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2013
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November
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- Long Weekend Newsbites: Fri., Sat., & Sun., Nov. 2...
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, November 27, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, November 26, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: November 25, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, November 21, 2013
- A Stand-Alone Based Upon "Perks Ease the Way," a N...
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, November 20, 2013
- All "Heil" Obama! (A stand-alone newsbite.)
- Weekend Newsbites (early): Fri., Sat., & Sun.; Nov...
- Hiya Gang!
- My Friend John S. Hicks Passed Away This Morning
- Vice Admiral Ted “Twig” Branch and Rear Admiral Br...
- Holiday Weekend Newsbites: Sat., Sun. & Mon., Nov....
- Mark Steyn Goes Out on a Limb... and I Follow
- Another Great Buchanan Column Everyone Should Read
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, November 8, 2013
- Thoughts on What Effective Health Insurance/Care W...
- Mark These Words...
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, November 5, 2013
- Marc Thiessen Writing In Today's Washington Post
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, November 4, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, November 1, 2013
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November
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About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
20 comments:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/price-chicken-reaches-all-time-high-us
The price for fresh whole chickens hit its all-time high in the United States in October, according to data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
* NAH... NO INFLATION...
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/11/22/will-obamacare-be-the-death-of-liberalism/
* BY PATRICK J. BUCHANAN
ObamaCare is coming to be perceived as a political catastrophe...
Obama’s reputation for competence has been shredded, and, so, too, has his reputation for truthfulness.
Though they had as long as World War II to get it done, Obama’s crowd could not even produce a working website.
Now we learn the White House was alerted to the website problems in March but plunged ahead.
With millions losing their health insurance because of ObamaCare mandates, we learn that Obama and his team knew this was inevitable, even as they reassured us, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Period.”
The brutal truth: Our president got his legacy program passed by deceiving the American people in a giant swindle.
Not only have millions lost their health care plans, tens of millions more may lose theirs at year’s end when they learn that their employer’s health care plans also do not meet ObamaCare mandates.
HillaryCare cost the Democrats the House in 1994. ObamaCare, the love child of HillaryCare, could cost Democrats the Senate in 2014.
But what makes this a disaster not just for a party but a philosophy is that ObamaCare is liberalism incarnate. It is premised on the idea that progressives, starting from scratch, can redesign a health care system, 16% of the economy, and make it more fair, more just and more efficient for us all.
ObamaCare was an act of hubris by an administration of talking heads most of whom never ran anything in their lives. And what we are witnessing is the antithesis of what we were promised.
So confident were they in the wonks that wrote the bill that Nancy Pelosi could say, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.”
Seven weeks in, the website is not fixed. Millions have lost their health care plans. Quality hospitals are being cut out of the program as too costly. Individuals are being offered plans inferior to what they had in terms of benefits, but with far more costly premiums.
The crisis for Obama, his party, and his philosophy is that this is not only a nightly national story; it is a daily story in every state. And the anecdotes of debacles have been piling up, one upon another, for seven weeks. They do not cease, and there is no end in sight.
Nothing, it appears, will interrupt the litany of personal woes before Democrats, in panic, cut themselves loose of ObamaCare and try to swim away from the Lusitania.
It will likely be a long time before another Democratic president dares again another such Great Leap Forward.
As you folks know, I usually comment within the newsbites. This time, however, I'm gonna add a few thoughts - separately - to the Buchanan column above:
1) Yes. ObamaCare is a disaster.
That said... so what? What outrages WON'T the American Sheeple stand for in today's Amerika?
2) Obama and the Dems have been caught in lie after lie, subterfuge after subterfuge... bribes offered... bribes accepted... vote purchased... political and regulatory favoritism undisguised...
So what? Obama was re-elected, wasn't he? The Dems retained the Senate in 2012 - didn't they?
(If Obama and Hillary could get away with Benghazi than surely ObamaCare will present no long term problems...)
As to "Great Leaps Forward" and what Democrats will or won't do in the future...
(*PAUSE*)
My guess is that just as Obama has tended to double-down on the worst of Bush's behavior as president, so too would Hillary - or any other Dem president to follow Obama - double-down on Obama's trashing of the Constitution and the Rule of Law.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303281504579221993719005178
A pair of American B-52 bombers flew over a disputed island chain in the East China Sea without informing Beijing, U.S. officials said Tuesday, in a direct challenge to China and its [illegal] establishment of an expanded air-defense zone.
* GOOD FOR OBAMA!
The planes flew out of Guam and entered the new Chinese Air Defense Identification Zone at about 7 p.m. Washington time Monday, according to a U.S. official.
Over the weekend, Beijing said it was establishing an air-defense zone covering disputed islands that are claimed by both Beijing and Tokyo but administered by Japan. The islands, the source of growing friction in the region, are known as the Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan. U.S. defense officials earlier had promised that the U.S. would challenge the zone and wouldn't comply with Chinese requirements to file a flight plan, radio frequency or transponder information.
(*THUMBS UP*)
The flight of the B-52s, based at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, were part of a long-planned exercise called Coral Lightning. The bombers weren't armed and weren't accompanied by escort planes. But the routine flight took on new significance with China's weekend announcement, and it counters Beijing's attempts to strengthen its influence over the region.
* LET'S NOT GET AHEAD OF OURSELVES! "COUNTERED" IS A BIT OVER THE TOP. "CHALLENGED" IS A MORE ACCURATE DESCRIPTIVE.
China had warned that aircraft that don't comply could be subject to a military response.
* SCREW THAT!
