U.S. Senator Ted Cruz(R-Texas) spoke today at the 2013 Values Voter Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Some of Obama’s “paid operatives” showed up to disrupt, but Cruz showed Republicans how to handle hecklers, calling “Obama’s paid political operatives.”
He wondered aloud if anyone was left at the “Organizing for America’s” Campaign HQ! “I’m actually glad that the president’s whole political staff is here instead of actually doing mischief in the country”, he said to raucous laughter and applause.
The Councilhas spoken, the votes have been cast, and we have the results for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up.
“Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius” (“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”) – Euripedes
This week’s winner, Joshuapundit’s The Shut Down, And The Madness Of King Obama is my take on the current shutdown, the battle over ObamaCare and the debt ceiling and the spiteful and dysfunctional behavior of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Here’s a slice:
This shutdown is an amazing spectacle. And what it reveals about what America has become and about the state of our leadership would be sit-com worthy, except that it’s happening in real life as I write this, and isn’t funny in the least.
Government shutdowns are not all that unique – Democrat Tip O’Neill shut down the government eight times during the Regan administration, supposedly the Golden Age of ‘bi-partisanship’. And during the Clinton years, the government was shut down twice after Clinton rejected the budget. And here’s a fun fact. Popular mythology to the contrary, out of the 17 times the government has shut down, Democrats are much more prone to shut the government down than Republicans. The Democrats controlled the House during 15 of these shut downs and actually controlled both houses of Congress during 8 of them.
But what’s unique this time is that this is the first time a President and a majority leader from his party have absolutely refused to negotiate at all. In fact, President Obama has been almost totally disengaged, except for fits of explosive rhetoric aimed at ‘radical Republicans’ and the Tea Party. In contrast, both President Reagan and President Clinton were very hands on and seemed to acknowledge and even enjoy at times the give and take of negotiating as part of the job.
President Obama, in contrast, feels he shouldn’t even have to.
In an amazing instance of hubris, he actually went to the extent of finally inviting members of Congress to a meeting…for the sole purpose of telling them he wasn’t going to negotiate! Thank you, good night.
Another thing that unique about this shutdown is the off the charts rhetoric and actions emanating from the White House and its allies in Congress and the media towards anyone whom has the temerity to try and even suggest that the White House might need to negotiate some kind of compromise.
The President, Harry Reid and the Democrat caucus are even refusing to allow bills to come to a vote that would fund things like pay for veterans, the National Institute of health, and PX’s on military bases….while the president’s golf course remains open.
Countless monuments and facilities that have never been closed in previous shut downs have been deliberately closed by the White House with an eye towards using this for political gain to demonize his opposition. It’s almost an extension of President Obama’s use of the IRS against those he perceives as his political enemies.
The monument in Washington to America’s WWII vets, a monument funded by private donations had no fence at all around. On the day of the shutdown, veterans visiting the monument to their heroism found the monument blocked off by barriers and manned, as Senator Rand Paul quipped ‘with more security than Obama had at Benghazi’. The vets, with the aid of a number of GOP congressman stormed the barriers.
Even the D-Day beaches and cemeteries have been shut down. Along with a number of privately funded, privately run parks, who are being ordered by the White House to shut down ‘to be consistent with National Parks services’. The president’s private retreat at Camp David remains open, of course.
Federal agencies are deliberately blocking access to a number of government websites, something that obviously has nothing to do with any lack of funding.
The idea here is obvious – to make things unnecessarily painful for as many Americans as possible and try to spin it politically as the fault of ‘those evil Republicans’. It is a despicable tactic, and it says volumes about the kind of person President Obama is.
President Obama has also had the help of a number of his minions in the media. Andrew Sullivan and Salon’sJoan Walsh, among others have no problem putting the whole thing down to racism. Of course, that kind of attitude reveals a pretty racist mindset of its own, the belief that a president shouldn’t be held to the same standards simply because he happens to be black, but that’s meaningless in itself because I doubt even they believe racism is behind this. It’s merely a convenient tool to use to demonize people they disagree with, and it resonates with people who want to believe it.
