The Obama Legacy

What this president leaves in his wake.

Greenville News

AIM Editor Roger Aronoff on “President Obama’s Deceitful Legacy Tour.”  Obamacare and the Iran Deal.
. . . "So while Iran pursues nuclear weapons under a mantle of international legitimacy, Obama receives praise for a job well done." . . .

. . . "Another signature Obama accomplishment is Obamacare, which was supposed to increase health care access and quality of care. Instead, it has increased part-time employment and led to much higher deductibles and skyrocketing premiums, Aronoff argues. " . . .

Man “Representing Himself as a Woman” Enter’s Women’s Department Store Dressing Room

A female customer was unnerved when a man, who reportedly made no effort to appear as a woman, but said he was “representing himself as a woman today,” entered the women’s dressing room at a Ross department store in Mesquite, Texas.

Obama Legacy: Dawn of Chinese Empire?

"China has been quick to fill the geopolitical vacuum created by President Obama’s policy of reducing America’s global footprint. With Iran and Russia already gaining ground in the Middle East, China has now formally entered the region’s power play. The confluence of these despotic powers in the Middle East will inevitably have adversely affect Israel’s national security.

. . . 

"Obama White House has been too busy fighting Climate Change, Islamophobia and common sense restroom rules; and can’t bother to stand up to Chinese Communist aggression. Because that would be “so 20th century.' ”

China says it's ready if US ‘stirs up any conflict’ in South China Sea
This contemptible president leaves a world on the brink of war, claiming he has set up conditions to help the next President bring peace to the Middle East. 

When it all breaks loose, he will appear before the press declaring how his successor botched the opportunity He Himself left behind. Obama has spent the last eight years blaming President Bush for the mess we are in. He will spend future years speaking how the next administrations have messed things up and that his days were the "good times". Of course, the under-educated young people will cheer for Barack and want him back in the White House. The Tunnel Dweller

Charles Krauthammer: Donald, Hillary And The Bernie Factor

Investors Business Daily

"Among the abundant ironies of this election cycle, there is this: We are now in the eighth year of the most liberal administration since Lyndon Johnson’s. The primary elections reveal a national mood of anxiety, apprehension and anger, in turn reflecting stagnation at home and failure abroad. Two-thirds of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Yet after nearly two terms of Barack Obama’s corrosively unsuccessful liberalism — both parties have decisively moved left.

Photo added, TD

"Hillary Clinton cannot put away a heretofore marginal, self-declared socialist. He has forced her into leftward genuflections on everything from trade to national health care. At the same time, Bernie Sanders has created a remarkably resilient insurgency calling for — after Obama, mind you — a political revolution of the left.

"The Republicans’ ideological about-face is even more pronounced. They’ve chosen as their leader a nationalist populist who hardly bothers to pretend any allegiance to conservatism. Indeed, Donald Trump is, like Sanders, running to the left of Clinton on a host of major issues including trade, Wall Street, NATO and interventionism." . . .

Camille Paglia perfectly diagnoses the lunacy of campus “safe spaces”

"Suppression of free speech on campuses "encourages, endorses, and celebrates the suppression of ideas," says Paglia"

Salon  "Last month, Salon columnist Camille Paglia gave a talk for Drexel University’s “Smart Set Forum: Free Speech on the College Campus,” a modified transcript of which has recently been made available by The Smart Set.

"Paglia attributed the rise of current-day free speech issues on college campuses to decades of passiveness on the part of faculty, who “failed from the start to acknowledge the seriousness of political correctness as an academic issue,” and “permitted a swollen campus bureaucracy, empowered by intrusive federal regulation, to usurp the faculty’s historic responsibility and prerogative to shape the educational mission.”

“ 'The end result,” she said, “is a violation of the free speech rights of students as well as faculty.”

"Noting the historical rise of free speech activism in the U.S. in the 20th century, Paglia arrived at the fundamental question underlying the suppression of free speech on modern college campuses:

“ 'How then, we must ask, has campus Leftism in the U.S. been so transformed that it now encourages, endorses, and celebrates the suppression of ideas, including those that question its own current agenda and orthodoxy?' ” . . .

Bernie Sanders can’t afford to stay silent any longer

Sacramento Bee

"For the latest round of curse-word hurling, chair throwing, social-media stalking and conspiracy-theory swapping, look no further than the supporters of Bernie Sanders.

"Over the weekend, dozens of Sanders devotees lost their minds after the Nevada Democratic Party, meeting for its convention in Las Vegas, awarded a majority of delegates to front-runner Hillary Clinton.

"Convinced that the establishment had rigged the rules and that Sanders delegates had been excluded for unfair reasons, they booed and traded barbs with people on stage, including Clinton surrogate and keynote speaker U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.

