Category: Politics

Obama’s Gun Control Initiative: Chicago Beats New York in Number of 2012 Homicides. Obama Ignores.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

guncontrolThe Senate Dog and Pony Show concerning Gun Control got started yesterday, as those who wish to take away average American’s guns presented former Congressperson Gabby Giffords, shot in the head by a psychopath,  to testify on their behalf. Meanwhile, out in the Real World, back in President Barack Hussein Obama’s Hometown, Chicago is no longer “that toddlin’ town”. It is now a Demilitarized Zone..a No Man’s Land where innocent young people are being savagely murdered…caught in the crossfire of Thugs.

FoxNews.com reports that

A week after she performed at festivities during President Obama’s inauguration, a 15-year-old majorette was shot dead in Chicago.

Police say Hadiya Pendleton was shot in the back Tuesday in a South Side park and died at a city hospital.

Authorities say Hadiya was one of about 12 teenagers sheltering from heavy rain under a canopy when a man jumped a fence, ran toward the group and opened fire. The man fled the scene in a vehicle. No arrests have been made.

“As usual, the bad guy aims, but he never hits the other bad guy . . . He hits the one that hurts the most to lose,” said Chicago Police Officer Damon Stewart, 36, Hadiya ‘s godfather. “I changed her diapers, I played with her growing up. My heart is broken.”

Police do not believe Hadiya was the intended target of the shooting. A teenage boy was shot in the leg. Police did not release his name.

Hadiya belonged to the King College Prep High School band, which performed at several inaugural events in Washington, D.C. She was remembered by friends as a lover of books.

Two other men died Tuesday and at least eight others wounded by gunfire, the report said.

A horrible murder is nothing new in Chicago. In fact, that city excels at it. The Windy City even beat the Big Apple in the number of murders committed last year.

In a sharp contrast between two of the nation’s largest cities, Chicago recorded its 499th murder of 2012 on Thursday night while New York reported 414 murders as of Friday even though it has more than three times the population, according to police.

Plagued by gang violence, Chicago surpassed last year’s murder total of 433 in October and is set for the highest rate of homicide since the third largest U.S. city recorded 512 in 2008. The number is likely to top 500 on the last weekend of the year.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Friday that the nation’s largest city could finish the year with the lowest number of murders and shootings since 1963, when it began keeping comparable data. The number of murders this year in New York is only about one-fifth the total of 2,245 homicides recorded in the peak year of 1990.

The rising murder rate has frustrated Chicago Police Commissioner Garry McCarthy and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who promised to make the city’s streets safer when he took office in May 2011.

“It’s unacceptable,” McCarthy said in an interview with Reuters on Friday.

New York’s Bloomberg trumpeted the news with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly at a police recruit graduation ceremony in the borough of Brooklyn.

Kelly attributed the decline to the increasing use of stop-and-frisk tactics, when police can stop and search people on the street they consider suspicious.

“We’re preventing crimes before someone is killed and before someone else has to go to prison for murder or other serious crimes,” Kelly said in a statement.

Civil rights groups and some local politicians have criticized stop-and-frisk tactics, saying that most people stopped turn out to be innocent, and they unfairly target black and Latino men. The practice is the subject of a federal court case over whether it is unconstitutional.

About that…The New York Times did some research, publishing a map of the locations of Chicago murders. The accompanying text reads

A New York Times analysis of homicides and census data in Chicago compared areas near murders to those that were not. Residents living near homicides in the last 12 years were much more likely to be black, earn less money and lack a college degree.

They also published a breakdown of the neighborhoods:

Austin – More than 450 homicides have happened in this neighborhood in Chicago’s West Side, one of the city’s deadliest places.

Lincoln Park – A predominantly white neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side had about 10 percent the murder rate of neighborhoods to the west.

Grand Crossing – A shooting broke out during the funeral for a victim of another shooting in December. Chicago’s South Side, in neighborhoods like Englewood, Auburn and Woodlawn, has some of the city’s highest concentrations of murders.

Hyde Park – Less than one homicide per year happened in this affluent neighborhood, which is also home to the University of Chicago.

When President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) started his Gun Confiscation Campaign, ( You Remember. The speech where he used the mass murder of children at Sandy Hook Elementary to jump-start a long-cherished Liberal goal that has been defeated every time self-serving Liberal politicians try to infringe on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.) he said,

We won’t be able to stop every violent act, but if there is even one thing that we can do to prevent any of these events, we have a deep obligation, all of us, to try.

2013 is shaping up to be even worse for Chicago, as far as homicides are concerned. RedeyeChicago.com reports that

Forty-four homicides have been logged so far this month. Forty homicides were recorded in January 2012, according to RedEye data.

Mr. President, I suggest you take care of your Hometown, first, where young black teenagers, full of potential, with their whole lives ahead of them, are being senselessly murdered by thugs in their own neighborhoods.

Get the guns away from the criminals.

And, leave law-abiding Americans alone.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Egypt Imitating the 1979 Iranian Revolution. This is Smart Power?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

MorsiThe Egyptian people have awakened to the corrupt nature of the Muslim Brotherhood.

And, they are not very happy with their nation’s new unexpected theocracy.

The Christian Science Monitor has the story:

Five days of protests in Egypt, with dozens of people killed and entire cities in turmoil, have revealed a whopping deficit of public trust in the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic group that dominates the leadership of this young democracy of the Arab Spring.

The triggers for this upheaval were the second anniversary of the fall of Hosni Mubarak and a court sentencing 21 people for the deaths of 74 people after a soccer match last year. But below the surface of this dissent lies a deeper struggle. It is one trying to define the source of legitimacy for Egypt’s new leaders, or the kind of sentiment that cements trust between a government and its people.

As it has slowly risen to power in the past two years, the Muslim Brotherhood has broken many promises about the role it would play in representative government. Its flip-flops and power grabs in forming a new regime have only added to a worry among democracy advocates that Mr. Morsi would define his authority from Islam, or sharia law, rather than from constitutional rights and secular pluralism.

Even within the Brotherhood, a decades-long debate on reconciling Islam as a revealed religion with liberal democracy has yet to be settled, resulting in splits and high-level defections. A younger generation in the group wants to rely on persuasion to gain support while an old guard sticks to al-sama’ wa’l-ta’a, or “hearing and obeying.”

Now an Islamic movement founded by an Egyptian schoolteacher in 1928 faces the kind of protests that brought down a secular dictator. Protesters even chant the same word used in 2011: “Leave.”

