Barak Obama faces about the same problem that confronted Bill Clinton in 1994 when he lost control of Congress. In both cases, the Democratic presidents had alienated moderate and conservative voters and found themselves increasingly isolated with a political base of liberals and minorities. In each instance, the president worried that off-year election turnout among their base would be attenuated both because it always is in non-presidential years and because their policy failings had reduced the enthusiasm they found among their base voters. And both men found themselves forced to escalate their rhetoric and move their ideological positions to the left in order to try to drum up the kind of turnout they needed to keep power in Congress.
Clinton failed and Obama will too.
When President Clinton asked me to help him to move to the center to win re-election in 1996, he said “I’ve moved so far to the left that I don’t even recognize myself.” At heart a moderate while Obama is, at core, a leftist, Clinton was alluding to the positions he had to take to keep the support of his liberal House majority. Obama — for whom the further left he drifts the better — has no such qualms but the political impact of his move to the left will be just as fatal for his Congressional majority as it was for Clintons’.
When a president moves leftward, a vicious cycle begins to set in. Driven to raise the intensity of his rhetoric and to take positions further to the extreme, he alienates more and more centrists and moderates, forcing himself to rely more and more on left wing voters. This reliance, in turn, fuels an ever more pronounced leftward drift until he ends up with a vastly diminished political base.
In Obama’s case, his reliance on minority voters adds to the difficulty as he drives racially fair whites to see him as governing primarily in the interests of minority voters.
Obama’s decision to have his Justice Department sue Arizona over its immigration law — despite the fact that American voters back the statute by 2:1 — is the latest illustration of that leftward drift. So is Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision not to prosecute the Black Panthers who posted themselves at a mixed-race polling place in military uniform with clubs to deter white voters.
The further Obama moves to the left, the more he has to move to the left. And the worse it is for his ability to control Congress.
Jackson Galley, 5, plays with a guinea pig at the Animal Connection in San Francisco, which still sells pets.
Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sell a guinea pig, go to jail.
That’s the law under consideration by San Francisco’s Commission of Animal Control and Welfare. If the commission approves the ordinance at its meeting tonight, San Francisco could soon have what is believed to be the country’s first ban on the sale of all pets except fish.
That includes dogs, cats, hamsters, mice, rats, chinchillas, guinea pigs, birds, snakes, lizards and nearly every other critter, or, as the commission calls them, companion animals.
“People buy small animals all the time as an impulse buy, don’t know what they’re getting into, and the animals end up at the shelter and often are euthanized,” said commission Chairwoman Sally Stephens. “That’s what we’d like to stop.”
San Francisco residents who want a pet would have to go to another city, adopt one from a shelter or rescue group, or find one through the classifieds.
The Board of Supervisors would have final say on the matter. But not before pet store owners unleash a cacophony of howling, squeaking and squawking.
“It’s terrible. A pet store that can’t sell pets? It’s ridiculous,” said John Chan, manager of Pet Central on Broadway, which has been in business 30 years. “We’d have to close.”
‘Terrible for our business’
Joe Taylor, bird manager of Animal Connection on Judah Street, called the proposal “ludicrous.”
“What difference does it make if you get a parrot at the SPCA or a pet store? If it doesn’t work out, in either case, you just bring it back,” Taylor said. “This would be terrible for our business.”
The idea originated about two years ago, when the commission began looking into a ban on dog and cat sales as a way to discourage puppy and kitten mills. But the city’s animal control staff said that excess puppies and kittens are not the problem at the city shelter, thanks to the plethora of rescue groups. In any case, only one or two pet stores in San Francisco sell dogs and cats. The rest stick to small animals.
The hamster problem
The real problem, staff said, is hamsters.
People buy the high-strung, nocturnal rodents because they’re under the temporary impression that hamsters are cute and cuddly. But the new owners quickly learn that hamsters are, in fact, prone to biting, gnawing through expensive wiring and maniacally racing on their exercise wheels at 2 a.m.
So the animals end up at the shelter. Just about every species has its own rescue group in San Francisco, but no one seems to want hamsters. Hamsters are the No. 1 animal euthanized at the city’s shelter, said San Francisco Animal Care and Control director Rebecca Katz.
“It’s definitely a concern,” she said. “They’re an impulse buy, and we do sometimes get tons of them, especially babies.”
