Tag Archives: Politics

Egypt, Media, Politics

Egypt’s Unrest And The News Media

The political climate in Egypt doesn’t look good. But is that because of what we see on the news or because it really doesn’t look good?

I guess it depends on what the definition of ‘good’ is, and which side of the fence you are on. The side of democracy or the side of the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter of which want nothing to do with democracy. Well, unless you call Iran’s government a democracy.

Considering that the population in Cairo, the largest city in Egypt, is 6.8 million, is a riotous group of tens of thousands of people really representative of the other millions of Egyptians?

Not satisfied living in a country with a majority of Muslims where other religions are tolerated, it is apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to hijack the unrest over the economic disaster that Egyptians find themselves living in, and turn it into some sort of Islamic state like Iran; hostile to the West, Israel, and the rest of the non-Muslim world.

Calling for Mubarak to step down before the scheduled September elections, like President Obama has done, plays into the hands of the radical Islamists. And his calling for all opposition parties to have some representation in the ‘new’ government, including the Muslim Brotherhood, only exacerbates the problem. That irresponsible action just reinforces what we are shown in the media. Pretty presumptuous of our President to tell Egyptians how their government should be assembled. No doubt President Obama is overflowing with audacity.

The only reason for optimism in Egypt now is that the other 6.7 million Egyptians will keep a secular and more democratic government in place. Given the choice in a free and legitimate election, it is hard to imagine that they would choose a government that is anything like Iran.

Economy, Florida, Pensacola, Politics

Obamacare Is Void, Lawless Administration Doesn’t Care

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That’s the bottom line where Judge Roger Vinson’s opinion on the State of Florida v. U.S. Dept. of HHS is concerned. Judge Vinson of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida yesterday became the second federal judge to strike down Obamacare’s individual mandate.

Drawing on the precedent of the original Boston Tea Party was not only valid, but whether intentional or not, was a nice kick in the pants balls to the political Left that non-stop demonized the ‘tea party’ of today. Attaching a vulgar sexual act to them.  ? Maybe projecting what really turns them on.

Judge Vinson writes . . .

“It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be ‘difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power’ and we would have a Constitution in name only.”

Like Judge Henry Hudson of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Vinson also found that Section 1501 of the act, which forces all Americans to buy government-approved health insurance policies, “falls outside the boundary of Congress’ Commerce Clause authority and cannot be reconciled with a limited government of enumerated powers.”

But then Judge Vinson went even further, concluding that “the individual mandate and the remaining provisions are all inextricably bound together in purpose and must stand or fall as a single unit.” Accordingly, Vinson concluded: “Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void.” {emphasis added}

Judge Vinson further explained the problem with the mandate part of the bill.

For the reasons stated, I must reluctantly conclude that Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the Act with the individual mandate. That is not to say, of course, that Congress is without power to address the problems and inequities in our health care system. The health care market is more than one sixth of the national economy, and without doubt Congress has the power to reform and regulate this market. That has not been disputed in this case. The principal dispute has been about how Congress chose to exercise that power here.30

And to that point, Judge Vinson expounded on what is faulty with a federal mandate by using then Senator Barack Obama’s own words. Oh ya gotta love it. {Free cheesesteak for Judge Vinson.} Judge Vinson continues . . .

30 On this point, it should be emphasized that while the individual mandate was clearly “necessary and essential” to the Act as drafted, it is not “necessary and essential” to health care reform in general. It is undisputed that there are various other (Constitutional) ways to accomplish what Congress wanted to do. Indeed, I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that “if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house.” See Interview on CNN’s American Morning, Feb. 5, 2008, transcript available at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0802/05/ltm.02.html.

{great research Judge}

Here is Obama’s quote in context. He was responding to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s idea of mandating health insurance . . .

OBAMA: Let’s break down what she really means by a mandate. What’s meant by a mandate is that the government is forcing people to buy health insurance and so she’s suggesting a parent is not going to buy health insurance for themselves if they can afford it. Now, my belief is that most parents will choose to get health care for themselves and we make it affordable.

Here’s the concern. If you haven’t made it affordable, how are you going to enforce a mandate. I mean, if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house. The reason they don’t buy a house is they don’t have the money. And so, our focus has been on reducing costs, making it available. I am confident if people have a chance to buy high-quality health care that is affordable, they will do so. That’s what our plan does and nobody disputes that.

Oh what a difference a couple years make.