Others have referred to the Tea Party ‘jihad’, the ‘Tea Party shutdown‘, called Republicans ‘radicals’ ‘deluded’ ‘bananna Republicans‘ arsonists and worse. And these are not people on the fringe,but mainstream writers working for mainstream media outlets.
The similarity in the venom of the rhetoric and messaging make it pretty obvious this is being co-ordinated out of the White House, like it always has been.
In our non-Council category, the winner was Dan Carter over at Richochet with When The Bleeding Heart Becomes The Iron Fist submitted by Nice Deb.It’s an excellent summing up of what we’re living through. Read it.
OK, here are this week’s full results. Only The Mellow Jihadi was unable to vote this week but was not subject to the usual 2/3 vote penalty:
See you next week! Don’t forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week’s Watcher’s Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day with short takes and weigh in…don’t you dare miss it. And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us onTwitter…..’cause we’re cool like that!
10/10/13 – On Thursday night, Megyn Kelly spoke to two people outraged over the government shutdown: a trucker organizing a protest, and a man who actually spent his time mowing the grass outside the Lincoln Memorial. Ernest Lee is one of the many truckers backing the Ride for the Constitution protest to “get the attention of our unrepresenting representatives” by “causing the world’s biggest traffic jam” in DC. Lee said, “This is an Egypt moment for the entire country to say ‘We have had enough.'”
A kind-hearted South Carolina volunteer who has mowed lawns, cleared a fallen tree and emptied ‘hundreds of trash cans’ up and down the National Mall since the federal government partially shut down told MailOnline that an aggressive, ‘bully’ of a U.S. Park Police officer who ‘looked like Robocop’ today ordered him to leave the Lincoln Memorial.
Chris Cox, the one-man landscaping crew, calls himself the Memorial Militia. He said he has been on a mission to spruce up the lawns, trees and trash bins near America’s grandest memorials before the weekend, because a ‘Million Vet March’ event is expected to bring scores of retired servicemen and women to the nation’s capital.
“TRAFFIC BEHIND THE TRUCKERS BACKED UP FOR MILES!!!”
Overpasses For Obama’s Impeachment: Constitution Convoy Rally Denver:
Men, women, and children gather on a Denver I25 Overpass 10/9/13 in support of the truckers on their way to DC. Obama has told truck drivers and Americans alike, “It’s MY WAY or the HIGHWAY!” Well the people on this bridge and the truckers heading to DC choose THE HIGHWAY! Support their strike, buy nothing Oct. 11-13. Follow them at RideForTheConstitution.org
The main Million Vet March will be in Washington this Sunday at 9 am, Oct. 13th. But I want readers here to know that if they can’t get to D.C., there will be various rallies of veterans and their supporters in many states. You can find these events at https://1mvetmarch.wordpress.com/rally-points/
It appears that military veterans have had enough of the present administration, and intend to visit the WW2 memorial on the national Mall at 9:00 AM this coming Sunday October 13th.
See links here andhere.I have never been to the World War 2 memorial, but I have decided that this Sunday will be the day, and I intend to see that memorial along with anybody else that wants to see it. Especially any veteran and most especially any WW2 veteran, regardless of what any shit-eating toady or jackbooted thug thinks about it, and regardless of what tyrannical diktat is excreted by those illegitimately exercising authority. If you are within driving distance of the District of Criminals, AKA Mordor-on-the-Potomac, I encourage you to come and educate a few clueless polishitians about what trying to govern without consent or legitimacy means.
President Obama’s meeting with certain House Republicans, Carney said, would not be a negotiation: “he’s not going to pay ransom to the Tea Party so that the government opens or the government doesn’t default.”
He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.
Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would” – or the death of Osama bin Laden. “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,” he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011 [see footnote].
Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an “independent” Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. “The Pakistanis put out a report, don’t get me going on it. Let’s put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It’s a bullshit report,” he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.
The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.
“It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],” he declares in an interview with the Guardian.
“It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn’t happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president.
The Footnote:
Hersh has pointed out that he was in no way suggesting that Osama bin Laden was not killed in Pakistan, as reported, upon the president’s authority: he was saying that it was in the aftermath that the lying began. Finally, the interview took place in the month of July, 2013.