Committed owners
On Wednesday, the shelter, which is on 15th Street in the Mission District, had six hamsters, nine rabbits, nine mice, nine rats, two guinea pigs, a bowl of goldfish, two birds, a leopard gecko, a bearded dragon and a hermit crab named Charlie.
But those shelter hamsters almost certainly did not originate at a pet store, said Michael Maddox, general counsel for the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council in Washington, D.C.
Studies by UC Davis and the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy have shown that only a small fraction of shelter animals were purchased at pet stores, he said. People who buy animals at pet stores are just as committed, emotionally and financially, to caring for their pets as people who procure pets elsewhere, he said.
“This is an anti-pet proposal from people who oppose the keeping of pets,” he said. “If their goal is to ban the ownership of pets entirely, then this is a good first step.”
The commission plans to listen to testimony from pet store owners, among others, before voting. Among the items it will consider is the impact on small businesses, whether to allow the sale of feeder rodents for snakes and other reptiles, the sale of fish, owner education, penalties and rescue groups that host adoptions at pet stores.
“We’re still in the information-gathering phase,” said Commissioner Philip Gerrie, who is sponsoring the proposal. “We’re trying to get at the problem of people buying these creatures with the best intentions, but then the reality turns out quite different.”
Meeting tonight
San Francisco’s Commission of Animal Control and Welfare meets at 5:30 p.m. today at City Hall, Room 408, to consider an ordinance banning the sale of pets, except for fish, in San Francisco.
— For more information, go to sfgate.com/ZJYO.
Euthanized pets in S.F.
13% Percentage of dogs and cats at the San Francisco animal shelter that are euthanized, including aggressive, injured and sick animals.
35% Percentage of dogs and cats in shelters nationwide that are euthanized.
30% Percentage of hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits and other small animals at the San Francisco shelter that are euthanized.
Conservatives and libertarians don’t agree on all issues, but they couldn’t agree more about government unjustifiably redistributing billions of taxpayer dollars and placating to public-sector demands.
Although the damage is rather miniscule relative to the multi-trillion dollar legalized Ponzi-scheme known as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the excesses afforded to the average civil “servant” is borderline criminal – and it doesn’t receive the scrutiny it nearly deserves.
Luckily we have James Sherk and the Heritage Foundation to do our homework for us:
The average federal employee earns an annual salary almost 60% Higher than the average private-sector employee – $79,000 vs. $50,000.
Federal employees do have more education (on average) than private-sector workers. Their unions argue that this justifies their higher pay. But it doesn’t. Even after controlling for education and experience, federal employees get paid significantly better – 22% more per hour, on average – than private-sector workers.
And oh the inalienable and God-given right to benefits such as paid leave, group life insurance, child care, and retiring at 56 with full benefits.
“Once you add up these benefits, the gap in total compensation rises even higher – 30% to 40% above comparable private-sector workers,”Sherk notes.
But the best news for taxpayers? Like their union brethren – and unlike the rest of us mortals – civil “servants” are virtually untouchable from life in the real world:
Federal civil servants enjoy another perk: near-absolute job security. Private businesses cut hiring and increase layoffs when sales drops.
[…]
This is largely because of civil service rules. It’s virtually impossible to fire federal employees for bad performance once they’ve passed a one-year probationary period.
Not surprisingly, federal employees rarely quit. In good economic times, they voluntarily leave at roughly a third the private-sector rate. And that disparity has only grown since the recession began.
Why should taxpayers care? Because it’s costing them money. If Congress were to set up a payment system like the private sector’s, itwould save about $47 billion a year. That’s serious money.
“Serious money”? Hardly – you can’t put a price on helping out the common good. It’s the old adage – “People spend other people’s money more thoughtfully, carefully and constructively than their own money”…right?
The control room at a nuclear-power plant in Limerick, Pa. The National Security Agency's 'Private Citizen' program will detect cyber assaults on critical infrastructure, but could also help companies in other fields, such as Google, which sustained a major attack late last year.
By SIOBHAN GORMAN
The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed “Perfect Citizen” to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.
The surveillance by the National Security Agency, the government’s chief eavesdropping agency, would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack, though it wouldn’t persistently monitor the whole system, these people said.
