World leaders and their standing

 

"I heard Vatican analyst John Allen suggest that world moral authority would pass from Nelson Mandela to Pope Francis. If you like your moral authority you can keep your moral authority…

"Interesting to consider that two of the world’s most humble guys would also be the most popular."  Chip Bok

Election Integrity Activists: Obamacare 'Biggest Voter Registration Fraud Scheme in History'

Big Government  "Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht of True The Vote, another election integrity group, cite as proof what left-wing organizations are saying about how they plan to use Obamacare. Demos, a left-wing organization funded by liberal billionaire George Soros, published a report earlier this year titled: “Building a Healthy Democracy: Registering 68 Million People to Vote Through Health Benefit Exchanges.”

"On page six of the report, author Lisa Danetz argues that Obamacare “will enroll 68 million individuals.' ”

Krauthammer's Take: America's Pacific Allies Should Be Worried

NRO Editors 

 

"Charles Krauthammer had harsh words Wednesday night for American foreign policy when it came to China’s establishment of a zone of control over the East China Sea.
“ 'We had one strong response, which was to send American warplanes into that zone without obeying the Chinese demand that you check in with them,” Krauthammer said on Special Report, lauding the pair of B-52 bombers that flew through the airspace. However, he lamented that the U.S. has ordered its civilian airlines to comply with the Chinese rules even as Japan has told its airlines to ignore them.
"Acknowledgement of the zone by the American government “undercut . . . and alarmed” the Japanese, Krauthammer said.
"America’s allies in the region, he said, were right to worry that the United States might be putting its relationship with China ahead of them, just as it appears to be putting its relationship with Iran ahead of its allies in the Middle East."

Ted Cruz and Mike Lee being vindicated on shutdown

Thomas Lifson   "The GOP establishment is loath to admit it, but the government shutdown is turning out to be a brilliant political chess move on the part of Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. The Obamacare disaster, fully predictable by anyone who understands the effect of incentives and the fundamental incompetence of academic theorists and left wing ideologues, has made the go-for-broke attempt to stop it an obvious profile in courage. "

.... "President Obama's promise that it will not be repealed "while I am president" makes his ego the problem, and Democrats who support him become equally culpable."

Related: Play Him as He Lies   " Fortunately, there is a way out for those whom our president has liberated from those embarrassingly flawed, “bad-apple” schemes. “So if you’re getting one of these letters,” he said in that “better put some ice on it” way he has with people of all ethnicities, “just shop around in the new marketplace.” Only he could make it sound like the marketplace he shopped around in during his Choom Gang binges."

The Minimum Wages of Politics (Updated)

 

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE       "Economic inequality” is to be the great theme of the remainder of the Obama administration, the president announced in a speech that combined rank economic ignorance with shallow demagoguery. And the first item on Barack Obama’s new economic agenda is an increase in the federal minimum wage to $9, higher than the minimum wage in any state excepting Washington.  (Emphasis added)

Comical Conservative

"President Obama can reliably be counted upon to ignore elementary economics — which is to say, reality — when it is politically attractive to do so, and this case is no exception. A wage is a price — the price of labor — and raising prices lowers demand, other things being constant. The effects of a minimum-wage increase probably would not be dramatic on their own, since relatively few employed Americans make the minimum wage, though it will raise the bottom rung of the economic ladder another few inches out of the reach of those without sufficient skills or education to command a higher wage in the marketplace."
....
Low-information voters and Democrats in general may not grasp this next point since their priority is keeping power at this nation's expense:
"There is a way to increase wages while increasing overall employment, and that is to raise the demand for labor. Unfortunately for the planners and schemers in Washington, doing so requires more than simply passing a law. Higher demand for labor is the result of a growing and productive economy...."

 

Thank you, Hobby Lobby

Michelle Malkin

"Religious liberty is front and center on the nation’s Thanksgiving table. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. The family-owned craft store company is intrepidly challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare’s abortion coverage mandate. Hobby Lobby’s faithful owners deserve our thanks and praise as they defend freedom of conscience for all Americans."

Opinion inequality

Jennifer Rubin   "This week the president spoke about economic inequality. It is a problem to be sure, but it tends to blot out other types of inequality that are quite significant."
....
"But there is a great mass of Americans are unplugged. There were about 240 million voting-age adults in 2012; only about 130 million votes were cast. Even among the 130 million who vote, there are millions who don’t know the name of a single cabinet member, never watch a talking head cable TV show and vote (maybe at most) once every four years.