Many Egyptians, or at least those in major cities, appear to be worried that their country might follow the path of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, in which Islamic leaders cite holy writ for secular authority more than they do public polls or election results.

The current protests show Egyptians trust democracy itself but they want more checks and balances on the power of elected leaders. Distrust is built into any democracy as a way to prevent the abuse of power by a few even if the system itself requires public trust.

If the people of Egypt don’t trust their Muslim Brotherhood Government, why does the Leader of the Free World, United States President Barack Hussein Obama (peace be upon him)?

Hold on to something.

Back on January 9th, IsraelNationalNews.com reported the following:

              An Egyptian magazine has claimed that six American Islamist activists who work with the Obama administration are Muslim Brotherhood operatives who enjoy strong influence over U.S. policy.

The December 22 story was published in Egypt’s Rose El-Youssef magazine and was translated into English for the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT). The story suggests the six turned the White House “from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

T

he story is largely unsourced, but its publication is considered significant in raising the issue to Egyptian readers, IPT said.

The six named people include: Arif Alikhan, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for policy development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.

Alikhan is a founder of the World Islamic Organization, which the magazine identifies as a Brotherhood “subsidiary.” It suggests that Alikhan was responsible for the “file of Islamic states” in the White House and that he provides the direct link between the Obama administration and the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011.

Elibiary, who has endorsed the ideas of radical Muslim Brotherhood luminary Sayyid Qutb, may have leaked secret materials contained in Department of Homeland Security databases, according to the magazine. He, however, denies having any connection with the Brotherhood.

Elibiary also played a role in defining the Obama administration’s counterterrorism strategy, and the magazine asserted that he wrote the speech Obama gave when he told former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to leave power but offers no source or evidence for the claim.

According to Rose El-Youssef, Rashad Hussain maintained close ties with people and groups that it says comprise the Muslim Brotherhood network in America. This includes his participation in the June 2002 annual conference of the American Muslim Council, formerly headed by convicted terrorist financier Abdurahman Alamoudi.

He also participated in the organizing committee of the Critical Islamic Reflection along with important figures of the American Muslim Brotherhood such as Jamal Barzinji, Hisham al-Talib and Yaqub Mirza.

Regarding al-Marayati, who has been among the most influential Muslim American leaders in recent years, the magazine draws connections between MPAC in the international Muslim Brotherhood infrastructure.

Magid heads ISNA, which was founded by Brotherhood members, was appointed by Obama in 2011 as an adviser to the Department of Homeland Security. The magazine says that has also given speeches and conferences on American Middle East policy at the State Department and offered advice to the FBI.

Rose El-Youssef also said that Patel maintains a close relationship with Hani Ramadan, the grandson of Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, and is a member of the Muslim Students Association, which it identifies as “a large Brotherhood organization.”

Despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt was voted into power on an anti-U.S. and anti-Israel platform, it is about to receive 20 F-16 fighter jets from the U.S.

The jets were ordered by Mubarak, but the Muslim Brotherhood will take over the inheritance.

In an article posted on nationalreview.com on April 7, 2012, Andrew J. McCarthy reported that

This week, the Obama administration quietly released $1.5 billion in foreign aid to the new Egyptian government, now dominated by a Brotherhood-led coalition in parliament — soon to be joined by an Ikhwan (i.e., Brotherhood) luminary as president.

It appears that the Egyptian people do not share Obama’s warm fuzzy feeling about the Muslim Brotherhood.

That ought to cause a light bulb to go off in the minds of the purveyors of Smart Power!

It ought to….but, it won’t.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Failed GOP Strategy of Passive Resistance

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

boehnercryingOut here in the Heartland of America, I have heard from Conservatives who are bumfuzzled by the actions (specifically, the lack thereof) of the Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate, in regards to the full throttle offensive battle being waged against America by its own president, Barack Hussein Obama.

I believe that the GOP Establishment have ordered the rank and file to shuddup and practice “Passive Resistance” in an effort to show the party as being “bi-partisan” and able to “reach across the aisle”.

Merriam-Webster Online defines “Passive Resistance” as

resistance especially to a government or an occupying power characterized mainly by noncooperation

Examples of passive resistance are easily found in many societies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Student protestors occupied Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. Nonviolent movements across Eastern Europe brought down Communist governments in the same year. In 2000 a nonviolent movement in Serbia ended the dictatorship of Slobodan Milošević (1941–2006). Civilians on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have periodically employed the technique. Indigenous peoples forced the collapse of the government in Bolivia in 2005 with protests and work stoppages.

The most important development of the concepts of passive resistance came from Mohandas Gandhi and the Indian campaigns for independence. As a young lawyer in South Africa at the turn of the twentieth century, Gandhi organized Indians to resist discrimination and unequal treatment. Claiming their rights as citizens of the British Empire, they refused to carry passes and held public acts where they burned the government-issued passes. Out of these experiences, Gandhi developed his idea of satyagraha, which is often translated as “soul force” or “truth force.”

One of the key principles of Gandhi’s use of passive resistance was to find opportunities to publicly confront unjust laws or authority. Protestors, or satyagrahis, defied the laws, but sought to maintain a posture that treated the agents of authority with respect and even compassion. Gandhi argued that the means of struggle must be morally compatible with the ends being sought. Protestors often submitted to arrest and even violence, but did not resort to violence themselves. In a protest march to the gates of the saltworks in Dharsana in 1931, for example, protestors willingly walked up to the waiting police, who beat them brutally.

Passive resistance gained a broad public recognition in the United States as the civil rights movement exploded in the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout the movement years, techniques of passive resistance were used both to assert a moral position about rights and equality and to apply economic and political pressure. Martin Luther King Jr. drew on Gandhi and his own Christian tradition to formulate a strategy of nonviolence. Like Gandhi’s satyagrahis, civil rights activists marched peacefully and publicly in Birmingham, Alabama, in Selma, Alabama, and elsewhere. They also accepted upon themselves the costs of their actions, including discomfort, arrest, beatings, and even death.

Nonviolent actions often also exerted economic and political leverage. Boycotts of busses and department stores pressured private business to end their policies of exclusion. Sit-ins at segregated lunch counters disrupted business until owners relented. Defiant demonstrations often led to mass arrests, which encumbered the police and judicial systems. Provocations of the police to brutality gained national and international political sympathy for the movement.