Defense contractor Raytheon Corp. recently won a classified contract for the initial phase of the surveillance effort valued at up to $100 million, said a person familiar with the project.
An NSA spokeswoman said the agency had no information to provide on the program. A Raytheon spokesman declined to comment.
Some industry and government officials familiar with the program see Perfect Citizen as an intrusion by the NSA into domestic affairs, while others say it is an important program to combat an emerging security threat that only the NSA is equipped to provide.
“The overall purpose of the [program] is our Government…feel[s] that they need to insure the Public Sector is doing all they can to secure Infrastructure critical to our National Security,” said one internal Raytheon email, the text of which was seen by The Wall Street Journal. “Perfect Citizen is Big Brother.”
Raytheon declined to comment on this email.
A U.S. military official called the program long overdue and said any intrusion into privacy is no greater than what the public already endures from traffic cameras. It’s a logical extension of the work federal agencies have done in the past to protect physical attacks on critical infrastructure that could sabotage the government or key parts of the country, the official said.
U.S. intelligence officials have grown increasingly alarmed about what they believe to be Chinese and Russian surveillance of computer systems that control the electric grid and other U.S. infrastructure. Officials are unable to describe the full scope of the problem, however, because they have had limited ability to pull together all the private data.
Perfect Citizen will look at large, typically older computer control systems that were often designed without Internet connectivity or security in mind. Many of those systems—which run everything from subway systems to air-traffic control networks—have since been linked to the Internet, making them more efficient but also exposing them to cyber attack.
The goal is to close the “big, glaring holes” in the U.S.’s understanding of the nature of the cyber threat against its infrastructure, said one industry specialist familiar with the program. “We don’t have a dedicated way to understand the problem.”
The information gathered by Perfect Citizen could also have applications beyond the critical infrastructure sector, officials said, serving as a data bank that would also help companies and agencies who call upon NSA for help with investigations of cyber attacks, as Google did when it sustained a major attack late last year.
The U.S. government has for more than a decade claimed a national-security interest in privately owned critical infrastructure that, if attacked, could cause significant damage to the government or the economy. Initially, it established relationships with utility companies so it could, for instance, request that a power company seal a manhole that provides access to a key power line for a government agency.
With the growth in concern about cyber attacks, these relationships began to extend into the electronic arena, and the only U.S. agency equipped to manage electronic assessments of critical-infrastructure vulnerabilities is the NSA, government and industry officials said.
The NSA years ago began a small-scale effort to address this problem code-named April Strawberry, the military official said. The program researched vulnerabilities in computer networks running critical infrastructure and sought ways to close security holes.
That led to initial work on Perfect Citizen, which was a piecemeal effort to forge relationships with some companies, particularly energy companies, whose infrastructure is widely used across the country.
The classified program is now being expanded with funding from the multibillion-dollar Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, which started at the end of the Bush administration and has been continued by the Obama administration, officials said. With that infusion of money, the NSA is now seeking to map out intrusions into critical infrastructure across the country.
Because the program is still in the early stages, much remains to be worked out, such as which computer control systems will be monitored and how the data will be collected. NSA would likely start with the systems that have the most important security implications if attacked, such as electric, nuclear, and air-traffic-control systems, they said.
Intelligence officials have met with utilities’ CEOs and those discussions convinced them of the gravity of the threat against U.S. infrastructure, an industry specialist said, but the CEOs concluded they needed better threat information and guidance on what to do in the event of a major cyber attack.
Some companies may agree to have the NSA put its own sensors on and others may ask for direction on what sensors to buy and come to an agreement about what data they will then share with the government, industry and government officials said.
While the government can’t force companies to work with it, it can provide incentives to urge them to cooperate, particularly if the government already buys services from that company, officials said.
Raytheon, which has built up a large cyber-security practice through acquisitions in recent years, is expected to subcontract out some of the work to smaller specialty companies, according to a person familiar with the project.
By the time this post finds its way to the blog, it’s a possibility that tens of millions of Americans (conservatively speaking) will know which team LeBron James has decided to sign with. Millions more will be up-to-speed on the jail sentence for Lindsay Lohan. I can only imagine how crowded the Twitter airwaves must be today, as these are life-changing events that demand immediate attention, aren’t they?