The establishment of the new zone was certain to have been approved by Xi Jinping, China's new leader, who became military chief at the same time as taking over as head of the Communist Party in November last year, analysts and diplomats said. They see the move as part of a long-term strategy to try to gradually change the status quo in the East China Sea, and make it increasingly costly for Japan to enforce its claims, without ever crossing the red lines that might provoke an actual military conflict. But some analysts now believe that China might have overplayed its hand by angering not just Japan and the U.S., but South Korea and Taiwan — both of which have air-defense zones that overlap China's — and several other countries that have territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.
* YEP. WE MUST STAND STRONG AGAINST CHINA. THIS WAS A GOOD MOVE BY PRESIDENT OBAMA.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303653004579213841747969928?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
National spending on health care is projected to reach a record $2.9 trillion in 2013, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This is more than 25% above pre-recession spending levels in 2007. Health-care expenditures per capita and as a percentage of GDP are also at record highs, expected to top out this year at $9,216 and 18% respectively.
* SO MUCH FOR THE AVERAGE AMERICAN SAVING $2,500 9OR SOME SUCH NONSENSE) THANKS TO OBAMACARE!
In 2002, health-care spending grew by nearly 10% in a single year. The growth rate dropped to 7.1% in 2004, 6.2% in 2007, and bottomed out at 3.9% in 2009 — the worst year of the Great Recession - where it has stayed ever since.
And in the future? According to health-care actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, health-care spending will begin spiraling upward again starting next year, as the Affordable Care Act takes full effect.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
It will reach $5 trillion in 2022, or 20% of GDP, or $14,664 per capita. By 2022, ObamaCare alone is projected to increase cumulative health spending by roughly $621 billion, according to CMS.
(*SILENCE*)
CMS actuaries find that any positive effects of the ObamaCare delivery system experiments on the cost of health care "remain highly speculative." When they compare their September 2013 projections with earlier estimates in April 2010, these actuaries find that the law would increase national health spending higher than previously expected by an additional $27 billion in 2019 alone.
* OOPS...
ObamaCare was enacted in 2010.
* VIA BRIBERY, "DEEMING," AND SHEER IDEOLOGICAL STUBBORNNESS AND NEAR-PERFECT PARTY-LINE VOTING. (YOU FOLKS REMEMBER THE CORNHUSKER KICKBACK... THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE... PELOSI'S "WE'LL FIND OUT WHAT'S IN IT AFTER WE PASS IT...")
Supporters of President Obama are working overtime to backtrack from his promise that "If you like your health-care insurance, you can keep it. Period."
The claim this time is that the health-care "cost curve is bending, and the ACA is a significant part of the reason."
These assertions border on nonsense.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303789604579195592650374168
The main reason crumbling roads, decrepit bridges, antiquated power lines, leaky water mains and muddy harbors don't get fixed is interminable regulatory review; funding is not the challenge.
Infrastructure approvals can take upward of a decade or longer, according to the Regional Plan Association.
The environmental review statement for dredging the Savannah River took 14 years to complete.
Even projects with little or no environmental impact can take years.
Raising the roadway of the Bayonne Bridge at the mouth of the Port of Newark, for example, requires no new foundations or right of way, and would not require approvals at all except that it spans navigable water. Raising the roadway would allow a new generation of efficient large ships into the port. But the project is now approaching its fifth year of legal process, bogged down in environmental litigation.
Building new infrastructure would enhance U.S. global competitiveness, improve our environmental footprint and, according to McKinsey studies, generate almost two million jobs. But it is impossible to modernize America's physical infrastructure until we modernize our legal infrastructure. Regulatory review is supposed to serve a free society, not paralyze it.
* AGAIN...
Regulatory review is supposed to serve a free society, not paralyze it.
Other developed countries have found a way.
Canada requires full environmental review, with state and local input, but it has recently put a maximum of two years on major projects.
Germany allocates decision-making authority to a particular state or federal agency: Getting approval for a large electrical platform in the North Sea, built this year, took 20 months; approval for the City Tunnel in Leipzig, scheduled to open next year, took 18 months.
(Neither Canada nor Germany waits for years for a final decision to emerge out of endless red tape.)
In America, by contrast, official responsibility is a kind of free-for-all among multiple federal, state and local agencies, with courts called upon to sort it out after everyone else has dropped of exhaustion. The effect is not just delay, but decisions skewed toward the squeaky wheels instead of the common good. This is not how democracy is supposed to work.
America is missing the key element of regulatory finality: No one is in charge of deciding when there has been enough review.
Avoiding endless process requires changing the regulatory structure in two ways:
Environmental review today is done by a "lead agency" — such as the Coast Guard in the case of the Bayonne Bridge — that is usually a proponent of a project, and therefore not to be trusted to draw the line. Because it is under legal scrutiny and pressure to prove it took a "hard look," the lead agency's approach has mutated into a process of no pebble left unturned, followed by lawsuits that flyspeck documents that are often thousands of pages long. What's needed is an independent agency to decide how much environmental review is sufficient.
An alteration project like the Bayonne Bridge should probably have an environmental review of a few dozen pages and not, as in that case, more than 5,000 pages.
* OBVIOUSLY!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
If there were an independent agency with the power to say when enough is enough, then there would be a deliberate decision, not a multi-year ooze of irrelevant facts. Its decision on the scope of review can still be legally challenged as not complying with the basic principles of environmental law. But the challenge should come after, say, one year of review, not 10.
* SOUNDS REASONABLE!