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the uses of passive resistance in many conflicts around the world became more overtly strategic and less concerned with the moral character of the tools. Passive resistance, one of many forms of nonviolent action, provides a source of power to those disenfranchised from traditional politics. When used as part of broader strategy, it has contributed to powerful movements for social change.

The Republicans have got the “passive” part down pat. The problem is…the Republicans are not resisting. 

Sure, they are talking a good game, but, that’s about it.  

Does the term “Vichy French” ring a bell?

The Franco-German Armistice of June 22, 1940, divided France into two zones: one to be under German military occupation and one to be left to the French in full sovereignty, at least nominally. The unoccupied zone comprised the southeastern two-fifths of the country, from the Swiss frontier near Geneva to a point 12 miles (19 km) east of Tours and thence southwest to the Spanish frontier, 30 miles (48 km) from the Bay of Biscay.

Pierre Laval joined the government the day after the armistice was signed and became the main architect of the Vichy regime. It was he who on July 10, 1940, persuaded the National Assembly (summoned at Vichy to ratify the armistice) to grant Pétain authority to promulgate a new constitution (569 votes in favour, 80 against, 18 abstentions), so that Pétain was able, the next day, to assume in his own name full legislative and executive powers in the “French State.” The Vichy governments in fact survived for four years by never promulgating a new constitution. Their policy changed in tune with the fortunes of the war. When close collaboration with the Germans proved impracticable, a plot was formed at Vichy against Laval, who fell from power in December 1940 and was succeeded as premier by Pierre Étienne Flandin and then by Admiral Jean Darlan. Backed by Charles Maurras’s Action Française (a newspaper that advocated traditionalist, semiroyalist doctrines), Pétain and Darlan embarked on a period of attentisme (“wait and see”) in their dealings with Germany. Vichy became, at least superficially, a corporative state. The republican slogan of “Liberty, equality, fraternity” was replaced by “Work, family, fatherland.” A labour charter was passed, and there was much talk of a Pétainist “national revolution.”

In April 1942 Laval returned to power and contrived to convince the Germans that they could get more active collaboration from him. Germany was now engaged in massive war with the Soviet Union and with the United States and needed greater security in western Europe. But six months later the whole basis of Vichy’s position was transformed. U.S. and British forces landed in North Africa; the main units of the French fleet were scuttled by their crews at Toulon to prevent their falling into German hands; and on November 11, 1942, Germany occupied the whole of France and disbanded the “armistice army” of Vichy.

If these Vichy Republicans do not “man up” soon and start “‘resisting” the plans of Obama and his minions to turn the “Shining City on the Hill” into a Third World Barrio, they are going to find themselves out of a job after a Mid-Term Election in 2014,  that will make the political bloodbath of 2012 seem like a squirt gun fight.

Do not forget, GOP: You serve at OUR pleasure. Not yours.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama Claims to be Just Like You and Me. He Hunts…Skeet.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

marie-antoinette-obamaWell, just when you think you have heard everything lie possible out of the mouth of the Manchurian President, Barack Hussein Obama, he comes up with another whopper.

The London Daily Telegraph reports

Amid conservative anger over Mr Obama’s proposals to ban assault weapons as part of a drastic overhaul of US gun control laws, the president said that he was a keen clay-pigeon shooter.

Asked in a magazine interview whether he had ever fired a gun, Mr Obama said he did so with guests at the president’s rural retreat.

“Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” he said. “And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations.

“And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake”.

Mr Obama’s plans for tighter firearms regulations were drawn up by Joe Biden, his vice-president, following the massacre of 26 people, including 20 young pupils at a primary school in Connecticut last month.

Mr Biden – whose proposals also include a background check system on all Americans trying to buy guns and a 10-shot limit for ammunition clips – has been quick to note that he owns a shotgun.

The president, however, rarely speaks personally about firearms, and is dismissed by many enthusiasts as an elite urban law professor who does not appreciate America’s heritage of gun ownership.

He accepted in his interview that gun culture in rural areas was “very different” to that in urban areas, such as his home town of Chicago, where it is more frequently linked to serious crime.

“If you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were 10, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family’s traditions, you can see why you’d be pretty protective of that,” Mr Obama told The New Republic.

He made clear, however, that his daughters Sasha, 11, and Malia, 14, did not join the clay-pigeon shooting parties at Camp David, in rural Maryland.

A week before the Super Bowl, the most keenly-awaited event in the US sporting calendar, the president risked further angering the heartland by expressing concern about the safety of American football.

Several high-profile professional players have in recent years developed brain damage, which has been linked to the frequent heavy impacts on their skulls caused by the sport.

“I’m a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I’d have to think long and hard before I let him play football,” said Mr Obama.

Why is Obama  so different (and, not in a good way)  from us average Americans, living in the Heartland?

Let us go back to the beginning, shall we? To the Wayback Machine, Sherman!

The rags to riches fable (supported by a cast of thousands) of Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) begins like any other, with his parents, Ann Dunham and Barack Obama, Sr. They met in a Russian language class in 1960, right in the middle of that time of history known as the Cold War, when America and Russia were poised to start lobbing missiles at each other. In 1961 they were married and later that year Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (peace be unto him) was born.

When Barack, Jr. was 3-years-old, his parents divorced. Obama only saw his father one time after that. Dad moved to Kenya and his mother married an Indonesian man, Lolo Soetoro. From ages six to 10, Barack Obama, Jr., attended a private school for well-off families in Jakarta.

At age 10, he moved back to Hawaii and lived with his grandparents. As kids his age often do, young Barack eventually took up with a family friend named Frank, also known as Frank Marshall Davis.

Frank Marshall Davis (1905 – 1987) was an author, liberal activist, Stalinist agent, and self-admitted pedophile (Would you let your children hang around him?) . Davis was involved in Chicago’s South Side Community Art Center, “a meeting place for young African-American writers and artists during the 1940s”. Coming out of the New Deal Federal Art Project, the Art Center was a hangout for the “Culture Group,” a circle of Communist Party members and sympathizers including Richard Wright, Margaret Burroughs, Marion Perkins and Arna Bontemps. Another guy who hung out at the center was a young journalist named Vernon Jarrett. Davis and Jarrett worked together on the black run newspaper, the Chicago Defender. Vernon Jarrett is the father of Obama’s closest advisor and administration member, Valerie Jarrett.

Davis was in the FBI’s security index. This meant he could be arrested and detained in the event of a national emergency. Davis stated singer Paul Robeson, (He sang Ol’ Man River in the movie, Showboat.) a secret communist, was instrumental in helping him move to Hawaii.

