination of dispositional traits, is emphasized in psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi's essay 'Maybe Washington Needs More Craziness.' As Ghaemi puts it in his opening sentence 'If President Obama stumbled in his handling of the debt crisis, in my view, it was because he is too normal: too rational, willing to compromise, a rule follower, conventionally wise.' And he then goes on to contrast Obama with Franklin D. Roosevelt whose greater success he attributes, in part, to Roosevelt's 'hyperthymic temperament ... such people have very high energy levels, and are extroverted, talkative, sociable, humorous, charismatic, productive, libidinous, and workaholic.' To Ghaemi the more moderate temperament of 'no-drama-Obama' keeps him from confronting his adversaries in the manner of FDR.

"Drew Westen, a psychologist with interests in both personality and politics, emphasizes Obama's sense of identity. In 'What Happened to Obama's Passion?' he raises the possibility that Obama hasn't figured himself out yet: 'Perhaps those of us who were so enthralled with the magnificent story he told in "Dreams From My Father" appended a chapter at the end that wasn't there -- the chapter in which he resolves his identity and comes to know who he is and what he believes in.' Later Westen suggests that Obama is conflicted about his identity and 'ran for president on two contradictory platforms: as a reformer who would clean up the system, and as a unity candidate who would transcend the lines of red and blue.' But in the end he concludes that Obama is really most comfortable 'consistently choosing the message of bipartisanship over the message of confrontation.' This, then, appears to be an essential element of what Obama stands for."

Obama's glaring and greatest weakness -- namely his inability to make hard decisions in crisis and lead opposing forces through or out of them -- has cost America on every front. It has further divided Washington and our nation and jeopardized our standing with the global community and even our allies, leaving us in a much more unstable place in our world.

Though most people in 2008 seemed to laud Obama's personality as a needed polar opposite to George W. Bush's, especially in an era that required the repairing of international relations, I posed to readers that Obama's personality pendulum swing was way too far to the other side. An "accommodating-agreeable-conciliator-favoring compromise" type of personality might be good for closing a used car deal when all parties are amicable, but it's not the one that can lead our country through war, divisive crises or emergency conflicts, which often require unpopular actions.

Obama's voting record as an Illinois state senator showed his inability to take a stand in a crisis. His own Democratic colleagues couldn't understand why he had voted "present" (instead of "yes" or "no") 129 times, including a number of noncommittal tallies on gun rights and abortion.

Gone are the days when strong leaders and personalities, such as House Speaker Tip O'Neill and President Ronald Reagan, reached across the aisle in order to lead our country. En vogue today are pitching polarities, demonizing your opposition and casting blame to justify one's own divisiveness and inability to bridge gaps.

But what we need now more than ever are leaders like those three decades ago who knew how to agree to disagree agreeably, confronted tough challenges together and advanced our nation forward despite their differences. That is particularly true of our president.

God doesn't grant us do-overs, but He does give us abundant try-agains.

Netanyahu is acting to defeat Hamas. Obama is acting to save Hamas. The interesting question is which option would better serve the life and interests of ordinary Palestinians?


Fed up to the gills with assertions of racism as a unique American sin. Rubbish. Show me any society on earth that gives minority cultures and subcultures a better shake.

America didn't invent slavery. But it fought a civil war to eradicate it; passed three constitutional amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and established state and federal civil rights offices throughout the land to enforce equal opportunity.

The ridiculous cries of American racism call to mind a Puritan flagellating himself because he's tempted by sin. The fellow isn't perfect, but he sure is trying.

If you are unclear about the importance of Separation of Powers for your personal liberty, imagine fighting a traffic ticket while the cop who cited you sits in black robes in the judge’s chair. Then use your imagination to consider whether this scenario has any applicability to the policy and enforcement powers of federal agencies.

I was about to click and read why George Takei and William Shattner don't like each other. But then I decided maybe life was better before the internet existed.

Here's what I don't get--what we aren't talking about.

Liberals thought Bush sucked, and especially in his second term, wished he'd go away. Fair enough.

But, today, Americans don't just think Obama sucks. It's pretty clear he's illegally using federal agencies to persecute his enemies. Audit them. Raid them. Put them in jail.

No serious person doubts it.

Where in the infierno is any serious and honest liberal to say this man is a plague that needs to be cleansed?

There has never been anything in America as cynical and outrageous as the Obamacrats saying: "Those dirty Republicans are going to impeach Obama!" while the cowed Republicans say "Who us?! We are not! Whatchu talkin about?!"

Meanwhile, Obama tries to think of the most insidious things he can do that either A. Will force Republicans to impeach him; or B. He will get away with and set new lows for conduct of the President of the United States.

Our union is becoming a pathetic joke.

If voter ID laws are a racist plot, then why does minority turnout increase everywhere they pass?

Couldn't be the proponents really are worried about vote fraud, while fraud-apologist opponents play the race card because that's the only card they got?