People on the left may be delusional but they are not stupid. They know what they can say and get away with, and what they can’t. Barack Obama is a born and bred member of the left and not coincidentally is the most brazen and compulsive liar ever to occupy the American White House. What other politician could have successfully explained away the fact that two of his closest political confidantes over a twenty-year period were an anti-American racist, Jeremiah Wright and an anti-American terrorist William Ayers?
There is a marked difference between the radicals of the Sixties and the radical movement Obama is part of. In the Sixties, as radicals we said what we thought and blurted out what we wanted. We wanted a revolution, and we wanted it now. It was actually very decent of us to warn others as to what we intended. But because we blurted out our goal, we didn’t get very far. Americans were onto us. Those who remained on the left when the Sixties were over, learned from their experience. They learned to lie. The strategy of the lie is progressives’ new gospel. It is what the progressive bible — Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals — is all about. Alinsky is the acknowledged political mentor to Obama and Hillary, to the service and teacher unions, and to the progressive rank and file. Alinsky understood the mistake Sixties’ radicals had made. His message to this generation is easily summed up: Don’t telegraph your goals; infiltrate their institutions and subvert them; moral principles are disposable fictions; the end justifies the means; and never forget that your political goal is always power.
An SDS radical wrote in the Sixties: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” The Alinsky version is this: The issue is never the issue; the issue is always power: How to wring power out of the democratic process, how turn the process into an instrument of progressive control. How to use it to fundamentally transform the United States of America — which is exactly what Barack Obama warned he would do on the eve of his election.
The chosen legislative instrument to begin this transformation was Obamacare. It was presented as an act of charity, a plan to cover the uninsured. That was the “issue” as they presented it. But the actual goal of Obamacare’s socialist sponsors was a “single payer system” – government healthcare — which would put the state in control of the lives of every American, man, woman and child. That is the reason that none of the promises made about Obamacare was true, beginning with his campaign lie that Obamacare government health care was not a program he would support. Obamacare will not cover 30 million uninsured Americans, as Obama and the Democrats said it would; Obamacare will not lower costs, as they promised it would; Obamacare will deprive many Americans of their doctors and healthcare plans, as they assured everyone it would not; Obamacare is a new tax, as they swore it wouldn’t be. All these promises Obama and the Democrats made were false because they were only a camouflage for their real goal actual goal, which was universal control.
The president wanted a nice setting in which to chide or worse the GOP conference. He has puled that trick before, and the Speaker isn’t falling for it again. Good.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew spent the Sunday shows imitating Susan Rice and furiously peddling nonsense talking points, only this year it was “October 17th is doomsday” and last year it was “a video caused Benghazi.” The false immediacy of the October 17th deadline should be punctured and another lesson taught the public about the president’s men (and women) and their credibility.
White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed the GOP’s latest proposal to end the budget impasse, but he didn’t completely reject the olive branch.
The proposal suggested by House Speaker John Boehner would raise the government’s credit-card limit to allow continued deficit spending for an additional six weeks.
But the proposal would not include a 2014 budget, which is stalled because Obama and his Senate allies want extra taxes and spending, and also oppose any GOP budget that includes popular reforms of the Obamacare takeover of the nation’s health-care sector.
UPDATE: A statement issued by the White House Thursday evening seems contradict the New York Times’ initial report that Obama rejected the GOP’s short-term debt limit plan. The White House says “no specific determination was made” during the meeting.
Either way, the two sides still have been unable to reach an agreement.
“The President had a good meeting with members of the House Republican Leadership this evening; the meeting lasted approximately an hour and a half. The President, along with the Vice President, Treasury Secretary Lew, Denis McDonough and Rob Nabors listened to the Republicans present their proposal. After a discussion about potential paths forward, no specific determination was made. The President looks forward to making continued progress with members on both sides of the aisle. The President’s goal remains to ensure we pay the bills we’ve incurred, reopen the government and get back to the business of growing the economy, creating jobs and strengthening the middle class.”