It is also important to change the Balkanized approvals process for other regulations and licenses. These approvals are now spread among federal, state and local agencies like a parody of bureaucracy, with little coordination and frequent duplication of environmental and other requirements. The Cape Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, now in its 12th year of scrutiny, required review by 17 different agencies. The Gateway West power line, to carry electricity from Wyoming wind farms to the Pacific Northwest, requires the approval of each county in Idaho that the line will traverse. The approval process, begun in 2007, is expected to be complete by 2015. This is paralysis by federalism.
* AGREED!
The solution is to create what other countries call "one-stop approvals." Giving one agency the authority to cut through the knot of multiple agencies (including those at state and local levels) will dramatically accelerate approvals.
* WELL... I WOULDN'T FAVOR CUTTING THE STATES OUT OF THE PROCESS; BUT I WOULD STREAMLINE BOTH THE FEDERAL AND STATE SYSTEMS AND WHERE AND WHEN INTERSTATE ACTIONS ARE INVOLVED THE STREAMLINED FEDERAL SYSTEM COULD THEN WORK WITH THE STATE(S) STREAMLINED SYSTEM - PERHAPS WITH THE FEDS TAKING THE LEAD.
One-stop approval is already in place in the U.S. New interstate gas pipelines are under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Special interests — especially groups that like the power of being able to stop anything — will foster fears of officials abusing the public trust. Giving people responsibility does not require trust, however. I don't trust anyone. But I can live with a system of democratic responsibility and judicial oversight. What our country can't live with is spinning our wheels in perpetual review.
America needs to get moving again.
* AGREED!
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-secret-diplomacy-that-worked/2013/11/25/5e2acdce-55f0-11e3-ba82-16ed03681809_story.html
* BY DAVID IGNATIUS
Count the Iran nuclear deal as a rare win for President Obama’s secretive, cerebral style of governing. His careful, closeted approach has produced many setbacks over the past five years, but it was at the heart of last weekend’s breakthrough deal with Tehran.
This was secret diplomacy that a Henry Kissinger could appreciate.
Obama began by authorizing carefully concealed meetings back in March, through Oman, the most opaque and discreet nation in the Persian Gulf. The president sent as his personal emissaries two low-key, quintessentially gray men, Bill Burns and Jake Sullivan, the deputy secretary of state and vice presidential adviser, respectively. It was a classic magic trick: While the eye was distracted by the show of the P5+1 talks, the real work was done elsewhere — and presented to the foreign ministers of Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany in Geneva two weeks ago almost as a fait accompli.
(*NOD*)
* YES, FOLKS... IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T FIGURED IT OUT... I'M ACTUALLY BEHIND OBAMA ON IRAN.
* I'VE ALWAYS WANTED A REAPPROACHMENT WITH IRAN! AT THE SAME TIME, WHILE ONE HAS TO WORK "WITH" THE CURRENT REGIME, THE U.S. GOAL SHOULD BE TO SEE IRAN REVERT TO A FREER STATUS - THE ONE YOUNG IRANIANS HAVE BEEN FIGHTING FOR DECADES NOW. YES... "BETTER" RELATIONS WITH THE DICTATORSHIP... BUT THESE RELATIONSHIPS FORGED FOR THE PURPOSE OF ASSISTING THE PEOPLE OF IRAN TO RECLAIM CONTROL OF THEIR LIVES FROM THE MULLAHS... FROM A THEOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP.
* IS OBAMA COMPETENT TO PULL BACK SHORT OF FUTURE "ALLIANCE" WITH THE THEOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP... THAT'S THE SCARY PART... THAT'S THE PART I'M NOT SURE OF... YET THAT'S WHERE I'M PUTTING MY TRUST... TO A POINT.
No wonder Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius were miffed. This deal was done (as any serious piece of diplomacy must be) out of sight. They were asked to endorse it after the fact, and it’s no surprise that they balked — Netanyahu unwisely locking himself into an inflexible rejectionist position and Fabius dickering publicly for more concessions.
* NETANYAHU WAS ONLY "UNWISE" ASSUMING HE'S WRONG ABOUT OBAMA. IF, HOWEVER, HIS FEARS COME TO PASS...
(*SHRUG*)
Commentaries along the way celebrated Fabius’s show of independence, just as earlier reports had lauded Russian diplomacy on Syria. But this credit was largely illusory. Iran and Syria illustrate the immense leverage the United States still has when it uses its diplomatic tools wisely and stealthily.
* SYRIA WAS A DISASTER FOR OBAMA. HE TOTALLY MISMANAGED IT FROM DAY ONE. PUTIN IS THE GOOD GUY WHEN IT COMES TO SYRIA. IN A SENSE SYRIA IS NOW "OFF THE BOARD." LET'S HOPE IT REMAINS THIS WAY FOR YEARS TO COME!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
The definition of a good agreement is one that each side can sell to its public, and that’s the case here. The agreement seems broadly positive for the United States and Israel, at the outer edge of what was possible in terms of freezing the Iranian nuclear program and providing daily inspections to check against any trickery. The world is safer from the Iranian nuclear threat today than it was a week ago.
* ON THIS... TIME WILL TELL...
But it’s a good deal for Iran, too, and that’s going to upset those who wanted an Iranian capitulation. The agreement explicitly seeks a “comprehensive solution [that] would enable Iran to fully enjoy its right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes under the relevant articles of the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty],” including “a mutually defined [uranium] enrichment program.” The language is just fuzzy enough that the United States can claim it hasn’t endorsed a “right to enrich” — but the Israeli critique here is correct. The enrichment right has prospectively been conceded; it will never be rescinded, nor will it ever again form the basis for a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Iran.
* MEANING OBAMA HAS THROWN THE U.S. "ALL IN."