"The convention ended abruptly, descending into chaos that was captured for the world to relive on Facebook and YouTube.

"Death threats and vandalism followed, prompting Nevada Democratic Party offices to close on Monday and its chairwoman, Roberta Lange, to release some downright disgusting voicemails and text messages she had received from Sanders supporters. She also reported threats against her grandchildren." . . .

Broaddrick on 'evil' Clinton rape: 'I could never forgive them'

WND

Scowling girls steal Bill Clinton's thunder

"What follows, as Jackson explains, poignantly and in detail, reveals for the first time how Juanita Broaddrick’s life – like that of so many others – has been deeply and permanently scarred by her unwanted sexual encounter with Bill Clinton. Broaddrick also details Hillary Clinton’s “haunting” and intimidating interaction with her following the sexual assault.)"

. . . "The brutal sexual assault itself has been described in Juanita’s own words in the Wall Street Journal, on NBC’s “Dateline” with Lisa Myers, and in my book “Their Lives.” This interview isn’t about cheap headlines promising new revelations of details surrounding the rape itself. This is about sharing publicly new details of how the rape has affected Juanita over her lifetime. It’s also about presenting Juanita’s experience to a new generation, including millennials who may be more open-minded to hearing the truth about the Clintons now than their baby boomer parents were in the 1990s." . . .

Juanita Broaddrick, right, with residents of her Arkansas retirement home
and Bill Clinton in April 1978, the same month she says Clinton raped her

THEIR LIVES: THE WOMEN TARGETED BY THE CLINTON MACHINE

•A private investigator's confession that Clinton's supporters assembled an attack team to smear a grief-stricken widow.

•The personal hell a former Miss America underwent after her affair with Clinton and why she'll never know what the president's attack machine did to her.

•Clinton's legal counsel secured a high-paying Pentagon job for Linda Tripp as quid pro quo for her silence in a scandal years before the Lewinsky affair.

•A White House connection to a scandal involving tainted prisoner blood and the threats leveled against a female reporter investigating it.

•The story of how one woman assaulted by Clinton personally encouraged another, Juanita Broaddrick, to go public with her story.

"The pattern of threats, bribes and coercion that this book uncovers reveals not only a cold-blooded willingness on the part of Clinton, his wife and their inner circle to maintain power at any cost, but it also exposes the undeniable connection between Clinton's misogynist tendencies and his liberal agenda. "Their Lives" is a wake-up call to women everywhere to re-evaluate this ruthless man and to come together to prevent Hillary Clinton, a willing partner in her husband's attacks, from returning to the White House."

Hillary: the video, the poll, and the myth.

Video of Hillary Clinton 'lying for 13 minutes' goes viral  "A video stringing together clips of Hillary Clinton's lies and flip-flops has gotten 7 million hits on YouTube.  The video was posted in January but didn't receive widespread attention until Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote about it recently.

Washington Times:

“Hillary Clinton’s vast résumé of, shall we say, inconsistencies, is the dog that caught the car and won’t let go. A viral video collection of her comments on various subjects through the years is bestirring Republican hearts,” Ms. Parker wrote. “To those who’d rather vote for a reality show host than a Clinton, the video merely confirms what they’ve believed all along. For independents and even Democrats, it’s a reminder of how often Clinton has morphed into a fresh incarnation as required by the political moment.”

  "Tea on the tarmac"? Really?

The Video:

Hillary losing to Trump 45-42 in new poll  "Even Hillary Clinton’s supporters admit she has a “likability problem,” which is a polite euphemism for her unattractive personality, including (but not limited to) her obvious penchant for lying, her condescending attitude towards others, and her nearly intolerable voice when she gets excited and emphatic, epitomized by her yelling at a crowd about the need to stop yelling."

Enough on her character and statistics; let's get on to economics:

The Hillary Myth  . . . " It's the centrist-at-heart Clinton whom conservatives and Republicans eager for an acceptable alternative to Donald Trump can vote for.

"Only there's a problem: This Hillary Clinton is entirely mythical. She doesn't exist. As the Democratic party has lurched to the left, she has lurched with it. While talking up growth, she has proposed no incentives to produce it. She relies on government spending to stir growth, Obama's woeful policy. On tax cuts, she's for boosting the top rate on individual income to 45 percent, the highest in three decades. Under her complicated plan, the tax rate on capital gains would jump from 23.8 percent to 39.6 percent, then to 47.4 percent with surtaxes. The Tax Foundation concluded her tax hikes would cut annual growth by 1 percent and shrink incomes by at least 0.9 percent. That's a recipe for less job creation, more wage stagnation, fewer business startups, and a despondent country."  Fred Barnes

Life under liberal socialism (do those words go together?)

Will liberals never go away and leave us alone? As Will Rogers wisely put it,

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.