“Boehner has his offer, he goes in to see the president. You would expect that you would then have [a] six week extension and discuss all of these issues,” Krauthammer said onSpecial Report. “What seems to have happened is there are now demands from the president on the reopening of the government, which was not what they had said earlier in the week.”
The important thing to understand is that President Barack Obama relishes the power. This is evidenced by his desperate need to monitor and command drone strikes from the White House himself. He likes the thrill of being the decision maker and holding the lives of others in his hands.
And they will let no crisis go to waste. For them, the debt ceiling negotiations reaching a stalemate may well be the outcome they are looking for, because it will justify the administration’s invocation of Executive Order and rule by decree.
The debt ceiling debate will likely have a resolution, just as it has twice in as many years under the Obama administration, but if it doesn’t you can fully expect the Executive Branch to take whatever action they deem necessary to “protect” the American people.
Fox News Channel’s Ed Henry pressed White House Press Secretary Jay Carney over the suspension of military death benefits in response to the government shutdown.
Carney hedged when Henry pressed about when the president was informed that benefits weren’t being paid to the families of fallen soldiers, saying simply, “When the president found out, he was disturbed.”
Carney added that Obama asked lawyers and the OMB to take action.
Carney later accused Henry of “trying to make a partisan issue out of it,” to which Henry responded, “Nice try, except you won’t tell us a simple fact of when the president learned.”
Now that we’re a little more than a week on from the government shutdown’s start, Americans are a beginning to feel the effects of not having a bureaucratic nightmare breathing down their necks as they make all of their major life decisions. Can the governent breathe down our necks while the website that powers the government’s own health care plan is still non-functional? Unfortunately, it can.
In order to visit a national park or memorial, you have to declare a First Amendment purpose. If you have a complaint about a violation of your civil liberties, there’s no hotline to call. And if you picked this week to open your craft brewery, you’re going to have to wait just a little bit longer. But with 86% of the government still functioning, you can tell that these agencies were selected for closure to maximize your pain. But what about the things the government does that you’re not missing? What activities that have been designated “non-essential” really aren’t essential? Well, a lot. But here are ten things the government is currently not doing that you probably didn’t need them to do in the first place:
Could this be the end of Monument Syndrome? Across the country, ordinary Americans are rising up in revolt against the old Washington tactic of closing public parks and memorials during selective government “shutdowns” to score political points. Tax-paying tourists are tossing off theorange traffic cones and “Barrycades.” Enough is enough.
The movement started with waves of World War II veterans who flew to D.C. last week as part of the Honor Flight Network. (The nonprofit group brings our surviving heroes to visit the memorials that honor their service and sacrifice.) The vets and volunteers breached the fences last week, exposing the tone-deaf tactics of President Obama’s Spite House. Honor Flight visits continue this week, and more vets vowed to defy the cynical closures.
They are not alone. At Gettysburg National Military Park, tourists broke through barriers and posed for pictures on the battlefields with notes reading, “Catch us if you can.” One visitor reported that motorists formed impromptu caravans as rangers chased them. “Strength in numbers,” they tweeted.
At Mount Rushmore and in the Badlands of South Dakota, families barreled over hazard cones. Their photos went viral on Facebook. In Wisconsin, GOP Gov. Scott Walker defied the National Park Service and opened state parks that Obama-crats wanted closed because they receive some federal dollars. At the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Missouri, a group of 20 protesters defied threats of arrest to enter the park.
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer believes that during the partial government shutdown, the bureaucracy in Washington demonstrated its willingness to punish citizens when it does not get its way.
“I think there are two issues here,” Krauthammer said on Wednesday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel. “One, was it a political act? I tend to think that some of these interpretations, clearly, people seem to be always erring on the side of being rough and tough and irrational like the cordoning off of the World War II Memorial, which is open-air, and where it takes more park rangers to cordon it off than it would to accompany the aging veterans on to the site. I think there’s an element — and we saw it in the sequestration. This isn’t the first time.”
A huge bureaucracy will bully the public into funding it, Krauthammer said.
