Obama appointed Richard Cordray to be head of a controversial consumer consumer financial protection agency and stacking the National Relations Labor Board (NRLB) with Pro-Union cronies, despite the fact that Congress is not officially in recess! It is being held open with pro-forma sessions and not gaveled “sin die” for the specific purpose of preventing recess appointments. From the Constitution: Article 2 Section 2″ The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” This should be an Impeachable offense! Will we see justice served by Congress?
Deception as a Principle of Governance By James Long
February 11, 2010
Deception as a Principle of Governance
By James Long
The Democrats all agree that President George Bush received a surplus when he took office after President Clinton’s term, and then he passed a deficit to President Obama. Democrats are outrageous prevaricators.
David Axelrod in the Washington Post, 15 January 2010:
The day the Bush administration took over from President Bill Clinton in 2001, America enjoyed a $236 billion budget surplus — with a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion.
Hillary said much the same thing on “Meet the Press,” 15 November 2009:
It, it breaks my heart, David (Gregory), that in 2001 we had a balanced budget and a surplus; and if we’d stayed on that path, we were heading toward eliminating our debt.
Similarly, Senator Robert Menendez on “This Week,” 24 January 2010:
And, you know, I love my dear friend (Jim DeMint) talking about, you know, fiscal responsibility, but when George Bush came to office, he had a $236 billion surplus. Barack Obama was handed a $1.3 trillion deficit.
And a 07 February 2010 NYT editorial put it this way:
When President Bush took office in 2001, the federal budget had been in the black for three (four, actually) years, and continued surpluses were projected for a decade to come.
President Obama in his first State of the Union address also mentioned the large surplus that President Bush inherited in contrast to the deficit that Obama himself inherited.
Every one of the above statements is patently and provably false. The dot-com bubble crashed almost exactly one year before Clinton left office, and the value of the NASDAQ (symbol ^IXIC available on YAHOO!) fell by $2.5 trillion dollars (half its total value) before the end of the Clinton administration. When the dot-com bubble popped, as all
economic bubbles do, the NASDAQ fell sharply. Every economic indicator during Clinton’s last year in office turned decisively downward — the surplus, government revenues, and the markets included. Economic projections made at the very top of an economic bubble are foolish, but the dot-com bubble had long since popped, and everything was going south by the time Clinton left office. Consequently, the Democrats’ projections of surpluses years into the future at a time when all indices were falling are not just foolish, but dishonest.
A lot of things happened in the economy during Clinton’s last year, all of them bad. Besides the dot-com bubble crash in January 2000, the DOW also peaked and started down shortly before Clinton left office, and the S&P started down shortly after that. The NASDAQ continued to fall for an eventual loss of $4 trillion, and the collapse of the DOW
and the S&P also resulted in more trillions of dollars lost in the markets.
With the markets crashing, federal revenues were reduced, and GDP growth slowed as President Clinton left office. The vaunted Clinton surplus fell from $236 billion in FY 1999 (ending 30 September 1999) to $128 billion in FY 2000 (ending 30 September 2000), Clinton’s last year. Axelrod’s and Menendez’s claims that the surplus was $236 billion on “[t]he day the Bush administration took over” were off by just sixteen months, during which time markets, government revenues, and the “Clinton surplus” were falling like rocks. At the end of the first FY of President Bush’s term (2001), the budget had a deficit of over $157 billion. The “Clinton surplus” fell $393 billion in twenty- four months (FY 1999 to FY 2001) following the dot-com crash, and Clinton was still in office for sixteen of those months.
Empirically, if the American voters in late 2000 believed that the Clinton surplus was as high as the Democrats now claim, and if the long-term projection for the surplus was accepted as valid by those voters, Al Gore would have won the 2000 election in a landslide that would have rivaled President Reagan’s victories. In reality, the voters in 2000 were nervous about the economy, having just witnessed trillions of dollars lost in the dot-com fiasco, and Bush won.