"The plugged in are highly opinionated in most cases. They thrive on confrontation and drive much of the national debate. They’ve made politics into an esoteric subject with its own language. In doing so, they make politics angry, petty and somewhat incomprehensible — which are the reasons a great many Americans choose to unplug themselves. Political insiders sneer at “low information” voters, but in reality these are “low interest” voters who have decided to check out.

  

http://truthandcommonsense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/New-Picture-1.bmp

Yale to hold Non-Human Rights Conference

College Insurrection  "There were plenty of headlines about a lawsuit seeking a court ruling that four captive Chimpanzees were persons and entitled to “the right to bodily liberty via a writ of habeas corpus.” The suits, filed in New York Supreme Court, are based on scientific evidence proving that chimpanzees are self-aware and autonomous, and therefore entitled to be recognized as “legal persons” with certain fundamental legal rights."

 

..."Among the papers to be presented are:

• Personhood and Liberal Neutrality: Should we provide public aid to pets’ owners?”
• Posthuman Personhood
• Establishing Nonhuman Legal Personhood
• What Is A Person and How Can We Be Sure?
• The Personhood of Cyberconsciousness

A Month of Horror for Christians under Islam: September, 2013

Raymond Ibrahim   "The same month that Obama tried to wage war on behalf of the jihadi rebels in Syria (citing “human rights” concerns), some of the war’s worst atrocities were committed against that nation’s Christian minority, most notably in Ma‘loula, an ancient Christian region where the inhabitants still spoke the language of Jesus.
"There, among other things, the al-Qaeda-linked jihadis fired mortars and missiles onto at least two ancient churches before looting them; some 80 Christians trying to defend their homes were killed.  Others who could not flee were forced on pain of death to convert to Islam.
"One man’s last words before being slaughtered by the rebels were: “I am a Christian, and if you want to kill me for this, I do not object to it.”   A nun involved with humanitarian relief said the man “Is a Martyr in Christ in the full sense of this word, since he was murdered solely because of religious hatred!'"

What Islamists do to Christians  "Maaloula was the scene of heavy fighting in September. It is considered to be one of the birthplaces of Christianity and is home to a number of shrines and monasteries, which are listed as UNESCO world heritage sites.
"According to the Syrian Patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic church, Gregory Laham, some 450,000 Syrian Christians have been forced from their homes by the civil war that began in March 2011. He added that “at least 57 Christian sites” have been damaged or destroyed since the beginning of hostilities, and blamed the United States and its Western allies for aggravating the situation by providing assistance to the rebels."

Fast-food strikers, be careful what you wish for

 

The minimum wage and the rise of the machines  "After you heard President Obama’s call for a hike in the minimum wage, you probably wondered the same thing I did: Was Obama sent from the future by Skynet to prepare humanity for its ultimate dominion by robots?

"But just in case the question didn’t occur to you, let me explain. On Tuesday, the day before Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, the restaurant chain Applebee’s announced that it will install iPad-like tablets at every table. Chili’s already made this move earlier this year. "

Fast Feud   "Which is why the same president whose signature legislation slashed employee hours and cost them their health insurance is now pushing for a higher minimum wage, so that people can enjoy self-respect and support entire families by flipping burgers. "

Looks like the millenials are leading Obama and his healthcare from behind

First off, what does Millennials mean?  ... "In 1987 they coined the term "around the time 1982-born children were entering preschool and the media were first identifying their prospective link to the millennial year 2000". Strauss and Howe use 1982 as the Millennials' starting birth year and 2004 as the last birth year.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/12/branco-cartoon-young-and-the-restless/

 

Obama: Young People Will Realize Obamacare Benefits Are “Something That’s Priceless”  "Because what young person wouldn’t find being burdened with yet another bloated entitlement program they’re going to get stuck paying for “priceless?”

Via Washington Examiners(sp):

Woe to Our Allies; America’s new policy of retreat is leaving our friends exposed.

Charles Krauthammer  "Three crises, one president, many bewildered friends.

"The first crisis, barely noticed here, is Ukraine’s sudden turn away from Europe and back to the Russian embrace.
....
The second crisis is the Middle East — the collapse of confidence of U.S. allies as America romances Iran."
....
"The third crisis is unfolding over the East China Sea, where, in open challenge to Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” China has brazenly declared a huge expansion of its airspace into waters claimed by Japan and South Korea."

Read the details on each crisis to see what a foreign policy mess the next administration will inherit from this circus that occupies the halls of American "power".