Tag: President Bush

The Imperious Presidency: An Executive Order By Any Other Name…

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

obamaburningconstitutionAnother Liberal Defense for Petulant President Pantywaist’s Imperious Presidency has been shot to Blazes.

USA Today reports that…

President Obama has issued a form of executive action known as the presidential memorandum more often than any other president in history — using it to take unilateral action even as he has signed fewer executive orders.

When these two forms of directives are taken together, Obama is on track to take more high-level executive actions than any president since Harry Truman battled the “Do Nothing Congress” almost seven decades ago, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents.

Obama has issued executive orders to give federal employees the day after Christmas off, to impose economic sanctions and to determine how national secrets are classified. He’s used presidential memoranda to make policy on gun control, immigration and labor regulations. Tuesday, he used a memorandum to declare Bristol Bay, Alaska, off-limits to oil and gas exploration.

Like executive orders, presidential memoranda don’t require action by Congress. They have the same force of law as executive orders and often have consequences just as far-reaching. And some of the most significant actions of the Obama presidency have come not by executive order but by presidential memoranda.

Obama has made prolific use of memoranda despite his own claims that he’s used his executive power less than other presidents. “The truth is, even with all the actions I’ve taken this year, I’m issuing executive orders at the lowest rate in more than 100 years,” Obama said in a speech in Austin last July. “So it’s not clear how it is that Republicans didn’t seem to mind when President Bush took more executive actions than I did.”

Obama has issued 195 executive orders as of Tuesday. Published alongside them in the Federal Register are 198 presidential memoranda — all of which carry the same legal force as executive orders.

He’s already signed 33% more presidential memoranda in less than six years than Bush did in eight. He’s also issued 45% more than the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who assertively used memoranda to signal what kinds of regulations he wanted federal agencies to adopt.

Obama is not the first president to use memoranda to accomplish policy aims. But at this point in his presidency, he’s the first to use them more often than executive orders.

“There’s been a lot of discussion about executive orders in his presidency, and of course by sheer numbers he’s had fewer than other presidents. So the White House and its defenders can say, ‘He can’t be abusing his executive authority; he’s hardly using any orders,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a presidency scholar at Bowdoin College. “But if you look at these other vehicles, he has been aggressive in his use of executive power.”

Evidently, OUR Constitution doesn’t matter a hill of beans to the Manchurian President. Ladies and gentlemen, the Great One, Mark Levin, is right: We have an imperial president:

I’m not into imperial presidents who act imperial and speak imperial and Obama forgets there’s a Constitution. Yes, he keeps telling us he won reelection. Congratulations, but guess what? The Constitution wasn’t up for election, it’s not up for a referendum. He has to comply with it, too.

He was sent back to Washington, but he’s got a strict list of rules that he has to follow as president. When he gets up there and starts saying, if Congress doesn’t do this, I’m going to do this unilaterally, it violates separation of power a lot of the times.

…What the hell is this? He was elected president. Congratulations. This guy makes Richard Nixon look like a man who followed the law all the time. I think we have an imperial president, he sounds imperial, he’s arrogant as hell and I’m furious about this and I’m going to tell you why. We are a magnificent country. We don’t need to be turned upside down. We don’t need to run from crisis to crisis to crisis. He’s bankrupting this country.

On his nationally syndicated radio program, back in January of this year, the Godfather of Conservative Talk Radio, Maha Rushie, himself, spoke about Obama’s “Independence Proclamation”:

Executive orders to make things fair. He can do executive orders and executive actions to get rid of the unfairness. He’s gonna make this lousy country finally fair! … He’s got these Republicans standing in his way. “Okay, I’m gonna just start writing executive orders. “To hell with it! I’m gonna finally make everything fair.” Now, he might have a pen, and he might have a phone, but what he does not have is the constitutional power to run this country like a dictator…

…He’s a constitutional lawyer, and he should know better. But he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about the Constitution. The Constitution is an impediment to Obama. The Constitution is not something to be respected — and it’s not just Obama, by the way. It’s to the vast majority of the intellectual, leftist elite. They really detest the Constitution, because it thwarts them. Some of you may not know this, but the United States Constitution was written to limit government power.

The US Constitution’s first 10 amendments specifically limit government’s power. Well, that’s not cool if you’re Obama or any of today’s liberal Democrats. That, to you, is shackles. They call that “a charter of negative liberties.” Stop and think of that. A document founded in the belief, the proclamation, the declaration, the primacy of individual liberty and freedom is considered “a charter of negative liberties.”

It’s something that gives the people individual primacy and freedom — and, to the left, that’s negative — and the reason they call it “a charter of negative liberties” is because it limits government. They don’t like that, and that’s what Obama was talking about, “You know, the heck with it!”