This big concession on enrichment is offset by the limitations on the Iranian program in the near term that are stronger than many analysts expected. For the next six months, the Iranians will mothball some centrifuges, delay installation of others, disconnect links between the cascades of centrifuges that would be necessary for bomb-level enrichment and provide unprecedented daily inspection of their once-covert facilities at Natanz and Fordow.
* WE... WILL... SEE...
Could the Iranians pocket the modest $7 billion they will receive in sanctions relief and then press ahead in six months toward bomb-making capability? That’s certainly possible. But they would make such a breakout with more chance of a U.S. military strike than before.
* MAYBE. MAYBE NOT.
Kissinger set the right test when he told me in 2006 that “Iran has to take a decision whether it wants to be a nation or a cause.” This agreement, negotiated in secret with the erstwhile “Great Satan,” looks like the beginning of a long turn away from revolutionary isolation to an Iranian nation that is engaged with the West in a security framework for this volatile region. Iran may think it can play the candle at both ends — destabilize the region even as it negotiates with the United States. But that isn’t likely to work.
* BUT IF IT DOES... THEN INSTEAD OF BEING THE HERO... OBAMA REVERTS TO INCOMPETENT, IRRESPONSIBLE FOOL.
(*SHRUG*)
* HEY... THE BUCK STOPS AT HIS DESK!
This is a fork in the road; Iran may try to go both directions at once, but if the United States and Israel are vigilant, it won’t succeed.
* WE... SHALL... SEE...
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/opinion/end-the-nsa-dragnet-now.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=2&
* An open letter signed by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado and Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, all Democrats.
The framers of the Constitution declared that government officials had no power to seize the records of individual Americans without evidence of wrongdoing, and they embedded this principle in the Fourth Amendment.
The bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records — so-called metadata — by the National Security Agency is, in our view, a clear case of a general warrant that violates the spirit of the framers’ intentions.
* I AGREE.
This intrusive program was authorized under a secret legal process by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, so for years American citizens did not have the knowledge needed to challenge the infringement of their privacy rights.
* YEP...
Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism.
* ACTUALLY, SENATORS, YOUR FIRST PRIORITY IS TO MAKE SURE THAT THE CONSTITUTION IS ABIDED BY SO THAT THE RULE OF LAW EXISTS.
If government agencies identify a suspected terrorist, they should absolutely go to the relevant phone companies to get that person’s phone records. But this can be done without collecting the records of millions of law-abiding Americans. We recall Benjamin Franklin’s famous admonition that those who would give up essential liberty in the pursuit of temporary safety will lose both and deserve neither.
* YEP!
The usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated. We have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security. In spite of our repeated requests, the N.S.A. has not provided evidence of any instance when the agency used this program to review phone records that could not have been obtained using a regular court order or emergency authorization. Despite this, the surveillance reform bill recently ratified by the Senate Intelligence Committee would explicitly permit the government to engage in dragnet collection as long as there were rules about when officials could look at these phone records. It would also give intelligence agencies wide latitude to conduct warrantless searches for Americans’ phone calls and emails.
* MERE LEGISLATION CANNOT TRUMP THE CONSTITUTION... ONLY NOW... IN THE AGE OF OBAMA... IT OFTEN DOES.
This is not the true reform that poll after poll has shown the American people want.
* STOP MUDDYING THE WATERS. THIS IS ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION AND THE RULE OF LAW BEING VIOLATED. PUBLIC APPROVAL OR DISAPPROVAL IS BESIDES THE POINT.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
When the Bill of Rights was adopted, it established that Americans’ papers and effects should be seized only when there was specific evidence of suspicious activity. It did not permit government agencies to issue general warrants as long as records seized were reviewed with the permission of senior officials.
(*THUMBS UP*)
Congress has a crucial opportunity to reassert constitutionally guaranteed liberties by reforming the N.S.A.’s overbroad collection of Americans’ personal data. But the Intelligence Committee bill squanders this chance.
* AND SOME WONDER WHY I FEAR ONLY VIOLENCE WILL SAVE OUR NATION...
It would enable some of the most constitutionally questionable surveillance activities now exposed to the public eye. The Senate should be reining in these programs, not giving them a stamp of approval.
* THE SENATE AS A WHOLE DOESN'T GIVE A CRAP ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION. (THUS... HOW CAN VIOLENCE NOT BE ON THE TABLE...?!?!)
As members of the Intelligence Committee, we strongly disagree with this approach. We had already proposed our own, bipartisan surveillance reform legislation, the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act, which we have sponsored with a number of other senators. Our bill would prohibit the government from conducting warrantless “backdoor searches” of Americans’ communications — including emails, text messages and Internet use — under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It would also create a “constitutional advocate” to present an opposing view when the F.I.S.C. is considering major questions of law or constitutional interpretation.
Rather than adopt our legislation, the Intelligence Committee chose to codify excessively broad domestic surveillance authorities.
* THE DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE...
(*SHRUG*)
So we offered amendments: One would end the bulk collection of Americans’ records, but still allow intelligence agencies to obtain information they legitimately needed for national security purposes by getting the approval of a judge, which could even be done after the fact in emergency situations.
Another of our amendments sought to prevent the N.S.A. from collecting Americans’ cell-phone location information in bulk — a capability that potentially turns the cell-phone of every man, woman and child in America into a tracking device.
Each of these proposals represents real and meaningful reform, which we believe would have fulfilled the purpose of protecting our security and liberty. Each was rejected by the committee, in some cases by a single vote.
* FUNNY HOW THESE CLOWNS DON'T MENTION THE REPUBLICAN SENATORS WHO VOTED WITH THEM AND AGAINST THE DEM MAJORITY...
