Policing Political Speech; Government’s increasing reach becomes increasingly indiscriminate.

George Will   "This case, which comes from Cincinnati, where the regional IRS office was especially active in suppressing the political speech of conservative groups, involves the intersection of two ominous developments. One is the inevitable, and inevitably abrasive, government intrusions into sensitive moral issues that come with government’s comprehensive and minute regulation of health care with taxes, mandates, and other coercions. The Supreme Court will soon rule on one such controversy, the ACA requirement that employer-provided health-care plans must cover the cost of abortifacients. The other development is government’s growing attempts to regulate political speech, as illustrated by the Obama administration’s unapologetic politicization of the IRS to target conservative groups.

War on Women? 'Think About That For a Moment'

Weekly Standard  "Michigan Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land has a new 30-second ad out taking on the Democratic line that Republicans like her are waging a "war on women." Land is facing Democratic congressman Gary Peters in November, and Peters has criticized Land's opposition to the so-called Paycheck Fairness Act.

" 'Congressman Gary Peters and his buddies want you to believe I'm waging a war on women," Land says in the ad. "Really? Think about that for a moment." Land gives the viewer some time. Watch the video below:"
 

 

"The Real Clear Politics poll average shows a tight race for Senate in Michigan. Land and Peters are vying for the seat held by retiring Democrat Carl Levin. Land was a two-term secretary of state, while Peters is a three-term congressman who voted for Obamacare."

PJ Tatler commented on this as well     "This is perfect. I don’t know anything about Land on the issues yet, but based on this ad, I like her and I suspect most viewers will too. She comes off as charming, yet no-nonsense at the same time. Land’s response taps right into how real people actually talk about the absurd, and it leaves the Democrats nowhere to go. Land is set to “Really?” them every time they claim “war on women” or any other ridiculous accusation that Democrats tend to toss out." ...
 

Sally Kohn’s ridiculous ‘war on women’ salvo gloriously shot down  For some reason, Kohn was once on the Bret Baier Special Report all-star panel. In the middle of a discussion having nothing to do with this meme, Kohn dropped the phrase "war on women". The remark was ignored by the others as it should have been and they returned to the topic at hand. I found this to be a low point in the usually excellent panel discussions; it is much better when they have informed commentators instead of political hacks.

Conservative Daily News

Alan Caruba: Obama's War on U.S. Energy

  "Want to see what a protest against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington, DC

 looked like this morning? Here's a photo taken this morning by a friend of mine.

He reported that a mere handful of people attended. " Alan Caruba

 

 

Warning Signs  "A nation without adequate energy production is a nation in decline and that has been the President’s agenda since the day he took office in 2009. He even announced his war on coal during the 2008 campaign even though, at the time, it was providing fifty percent of the electricity being utilized." ... 

 

Groups like the above are usually shown in the press like this:

 

One has to conclude the anti-Keystone acts by Democrats have less to do with the will of the people than the money promised by billionaire Tom Steyer.

And they dare demagogue the Koch brothers.

 

From the NYT: “A billionaire retired investor is forging plans to spend as much as $100 million during the 2014 election, seeking to pressure federal and state officials to enact climate change measures through a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers. The donor, Tom Steyer, a Democrat....   Via CNS

State Department Unable To Name One Accomplishment From A Hillary Clinton-Run Initiative…

Weasel Zippers   "For obvious reasons."
 

Reporter Asks State Dept for One Accomplishment from Hillary Clinton’s Big Review Process. Let’s See What Happens.  ... "Psaki has been at the State Department since February 2013. She’s part of the revolving door from lobbying and campaigns to government — Psaki came to State from the 2012 Obama campaign, a perch from which she attacked Mitt Romney’s foreign policy chops.

"Romney turns out to have been right when he called Russia America’s number one geostrategic foe, while Psaki’s boss, Obama, has been proved wrong.

"Unfortunately, to most Democrat voters, accomplishments don’t matter and they will support Hillary in 2016 anyway."

EPA chief: Climate change, not Keystone, is game changer

 From The Hill   "Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy on Tuesday sought to downplay the importance of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and said the Obama administration will continue to focus on the bigger problem of climate change.

"McCarthy tried to turn the attention toward climate change during an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," less than one week after the State Department stopped the clock with 14 days left in the 90-day interagency review of the $5.4 billion project. " ...

 

 

Elites’ Sacrificial Victims; When your goal is to save the planet, you can’t worry about who may get hurt.

Victor Davis Hanson   ... "Thomas Friedman recently wrote of the upside to Vladimir Putin’s possible radical cutoff of natural gas to the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe. Friedman nearly rejoices that Putin has inadvertently helped the green cause. Supposedly, once Putin’s erstwhile gas buyers grasp that Russia proves an unreliable supplier, they will then be forced to redouble their efforts at wind, solar, and renewable energy. Thus, we will all be better off. “If I’m actually rooting for Putin to go ahead and shut off the gas,” Friedman asks, “does that make me a bad guy?”

