Tag: Obama

The most divisive president in U.S. History.

Disenfranchising the Dead Voter Bloc

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

Remember J. Christian Adams?

He resigned from the Department of Justice in 2010 over the handling of the Black Panther case, then he testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that he was told “cases are not going to be brought against black defendants for the benefit of white victims.”

Well, now he writes for pjmedia.com and he has posted this story:

I have learned that Florida election officials are set to announce that the secretary of state has discovered and purged up to 53,000 dead voters from the voter rolls in Florida.

How could 53,000 dead voters have sat on the polls for so long? Simple. Because Florida hadn’t been using the best available data revealing which voters have died. Florida is now using the nationwide Social Security Death Index for determining which voters should be purged because they have died.

Here is the bad news. Most states aren’t using the same database that Florida is. In fact, I have heard reports that some election officials won’t even remove voters even when they are presented with a death certificate. That means that voter rolls across the nation still are filled with dead voters, even if Florida is leading the way in detecting and removing them.

But surely people aren’t voting in the names of dead voters, the voter fraud deniers argue. Wrong.

Consider the case of Lafayette Keaton. Keaton not only voted for a dead person in Oregon, he voted for his dead son. Making Keaton’s fraud easier was Oregon’s vote by mail scheme, which has opened up gaping holes in the integrity of elections. The incident in Oregon just scratches the surface of the problem. Massachusetts and Mississippi are but two other examples of the dead rising on election day.

Florida should be applauded for taking the problem seriously, even if Eric Holder’s Justice Department and many state election officials don’t.

On December 13, 2011, politico.com published the following story about the United States Attorney General’s opinion of the proposed state Voter I.D. Laws:

…“It is time to ask: What kind of nation and what kind of people do we want to be? Are we willing to allow this era — our era — to be remembered as the age when our nation’s proud tradition of expanding the franchise ended?” Holder said in a speech at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas.

This year, eight states have passed laws that require voters to show identification at the polls. Two of those states, South Carolina and Texas, need so-called pre-clearance from the Justice Department or a court, which has not yet been granted. Some states are also rolling back early voting options and adding new registration procedures, while others are imposing rules that could make it more difficult for college students and the elderly to vote.

Critics complain that the measures will have a disproportionate impact on minorities and the poor and are aimed at suppressing turnout of voters who tend to support Democrats. Supporters generally cite a need to fight fraud, though some have on occasion admitted seeking to discourage voting by specific groups, such as students.

Holder suggested that the new voter ID laws are unnecessary but was vague about what action the Justice Department plans to take against them, particularly in those states free to craft election procedures without the prior approval from the DOJ or the courts required by the Voting Rights Act. Under Section 5 of that law, most parts of nine states and a smattering of other counties and towns with a history of election-related discrimination must apply to the Justice Department or a court for permission to change voting procedures.

“Since January, more than a dozen states have advanced new voting measures. Some of these new laws are currently under review by the Justice Department, based on our obligations under the Voting Rights Act,” Holder said. “Although I cannot go into detail about the ongoing review of these and other state law changes, I can assure you that it will be thorough — and fair. We will examine the facts and we will apply the law.”

Holder’s message seemed as much a public exhortation to fight voter ID laws as a vow that the Justice Department would take action to block them.

“Speak out. Raise awareness about what’s at stake,” Holder said. “Call on our political parties to resist the temptation to suppress certain votes in the hope of attaining electoral success and, instead, encourage and work with the parties to achieve this success by appealing to more voters. And urge policymakers at every level to re-evaluate our election systems — and to reform them in ways that encourage, not limit, participation.”

In his remarks, Holder addressed the question of voter fraud that has been cited repeatedly by advocates of the new state laws such as Republican state Sen. Troy Fraser, a sponsor of Texas’s voter ID law, who said at the time the bill was passed: “Voter impersonation is a serious crime, but without a photo ID requirement, we can never have confidence in our system of voting.”

Holder said he prosecuted voter fraud cases earlier in his career but that “in-person voting fraud is uncommon.”

[53,000 Dead Voters in one state is uncommon?]

“We must be honest about this,” he said.

Of course, AG Holder is just acting on orders from his boss, President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm):

President Obama’s reelection campaign launched a national drive Friday to counter new restrictive voter-access laws, which advisers said threaten his electoral chances in November. 

[Evidently.]

Organizers will fan out in key swing states this weekend to teach volunteers and voters how to navigate a series of laws passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures imposing stricter identification requirements, limiting early voting and making it harder to organize voter-registration drives.

It is the beginning of a months-long effort, campaign officials said, to combat what they described as a Republican effort to stifle voting among young people and minorities, two groups that traditionally tend to vote Democratic.

Republicans say the new laws are needed to protect against voter fraud and help make elections fairer.

The Obama campaign’s “weekend of action” is part of a field effort that in 2008 helped identify, register and turn out millions of new voters. Those new voters gave Obama wins in unlikely places, including North Carolina and Virginia, where young and minority voters helped make the difference. Turning out those voters again this year is key to the president’s reelection strategy, but it is also more challenging this year in part because of the new voting laws.

Up until now, Americans thought what Sam “Mooney” Giacana did in turning out the Chicago and Illinois vote to elect JFK was the height of  “shady”.

It turns out that the late “businessman” was an amateur compared to these operators…and,he will probably be voting for Obama on November 6, 2012.

Gibson Guitars, the Lacey Act, and Campaign Contributions

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Is the Obama Administration going to perform an impersonation of David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen and stop summer concerts?

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander certainly hopes not:

“I don’t want the musicians from Nashville who are flying to Canada to perform this summer to worry about the government seizing their guitars,” Alexander, R-Tenn., said Friday in a statement released by his office.

Why seize guitars? Because many of those instruments are made from exotic woods that were outlawed by a 2008 amendment to the Lacey Act, an amendment Alexander himself wrote.