(*SMIRK*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security-adviser-susan-rice-visits-afghanistan-amid-tension-over-troop-accord/2013/11/25/fd0f8460-55dd-11e3-835d-e7173847c7cc_story.html
Efforts by the United States and Afghanistan to finalize a long-term security arrangement appeared on the brink of collapse Monday as Afghan President Hamid Karzai made a new set of demands...
* IN THAT CASE, GOD BLESS PRESIDENT KARZAI!
...and the Obama administration said it would be forced to begin planning for a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces at the end of 2014.
* SHOULDN'T WE HAVE BEEN PLANNING FOR THIS ALL ALONG...??? HMM...??? (EVEN IF JUST AS A CONTINGENCY...?!?! HMM...?!?!)
In a two-hour meeting here, Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s top national security adviser...
* YEP. THAT SUSAN RICE. UNFRIGGIN'BELIEVABLE...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
...told Karzai that if he failed to sign the bilateral security agreement by the end of this year, the United States would have “no choice” but to prepare for withdrawal, according to a statement by the National Security Council in Washington.
* SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM? LET'S WITHDRAW!
Karzai told Rice that he would sign only after the United States helps his government begin peace talks with the Taliban and agrees to release all 17 Afghan citizens being held in the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, according to Afghan and U.S. officials.
* EITHER EXECUTE 'EM OR RELEASE 'EM. EITHER THEY'RE TERRORISTS OR THEY'RE NOT. MAKE A FRIGGIN' DECISION, OBAMA!
In addition to those new demands, the Afghan leader reiterated that he will not sign if “another [U.S.] soldier steps foot into an Afghan home,” Karzai spokesman Aimal Faizi said. The United States has already promised to show “restraint” in “home entries” by U.S. troops and to carry them out only in conjunction with Afghan troops, but the tactic remains a part of U.S. operations against some insurgents here.
* AND OBAMA WANTS US TO STAY IN AFGHANISTAN? OBAMA WANTS U.S. TROOPS TO KEEP ON FIGHTING AND DYING IN AFGHANISTAN? WHY...?!?! THIS IS INSANITY!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
If Rice’s unannounced visit to Afghanistan, her first solo trip abroad in office, was designed to convince Karzai that the Obama administration was not bluffing about a complete withdrawal, it did not appear to work. Instead, Karzai doubled down on the position he staked out Thursday, when he shocked both U.S. officials and an assembly of Afghan elders called to approve the deal by saying that he would not sign it until his growing list of demands was met.
* I'M LIKING KARZAI MORE AND MORE WITH EVERY WORD I READ!
The agreement, completed last week after year-long negotiations, outlines the conditions for a follow-on presence of U.S. troops to train and advise the Afghan military and to conduct counterterrorism operations after the Americans and their NATO partners withdraw all combat troops by the end of next year.
* NO! GET OUT! ENOUGH AMERICAN TREASURE HAS BEEN SQUANDERED; ENOUGH AMERICAN LIVES WASTED!
The administration has said it must be signed before the end of this year if U.S. and NATO planning for post-2014 deployments are to be completed.
* THEN LET'S PRAY IT'S NEVER SIGNED!
On Sunday — despite endorsement of the deal by the assembly, called a loya jirga — Karzai repeated his refusal to sign until after the presidential election here in April. U.S. officials have said they believed that Karzai was bluffing.
* LET'S HOPE NOT!
Failure to sign, Rice told Karzai, would jeopardize not only the $4 billion annually in international pledges to fund the Afghan military after 2014...
* SO IF THE DEAL FALLS THROUGH U.S. TAXPAYERS SAVE $4 BILLION ANNUALLY...? SOUNDS GOOD TO ME...!!!
...but also an additional $4 billion that has been promised for Afghan economic development.
* SO WE ACTUALLY WOULD SAVE $8 BILLION A YEAR...?!?! WOO-HOO...!!!
A senior U.S. official in Washington, who was not authorized to discuss the sensitive matter on the record, said the Obama administration was deeply frustrated by Karzai’s new demands. “We can continue to disagree, but at the end of the day, we are the ones who have the troops,” the official said.
* PUT 'EM ON THE MEXICAN BORDER!
* BRING 'EM HOME...!!!
* FIVE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 5)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/364731/front-man-kevin-d-williamson
Obama has been called many things — radical, socialist — labels that may have him dead to rights at the phylum level but not down at his genus or species.
His social circle includes an alarming number of authentic radicals, but the president’s politics are utterly conventional managerial liberalism.
The result of this is his utterly predictable approach to domestic politics: appoint a panel of credentialed experts.
His faith in the powers of pedigreed professionals is apparently absolute. Consider his hallmark achievement, the Affordable Care Act, the centerpiece of which is the appointment of a committee, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), the mission of which is to achieve targeted savings in Medicare without reducing the scope or quality of care.
How that is to be achieved was contemplated in detail neither by the lawmakers who wrote the health-care bill nor by the president himself.) But they did pay a great deal of attention to the processes touching IPAB: For example, if that committee of experts fails to achieve the demanded savings, then the ball is passed to . . . a new committee of experts, this one under the guidance of the secretary of health and human services. IPAB’s powers are nearly plenipotentiary: Its proposals, like a presidential veto, require a supermajority of Congress to be overridden.
IPAB is the most dramatic example of President Obama’s approach to government by expert decree, but much of the rest of his domestic program, from the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law to his economic agenda, is substantially similar. In total, it amounts to that fundamental transformation of American society that President Obama promised as a candidate: but instead of the new birth of hope and change, it is the transformation of a constitutional republic operating under laws passed by democratically accountable legislators into a servile nation under the management of an unaccountable administrative state.