"I am afraid it does. At least in the here and now.
....
"In California, it is just this sort of assumption that millions must be sacrificed on the altars of green deities that has resulted in cutoffs of life-providing irrigation water in order to save a bait fish, or decrepit and nightmarishly dangerous highways because highway funds have been diverted to “high-speed rail,” whose initial construction is as dear to liberals as it is not allowed to begin in their neighborhoods. What if the campus of Stanford University disrupted the migrating patterns of the Palo Alto horned toad, or if the new Arizona Apple plant retarded the spring bloom of the Mesa desert cactus? Would we see a shutdown of either Stanford or Apple — as we are seeing now with the uprooting of vast acreages of California almonds?
...
"Once we go down that road of assumed noble ends justifying questionable means, then anything becomes not just possible but assured." Full article

I Will Not 'Go Gentle into That Good Night'. Under Obama and Democrats a great nation ends. Period.

How will we, individually and collectively, respond to the approach of that "good night" marking the end of a great nation?

American Thinker   "We should not – no, actually, we must not – show bestial rage like the animals that populated the Occupy crowd.  But display civil disobedience – not violence or destruction of property or physical assaults – against the proto-fascists so favored by the Obama regime. 

"Think civil disobedience would be a waste of time?  It could be that you’re right.  Of course, there have been people here and there throughout history who would disagree on that. 

"Mahatma Gandhi would head the list, with Rosa Parks standing at his side.  Our own Thomas Jefferson once said: “If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.”  Bishop Desmond Tutu went even farther when he said:  “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”  And the icon of the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, expressed the same sentiment when he said: “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.' ”

Jim Yardley is a retired financial controller and a two-tour Vietnam veteran.  He writes frequently about political idiocy, business and economic idiocy, and American cultural idiocy. Jim also blogs at http://jimyardley.wordpress.com and can be contacted directly at james.v.yardley@gmail.com.

Clemency for Drug Offenders Is More Presidential Lawlessness Disguised as Pardon Power

Andrew C. McCarthy  "Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that dozens of lawyers will be reassigned to the Justice Department’s pardon office in anticipation of a surge of applications from drug offenders for reductions in their sentences — applications the Obama administration has signaled it would look upon favorably. This exercise is another transparent usurpation of legislative power by the president. The pardon power is just the camouflage for it.

"The pardon power exists so that the president can act in individual cases to correct excesses and injustices. It is not supposed to be a vehicle by which presidents rewrite congressional statutes that they disagree with philosophically (just as “prosecutorial discretion,” another doctrine the Obama administration has abused, is not supposed to be a vehicle by which the president substitutes his policies for duly enacted federal law)." ...

Dem Congressman on Obamacare: The Worst Is Yet to Come, It’s ‘Going to Hit the Fan’

NRO 

 

"Massachusetts representative Stephen Lynch isn’t just worried about the negative impact Obamacare will have on his party’s performance this fall — he also thinks its worst effects on our health-care system are still to come. Lynch, who voted against the Affordable Care Act in 2010, warned that the situation is “going to hit the fan” when the law’s delayed provisions go into effect down the road." ...

Death, Taxes, and Anti-Semitism

Clarice Feldman  ... "As Americans struggled with preposterously complex federal income tax regulations and ever-higher tax burdens, the Washington Examiner’s Timothy P. Carney tweeted “That’s the price we pay for 7 of the 10 richest counties being within commuting distance of DC.” Right he is. As the rest of the country struggles to keep on producing -- cattle, grain, merchandise, services -- hamstrung by ever more regulations and executive and judicial branch overreaching, DC lives high on the hog off that labor. Drive up and see expensive restaurants full of patrons every night and elegant spas and hotels fully booked. The price of real estate in the nation’s capital keeps soaring, as it does in the near suburbs. At the moment 86 million full- time private sector employees sustain 148 million benefit takers. Greetings, suckers!"

...
"Do you suppose that Democrats -- the chief American statists, class warriors, multiculturalists, and internationalists -- are any different than their European counterparts? I don’t. Keep electing them and we will become more like Europe in its repulsive and pervasive anti-Semitism as we have in every other regrettable way."   Full article.

Related: Not all Democrats are anti-Israel, but almost all anti-Israelis are Democrats

How Obama lost friends and influence in the Brics

The Financial Times

 

"When Barack Obama took office, he pledged a new overture to the world’s emerging powers. Today each of the Brics – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – is at loggerheads with America, or worse. Last month four of the five abstained in a UN vote condemning the fifth’s annexation of Crimea. Next month India is likely to elect as its new leader Narendra Modi, who says he has “no interest in visiting America other than to attend the UN in New York”. As the world’s largest democracy, and America’s most natural ally among the emerging powers, India’s is a troubling weathervane. How on earth did Mr Obama lose the Brics?"