Not only did Bush inherit a plunging economy, but given the magnitude of the dot-com crash, this was an extremely perilous time for the American economic outlook. In the event, President Bush applied the proper corrective measures and the damage was minimized, with unemployment limited to a relatively benign 6.1%. The economy went on to register solid jobs, growth, and productivity from 2003 to 2007 until the next Democratic disaster hit: the unaffordable housing bubble.
Sandwiched between the stupid Clinton dot-com bubble and the deliberate Democratic housing bubble, the Bush economy did quite well from 2003 to 2007, with deficits steadily being reduced and government growing at a slower relative rate than the economy. But President Bush had to pay for the considerable costs of Clinton’s dot-com bubble
(unemployment compensation, job training, lost tax revenues, etc.) until the economy began to recover in 2003, and then, at the end of his term, Bush had to stop the economic collapse that was triggered by the Democrats’ mortgage follies. Democrats have hung a bad rap on President Bush because they want to achieve power, and dishonesty is
one of the tools they have used successfully (and frequently) in their quest to tell us how to live.
Every economic crisis we have suffered since WWII has been the result of Democratic Party malfeasance or misfeasance. LBJ’s wasteful and corrupt War on Poverty did almost nothing to lessen poverty, cost $6.6 trillion over a thirty-year period, and ended when President Clinton signed off on a Republican initiative to end it. In comparison, the total national debt was $5.2 trillion at the point when the fraud- ridden, $6.6-trillion War on Poverty was mercifully ended. President Obama has now substantially reinstituted the War on Poverty with his non-stimulating stimulus package.
President Reagan and President Bush pulled us out of the first two Democratic disasters described above, but Obama’s disaster is much worse. Obama is adding fuel to the raging inferno as the economy melts down, rather than taking known corrective actions similar to what Reagan and Bush (and Kennedy, in a similar scenario) did.
If Hillary is really interested in “heading toward eliminating our debt,” then she could tell the Democrats to quit spending our money foolishly.
In the Soviet era, Pravda was the major official Soviet newspaper. The term “pravda” is usually translated as “truth,” but as Russians use the term, pravda would be more accurately translated as “the official word.” The official Democratic word and the official words of all declining mainstream Pravdas is that everything is President Bush’s
fault, even if the disastrous dot-com bubble and its inevitable crash happened during the Clinton administration.
James Long is a professional engineer and manager.
Patriot’s History, a worthwhile reading.
For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.”
As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin.
A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.
A Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to the War on Terror
Some reviews:
“A welcome, refreshing, and solid contribution to relearning what we have forgotten and remembering why this nation is good, and worth defending.” — Matthew Spalding, National Review
“In A Patriot’s History of the United States, Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen remind us what a few good individuals can do in just a few short centuries . . . . A fluid account of America from the discovery of the Continent up to the present day”. — Brandon Miniter, The Wall Street Journal
“No recent American history challenges the conventional wisdom of academics as aggressively as Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen’s A Patriot’s History of the United States”. — Daniel J. Flynn, Front Page Magazine
“There are a thousand pleasant surprises and heartening reminders that underneath it all America remains a country of ideas, ideals, and optimism—and no amount of revisionism can take that legacy away”. (John Coleman, Humane Studies Review)
Christian Manufacturer under fire for Bible references
The left is at it again, a Christian Manufacturer is under fire for Bible references within the serial number of its product.
ABC News has recently reported on the fact that Trijicon, the manufacturer of gun sites for our military has placed Bible verses in their serial numbers. ABC is quoted:
“U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious “Crusade” in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.”
Trijicon has stated that their company has been doing this since 2003. The company founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa, who was killed in a plane crash, started this practice.
Like every company the site manufacturer Trijicon, has no limits on how it can create its logo or any other limitations. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions “have always been there” and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is “not Christian.”
The Bible verses is question reference light:
John 8:12, referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12, reads, “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
There is nothing wrong with giving our troops something to bolster their faith!