In 2008, Alexander and fellow Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Wash., moved to protect the American forest products industry by adding wood to the century-old Lacey Act – which was passed to protect endangered birds, whose feathers were prized for ladies’ hats.

American timber companies were being unfairly undercut by foreign sources of wood, many of which were illegally logged. Environmental groups also supported the amendment for curbing illegal logging in rainforests by imposing criminal penalties for trading in endangered species of wood.

It was that same amendment that led federal agents to raid the factories of Gibson Guitars in 2009 and again in 2011 – raids in which substantial quantities of musical instrument-grade wood were seized. It also ignited a firestorm of fear among musicians that the feds could come gunning for their instruments, unless they had extensive documentation on when the guitar was made and where the wood was from.

After pointed questions from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and other lawmakers, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Fish and Wildlife Service sent a letter assuring musicians that they would not be targeted for “unknowingly” possessing instruments that were manufactured from illegal wood.

But Alexander wants to make clear that the Lacey Act “was not intended to seize instruments made of wood harvested before 2008.” He said he and Wyden plan to write a letter to the federal agencies to clarify that point.

Both senators held a roundtable discussion with representatives from the music and wood import industries – along with conservation groups — to discuss the intent and impact of the Lacey Act amendment.

Alexander said he hoped to reduce “confusion, uncertainty and paperwork for wood importers and musical instrument manufacturers through administrative regulation.” Failing that, he promised he and Wyden would move to amend the Lacey Act.

Without indicating how he felt about Gibson’s guilt or innocence regarding the 2009 and 2011 seizures, Alexander dipped a toe in that water, saying, “We held this roundtable because instrument makers like Gibson Guitars in Tennessee are an important part of our music industry. And if the Lacey Act as written is keeping them from being able to get the wood they need to make instruments, we need to make every effort to fix the regulation.”

That has to be music to Gibson’s ears, which has had to switch to alternative woods, even composite materials, because they have been unable to import Indian ebony and rosewood since last year’s raid. Buyers of their expensive, high-end products are picky about the type of wood that is used in a Gibson guitar. Gibson is concerned it may lose market share to other manufacturers if it can’t resupply with Indian woods.

The acknowledgement that the Lacey Act may need “fixing” is a significant development in the dispute surrounding Gibson, exotic woods and the musical instrument industry. And months after the raid against Gibson, there is still no word from the Justice Department whether the company will even face charges.

Back on August 28, 2011, I posted the following, in an article titled, “Obama’s Gibson Guitar Raid:  Punishing His Enemies”:

Wood, huh?

Sorry, tree huggers.  It was revealed yesterday, by Andrew Lawton, of landmarkreport.com, that the reason for the raids has about a much to do with wood as a buffalo nickel:

…It’s worth pointing out that Henry E. Juszkiewicz, Gibson’s Chief Executive Officer, is a donor to a couple of Republican politicians. According to the Open Secrets database, Juszkiewicz donated $2000 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN07) last year, as well as $1500 each to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). Juszkiewicz also has donated $10,000 to the Consumer Electronics Association, a PAC that contributed $92.5k to Republican candidates last year, as opposed to $72k to Democrats. (The CEA did, however, contribute more to Democrats in the 2008 election cycle.)

When warrants as ridiculous such as these are issued and executed, there appears no other reason than because the company or individual at hand is being targeted, not because there is any sort of wrongdoing. As a company, Gibson is a legendary. They’ve done nothing wrong, except, apparently, deigning to have a Republican CEO.

The plot thickens, however.

One of Gibson’s leading competitors is C.F. Martin & Company. The C.E.O., Chris Martin IV, is a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the DNC over the past couple of election cycles. According to C.F. Martin’s catalog, several of their guitars contain “East Indian Rosewood.” In case you were wondering, that is the exact same wood in at least ten of Gibson’s guitars.

The Gibson facility wasn’t raided over allegations of tax evasion, charges of embezzlement, or even something as drab as child labor. Not even close. It was raided over what the DOJ deems an inability to follow a vague domestic trade law in India (one that apparently the Indian government didn’t seem too concerned about enforcing) regarding a specific type of wood. Not illegal wood, just wood with obscenely specific procedural guidelines.

So, in reality, Sen. Alexander, Obama’s actions against Gibson Guitars has about as much to do with the Lacey Act as Obama himself had to do with killing Osama bin Laden.

Jar Jar Biden Stumbles Upon the Truth.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Shortly after the immaculation of the leader of the Regime, as I was beginning my journey into the world of blogging, I made the statement that, in terms of Vice-President, America had gone from Darth Cheney to Jar Jar Biden.

I didn’t exaggerate.

Thehill.com reports on the latest open mouth, insert foot moment from the Gaffemeister:

Vice President Biden said he understood the frustration that led many West Virginia Democrats to vote for a felon over President Obama in the state’s presidential primary.

Asked what he made of a felon sitting in a Texas prison who won four out of 10 Democratic primary voters in West Virginia, Biden told Ohio television station WTOV that he doesn’t blame people who are frustrated and angry over the economy.

“Look, I come from a household where whenever there’s a recession, somebody around my grandpop or my dad’s table lost a job. A brother, a sister a friend, a neighbor,” Biden said. “When you’re out of work, man, it’s a depression.” [Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.]

Biden said a lot of Americans are still hurting because of the recession the Obama administration inherited.

“And so I don’t blame people. They’re frustrated, they’re angry,” Biden said.

He added that Americans would eventually decide that the path back to employment and prosperity would lead them to Obama’s approach rather than Mitt Romney’s.

You need to stop those liquid lunches, Joe.

Average Americans are drowning in a sea of debt.