Robeson suggested Davis contact Harry Bridges, head of the International Longshoremen and Workers’ Union, the most powerful labor union in Hawaii. Bridges then suggested that Davis get to know Koji Ariyoshi, Editor of the Honolulu Record, a newspaper that supported the policies of the Communist Party of the U.S.A.

Robeson, Bridges and Ariyoshi were all Communist party operatives. Ariyoshi gave Davis a regular weekly column in the Honolulu Record entitled “Frankly Speaking.” When Davis’ column first appeared in May 1949, the Record bragged that he was a member of the national executive board of the Civil Rights Congress, which had been named as a Communist subversive organization by Truman Attorney General Tom Clark. While sponsored by the Civil Rights Congress, Davis signed a statement in defense of Gerhart Eisler, a notorious Comintern agent who escaped jail for passport fraud by fleeing to East Germany.

I’m sure that Barry and Frank just talked “hoops” all the time, aren’t you?

The preceding information was from a biography I compiled about the president, “The Great Disconnect: The Whole Ugly Truth about Barack Hussein Obama”,which I posted before the Presidential Election.

And, as you read above, the “great disconnect” continues…

Until He Comes, 

KJ

Gun Control = Citizen Control

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

guncontrolAlright, boys and girls, let’s play a little game called “Guess the Source”. Your choices are a) The Daily Beast b) MSNBC c) CNN d) Daily Kos e) None of the Above.

…the right-wing extremists opposing all efforts to curb gun violence are the same forces that rallied behind Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, hoping to undermine every other democratic right as well as the living standards of workers and ordinary Americans. It is for that reason, as well as the need to protect public safety, that the same coalition of labor and its allies that worked so hard and effectively to re-elect President Barack Obama must now go all-out to back his common sense proposals for gun law reform.

As Obama has charged, the extremists recklessly “gin up fear” that the government is coming to take away hunting rifles and personal weapons owned for legitimate self-defense. Led by the hate-mongering leadership of the National Rifle Association, they use a totally fraudulent and only very recent interpretation of the Second Amendment which they falsely claim as necessary for protecting every other freedom contained in the Bill of Rights.

One of their unhinged spokesmen, Texas talk show host Alex Jones, launched a national petition drive to deport CNN commentator Piers Morgan for questioning the Second Amendment. Jones said the amendment “isn’t there for duck hunting. It’s there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs,” and then went on to threaten insurrection “if you try to take our firearms.”

Actually, the Second Amendment wasn’t enacted with any of these things in mind. The amendment was adopted as a means to enable the new American republic, lacking a standing army or state national guards, to muster militia to put down domestic uprisings, including slave revolts, to repulse any attempted return by the British and to deal with clashes with Native Americans on the expanding frontier.

These issues vanished long ago. The Second Amendment is obsolete and now has been twisted to threaten the basic safety and security of all Americans. There is no basis for claiming this amendment was intended to permit unregulated personal acquisition of firearms, including amassing military weapons and private arsenals for “protection” from the government. No government, especially one that is new and fragile, has ever authorized citizens to arm themselves against it.

The answer is e) None of the Above.

The preceding quote actually comes from peoplesworld.org, the website of Communist Party USA.

And, they are positively jubilant over this announcement from their fellow travelers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC:

Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday released three proposals to strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which was one of the 23 actions ordered by Obama last week to tackle gun violence.

The proposed regulations would give local law-enforcement agencies access to the gun-sale database that is maintained by the FBI. The rules would also preserve records of denied weapons sales indefinitely.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act already requires federal background checks for gun purchases, but not every firearm sale is covered under the law.

Currently, law enforcement agencies cannot perform a NICS check when transferring, returning or selling weapons that have been confiscated, seized or recovered. The new rules would change that, allowing officials to perform a background check on people who receive those weapons to ensure that they are permitted to own a gun.

Obama ordered the rule change in a Jan. 16 memo that called for “rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.”

Holder is also proposing that the NICS hold on to records of denied weapon sales that are more than 10 years old. When the NICS was established, the Justice Department ordered that the records be moved to a storage facility after 10 years, which Holder says is no longer necessary.

“The FBI has therefore determined that for NICS’ own internal business operations, litigation and prosecution purposes, and proper administration of the system, NICS shall retain denied transaction records on site,” Holder wrote in a notice to be published in Monday’s Federal Register. “The retention of denied transaction information … will enhance the efficiency and operational capability of the NICS.”

The proposed rules would also give Native American tribes access to NICS. Currently, only federal, state, or local agencies can perform the checks, which leaves out “domestic dependent nations” recognized by the United States.

Why are Obama, his Administration and their “fellow travelers” so intent over getting our guns?

If they cared so much about our nation’s children, their supposed reason for gun confiscation, they would not be pro-abortion, which has murdered 56 million children.

David Mamet, in an  article for The Daily Beast, published yesterday, wrote the following:

…where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining “needs”? And note that the president did not say “I have more money than I need,” but “You and I have more than we need.” Who elected him to speak for another citizen?

It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs. One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. “One-size-fits-all,” and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is “slavery.”

The Founding Fathers, far from being ideologues, were not even politicians. They were an assortment of businessmen, writers, teachers, planters; men, in short, who knew something of the world, which is to say, of Human Nature. Their struggle to draft a set of rules acceptable to each other was based on the assumption that we human beings, in the mass, are no damned good—that we are biddable, easily confused, and that we may easily be motivated by a Politician, which is to say, a huckster, mounting a soapbox and inflaming our passions.

The Constitution’s drafters did not require a wag to teach them that power corrupts: they had experienced it in the person of King George. The American secession was announced by reference to his abuses of power: “He has obstructed the administration of Justice … he has made Judges dependant on his will alone … He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws … He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass out people and to eat out their substance … imposed taxes upon us without our consent… [He has] fundamentally altered the forms of our government.”

…The police do not exist to protect the individual. They exist to cordon off the crime scene and attempt to apprehend the criminal. We individuals are guaranteed by the Constitution the right to self-defense. This right is not the Government’s to “award” us. They have never been granted it.

The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal (as above) for 78 years. Did the ban make them “more” illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation.

Will increased cosmetic measures make anyone safer? They, like all efforts at disarmament, will put the citizenry more at risk. Disarmament rests on the assumption that all people are good, and, basically, want the same things.