People who never had jobs in private enterprise, nor kept a payroll, nor had to watch a financial balance sheet pass laws that businesses have to live with.

Congratulations, You’re Fired! Obama Regime Dictates Doubling Of ‘Overtime Pay’
"This has some of the same issues of minimum wage. Artificially and suddenly creating a doubling of the overtime would break the back of some businesses."

As the sun sets on the Obama administration, its members appear determined to allow themselves a few final self-satisfied victory laps. The latest cause for self-administered back pats in the West Wing is the announcement of a forthcoming Labor Department regulation that will double the income threshold for full-time workers to become eligible for overtime pay — from $23,660 annually to $47,476.

 The heavy hand of government speech control is on us.

The Washington Times

"Greeting customers as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” could be costly for New York City businesses under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

. . . "The guidance also notes that some people prefer non-gender-binary pronouns, including “they/them/theirs or ze/hir.”

. . . 

“' For example, repeatedly calling a transgender woman ‘him’ or ‘Mr.’ after she has made clear which pronouns and title she uses,” the guidance says." . . .  "Guidance" has the force of law behind it.

Here it is again from the WaPo by way of Volokh Conspiracy:

You can be fined for not calling people ‘ze’ or ‘hir,’ if that’s the pronoun they demand that you use
That’s the official legal guidance from the New York City Commission on Human Rights:

. . . "So people can basically force us — on pain of massive legal liability — to say what they want us to say, whether or not we want to endorse the political message associated with that term, and whether or not we think it’s a lie.

"We have to use “ze,” a made-up word that carries an obvious political connotation (endorsement of the “non-binary” view of gender)." . . . 

(I myself am not sure whether people who are anatomically male, for example, but perceive themselves as female should be viewed as men or women; perhaps one day I’ll be persuaded that they should be viewed as women; my objection is to being forced to express that view.)

Remember the childhood joy of F.W. Woolworth?

I loved those red and gold signs that spoke of the wonders of toyland, especially during the Korean War when military toys came out. Here Woolworth is depicted whimsically and affectionately in the American 1930s:

But in the 1930s, these people were not whimsical but dead serious.

NYC Mayor de Blasio to fine businesses that fail to use correct gender pronouns

The heavy hand of government speech control is on us.

The Washington Times

"Greeting customers as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” could be costly for New York City businesses under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

"The Gotham mayor’s Commission on Human Rights says businesses that fail to address customers by their preferred gender pronouns are in violation of the law and could be subject to penalties.

"The Commission issued a “legal enforcement guidance” for the New York City Human Rights Law, which apparently “requires employers and converted entities to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun and title (e.g., Ms./Mrs.) regardless of the individual’s sex assigned at birth, anatomy, gender, medical history, appearance, or the sex indicated on the individual’s identification.”

"The guidance also notes that some people prefer non-gender-binary pronouns, including “they/them/theirs or ze/hir.”

. . . 

“' For example, repeatedly calling a transgender woman ‘him’ or ‘Mr.’ after she has made clear which pronouns and title she uses,” the guidance says." . . .

The path that Hillary still has to tread

Clinton Scores Razor-Thin Win in Kentucky

"Complete with reports of voting irregularities and angry Sanders supporters!"

"Recall the initial days of the 2016 presidential primary cycle, when Hillary Clinton’s victory over Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucus was the result of 6 perfectly tossed coin flips.

"Now, as we are wrapping up the primary season, Clinton has scored a razor-thin win over sanders in Kentucky.

Hillary Clinton is the apparent winner of the Kentucky Democratic primary Tuesday night, NBC News projects.

The win — which seems like it will be by the narrowest of margins, perhaps just a few thousand votes — will blunt rival Sen. Bernie Sanders primary winning streak by winning Tuesday’s nominating contest in Kentucky.

…After the results came in, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said, “Essentially a tie in a state they dominated last time. And Oregon is yet to come.”

"The press is already massaging the news, because “a few thousand votes” is a stretch. It was approximately 1800, and less than 0.5% difference." . . .

Delegate count: Both candidates within 100 to clinch nomination

"It's Trump's party now, win or lose."

As if Hillary didn't have enough on her plate, this is the question about her economic advisor: Is Orgy Island the new Blue Dress?  . . . "Jeffrey Epstein is a name you may be familiar with, or you may not, but if media rumors are true, expect to hear about him much more in the coming weeks." . . .

"Epstein is a good pal of President Bill Clinton’s. Epstein is also a registered sex offender who got himself into trouble soliciting and procuring the services of underaged girls."

Hillary Clinton can't rely on former President Bill Clinton to beat Donald Trump  . . . "There is no politician in recent memory who seems more a product of her handlers than Hillary Clinton. But her handlers in 2008 did hardly anything for her, and now you wonder if the reinforcements she’s brought in this time are doing any better, or giving her better advice. Because all she continues to do is serve this whole thing up for Donald Trump."