* PLEASE RE-READ THAT LAST PARAGRAPH AGAIN...
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 5)
The real import of Barack Obama’s political career will be felt long after he leaves office, in the form of a permanently expanded state that is more assertive of its own interests and more ruthless in punishing its enemies. At times, he has advanced this project abetted by congressional Democrats, as with the health-care law’s investiture of extraordinary powers in the executive bureaucracy, but he also has advanced it without legislative assistance — and, more troubling still, in plain violation of the law.
* REPEAT:
...in plain violation of the law.
(*SHRUG*)
President Obama and his admirers choose to call this “pragmatism,” but what it is is a mild expression of totalitarianism, under which the interests of the country are conflated with those of the president’s administration and his party.
* YES! A "MILD" EXPRESSION OF TOTALITARIANISM, BUT DICTATORIAL, LAWLESS, AND POLITICALLY AND ECONOMICALLY SELF-SERVING JUST THE SAME!
“Democracy never lasts long,” Founder and later President John Adams famously said. “It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
Barack Obama is the first president of the democracy that Adams warned us about.
For liberal regimes, a very common starting point on the road to serfdom is the over-delegation of legislative powers to the executive. France very nearly ended up in a permanent dictatorship as a result of that error, and was spared that fate mostly by good luck and Charles de Gaulle’s patriotism.
Long before she declared her infamous state of emergency, Indira Gandhi had been centralizing power in the prime minister’s office, and India was spared a permanent dictatorship only by her political miscalculation and her dynasty-minded son’s having gotten himself killed in a plane wreck.
Salazar in Portugal, Austria under Dollfuss, similar stories.
* BUT...
But the United States is not going to fall for a strongman government.
Instead of delegating power to a would-be president-for-life, we delegate it to a bureaucracy-without-death.
You do not need to install a dictator when you’ve already had a politically supercharged permanent bureaucracy in place for 40 years or more. As is made clear by everything from campaign donations to the IRS jihad, the bureaucracy is the Left, and the Left is the bureaucracy. Elections will be held, politicians will come and go, but if you expand the power of the bureaucracy, you expand the power of the Left, of the managers and minions who share Barack Obama’s view of the world. Barack Obama isn’t the leader of the free world; he’s the front man for the permanent bureaucracy, the smiley-face mask hiding the pitiless yawning maw of total politics.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 3 of 5)
In an important sense, the American people have no political say in the health-care law, for example, because Congress did not pass a law reforming the health-care system; instead, Congress passed a law empowering the Obama administration, through its political appointees and unelected time-servers, to create a new national health-care regime. The general outline of the program is there in the law, but the nuts and bolts of the thing will be created on the fly by President Obama and his many panels of experts.
There are several problems with that model of business, one of which is that President Obama, and more than a few of his beloved experts, have political interests. ... For example, the president would very much like the unemployment problem to be somewhat abated by the time of the 2014 congressional elections, but he knows that this is unlikely to happen with employers struggling under an expensive health-care mandate ... and so he has decided — empowered to do so by precisely nothing — that the law will not be enforced until after the elections.
(Neither does the law empower him arbitrarily to exempt millions of his donors and allies in organized labor from the law, but he has done that too.)
This is a remarkable thing. The health-care law gives the executive all sorts of powers to promulgate regulations and make judgments, but it does not give the executive the power to decide which aspects of the law will be enforced and which will not, or to establish a different timeline from the one found in the law itself. For all of the power that Congress legally has given the president in this matter, he feels it necessary to take more — illegally.
* AND NO ONE IS TRYING TO STOP HIM! NOTE... NO ONE IS TRYING TO STOP HIM!
* FOLKS... WE ARE LIVING IN A DICTATORSHIP!
There is no obvious and persuasive legal rationale for the belief that the president can willy-nilly suspend portions of the law or delay their execution. There is still less reason to believe that the president has the unilateral authority to overturn the law’s fundamental requirements, including the requirement that all health-care plans on offer meet certain federal regulations.
* AND THERE IS NO OPPOSITION PARTY... NO OPPOSITION MEDIA... STRONG ENOUGH TO STOP OBAMA. (INDEED THEY'RE NOT EVEN TRYING TO!)
The president and his admirers dismiss concern over this as so much chum for the talk-radio ravers, but it is no such thing. The job of the president is to execute the law — that is what the executive branch is there to do. If Barack Obama had wanted to keep pursuing his career as a lawmaker, then the people of Illinois probably would have been content to preserve him in the Senate for half a century or so. As president, he has no more power to decide not to enforce the provisions of a duly enacted federal law than does John Boehner, Anthony Weiner, or Whoopi Goldberg.
* WHAT TERRIFIES ME IS VISUALIZING YOUR FACES READING THIS... "SEEING" A FEW OF YOU NOD... AND KNOWING THAT YOU - MY FRIENDS - ACCEPT THIS AS "JUST THE WAY IT IS."
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 4 of 5)
[H]e has a constitutional duty to enforce the law.
* HE... DOESN'T... CARE...! (AND SINCE MOST OF YOU DON'T EITHER... WHY SHOULD HE?)
Representative Tom Cotton says that the president’s health-care delay makes a deal on immigration less likely — if the president can simply decline to enforce the provisions of a law he fought for, why trust him to enforce provisions of a law he is accepting only as a compromise? Representative Cotton must also of course have in mind the fact that after Congress had unequivocally rejected another piece of immigration reform, the so-called DREAM Act, that the president had supported, he simply instituted it unilaterally, as though he had the authority to declare an amnesty himself. He then did away with criminal-background checks for those to be amnestied, also on his own authority. Strangely, the order to halt background checks came down on November 9, 2012, the same day that John Boehner said Republicans would seek a compromise on immigration reform.