I love all dogs. Just can't understand why people choose some of the prissy ones. There are cats for that.

I love cats, too. Two, precisely.


Big props to Sonic Burger for giving me an ice water bigger than a communion sip.

Stop being jerks, fast food America.

No, Local News Broadcaster, the debate over the EPA's power grab to gut American energy is not between those who care about the environment and those who think jobs are more important, as if defenders of plentiful energy don’t care about our environment.

Of course jobs are important, but the main opposition to the EPA's initiative to kill coal is that we just don't believe the computer model scenarios predicting disaster if humans keep using traditional energy. And we know that more expensive energy will make life harder and more of a struggle for millions of American families today.

US science establishment: "Sorry. We were wrong about fat. We were wrong about carbs. We were wrong about salt."

"But don't you dare question us about carbon, you deniers!!"

"IT'S SETTLED!!!!"

Every Luddite prediction about technology was wrong. We kept getting richer. Now we're getting poorer because the parasite political class has mastered the art of wringing our throat.


Do the sheep realize that when Sen. Udall says wind and sun create jobs, he really means tax payer subsidies are the critical factor?

Mr. Udall, if sun and wind created wealth and enterprise, why does Washington have to suck us to keep it going?

The Libertarians who think it a pittance's difference between Romney and Obama haven't a clue the deliberate damage Obama is doing.

Do they know how many lawsuits his mini-me Holder is filing against companies for the sin of competing?

Do they know how many for-profit colleges Obamatrons are shutting down, simply because they hate the idea of for-profit education?

Do they grasp the private universities that Obama/Holder are trying to defund and dis-accredit because the schools won't toe Obama's liberal line.

Do they know Obama means to make our traditional energy as scarce and expensive as possible?

Do they know the difference between flawed policy and direct, malicious, transformative assault?

These Liberty Utopians are self-defeating and delusional.

No one believes Obama is protecting America’s best interests.
Everyone knows he’s pursuing his own agenda.
No one knows what it is.

• Question: How can you tell it’s a difficult campaign season for Democrats?

Answer: They are already running ads accusing Republicans of wanting to destroy Social Security and Medicare.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is financing an Iowa ad saying that GOP nominee Joni Ernst has “proposed privatizing Social Security [and] gambling our savings in the stock market.”

In Arkansas, Senator Mark Pryor accuses his opponent, Representative Tom Cotton, of trying to “undermine the integrity of Medicare and Social Security.”

And in Kentucky, Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes has ignored press criticism to launch a new round of attacks on Mitch McConnell for supporting the Ryan budget, which Grimes falsely claims “increases Medicare costs and privatizes Social Security.”

House campaigns are also featuring their share of Social Security and Medicare demagoguery: In Arizona’s second congressional district, Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic Majority PAC has run ads accusing GOP candidate Martha McSally of wanting to “raise the retirement age” and supporting “a plan that the AARP says privatizes Social Security in the stock market.” Similar ads are running in Florida and elsewhere.

As the election gets closer, we can undoubtedly expect still more.

In fairness, of course, it should be noted that it’s not just Democrats who peddle this nonsense. In Montana, the Republican senatorial candidate, Representative Steve Daines, is running an ad claiming that embattled Democratic incumbent Senator John Walsh “believes that privatizing Social Security should be on the table.”

Unfortunately for those candidates, the trustees for those troubled programs just injected some inconvenient truths into the debate.

Start with Social Security. Last year, the program spent $75.6 billion more than it took in. This year’s gap is expected to be more than $80 billion. This cash-flow shortfall is being covered by interest payments on the bonds in the Social Security Trust Fund.

Soon the interest payments will not be enough, and Social Security will have to make up any shortfall by redeeming bonds from the Social Security Trust Fund. But the Trust Fund holds no actual assets — it’s only government bonds held by the government itself, essentially an accounting measure of how much the system is owed out of general revenues. Thus, when the Social Security system redeems bonds in order to cover its deficit, the money to redeem them. like today’s interest payments, comes from general revenues, meaning that it simply increases our annual budget deficits and growing national debt.

This accounting gimmick will be irrelevant anyway after 2033, when the Trust Fund will be exhausted. By then, Social Security will have redeemed $2.8 trillion in bonds. Of course, you may have noticed that the federal budget doesn’t really have $2.8 trillion to spare.

From there on out, Social Security’s unfunded liabilities top $24.9 trillion. Add that to the $2.8 trillion needed to redeem the Trust Fund, and Social Security is running roughly $27.7 trillion in the red. That’s $1.8 trillion more than last year. It’s not getting any better, folks.

Yet Social Security’s finances actually look pretty good compared with Medicare’s. According to the trustees, Medicare’s Trust Fund will run a deficit this year as it has for the last six years. The program may briefly return to solvency next year, as a result of Obamacare tax hikes, but will be running deficits again by 2021.

