Obama’s Arrogant Authoritarianism

Heritage  "Last week, President Barack Obama took the latest step on his road toward an arrogant, new authoritarianism with four illegal appointments that entirely trampled on the Constitution’s requirements. More troubling still, the President chose to shred the Constitution all in the name of serving his Big Labor agenda while killing jobs in the process."
....
"The policy implications of the President’s appointments? The CFPB will now have unmitigated authority to issue regulation upon regulation, contributing to the already-crippling red tape that is strangling business in America. And the NLRB will have the power to advance the President’s agenda to bolster unions across the country at the expense of job growth in a smarting economy."


Jennifer Rubin:  Time for Justice Department transparency  ..."He observes that this shows why Eric Holder “has been a terrible attorney general — he won’t even stand up for his own department’s function as legal advisor to the government, or he has twisted the law so far to please the White House as to render the job meaningless.”....
Quoting David S. Addington:

It is reasonable that people are asking the White House whether a Department of Justice legal opinion was issued before the President made the purported recess appointments."....So, Mr. President, did the Department of Justice issue a legal opinion in relation to your purported recess appointments to the NLRB and the CPFB before you made them?....

"So, Mr. President, did the Department of Justice issue a legal opinion in relation to your purported recess appointments to the NLRB and the CPFB before you made them?"  (Emphasis added)

Bain is our Bane

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/01/10/95369

Obama picks immigration reform advocate to lead domestic policy

The Hill    "The White House announced Tuesday that Cecilia Muñoz, a former senior vice president of the National Council of
La Raza, would replace Melody Barnes at the top of the council. White House press secretary Jay Carney announced the appointment during his press briefing."....
 "All of this has led to questions about whether Obama will garner strong support from Hispanics in his 2012 reelection bid. It is crucial to Obama's reelection that he win a large majority of the Hispanic vote, particularly in critical swing states such as Florida, New Mexico and Colorado." 
Be sure to read the comments to this article.

The Mexican flag flew over a crowd of pro-amnesty marchers
 in New York. Marches like this across the U.S. have been supported
by the “La Raza” movement.

The Truth About 'La Raza'  "MEChA and the La Raza movement teach that Colorado, California, Arizona, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon and parts of Washington State make up an area known as "Aztlan" -- a fictional ancestral homeland of the Aztecs before Europeans arrived in North America. As such, it belongs to the followers of MEChA. These are all areas America should surrender to "La Raza" once enough immigrants, legal or illegal, enter to claim a majority, as in Los Angeles. The current borders of the United States will simply be extinguished. 
"This plan is what is referred to as the "Reconquista" or reconquest, of the Western U.S."....
"As Miguel Perez of Cal State-Northridge's MEChA chapter has been quoted as saying: "The ultimate ideology is the liberation of Aztlan. Communism would be closest [to it]. Once Aztlan is established, ethnic cleansing would commence: Non-Chicanos would have to be expelled -- opposition groups would be quashed because you have to keep power." "


For now, they are just looked upon as potential Democrat voters and welcomed into the halls of power.

Won't you go home, Bill Daley?

http://doninmass.com/2012/01/10/bill-daley-resigns-cartoon/

Rick Moran:  Why Daley had to go  "His power gone, his relations with Hill Democrats frosty, perhaps the biggest reason for his departure was that he didn't fit in with the newly hyper-liberal, hyper-partisan Obama White House where the inner circle is transforming the administration into a cog in the re-election machine:

WaPo: White House Chief of Staff William Daley resigns; budget chief Jacob Lew fills post
"In one particularly embarrassing episode, Obama requested to speak to a joint session of Congress in September only to be rejected by House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who invited him instead to come a day later. The White House claimed that Daley had earlier secured Boehner’s agreement for the original date, but the speaker’s office denied that an agreement was in place."

Greens to Daley: Don’t let the door hit you in …Bill Daley left plenty of fingerprints on energy policy during his yearlong stint in the White House, but environmentalists will remember him most for undercutting EPA’s attempts to set tough new air pollution limits.
The outgoing White House chief of staff, who announced his departure Monday, is seen as the person to blame for successfully urging President Barack Obama last summer to halt the ozone standards.

OBAMA’S NEW DEFENSE STRATEGY: PRESCIENT OR PROBLEMATIC?

Blackfive  "Over the years I have seen more “new” defense strategies than one can shake a stick at.  And I’ve noticed one thing about all of them: for the most part they’ve been uniformly wrong.  We have mostly had an abysmal record in divining what sort of a military we need in the future, and I doubt this particular version will be any better. "

http://terrellaftermath.com/

....