…Violating the Constitution — there’s no question about this, folks. It’s just a matter of whether people in power and who have the authority to do so want to stop it. Because if nobody’s gonna stop Obama, he’s gonna be able to keep doing it.

President Obama has been on a mission during his presidency to circumvent the system of checks and balances which Our Founding Fathers have so wisely put in place, in order to prevent exactly what our imperial president is attempting to do.

Therefore, one can say that the president’s actions, concerning the issuance of “Memoranda”, are no less than tyrannical.

What did our Founding Fathers have to say about Tyranny?

The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men. –Samuel Adams

Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.- Thomas Jefferson

And, this final quote, which is amazingly prophetic:

Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery.- Thomas Jefferson

If you haven’t noticed, there has been an explosion of Conservative Bloggers during the Obama Administration. There is a reason for this.

Just as Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard’s Almanac) and Thomas Paine (Common Sense) used their biting wit, as communicated by the Written Word, to fight tyranny in their time, so are “Citizen Bloggers” using the power of the Written Word once again, this time magnified in scope a thousand-fold by the power of the Internet, to fight an Imperious President.

Because…

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. – Edmund Burke

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama’s Coffee Cup Salute: Semper Latte, Praesidens Inflatus

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment
Obamacoffeecupsalute9232014Just when you think that President Barack Hussein Obama cannot get any more pompous…and clueless…he surprises you.
The Washington Times reports that
President Obama returned a formal military salute by saluting with a coffee cup he had in his hand as he stepped off his U.S. Marine Corps helicopter in New York on Sunday.A video of the gesture that some are calling the “latte salute” was uploaded to the White House Instagram account.
 
“President Obama just landed in New York for #UNGA2014,” the caption reads.The salute is “the most important of all military courtesies,” says a manual, titled “Customs and Courtesies,” for Marine Corps officer candidates, The Daily Caller reported.

“In general, do not salute when… carrying articles with both hands or being otherwise so occupied as to make saluting impractical,” the manual says.

Mr. Obama did not appear to be carrying anything else in his hands when he made the unusual salute.
 
Reaction on social media was swift.

“Dear POTUS. Place cup in left hand and salute with the right. Please. You are embarrassing us,” one commenter said on the White House’s Instagram account.

Compare and Contrast…

bushwithtroopsFrom The Washington Times, 12/22/2008

For much of the past seven years, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have waged a clandestine operation inside the White House. It has involved thousands of military personnel, private presidential letters and meetings that were kept off their public calendars or sometimes left the news media in the dark.

Their mission: to comfort the families of soldiers who died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to lift the spirits of those wounded in the service of their country.

On Monday, the president is set to make a more common public trip – with reporters in tow – to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, home to many of the wounded and a symbol of controversy earlier in his presidency over the quality of care the veterans were receiving.

But the size and scope of Mr. Bush’s and Mr. Cheney’s private endeavors to meet with wounded soliders and families of the fallen far exceed anything that has been witnessed publicly, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials familiar with the effort.

“People say, ‘Why would you do that?’” the president said in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Times on Friday. “And the answer is: This is my duty. The president is commander in chief, but the president is often comforter in chief, as well. It is my duty to be – to try to comfort as best as I humanly can a loved one who is in anguish.”

Mr. Bush, for instance, has sent personal letters to the families of every one of the more than 4,000 troops who have died in the two wars, an enormous personal effort that consumed hours of his time and escaped public notice. The task, along with meeting family members of troops killed in action, has been so wrenching – balancing the anger, grief and pride of families coping with the loss symbolized by a flag-draped coffin – that the president often leaned on his wife, Laura, for emotional support.

“I lean on the Almighty and Laura,” Mr. Bush said in the interview. “She has been very reassuring, very calming.”

Mr. Bush also has met privately with more than 500 families of troops killed in action and with more than 950 wounded veterans, according to White House spokesman Carlton Carroll. Many of those meetings were outside the presence of the news media at the White House or at private sessions during official travel stops, officials said.

In contrast, this administration seems to view America’s Fighting Men and Women as nothing more that lab rats to be apologized for and jacked around with.

Former United States Representative, Lt. Col. Allen B. West, posted the following observation yesterday:

If there was ever any doubt how this Commander in Chief really feels in his heart about our men and women in uniform, this should seal the deal. We have warriors engaged in harm’s way, and he does THIS? The latte salute. And he has the nerve to publish it on his Instagram account. Disgraceful.

Back in March of 2011, I reported the following…

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was taken after President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) and his Coalition of the Unwilling began bombing Libya, a mere 17 percent of Americans view our man Scooter as a strong and decisive military leader.   Almost half of those that responded think that Obama is a cautious and consultative commander-in-chief and more than a third label him as indecisive in military matters.