Medicare’s Trust Fund will remain technically solvent until 2030, which represents a four-year improvement over last year’s projection. But, as we saw with the Social Security Trust Fund, this is a meaningless accounting measure that doesn’t affect the nation’s overall finances. The program’s total unfunded liabilities exceed $48.1 trillion, an increase of $5.2 trillion since last year’s report.

It should also be noted that the trustees estimate that the total cost of Medicare will increase from approximately 3.5 percent of GDP in 2013 to 5.3 percent of GDP by 2035, and thereafter to about 6.9 percent of GDP by 2088. At that point, Social Security’s costs will consume an additional 6.1 percent of GDP, meaning that these two government programs alone will eat up one-eighth of everything produced in this country. Medicaid and Obamacare will consume another 4.6 percent of GDP. With interest on the debt equaling 9.9 percent of GDP at that point, government will consume 27.5 percent of our economy before it does anything else … national defense, human services, infrastructure, anything. By way of comparison, all federal spending today amounts to 20.8 percent of GDP, and the post–World War II average has been just 19.3 percent.

In the face of this undeniable crisis, proposals to give future seniors more choice of Medicare plans or to allow younger workers to privately invest a portion of their Social Security taxes through personal accounts hardly look radical.

None of this seems to matter to candidates who think they can find a little temporary advantage by frightening senior citizens. Perhaps they are right when it comes to the politics, although such attacks have proven less and less effective in recent years. But when it comes to the future of the country, such irresponsible demagoguery should be all but disqualifying.

• Share on Facebook 32
• 38 SHARES

The language in the Obamacare statute has always been crystal clear. Eligibility for the "affordability tax credit," or subsidy, requires enrollment "through an Exchange established by the State under 1311 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Identical language appears in the definition of a "coverage month," and every, single place subsidy eligibility is mentioned in the law.

States would, liberals assumed, all create state exchanges to get the money. It never occurred to them that some states would want to stop the subsidies and the employer taxes, 30-hour workweek, and associated penalties that come with them.

The only exception was eleven Democrats who were pretty sure their state would turn down the cash and warned: "In Texas, we know from experience that the dangers to the uninsured from greater State authority...millions of people will be left no better off than before Congress acted."

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) wrote in April 2010, right after the law passed, that subsidy eligibility required "residing in a state that established an exchange," but simply assumed: "Under PPACA, state-established 'American Health Benefit Exchanges' will have to be established in every state by January 1, 2014."

But something funny happened on the way to those 50 state exchanges.

The American people rose up against Obamacare - ultimately resulting in one of the biggest landslide elections in history. They wanted the law repealed, but obstinate Senate Democrats refused to consider even modest changes. Most states, however, were in no mood to cooperate.

Rather than accept the verdict of the American people, the Obama administration turned to the IRS to come to Obamacare's unlawful rescue. I say unlawful because CRS had issued a legal opinion on the matter, based on standard textualist principles of statutory construction: "An IRS interpretation that extended tax credits to those enrolled in federally facilitated exchanges would be contrary to clear congressional intent, receive no Chevron deference, and likely be deemed invalid."

Yet the IRS, in a May 23, 2012 regulation, did extend subsidies.

Some states still didn't believe it. At least three - Oklahoma, Alabama, and Indiana- cited the illegality of the IRS rule as a reason not to establish an exchange. They didn't want the subsidies.

With lawsuits challenging the IRS rule moving through the courts, Obamacare had a problem. They were wrong on the facts and wrong on the law, so they pounded the table.

Foremost among them was Obamacare's architect: Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist who helped write the law. He relentlessly attacked the personal integrity of the honest men and women who put together the legal challenges to the IRS rule. He told the ultraliberal Mother Jones magazine in January 2013 that limiting subsidies to state exchanges was a "screwy interpretation." of the law. "It's nutty. It's stupid," he said, pounding that table hard. "They're desperate."

Well, somebody was.

"What's important to remember politically about this is if you're a state and you don't set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits," Gruber himself explained in a January 2012 video found by Rich Weinstein.

"I hope that that's a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges." And then, perhaps hedging that politics might trump the law, he added: "But, you know, once again the politics can get ugly around this."

When he was caught, Gruber told the liberal New Republic the "statement was just a speak-o-you know, like a typo."

Then more tapes emerged. In one he said: "Now, I guess I'm enough of a believer in democracy to think that when the voters in states see that by not setting up an exchange the politicians in a state are costing state residents hundreds of millions and billions of dollars that they'll eventually throw the guys out, but I don't know that for sure. And that is really the ultimate threat, is will people understand that gee, if your governor doesn't set up an exchange, you're losing hundreds of millions of dollars of tax credits to be delivered to your citizens."

The Obamacare apologists of the left will somehow try to explain away the Gruber tapes. But no honest person should listen to them anymore.