Refusing to take NO for an answer the administration intends to ignore the Judges ruling that the legislation is VOID. Because the judge did “not order the government to stop implementing the law, a senior administration source said ‘implementation will proceed at pace.'” Legally speaking, when the legislation is considered VOID by the judiciary, the other branches have nothing to go on to proceed. They have to either appeal it or ask for a stay. Tomorrow, President Obama ought to request the senate to repeal the bill and start over. Don’t hold your breath for that to happen. Ignoring the ruling just highlights how lawless this administration is. It is the Chicago way. It’s what community organizers do.

Economy, Egypt, Energy, Media, Middle East, Organized Labor, Politics, United Nations

Fed Policy, Govt. Policy, Egypt Burns

Here’s a little ditty that the mainstream media won’t touch with a ten foot pole. That’s because the Obama administration, environmentists, and the Federal Reserve are not insignificant players in the rioting and unrest we are seeing in the Middle East, and in the rise in prices of foodstuffs around the world. WHAT you say?

For years now, the United Nations has been complaining that they can’t continue to feed all they need to for a lack of money caused by the rising food cost. This is a direct consequence of bio-fuel nonsense where the United States is using food (corn) to put in our gas tank. This causes all kinds of food to be more expensive. Not just for foodstuffs made from corn, but meat and poultry products because it is also food for the livestock.

Compounding that is the enormous spending of the Federal Reserve. The effect of that has contributed to the increase in food prices not only here but everywhere else in the world.

Chriss W. Street at Big Government writes . . .

QE2 money quickly drove up commodity food prices around the world. This price rise is barely noticeable to Americans who only spend 10% of their personal income on food for three meals a day; but the impact of food inflation is devastating the over half the world that spends approximately 50% of personal income on food for two meals a day. The 15% QE2 induced commodity food price increase has reduced the amount of food poor people can purchase by almost 1/3.

The riots and revolutionary activity burning down Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt are about gut-level economics. Do you think Americans would riot and throwing out our government if we were forced to cut back to eating 1 1/3 meals a day? Once riots start people in cities hoard food to survive and becomes dangerous for farmers to transport food. This is exacerbates food shortages and drives prices even higher.

When you consider how lucky we are to live in the United States, where 10% of our income goes for food for three meals a day,  a rise in food prices is not as much of an issue as it is in other parts of the world like Egypt, where food consumes 50% of their income for two meals a day. Couple that with outrageously high unemployment while the ruling class lives the high life, and you have a powder keg in the making.

UPDATE 06:50:

As if there isn’t enough evidence of how government policies were accomplices in Egypt’s revolution, new evidence points to the role of labor unions and the American Left in orchestrating it:

For all the lack of clarity on where the Obama administration stands, one thing is becoming more and more clear: Signs are beginning to point more toward the likelihood that President Obama’s State Department, unions, as well as Left-leaning media corporations are more directly involved in helping to ignite the Mid-East turmoil than they are publicly admitting.

Egypt, Middle East, Politics

Caught By Surprise, Flat-footed, Mixed Message

That is how CNN described the Obama administration’s reaction to the upheavel in Egypt today on the Wolf Blitzer show. By now, it should become painfully obvious to the administration that the media can no longer carry their water when there are such big holes in the buckets. It is quite a shift from just two days ago when Obama adviser David Axelrod told ABC’s Jake Tapper how the president has been engaged with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from the beginning. Not to worry, that he has been on top of things for the last two years.

If the administration has been so engaged for the last two years, how could this event have caught them by surprise? They didn’t see the clues? Obama voting PRESENT on Egypt isn’t working.  The media is not yet calling the administration incompetent, although I am, but the fact that they can not longer ignore the contradiction shows they are looking out for their own survival now, instead of his.

He was on the wrong side of the fence when Iran had their political uprising. Now he has to play catch up in Egypt, and the Egyptian people are not fooled.

Another story that has not been reported in the U.S. media, if you want to connect some dots, is the unrest in other poor and mostly Muslim countries like Yemen, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan. Andrew McCarthy has a pretty good idea for why we are seeing what we are seeing.

Al-Qaeda seeks to spread Islam by brute force. The Muslim Brotherhood and its American confederates – CAIR, the Muslim American Society, the Islamic Society of North America, etc. – agree with al-Qaeda on the endgame but part company on methodology.