Ann Coulter: Trump's Problem With Women

Ann Coulter   "The New York Times' front-page article last Saturday on Donald J. Trump's dealings with women forced me into a weekend of self-examination. As much as I support Trump, this isn't a cult of personality. He's not Mao, Kim Jong-un or L. Ron Hubbard. We can like our candidates, but still acknowledge their flaws. No one's perfect. 

"I admit there are some things about Trump that give me pause. I'm sure these will come out eventually, so I'm just going to list them.

"First -- and this is corroborated by five contemporaneous witnesses -- in 1978, Trump violently raped Juanita Broaddrick in a Little Rock, Arkansas, hotel room, then, as he was leaving, looked at her bloody lip and said, "Better put some ice on that" -- oh wait, I'm terribly sorry. Did I say Trump? I didn't mean Trump, I meant Bill Clinton. 

"Hang on -- here we go! Knowing full well about Bill Clinton's proclivity to sexually assault women, about three weeks after that rape, Trump cornered Broaddrick at a party and said, pointedly, "I just want you to know how much Bill and I appreciate the things you do for him. Do you understand? Everything you do."

"No! My mistake! That wasn't Trump either. That was Hillary Clinton. ... But this next one I'm sure was Trump.

"In the early 1990s, Trump invited a young female staffer to his hotel room at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, dropped his pants and said, "Kiss it" -- WAIT A SECOND!

"I don't know how this keeps happening. That was Bill Clinton. Please bear with me -- it's late at night and my notes are jumbled.

"As CEO of an organization, Trump had a female employee, just months out of her teens, perform oral sex on him while he made business calls. That girl's name was Monica Lewin-- No! Wrong again! That was Bill Clinton, too! Please don't stop reading. Let me find my Trump notes ...

What I meant was that Trump was the one who later smeared that girl as a delusional stalker. She may have volunteered for the sex -- at around age 20 -- but Monica Lewinsky didn't volunteer to be slandered! And yet this fiend, this user-of-women, this retrograde misogynist, Donald Trump, deployed his journalist friends, like Sidney Blumenthal, to spread rumors that Monica was a stalker, trying to blackmail the president.

"Oh, boy -- this is embarrassing. This must seem very sloppy. That wasn't Trump either; it was Hillary Clinton.

"There must be something here that was Trump ... Here! I have one.

"When an attractive woman desperately in need of a job came to Trump's office in 1993, instead of helping, he lunged at her, kissed her on the mouth, grabbed her breast and put her hand on his genitals. He later told a mistress that the claim was absurd because the woman, Kathleen Willey, had such small breasts.

"Uh-oh -- you're not going to believe this, but -- yep, that was Bill Clinton.

"This one, I'm sure was Trump. In January 1992, Trump went on "60 Minutes" to slime nightclub singer Gennifer Flowers, knowing full well she was telling the truth. He implied she belonged in a loony bin, telling millions of viewers "every time she called, distraught ... she said sort of wacky things."

"Dammit! I don't know how this keeps happening. That wasn't Trump! That was Hillary, smearing one of her husband's sexual conquests.

"Let's just go back to the Times' story, based on months of investigation and interviews with hundreds of women. I'll give it to you straight: When Trump was at the New York Military Academy as a teenager, one person who knew him said -- and this is corroborated by two other witnesses: "Donald was extremely sensitive to whether or not the women he invited to campus were pretty."

"I almost threw up reading that. I am physically ill. "

Trump Unveils List of His Top Supreme Court Picks

ABC News  "Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has released a list of 11 potential Supreme Court justices he plans to vet to fill the seat of late Justice Antonin Scalia if he's elected to the White House.

"Trump's picks include Steven Colloton of Iowa, Allison Eid of Colorado and Raymond Gruender of Missouri.

"Also on the list are: Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, Joan Larsen of Michigan, Thomas Lee of Utah, William Pryor of Alabama, David Stras of Minnesota, Diane Sykes of Wisconsin and Don Willett of Texas. Trump had previously named Pryor and Sykes as examples of kind of justices he would choose.

"The news comes as Trump is working to bring together a fractured Republican Party and earn the trust of skill-skeptical establishment Republicans who question his electability in the general election and conservatives in his party still weary of his commitment to their cause.

"In a statement, Trump said the list "is representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value" and said that, as president, he would use it "as a guide to nominate our next United States Supreme Court Justices."

"His campaign stressed the list was compiled "first and foremost, based on constitutional principles, with input from highly respected conservatives and Republican Party leadership."

"Trump first said in March that he planned to release the list of five to 10 judges in an effort to ease concerns about his conservative credentials, which had come under attack in the heated Republican primary." . . .