This brings to the surface one of the saddest aspects of our society: While millions devote hours to the social activities of our most-famous celebs; while millions more hang on every word muttered and watch every video shown on TMZ, we can’t seem to persuade the majority of them to pay a moment’s attention to the fact that our country is hurtling towards the black hole of economic ruin. We can’t get them to understand the ramifications of “deemed” legislation. They couldn’t care less about border security, unless it meant the possibility that their cell phone service could be disrupted by the throngs of illegals trampling relay towers.
Why is it that so many folks can name the last seven American Idol winners, yet they aren’t even aware that our government is spending without a budget for the first time. Why is it that when Paris Hilton takes a new beau, the world knows his name within 24 hours, yet when the President recess appoints a radical ideologue to the Medicare/Medicaid post, skipping the Senate confirmation process, nobody seems to care?
While recognizing the importance of distractions to maintain some semblance of sanity, it would behoove us to put these into perspective and base our daily knowledge input on what is truly important…the honest-to-goodness, life-changing events that occur each day.
Perhaps we need to discover new ways to communicate these issues to the masses? For example: “Oil drilling moratorium in Gulf forces companies to cease manufacturing of oil-based consumer products such as cell phones, Ipods, Ipads and Xbox games, due to the exorbitant costs associated with the delivery of refined oil.” I’d be willing to bet that this would generate a couple Twitter messages!
That is a reasonable conclusion once you’ve assessed the first nineteen months of his presidency and compared it to the definition of intelligence put together by researchers in the field. Although the mainstream media have spent the last two years proclaiming Obama “super-smart” or, as Newsweek put it, “sort of God” in stature and brilliance, the 44th president of the United States is poised to surpass our 15th president, James Buchanan. Jr., as the White House occupant who has made the dumbest moves while in office. With two years left, he is on the fast track to last.
That takes some doing, for the leadership of the hapless Buchanan prior to the Civil War “has led to his consistent ranking by historians as one of the worst Presidents.” This is the president who vetoed a college funding bill because “there were already too many educated people” in the young nation. Buchanan’s judgment was so wretched that he thought anti-slavery forces could be convinced to give up their opposition by his personal assurances that slaves were “treated with kindness and humanity” and that poverty could be ended by simply printing more money. Sound familiar?
Barack Obama is dumb. How dumb? Alfred E. Newman dumb, says columnist David Limbaugh, who labeled him “President Alfred E. Obama” because of his blithe disregard of the basics of fiscal responsibility. Alfred E. Newman is the Mad magazine mascot, whose answer to every problem is his signature statement: “What, me worry?”
How dumb? How-many-Obamas-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-light-bulb dumb. And in the answer lies the answer, the key to his pole position in the race to last: It takes 242. One to hold the light bulb, four to turn the ladder, eighteen to assess conformity to OSHA workplace requirements, four to assess the environmental impact of the burnt-out bulb disposal, twelve to participate in a task force to evaluate green energy solutions for a replacement bulb, eight to script his actions, four to script instructions and work the teleprompter, 23 to work with the justice department to sue the light bulb manufacturer…you get the picture. And, à la Buchanan, Obama never does get that light bulb changed.
That James Buchanan “fiddled while Rome burned” seems to be the consensus of historians. His approach to the raging controversy over slavery in the decade preceding the Civil War was based on ignoring evidence and acting upon events as he wished them to be, not as they were. Fast-forward to the present: Obama responds to the Gulf crisis by trying to move us toward the collapsed centralized green economy of Spain, ignoring the fact that even Spain acknowledges that “every ‘green job’ created with government money…came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job.”
In all areas of his presidency, Obama has demonstrated a striking disregard of facts, lack of good reasoning, and inability to function at an executive level, all at the core of the textbook definition of intelligence derived from more than a half century of research. Intelligence, the experts tell us, comes down to understanding the meaning of the world around us, and then using that understanding to live skillfully and appropriately (i.e., to get stuff done). One survey of more than fifty researchers in the field of intelligence offers the following definition:
A very special mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—“catching on”, “making sense” of things, or “figuring out” what to do.