Here are some depressing statistics, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, from an article published May 7th:

Consumer credit outstanding surged by $21.36 billion, or 10.2%, to $2.542 trillion, Federal Reserve data showed Monday. That was the biggest jump since November 2001, in both dollar and percentage terms. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast an $8.5 billion increase. February’s expansion in consumer credit was revised up, as well, to $9.27 billion from an initial estimate of an $8.73 billion rise.

With consumer credit expanding at the fastest rate in the six months ending in February since late 2007–before the credit crunch caused a painful contraction–and commercial banks showing an increasing willingness to lend, Deutsche Bank analysts said earlier Monday the household deleveraging process may finally be running its course.

Still, much of the credit expansion has reflected a shift in student loans to direct borrowing from the federal government, with loans held by the Department of Education surging more than four-fold since 2008. Federal student credit outstanding rose to $460.2 billion in March from $453.3 billion the previous month.

Overall nonrevolving credit, which includes student credit as well as auto loans, rose $16.17 billion to $1.739 trillion.

Revolving credit, which includes credit-card debt, increased in March by $5.18 billion to $803.63 billion. That was the first gain in three months.

The consumer-credit report doesn’t include numbers on home mortgages and other real-estate secured loans. But the Fed data are important for the clues to behavior by consumers, whose spending helps propel the economy.

So, what sort of economic example is our Federal Government setting for us average consumers?

A horrible one, per cnsnews.com:

The White House and the congressional leaders of both parties in Congress have begun maneuvering this week over the issue of the federal debt and what to do when the government hits the latest statutory limit on that debt–$16.394 trillion—which Congress and the president agreed to when they cut a deal on the debt limit last August.

The federal debt is currently $15.709 trillion, or about $685 billion below the limit.

The first spending deal the White House and leaders of both parties in Congress made last year was on March 2. On that day, the president signed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded past March 4, when the previous continuing resolution, passed by a lame-duck Congress in late 2010, expired.

The March 4 CR kept the government funded for two weeks and was approved by a bipartisan 335-91 vote in the House and a bipartisan 91-9 vote in the Senate.

Since that March 4, 2011 bipartisan continuing resolution, the federal government has been funded by a series of bipartisan deals cut between the White House and congressional leaders.

In the meanwhile, under these bipartisan spending deals, according to official figures published by the U.S. Treasury, the federal debt has climbed from $14,182,627,184,881.03 to $15,708,753,671,767.64.

That is an increase of $1,526,126,486,886.61.

Given that the Census Bureau estimates there are about 117,538,000 households in the United States, the per household increase in the federal debt since Congress enacted its March 4, 2011 bipartisan spending deal has been approximately $12,984.

So, what is President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) doing about our National Debt?

Per openmarkets.org, he’s trying to add to it:

President Obama’s proposed budget is so irresponsible that even the Senate, controlled by Obama’s own political party, just rejected it in a 99-to-0 vote. Reading the proposed budget does not inspire confidence, even in liberal journalists. In February, USA Today wrote that “Obama’s budget plan leaves debt bomb ticking… The best test of a budget proposal these days is whether it reins in the national debt… The election-year budget President Obama sent to Congress on Monday fails that test.”

The Los Angeles Times noted on February 14 that Obama’s proposed budget “offers no real solution to the United States’ long-term fiscal problems.” That same day, the Washington Post wrote that “Mr. Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2013 falls short. At the end of the 10-year budget window, he would have the national debt at a disturbing 76.5 percent of gross domestic product” even under very optimistic assumptions. “The final budget of his first term does not reflect the leadership on issues of debt and deficit that Mr. Obama once vowed.”

The Detroit News noted that “President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget proposal should be dismissed as a blueprint for his re-election campaign. But it’s worse than that. If passed as presented — and there’s little likelihood of that — the spending plan would lock America on an auto-pilot course for Greece.” (Editorial, “Obama Budget Shirks Off Any Pretense To Fiscal Responsibility,” The Detroit News, 2/14/12.) The Chicago Tribune called Obama’s budget the blueprint for a “debt debacle.” In March, the House rejected the Obama budget in a 414-0 vote. In 2008, Obama promised a “net spending cut,” but as soon as he was elected, he proposed massive spending increases.

While the GOP-controlled House has passed a budget plan of its own, the Democratic-controlled Senate has not passed a single budget during the Obama administration, leaving the country without an official budget for over a thousand days. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) acknowledged that “there’s no excuse” for Senate Democrats’ failure to pass a budget, and that a state governor might face impeachment for similarly failing to put together a budget.

No chance of that happening in Washington, DC.  A realistic National Budget would lead to those professional politicians actually being held accountable.  And those jokers up there have never seen a tax dollar that they did not want to spend.

Obama: Sweet Home Hawaii…or Kenya?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics7 Comments

Once upon a time….within the mythical halls of a fabled ivy-covered Law School named Hahvahd, there dwelt an ambitious young scion known as Barry Soetoro…err…I mean Barack Hussein Obama.  He was known far and wide as the Editor of the Harvard Law Review.

The young “born leader” soon signed with a Literary Agency, for the purpose of marketing an upcoming book.  The Literary Agency, Acton & Dystel, published a brochure in 1991 which included the following short biography of the young liege:

Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation. He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.

Mysteriously, in 2007, his birthplace on that biography was changed from Kenya to Hawaii.

An explanation of this curious biography was given yesterday:

Miriam Goderich edited the text of the bio; she is now a partner at the Dystel & Goderich agency, which lists Obama as one of its current clients.

“This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me–an agency assistant at the time,” Goderich wrote in an emailed statement to Yahoo News. “There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more.”

A copy of the booklet was published on Breitbart.com, under the headline: ” Obama’s Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: ‘Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.’ It was part of the “vetting” of the president the site’s late founder, Andrew Breitbart, had promised.

Ms. Goderich still represents President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm).