* FOLKS... AMERIKA IS A DICTATORSHIP. (AND AS LONG AS MOST OF YOU DON'T SEE IT AS DIRECTLY IMPACTING YOU... WHAT DO YOU CARE?)
In a similar vein, President Obama refused to cut off foreign-aid funds to the Egyptian government, though he is required by law to do so in the event of a coup d’état, which is precisely what happened in July in Egypt. It might be embarrassing for the president to punish the Egyptian military and the grand mufti of al-Azhar for their overthrow of the unpopular Mohamed Morsi, but the law does not make exceptions for presidential embarrassment.
* ACTUALLY ONE COULD ARGUE IT WASN'T A COUP... BUT IN ANY CASE, THE WAY TO HANDLE A CASE LIKE THIS IS TO GO TO CONGRESS AND GET THEM TO CHANGE THE LAW IN THE INTERESTS OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY. BOTTOM LINE, THE AUTHOR IS RIGHT... OBAMA SIMPLY IGNORED THE LAW.
The president is not legally empowered to assassinate American citizens, but he has done so, after going through the charade of drawing up a legal argument under which he judged himself entitled to do what the Constitution plainly prohibits.
The law also prohibits the president and his allies from using the instruments of government to persecute their rivals, but that is precisely what the IRS has been up to for several years, as it turns out. And not just the IRS: Tea-party activist Catherine Engelbrecht was subject to an IRS audit, two FBI visits, an OSHA investigation, and an ATF inspection of her business (which does not deal in A, T, or F). And although the IRS has no statutory power to collect Affordable Care Act–related fines in states that have not voluntarily set up health-care exchanges, Obama’s managers there have announced that they will do so anyway.
(*SHRUG*)
The president not only ignores the law but in some cases goes out of his way to subvert it. The U.S. military carried out the killing of Osama bin Laden, but the records of that event have been removed from military custody, where they are subject to inquiries under the Freedom of Information Act, and moved to the CIA, where they can be kept in secrecy. He has attempted to make “recess appointments” when Congress is not in recess and has been stopped from doing so by the federal courts, which rightly identified the maneuver as patently unconstitutional.
* ON THE "RECESS APPOINTMENT" THING... MY VIEW IS THAT CONGRESS WASN'T "TRULY" IN SESSION. (I'VE MADE MY VIEWS CLEAR IN PREVIOUS STAND-ALONES AND NEWSBITES.)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 5 of 5)
There exists a federal law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which restricts the federal government’s power to force Americans to violate their consciences. The Obama administration is forcing an abortifacient mandate upon practically all U.S. employers, in violation of that law. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, who is responsible for drafting those regulations, received a number of letters from lawmakers arguing that the mandate she was contemplating violated the law; she proceeded anyway — without so much as getting an opinion from her departmental lawyer.
Congress’s supine ceding of its powers, and the Obama administration’s usurpation of both legal and extralegal powers, is worrisome. But what is particularly disturbing is the quiet, polite, workaday manner with which the administration goes about its business — and with which the American public accepts it.
(*NOD*)
As Christopher Hitchens once put it, “The essence of tyranny is not iron law; it is capricious law.” Barack Obama makes a virtue out of that caprice, having articulated for his judicial nominees not a legal standard but a political standard requiring sympathy for politically favored groups: African-American, gay, disabled, old, in his words.
We have to some extent been here before. It is a testament to the success of free-market ideas that it is impossible to imagine President Obama making the announcement that President Richard Nixon did on August 15, 1971: “I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States.”
* I CAN IMAGINE THIS!
President Nixon created not one but two IPABs, the Pay Board and the Price Commission, which were to be entrusted with managing the day-to-day operations of the U.S. economy. President Nixon, too, was empowered by a Congress that invested him with that remarkable authority, through the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970, whose provisions were to be invoked during times of economic emergency. There was no economic emergency in 1971, but it is a nearly iron-clad rule of the presidency that powers vested will be powers used. That President Obama has adopted President Nixon’s approach but limited himself to health care might be considered "progress" if he had not adopted as a general principle one of Nixon’s unfortunate maxims: When the president does it, it isn’t illegal.
President Nixon’s lawlessness was sneaky, and he had the decency to be ashamed of it. President Obama’s lawlessness is as bland and bloodless as the man himself, and practiced openly, as though it were a virtue.
President Nixon privately kept an enemies list; President Obama publicly promises that “we’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends.”
Barack Obama’s administration is unmoored from the institutions that have long kept the imperial tendencies of the American presidency in check. That is partly the fault of Congress, which has punted too many of its legislative responsibilities to the president’s army of faceless regulators, but it is in no small part the result of an intentional strategy on the part of the administration. He has spent the past five years methodically testing the limits of what he can get away with, like one of those crafty velociraptors testing the electric fence in Jurassic Park.
Barack Obama is a Harvard Law graduate, and he knows that he cannot make recess appointments when Congress is not in recess. He knows that his HHS is promulgating regulations that conflict with federal statutes. He knows that he is not constitutionally empowered to pick and choose which laws will be enforced. This is a "might-makes-right" presidency, and if Barack Obama has been from time to time muddled and contradictory, he has been clear on the point that he has no intention of being limited by something so trivial as the law.
(*NOD*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/364764/collateral-damage-gop-civil-war-jonathan-strong
On Tuesday, November 12, Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse walked into Mitch McConnell’s office to clear the air. Contrary to the rumors, Sasse wanted to say, he hadn’t secretly vowed to oppose McConnell’s leadership if elected. In fact, he hadn’t been asked to make such a pledge and would never have even considered it.