...

"Second, the US public is tiring of its country’s global responsibilities. Mr. Obama’s real pivot is not to Asia but to America. In this he is only taking his cue from domestic sentiment. Yet his pivot to home is not going too well either. As Lawrence Summers, the former US Treasury secretary, recently observed, the US has two parties, one of which, the Democrats, refuses to endorse any kind of trade deal; the other of which, the Republicans, appears to detest all international institutions. Neither of the two parties listens to what Mr. Obama wants. If you believe the television ratings, the US public long ago tuned out from what he says.

"Little surprise, then, that the Brics are getting into the habit of talking among themselves."

Given the mood of the American public, I see little chance of a more forceful and competent president being able to reverse America's abdication.

Neal Boortz: Respect THIS President? Are you kidding?

Neal Boortz, Jan. 16, 2014;  "Please … don’t anyone approach me, email me, Tweet me or in any way communicate to me your belief, as moronic as it may be, that I am somehow “disrespecting” the office of the presidency.  It’s the actual president for whom I have no respect --- not the office he occupies.  0bama is a stain, a skid mark on the presidency.

"Frankly, after the disclosures of the past few days I don’t understand why hundreds of thousands of informed Americans aren’t marching down Pennsylvania Avenue with torches and pitchforks right now." 

 

The long and short of it?  Everything that 0bama and his dog washers have told us about Benghazi has been an intentional, premeditated lie.   If lying to the American people were a crime, 0bama would be in jail. 
            Just what have we learned the last few days?  Well, I’ll try to keep it simple here.  After all, informed Americans already know what the score is … so I’ll imagine that I’m addressing the Playstation/skateboard crowd here. 
            Here you go … after Ambassador Chris Stephens and three other Americans were killed in Benghazi, 0bama and his team were telling the American people that this was simply a demonstration that got out of control, a demonstration by Muslims upset with a YouTube video.  It was a lie.  He knew it was a lie. 
            We have now learned that within an hour of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi 0bama was told by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that a terrorist attack against Americans was under way in Benghazi.  What’s more, our Dear Ruler was told that the attack – the assassination of an American diplomat and the murders of three other Americans -- was being carried out by two al Qaeda terrorist groups.
    

        You see, 0bama had a bit of a problem here.  It was an election year.  He wasn’t even near finished with his “fundamental transformation” of our country.  He had no accomplishments to speak of.  The economy sucked, job creation was lagging, people were dropping out of the workforce, Americans were starting to get an idea that 0bamacare was going to be a disaster.  He had NOTHING .. nothing except the millions of Americans he managed to add to the government teat.  Oh … and he had the media.  Now 0bama had been prancing around the country on the campaign trail telling anyone who would listen that “Osama bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is on the run.”  The media was dutifully repeating this line at every opportunity.  So suddenly, less than two months before the election, 0bama is presented with a situation that, if widely known, would certainly show that al Qaeda was most certainly NOT on the run.  In fact, it was out there assassinating a U.S. ambassador. 
            So what to do?  After all, 0bama has a fundraiser in Las Vegas, and nothing can be allowed to get between him and some more campaign dollars.  So 0bama gets his brain trust together at the White House, and they come up with this absurd story about some YouTube video getting some Muzzie turbans in a wad over there in Libya --- then 0bama hops on Air Force One and heads for Las Vegas.
            Now to this very day you have liberals slamming George Bush for not erupting into some sort of a frenzy in front of all those school children in Florida when he learned about the Muslim attack on New York City and Washington.  But 0bama running off to Las Vegas?  That gets virtually NO adverse reaction from the media.  And why?  Well .. because the media was 0bama’s other ally when the Muzzies attacked in Benghazi.  Obama didn’t have to worry about what the moochers and parasites would think.  They were and are only worried about their next government checks.  But 0bama had the media, and he knew it.  Whatever story he came up with he could depend on the media to take that story and run with it – to parrot it incessantly and to defend it if and when information to the contrary came forward.  Now we have that information to the contrary – big time.  And the media?  Well, except for Fox News, they’re pretty much ignoring it.  After all, they have Chris Christie and that lane closure thing to obsess over.  Christie, you see, was a threat to Queen Hillary, and if the mainstream media gets to chose between a story that damages Hillary and shows 0bama to be the wretched, unqualified, incompetent liar that he is; or to destroy someone who might present a threat to the media’s next appointee for the presidency ---- well, you know which way they’re going to go.
            Disrespect the presidency?  Get real.  There is no better way to show your respect for the office of the president, and your love for this country, than to do everything you can to expose 0bama.  I may not have a radio show any more --- but there’s always this blog and Twitter --- and I’m just getting started.