Obama addressed the curious question of the location of his birth in April of 2011, by producing a less-than-satisfying copy of his long form birth certificate from Hawaii, which many Americans thought was a cut and paste job.

After refusing for more than two years to indulge the most corrosive of conspiracy theories questioning his legitimacy, President Obama finally decided that he’d had enough.

He was frustrated and annoyed that questions about where he was born — once the province of the political fringe and more recently fanned by showman and real estate mogul Donald Trump — had arisen even in an interview last week with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos.

The “birther” question had become a distraction, one that was getting in Obama’s way as he tried to sell the country on his approach to long-term deficit reduction.

On April 19, Obama ordered White House counsel Robert Bauer to find out what it would take to retrieve a longer and more detailed version of his Hawaiian birth certificate, a document not routinely released by state authorities.

That set into motion several days of intense, secret maneuvering that culminated in an extraordinary moment Wednesday. The president appeared in the White House briefing room with evidence that he had indeed been born in the United States, as the Constitution requires.

In a six-minute statement, Obama alternately poked fun at the “sideshows and carnival barkers” that had made such a declaration necessary and pleaded for the media and political world to focus on the serious challenges that face the nation.

“We do not have time for this silliness,” Obama said. “We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve.”

Some of the president’s conservative critics have pushed the theory that Obama, whose father was Kenyan, was born in Africa, as a way to question his constitutional legitimacy and even his basic American-ness. It is a falsehood that has gained remarkable currency. The most recent CBS/New York Times poll suggests that about a quarter of Americans believe it to be true. Among Republicans, 45 percent said they think Obama was not born in the United States.

That number may be about to go up.

Here’s a short Civics lession from usgovinfo.about.com:

Only native-born U.S. citizens (or those born abroad, but only to parents who were both citizens of the U.S.) may be president of the United States, though from time to time that requirement is called into question, most recently after Arnold Schwarzenegger, born in Austria, was elected governor of California, in 2003. The Constitution originally provided a small loophole to this provision: One needn’t have been born in the United States but had to be a citizen at the time the Constitution was adopted. But, since that occurred in 1789, that ship has sailed.

Was President Obama “telling a story” to that Literary Agency in 1991 or to the American people when he said that he was eligible to run for the Presidency in 2008?

A 16-year-old “fact checking error”?  Gimme a break.

The Obama Administration and Terrorism: Don’t Say the “I” Word.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

The War on Terror is still being fought by those who are sworn to protect us everyday…even if they are forbidden from publicly identifying or profiling the enemy.

Reuters News has the story:

Law enforcement and homeland security personnel face an average of 55 daily encounters with “known or suspected terrorists” named on government watchlists, officials told Reuters.

The figure – which equals more than 20,000 contacts per year – underscores the growing sweep of the watchlists, which have expanded significantly since a failed Christmas Day 2009 bombing attempt of a U.S. airliner. But officials note that very few of those daily contacts lead to arrests.

Civil liberties groups question the use of watchlists, and they have been ridiculed for ensnaring innocent citizens.

U.S. officials said the encounters, which involve airport and border security personnel as well as federal and local law enforcement officers, are reported to the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), an interagency unit led by an FBI official based in a tightly guarded building in northern Virginia.

At its headquarters, the TSC operates a 24-hour command center, resembling something from a Hollywood thriller, complete with giant wall-screen projections and signs flashing “SECRET.”

Officials said that when a law enforcement or homeland security officer in the field stops a person whose name matches a name in the TSC’s databases, the officer is supposed to phone the TSC command center for instructions. Based on information in the databases, the TSC then will advise the officer in the field how to proceed, which could range from releasing the suspect to calling in federal officers as backup.

The command center gets between 100 and 150 inquiries a day, of which an average of 55 involve individuals who turn out to be listed on one of the federal watch lists, officials said. Of those calls, about 60 percent come from federal officers at border or airport security posts; the rest come from local police.

“There are incidents every single day,” said TSC director Timothy Healy.

The watchlists include the best known “no fly list” as well as a “selectee list” of people who the government thinks should get extra screening or questioning before being allowed to board an airplane.

…A suspect’s name is put on the “no fly” list if they are deemed by government experts to be a threat to aviation, to be planning an attack or if they are “operationally capable” and are known to be planning to attend, or to have already attended, a militant training camp.

Fewer than 500 of the individuals on the no-fly list are U.S. citizens, officials said.

Waitasec.  You mean we can start calling these jerks “terrorists” again?  I thought they were “misguided youths” creating “man-caused disasters”?  At least, that’s what we were told by newsbusters.org, back in March of 2009:

Even as President Obama compares bankers to suicide bombers, his Homeland Security Secretary is suggesting the T-word, terrorism, is too inflammatory and representative of old-fashioned “politics of fear.” She’s announced a new term: “man-caused disaster.” From an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Madame Secretary, in your first testimony to the US Congress as Homeland Security Secretary you never mentioned the word “terrorism.” Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?

NAPOLITANO: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word “terrorism,” I referred to “man-caused” disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.

But what if the suicide bomber is a female? Isn’t it sexist to use “man-caused disaster”?

Why did the Obama Administration forbid the use of the term Islamic Terroist” in the first place?

Perhaps a clue to the answer to that may be found in the new book written by Ed Klein, “The Amateur:  Barack Obama in the White House”.  In the book, Klein says that Rev. Wright, a former American Muslim, took Obama under his wing, becoming a father figure to him.

“Obama was steeped in Islam but knew nothing about Christianity,” Klein says.

Klein asked Wright if he converted Obama from being a Muslim into a Christian.

“He said, I don’t know about that. but I can tell you that I made it easy for him to come to an understanding of who Jesus Christ is and not feel that he was turning his back on his Islamic friends and his Islamic traditions and his understanding of Islam,” Klein says.