* BUT WHY NOT? MCCONNELL IS A SCUMBAG! REPUBLICANS NEED TO BE PUTTING PRESSURE ON MCCONNELL - NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!
That was the plan, anyway.
As soon as Sasse sat down, McConnell lit into him, criticizing him for working with the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) as well as for posting a viral YouTube video in which he demanded “every Republican in Washington, starting with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to show some actual leadership.”
* AND SASSE PUT UP WITH MCCONNELL'S CRAP? THAT DOESN'T BODE WELL FOR HIM IN MY BOOK!
Republicans in Washington familiar with these kinds of sessions say the Kentucky Republican’s specialty is long, tension-filled pauses. But even for McConnell, this was awkward. Josh Holmes, McConnell’s top political hand, privately told friends afterward it was the most uncomfortable meeting he’d been in.
Following the initial exchange came a series of questions about exactly when Sasse had first interacted with Matt Hoskins, the hard-charging executive director of SCF working to elect McConnell’s primary challenger, Matt Bevin, in Kentucky.
Sasse’s answers, several Republicans familiar with the episode say, did nothing to mitigate the minority leader’s anger.
As he walked out of the room, Sasse turned to Holmes — “That didn’t go well!”
The nation’s youngest university president (Nebraska’s Midland University), Sasse has become the latest collateral damage in a GOP civil war between McConnell and Holmes, on the one side, and Matt Hoskins and Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint, Hoskins’s political godfather.
* THERE'S NO NEED FOR THIS TO BE DAMAGING TO SASSE! INDEED, SASSE SHOULD BE READING MCCONNELL THE RIOT ACT!
After Hoskins invaded enemy territory October 18 in backing Bevin, McConnell has launched a campaign against his vendors, his allies, and candidates he has endorsed — beginning with a blacklisting of GOP ad firm Jamestown Associates.
Last week, for example, pressure from McConnell allies convinced SCF’s bookkeeper, Lisa Lisker, to part ways with the group. Lisker has previously worked for Republican candidates locked in tense primary elections without incident, sources say.
* GOOD RIDDANCE!
But with Majority Leader Harry Reid detonating the nuclear option in the background, the notion that his accountant had become part of an intra-GOP war incensed Hoskins. “It’s amazing that the Senate Republican leader is now bullying bookkeepers in his war on conservatives, but it won’t stop us from supporting Matt Bevin,” he says.
* GOOD FOR YOU, MATT HOSKINS!
McConnell’s camp was likewise livid with Hoskins when SCF improbably blamed him for Reid’s actions, saying “Harry Reid did this because he knows Republican Leader Mitch McConnell will let him get away with it” in an e-mail to the group’s supporters.
* IF THE SHOE FITS... (AND IT DOES!)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 3)
Meanwhile, Breitbart News reported that McConnell exclaimed he wanted to punch tea-party “bullies . . . in the nose” on an October 30 conference call organized by American Crossroads.
* AND I'D LIKE MCCONNELL TO DROP DEAD! (BTW... AMERICAN CROSSROADS IS THAT WEASEL ROVE'S GROUP!)
Crossroads brought Washington Examiner reporter Charlie Spiering to its offices to review the audio, showing McConnell had said he wanted to punch SCF specifically in the nose. That’s more in line with McConnell’s aims, which aides explain is to isolate the Hoskins group.
* MCCONNELL IS A MORON. HE'S A RINO. HIS SUDDEN DEATH WOULD BE A GIFT FROM GOD TO THE GOP AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!
The Breitbart story triggered Tea Party Patriots president Jenny Beth Martin to issue a scathing comment about McConnell as well as make private vows to take further action.
Of all these incidents, however, the Sasse episode is most notable because it involves an attractive, promising candidate in an open primary as collateral damage in the intramural fight..
Sasse’s YouTube video calling out McConnell by name — one of several Sasse videos prominently featured on the Drudge Report — came out September 23. But insiders say the bad blood between Sasse and McConnell escalated several weeks ago at a meeting between Sasse and National Republican Senatorial Committee political director Ward Baker. There Sasse delivered a pitch that included suggesting he was the “smartest” candidate in the race. As a university president with an undergrad degree from Harvard, Ph.D. from Yale, and several prestigious academic awards to his name, it’s understandable why the candidate would think that.
His rivals, though, have begun to parody the claim, forwarding around an e-mail his fundraising consultant sent October 30 with the subject line “Take a Chance on Smart.” (“Sometimes, like when you meet your future spouse, you just know you’ve found the one,” the e-mail gushes; campaign officials subsequently asked the consultant to stop using the appeal.) Asked about Sasse at a recent D.C. fundraiser, McConnell deadpanned that “he’s definitely smart.” The subsequent meeting between the two went terribly. But McConnell has yet to provide active assistance to Sasse’s chief rival in the race, Shane Osborn. Osborn, a decorated veteran who was piloting the spy plane forced down by a Chinese fighter jet in 2001, would undoubtedly appreciate the help. But the former pilot, critics note, sought SCF’s endorsement, too.
* MAY THE MORE "BARKERIST" CANDIDATE WIN!
By all accounts, Sasse — whom The Weekly Standard recently heralded as being able to bridge the divide between the GOP establishment and the Tea Party — never wanted a fight with McConnell. In 2013, however, it’s becoming clear that being Switzerland isn’t really an option.
* AGAIN... EITHER MAN UP OR GET OUT. MCCONNELL IS THE ENEMY. BRIDGING THE DIVIDE MEANS SURRENDERING AS FAR AS THE RINOs ARE CONCERNED.
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