Obama is Buchanan-esque in his inability to function as an executive, a key part of intelligence. Even a cursory analysis of history shows that limited government and free markets have produced prosperity; so Obama expands government and takes over private businesses, causing one observer to throw up his hands at another Buchanan moment from Obama and exclaim, “It isn’t rocket science, Mr. President!” Hands-on executives and laser focus are business school basics for solving problems; so Obama parties rather than roll up his sleeves, unleashes federal regulators on hapless Gulf state residents rather than cutting through the red tape, and appoints study panels even as the oil washes ashore (e.g., see video timeline). Radical Islamists are waging war against the United States; Obama does a full Buchanan — or, if you will, an Alfred E. Newman-style “What, me worry?” — and, denying the existence of Islamic terrorism, asks whom are you going to believe — me or your lying eyes?
The ability to draw reasonable conclusions from everyday life and then use those conclusions to adapt is fundamental to high intelligence, says cognitive psychologist Robert J. Steinberg, the award-winning Tufts University dean and University of Cambridge fellow. In other words, the scientific community has established good reasoning, learning from past experience, and acting according to those experiences as integral to high intelligence.
It does not include, as David Brooks, tells us, having an exceptional and “perfectly creased pant [leg]” or — in what Hot Air’s Allahpundit calls “a loathsome expression of elitism” — being able to “talk like us,” Brooks, and others of the “smart set.” If that were the case, all we would need to increase intelligence in the U.S. Congress is to provide our elected representatives with dry cleaning services. As for the “talk like us” part, it doesn’t take intelligence to talk like a self-styled intellectual, a.k.a. a New York Times columnist. Hawkeye Pearce has already shown us the way in the classic “Love Story” episode of television’s “Mash.” He teaches Radar, the shy Iowa farm boy who has a crush on a nurse who reads the classics and enjoys Bach, to reply with, eyebrows uplifted, “Ahhh…Bach” when she discusses music and throw in the occasional “That’s highly significant.”
Want to impress David Brooks and others of the media engaging in what Bernard Goldberg calls “a slobbering love affair” with the president? Simple. Reply, as Obama has done, “Ahhh…Burke” to David Brooks, enthralled by a president who expressed appreciation for the “finer points” of political philosophy; or flash your degree to Christopher Buckley, formerly of National Review, awestruck by Obama’s “Harvard intellect”; or simply present Marxism and mainline elegance as typical of the academic life, and media academics like Michael Beschloss will gush on mainstream news, “he’s probably the smartest guy ever to become President.”
But intelligence is as intelligence does, as Forest Gump might remind us. Harvard has produced more than its share of great men and women, but it has also produced the Unabomber, Barney Frank, and Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling…and now, the next James Buchanan.
So the next time Brooks or others in the mainstream media firmament tell you that Barack Obama is a towering intellect, the smartest president ever, just nod your head wisely and say, “Ahhh…pant leg.”
It should go down as one of the most pathetic presidential speeches in American history, but probably won’t.
That would be President Obama’s speech about immigration “reform” he gave at American University recently. During the course of his speech, Obama took aim, once again, at Arizona’s new law that would enable local police officers to do their part in stanching the flow of illegal immigrants into the country.
“These laws have the potential of violating the rights of innocent American citizens and legal residents,” Obama said, according to various news reports, “making them subject to possible stops and questioning because of what they look like or how they sound.”
There goes Obama again, resorting to hysteria, demagoguery and downright lies about Arizona’s law. Nowhere in the Arizona law does it say police are allowed to stop people “because of what they look like or how they sound.”
The law does say the stops have to have probable cause. Obama tried to cover himself by not claiming Arizona’s law will, in fact, do what he said, but that it has “the potential” of doing it.
All laws have the potential of being enforced in a racially or ethnically discriminatory manner. We have to conclude that the head of the executive branch of our national government, responsible for enforcing the nation’s laws, is in fact anti-law enforcement.
Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer called Obama’s immigration “reform” speech disappointing, showing what a charitable soul she indeed must be. The speech was egregiously awful, especially this part, as reported on the Web site content.usatoday.com:
“As for critics of ‘amnesty,’ Obama said it’s simply impossible to deport 11 million people. Doing so would disrupt communities and break up families, he said, ‘as many undocumented immigrants have children who are U.S. citizens because they were born here.’ ”
Has the president been living in the same country the rest of us have been living in for the past 20 years? There are American communities that have already been “disrupted” by illegal immigration. Several formerly all-black or predominantly black communities in Los Angeles have been disrupted by the influx of illegal immigrants from south of the border.