In an article posted at The Daily Caller on October 21, 2011…

Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole confirmed on Wednesday that the Obama administration was pulling back all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities, in order to eliminate all references to Islam that some Muslim groups have claimed are offensive.

“I recently directed all components of the Department of Justice to re-evaluate their training efforts in a range of areas, from community outreach to national security,” Cole told a panel at the George Washington University law school.

The move comes after complaints from advocacy organizations including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others identified as Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the 2004 Holy Land Foundation terror fundraising trial.

In a Wednesday Los Angeles Times op-ed, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) president Salam al-Marayati threatened the FBI with a total cutoff of cooperation between American Muslims and law enforcement if the agency failed to revise its law enforcement training materials.

Maintaining the training materials in their current state “will undermine the relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim American community,” al-Marayati wrote.

Multiple online sources detail MPAC’s close alignment with CAIR.

So, to recap, our Law Enforcement officials and Homeland Security Agents handle an average of 55 “terrorist” encounters per day, consisting of people who are recorded on a government watchlist, which includes a no-fly list, which has less than 500 U.S. Citizens listed on it.

Therefore, one must conclude that the majority of these terrorists are not U.S. Citizens.   

Hmmm.  I wonder who they are and where they hail from. Mongolia?

Obama and the Media: A Love Story

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

Yesterday, President Barack Hussein Obama blamed the Media for Americans’ lack of faith in their country’s institutions.

CNSNews.com has the story:

President Barack Obama pointed a finger at the news media today when he gave the commencement address at all-female Barnard College in New York City, attributing some of the blame for what he described as a lack of faith in American institutions on news reports that focus on “sensationalism” and “scandal” and carry “a message that change isn’t possible.”

In a survey conducted last September, Gallup discovered that 47 percent of Americans believe the media is “too liberal” while only 13 percent believe it is “too conservative.” Thirty-six percent said they believed the media was “just about right.”

“And while opportunities for women have grown exponentially over the last 30 years, as young people, in many ways you have it even tougher than we did,” Obama said.

President Obama, lost in his own hubris, has inadvertently opened a Pandora’s Box of his own making.  Yes, Americans distrust the MSM, but it’s because they are biased and are all too happy to carry the water for President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) and the Democratic Party.

A Pew Research Center survey of 1,000 adults conducted in January 2012 and released the following month found a record high 67 percent of Americans see “a great deal” or “fair amount” of “political bias” in the news media. Such a widespread perception of bias is bad news for the media, since most Americans (68%) also told Pew’s researchers they prefer to get their political news from sources “that have no particular political point of view.”

KEY FINDINGS: 

Pew found that “the number saying there is a great deal of political bias in the news has risen to a new high, with the most intense criticism coming from Tea Party Republicans.” A record high 67 percent of Americans see “a great deal” (37%) or “fair amount” (30%) of political bias in the news media, up from 63 percent just four months earlier.

Among self-described Tea Party Republicans, 74 percent saw a “great deal” of political bias in the media. Among all Republicans, 49 percent saw a “great deal” of bias in the news, vs. 35 percent of independents and 32 percent of Democrats.

“Men (41%) are somewhat more likely than women (33%) to see bias in the news,” and “higher-earning and better-educated Americans [are] more likely to say there is a great deal of political bias in the news.”

“Among news audiences, those who cite the Fox News Channel or the radio as their main source of campaign news are the most likely to say there is a great deal of bias in news coverage.”

Despite the widespread perception of a biased media, Pew found “most Americans [68%] say they prefer to get their news from sources that have no particular point of view than from sources that share their political view [23%].”

How about some examples of the Main Stream Media’s adoration of their “messiah”?

“Getting Chills” Upon Hearing Obama’s “Historic Words”

Co-host George Stephanopoulos: “What a watershed moment. You know, whatever people think about this issue, and we know it’s controversial, there’s no denying when a President speaks out for the first time like that, it is history.”

Co-host Robin Roberts: “And let me tell you, George, I’m getting chills again. Because when you sit in that room and you hear him say those historic words — it was not lost on anyone that was in the room.”

— ABC’s Good Morning America, May 10.

Too Obvious to Deny: Media “Uniformly” Back Obama on Gay Marriage

“So many people in the media seem to uniformly support same-sex marriage. Do you think that this dialogue we’re having nationally doesn’t adequately recognize that for many people, this is an issue that they struggle with and don’t believe in?”

— Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s Today, May 10.

“I think that the media is as divided on this issue as the Obama family — which is to say not at all. And so he’s never going to get negative coverage for this….When you have almost the entire media establishment on your side on an issue in a presidential campaign, it’s very hard to lose politically.”

— Mark Halperin on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, May 10.

Watch Out for Evil “Wolves… Giggling With Delight”

“It is a pretty profound statement by our President. I don’t want to get past that too quickly. That’s the good news for everybody in the country in terms of freedom and the long march towards liberalism in the country…. But there has always been another army out there that feeds on those who resent it. That army has been out there during Jim Crow. It was out there during abolition, during suffrage. There’s always an army that feeds on change and feeds against it — the wolves, and they’re being released right now and they’re probably giggling with delight at how they’re going to use this.”

— Chris Matthews during MSNBC live coverage during the 3pm hour, May 9, shortly after ABC released clips of Obama’s statement on same-sex marriage.

So, Mr. President, you were half-right.  Yes, the media is corrupt.  However, you and your cronies are the ones benefiting from their corruption.