But if all people were basically good, why would we, increasingly, pass more and more elaborate laws?

The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution.

President Obama seems to understand the Constitution as a “set of suggestions.” I cannot endorse his performance in office, but he wins my respect for taking those steps he deems necessary to ensure the safety of his family. Why would he want to prohibit me from doing the same?

Why, indeed? The Communist Leader, Vladimir Lenin ,answered that question very succinctly:

One man with a gun can control 100 without one.

Until He Comes, 

KJ

“What Difference Does it Make?”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Hillary2One month after being called to testify before a Senate Committee, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally graced them with her presence. To say she showed her hindquarters and prevaricated it off, at the same time,  is being kind.

(But then again, I am a Christian Southern Gentleman.)

James Taranto reports or The Wall Street Journal that

Hillary Clinton is ending her tenure as secretary of state in fiery fashion. “You really get the sense that [Mrs.] Clinton barely managed to restrain herself from dropping an F-bomb there,” remarks New York magazine’s Dan Amira. He refers to an exchange between the secretary and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing this morning.

Johnson pressed her about the administration’s conflicting explanations for the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed the ambassador and three other Americans. “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans,” said the secretary snappishly to the senator. “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.”

So it’s “our job to figure out what happened” but it doesn’t make a difference what happened? Huh? What would we do without rhetorical questions? We suppose we’d answer them, as Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin does:

“The answer to her question is clear. An administration that sought, for political purposes, to give the American people the idea that al-Qaeda had been “decimated” and was effectively out of commission had a clear motive during a presidential campaign to mislead the public about Benghazi. The fact that questions are still unanswered about this crime and that Clinton and President Obama seem more interested in burying this story along with the four Americans that died is an outrage that won’t be forgotten.”

Especially if she runs for president in 2016. As we watched this exchange, it occurred to us that Mrs. Clinton was back in a familiar role, and an ironic one for someone who is supposed to be a feminist icon. Once again, she was helping the most powerful man in the world dodge accountability for scandalous behavior.

As I said, she was prevaricating her hindquarters off, because the truth condemns her, President Barack Hussein Obama, and the entire feckless, anti-American Administration.

On October 25th, 2012, contributor Peter Ferrara summarized what actually happened in an Op Ed for Forbes.com:

As the anniversary of 9/11 approached, the Obama Administration should have known that more security was necessary to protect diplomatic missions in the increasingly hostile country, especially on that sensitive date. But they did just the opposite, reducing security. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 10 that the Administration removed a well armed, 16 member, security detail from Libya in August, to be replaced by the Libyan security personnel that Ambassador Stevens had just told them could not be relied upon.

Based on documents released by the House Oversight Committee, the day of the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, September 11, the White House situation room starts receiving emails at about 1 pm that the mission is under hostile surveillance. The only response was that the Pentagon sends a drone armed with a video camera so that everyone in Washington can see what transpires in real time, as it happens, at the White House, at the State Department, at the Pentagon, at the CIA.

The drone documents no crowds protesting any video. But at 4 pm Washington receives an email from the Benghazi mission that it is under military style attack. Subject: “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack.” The email states,

“The Regional Security Officer reports the diplomatic mission is under attack. Embassy Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.”

The attack was then fed to all of them, the White House, the Pentagon, the State Dept., the CIA, through live video feed. A later email that day reported, “Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.” The feed showed no protest of any supposedly offensive You Tube video.

Just one hour flight time away were U.S. Air Force bases that could have been rousted in minutes to send fighter planes and attack helicopters that could have routed the attackers in minutes of fighting. As Investors Business Daily editorialized on October 24, “Within an hour’s flight time from Libya, at the large naval air station in Sigonella, Italy, and at bases in nearby Aviano and Souda Bay, were fighters and AC 130 gunships that can be extremely effective in dispersing crowds or responding to a terrorist assault.” But the order for the rescue never came. Maybe because Barack Obama did not want to offend Muslim sensibilities by such a show of force.

I was going to show the well-publicized picture of the blood stained wall of the American Consulate, but, that image is probably already seared in your mind, as it is in mine. 

In fact, there are a lot of images that race through my mind as I sit here at my computer.

I remember the image of a lone terrorist, brandishing a machine gun, standing in front of the burning Benghazi Consulate.

I also remember the image of Benghazi barbarians dragging a murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens through the streets, taking pictures every few yards, with their cell phones. 

My mind envisions the image of two brave Americans, up on a roof holding off 100 Muslim Terrorists, trying desperately to hold out for help which was denied to them, until finally the overwhelming numbers which comprise the horde of barbarians, murdered them as well. 

I imagine Ambassador Stevens’ elderly mother, making the trip from the West Coast to the East Coast to pick up the lifeless body of her abused and murdered son, whom she and her entire family were so proud of.

Finally, I remember the show of hypocrisy involving members of this anti-American Administration solemnly welcoming the bodies of those brave Americans home.

Secretary Clinton…the truth makes a big difference…to the families of those that were so savagely murdered that fateful night…and to the millions of Americans who still believe in this “Shining City on a Hill”.

Americans deserve the truth.

And, you should be ashamed.

Obama Puts Our Moms and Sisters on the Front Line

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

bettyboopfatiguesObama and his Liberal Administration are using our Brightest and Best as Lab Rats…again.

Fox News reports

Women in all branches of the military soon will have unprecedented opportunities to serve on the front lines of the nation’s wars.

Leon Panetta, in one of his last acts as President Obama’s defense secretary, is preparing to announce the policy change, which would open hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war, the Pentagon confirmed Wednesday.

The groundbreaking move recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff overturns a 1994 rule banning women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units. Panetta’s decision gives the military services until January 2016 to seek special exceptions if they believe any positions must remain closed to women.

“This policy change will initiate a process whereby the services will develop plans to implement this decision, which was made by the secretary of defense upon the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” a senior defense official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Some front-line military roles may open to women as soon as this year. Assessments for others, such as special operations forces, including Navy SEALS and the Army’s Delta Force, may take longer.

A defense official told the Associated Press that the military chiefs must report back to Panetta with their initial implementation plans by May 15. The announcement on Panetta’s decision is not expected until Thursday, so the official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Panetta’s move expands the Pentagon’s action nearly a year ago to open about 14,500 combat positions to women, nearly all of them in the Army. This decision could open more than 230,000 jobs, many in Army and Marine infantry units, to women.

Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., said he supports Panetta’s decision.