In December 2005, a California historian named Roger D. McGrath wrote a piece, “End of the Rainbow,” that appeared on the Web site amconmag.com. In his article, McGrath quoted a black Los Angeles auto mechanic named Terry Anderson about the influence illegal immigration has had on formerly black Los Angeles:
“We have schools here that used to be 80 percent to 90 percent black and now, after a period of 10 years, are 80 percent to 90 percent Latino. As this trend spreads, blacks either can move to other neighborhoods or watch their children stuck in schools listening to Spanish all day. Yet nobody speaks up for our children the way pro-immigrant organizations do for immigrant children. As a result, our children are getting the equivalent of half a day of school. Why should our children be deprived?”
Because many Americans, our president among them, clearly don’t understand the intent of the 14th Amendment. Ratified in July of 1868, the amendment was meant to make newly freed slaves citizens and to end the abuse black Americans faced in former Confederate states.
People who come here illegally, have children and then ask for a pass on their illegal acts because their children are American citizens are cynically abusing the 14th Amendment.
Obama passed on his opportunity to urge Americans to close that 14th Amendment loophole, thereby ending such abuse. That’s not statesmanship, but rank cowardice.
Donald Berwick is the newly appointed administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that is ground zero for Obamacare. (Goodman Media International, Inc./AP)
Donald Berwick is no household name, but President Obama just handed him immense power to shape what kind of health care will be available to every American man, woman and child.
Berwick is the president’s newly appointed administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that is ground zero for Obamacare’s politicization of American medicine. Obama installed Berwick with a recess appointment, a rarely exercised authority given to the president by the Constitution to use when the Senate is out of session for long periods. Berwick will have the job until the end of 2011. He assumes his duties without a Senate confirmation hearing or a Senate vote on his nomination.
Here’s another name few Americans are likely to recognize: Linda O’Boyle. According to the London Sunday Times, O’Boyle died in 2008 after British National Health Service officials cut off her “free” treatment by government doctors. Her sin was that she used her life savings to pay for an unapproved cancer drug earlier in the year. Her doctors had told her the drug, cetuximab, was markedly more effective in combating bowel cancer than the NHS-approved chemotherapy. Unfortunately, cetuximab was rejected by NHS officials as “not cost-effective.” O’Boyle, an NHS occupational therapist, was dead within a few months, a victim of rationed health care. She was also one of the tragic human beings behind a statistic Obama and Berwick likely hope you never hear about: Britain’s cancer survival rate ranges between 40.2 percent and 48.1 percent for men and between 48 percent with 54.1 percent for women, compared with 66 percent for U.S. men and 63 percent for U.S. women.
Now consider this quote from Berwick: “Cynics beware, I am romantic about the National Health Service, I love it.” Here’s another Berwick quote: “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care, the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” It is bad enough that Obama would nominate an individual who holds such views to head Medicare and Medicaid. To install him under a recess appointment with no Senate hearing and no Senate confirmation vote is an arbitrary act of an imperial presidency so outrageous as to embarrass even Richard Nixon. Since Berwick can only occupy the position for approximately 17 months, the question inevitably arises: What does Obama want Berwick to do that is so important that it justifies circumventing the Senate’s constitutional duty to advise and consent on presidential appointments?
Are you believing this? First we have the absolute refusal of the Obama Administration – and the Bush Administration before it – to protect our Southern border from the Mexican invasion and to enforce our immigration laws. Then we have the State of Arizona, besieged with crime, drugs and the costs that come with being the preferred crossing point for illegals. Finally Arizona has had enough and it passes it’s own immigration law. Actually, it’s a bit of a stretch to call this law “Arizona’s” since it does nothing but take already existing federal law and codify it at the local level. So … Obama’s reaction? Does he apologize for his inattention to the invasion? Hardly. He instructs his dog washers in the Department of Justice to file a lawsuit against Arizona. The lawsuit says that Arizona is “usurping federal authority.”
Let’s cogitate on this for a moment.
Federal law makes it illegal to cross the border into the United States without legal authorization. The Feds refuse to enforce the law.
Mexicans invade America across the Arizona border. Crime soars in Arizona. A rancher is killed. Phoenix becomes the kidnapping center of the U.S. Drugs flood across the border with the illegals.v The Feds do virtually nothing.