Look, three love affairs in history, are Abelard and Eloise, Romeo and Juliet and the American media and this President at the moment. But this doesn’t matter over time. Reality will impinge. If his programs work, he’s fine. If it doesn’t work, all of the adulation of journalists in the world won’t matter.
George Will

Andrew Sullivan: Being Gay is like Being Black…or Something

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

This week’s edition of Newsweek Magazine will feature a very “special” article in it by self-proclaimed Gay Conservative Andrew Sullivan (and if this guy is a “Conservative”, I’m a blonde 22-year-old Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader named Buffy).  In the article, Sullivan equates Obama’s Black Experience to being Gay:

Last week he did it—in a move whose consequences are simply impossible to judge. White House sources told me that after the interview with ABC News, the president felt as if a weight had been lifted off him. Yes, he was bounced into it by Joe Biden, the lovable Irish-Catholic rogue who couldn’t help but tell the truth about his own views on TV (only to be immediately knocked down by David Axelrod on Twitter). But Obama had been planning to endorse gay marriage before his reelection for a while. White House sources say that if Obama had been a state senator in New York last year when the Albany legislature legalized gay marriage, he’d have voted in favor. But no one asked. The “make news” reveal was scheduled for The View. In the end, scrambling to catch up with his veep, he turned to his fellow ESPN fan, Robin Roberts, a Christian African-American from Mississippi, to quell the sudden kerfuffle. Even this was calculated: to have this moment occur between two African-Americans would help Obama calm opposition within parts of the black community.

The interview, by coincidence, came the day after North Carolina voted emphatically to ban all rights for gay couples in the state constitution. For gay Americans and their families, the emotional darkness of Tuesday night became a canvas on which Obama could paint a widening dawn. But I didn’t expect it. Like many others, I braced myself for disappointment. And yet when I watched the interview, the tears came flooding down. The moment reminded me of my own wedding day. I had figured it out in my head, but not my heart. And I was utterly unprepared for how psychologically transformative the moment would be. To have the president of the United States affirm my humanity—and the humanity of all gay Americans—was, unexpectedly, a watershed. He shifted the mainstream in one interview. And last week, a range of Democratic leaders—from Harry Reid to Steny Hoyer—backed the president, who moved an entire party behind a position that only a few years ago was regarded as simply preposterous. And in response, Mitt Romney could only stutter.

…This is the gay experience: the discovery in adulthood of a community not like your own home and the struggle to belong in both places, without displacement, without alienation. It is easier today than ever. But it is never truly without emotional scar tissue. Obama learned to be black the way gays learn to be gay. And in Obama’s marriage to a professional, determined, charismatic black woman, he created a kind of family he never had before, without ever leaving his real family behind. He did the hard work of integration and managed to create a space in America for people who did not have the space to be themselves before. And then as president, he constitutionally represented us all.

I have always sensed that he intuitively understands gays and our predicament—because it so mirrors his own. And he knows how the love and sacrifice of marriage can heal, integrate, and rebuild a soul. The point of the gay-rights movement, after all, is not about helping people be gay. It is about creating the space for people to be themselves. This has been Obama’s life’s work. And he just enlarged the space in this world for so many others, trapped in different cages of identity, yearning to be released and returned to the families they love and the dignity they deserve.

Back on December 31, 2004, Dr. Thomas Sowell, the respected Black Economist, wrote the following in an article titled, “Gay marriage ‘rights'”, published at townhall.com:

Of all the phony arguments for gay marriage, the phoniest is the argument that it is a matter of equal rights.Marriage is not a right extended to individuals by the government. It is a restriction on the rights they already have.

People who are simply living together can make whatever arrangements they want, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual. They can divide up their worldly belongings 50-50 or 90-10 or whatever other way they want. They can make their union temporary or permanent or subject to cancellation at any time.

…The time is long overdue to stop word games about equal rights from leading to special privileges — for anybody — and gay marriage is as good an issue on which to do so as anything else.

Incidentally, it is not even clear how many homosexuals actually want marriage, even though gay activists are pushing it.

What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS.

…There is no limit to what people will do if you let them get away with it. That our schools, which are painfully failing to educate our children to the standards in other countries, have time for promoting homosexuality is truly staggering.

Every special interest group has an incentive to take something away from society as a whole. Some will be content just to siphon off a share of the taxpayers’ money for themselves. Others, however, want to dismantle a part of the structure of values that make a society viable.

They may not want to bring down the whole structure, just get rid of the part that cramps their style. But when innumerable groups start dismantling pieces of the structure that they don’t like, we can be headed for the kinds of social collapses seen both in history and in other parts of the world in our own times.

I have no desire to destroy somebody’s happiness.  

That being said, I don’t want 5% of America to have the “right” to re-define a word that has meant one thing since time immemorial, simply because they believe that it brings to their lifestyle the label of “normalcy”.

Another Saturday Morning With Bubba

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

Well, howdy, Mr. President. Good to see you. Please…have a seat.

Waitress, one Rooty-Tooty Fresh ‘n Fruity Breakfast for President Clinton, please, with a large sweet tea to drink.

Wow, Mr. President. Did you see this article in the New York Post yesterday? You didn’t? Here’s, let me read some of it for you:

The title of Klein’s explosive, unauthorized bio of Obama, “The Amateur” (Regnery Publishing), was taken directly from Bill Clinton’s bombshell criticism of the president, the author said.

“Barack Obama,” Bill Clinton said, according to book excerpts, “is an amateur.”

The withering criticism is incredible, given the fact that Bill Clinton is actively campaigning for Obama’s re-election.

But according to the book, Bill Clinton unloaded on Obama and pressed Hillary to run against her boss during a gathering in the ex-president’s home office in Chappaqua last August that included longtime friends, Klein said.

“The economy’s a mess, it’s dead flat. America has lost its Triple-A rating . . . You know better than Obama does,” Bill said.

Bill Clinton insisted he had “no relationship” with Obama and had been consulted more frequently by his presidential successor, George W. Bush.

Obama, Bill Clinton said, “doesn’t know how to be president” and is “incompetent.”

But Hillary resisted the entreaties, according to two of the guests interviewed for the book.