“The fact is that American women are already serving in harm’s way today all over the world and in every branch of our armed forces,” he said in a statement. “Many have made the ultimate sacrifice, and our nation owes them a deep debt of gratitude.”

In recent years the necessities of war propelled women into jobs as medics, military police and intelligence officers that were sometimes attached — but not formally assigned — to units on the front lines.

Women comprise 14 percent of the 1.4 million active military personnel.

Are the physical requirements the same for men and women in Boot Camp? Last June, The Washington Times told us that

To graduate from boot camp, soldiers must perform 35 pushups and 47 situps and run two miles in at least 16 minutes and 36 seconds — but that’s only for male soldiers.

Female troops are required to do 13 pushups and 43 situps and run two miles in 19 minutes and 42 seconds.

As the Army weighs integrating women into armor and infantry combat positions, the command in charge of soldier training is looking at requiring women to meet the same physical goals as men.

If wartime studies over the past decade are a guide, the Army can expect an increase in injuries and attrition among female soldiers as they seek to match men in strength and endurance.

The Pentagon bans women from direct combat roles, but this year opened 14,000 support jobs that can put female soldiers closer to the front lines on battlefields.

The Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is evaluating whether direct combat units should be open to women, and Army officials have talked of making a decision before the November elections.

The Washington Times asked the training command whether it plans to require women to meet the same physical standards as men if female soldiers begin infantry training at Fort Benning, Ga. The command basically said yes.

“In preparation for this potential future decision, TRADOC is starting the long-term process of gathering data to provide the Army decision-makers the information they need to determine the way forward,” the command stated. “That said, an example we currently have would be the Sapper Leader Course, where both female and male soldiers attend. The standards throughout the course are the same for all soldiers who attend.”

The Times earlier this month published a two-part series about two female officers who recently completed the 28-day Sapper combat engineering course.

Since June 2010, women, who make up 2.5 percent of Sapper students, have a graduation rate of 60 percent, compared with 52 percent for men, according to the training command.

The Army’s Ranger School, a 61-day combat leadership course, is still off-limits to female troops. (Ranger School is separate from the 75th Ranger Regiment, the combat special operations unit whose members are classified as Rangers.)

If women were to enter the all-male Ranger School — an option being weighed — they would have to meet physical standards more rigorous than those for men in boot camp.

Would-be Rangers must be able to do at least 49 pushups and 59 situps, run five miles in less than 40 minutes and do six pullups from a dead hang.

Ranger students then face a series of other tests, such as balancing on a beam, crawling across a rope and then dropping 30 feet into water.

The Army’s training command operates Ranger School as a skills-building exercise, and almost all students come from some branch of combat arms. Graduates get to wear a Ranger badge on their uniforms.

At a news conference in May, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno mentioned Ranger School as a possibility to make female soldiers “successful.”

Personally, I am against this. Not because I am a Male Chauvinist Pig (yay, Pigs …soooey!). Nor is it because I think women are inferior to men. Some of the smartest, most capable people I’ve known in my life, were and are  women.

My Southern “rearing” as a Christian Gentlemen causes the hackles on the back of my neck to stand straight up when I think about it.

Men and women are different. We are physically different. (Thank you, Lord)  We are psychologically different. (I have the gray hair to prove it.) And, we are emotionally different. (Men are from Bass Pro. Women are from Kohl’s.)

Women are blessed by God. They are the foundation of the human race. Each and every one of us came out of a woman.

That’s not to say women can’t serve. They are serving our country honorably right now, in every branch of service.

However, intentionally sending them to the Front Lines, where they can be killed or captured, raped, and tortured, just to make a political point, is insensitive and just plain stupid.

It will weaken our Armed Forces.

And, perhaps, that is what this Administration, which does not believe in American Exceptionalism, wants to do.

Obama: Abortion? “Good.” Gun Control? “It’s For The Children.”

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics6 Comments

fetus1I was born three days before my mother’s 40th birthday.  To say I was a surprise is an understatement.  As I recently wrote, I truly believe that they were going to name me “oops”.   That being said, I am grateful that God convicted them regarding the sanctity of the life that my mother was carrying within her.

Prior to 1973, abortions were allowed in some states but restricted or almost banned in others. Every state legislature made their own decision on whether to allow abortions and under what circumstances.  There was no Federal Law in regards to abortion.   Then, in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court gave us Roe v. Wade. It declared a Texas anti-abortion statute unconstitutional and, in doing so, affected abortion laws in many other states.

For any low  information voters who might be reading, I present the following summary:

Jane Roe was an unmarried and pregnant Texas resident in 1970. Texas law made it a felony to abort a fetus unless “on medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother.” Roe filed suit against Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, contesting the statue on the grounds that it violated the guarantee of personal liberty and the right to privacy implicitly guaranteed in the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. In deciding for Roe, the Supreme Court invalidated any state laws that prohibited first trimester abortions.

“We … acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires.” — Justice Blackmun (1973), majority opinion in Roe v. Wade

When you talk to Liberals about this stopping of a beathing heart, they will  claim that, a human fetus is “just a clump of cells”. 

From the scientific perspective, Dr. Carlo Bellieni, in his book “Dawn of the I: Pain, Memory, Desire, Dream of the Fetus,” says:

As soon as it is born, the child shows in a scientifically demonstrable way that it recognizes its mother’s voice and distinguishes it from that of a stranger. Where has he learned that voice other than in the maternal womb?

There are also direct proofs. For example, we register how the movements and cardiac frequency of the fetus vary if we transmit unexpected sounds through the uterine wall. And we see that at first the fetus is startled, then it gets used to it, just like we do when we hear something that does not interest us.

In fact, the scientific evidence is immense. We cannot understand how it can be thought that it becomes a person at a certain point, perhaps when coming out of the uterus.

From the physical point of view, at the birth very little really changes: Air enters the lungs, the arrival of blood from the placenta is interrupted, the type of circulation of blood in the heart changes, and not much more.

As I often say, only blind faith in magic arts or some strange divinity can lead one to think that there is a “human” quality leap at a given moment — certainly not science.

I know that there are some of you that read my blog that are non-believers.  For you and for my Christian brothers and sisters, I add the following thought:

There is a curious unique enzyme found in the human body.   Laminin is defined by the Webster Medical Dictionary as a “glycoprotein that is a component of connective tissue basement membrane and that promotes cell adhesion.”  In other words,a glue within the body.

laminin

Colossians 1:15-17 tells us:

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Sarah Palin wrote the following words of wisdom in a post on the subject of the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, yesterday on Facebook:

…Our Founding Fathers declared: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” However, since 1973, millions of children have been denied the basic right upon which all the others hinge: the right to life.