Links: Analysis: Egypt crisis a fresh dilemma for Obama team

Fair Tax, Politics

FairTax Introduced In Senate, S. 13

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Sen. Saxby Chambliss [R-GA] introduced the FairTax in the Senate January 25, 2011. Currently there are 5 cosponsors:

  1. Sen Burr, Richard [R-NC] – 1/25/2011
  2. Sen Coburn, Tom [R-OK] – 1/25/2011
  3. Sen DeMint, Jim [R-SC] – 1/25/2011
  4. Sen Isakson, Johnny [R-GA] – 1/25/2011
  5. Sen Moran, Jerry [R-KS] – 1/25/2011

To contact your Senators and Representative go to:  http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

Please ask them to cosponsor H.R. 25 in the House, and S. 13 in the Senate!

Egypt, Energy, Media, Politics

Axelrod, ABC, Cover For President Obama On Egypt

ABC, part of the propaganda wing of the West Wing, is getting out in front of the questions like this one. Where in the world did this political upheaval in Egypt come from, and why was it kept from the American people?

If we are to believe presidential advisor David Axelrod, and who believes Axelrod anyway, this is something that the president has been working on for the last 2 years. Oh really? This seems to have worked out about as good as the ‘I will not rest’ line he’s used for the past two years to give the illusion that he is creating jobs.

Which begs the question that Jake Tapper certainly will not ask. If Egypt was at the brink of some sort of revolution, why didn’t you talk about it? Why didn’t the State Department talk about it? Why would you keep the American people in the dark about something this big?

Would it have anything to do with oil? Since you apparently are so on top of what is going on in the Middle East, what is the state of affairs of the rest of our ‘allies’ in the Muslim world? Would hiding the threat of a radical Islamic takeover under the prayer rug work to our advantage, or to the advantage of the Islamic extremists? And one more. Does keeping this under the prayer rug have anything to do with our dependency on oil and your unwillingness to get our own?

It wasn’t Naziophobia to be against Hitler. It isn’t Islamophobia to know what radical Islamists are up to either.

If not Jake Tapper, who will ask President Obama or Sec. of State Clinton these questions?

Link: ABC News’ Political Punch, the Tapper-Axelrod show

Economy, Politics

Today’s Special – Obamacare’s Impact On Doctors

You know what you’ve been told about Obamacare. That it will ‘bend the cost curve.’ Premiums will go down. It will not increase the national debt. In fact, it will reduce it.   You can keep your doctor. You can keep your health care plan. There won’t be longer waiting periods for treatment or rationing of health care. Health care will improve in all these areas. While at the same time over 30 million more Americans will have ‘health insurance.’ That’s right. Whether they want it or not. If not, you will pay a penalty. But now that Obamacare is in court, the ‘penalty’ is now called a tax.

What makes Obamacare even more incredible, is to believe it that it won’t have any negative effect on doctors. In fact, the prospect that there will be enough doctors in the health care industry to take care of existing patients, let alone 30 million more, is right out of the Twilight Zone. Or as then Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) said, would ‘require a suspension of disbelief.’

Isn’t it terrible that who is running the show is more important than patients getting the treatment and care they need? In this case, the ‘who’ is government. I came across a quote from Daniel Webster that pretty much sums up President Obama and his agenda for America.

“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”

Below is a video of a Doctor in Atlanta and what burdens the government bureaucracy place on her practice. My question is, where are all the doctors for tomorrow going to come from? Why would they choose to subject themselves to such punishment when there are other industries that (so far) are not being controlled by or in the sights of Uncle Sam.  Oh no! Sights! A gun reference. Get over it.

Link: The Heritage Foundation

Politics

Senate Filibuster Is Alive And Well

It seems that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has acquiesced in his strategy to end the filibuster, aka the nuclear option, by changing the rules where a simple majority would be needed to end debate. It also seems that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Reid are beginning to show signs of getting along to work together. Well, for now anyways. I mean, when your back is against the wall, you begin to become a little more cooperative. And by all accounts, the mid-term elections put Reid’s back against the wall.

Some things that were accomplished in the Senate yesterday . . .

1) Reid’s effort to kill the filibuster, which is the minority’s right to effect legislation, went down in flames in the final rules changes on Thursday. Both agreed to never try again to use the nuclear option, which is to change the rules of the Senate with only 51 votes, instead of the established 67 vote margin. Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall and realizing what goes around comes around, Marty Gold, a former senate leadership aide, said ‘The rules compromise reached today will look like a half-measure to the liberal blogosphere. But if Democrats go into the minority in two years, liberals will be happy for this day.’

2) The senate also ended the practice of secret ‘holds.’  The resolution to end secret holds, which passed 92-4, states that a Senator must publicly disclose a notice of intent to object to any measure or matter.

3) The two leaders agreed to not use two important procedural methods as often in order to preserve the great rights of the Senate: to amend and to debate. McConnell agreed that the Republicans would use the filibuster less often in this Congress. In return, Reid agreed to be less active in filling up the amendment tree to block out all Republican amendments.