Combat vets have said that there truly is no atheist in a foxhole!
I find it incomprehensible that our Government can be bullied by a vocal minority who want Christianity to be removed from every aspect of our lives.
This country was founded upon the freedom OF religion, not from religion. The separation of Church and State is a progressive gross misinterpretation of our Constitution!
As much as the anti-religion pushes, we of any faith, need to push back harder to maintain our freedoms.
Friday Mornings at the Pentagon
ABOUT THE WRITER
Joseph L. Galloway is former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday Mornings at the Pentagon
By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
McClatchy Newspapers
Over the last 12 months, 1,042 soldiers, Marines, sailors and Air Force personnel have given their lives in the terrible duty that is war. Thousands more have come home on stretchers, horribly wounded and facing months or years in military hospitals.
This week, I’m turning my space over to a good friend and former roommate, Army Lt. Col. Robert Bateman, who recently completed a yearlong tour of duty in Iraq and is now back at the Pentagon.
Here’s Lt. Col. Bateman’s account of a little-known ceremony that fills the halls of the Army corridor of the Pentagon with cheers, applause and many tears every Friday morning. It first appeared on May 17 on the Weblog of media critic and pundit Eric Alterman at the Media Matters for America Website.
“It is 110 yards from the “E” ring to the “A” ring of the Pentagon. This section of the Pentagon is newly renovated; the floors shine, the hallway is broad, and the lighting is bright. At this instant the entire length of the corridor is packed with officers, a few sergeants and some civilians, all crammed tightly three and four deep against the walls. There are thousands here.
This hallway, more than any other, is the `Army’ hallway. The G3 offices line one side, G2 the other, G8 is around the corner. All Army. Moderate conversations flow in a low buzz. Friends who may not have seen each other for a few weeks, or a few years, spot each other, cross the way and renew.
Everyone shifts to ensure an open path remains down the center. The air conditioning system was not designed for this press of bodies in this area.
The temperature is rising already. Nobody cares. 10:36 hours: The clapping starts at the E-Ring. That is the outermost of the five rings of the Pentagon and it is closest to the entrance to the building. This clapping is low, sustained, hearty. It is applause with a deep emotion behind it as it moves forward in a wave down the length of the hallway.
“A steady rolling wave of sound it is, moving at the pace of the soldier in the wheelchair who marks the forward edge with his presence. He is the first. He is missing the greater part of one leg, and some of his wounds are still suppurating. By his age I expect that he is a private, or perhaps a private first class.
“Captains, majors, lieutenant colonels and colonels meet his gaze and nod as they applaud, soldier to soldier. Three years ago when I described one of these events, those lining the hallways were somewhat different. The applause a little wilder, perhaps in private guilt for not having shared in the burden … yet.
“Now almost everyone lining the hallway is, like the man in the wheelchair, also a combat veteran. This steadies the applause, but I think deepens the sentiment. We have all been there now. The soldier’s chair is pushed by, I believe, a full colonel.
“Behind him, and stretching the length from Rings E to A, come more of his peers, each private, corporal, or sergeant assisted as need be by a field grade officer.
“11:00 hours: Twenty-four minutes of steady applause. My hands hurt, and I laugh to myself at how stupid that sounds in my own head. My hands hurt. Please! Shut up and clap. For twenty-four minutes, soldier after soldier has come down this hallway – 20, 25, 30… Fifty-three legs come with them, and perhaps only 52 hands or arms, but down this hall came 30 solid hearts.
They pass down this corridor of officers and applause, and then meet for a private lunch, at which they are the guests of honor, hosted by the generals. Some are wheeled along.. Some insist upon getting out of their chairs, to march as best they can with their chin held up, down this hallway, through this most unique audience. Some are catching handshakes and smiling like a politician at a Fourth of July parade. More than a couple of them seem amazed and are smiling shyly.