Lately, President Obama has taken to boldly highlighting children in his speeches. Using kids as the backdrop for his gun control speech, the President claimed his commitment to young ones. “If there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try,” he said. He then outlined why gutting our Second Amendment is the means by which he believes we accomplish this. Every law-abiding citizen’s heart is broken when children are the target of men hell-bent on committing acts of evil, and we agree that the safety and protection of innocent life is paramount.

The hypocrisy of it all, however, is that while the President publicly acknowledges the value of “even one life” when it advances his own political agenda, he fails to acknowledge as much when it comes to protecting the lives of children soon to be born. In that same speech, he proclaimed that “when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable among us, we must act now.” Well, who is more vulnerable than those who find themselves at the mercy of others to honor their existence and receive them into our world? Are these—the truly vulnerable—not worthy of the protection of which the President speaks? Why is it that their cause is never the subject of one of his lofty addresses to the nation? Has he ever even mentioned the March for Life that takes place in his own back yard and ought to be worthy of at least a scant mention? If indeed we have an obligation to save “even one life,” when will we hear our President rally Americans to stand alongside women who find themselves in these less than ideal circumstances to offer the support they need, to encourage parents to choose life, and to promote the option of adoption? Instead, he has committed himself to the most liberal of abortion agendas—so much so that as a Senator he couldn’t even bring himself to support the Born Alive Act that would save the lives of babies ALREADY BORN and needing medical aid. Further, he believes taxpayers should betray their consciences by paying for his abortion agenda. This same President has stated he didn’t want his daughters “punished with a baby,” and remarked that it was “above my pay grade” to answer a pastor’s question: “At what point does a baby get human rights?” Yet now we are to somehow believe that children are the priority in his current aggressive campaign against the Second Amendment?

 Confusing, Isn’t it? Perhaps some words from The Author of Life can help illuminate matters a bit:

Did not He who made me in the womb make him, And the same one fashion us in the womb? (Job 31:15)

Yet Thou art He who didst bring me forth from the womb; Thou didst make me trust when upon my mother’s breasts. Upon Thee I was cast from birth; Thou hast been my God from my mother’s womb. (Psalm 22:9-10)

For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Thy works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Thy book they were all written, The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them. (Psalm 139:13-16)

Thus says the LORD who made you And formed you from the womb, who will help you, `Do not fear, O Jacob My servant; And you Jeshurun whom I have chosen. (Isaiah 44:2)

Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, “I, the LORD, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself, And spreading out the earth all alone, (Isaiah 44:24)

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5)

Why,  even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not;  you are of more value than many sparrows.”(Luke 12:7 )

It’s all very clear to me. I choose life. How about you?

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama Sworn In. Continues Campaigning.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

obamakingInauguration Day is over. Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) is now President of these United States…again. But, is he Chief Executive…or Chief Campaigner?

Reuters.com reports that

Obama, who won a second term by defeating Republican Mitt Romney after a bitter campaign, will now face many of the same problems that dogged his first four years: persistently high unemployment, crushing government debt and a deep partisan divide. The war in Afghanistan, which Obama is winding down, has dragged on for over a decade.

He won an end-of-year fiscal battle against Republicans, whose poll numbers have continued to sag, and appears to have gotten them to back down, at least temporarily, from resisting an increase in the national debt ceiling.

And Obama faces a less-dire outlook than he did when he took office in 2009 at the height of a deep U.S. recession and world economic crisis. The economy is growing again, though slowly.

But he still faces a daunting array of challenges.

Among them is a fierce gun-control debate inspired by a school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, last month, a tragedy he invoked in his speech.

He said America must not rest until “all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.”

Obama’s appeals for bipartisan cooperation will remind many Americans of his own failure to meet a key promise when he came to power – to act as a transformational leader who would fix a dysfunctional Washington.

His speech was light on foreign policy, with no mention of the West’s nuclear standoff with Iran, the civil war in Syria, dealings with an increasingly powerful China or confronting al Qaeda’s continued threat as exemplified by the recent deadly hostage crisis in Algeria.

But Obama said: “We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully … We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom.”

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had declared in 2010 that his top goal was to deny Obama re-election, congratulated the president and expressed a willingness to work together, saying a second term “represents a fresh start.”

But some Republicans responded skeptically. “It was a very, very progressive speech, to put it in the best possible light,” said Republican strategist Rich Galen. “He’s not running for election anymore.”

But, Rich…what if that is all he knows how to do?

Back n November 28, 2012, as the fight over the Fiscal Cliff and Debt Ceiling was heating up, mediaite .com published the following insight:

Campaigning is comfortable territory for politicians and it is an especially cozy place for President Obama to occupy – he is an extraordinary campaigner and has spent the majority of his political career on the trail seeking one or the other public office. But is this an effective tool for governing? One need only look at Obama’s accomplishments in his first term to determine that it is not.

The president did not need to campaign to pass the stimulus act – his party’s electoral mandate after the 2008 elections was broad enough and the financial crisis so dire that virtually any measure the president advocated for would have been passed. The president did, however, need to push hard to pass his health care reform law – a program which remains deeply unpopular and whose future is forever in doubt.

The only reassurance that Democrats who support the Affordable Care Act have that the law will not be repealed (more likely, dramatically amended) by a future Republican administration or GOP-dominated Congress is that broad entitlement programs is rarely repealed after it is fully enacted because vulnerable members of the public become dependent on those programs. Those who hold this view cite the legislative accomplishments of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” to support this thesis. But Democrats who idolize Johnson and seek parallels between the 36th president and the 44th have few to choose from.

Johnson was a famously passionate negotiator and a dogged pursuer of legislative compromise – so long as ultimate goals were agreed to at the end of the day. The tails of his tireless efforts to strike deals between members of his party and Republicans in Congress (some of whom he had better relationships with) remain legendary.

Numerous accounts, notably those of reporter Bob Woodward in The Price of Politics, suggest that Obama is more likely to alienate his opponents in a tense negotiation than to win them over. Woodward noted that Vice President Joe Biden was the administration’s link to Republican members of Congress when several debt reduction commissions were convened in Obama’s first term. Given the vice president’s demeanor during the 2012 campaign, and his concerns for his own political future, it is unlikely that Biden can serve in such a role in Obama’s second term.