Gee, DiNozzo, ya think?

I remember my ex-brother-in-law, Dave. My late step-sister met him at the USO in Memphis during the Vietnam War. David was a Polish Catholic from outside of Detroit, a Navy guy who received his training in the computers of the day, while in service to our country. When he got out, they got married and moved to Dearborn (now Dearbornistan), Michigan, where he got a job with Burroughs. I remember Dave, because he was always good to me, even though I was just a runt kid, 15 years younger than him. I remember him cleaning his service rifle, sitting on the living room floor of our house, and, making sure it was empty, allowing me to to hold it. At the time,I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever done.

I also remember John. John was a friend of my sister’s, who stayed with us, because of problems at home. As I have related before, my folks were the ones whom all my sister’s friends would talk to when they had trouble at home. John was great guy, as well, who wound up enlisting and serving in that “crazy Asian War”, as Kenny Rogers and Mel Tillis once referred to it in song.

I have related before about my own Daddy and my Uncles, and their service in World War II. I have also had friends that served over the years, and one who is still serving in the Air National Guard.

All of these men were/are Patriots. They enlisted out of duty to God and Country.

Our Brightest and Best, who wear the uniform today, are no less dedicated. They deserve to be treated with respect, not as pawns in a game of political expediency, whose rules including social experimentation, political correctness, and blatant disrespect by the Commander-in-Chief..

How hard would it have been for Obama to hand off his coffee to one of those accompanying him to hold for him, getting it back after he gave a proper salute to those Marines?
It would have taken only a moment to show respect for those who willingly lay down their lives under his command.
It was Obama’s choice not to respect them.
And, it was a very revealing choice, indeed.
Until He Comes,
KJ

Obama Struggles to Find a Strategy With Which to “Defeat and Debase” a “Junior Varsity”

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

AFBrancoThe-Sword-9122014In an interview conducted by New Yorker Editor David Remick, back in January of this year, the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, said the following about a Muslim Terrorist Group, which he would later refer to as ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), and everyone else (except for the UN and some of Obama’s Minions in the Main Streat Media) would call ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham):

The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant. I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian.

As the Terrorist Organization grew in power and aggression, invading Iraq, Obama was pressed to recognize the threat, and proceeded to drop bombs on the Muslim Barbarians and spy on their activities using unmanned drones,resulting in retaliation, involving the beheading of two American Journalists, while they captured a strategic dam on the Euphrates River, threatening to blow it up and flood the region around Baghdad, killing tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

Unfortunately, on August 29th, our skittish Commander-in-Chief reluctantly admitted that he did not have a clue as to what he was doing.

Fox News.com reported at the time, that,

President Obama is facing intense criticism for admitting Thursday “we don’t have a strategy yet” for dealing with Islamic State militants in Syria, despite warnings from top military advisers and others that the group must be confronted on that side of the border. 

The president made the comment during a briefing with reporters in which he overtly played down the prospect of any imminent military action in Syria. He tried to temper speculation that he was about to roll out a “full scale” strategy, one that might expand the current, limited airstrike campaign in northern Iraq. 

“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet,” Obama said. 

As the White House later clarified, he was talking specifically about a military strategy for Syria. But Republican critics pointed out that the ISIS presence in Syria has been festering for a long time, and is only growing in strength. 

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the toughest critics in Congress of the administration’s Middle East policies, tweeted the president’s quote with a reminder: “#ISIS is largest, richest terrorist group in history & 192,000 dead in #Syria.” 

Karl Rove, Fox News analyst and former George W. Bush administration adviser, said he was “appalled” by the president’s comment. 

“He was warned about the role that ISIS was playing inside Syria, and he has had all that time to develop a strategy about what to do about ISIS in Syria and he still doesn’t,” Rove told Fox News. 

Finally, with public outcry and concern turned up to “11”, like Spinal Tap’s Guitar Amp (look them up, children), and his popularity at 38% and dropping, Obama suddenly came up with a strategy, which he would present to a worried nation last Tuesday evening.

Here are some excerpts from whitehouse.gov…

…In a region that has known so much bloodshed, these terrorists are unique in their brutality.  They execute captured prisoners.  They kill children.  They enslave, rape, and force women into marriage.  They threatened a religious minority with genocide.  And in acts of barbarism, they took the lives of two American journalists — Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff.

So ISIL poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East — including American citizens, personnel and facilities.  If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States.  While we have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland, ISIL leaders have threatened America and our allies.  Our Intelligence Community believes that thousands of foreigners -– including Europeans and some Americans –- have joined them in Syria and Iraq.  Trained and battle-hardened, these fighters could try to return to their home countries and carry out deadly attacks.

…Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.

The, he got vaguely specific:

1. A systematic campaign of airstrikes against ISIL

Working with the Iraqi government, we will expand our efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian missions, so that we’re hitting ISIL targets as Iraqi forces go on offense.  Moreover, I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are.  That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq.  This is a core principle of my presidency:  If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven. 

2. Increased support to forces fighting ISIL on the ground

In June, I deployed several hundred American servicemembers to Iraq to assess how we can best support Iraqi security forces.  Now that those teams have completed their work –- and Iraq has formed a government –- we will send an additional 475 servicemembers to Iraq.  As I have said before, these American forces will not have a combat mission –- we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq.  But they are needed to support Iraqi and Kurdish forces with training, intelligence and equipment.  We’ll also support Iraq’s efforts to stand up National Guard Units to help Sunni communities secure their own freedom from ISIL’s control.

Across the border, in Syria, we have ramped up our military assistance to the Syrian opposition.  Tonight, I call on Congress again to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters.  In the fight against ISIL, we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its own people — a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost.  Instead, we must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria’s crisis once and for all. 

3. Drawing on our substantial counterterrorism capabilities to prevent ISIL attacks

Working with our partners, we will redouble our efforts to cut off its funding; improve our intelligence; strengthen our defenses; counter its warped ideology; and stem the flow of foreign fighters into and out of the Middle East.  And in two weeks, I will chair a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to further mobilize the international community around this effort.

4. Providing humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians displaced by ISIL

This includes Sunni and Shia Muslims who are at grave risk, as well as tens of thousands of Christians and other religious minorities.  We cannot allow these communities to be driven from their ancient homelands. 

“This is our strategy,” the President said, adding that the United States has a “broad coalition of partners” joining us in this effort…

When ISIS started their invasions of Iraq, Liberals, in defense of Obama, blamed “Booosh!”, as he had originally set a timeline for our country’s military withdrawal from Iraq, which, for the sake of his own political advantage, Obama followed.

What all the apologists neglected to pay attention to, was the fact that President George W. Bush also warned what would happened if the next president suffered from “premature evacuation”.

Foxnews.com has the story…

A prophetic warning from then-President George W. Bush before he left office about what would happen if the U.S. withdrew troops from Iraq too soon is getting new attention in light of the Islamic State’s gains, as each of his predictions appears to be coming true.

Bush, as discussed on “The Kelly File,” made the remarks in the White House briefing room on July 12, 2007, as he argued against those who sought an immediate troop withdrawal.  

“To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States,” Bush cautioned.

He then ticked off a string of predictions about what would happen if the U.S. left too early.

“It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to Al Qaeda.

“It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale.

“It would mean we allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan.  

“It would mean we’d be increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.”

Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen says all these predictions have come true.

“Every single thing that President Bush said there in that statement is happening today,” he told Fox News.

To Bush’s first warning, the Islamic State terror group is effectively the successor to Al Qaeda in Iraq – and they’ve overrun several major cities in Iraq’s north while claiming broad swaths of territory in Syria. Further, the group has been behind mass killings of Iraqi civilians as well as the recent execution by beheading of two American journalists.

The Obama administration has warned that the group’s violence threatens to approach genocide levels.

Though President Obama says combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, American troops are nevertheless returning in some capacity. The president on Wednesday announced an expanded airstrike campaign against the group in Iraq and Syria, and is sending hundreds more U.S. military personnel into Iraq.

Some lawmakers and analysts say this could have been avoided if the Obama administration had left a residual force in Iraq, or at least had responded sooner to ISIS’ gains in northern Iraq over the past year.

Bush, before he left office, signed an agreement setting the stage for U.S. troops to withdraw by December 2011.

Obama, though, was urged by military advisers to keep thousands of service members after that deadline to help the shaky Iraqi government. But when Washington and Baghdad were unable to reach a renewed agreement governing the presence of U.S. forces in the country, the Obama administration withdrew virtually all troops at the end of 2011.

“We needed to leave a stabilizing force behind, and we didn’t.  And of course, we know the rest is history,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told Fox News.

It is “funny” how Liberals’ pomposity always comes back to bite them in the hindquarters, isn’t it?

But, I digress…

According to reports issues yesterday, ISIS Forces are increasing daily, now numbering over 31,000 Radical Muslims.

It is time for bold, decisive moves. Pussy-footing around with a “limited engagement”, which the administration is refusing to call a “war”, will lead us straight into another Vietnam.

And that, is something that this nation does not need to go through again.

Until He comes,

KJ