“There are families with them as well: the 18-year-old war-bride pushing her 19-year-old husband’s wheelchair and not quite understanding why her husband is so affected by this, the boy she grew up with, now a man, who had never shed a tear is crying; the older immigrant Latino parents who have, perhaps more than their wounded mid-20′s son, an appreciation for the emotion given on their son’s behalf. No man in that hallway, walking or clapping, is ashamed by the silent tears on more than a few cheeks. An Airborne Ranger wipes his eyes only to better see. A couple of the officers in this crowd have themselves been a part of this parade in the past.
These are our men, broken in body they may be, but they are our brothers, and we welcome them home. This parade has gone on, every single Friday, all year long, for more than four years.
“Did you know that?
The media haven’t yet told the story.”
Terry O’Brien
Obama grants INTERPOL diplomatic immunity, freedom from US Law
Last Thursday, December 17, 2009, The White House released an Executive Order “Amending Executive Order 12425.” It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other “International Organizations” as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945.
By removing language from President Reagan’s 1983 Executive Order 12425, this international law enforcement body now operates – now operates – on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
What, exactly does this mean? It means that INTERPOL now has the full authority to conduct investigations and other law enforcement activities on U.S. soil, with full immunity from U.S. laws such as the Freedom of Information Act and with complete independence from oversight from the FBI.
In short, a global law enforcement entity now has full law-enforcement authority in the U.S. without any check on its power afforded by U.S. law and U.S. law enforcement agencies.
A bit of background is in order here, and Hot Air provides it:
During his presidency, Ronald Reagan granted the global police agency Interpol the status of diplomatic personnel in order to engage more constructively on international law enforcement. In Executive Order 12425, Reagan made two exceptions to that status. The first had to do with taxation, but the second was to make sure that Interpol had the same accountability for its actions as American law enforcement — namely, they had to produce records when demanded by courts and could not have immunity for their actions.
Barack Obama unexpectedly revoked those exceptions in a change to EO 12425 last (week)…
Thus, Interpol now can conduct its operations on U.S. soil with ZERO accountability to anyone in this country.
And you beginning to understand now just what the ‘end game’ is on the part of those who are currently running the U.S. Government?
Let’s go a step further in fleshing out exactly what this means in practical terms. It gets ugly…and scary. Again, from ThreatsWatch:
Section 2c of the United States International Organizations Immunities Act is the crucial piece.
Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable. (Emphasis added.)
Inviolable archives means INTERPOL records are beyond US citizens’ Freedom of Information Act requests and from American legal or investigative discovery (“unless such immunity be expressly waived.”)
Property and assets being immune from search and confiscation means precisely that. Wherever they may be in the United States. This could conceivably include human assets – Americans arrested on our soil by INTERPOL officers.
Why would INTERPOL be arresting American citizens on our own soil, without oversight from our own law enforcement agencies? And remember, citizens who are thusly arrested would have no legal authority to demand full documentation from the International Police concerning the charges brought against them.
Andy McCarthy at National Review asks these crucial, sobering questions of the secretive Obama order:
Why would we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize?
At least one answer to these questions is very clear. A coup is underway in the United States of America, the goal of which is to establish complete, unquestioned authority over the citizens–a ‘fundamental change’ to the United States where citizens have no legal recourse against an authoritarian central government.
The Dismantling of America
I read this and feel that I can not express in my own words what the author has conveyed. So Here is the entire article, very insightful:
Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official — not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate, but simply one of the many “czars” appointed by the President — could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?
Did you think that another “czar” would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — that is, to create a situation where some newspapers’ survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called “experts” deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?
Does any of this sound like America?
How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.
How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.
We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.
How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.
Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to “change the United States of America,” the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles, and the people of this country.
Jeremiah Wright said it with words: “God d— America!” Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.
Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.
Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn’t know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?
Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government — people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America’s influence in the world.
Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration’s enemies list.
Nothing so epitomizes President Obama’s own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question — and the biggest question for this generation.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