“Why risk everything now?” a skeptical Hillary told her husband, emphasizing that she wanted to leave a legacy as secretary of state.

“Because,” Bill replied, his voice rising, “the country needs you!”

“The country needs us!” added Bill.

He later even joked about the prospect of having two Clinton presidential libraries — about the only time that Hillary cracked a smile.

“I want my term [at the State Department] to be an important one, and running away from it now would leave it as a footnote,” Hillary argued.

She said she had the option of running again in 2016.

But Bill wouldn’t let go.

“I know you’re young enough!” Bill said, his voice booming. “That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried that I’m not young enough.”

“I’m the highest-ranking member in Obama’s Cabinet. I eat breakfast with the guy every Thursday morning. What about loyalty, Bill? What about loyalty?” she responded.

“Loyalty is a joke,’’ Bill shot back. “Loyalty doesn’t exist in politics.”

Bill’s verbal battle with Hillary over the presidency, if anything, intensified when daughter Chelsea showed up with her husband, Marc Mezvinsky.

“You deserve to be president,” Chelsea said.

Bill was clearly pleased that Chelsea was on his side and vowed to have allies commission polls on a Hillary-Obama matchup.

“What are you trying to do — force my hand?” Hillary said.

“I want everyone to know how strong you poll,” Bill said.

Hillary said, “Go ahead and knock yourself out.”

Well, Mr. President, the publishing of this book about you certainly isn’t going to help the Missus’ relationship with “The Lightbringer”, is it?

But, in reality, you’ve felt this way for a while, haven’t you?

Remember back on that Friday afternoon in December 2010?  No?  Well, Jon Ward of The Daily Caller described it this way:

In terms of Washington political drama, Friday was an instant classic.

President Obama ushered former President Bill Clinton to the White House briefing room late Friday for an impromptu press session, then abruptly left the wonky and winsome Arkansan at the podium by himself to defend the Obama administration’s tax deal.

“I’ve been keeping the first lady waiting for about half an hour, so I’m going to take off,” Obama said.

Clinton chuckled, joking, “I don’t want to make her mad. Please go,” and then quickly turned back to the microphone and began taking questions from the White House press corps, which had been given no advance notice of the two presidents’ trip to the briefing room.

At the same time on Capitol Hill, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont independent, was in his sixth hour of speaking on the Senate floor in a real life filibuster of the president’s tax deal. He began talking shortly before 10:30 a.m. on Friday and was still speaking at 6 p.m.

“I think that the American people don’t like this agreement,” Sanders said, predicting that if the deal to extend the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts for two years were to pass, all cuts – even those for the top brackets, which he opposes – would be “extended long term.”

Despite Sanders’ filibuster, the real obstacles to the deal’s passage are in the House, where Democrats are incensed at the deal, in some ways on substance but also in large part because it was brokered directly with Republicans and without their input.

Clinton’s main purpose in appearing before the press was to lobby the public, but even more so House Democrats, to accept the deal.

“A lot them are hurting now, and I get it,” Clinton said. “I have an enormous amount of respect for the Democrats in the House … I regret that so many of them lost.”

And, just think, Mr. President, thanks to this “amateur” in the White House, more of your Democratic friends are going to lose their jobs this November.  

And, if we’re lucky, the guy you rightly pegged as an amateur will, too.

It’s Still the Economy, Stupid.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

Barack Obama said the following about the “Recession” we’ve experienced for the last three and a half years, at a campaign rally in Seattle, Washington, yesterday:

It was a house of cards and it collapsed in the most destructive, worst crisis that we’ve seen since the Great Depression. And sometimes people forget the magnitude of it. You know, you saw some of that in the video that was shown. Sometimes I forget.

Mitt Romney’s press secretary, Andrea Saul, responds: “It’s not surprising that a president who forgot to create jobs, forgot to cut the debt, and forgot to change Washington has now admitted that he’s forgotten about the recession. In fact, it seems that the President has forgotten that he’s been in office for the last three-and-a-half years. In November, the American people won’t forget.”

Per Gallup,

64% of Americans are employed full-time, 18.2% are underemployed, and 8.3% are unemployed.

Also, per Gallup:

Registered voters are more likely to say Mitt Romney, if elected president, would do a very good or good job of handling the economy than they are to say President Obama would, if re-elected — 61% vs. 52%. While the two men earn about equal “very good” ratings, 22% of voters think Obama would do a “very poor” job, more than twice as many as say the same about Romney (10%).

Voters were asked to rate Obama and Romney separately on the economy in the May 1-2 USA Today/Gallup poll. However, when forced to choose between the two in a follow-up question, voters were split about evenly, with 47% saying Romney and 45% Obama.

Voters’ greater likelihood to say Obama would do a “very poor” job with the economy comes partly from the large percentage of Republicans who say this — 46%. This compares with a much smaller 20% of Democrats who say the same about Romney. This could partly reflect the fact that Obama has been in office for more than three years in troubled economic times, while Romney has no track record on the economy at the national level. In total, 81% of Republicans say Obama would do a very poor or poor job of handling the economy, while 58% of Democrats give Romney the same ratings.

Independents also give Romney much better ratings than Obama on handling the economy. Twenty-one percent of independents believe Obama would do a very poor job with the economy over the next four years, while 7% say the same about Romney. They are more likely to say Romney than Obama would do a very good or good job — 64% vs. 52%.

Independents’ views on the forced-choice question are similar, with 50% saying Romney would do a better job and 40% saying Obama would. Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly choose their respective party’s candidate as better able to manage the economy — at almost identically high levels.

And, while the American Economy continues to sink deeper into a socialist swamp, what is the 44th President of the United States doing about it?