"Libya, for instance, seems anything but a success with Islamist militias poised to take over.  It certainly may be seen as a “military” success, but military success should tied to a strategy of overall success, not just whether it was able to defeat a rag-tag enemy.  After all the the military is but the blunt force of foreign policy, used when all less violent means have been exhausted.  There should be an acceptable outcome tied to its use.  Libya’s descent into Islamic extremism seems to argue against “success” on the whole.  Couple that with the fact that al Qaeda has set up shop there, and you could argue that even if al Qaeda has been “seriously weakened”, it has just been given a new lease on life in Libya."

Obama's Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps

Timothy Birdnow  "Writing back in 2007, Naomi Wolfe catalogued the steps to creating a dictatorship (which she sought to apply to George W. Bush).  Interestingly enough, they apply far more to the man who replaced him.
"Wolfe's steps include:" (Each step is enlarged upon in the article linked.)

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag 
3.  Develop a thug caste 
4. Set up an internal surveillance system 
5. Harass citizens' groups 
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release 
7. Target key individuals 
8.  Control the press 
9.  Dissent equals treason 
10.  Suspend the rule of law 

A graduate course in propaganda: "Michelle Obama and the Evolution of a First Lady"

Hassan Nurullah in American Thinker:  This article is about Jodi Kantor's' column the Tunnel Wall linked to last Saturday.

"This was written specifically for the Matt Damons, Sean Penns of the world. The hardline leftists who have been critical of President Obama for not being more forcefully liberal, not doing enough to drive a hardcore pink agenda."
....
"The right is very good at serving up red meat to stir up its own base. Yet the right is woefully bad at selling conservative ideas to anyone not already smart enough to know how bad the leftist agenda is for the country. And that is why the right is losing the culture war and why the country continues to decline spiritually and temporally."
....
"This is the reason the Roves and Krauthammers fight so desperately hard to ensure a safe man like Mitt Romney secures the Republican Nomination for President. Better to appear the good presidential candidate than to actually have any real ideas to substantively change the nation for the better. Real ideas are an instant disqualifier sure to get you labeled unelectable."

Romney's "fire people" comment

Neal Boortz

Video: National Review Online

"Mitt Romney is being fired on for something he didn’t even really say.  What we have here is a classic case of something being taken out of context.  But unfortunately for him, he will have to battle this soundbite from now through November if he is the nominee."....
"What’s the problem?  Well there shouldn’t be a problem.  But liberals and GOP opponents are glomming onto this “I like being able to fire people.”  Relax, people.  Mitt Romney is expressing his affinity for the power of choice, and if Barack Obama has his way … it’s something that will become a precious commodity that we will one day look back on and realize we took for granted."


And this is how Debbie W-S used it.


Legal Insurrection and Newt Gingrich point out the obvious distortion of Romney's words.  Romney is right: being able to "fire" a health-care provider is a choice the Obamacrats will deny us if Obamacare goes through. If you want to see how dealing with agencies that you can't fire, just go to the nearest Department of Motor Vehicles office and do business. Picture those unsmiling, somber clerks behind empty shelves in those government-owned department stores in the old Soviet Union.


Speaking of firing providers, how about this?  Read "Kodak and the Post Office", by Thomas Sowell:

"Great names of companies in other fields have likewise vanished as new technology brought new rivals to the forefront, or else made the whole product obsolete, as happened with typewriters, slide rules and other products now remembered only by an older generation. That is what happens in a market economy and we all benefit from it as consumers.

"Unfortunately, that is not what happens in government. The post office is a classic example."...More...

Obama’s foreign initiatives have been failures/ Surrender in Afghanistan

Washington Post  "The easiest one to document — and the one most likely to draw Republican attention next fall — is the busted Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Obama arrived in office afire with the ambition to create a Palestinian state within two years. But his diplomacy was based on a twofold misunderstanding: that the key to successful negotiations was forcing Israel to stop all settlement construction — and that the United States had the leverage to make that happen.
"Veterans of the Middle East “peace process” shook their heads in wonderment as what at first appeared to be a rookie error evolved into a two-year standoff between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu." 

Surrender in Afghanistan/ Obama wants to bug out before the election   "Picking Mr. al-Qaradawi, 84, to broker a peace deal is like choosing Benito Mussolini to mediate secret peace talks with the Nazis. 

http://conservativedailynews.com/category/political-cartoons/

"Mr. al-Qaradawi seeks the establishment of a worldwide caliphate ruled by Islamic law. And like other radical Islamists, Mr. al-Qaradawi advocates the destruction of Israel. But not even that is enough to satisfy his blood lust."....

The losers would be those Afghans who don't want to live under the thumb of a brutal reactionary theocracy, especially those who trusted us and sent their daughters to school. But they don't vote in our elections.