Finally Arizona passes a law making what is already a crime under federal law a crime under State law.
The Arizona law gives Arizona law enforcement the authority to do what federal law enforcement officers can already do … but aren’t.
Democrats see Hispanic votes slipping away if the law is enforced.
Obama instructs a lawsuit to be filed citing “usurping federal authority.”
Question: Robbing a federally insured bank is a federal crime. It’s also a crime under the statutes of the State of Arizona. Should the Justice Department file a lawsuit against Arizona demanding that Arizona law enforcement officials cease enforcing Arizona’s law against robbing banks because it usurps federal authority? Just wondering.
And what about this particular U.S. Justice Department? Is this the same Justice Department that dismissed charges against that white-hating member of the New Black Panther Party who has warned black males that if they ever want to be free they’re going to have to kill some white people and some white babies! The New Black Panther Party member who stood in front of a polling place in Philly during the last election waving a steel baton and making threatening remarks to white voters? THAT Justice Department? The same Justice Department that is headed by a man who pardoned terrorists who shot up the U.S. Capitol? Yup! That’s the same Justice Department alright.
So .. here’s the picture. The federal government is NOT going to secure our border with Mexico; at least not until amnesty for the criminal aliens who have already crossed is arranged. Votes for Democrats, you know. So while the Federal government sits on its hands Hispandering … Arizona acts, then gets taken to court.
The President of the United States took a Congressional recess opportunity to appoint another controversial czar. Renowned for rationing health care, Donald Berwick was appointed to the position of Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Dare we ask: Why does Obama need a rationing expert to oversee these two programs?
While Nancy is funning and sunning, Obama placed Czar Donald Berwick, president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, in the position of deciding who lives and who dies. Obama circumvented the traditional confirmation venue because Berwick’s nomination was an uncertain one. Democrats realized a permanent vacation awaited them in November if the unpopular Obamacare discussion was broached again. Let’s just say Berwick was a touchy nominee.
Thus, Obama dictated and denied America the opportunity to have dastardly Donald explain comments he made in an interview last year with Biotechnology Healthcare. Berwick said “society makes decisions about rationing all the time,” and that the “decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.”
Obama’s “blind” appointment spares Donald having to explain his praise for the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Berwick said NICE “developed very good and very disciplined, scientifically grounded, policy-connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments from which we ought to learn.”
Emphasis on Berwick’s comment: “policy-connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments.”
Obama insisted on ruining 90% of the population’s health care to insure 30-million uninsured individuals. Maybe those about to be herded toward life and death social policy mandates might like clarification on Berwick’s statement that “The social budget is limited — we have a limited resource pool. It makes terribly good sense to at least know the price of an added benefit, and at some point we might say nationally, regionally, or locally that we wish we could afford it, but we can’t.”
Berwick believes the “degree to which the knowledge base is linked directly to policy and decision is a matter of choice,” which will be Donald’s choice alone. If Obama gets his way, which he always does, death panel Donald will decide by advisory, mandatory, or policy-based measures who gets to live and who makes the sacrifice for the common good and dies.
Thankfully Republican leaders are speaking up on behalf of constituents at the mercy of Barry and the soon-to-be “expert on rationing.” Like Barack, Berwick believes excellent health care includes “redistribution.” The world’s finest health care system, like everything else, is about to be redistributed by government-appointed czars whose socialistic dreams mirror Barry’s utopian nirvana.
John Barrasso (R-Wyo) called the appointment “an insult to the American people,” saying “Once again, President Obama has made a mockery of his pledge to be accountable and transparent.” Mitch McConnell (R-KY) agreed, underscoring the reality that “Americans’ worst fears about health reform are being realized every day.”
Democrat Max Baucus (D-Mont) joined the chorus from across the aisle and “blasted the Obama administration for sidestepping Congress.” Baucus said “Senate confirmation of presidential appointees is an essential process prescribed by the Constitution that serves as a check on executive power …ensuring crucial questions are asked of the nominee – and answered.”
Maybe before Obama overturns the First Amendment, McConnell, Barrasso and Baucus still have time to hold a nightly update press conference on the steps of the Capitol. It’s about time Americans are made aware of Obama’s covert actions, which ultimately stand poised to threaten lives.
U.S. Constitutional Free Press 