Per  Sen. Marco Rubio, in an interview on Laura Ingraham’s Radio Show on Thursday, not a whole heck of a lot.  In fact, he’s trying his darnedest to cover it up:

According to Florida’s Republican junior U.S. senator, the economy should be the focus, but there seems to be a different issue every week brought to the forefront by the president and his party.

“Every single week, whether it’s the student loan issue this week, or this gay marriage issue — next week it’ll be something else; every single week they will trot out another issue to avoid having to talk about the economy because this election is about the economy, which is what it should be about. He can’t win and they know that. They’re smart enough to know that.”

As for the issue itself, Rubio said it was an important one, but one that was preferably done at the state level.

“I’m not saying this isn’t an issue we shouldn’t have an opinion on,” Rubio said. “I’m not saying it isn’t an important issue. But obviously you’re seeing this issue being litigated and voted on across the country at the state level. We did so in Florida. You saw so in North Carolina. But in terms of our president, what we really want to focus on is getting jobs and the economy growing again and keeping America safe. He doesn’t want to talk about the issue — especially the economy.”

But Rubio said whether it be the student loan issue, the contraception mandate or the same-sex marriage issue, Obama has managed to use these issues to divide people for political purposes.

“Every week, it is an effort by this president to divide one group of Americans against another group of Americans for the purposes of getting him reelected,” Rubio said. “It’s very, very sad.”

Obama is simply following Rule #8 of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, which states:

“Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

While Obama’s Far Left Base is jumping for joy, the overwhelming majority of average Americans out here in the Heartland are not amused.

Obama: Smarter Than Us “Common” Folks

On By kingsjesterIn Politics9 Comments

President Barack Hussein Obama yesterday reaffirmed his personal belief that he is wiser than the average American voter.

GMA.yahoo.com has the story:

President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.

In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts, the president described his thought process as an “evolution” that led him to this decision, based on conversations with his staff members, openly gay and lesbian service members, and his wife and daughters.

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together; when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told Roberts in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.

Excerpts of the interview will air tonight on ABC’s “World News With Diane Sawyer” and “Nightline.”

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states’ deciding the issue on their own. But he said he’s confident that more Americans will grow comfortable with gays and lesbians getting married, citing his own daughters’ comfort with the concept.

Of course, this announcement came the day after North Carolina Voters overwhelmingly voted for a resolution declaring marriage to be “one man and one woman”, becoming the 31st state to pass such a law.

If you watched the MSM yesterday, you would have thought that this was the greatest announcement since Moses brought the tablets down from Mount Sinai.

One would have thought that Obama would have learned a lesson from both the North Carolina vote and the defeat of long-time Indiana Senator Richard Lugar.

Washingtontimes.com reports that

Dark clouds had been gathering over Mr. Lugar for months after tea party groups made the elder statesman, a moderate Republican, their chief congressional target this year.

The GOP primary quickly turned into a nationally scrutinized showdown as the Club for Growth and other Mourdock supporters poured some $3 million into ads lambasting Mr. Lugar for voting for the automakers bailout and tax hikes over his six terms, while groups supporting Mr. Lugar spent half that.

Mr. Mourdock pounded his core message that the 80-year-old senator had turned into a Washington insider, slamming him for living away from Indiana for years, highlighting Mr. Lugar’s congenial relationship with Mr. Obama and criticizing the senator for voting to confirm Mr. Obama’s liberal Supreme Court nominees.

Suddenly, Mr. Lugar found himself struggling to defend things he once touted as accomplishments; among them, working with Democrats on foreign policy and earning the title of one of the two longest-serving Republicans in the Senate. Mr. Lugar and Mr. Hatch were both first elected in 1976.

In a blistering letter, written after his defeat, Sen. Lugar came off as a bitter, pompous, old RINO:

Ultimately, the re-election of an incumbent to Congress usually comes down to whether voters agree with the positions the incumbent has taken. I knew that I had cast recent votes that would be unpopular with some Republicans and that would be targeted by outside groups.

These included my votes for the TARP program, for government support of the auto industry, for the START Treaty, and for the confirmations of Justices Sotomayor and Kagan. I also advanced several propositions that were considered heretical by some, including the thought that Congressional earmarks saved no money and turned spending power over to unelected bureaucrats and that the country should explore options for immigration reform.

It was apparent that these positions would be attacked in a Republican primary. But I believe that they were the right votes for the country, and I stand by them without regrets, as I have throughout the campaign.

…Unfortunately, we have an increasing number of legislators in both parties who have adopted an unrelenting partisan viewpoint. This shows up in countless vote studies that find diminishing intersections between Democrat and Republican positions. Partisans at both ends of the political spectrum are dominating the political debate in our country. And partisan groups, including outside groups that spent millions against me in this race, are determined to see that this continues. They have worked to make it as difficult as possible for a legislator of either party to hold independent views or engage in constructive compromise. If that attitude prevails in American politics, our government will remain mired in the dysfunction we have witnessed during the last several years. And I believe that if this attitude expands in the Republican Party, we will be relegated to minority status. Parties don’t succeed for long if they stop appealing to voters who may disagree with them on some issues.

Legislators should have an ideological grounding and strong beliefs identifiable to their constituents. I believe I have offered that throughout my career. But ideology cannot be a substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a willingness to study an issue objectively, and for the fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party or even your constituents. Like Edmund Burke, I believe leaders owe the people they represent their best judgment.

Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times. Certainly this was understood by President Reagan, who worked with Democrats frequently and showed flexibility that would be ridiculed today – from assenting to tax increases in the 1983 Social Security fix, to compromising on landmark tax reform legislation in 1986, to advancing arms control agreements in his second term.

Except that, Reagan, in the end, would always stand behind Conservative principles.  Lugar spent his career reaching across the aisle and patting himself on the back at the same time.

Obama should have paid attention to what was happening around him yesterday.

The American people spoke very clearly.

The death of the Tea Party Movement has been greatly exaggerated.