Mr. Obama supported the war in Afghanistan during the 2008 campaign, but I suspect he did so only because he so vociferously opposed the war in Iraq and didn't want people to think he was soft on national defense. His heart was never in it.

So I wish he'd decided to bug out sooner. About two-thirds of the 1,864 American servicemen and women who have been killed in Afghanistan have been killed since Barack Obama became president. They appear to have died in vain.

The feckless left again.

Poll: Americans, 2-1, Fear Obama's Reelection

US News  "But in results backed up by other polls, older Americans and those earning $75,000 or more are especially worried about the president getting a second term, according to the poll done by Synovate eNation.

"Nearly half of Americans 65 and older said Obama's reelection was their top fear, 39 percent of those making $75,000 or more agreed."

"As we enter the presidential election year of 2012, what potential news event do you fear the most?"

President Obama wins reelection 33%Taxes will increase 31%Iran will get a nuclear weapon 16%Obama will lose reelection 16%North Korea will attack South Korea 4%

Obama, Iran and National Defense

NRO: Obama’s Indefensible Cuts; On national security, decline is a choice.  "The president’s remarks, as well those of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, contained much vague talk of a “smarter,” more “agile” military that would “evolve” to find new ways to meet its existing commitments in Europe and the Middle East, along with a reaffirmation — all but offered as consolation — that we will be enlarging our footprint in Asia. But behind the euphemistic vocabulary and the strategic veneer is a simple truth: This is a retreat."


President Obama’s Pentagon cuts are indefensible.  "More important, President Obama doesn’t understand that our military’s role isn’t just fighting wars. It’s providing a strong strategic presence that will influence events in our favor — and away from that of adversaries and rivals."

Saudis, Gulf states on war alert for early US-Iran clash  "America's failure to rise to Iran's challenge will confirm its rulers in the conviction that the US is a paper tiger and encourage them to press their advantage for new gains"   What would Ron Paul do?


Max Boot: A Powerful Case for Force Against Iran  "As a result of the growing danger, Iran is getting closer to what should be “redlines.” Writes Kroening: “If Iran expels IAEA inspectors, begins enriching its stockpiles of uranium to weapons-grade levels of 90 percent, or installs advanced centrifuges at its uranium-enrichment facility in Qom, the United States must strike immediately or forfeit its last opportunity to prevent Iran from joining the nuclear club.” "

The Foreign Policy Initiative: The best hope for deterring Iran is to put the military option front and center, says FPI Executive Director Jamie Fly  Continued Iranian aggression, including the killing of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and even a plot to carry out a terrorist attack on American soil, has gone unanswered. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has vacated Iraq and is reluctant to intervene to oust Iran’s closest ally, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.


American Enterprise Institute  The Iranians Certainly Think They've Won in Iraq  "Lebanese Hezbollah secretary general “Hassan Nasrallah has described the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq as a historic defeat for the U.S. and a true victory for Iraqis. . . . In a televised interview, Nasrallah said on Monday that Iraqis owe this remarkable achievementto the resistance groups, adding that U.S. troops would have stayed in the country if they had felt secure. . . . He also compared U.S. pullout from Iraq to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon.” October 25"  More Arab-Iranian quotes offered here as proof...

Media Bias 101: What Journalists Really Think -- and What the Public Thinks About the Media

For you students of Journalism, here is valuable research material for you.


Media Research Center " Over the years, the Media Research Center has catalogued the views of journalists on the subject of bias. In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many journalists still refuse to acknowledge that most of the establishment media tilts to the left. Even so, a number of journalists have admitted that the majority of their brethren approach the news from a liberal angle."


MEDIA BIAS 101.pdf
Part One contents:
Exhibit 1-1: The Media Elite
Exhibit 1-2: Major Newspaper Reporters
Exhibit 1-3: The American Journalist
Exhibit 1-4: U.S. Newspaper Journalists
Exhibit 1-5: Survey of Business Reporters
Exhibit 1-6: Journalists -- Who Are They, Really?
Exhibit 1-7: White House Reporters
Exhibit 1-8: The Media Elite Revisited
Exhibit 1-9: Washington Bureau Chiefs and Correspondents
Exhibit 1-10: Newspaper Journalists of the 1990s
Exhibit 1-11: Newspaper Editors
Exhibit 1-12: The People and the Press: Whose Views Shape the News?
Exhibit 1-13: How Journalists See Journalists in 2004
Exhibit 1-14: Campaign Journalists (2004)
Exhibit 1-15: TV and Newspaper Journalists
Exhibit 1-16: Journalists' Ethics and Attitudes, 2005
Exhibit 1-17: The News Media and the War, 2005
Exhibit 1-18: Slate Magazine Pre-Election Staff Survey


Go here to see the contents of parts two and three.