The Majority Leader has the power to add the maximum amount of amendments to the tree, which locks out any amendments by the minority party. Reid agreed to not use up all the amendments, so that the Republicans can offer their alternatives to legislation. Over the past two years, Reid has used his power to fill up the amendment tree drastically more often than had been done in the past. “The Majority Leader used that power to cut off all amendments and debate 44 times. That’s more than the last 6 majority leaders combined,” said Sen. Alexander on the floor.

Senator Alexander summed up yesterday’s resolution this way . . .

“What they have done…is create a window in which we have had a good, open discussion about the kind of place we want to work, the kind of Senate we hope would serve the American people the best,” said Alexander.

“And we have come to a consensus about a change in behavior, which I believe, in the end, will be more important than the change in the rules,” he said.

Link: Reid’s Rules Scheme Defeated in the Senate

Media, Politics

2011 State Of The Union Show

After listening to NPR’s commentary of what I saw, I’m figuring they saw a different show. Their highlights were a spending freeze, targeted ‘investments,’ and Obama calling for civility.

What really happened is there was no call for civility. NPR is still carrying the water on the notion that calling for civility will silence Obama’s critics. If you can find anything relevant to NPR’s notion of civility in the transcript, please let me know.

Here’s Obama:

It’s no secret that those of us here tonight have had our differences over the last two years. The debates have been contentious; we have fought fiercely for our beliefs. And that’s a good thing. That’s what a robust democracy demands. That’s what helps set us apart as a nation.

. . . .

We are part of the American family. We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people; that we share common hopes and a common creed; that the dreams of a little girl in Tucson are not so different than those of our own children, and that they all deserve the chance to be fulfilled. That, too, is what sets us apart as a nation.

. . . .

What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.

One of the most telling moments in his address to the nation was his cavalier mention of his health care plan and the rejection of the results of the mid-term election.

Now, I’ve heard rumors that a few of you have some concerns about the new health care law. So let me be the first to say that anything can be improved. If you have ideas about how to improve this law by making care better or more affordable, I am eager to work with you. We can start right now by correcting a flaw in the legislation that has placed an unnecessary bookkeeping burden on small businesses.

Put simply, the flaw in the legislation is the legislation itself. From who drew it up (zero republicans) to how it was railroaded into law. The alternative will accomplish his goals of the pre-existing conditions, with the added bonus of actually lowering costs. Something Obama said he would not sign if it didn’t lower costs. If true to his word, he should be leading the charge to repeal and replace.

The notion of a freeze sounds good except for one major problem. He is talking about freezing spending at the current level, which is 4 times higher than just two years ago. To freeze spending after raising the level of it, as a percent of GDP, through all the TARP, stimulus, and bailout spending is not saving anything but the administration’s agenda of a huge and intrusive government, bought and borrowed in the last two years.

The American people were snookered into thinking that all that spending would be a temporary booster shot. Not a permanent growth in spending and government.

The president did speak of cutting back on the small stuff, the discretionary spending. Discretionary spending makes up about 12% of total spending. This was followed by more spending. We are not saving or cutting anything if we turn around and spend an amount equal to or greater than what was cut.

The speech wasn’t without a little comedy. Like when he said this . . .

And because the American people deserve to know that special interests aren’t larding up legislation with pet projects, both parties in Congress should know this: If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it. I will veto it. (Applause.)

I know he has said that before. Right before he signed bills with thousands of earmarks in them. So we are left to ask. Was he lying then and is he telling the truth now? And, do you still trust him to do what he says.

Another comedic moment came when speaking to the issue of cutting bureacracy. Oddly, it would have also been the perfect opportunity to speak to the issue of the intrusiveness of government, like the food police. But he passed on that.

Then there’s my favorite example: The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they’re in saltwater. (Laughter.) I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked. (Laughter and applause.)

He made only a cursory mention of the need to cut spending in Medicare and Medicaid “which are the single biggest contributor to our long-term deficit.” He got that right. Social Security runs third. Fact is, there won’t be any solution to our financial woes without making these three entitlement programs financially sound by facing the reality that the benefits must be cut back to a sustainable level. As our population ages, the demands on these three will only increase and no amount of taxes increases will fix that. Meanwhile, we are to believe that cutting what amounts to petty cash compared to the total of unfunded liabilities is all that the president has to do. We have to have results, not just a committment to work on it. We know how true the president is to his commitments. They amount to merely ‘words, just words.’