An executive in the White House would not attempt to strike compromise by directing his supporters to harangue his Congressional opposition through Facebook posts and Twitter-based guilt trips. Such tactics are impediments to real compromise, but these are the tools of Obama’s first resort.

Republicans have signaled their willingness to compromise by increasing tax rates on high earners and Democrats have begun to see the light on the need for dramatic reforms to entitlement programs. But the willingness to compromise does not automatically translate into a forthcoming bargain. The president seems set on making the political environment toxic and to make compromise less likely in order to secure the notion that he won a mandate in November.

It was announced recently that Obama for America was regrouping as Organizing for America, Obama’s very own bunch of Brown Shirts, who would provide”feet on the ground”  in an effort to intimidate and garner public support for Obama’s pet projects.

To recap…America has a divisive leader who has substituted perpetual campaigning for effective governance of our country, assisted by his own personal army of sycophantic supporters.

While the GOP Establishment are sounding like Neville Chamberlain.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Inauguration Day 2013: “So Help Me, Me.”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

obamabillofrightsToday is Martin Luther King, Jr Day and the day for the public ceremony commemorating America’s 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) Inauguration as America’s 45th President.

Second term, same as the first? …to paraphrase Herman’s Hermits “I’m Henry the 8th, I am”.

Obama will be sworn in using two Bibles, one belonging to Dr. King, and one belonging to Abraham Lincoln.

As far as Dr. King is concerned, this day and that Bible, are all that Obama has in common with Dr. King.

Concerning Lincoln, the London Daily Telegraph attempts to compare the Manchurian President to the Great Emanicpator:

Mr Obama has often been mentioned in the same breath as Lincoln. Not as his equal, but the symmetry of America’s first black president starting his political journey from the same place, Springfield, Illinois, as the man who emancipated the slaves, is lost on no-one.

Lincoln’s magisterial second inaugural address, uncontestably the greatest of all inaugurals, still contains the recipe for a great speech come Monday at noon, says Dr Ronald White, a Lincoln historian and author of Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural.

Firstly, Mr Obama must avoid the pitfalls of almost all second inaugurals by not making it longer than his first. “Lincoln learned that lesson,” said Dr White, “The Gettysburg Address was 272 words. The second inaugural was 701 words. Lincoln delivered it in just six or seven minutes and people were still arriving when he was finishing.”

Secondly, Lincoln dared to be honest. He confronted the American people frankly about the issue of slavery, an institution that cost the nation four devastating years of civil war. “People expected Lincoln to talk about the Confederacy – the guilty and innocent – but he understood this was the moment to give something short, inspirational and from the heart,” said Dr White, “He confronted the evils of slavery and avoided the usual exercise in self-congratulation, and talk about ‘this great nation of America’. It was a great risk, but Lincoln took it.”

And lastly, Lincoln succeeded because, unlike many a re-elected president, he didn’t fall for his own publicity. “In the Gettysburg address, there is not one personal pronoun and in the second inaugural, only two,” Dr White concludes, “Lincoln didn’t talk about his ‘mandate’ – a phrase you hear now from Mr Obama – but directed all the attention away from himself to the values of the great democratic experiment. He understood that he was a spokesperson for something larger than himself.”

Brevity. Honesty. Humility. If Mr Obama dares to dream of even coming close to matching his hero, these must be his watchwords.

Fat chance of that. As long as Scooter has himself, he’ll never be alone.

So, what’s on his  Machiavellian agenda for the next four years? And, what is the First Mooch going to be up to?

According to the New York Times:

What Mr. Obama wants to achieve this term is pretty clear: a fiscal deal and overhauls of gun and immigration laws, steps to address climate change and less restrictive voter identification laws. But what Mrs. Obama wants is more of a mystery. In almost every appearance, she sounds warm, unpretentious notes; on Friday, she continued her Twitter banter with Ellen DeGeneres over who could do more push-ups.

That informal tone can mask how disciplined she is. Though many surrounding the Obamas say she has changed far more than her husband, mastering a role she initially found uncomfortable, she still treats the job of first lady like a dangerous country through which she must navigate safe passage. The woman who never wanted to live in the bubble now uses it to protect herself, according to friends and former aides, preparing her public activities in 6- and 12-month strategic plans, rarely saying anything unscripted. First ladies are often figures of comfort, but she did not address the Newtown tragedy, beyond two brief letters she published, even though some of her fans were clamoring for the self-described “mom in chief” to do more.

In recent weeks, Mrs. Obama and her advisers have been discussing whether to expand her work beyond childhood obesity and military families and how to capitalize on her popularity. On Friday, she threw herself into her husband’s new effort to organize supporters, introducing the group, Organizing for Action, in an announcement video. (The effort did not seem to garner as much attention as her new hairstyle, which set off headlines like “Michelle Obama’s Bangs Are a Total Shock to the System.”)

Mrs. Obama cannot wait too long to set out on a new course: the Obamas will soon have more time behind them in the White House than in front of them. The rituals they introduced are now matters of tradition instead of innovation. At their White House Seder, the small group of mostly African-American and Jewish attendees reads the Emancipation Proclamation right before welcoming Elijah, just as the year before. The president played basketball on Election Day 2012, as he did on most of the voting days in 2008. But this time it felt different: the men older, the action slower, a reunion game with everyone talking about the old days, said John Rogers Jr., a longtime friend who joined in.

Mr. Obama’s entire career has been about getting to the next stage: if he could only become a lawyer, and then a public official, and then a United States senator, and then president, he could create real change. But soon there will be no higher job to reach for, and aides say there is an all-business quality to the Obamas now, a contrast with the sense of possibility that hung over the first inauguration. Early in the presidency, Mr. Obama would sometimes spend hours polishing ceremonial speeches, like one for Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial; now, the president has a more finely honed sense of how to use his precious time, said Adam Frankel, a former speechwriter.

In other words, while confident in the power he wields, Obama also knows that he is a lame duck….and that makes him all the more uninhibited…and dangerous.

As we have been experiencing since his re-election, the gloves are off, and he is going to do whatever he can to “radically change” our country into a socialist nation.

The only things that will save us are: 

1. Our system of Checks and Balances, which our founders so brilliantly put in place.

2. The independence-fueled resistance of the American people.

3. The Grace of God.

We are never defeated unless we give up on God.- Ronald Reagan

Until He Comes,

KJ