The administration is using anything it doesn’t like as a way to punish the American people,” he continued. “But there’s a larger issue here. And that is, as the state becomes larger and larger, the bureaucracy becomes stronger and more arrogant and independent. It believes in it so, and after all, it regulates. That’s what it does. And it becomes punitive, in the sense it says, ‘Listen, you want to hold up the government. We’re going to show you who’s in charge. We’re going to shut down all the monuments, you know. And if we don’t get a blank check, we’re going to do x, y and z.”
The Obama administration has prohibited the Kennedy family from practicing its Catholicism, and the Kennedys now intend to ask the Supreme Court to restore their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. Their case could become one of the most consequential in our nation’s history. The issue: Will the most fundamental liberty of all — freedom of conscience — survive in post-Obama America?
John Kennedy serves as president of Autocam and Autocam Medical, Michigan-based companies that produce automobile components and medical devices. He and his family own the companies, which employ 661 people in the United States.
The Kennedys strive to live all parts of their lives — including their business lives — in keeping with their Catholic faith.
The Shutdown: Federal closure threatens to bar priests not on active duty from conducting services on military installations or from ministering on base, and they risk being arrested if they attempt to do so.
The latest Obama shutdown shame is the news that, until it’s over, none of the families of those killed in Afghanistan can expect to receive the $100,000 death gratuity promised to reach them within 24 to 36 hours.
Grieving families also cannot expect the military to cover all the usual costs of family travel to meet their loved ones at Dover Air Force Base where they return home for burial in American-flag-draped coffins.
Catholic soldiers killed in battle might not even have a priest available to give the last rites of their church as even the religious freedoms they fought to protect are sacrificed by a petulant president who has the power to set priorities with the stroke of an executive order pen but refuses to do so.
As the Daily Caller reports, the Rev. Ray Leonard, a Catholic priest who serves a Georgia military base, was not allowed to celebrate Mass at the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay this weekend. “Shutdown: No Catholic service till further notice,” a sign posted on the chapel door said.
Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a Republican, released the details of Leonard’s experience after meeting with the priest on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Obama does another solid for his MB buddies…
The Muslim Brotherhood, despite being closely linked to terrorist groups, was never denied any heavy weapons. Kerry rejected any thoughtof refusing Morsi, who prayed for the destruction of Israel, his F-16s.
But the Egyptian military is getting more aid cuts, because it won’t restore the Church-burning MuslimBrotherhood to power.
The crackdown on the Brotherhood showed no signs of abating on Wednesday, as prosecutors said Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first-ever freely elected president, would face trial on Nov. 4 for inciting his followers to kill protesters against his rule late last year.
The announcement of the aid censure marks a new low point in the already frosty relationship between the U.S. and Egypt, once one of America’s closest security partners in the Middle East.
We’ve long suspected that the NSA, the world’s premiere spy agency, was pretty good at breaking into computers. But now, thanks to an article by security expert Bruce Schneier—who is working with the Guardian to go through the Snowden documents—we have a much more detailed view of how the NSA uses exploits in order to infect the computers of targeted users. The template for attacking people with malware used by the NSA is in widespread use by criminals and fraudsters, as well as foreign intelligence agencies, so it’s important to understand and defend against this threat to avoid being a victim to the plethora of attackers out there.
It is very likely every mother’s worst nightmare. To wake up in the middle of the night, having heard a noise just outside the safety of the walls of your home and knowing that you are likely all of the protection you and your children have. A call to the police may work, but how long might it take for them to respond? Five minutes, ten? Even less may be just too long.
That is the nightmare that Toledo, Ohio mom, Betty Collins has had to live through not once… but twice in the last four months.
Four months ago it was a home invader who met Ms. Collins as he tried to kick in the front door of her home. At about five in the morning, 31-year old Kyle Caldwell began kicking at the front door of Ms. Collins home in an attempt to break in. Betty, who was already awake and wary thanks to a call from her boyfriend about a suspicious man down the block, was waiting with her .357 Magnum at the ready. After a few unsuccessful kicks, Betty yelled for the attacker to leave because she had a gun and it was loaded. He didn’t heed her advice. Finally, Ms. Collins opened the door herself and the intruder found himself inches from the barrel of the loaded .357.
Nice Deb 